Jayne Friedt was 20 and assistant manager at a Burger Chef in Speedway, Indiana, when she disappeared after her shift on the night of November 17, 1978. She and three teenage coworkers — Ruth Ellen Shelton, Daniel Davis, and Mark Flemmonds — were closing the restaurant. A coworker who returned after closing found the building empty, the back door ajar, the safe open, and about $580 missing. Jayne’s white Chevrolet Vega was found abandoned about 1.5 miles from the restaurant the next day.

On November 19, 1978, the four employees were found murdered in a rural, wooded area in Johnson County, roughly 20 miles south of the Burger Chef. Jayne had been stabbed; an autopsy showed a four-and-a-half-inch blade broke off in her chest. Shelton and Davis were shot execution-style; Flemmonds died from blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. The restaurant had been cleaned before it was secured, limiting forensic evidence.

Authorities pursued many leads over decades. In 1984 an inmate, Donald Forrester, confessed with details not publicly known and implicated others but later recanted; investigators could not corroborate his claims and no one was charged. The killings remain unsolved. If anyone knew the victims, worked at that Burger Chef, or remembers unusual activity around Speedway in November 1978, please share what might help this cold case.