TRUE CRIME FRIDAY: THE BURGER CHEF MURDERS

Hey there, true crime lovers! It is your favorite investigator, Ninetoes, coming to you from Ninetoes HQ, and I am on the beat with The Case of the Burger Chef Murders. I have my notebook in hand and coffee in my system, so let’s get to it!

This case brings us to the night of November 17, 1978. It was a Friday night, and four young employees of the Burger Chef in Speedway, Indiana went missing. The restaurant was located at  5725 Crawfordsville Road, and the victims disappeared sometime between 11:00 pm and Midnight. The victims were:

Jayne Freidt (20)

Ruth Ellen Shelton (17)

Daniel Davis (16)

Mark Flemmonds (16)

A fellow employee came by the restaurant at midnight to visit his co-workers and noticed the restaurant was empty, the safe was open, and the back door was open. The police did not initially think the case was serious because all that was missing was $581 ($2,868 by 2026 standards), and all that was found was two cash bags and an empty roll of tape next to the safe. In fact, the police initially thought this was a case of petty cash theft because there were no clear signs of a struggle. The restaurant was cleaned and allowed to be opened the next day.

Their thoughts changed on Sunday, November 19, 1978, when the bodies were discovered by hikers twenty miles away in a wooded area in Johnson County. Daniel Davis and Ruth Ellen Shelton were shot numerous times with a .38 caliber handgun. Jayne Freidy was stabbed numerous times, and with such force that the handle snapped off of the knife; the blade was later found in her chest during an autopsy. Mark Flemmonds was bludgeoned to death, possibly with a chain, and he died choking on his own blood. All of the victims were still wearing their work uniforms.

Money and jewelry were found on the victims, leading the police to believe that robbery was not the sole motive. The theory was that the victims were kidnapped during a botched robbery. Flemmonds was covering for someone else that night and police believe he recognized one of the robbers, and they did not plan on his being there that night.

There was an eyewitness account of two men sitting in a car in the parking lot at closing time. There was also speculation that the murders were part of another crime at the time. The police cast a wide net for suspects, going as far as Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Dallas and Chicago. No more promising leads could be found.

In 1984, Donald Forrester, an inmate at Pendleton Correctional Facility, reached out to Detective Mel Willsey of the Marion County’s Sheriff Department and claimed he was in on the murders. He was willing to confess so he could avoid a transfer to a violent state prison. Willsey obtained a court order to bring Forrester to Marion County. There, Forrester admitted to shooting Davis and Shelton. He took the police out to the woods, and related the positioning of the bodies and gave details about the broken knife handle, a detail not widely publicized. Forrester then gave the names of the three men responsible for killing Flemmonds and Freidt. Forrester took the police to a spot on the river where he disposed of his gun, but it was never found.

Willsey interviewed Forrester’s ex-wife. She told him how she drove out to the woods with Forrester and retrieved the spent shell casings. Forrester took those home and flushed them down the toilet. Willsey got a warrant to search the septic system, where the casings were found.

Someone in the sheriff’s department leaked information regarding Forrester’s confession, and Forrester recanted everything. He claimed that the confession was coerced. Forrester was never charged in these crimes. He died in prison in 2006 from cancer. He was 55 years old.

The case remains open to this day.

Darren “Ninetoes” Perdue is a book and media reviewer. When he is not reading, he is watching true crime shows, cooking for his family, or working on a plan for universal domination. If you see him on his porch, say hi. He does not bite…much.

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