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|---|---|
| Location | Speedway, Indiana, U.S. |
| Date | November 17, 1978 c. 11:00 p.m. |
| Attack type | Attempted robbery, kidnapping, mass murder |
| Weapons | Firearm, knife, blunt object |
| Deaths | 4 |
| Perpetrators | Unknown |
| No. of participants | 2 or more |
"Burger Chef murders" is a phrase used to describe a series of events that began at a Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway, Indiana, on the night of November 17, 1978.
Suspected robbery and homicides
Just after 11:00 PM on Friday, November 17, 1978, four young employees of a Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway, Indiana, located at 5725 Crawfordsville Road, disappeared.
Originally, police did not consider this a serious case, as management reported the loss of less than $500 along with the disappearances of the employees, which was chalked up to a case of petty embezzlement, and the pilfered cash had been used to go partying that night. Though the purses of the missing women had been left at the shop, the petty theft theory initially seemed likely and the scene was cleaned up by employees.
The case took a more serious tack when the murdered bodies of Jayne Friedt, 20, Daniel Davis, 16, Mark Flemmonds, 16, and Ruth Ellen Shelton, 18, were found that Sunday afternoon over 20 mi (32 km) away in the rural woods of Johnson County. Both Davis and Shelton had been shot execution-style numerous times. Friedt 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. Flemmonds had suffered a blunt-force head injury, which coroners had believed he had fled his captors, only to have the misfortune of colliding with a heavy object, possibly a tree trunk, which thwarted his flight. Flemmonds was later determined to have been bludgeoned- possibly with a chain- prior to his death. The leading theory is that they had been kidnapped during a botched robbery.
Perpetrators
According to a 16-year-old eyewitness, two suspicious men were in a car outside the Burger Chef just before closing on the night of the murders. Both were white and in their thirties. One man had a beard, and the other was clean-shaven with light colored ('fair') hair. Models of the suspects were created in clay.
Later that year, a man in a bar in Greenwood bragged that he had been involved in the killings. Police questioned him, and while he passed a polygraph and officers were unable to bring charges on other grounds, he provided the names of others he suggested belonged to a fast-food robbery gang. 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 (which he had had for the previous five years) the night before. His neighbour, who had not been spotted by the original witness, had also been named by the Greenwood suspect and subsequently went to prison for strongarm robberies committed with a shotgun. Another man who fitted the description of the fair-haired man also subsequently was imprisoned for other armed robberies of fast-food restaurants. However, without confessions despite offers of plea deals and without direct physical evidence of the involvement of the suspects in the murders, the police were not able to effect an arest.
Unsolved
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 identified, and the case remains officially unsolved.
References
- ^ Swan, Scott (2011). "Burger Chef murders, a 25-year-old mystery". WTHR.
- National Organization for Victim Education, Legislation, and Justice.
- David J. Bodenhamer; Robert Graham Barrows; David Gordon Vanderstel
Contributor David J. Bodenhamer, Robert Graham Barrows, David Gordon Vanderstel (1994). The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-31222-8.
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