The Burger Chef Murders
One of Indiana's most infamous cases
Quadruple Homicide Shocks Community
On the night of Friday, November 17th, 1978, four Burger Chef employees—Jayne Friedt (20), Ruth Ellen Shelton (17), Mark Flemmonds (16) and Danny Davis (16)—vanished.
The building’s back door was wide open, as was the safe inside the restaurant, and the jackets and purses of two of the workers were still there, but the workers themselves were gone.
Still, with no obvious signs of a violent struggle, law enforcement didn’t take the disappearances seriously initially, assuming that the missing people had simply taken off with the $581 that was also missing and went out partying.
The scene was cleaned, with no photographs taken beforehand to document it, and the restaurant was opened up again the following morning.
Then, on November 19th, a gruesome discovery would change the nature of the investigation entirely: The bodies of Jayne, Mark, Ruth Ellen and Danny were found in a wooded area approximately 20 miles away from Burger Chef. They had been murdered.
Authorities would turn up many leads, theories and potential suspects over the course of the investigation, but without hard evidence a resolution remained elusive.
Who killed Mark Flemmonds, Danny Davis, Ruth Ellen Shelton and Jayne Friedt?
Jayne, Mark, Danny, and Ruth Ellen
One of four children, Jayne Carol Friedt was born on May 2nd, 1958, in Terre Haute, Indiana, to parents Carolyn and George.
“Jayne was always a pretty happy person,” remembered former coworker Lisa Staley.
20-year-old Jayne was the assistant manager of the Burger Chef in Speedway.
The youngest of seven children, Mark Sylvester Flemmonds was born on December 31st, 1961, to parents Robert and Blondell. Mark was known as a kind and upbeat individual.
“He was very friendly, had a great heart, ” said Mark’s friend Kirk. “You know, good attitude about life.”
One of three children, Daniel “Danny” Roy Davis was born on September 6th, 1962, in Indiana to parents Richard and Norma.
“He was just a happy kid,” said Norma. “He woke up smiling, he woke up happy. He was just very cheerful.”
Danny was deeply interested in photography and aviation, and dreamed of joining the Air Force after graduation.
“He had his own darkroom and took lots of pictures of the family and airplanes,” remembered Richard.
One of three children, Ruth Ellen Shelton was born on December 19th, 1960, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to parents Rachel and John.
Ruth Ellen was intelligent and driven. She did well in school and had been taking piano lessons for two years. She was planning to study computer science in college.
“She was a very bright, very businesslike young lady,” noted George Gale, principal of Northwest High School.
The Disappearance
Jayne, Ruth Ellen, Danny and Mark were all working on the evening of November 17th, 1978. Mark wasn’t originally scheduled to work that Friday, but agreed to cover the shift for another coworker, Ginger, who was going on a date that night.
It is believed that the abduction occurred sometime between closing (11 p.m.) and midnight.
Kirk, who had been at The Galaxy (a dance club) nearby and was intending to walk home with Mark that night, stopped by Burger Chef around midnight and found it eerily quiet and empty.
Similarly, Ginger and her date drove by around the same time and noticed that Jayne’s car was gone, but the lights were still on inside the restaurant.
17-year-old Brian Kring, another coworker, showed up at approximately 12:15 a.m. to chat with his coworkers, who were supposed to stay late, and noticed that the back door had been left open and that the cash drawers inside the restaurant were open as well.
He also saw Ruth Ellen’s coat on the floor. Brian thought a robbery had taken place and called his manager, who instructed him to notify the police, which he did.
No Evidence Collected at Scene
Law enforcement arrived and began looking around the restaurant. They quickly discovered an empty roll of adhesive tape beside the safe and two empty currency bags. It appeared that $581 had been stolen. More than $100 worth of coins still sat in the registers, though.
The presence of Ruth Ellen’s and Jayne’s purses and jackets seemed odd, but with no overt signs of foul play investigators felt this was likely nothing more than petty theft, presumably committed by the missing workers, though none were known to have done such a thing before.
The assumption was that the small group had taken the cash and departed in Jayne’s vehicle, possibly to go party.
They believed there was no real cause for concern and told the remaining employees that they could proceed with work as usual.
