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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. If you were around in the 1970s in the United States, chances are you've eaten at a burger chef restaurant at least once.
an American fast food chain known for some of the greasiest yet satisfying food. But it's not just greasy food and tasty burgers that Burger Chef is remembered for. In November 1978 in Speedway, Indiana, it became known as the place where a horrible, quadruple homicide occurred. Murders that would leave us scratching our heads even four decades later.
This is Forensic Tales, episode number 45, The Burger Chef Murders. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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or simply click the link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now, let's get to this week's episode. Chances are, if you're a millennial like me, you've never heard of Burger Chef. But if you're into true crime, chances are, you know that the Burger Chef restaurant chain is home to one of the most notorious, unsolved murders our country has ever seen.
Back in the late 1970s, Burger Chef was a leading all-American fast food chain serving some of the greasiest yet delicious food. If you were craving a late night snack or just something to satisfy your burger itch, Burger Chef was the spot. During its peak operations, Burger Chef had almost 1,100 locations across the United States serving thousands of American families every day.
On the menu, the Big Chef Burger and the Super Chef Burger. November 17, 1978 was supposed to be a regular chilly night in Speedway, Indiana. Speedway is a wholesome town of just over 12,000 people on the outskirts of Indianapolis. It's a town that's not supposed to be known for unsolved cold cases.
Thanksgiving was just a few days away, and if you didn't feel like cooking dinner, you'd stop by the Burger Chef restaurant located at 5725 Crawfordville Road and order that Big Chef burger with cheese. A few minutes after midnight, November 17th, a teenage boy pulled into the Burger Chef's parking lot. The teenager had been a longtime fast food chain employee and decided to see if his coworkers were gone for the night.
When he pulled his car into the parking lot, he noticed that the Burger Chef's lights were still on inside. A little strange, he thought. Maybe his co-workers were still inside cleaning up. Sometimes the closing procedures took longer than other nights. Maybe they had some last-minute customers. And maybe this was just one of those nights. He parked his car and turned off the engine. He walked up to the restaurant's back door, the door where the employees went in and out while on the clock.
The back door was open. Now this is really strange, he thought. When he got inside, instead of seeing his coworkers, he saw the cash register drawers on the floor and no one was there. He also noticed that the money safe was open, something that was never allowed. Maybe his coworkers forgot to close the safe up and lock the door when they left.
With a burning feeling in the pit of his stomach, the teenager knew something wasn't right, so he listened to his gut and called the police. When police arrived at the Burger Chef, they notified the restaurant's manager of a possible robbery. The manager calculated that $581 in cash was missing from the safe, a relatively low amount that didn't raise any alarm bells.
The first thought by the police and the manager was that the three teenagers and one 20-year-old working that night pocketed the money, took the cash, and were now out on a joyride. There weren't any signs of a struggle inside the restaurant, and nothing appeared to be damaged. What was unusual, though, was that there were two female purses found inside the restaurant.
A little strange if the teenagers stole the money, drove off, and left their purses behind. But still, the police and the manager chopped the whole thing up to the teenagers stealing the cash and decided not to launch a formal investigation that night. They didn't collect evidence or take photographs, and the police simply walked away and waited for the employees to come back and explain themselves.
The problem was, the teenagers never came back to explain. On the night of November 17, 1978, Burger Chef had four people on staff for the closing shift. 20-year-old assistant manager Jane Freit, 16-year-old Daniel Davis, 17-year-old Ruth Ellen Shelton, and 16-year-old Mark Flemons.
Jane was the oldest employee working that night. She was described as a girl with a heart of gold. Daniel, just 16 years old, was a talented photographer. Mark was the stylish one who was friendly to everyone he met. And Ruth loved music, a girl with her own creative side. Even though the police chalked this up to a joyride, the manager had some second thoughts about this theory.
