It was a cold Friday night, November 17, 1978, a little before eleven o’clock at night. The kids working at the local Burger Chef on Crawfordsville Road in Speedway, Indiana, were half an hour from closing the store and ready to close up and do what kids do on a Friday night. A sixteen-year-old witness would later tell police that two Caucasian men in their thirties were hanging out suspiciously in the parking lot.

There were four employees on duty, Jayne Friedt, Daniel Davis, Mark Flemmonds, and Ruth Ellen Shelton. The next morning, an employee discovered that the restaurant’s back door was wide open and about $ 600 was missing from the cash register.

Police believe a robbery occurred just as the burger joint was closing for the night. Whatever happens, the four employees were kidnapped and taken out of the Speedway. There was a massive search by police and volunteers.

Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon, the four murdered bodies were found in the woods twenty miles away. A child was beaten and an autopsy revealed that he died of blunt force trauma to the head. One of the girls had been stabbed twice in the chest with a hunting knife. The other two were shot execution-style with a .38 caliber pistol.

Burger Chef offered a $ 25,000 reward to anyone who could provide police information that could lead to the muderer’s arrest.

Today, the Indiana State Police maintains an open file on the case. But it still continues as an unsolved murder!