Ena Mary McIntosh Cordt was 28 when she and her young son Rory Wilhelm Willie Cordt were killed after a summer night in late July 1985 in Forsyth, Missouri. Their home was found the scene of a brutal double homicide; later accounts describe both victims beaten with a wooden baseball bat. In versions tied to a confession, Ena was attacked first and Rory was killed when he emerged and could have become a witness.

Tommy Lynn Sells, a transient carnival worker, later claimed he met Ena at the fair, was invited to the home, and then murdered both victims; investigators who reviewed the case after Sells’s arrest were reportedly convinced he committed the killings. No charges were filed in Missouri linking Sells to the Cordt homicides, and there was never a local trial over these deaths. Sells was prosecuted and executed in Texas for a different murder.

Who in Forsyth that summer might remember Ena, Rory, or the fair night that preceded their deaths?