He knew his employees really well. These four in particular were good kids, not the type of people to just steal money from the restaurant and run away. And the manager just couldn't get over what he saw inside the restaurant. Inside were two purses, one belonging to his assistant manager, Jane,
Jane wasn't the type of girl, in fact, I don't know any girl who would just leave their purse behind, at least not on purpose. Jane never clocked out and then just left her purse behind. Besides the two purses, there were also a couple of jackets belonging to the employees left behind. Items that would only be left behind by someone who didn't know they were leaving. And what about the restaurant's back door?
Why would they leave the back door unlocked, knowing their purses and belongings are still there? Things just didn't really add up here. The following morning, Saturday, November 18th, the opening crew arrived for their shift at the Burger Chef. Because the police cleared the restaurant, employees were allowed inside the restaurant, where they immediately began their opening cleaning procedures.
Any forensic evidence that would have been left behind was completely destroyed. The police hadn't even taken one single photograph before the whole place was squeaky clean, a mistake that would forever change the course of the investigation. The families of the four Burger Chef employees waited for them to show up on Saturday, but as the clock ticked and the hours went by, with no sign of Jane, Daniel, Mark, or Ruth,
The families began to worry. Where were they, and why hadn't they shown up yet? John and Rachel Shelton, the parents of Ruth Allen, waited by the phone for any update about where their daughter was. They knew it was only a matter of time before the media caught wind that four Burger Chef employees were missing, their daughter being one of them. Robert Flemons, the father of 17-year-old Mark, remembered a chilling conversation he had with his son.
While watching a kidnapping scene on TV, he recalled that Mark turned to his father and said, I wouldn't lay still and just die. A conversation that didn't seem to mean anything until now when his son is missing. By Saturday afternoon, Jane's blue and white Chevy Vega was found parked across town with no sign of the assistant manager. The car appeared to be abandoned.
The discovery of Jane's car and the realization that the four employees still hadn't shown up was the first clear sign that maybe the employees weren't the ones who stole the money. Maybe this was a robbery turned kidnapping. That the Burger Chef employees weren't the thieves, they were actually the victims. When Saturday afternoon came around, police no longer suspected the employees of stealing the money.
They feared that the employees may have been abducted or kidnapped while closing up the restaurant the night before. Maybe they went out the back door to throw away the trash and were picked up. No one knew. On Sunday afternoon, two days after the employees were last seen, a couple made a shocking discovery 35 minutes away from the Burger Chef restaurant.
The couple discovered the bodies of four people still dressed in their Burger Chef uniforms. Their bodies were found in the neighboring county of Johnson County on a heavily wooded property. This was some 30 minutes away from the Burger Chef location. Whoever was responsible kidnapped the employees and drove them off the main road onto a gravel path completely obscured from any other car driving by.
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Forensic experts concluded that 16-year-old Daniel Davis and 17-year-old Ruth Shelton had been shot execution style with a .38 caliber gun. They were lying face down, side by side to each other. Jane's body was found 75 yards away. She had been stabbed twice in the chest, and she had been stabbed with such brute force that the knife's handle had broken off entirely.
The blade was later recovered during her autopsy, and the handle was nowhere to be found. And finally, 16-year-old Mark Flemons had been bludgeoned with a chain. But it wasn't the bludgeoning that killed him. He died from choking to death on his own blood after the brutal and savage attack on him and his co-workers. His body was discovered several yards away from his co-workers near the main road.
A theory emerged based on the forensic evidence that Mark initially survived the attack and was able to escape whoever the attacker or attackers were. While trying to get away, he accidentally ran into a tree, causing him to knock himself out. Another theory is that he tried running away and fell down while trying to get away, just a few feet away from the main road.
Either theory, Mark didn't die right away. He fought and almost got away. All four Burger Chef employees had been murdered in cold blood. What noticeably stood out to investigators was that nothing was stolen from any of the victims. Most of them still had their jewelry on and they still had their wallets with money inside. It wasn't obvious that the motive wasn't financial. It wasn't money that these offenders were after.