The restaurant was never processed for evidence, nor did they document the scene with photographs.
“We screwed it up from the beginning,” Speedway police officer Buddy Ellwanger would later admit.
The Victims are Found
With no word from any of the missing employees, concerns started to grow. Then another troubling clue turned up: Jayne’s Chevrolet Vega was discovered early on Saturday morning, unlocked and parked near the Speedway police station.
The following morning, hikers stumbled upon the bodies of Jayne, Mark, Danny and Ruth Ellen in the woods around 20 miles away from Burger Chef. Autopsies would reveal that the latter two had been shot to death with a .38 caliber firearm, which was never found.
It appeared that Jayne and Mark were able to make a break for it and run away, at least briefly. Jayne’s body was found around 75 yards away from those of Danny and Ruth Ellen, while Mark’s was discovered roughly 100 yards away from them.
Jayne had been stabbed in the chest twice. The handle of the knife had broken off in the brutal attack and, to this day, has never been recovered. Her car key was in one of her pockets.
Mark suffered trauma to his head and face and ultimately died due to choking to death on his own blood. He also had a broken nose. He was lying on his back at the base of a tree.
The precise cause of his injuries has never been determined, but various explanations have been proposed over the years, such as Mark having been beaten with a chain or baseball bat—or, conversely, that his injury was accidental and caused by either running into a tree while trying to evade his captors or that one of his abductors had pushed him and he hit his head.
Eyewitness Sightings
Multiple witnesses would come forward to report having seen two suspicious men sitting in a car or van outside of the Burger Chef on the night in question. Both were believed to be in their 30s.
One of the men was clean-shaven and had light-colored hair, while the other had a beard and darker hair. Composite sketches were made of these suspects, who would come to be known simply as “The Clean-Shaven Man” and “The Bearded Man.”
A couple driving by allegedly saw the four being led to a van by an unknown male. Others saw the van as well and, depending on the account, it was either orange, yellow, or rust-colored and possibly had white wheels.
Local Armed Robbers
There was a group of five men in the Speedway area known to rob fast food restaurants, including several Burger Chefs. Their modus operandi was to rob an establishment, then steal a car from one of the employees, which they would drive to the location where they’d left their own vehicle and pick it up. Afterwards, they’d abandon the employee’s vehicle somewhere.
Some of these details seem to line up well with the Burger Chef murders case. After all, Jayne’s car had been taken that night and some cash had been stolen from the restaurant. Furthermore, two members of this gang—Gregg Steinke and S.W. Wilkins,—reportedly bore a strong resemblance to The Clean-Shaven Man and The Bearded Man.
Wilkins and Steinke both went on to spend time in prison for armed robbery. They had also lived just minutes away from the wooded area where the victims had been located.
The main question—and it was a big one—is why they would have killed the workers? No murders had been committed during any of their known robberies. So why this time?
The most popular theory is that one of the employees might have recognized one or more of the robbers and that the assailants felt they needed to kill them all in order to avoid being exposed.
Notably, Mark wasn’t originally supposed to be there that Friday. So some have speculated that he may have been the one who knew someone in this group and that no one had been expecting to find him there.
Or could it have been Jayne? She had previously worked at a Burger Chef in Avon, where Wilkins had also spent time working for a railway. Did they know or recognize each other?
This seems less likely—if we’re assuming that the murders weren’t premeditated—because if the perpetrators made an effort beforehand to see who would be there, hoping to avoid anyone they knew, they’d have already realized that she would be there.
Still, they all denied involvement in this crime when questioned by law enforcement and have never been conclusively linked to it.
Was This a Drug-Related Crime?
Jayne’s brother James often comes up as a potential catalyst for what happened to the employees, as he had a known history as a drug dealer and user. Because of this, some have theorized that he owed money to other drug dealers and that Jayne was targeted for this reason.
However, the 2023 documentary The Speedway Murders explores the possibility that it may have been Jayne herself who was indebted to the wrong people.
In 1984, a prisoner named Donald Forrester, who was serving time for a rape conviction, reached out to Detective Mel Willsey. He had a story to tell Willsey, one that, according to him, would explain why the Burger Chef murders had occurred.
