On a November night in 1978, the entire closing crew of a Burger Chef restaurant in suburban Indianapolis disappeared — and two days later, their bodies were discovered in the woods.
Police identified the victims as assistant manager Jayne Friedt, 20, and employees Ruth Ellen Shelton, 17, Daniel “Danny” Davis, 16, and Mark Flemmons, 16. The four vanished from the Speedway, Indiana, restaurant on Nov. 17, 1978, and were found on Nov. 19 in a wooded area in nearby Johnson County, according to Indianapolis Monthly and A&E.
A teenage coworker who arrived after midnight to help close the restaurant discovered the back door ajar and the safe and cash drawers exposed, Indianapolis Monthly reported. Friedt’s Chevy Vega was later found abandoned in a nearby park.
Investigators soon located the bodies. Davis and Shelton had been shot; Friedt was stabbed with a hunting knife whose blade broke off in her chest; and Flemmons had died from asphyxiation after suffering blunt-force trauma, according to A&E, which cited Julie Young’s book The Burger Chef Murders in Indiana.
Roughly $581 was missing from the restaurant, but purses and nearly $100 in coins were left behind — casting doubt on a simple robbery motive, per A&E.
Early investigative missteps severely weakened the case. Police allowed the restaurant to be cleaned the following morning before completing forensic work, and several agencies drove through the clearing where the bodies were found. Former Speedway Police Chief Buddy Ellwanger later admitted authorities “screwed it up from the beginning,” the outlet noted.
Over time, attention shifted to a robbery crew linked to multiple fast-food holdups that summer. One theory suggested that one of the victims may have recognized someone, prompting the killings, according to the Indianapolis Star and ABC News.
In 1986, an Indiana inmate named Donald Forrester confessed and led investigators to a septic tank, where they found .38-caliber shell casings believed to match the murders, Indianapolis Monthly reported. But Forrester later recanted his confession, failed polygraph tests, and was never charged. Detectives have disagreed on how credible his claims were.
Physical evidence has been re-examined multiple times. A palm print taken from Friedt’s car in 1978 was later compared against modern databases, but the identified match was ruled out, according to the Indianapolis Star. The case eventually passed to Indiana State Police Det. Nicholas Alspach, whose grandfather had helped process the original scene.
On the 40th anniversary of the killings in 2018, investigators released an image of the four-and-a-half-inch knife blade recovered from Friedt’s chest and announced new rounds of forensic testing.
“Jayne, Mark, Daniel and Ruth are real people, with real families, with real friends that deserve justice. I hope that before my time on Earth is gone that I have those answers,” said Theresa Jefferies, Shelton’s sister, at a state police press conference.
“It’s time to unload that secret,” added Sgt. Bill Dalton of the Indiana State Police, per ABC News.
Decades later, the case — one of Indiana’s most haunting unsolved crimes — remains open.