The location of all four employees was now the second crime scene. Investigators knew they completely messed up at the first crime scene, the Burger Chef restaurant. This second crime scene had a lot of potential for valuable DNA or forensic evidence. If there was any location that had possible forensic evidence linking the murders to a possible suspect, this was it.
This second crime scene could be where the case is solved. However, just like the restaurant, investigators assigned to the case compromised the forensic evidence around the bodies. And when I say compromised, I mean some officers drove through the area that should have been sealed off, and there was speculation that some of the bodies had been moved even before the coroner's arrival.
From an evidence recovery perspective, this was a complete disaster. The discovery of the bodies left one burning question on everyone's mind. Who would kill four innocent people? Four innocent people who all worked the closing shift at the local burger chef. The murders didn't appear to be purely financially motivated.
Only $581 was stolen from the restaurant, and they also left behind a little over $100 in coins. So they clearly didn't take the time to get all the money. The killer or killers also left behind two of the girls' purses with their wallet still inside. And when their bodies were discovered, nothing of anything of value appeared to have been stolen.
So if the motive wasn't financial, what could be the motive to commit a quadruple homicide of people all under the age of 20? Who in the world could be capable of something like this? Shortly after the bodies of the Burger Chef employees were discovered, a 16-year-old teenager came forward to police as a possible witness to the kidnapping and murders.
The teenager reported to police that he saw two men parked outside the Burger Chef restaurant just moments before closing time. The teenager described the men as white and somewhere in their 30s. One of the men had a beard while the other one was cleanly shaven. This became the only solid eyewitness sighting of the possible killer or killers.
Shortly after the eyewitness description was released to the public, a man inside a bar in Greenwood bragged about being responsible for the Burger Chef murders. Maybe this was the break in the case everyone was waiting for. But as quickly as everyone's hopes were raised, they came crashing back down to the ground. That's because the man who came forward claiming responsibility had absolutely nothing to do with the murders.
He was simply a guy who wanted his two seconds of fame. He even passed a police polygraph, essentially putting the nail in the coffin that he's not the guy. He did, however, provide police with the names of a couple guys who were part of this so-called fast food robbery gang.
Police tracked down two of the men in this so-called gang, and when investigators laid their eyes on them, they were almost a perfect match to the teenager's eyewitness sighting. One of the men had a freshly shaven face, the other the same exact beard the teenager described seeing in the Burger Chef parking lot that night. This was really good for the investigators.
But both men, although they looked the part, weren't their suspects. Both men, who were in fact fast food robbers, had nothing to do with the Burger Chef murders. Without any physical or forensic evidence linking them to the quadruple murder, there was nothing left to do but to let both of them go and wait for another big break in the case.
Once the two men were cleared, a possible theory emerged. Investigators wondered if the suspects intended to rob the burger chef but graduated to kidnap and murder because one of the employees recognized them. Here's why this was a strong theory. 16-year-old Mark Flemons wasn't supposed to work on the night of November 17th. Mark wasn't supposed to be at the restaurant at all that night.
He picked up the closing shift completely last minute because one of his co-workers needed the night off and he was nice enough to cover the shift. Of course, a decision that would ultimately cost him his life. Because Mark wasn't supposed to be there on the night of the murders, investigators working the case theorized that this might have thrown the suspects off.
They weren't expecting to see him inside the restaurant that night, and maybe it was Mark who was the one who recognized one of them, causing this to go from a simple robbery to a kidnapping and murder.
Also, keep in mind, Mark was killed in a very different way than his co-workers. He wasn't shot. He wasn't stabbed like the others. He was beaten and actually got away near the main road. His body was found several yards away from the rest. This opened up the possibility that the suspects singled him out.
The Burger Chef murders weren't the only tragedy to strike the Speedway, Indiana community. Causing some to speculate they might be related. Earlier that year, 65-year-old Speedway resident Julia Schiffers received a knock at her front door. She answered the door and saw a man she didn't know or recognize. Actually, she had never seen this person before.