Forrester told investigators that Jayne Friedt owed $15,000 for cocaine. He and three associates went there on November 17th hoping to collect some of their money. They split up and drove to the restaurant in two separate vehicles—a car and a van. He brought two firearms, a .25 and a .38, as well as a knife.
The identities of the men supposedly with him that night are unclear.
It’s also worth noting that Charlie, Jayne’s boyfriend, noticed that something seemed to be bothering her that day. She was uncharacteristically quiet, he said. When asked if anything was wrong, she simply answered, “No, not really.”
Although Charlie called her at Burger Chef a few hours later and she seemed to be in much better spirits by that point.
Coworker Ginger also noted that in the months leading up to the murders Jayne frequently took breaks and left with her brother, each time coming back “with a whole new attitude.” She believed they were doing drugs.
“There was another side to Jayne,” said Ginger. “She didn’t treat all the employees very kindly all the time. She could get pretty angry.”
She described an incident when Jayne threatened her not to tell anyone about these breaks.
“Don’t you tell a soul that I’m leaving, and if you do, I will make your life a living hell when you come back.”
The original plan, explained Forrester, was to do no more than threaten Jayne, but Mark had intervened on her behalf and tried to protect her. An altercation occurred, which ended with Mark falling and striking his head on a car bumper.
Jayne was known to have referred to Mark as her "protector" in the past, although she never said what she might need protection from.
The group believed that Mark Flemmonds was either already dead or dying and panicked. They took all four to the woods and bound them. Forrester claimed that he was the one who shot Danny and Ruth Ellen, but that he didn’t kill the other two.
His wife corroborated his claim and told law enforcement that they had driven out to the location afterwards, where they collected multiple shell casings and took them home to flush down the toilet.
He was also able to lead authorities to the general area where the bodies had been discovered. Additionally, he knew about the broken knife handle—a fact that, while not highly publicized, also wasn’t a complete secret from the public.
His septic tank was searched and shell casings were found. They were .38 caliber (the type used in the killings), lending credence to his version of events.
Some aspects of his story deviated from the physical evidence, though.
None of the victims were bound when discovered, nor did they have any ligature marks to suggest that they ever had been.
Investigator James Cramer had his doubts as to the veracity of Forrester’s claims. He noted that police officers had left Forrester in a room where the evidence was laid out and that they had asked him very leading questions, which provided additional information to him about the case.
Forrester’s reason for coming forward with his confession was that he desperately wanted to avoid his scheduled transfer to Indiana State Prison, a notoriously violent prison in Michigan City.
“He didn’t want to go to Michigan City,” said Willsey. “No one wants to go to Michigan City.”
Still, Cramer believed him to be more than capable of committing such heinous acts.
“Donald Forrester could have killed those kids. He was that kind of person. He was a coward. He was a liar. I’m not saying he didn’t do it. I’m saying he never said anything credible.”
Donald Forrester ultimately recanted his confession, claiming that it had been coerced. He died of cancer in prison in 2006.
The Speedway Bombings & The Murder of Julia Cyphers
Just months before the Burger Chef murders, Speedway was home to a crime spree.
On July 29th, 1978, 65-year-old Julia Cyphers was brutally murdered outside of her home. She was shot to death in front of her husband Fred, who identified the shooter as a man named Bill Bowman.
It was theorized that Bowman had been acting on the orders of Brett Kimberlin, one of his associates in the local drug trade. Kimberlin had been dating Julia’s daughter Sandra, a match that Julia “violently disapproved” of. Sandra had a pre-teen daughter and Julia allegedly suspected that Kimberlin was showing inappropriate interest in the girl.
Fred, who had terminal cancer, died just two weeks after Bowman’s arrest. With no other evidence against him, he was never charged with her murder and her case remains officially unsolved.
In early September, a series of bombings took place in Speedway, with homemade bombs being left in locations like trash bins, a parking lot, a bowling alley, and beneath an off-duty officer’s car. Amazingly, no one was killed, but two people were seriously injured. The bombings stopped abruptly after September 6th and a motive has never been definitively established.
