True-Crime Podcast, the Murder Sheet, Releases A Book On The Delphi Murders

 I first discovered The Murder Sheet podcast in November 2020. It was their first case and first season. Today, the true-crime podcast has released nearly 700 episodes, and won several awards, including the Ear Worthy Award in 2024 for Best True-Crime Podcast.

On the morning of Saturday, November 18, 1978, near Indianapolis, 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 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.

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 podcast co-hosts Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee, who began in 2020 with the Burger King case, continue to re-investigate the facts of the case, and then wade through the myriad number of theories that have arisen over the years.

Áine Cain is a journalist who previously worked as a senior reporter for Insider, where her beat included business-related crimes. Cain is from New York’s Westchester County and studied history at the College of William & Mary. She and her husband, Kevin Greenlee founded The Murder Sheet, an investigative true crime podcast, which has repeatedly broke national news in a series of dramatic reports on the Delphi case.

Kevin Greenlee is an attorney who received his bachelor’s degree and J.D. from Indiana University. His professional foray into true crime began in 2016, when he began investigating the Burger Chef murders and he came to represent a victim's relative pro bono.

In August, Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee, the Indianapolis-based investigative team behind a series of bombshell reports and hosts of the widely popular Murder Sheet Podcast, have put forth the only definitive account of the Delphi Murders. SHADOW OF THE BRIDGE: The Delphi Murders and the Dark Side of the American Heartland (Pegasus Crime, August 26th, 2025) goes deeper and offers more detail than what was shared on the Murder Sheet podcast, answering many of the questions that have haunted so many since the deaths of Libby and Abby.

Here's what happened. 

On February 13, 2017, two teenage friends went for a walk in the woods just outside the small city of Delphi, Indiana. They should have been safe — but Liberty German and Abigail Williams never made it home. The next day, searchers found their bodies in a clearing. The two girls had been brutally murdered. Incredibly, in the final moments of her life, Liberty somehow managed to capture a video of the man who would soon murder her and her friend. This blurry recording showed a man lumbering toward the girls and then gruffly commanding them to go “down the hill.” A fascinated public obsessed over those clues. Speculation about the killer’s identity ran rampant on social media. Meanwhile, a sprawling law enforcement investigation led to some of the darkest corners of the heartland. Still, the case remained unsolved for years.

Everything changed in October 2022 when authorities announced the arrest of Delphi resident Richard Allen. But as the case began to make its way through the justice system, many began to question whether the small community had what it took to prosecute the case. They also wondered whether the police had even arrested the right man. Investigators, officials, prosecutors, and the defense attorneys found themselves stuck in an unprecedented firestorm of online controversy and subterfuge, with so-called internet sleuths hyping up conspiracy theories and trading leaks.

With rigorous research and captivating prose, SHADOW OF THE BRIDGE is a powerful narrative of a complicated, twisting story of tragedy and a community's determination to see justice. Most importantly, in working closely with the German and Williams families, Cain and Greenlee tell the stories of whom these two warm, bright, and promising girls were to all who cared for them.

Cain and Greenlee have covered the Delphi Murders and the ongoing trial of Richard Allen on national and local broadcast media, including Good Morning America, FOX News, Inside Edition, NewsNation, and CourtTV.

Here are a few topics that Cain and Greenlee can delve into more during a virtual interview:

1. Uncovering key details of the case: Cain and Greenlee can get into all the shocking behind-the-scenes incidents during this investigation and trial, heard straight from the people who experienced it, including early promising leads that led to the discovery of other heinous crimes, conflicts between investigators and attorneys, and Richard Allen’s bizarre courtroom behavior.

2. Investigating the murders: They can speak about the myriad challenges facing this investigation, from the lost tip to the surge of leads to the social media frenzy, and discuss why it took so long for them to run down Richard Allen.

3. Highlighting the real heroes: They can speak to the fact that two murdered girls solved their own case and stuck together until the end — exposing the killer by listening to their instincts.

4. Discovering the real Delphi: Cain and Greenlee spent so much time in Delphi — and they can speak to this real place, the real people who live there, and what this crime has done to the small Indiana city where people used to forego locking their doors.

5. Exploring the legal battle: They can talk about the legal egos at the heart of this case, including a defense team that bet big on courting YouTubers and the young, untested prosecutor they underestimated.

6. Unraveling true crime conspiracies: They can do a deep dive into the true crime “cults” following the Delphi case that encouraged people to become “fans” of a child murderer, raised thousands of dollars for him, and accused the victims' families of covering up the murders.

7. Fighting to get answers: From leaked discovery to accidentally-published transcripts, the Murder Sheet podcast was constantly breaking news in the case — Cain and Greenlee can talk about how they came to get so many scoops and how they positioned themselves to tell the whole story in the book.

The Murder Sheet is one of the best true-crime podcasts around. Unlike many true-crime podcasters, who do Wikipedia research and then report to their listeners, Cain and Greenlee investigate the case, investigate the investigators, and follow up on their cases. 

If you are a true-crime fan, I recommend reading  SHADOW OF THE BRIDGE by Aine Cain and Kevin Greenlee of the superb Murder Sheet podcast, who have crafted an exceptional true-crime work of nonfiction. 

Cain and Greenlee magnificently capture the horror, confusion, and dogged determination of investigators, prosecutors, and the families of the victims in what must be described as a new classic in the True Crime genre.