Public DomainThe victims of the Burger Chef murders, clockwise from top left: Jayne Friedt, Mark Flemmonds, Ruth Ellen Shelton, and Danny Davis.In 1978, Speedway, Indiana, was a quiet town of less than 13,000 people that was only on the map due to the nearby Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That November, however, the town made the news for a different reason: the Burger Chef murders.Four employees of a local fast food chain vanished while closing the restaurant on the night of Friday, Nov. 17, 1978. The police initially thought that the young men and women who ranged in age from 16 to 20 had simply stolen cash from the register and gone out to party. It wasnt until their bodies were found two days later that they realized what had really happened.By that point, the restaurant had been cleaned and reopened. Any evidence had been scrubbed away. The perpetrators were long gone.Indeed, the Burger Chef murders remain unsolved to this day. While several suspects have been questioned over the years, the tragic case went cold long ago and its likely to stay that way.The Botched Investigation Of The Burger Chef MurdersJust after midnight on Nov. 18, 1978, an off-duty Burger Chef employee stopped by the Speedway, Indiana, restaurant to help close. According to an FBI report, He noticed that nobody in the Burger Chef was in sight and on going to the back door, noticed that it was open approx. three inches.He entered the restaurant and saw that the cash register drawers and the safe were all open, too. He called the police, who discovered that $581 was missing, though two employees purses and $100 in coins had been left behind.There were no obvious signs of a struggle of any kind, so the police assumed that the four employees who had been working that night Jayne Friedt, Ruth Ellen Shelton, Danny Davis, and Mark Flemmonds had stolen the cash. As Stoney Vann, a retired sergeant with the Indiana State Police who investigated the case, told WRTV in 2023, officers thought the youngsters were irresponsible kids who were going to show up in a few hours. The Indianapolis StarThe headline of The Indianapolis Star on Nov. 19, 1978, the day the bodies were found.So not a lot of investigation was done, said Vann.Not everyone agreed, though. Ken York, a detective who also investigated the Burger Chef murders, told WTHR in 2003, Professionally that would be hard for me to accept because the two girls purses were still at the scene at the Burger Chef.Still, the restaurant opened as usual the following morning, the surfaces were cleaned, and no photos were taken of the scene. This proved to be a terrible mistake, because the four employees never did show up again. Instead, their bodies were found in a forest two days later.The Young Victims Of The Burger Chef MurdersOn Sunday, Nov. 19, 1978, the remains of 20-year-old assistant manager Jayne Friedt, 17-year-old Ruth Ellen Shelton, and 16-year-old Danny Davis and Mark Flemmonds were found in Johnson County, Indiana, south of Indianapolis. In their haste to reach the site, multiple agencies drove their vehicles through the area, once again destroying potential evidence.The investigators arrived at a grisly scene: The Burger Chef murders had been brutal. Davis and Shelton had been shot. Friedt had been stabbed, with the blade breaking off in her chest. And Flemmonds had asphyxiated on his own blood after he was brutally beaten, seemingly with a chain. Central Indiana Crime StoppersThe knife blade found lodged in Jayne Friedts chest.What began as a petty theft investigation had transformed into something much darker. While any evidence that may have been left at the restaurant was long gone, Flemmonds corpse revealed a clue about what led to the Burger Chef murders. Some of the bruising on his head and shoulders was estimated at being an hour or two old prior to death, said York. There had seemingly been a violent struggle, likely at Burger Chef, before the employees were brought to the forest and killed.A theory emerged that the incident was the result of a robbery gone wrong. Perhaps one of the workers had recognized the criminals, so the perpetrators had killed all four of them to eliminate witnesses.Then, in 1984, a man came forward and seemingly confirmed this theory.Chasing The Suspects Of The Grisly CrimeIn the immediate aftermath of the Burger Chef murders, a man at a bar in nearby Greenwood, Indiana, bragged that hed been involved in the killings. The police tracked him down, but he quickly changed his tune. Hed had nothing to do with it after all, he said, but he did know of a group of men who frequently robbed fast food restaurants.Investigators questioned these new suspects, too, but despite the fact that two of them later went to prison for similar robberies, there was simply no evidence linking them to the scene of the Burger Chef murders.FOX59 News/YouTubeInvestigators made clay heads of two suspicious men a witness saw outside of Burger Chef the night of the murders, but no suspects were ever arrested.It wasnt until 1984 that there was a break in the case. Donald Forrester, an inmate at a local prison, asked the police if he could avoid an upcoming transfer to a more violent facility if he confessed to his involvement in the 1978 killings. They agreed and Forrester began to talk.Forrester seemed to know things that only the perpetrator would be able to tell investigators. For instance, he was aware that Friedt had been found with a blade stuck in her chest, even though that information hadnt been publicized. He also led officers to the spot where the bodies had been discovered. Whats more, shell casings were uncovered in Forresters septic tank that may have been from the gun that killed Davis and Shelton. Forrester went on to claim that he and his accomplices had gone to Burger Chef on the night of Nov. 17 to threaten Jayne Friedt, whose brother owed them drug money. When Flemmonds had stepped in to defend her, things turned violent. Flemmonds fell and hit his head, and the perpetrators believed he was dead, so they decided to kill everyone to cover their tracks.This aligned almost perfectly with the investigators initial theory. But before any charges could be filed, Forrester suddenly recanted his story, claiming that hed been coerced. The case went cold once more.GlaceEntertainmentPR/Wikimedia CommonsThe Burger Chef building where the brutal crime took place was demolished in 2025.As the years turned into decades, technology gave detectives new clues about the Burger Chef murders. A palm print from Friedts car, which officers believe was used in the kidnapping, pointed to a new suspect, but the lead fizzled out once again.Even now, nearly 50 years later, vital evidence has never been recovered, such as the handle of the knife blade lodged in Friedts chest. In 2018, the police carried out new forensic testing and released an image of the blade, hoping to gain new information about the case. But nobody else came forward. Still, York thinks he knows who did it: The members of the fast food robbery gang. Unless someone proves differently or someone confesses between now and then, he said, Ill go to my deathbed believing I know who killed those kids.After learning about the unsolved Burger Chef murders, go inside the disturbing story of Jared Fogle, the former Subway spokesman. Then, learn about the former cop who rigged the McDonalds Monopoly game.The post The Haunting Story Of The Mysterious Burger Chef Murders That Left Four Fast Food Workers Dead appeared first on All That's Interesting.