MASCOUTAH, Ill. _ Three conversations were going at once at David Jung's kitchen table, where old friends gathered this fall to catch up.
They laughed about years-old Easter candy left in a freezer. They mused about the rituals of the homecoming parade.
The chatter ceased and all eyes turned to Ed Morrison when the topic turned, inevitably, to murder.
Morrison has ties with everyone at the table over the murders 50 years ago of his older brother, Mike, and his brother's prom date, Debbie Means.
There's Mary Kay Webb, his childhood neighbor and good friend who helped Ed find the couple's abandoned car the day after prom.
There's Jung, the traffic cop first to reach the bodies and who dressed as a woman to try to snare a killer.
And Robert Moll, classmate and funeral home director's son who, at the age of 16, accompanied his father to the crime scene and kept grisly details to himself.
"I think it's helped heal the town of Mascoutah," he said.
Morrison, 67, now lives in Harrisonburg, Va., but returned to Mascoutah in October to speak with students at a high school assembly about the crime and its aftermath.
Webb, Jung and Moll welcome Morrison's visits to town and his curiosity that unearthed answers about the double murder. Morrison and a few friends visit the cemetery yearly to toast the couple who never made it home from prom.
This was, after all, the crime that marred their childhoods _ and the town _ a half century ago.
"We used to have our windows open and doors open at night," Webb said. "Not after that."
