EASTSTON, MISSOURI — On a blistering July day in 1989, the carousel spun as usual at the Eastston County Fair. Children laughed, music played, and lemonade sweated in paper cups. By sundown, a five-year-old girl named Kenya Edgewater had vanished without a sound. No alarm sounded. No gates closed. The fair went on.
For two decades, her disappearance haunted her mother, Marlene, and cast a long shadow over a town that seemed determined to forget. It would take the accidental unearthing of a ragdoll in a neighbor’s backyard—and the dogged work of a detective who’d grown up with Kenya’s face on missing posters—to finally reveal the truth Eastston tried to bury.
The Day Kenya Disappeared
Marlene Edgewater was a single mother working two jobs, but that summer day, she’d saved enough to take her daughter to the fair. Kenya wore pink corduroy overalls, light-up sneakers, and clutched her beloved ragdoll, stitched with her name in crooked pink thread.
“One more ride, Mama, please,” Kenya pleaded, her hair in bouncing pigtails.
Marlene relented, but told her to stay where she could see her. She turned for just a moment—to grab a lemonade—and when she looked back, the carousel was spinning, but Kenya was gone.
At first, Marlene searched calmly, assuming Kenya had wandered to the funnel cake stand or petting zoo. But after ten minutes, panic set in. She stopped strangers, described Kenya’s doll and shoes, and pleaded for help. When the police arrived, Officer Riddle barely listened. “Sometimes little ones wander off,” he shrugged, asking if Marlene had been drinking. No lockdown was ordered. No trailers were searched. Marlene was told to wait by the gate.
By nightfall, only a handful of volunteers searched the fairgrounds. The next morning, the rides were wiped down and the carousel cleaned for a new crowd. The fair continued. Kenya Edgewater had disappeared without a scream, a witness, or a trace.
A Town Turns Away
A week later, a small newspaper ran a photo of Kenya—smiling, missing baby teeth, clutching her doll. The word “abduction” was never used. The case was called “possible wandering.” Police never canvassed every vendor. They never questioned every fair worker. One name missing from employee logs—Claude Emik—wasn’t noticed at all. He’d been hired for maintenance through a temp agency, paid in cash, and left town within a week.
Lucinda Raburn, the longtime “Lost Kids” booth volunteer, lived two blocks from the fair. She told police she saw nothing. No one questioned the hydrangea bush she planted near her shed the following Monday.
Marlene returned to the fairgrounds every week for a year, clutching Kenya’s photo. Rumors spread that she’d snapped, that maybe she’d misplaced her daughter, or that Kenya’s father had taken her. Marlene’s church friends stopped visiting. Her sister changed her number. The doll was never found.
By the fall of 1989, the whispers had spread. Marlene became “the lady whose kid disappeared.” The fair returned the next year, with new safety signs—but no mention of Kenya. Her name lingered only in the worn pages of Marlene’s nightly journal letters.
The Doll in the Dirt
In 2009, the Raburn house sat empty, its blue paint peeling, the hydrangea bush blooming out of season. Reggie Drummond, a recent neighbor, set out to rebuild his fence. As his dog Jigs dug near the bush, he unearthed a limp, rotted ragdoll. The name “Kenya” was faintly stitched across its belly. Nearby, Jigs found a small, pale bone.
Reggie called police. A crime scene team arrived. Under the hydrangea, they found a child’s pink shoe, colored beads, more bones, and a clump of synthetic hair. The shallow grave contained the remains of a small body, curled into itself, wrapped in decayed fabric.
Detective Darnell Boone, who’d grown up in Eastston, recognized the name Kenya Edgewater. DNA tests confirmed the remains. Local papers ran muted headlines: “Remains Identified in Eastston Backyard.” But for Marlene and Boone, it was the answer to a question that had never faded.
The Secrets of the Fair
Boone pored over old files. The 1989 police investigation was riddled with holes: no perimeter, no trailer searches, no background checks for temp workers. The temp agency that hired maintenance man Claude Emik had gone bankrupt, its records lost in a fire. But a single receipt surfaced: “C Emik, gate & trailer cleanup, $60 cash.”
A photo from the day Kenya vanished showed a man in overalls, a ring of keys at his hip, standing by a trailer near the carousel. Boone tracked Emik—now living under a new name in a trailer park three hours away.
Confronted by Boone, Emik confessed: Kenya had followed him to the trailer, chasing a rabbit. When she panicked and screamed, he struck her. He claimed it was an accident. Afraid, he turned to Lucinda Raburn, who offered to help hide the body.
Lucinda, who had died in 2004, had outsmarted everyone. She’d planted the hydrangea bush, signed over part of her backyard to the city to prevent utility work near the grave, and never spoke of that night. Emik changed his name and tried to disappear.
The Town Reckons With Its Silence
With Emik’s confession, authorities charged him with second-degree murder and improper disposal of human remains. For the first time, the town faced what it had ignored: A child had vanished in plain sight, and the adults responsible for her safety had failed her at every turn.
Neighbors remembered Lucinda’s odd behavior—her refusal to let children near her shed, her breakdowns in the ’90s, her calls to police about “digging” near her fence. A former babysitter admitted she’d seen Lucinda arguing with a man behind the house during fair week, but was too afraid to come forward.
The fairgrounds closed for the first time in a century. The carousel was dismantled, utility trailers searched, and a plaque was placed at the gate:
“In memory of Kenya Edgewater, 1984–1989. We should have looked sooner. We should have listened louder.”
Aftermath: The Truth Unearthed
Marlene finally buried her daughter with dignity, placing the restored ragdoll in the casket. At the funeral, she read a letter she’d written to Kenya on her 10th birthday: “I still know your laugh. I still hear it sometimes when I dream. I love you more today than I ever have. I always will.”
Detective Boone closed the case, but the silence remained—a collective guilt for every neighbor who’d looked away, every officer who’d doubted a grieving mother, every fairgoer who’d smiled and walked past a missing child.
Marlene cleaned Kenya’s room, donated the light-up shoes she’d bought every year, and whispered, “Thank you for waiting.” It was never about moving on, she said, but about finally being able to move with the truth.