The aforementioned Brett Kimberlin was arrested for the crime in late September and would be convicted of it. It has been speculated that he might have done this in an effort to divert attention away from Julia Cyphers’ murder investigation. However, for his part, he has denied any involvement in either the bombings or the killing of Julia Cyphers.
He was released after spending 14 years in prison.
The Accounts of Allen Pruitt & Tim Boyer
A local man named Allen Pruitt was out with a friend on the night of the Burger Chef murders. The two stopped at the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts and noticed that the Burger Chef sign was uncharacteristically dark but the lights in the restaurant were still on.
They also saw a van with white wheels near Burger Chef, as well as two men, whom Pruitt identified as Jeff Reed and Tim Willoughby. Reed was known to have a van like the one spotted by several witnesses that night. He was also apparently involved in drug dealing.
Law enforcement has stated that they do know Pruitt was there that evening, but haven’t said how. He was once considered a suspect himself, along with his friend, but neither were ever charged.
It’s important to note that Pruitt has changed certain aspects of his story over the years, with him even allegedly claiming at one point that it was actually Jayne’s brother James there, not Jeff Reed, but he ultimately went back to the version in which it was Jeff Reed and Tim Willoughby he saw.
Did he really see Tim Willoughby, though? There was reason to think that might be impossible.
Willoughby’s girlfriend, Mary Ann Higginbotham, was found dead in a barrel in June 1978. Willoughby himself vanished around this time as well.
An informant later told authorities that a hit had been put on him and that Mary Ann was collateral damage. Tim Willoughby was part of a car theft ring. When investigators showed up to his home one day wanting to question him about a stolen vehicle, Willoughby reportedly panicked.
He went to the other members of this group, threatening to expose them if they didn’t give him enough money to leave and start over elsewhere. As one might expect, this didn’t go over particularly well and, according to the informant, this was when a contract killer was told to murder him.
The informant knew this information, she said, because her husband was one of the hitmen who killed Willoughby and his girlfriend. Authorities considered her a credible witness.
Naturally, if Willoughby had already been dead for months, he couldn’t possibly have been with Jeff Reed that night, assuming Reed himself was even there.
Yet Pruitt wouldn’t be the only one to implicate both Reed and Willoughby in the Burger Chef murders.
Tim Boyer, a friend of Reed’s, would later say that Reed had come to him one day seeming troubled and ended up confessing to being one of the men who killed Jayne, Mark, Danny, and Ruth Ellen.
Reed allegedly told Boyer that he went to Burger Chef that night intending to collect money from Jayne for a drug debt she owed to Brett Kimberlin. (Interestingly, there’s nothing about Donald Forrester in this version of events.)
Things took a turn when Mark intervened to help Jayne and Reed hit him in the head with a baseball bat. Reed called someone to move Jayne’s car for him, while he and Tim Willoughby transported the four workers to the woods in his van.
As the story goes, Reed initially didn’t intend to murder the others, but perhaps had only wanted to scare them into silence. Then someone either attempted to escape or attack him and he made the choice to kill them all.
Jeff Reed strongly resembled The Bearded Man seen by witnesses on the night of the murders.
As with the Speedway bombings and the killing of Julia Cyphers, Kimberlin denied any knowledge of or involvement in the Burger Chef murders.
(Side note: It’s unclear if Pruitt and Boyer knew each other or were friends.)
But with only secondhand accounts and no forensic evidence to tie him to the case, Reed was never charged. He died in 2011.
And Tim Willoughby, dead or alive, has never been found.
Current State of the Investigation
Allen Pruitt died in 2022.
To date, no one has ever been charged in the murders of Mark Flemmonds, Jayne Friedt, Danny Davis and Ruth Ellen Shelton, and the case remains unsolved. Their surviving loved ones are still hopeful for a resolution one day, though.
The senseless tragedy still haunts many.
“I think about it often,” said retired police officer Stoney Vann. “I dream about it sometimes. This is the type of case that I will take to my grave.”
The case is still open and active.
“I believe the case is solvable,” said current lead investigator Bill Dalton. “40 years is a long time but I do believe it’s possible to hold somebody accountable.”
Sources
The Speedway Murders (2023)
findagrave.com - Ruth Ellen Shelton