What are the Burger Chef Murders and have they been solved?

In 1978, four people were at work one night at a Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway, Indiana. Another Burger Chef employee checked the location shortly after midnight and discovered the restaurant was empty, and the doors were unlocked. Those four people were found dead two days later.

The deaths of Jayne Friedt, Ruth Shelton, Mark Flemmonds, and Daniel Davis, aged between 16 and 20, are now known as the Burger Chef Murders and have been covered in several podcasts and documentaries. The case remains unsolved today. In 2023, retired Indiana State Police 1st Sargeant Stoney Vann, who worked the case, told WRTV.com, “I think about it often. I dream about it sometimes. This is the type of case that I will take to my grave.”

What happened at the Burger Chef restaurant?

Burger Chef was a fast-food restaurant chain based in Indianapolis that closed its last location in the mid-1990s. According to FBI documents, the employee who found the doors unlocked and the restaurant empty the night of the murders, also discovered the backdoor was open. As well as the open back door — typically secured with a metal bar — all the money was gone except the change, and though some personal items were left behind, Jayne Friedt’s car was missing. It was later found just a few blocks away.

Early on, Speedway police assumed the four young restaurant workers stole the money and would soon reappear. But two days later, the four victims’ bodies were discovered in a rural area of Johnson County, where Speedway, an Indianapolis suburb, is located. Three of the victims had either been shot or brutally stabbed, while Mark Flemmonds was found a short distance away. Investigators concluded he may have tried to escape in the dark, ran hard into a tree, and asphyxiated on his blood.

The Burger Chef witnesses

When the four victim’s bodies were found, the police knew this was no mere robbery, and sought help from the FBI. Once the federal agency was on the case, a witness said she saw two men behind the restaurant the night of the quadruple murder; one man had a bushy beard and mustache, and the other was clean-shaven, the witness said. The bearded man told her to get away because there had been a lot of “vandalism” in the area.

Meanwhile, in 2023, The Murder Sheet podcast producers accessed original FBI files related to the case, which indicated another witness saw two men behind the counter that night, according to Fox59.com. Suspicious, he drew closer to the restaurant, but by that time, they were gone.

Those files also revealed evidence that Jayne Friedt, the assistant manager, had personnel problems with an employee who didn’t show up for his shift that night. Friedt may have also been receiving harassing phone calls in the time leading up to her death.

Did they ever find the Burger Chef murderers?

The Burger Chef case went cold, despite those leads and clay the busts created in the likeliness of the two men based on witness testimony. However, retired police Sergeant Stoney Vann has a theory. A known group of men at that time robbed fast food restaurants, and Vann thinks two of the men targeted the Speedway Burger Chef, intending to steal money.

According to Vann, Jayne Friedt may have recognized one of the men, so they panicked and abducted the restaurant workers, taking Friedt’s car, which they then ditched for another vehicle. Out in the rural area of Johnson County, they shot two of the victims but ran out of bullets, so they stabbed the third victim to death. The fourth, Mark Flemmonds, may have escaped if not for a tragic accident.

Vann’s theory has been confirmed as plausible by a known member of the gang robbing fast-food restaurants, who, to date, is still alive. Vann’s never been able to prove what happened that night, and the Burger Chef murder investigation is ongoing, but Vann thinks the two men responsible may still live in Johnson County.

The Burger Chef restaurant will get demolished

Vann’s theory aside, many now hope that advances in DNA technology may finally provide a break in the Burger Chef case and bring to justice those responsible. If the local police had acted quicker and not assumed it was just a robbery, then the outcome might have been different. The restaurant reopened the next day, and valuable crime scene evidence may have been lost, hampering the investigation.

According to WTHR.com, in late 2023, it was decided the old Burger Chef building would be torn down. Theresa Jeffries, whose sister, Ruth Shelton, was murdered that night, told the outlet, “I never believed the building itself was evil. I believe it was just a place of business, and that’s where they were taken from … I’m very thankful the building will be removed because I feel it has affected the entire community,” she added.