On a November night in 1978, 16-year-old Mark Flemmonds was working the closing shift at the Burger Chef on Crawfordsville Road in Speedway, Indiana, covering for a coworker. He and three coworkers — assistant manager 20-year-old Jayne Friedt, 17-year-old Ruth Ellen Shelton, and 16-year-old Daniel Davis — vanished sometime after the restaurant closed at 11:00 p.m. The next morning the back door was found ajar and the safe open; Friedt’s Chevy Vega was later discovered abandoned in town.

On November 19 the four bodies were recovered in a wooded area in Johnson County, about 20 miles from the restaurant. Davis and Shelton had been shot multiple times with a .38 caliber weapon. Friedt had been stabbed twice in the chest, the knife handle snapped from force. Flemmonds was found a short distance away, severely beaten and having died from asphyxiation on his own blood, suggesting he may have tried to flee.

Investigators suspected robbery — approximately $581 was missing from the register — but personal valuables were left behind. Evidence was compromised when the restaurant was cleaned and reopened the day after the abduction. Eyewitness reports and composite sketches of two men seen near the Burger Chef produced leads that did not result in arrests; confessions were later recanted and other theories have not been substantiated. Does anyone have information about that closing shift or the men seen near the restaurant that night?