New Podcast “ The Murder Street” To Cover 1978 Murder of Four Burger Chef Workers

 New true crime podcast to be released on November 17

Indianapolis in 1978 witnessed a series of events that shook the city and its citizens to its core. First in January, a historic blizzard buried the city beneath almost two feet of snow and 40-mph winds that whipped up 20-foot drifts. The National Guard was called out; 11 Hoosiers died. 

Then in July, a 65-year-old woman was shot and killed by an assailant in her own garage, only the third recorded homicide in the 52-year history of the nearby suburb of Speedway.

Then on November 18, the day after the Burger Chef Murders, Jim Jones, religious leader of the Peoples Temple, which got its start in Indianapolis, orchestrated a mass murder-suicide by drinking cyanide in Jonestown, Guyana, along with 918 of his followers, some of them Indiana transplants, 300 or so of them children. 

In September, a series of eight random soda-can bombings in six days left two citizens injured and an entire community on edge until the bomber, a local musician and political activist, was arrested.

On the morning of Saturday, November 18, Speedway police responded to a reported robbery and an apparent kidnapping at the Burger Chef at 5725 Crawfordsville Road An off-duty employee arrived at the fast-food joint around 12:15 a.m. to find the back door open but with no one inside. Four employees who had been working the previous night — assistant manager Jayne Friedt, 20; and workers Daniel Davis, 16; Mark Flemmonds, 16; and Ruth Shelton, 17 — were missing, along with about $581 in cash. Police found two empty currency bags and an empty roll of adhesive tape next to the open safe. Two women’s purses were also left behind, but some of the employees’ jackets were missing along with Friedt’s 1974 Chevrolet Vega, which was found later that morning, abandoned about a mile-and-a-half south on West 15th Street.

The Burger Chef building in Speedway, Indiana, now vacant, that was the scene of an unsolved murder of four employees in 1978.

 Speedway police told the newspapers that it was a “very peculiar” case because there were no leads and neither they nor the employees’ families had received a ransom call. One initial theory was that it was simply a case of petty theft, with the young workers taking the cash to go joyriding. It’s almost as if the cops never considered that the missing youths might be dead. Burger Chef employees cleaned the crime scene, and the restaurant was reopened the next day.

 “They didn’t process it as a murder; they didn’t know it was a murder,” says Virgil Vandagriff, a detective with the Marion County Sheriff’s Department at the time. “Police didn’t have a clue what was going on at the restaurant. They kind of messed up the crime scene.”

The call came days later when residents stumbled across two bodies in a secluded patch of Johnson County woods, two miles west of Center Grove High School and some 20 miles from the restaurant. Victims Shelton and Davis were lying side by side, both executed in the back of the head with a .38-caliber gun. Friedt was later found a few yards away, as if she had been trying to flee when she was chased down and twice stabbed with a hunting knife. 

The weapon, its handle broken off and missing, was still lodged in her chest. Flemmonds, who had also apparently fled, had endured blunt-force trauma to the head, which was later determined to have come from a bludgeoning with some sort of chain prior to death. Reports say he died choking on his own blood. All four were still wearing their brown-and-orange polyester uniforms, now soaked and caked with drying blood.

Today, of the thousands of homicides committed in major U.S. cities over the past decade, a little over half have resulted in an arrest. In Indianapolis, that number was slightly better: 55 percent. And that’s with all the technological marvels, modern forensics, networked electronic databases, and DNA analysis that didn’t exist in 1978, when the Burger Chef Murders were front-page news.

To this day, no one has been convicted of the Burger Chef murders, as they came to be known. But the young victims — Jayne, Ruth, Danny, and Mark — and the brutal way they died have not been forgotten. The unsolved case continues to haunt loved ones, investigators, and the communities of Speedway and the greater Indianapolis area.

The new podcast The Murder Sheet will launch a miniseries — titled “You Never Can Forget,” taking a line from the burger chain’s old jingle — delving into the Burger Chef murders on November 17, 1978.

Listen to the trailer here.

Podcast co-hosts Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee will be re-investigating the facts of the case, and then wade through the myriad number of theories that have arisen over the years. Kevin is an Indianapolis lawyer who began researching the case in 2016. He now represents the sister of victim Ruth Shelton. Áine is a journalist from New York who became obsessed with the case while writing a feature story on the murders for Insider.

Together, they will share what their joint investigation has uncovered. Áine and Kevin have knocked on the doors of rumored persons of interest, law enforcement officers who investigated the case, and victims’ loved ones, and amassed hundreds of hours of recorded interviews.

The Murder Sheet miniseries “You Never Can Forget” will investigate the story of a witness who claimed that the perps attempted to murder him and the possible involvement of a convicted terrorist, biker gangs, and a vicious serial killer. In another twist, the podcast will bizarre theories that “police know who did it”

After the “You Never Can Forget” miniseries focusing on the Burger Chef murders, the Murder Sheet will continue as a weekly podcast. The show’s first season will cover the phenomenon of restaurant homicides and shine a spotlight on the violent underbelly of the fast food industry. The podcast’s title is a reference to the spreadsheet of around 1,000 homicides involving restaurants, bars, and other eateries that Kevin and Áine have compiled, starting with 17th century tavern shootouts and ending with modern slayings occurring in burger joints.

Áine Cain is a senior retail reporter for Business Insider. She covers major national retailers, but has also tackled multi-level marketing schemes, COVID-19 outbreaks on cruise ships, and retail-related crimes.

Kevin Greenlee is an attorney from Indianapolis whose day job involves intellectual property cases. He began extensively researching the Burger Chef case in 2016, and represents the family of victim Ruth Shelton.

Check out Murder Street when it’s released on Tuesday, November 17th.