The man asked about some items she was selling in a recent garage sale she had, so she let the man to the garage. And while she got back there, she had turned her back towards him. That's when the man pulled out a gun and shot her, execution style in the back of the head, killing her instantly.
In September 1978, just two months before the Burger Chef murders, what would be known as the Speedway bombings rocked the entire community. For six long days, there were eight bombings throughout Speedway, Indiana. The coordinated bombings were orchestrated by Brett Kimberlin, a controversial political activist in the 1970s.
During the bombings, explosives were placed throughout the city in places like trash cans. Even though there were eight separate explosions, luckily no one was killed and only two people suffered injuries. Brett Kimberlin was ultimately arrested for the Speedway bombings and sentenced to 50 years in federal prison.
Although the Speedway bombings had a completely different MO than the Burger Chef murders and were later found to have zero connection, some people at the time couldn't help but wonder if they were in fact connected. In the Burger Chef investigation, the weeks turned into months with many unanswered questions. By now, the entire country, not just Speedway, Indiana, wanted to know who was responsible for the murders and why.
Over the next several years, after the families put their children to rest, investigators continue to receive tips about who the Burger Chef murderer or murderers were. Law enforcement received tips about possible suspects in Cincinnati, other suspects in Milwaukee and Chicago, and even as far as Dallas, Texas. But none of the leads really panned out to be much.
Just as quickly as the lead would come across the detective's desk, it would fall off and be put in the trash. No one really had any solid connection to the kidnapping or murders. It wasn't just the suspects the police couldn't locate. Law enforcement was never able to recover the gun, the handle of the knife, or the chain that was used in the murder. All of the murder weapons vanished with their suspects.
The murder weapons in this case would be beneficial to the investigation. We could see who the gun was registered to and draw connections to a possible suspect that way. We could examine the knife's handle for possible fingerprints of the suspect. We could swab the chain for DNA or trace evidence. A lot could be learned from a forensic perspective just from the murder weapons alone.
but none of them were recovered either at the restaurant or where the bodies were found. And they've never been found to this day. The biggest update in the murders came in 1984. A man named Donald Forrester was in a federal prison serving a 95-year sentence for rape.
Forrester called into police saying he was willing to confess to the Burger Chef murders in exchange for being transferred to another prison facility. At first, this phone call was really promising. Donald Forrester was living in Speedway at the time of the murders. He had a criminal record the length of a phone book, and at the time of the murders, he wasn't in prison.
Forrester was transferred to Marion County, Indiana and agreed to sit down with investigators working the Burger Chef murders case. He got in front of the authorities and admitted to shooting Daniel Davis and Ruth Ellen Shelton that night. He even took investigators to where the bodies were discovered and showed them where each body was.
Even more chilling, he told detectives about the knife's broken handle, which wasn't publicly released until many years later. According to Forrester, there were three other men with him that night. In his story, the whole thing started because Jane, the assistant manager on shift that night, and her older brother, James, owed money in a previous drug deal.
So Forrester and the three other men showed up at the Burger Chef to confront her and to scare her. But Jane's co-workers weren't just going to sit back and let the men threaten her. So according to Forrester, it was Mark Flemons who stepped in and decided to fight back. Forrester and the three men then decided to abduct and murder all four employees to eliminate any witnesses.
He even led police to a river where he said they tossed the .38 caliber gun used in the murders. But when police pulled all of their resources and searched the river, they found no evidence of the gun, or any weapon for that matter. Forrester's ex-wife also sat down with investigators working the case. She told an even more chilling story.
She said she drove with her ex-husband to a wooded area where the two of them collected shell casings. She never asked him why or what exactly they were doing. She said she just went along with it. She said they took the shell casings back home and flushed them down the toilet.
