A lingering vestige of the notorious unsolved Burger Chef murders 45 years ago in Speedway will soon be obliterated.
The free-standing building at 5725-5735 Crawfordsville Road is being demolished and replaced by a dental office.
“It’s been a couple of shops over the years that never caught on for more than a couple months and we’ve talked about redeveloping over time but that hasn’t happened,” said Speedway Town Council President Vince Noblet.
Four young Burger Chef workers were abducted at closing time on Nov. 17, 1978, and later killed. Their bodies were discovered two days later, still dressed in their brown and orange work uniforms, in a Johnson County field.
Jayne Friedt, 20, the assistant manager, was stabbed. Daniel Davis, 16, and Ruth Shelton, 17, were shot in the back of the head and found lying next to each other. Mark Flemmonds, 16, died choking on his blood, possibly after running into a tree trying to escape.
The case was never solved but an Indiana State Police investigator is still assigned to it.
The murders have drawn the attention of true crime sleuths, authors and documentary makers over the years.
Discovery Plus and Investigation Discovery last year aired a one-hour documentary titled “Murders at the Burger Joint.” Author Julie Young wrote a history titled “The Burger Chef Murders in Indiana,” which examined other Speedway crimes at the time, and podcasts have been dedicated to the mystery.
Unsolved: 1978 Burger Chef murders
Ruth Shelton, Daniel Davis, Mark Flemmonds and Jayne Friedt were abducted from a Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway Nov. 17, 1978. Their bodies were found two days later in rural Johnson County.
Diana Penner/IndyStar, Indianapolis Star
Ruth Shelton’s sister, Theresa Jefferies, was 12 when the killings occurred. She said she went to the building a couple of years ago to participate in a documentary and it was “horrible.”
But she said never had strong feelings about its remaining erect.
“I’m strange that way, I never blamed the building,” Jefferies said, partly because she lives in Marion and doesn’t have to pass it regularly.
Other relatives of victims, she said, feel differently and consider the building “evil.”
“I think if they blessed the site when they tear it down it would mean a lot to them,” she said.
Jefferies said she never stopped thinking about her sister.
“I play back how things could have been different, like what if she called in sick,’’ she said. “But that would have meant someone else would have been killed.”
Jefferies said despite advances in science she has only a “small hope” the crime will be solved. “I am not encouraged,” she said.
In 2019, the state police released a photograph of the 4.5 inch blade used to stab Friedt, hoping it would generate leads. The lead ISP investigator to the case did not respond to an interview request.
Former Speedway police Lt. Bill Jones had been on the job a little more than a year at the time of the murders. He said the patrol officers assumed drugs were involved but his role in the case was limited.
“It was taken over quickly by the state police because the bodies were located elsewhere,” he said. “But we continued to work our sources for a couple of years to see of they heard anything.”
Jones eventually headed up the detective division about 10 years later but by then leads were cold, he said.
Council President Noblet said the killings were a warning to the town — a quiet incorporated municipality within Indianapolis — that is was not inured to crime.
“It was a really sad day,” said Noblet, who was 18 at the time. ”It was a reality check that crime can reach anywhere.”
The Burger Chef site was fenced off this week and parts of it were already gutted. Noblett said it should be razed by early January.
Marion County Property records show the Burger Chef property was sold for $350,000 to Da Dental Partners. Noblet said dentist Ashwani K Sharma of Brownsburg plans to build a dental office at the site.
Noblet said Sharma had been interested in building a strip mall there but property owners on both sides, a donut shop and an auto store, would not sell.
Sharma could not be reached for comment.
Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at (317) 444-6418. Follow on X/Twitter and Facebook.
