True Crime Collection

Burger Chef Murders

At some point between 11pm and midnight on 17th November, 1978, 4 employees of Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway, Indiana disappeared: Assistant Manager Jayne Freidt, 20 years old; Daniel Davis, 16 years old; Mark Flemmonds, 16 years old; and Ruth Ellen Shelton, 18 years old. A fellow employee who came by at midnight to visit the 4 noticed that the restaurant was empty, the money safe was open, and the back door ajar Police found 2 empty currency bags and an empty roll of adhesive tape next to the open safe. 

Initially, police did not consider the case to be serious, given that management reported the loss of only approximately $581 from the safe and no clear signs of a struggle. It was thought to be a case of petty embezzlement, with the assumption that the pilfered cash had been used by the youths to go partying that night. More than $100 in coins was left in the registers. Although the purses and jackets of the missing women had been left at the shop, the petty theft theory initially seemed most likely and the scene was cleaned by employees early Saturday morning. 

Buddy Ellwanger, a Speedway police officer who was eventually assigned to the case, admitted "we screwed it up from the beginning". Not only was the restaurant cleaned and allowed to be reopened, but no photographs were taken beforehand, effectively eliminating all potential evidence at the crime scene. 

When the 4 did not show on Saturday morning and Jayne's Vega was found partially locked in town, concerns grew. It became evident that they had been abducted while closing the restaurant for the night, with the attack possibly beginning as they removed trash bags out the back door. 

On Sunday afternoon, hikers found the bodies of the 4 over 20 miles away, in the rural woods of Johnson County. Both Daniel and Ruth had been shot execution-style numerous times with a .38 caliber firearm. Jayne had been stabbed twice in the chest. The handle of the knife had broken off and was missing; the blade was later recovered during an autopsy. Mark was later determined to have been bludgeoned - possibly with a chain - and died from choking to death on his own blood. All 4 victims were still wearing their Burger Chef uniforms. 

Money and watches were found on the dead victims, implying that robbery might not have been the sole motive of the murders. 

The leading theory has been that the 4 victims were kidnapped during a botched robbery, possibly after one of the victims recognised 1 of the perpetrators. Mark was covering for another employee's shift and was not scheduled to work that night, leading investigators to speculate that perhaps he was the one who recognised the killers, since they had not planned on him being there. 

On the night of the murders, a 16 year old eyewitness saw 2 suspicious men in a car outside the Burger Chef just before closing. Both men were white and in their 30s. One man had a beard; the other was clean shaven with light coloured hair. The police had models of the suspects created in clay to assist the investigation. 

Later that year, a man in a bar in Greenwood bragged that he had been involved in the killings. Police subsequently questioned him, but he passed a polygraph claiming not to have been involved and officers were unable to bring charges on other grounds. The man provided the names of others who he suggested belonged to a fast-food robbery gang, and whom investigators suspected may have been involved in this case. While following up on these leads in Franklin, officers spotted a man who bore a strong resemblance to the "bearded man" composite. Summoned for a lineup, the man shaved his beard the night before he was to appear. A neighbour of his, who had not been spotted by the original witness but who had been named by the Greenwood suspects, subsequently went to prison for strong-arm robberies committed with a shotgun. Another associate named by the Greenwood suspect, who fit the description of the fair-haired man, also subsequently was imprisoned for other armed robberies of fast food restaurant. However, without confessions - despite offers of plea deals to any suspects not directly responsible for the killings - and without direct physical evidence of the involvement of the suspects in the murders, the police were not able to effect an arrest. 

At the time, there was some speculation that the murders were tied to other crimes that had shocked the town over the preceding months, such as the murder of Julia Scyphers and the Speedway bombings. At the time the perpetrator of the bombings was still on the loose. However, these cases were subsequently found to be unconnected to the November murders. 

Investigators continued to follow leads relating to possible suspects as widely as Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Dallas. However, they were not able to find any more promising leads, or to locate the evidence they believed would have been most useful: the firearm, the handle of the knife, and the chain used in the murders. Nor have any perpetrators made confessions to police, though the son of the bearded suspect has told police that he confided in him that he had been involved prior to his own death. 

Ken York, one of the original investigators on the case, has noted that the deaths of the Greenwood suspect and the bearded suspect, from an apparent suicide and a heart attack respectively, came suspiciously close after the release of the armed robber named by the suspect from the Greenwood bar. 

In 1981, Jayne's brother James was investigated for involvement in the murders after being arrested for unrelated drug charges, but was cleared of involvement in less than a week.

In 1984, Detective Mel Willsey of the Marion County Sheriff's Department received a call from an inmate at the Pendleton Correctional Facility named Donald Forrester, who was serving a 95 year prison sentence for rape. Donald said he was involved in the murders and was willing to confess in order to avoid his scheduled transfer to the notoriously violent Indiana state prison. At first the call seemed promising, as Donald was a career criminal who was living in Speedway when the murders took place, and was not incarcerated at the time. Mel got a court order to bring Donald to Marion County, where he confessed to shooting Daniel and Ruth. He then led police to the crime scene in the woods, where he accurately described the location and position of the dead bodies when they were found. He also knew about the broken handle of the knife, which was not widely publicised. According to Donald, Jayne's brother James owed money on a drug deal, so he and 3 other associates had gone to the restaurant to threaten her. But when Mark intervened to protect Jayne, a fight broke out outside Burger Chef, during which Mark fell and hit his head on the bumper of a car. Believing Mark was dead or dying, Donald and his accomplices decided to abduct and kill all the employees to eliminate all the witnesses to their crime. 

Donald said he shot Daniel and Ruth, and gave the names of 3 men he claimed were responsible for killing Mark and Jayne. He then led the police to a spot where he claimed he had thrown the gun into a river. However, a thorough search of the river did not find any weapon. Next, Mel interviewed Donald's ex-wife, who said that days after the murders, Donald had driven her out to a wooded area, where he left her in the car and got out to retrieve several firearm shell casings off the ground. He had then driven back home and flushed the casings down the toilet. Mel then got a warrant to search the septic tank of the house, which was now owned by someone else. The search turned up several spent .38 caliber shell casings. However, after someone within the Sheriff's office leaked details of Donald's cooperation, he suddenly recanted his confessions, claiming it was coerced. With no further cooperation from Donald and no direct evidence proving he committed the crime, Donald was never charged. He died in prison from cancer in 2006 at age 55. 

Despite thousands of hours of police investigation, as well as Burger Chef offering a reward of $25,000 to anyone who could capture the murderers or provide information about their whereabouts, the attackers were never prosecuted, and the case remains officially unsolved. Indiana state police continue to hold the case open, and have reportedly investigated the use of DNA-tracing techniques developed since the initial investigations.