But just like the story about the gun in the river, when police searched the septic tank where the shell casings would have been sent, they didn't find anything. Still, this all looked really, really good. Police thought they had this guy, Donald Forrester, and the three men with him that night. But as good as this looked, this story had some serious problems.
His story had holes that no one could patch up. As soon as the sheriff's department leaked details about Forrester's cooperation in the murders, he did a complete 180. He recanted his confession and said that he had nothing to do with the murders. He said he made the entire thing up. He even went as far as to say that his confession was coerced by the police.
There was also a huge problem with the timing of his admission. Donald Forrester presented his story to avoid being transferred to a facility for extremely violent offenders, a facility that he didn't really want to be transferred to. And when he found out he was still going to be transferred to this new facility anyway, he didn't want any part of the confession and the murders.
Besides the fact that this offender, this federal inmate, recanted his story, there was no physical or forensic evidence linking him to the Burger Chef case. Nothing. Everything Forrester claimed was thoroughly investigated and nothing they found warranted further investigation.
If Donald Forrester had anything to do with the murders, we would never hear from him directly again. And that's because he died back in 2006 at the age of 55 while serving time in federal prison. As the years have gone by and the years have turned to decades, people that were once thought to be involved in the murders have died.
The man from Greenwood who bragged inside a bar about being the murderer died from an apparent suicide years after the Burger Chef murders. The man, with the same exact beard as the eyewitness described seeing that night, died of a heart attack. It's now been over four decades since the Burger Chef murders, and the case still very much remains open.
In November 2018, which just so happened to be the 40th anniversary of the murders, the police released the image of the knife used to murder Jane. Remember, the knife broke. The blade was lodged in Jane's body, and the handle has never been recovered. Police hoped that the image of the broken blade might just jog someone's memory and call in a tip, even after all these years.
At the same time, the police also released the official timeline of the murders that they had mapped out. Because the restaurant had been wiped clean the day after the employees were kidnapped and where the bodies were recovered had been poorly investigated, we don't have much evidence. We don't have DNA, we don't have hair, or any other trace evidence belonging to a third party.
And because it's been over 40 years, we run the risk that the killer or killers may have already passed away and will never be brought to justice. When establishing a criminal profile, we have to consider the likelihood that more than one offender is responsible.
we're more likely looking for more than one offender here. Because we're talking about four victims, all of which were kidnapped, transported some 30 minutes away from the restaurant, and killed in three different ways. That's a difficult task for one person to take on. The likelihood that one person could be successful at this is very low. We're looking for at least two people, possibly more.
There was no physical or forensic evidence inside the restaurant suggesting a struggle. No other DNA was discovered at the dump site, things we'd expect to find if whoever was responsible was involved in a struggle. If it were one versus four, we'd expect at least one of the employees to attempt to strike back.
But when we think about two, three, maybe four offenders, it's unlikely that the employees had any real chance. Despite hours upon hours of investigative work, the Burger Chef murders remain unsolved and wide open. After four decades, not a single person has been arrested or charged in the case. Investigators from five different law enforcement agencies worked the case over the years.
Many investigators have since retired and many have passed away, leaving some people wondering if this case will ever be solved. For the people who lived in Speedway, Indiana and the greater Indianapolis area in 1978, this is a case that still haunts their nightmares. It's almost too heartbreaking to comprehend the loss the families of the Burger Chef employees have suffered, and with so many unanswered questions.
Was this a robbery gone wrong? Were the employees caught entirely off guard while taking out the trash? Was it part of a drug deal? Was it simply to take a little over $500 in cash? The Burger Chef murders remain one of the most notorious, brutal, senseless murders the state of Indiana has ever seen.
Since the 1978 Burger Chef murders at 5725 Crawfordville Road, the fast food chain has permanently closed its doors, having been replaced by a loan provider, Cashland, which also closed its doors. Those locked doors also hold the truth about what really happened to Jane Fright, Daniel Davis, Mark Flemons, and Ruth Ellen Shelton.
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Thank you.