Jayne Friedt, Daniel Davis, Mark Flemmonds and Ruth Ann Shelton:1978, Speedway, Indiana
Police were called to the restaurant by the morning shift. Earlier, when the employees had arrived they were shocked that the restaurant was unlocked and empty. Two female employees had left their purses and coats behind. Closing duties had not been finished. All the money was gone from the safe. All the cash in the registers had been taken except the coins. An empty roll of tape was sitting on the safe. None of the young employees who closed on November 17th, 1978 could be reached.
The local police concluded that the staff had just taken the money and skipped out. They weren’t worried about it. They took no photos. They did not dust for fingerprints. The police said that the crew probably bought booze with the money and went out and partied. They instructed the opening staff to just clean up and they’d talk to those thieving kids later. The opening staff protested that something was very wrong. The local police dismissed their concerns. The staff set about cleaning up and getting the place ready for the Saturday customers.
The staff of Burger Chef in Speedway, Indiana were still puzzling over what had happened with the closing staff on Friday night when word came in on Sunday that the missing staff had been located. All four were found dead in Johnson County, south of Speedway and Indianapolis.
Jayne Friedt was 20. She was a dedicated employee and a solid person. Her car had been found in town. But there was no call from Jayne. When the four Burger Chef workers were found; it suddenly made some sort of sense. Jayne would have called if she had been able. Friedt had been stabbed in the chest. The knife had broken and the handle was missing.
Daniel Davis was 16. He had been shot multiple times with a .38 caliber weapon.
Mark Flemmonds was also 16. He had been bludgeoned severely and was unconscious when he drowned in his own blood.
Ruth Ellen Shelton was 17. She had also been shot multiple times with a .38 caliber weapon.
All four were still wearing their uniforms. Some still had their watches on. They still had their own money in their pockets.
If the thieves just wanted money why had they not taken the employees personal cash and jewelry? Why had they not taken the $100 in coins from the registers? Why take the staff all the way to Johnson County just to murder all four? Was this a disgruntled former employee who wanted revenge? Was this someone who had a personal reason against one of the staff? Did one of the staff maybe recognize one of the robbers?
In November 1978, when the Burger Chef murders happened, I had just turned 9. Sometime after the murders my sister and I were invited to go roller skating with friends. After roller skating our socks off to the Grease Soundtrack, Donna Summer and other big Disco hits of the era; we headed home. On the way home I saw a Burger Chef and commented on how good the food smelled. Another kid in the car brought up that we shouldn’t eat there because of the recent murders. We weren’t going out to eat anyway but I asked about the murders. Our friend’s Mom asked us not to talk about that. I still didn’t know about the murders. For a long time I thought that the crime took place there in Southern Indiana. I was an adult before I learned it had taken place in Speedway, Indiana.
Speedway is literally the home of “the speedway”..the Indy 500 takes place there each May. All of the month of May is taken up with events leading up to race day on Memorial Day weekend. (I was thrilled to get to tend bar there all of May 2022.)
November 1978 in Speedway should have been rather quiet. It should have been business as usual. Everyone in Speedway was a bit rattled because someone kept setting off bombs that Fall. To my knowledge, the bomber was never caught.
The Speedway Police chief later admitted that they botched the Burger Chef investigation. It’s now nearly impossible to say who committed the Burger Chef murders. But there is a chief suspect who many consider to be the ringleader.
Donald Forrester had a long criminal history. He was in and out of jail for many offenses. He robbed restaurants, including other Burger Chef locations. He also lived across the street from the Speedway Burger Chef. That fact increased the likelihood that the restaurant staff was murdered because they might have recognized him.
Donald Forrester was well known to police. He was convicted of rape many times, including against female members of his own family. Sadly, rape was not considered a serious crime by the men who made laws in the 1970’s. Forrester would eventually be given a life sentence for the brutal rape and attempted murder of a victim in 1979.
This April 1st 1979, the victim had gone out to a club that evening and ran into an old friend. The two left the club and went to Denny’s on East 82nd street to talk and catch up on each other’s lives. After chatting for a good long while they each headed home. The victim then noticed that a car was following her. She made several turns and even ran a red light to see if it really was following her. It is. She didn’t want to lead them to her home so she drove into a residential neighborhood in Noblesville and pulled over thinking they would pass her by. The car instead blocked her in. Two men were in the car. Donald Forrester tried to convince her that they knew each other and even showed her his driver’s license. She insisted that they did not know one another. He then pulled a gun and forced her at gunpoint into the backseat.
Donald instructed his cousin, Dale Dawson to drive the victim’s car. Donald Forrester then raped V in the backseat as the car was moving. He told his cousin to go to a field somewhere. V realized then that they were going to kill her and dump her. Dale Dawson got lost somewhere along the way. As they approached a rural field; Dale hit the brakes suddenly for an animal. As that happened, V was able to reach the door handle and opened the car door and escaped. She is completely naked running through a field. She runs for her life, likely injuring her feet on rocks, thorns, and sticks. It was cold out. She was terrified. She managed to hide in some bushes. Donald and Dale gave up looking for her and went home.
The victim went to a nearby home and knocked on the door asking them to call the police. They turned her away. She went to the next house and they did not let her in but they did call the police.
The local Anderson, Indiana police officers did not believe her story.
They doubted that she could get out of the back seat of a two door car and escape so easily. So, based on that alone they initially dismissed her claims of stalking, kidnapping, rape and attempted murder.
This is what women who reported rape were up against in 1977 and even today in many places. This victim was battered, completely naked, scratched and bruised from running for her life. She has the name of her attacker and a description of his car. Still, the police doubt her story.
What does a rape victim have to look like before you believe her story? Did police think a woman would knock on a stranger’s door in the cold during early morning hours, battered and naked just for fun or for attention?
Luckily, the Indiana State Police DID believe her. They put a great deal of effort into the investigation and arrested Donald Forrester and Dale Dawson. Dale was terrified of his cousin but agreed to testify against him. Dale said this was not the first time the two had abducted and assaulted a woman like this. Together with other witness testimony; Forrester was convicted in November of 1979. He was then sentenced to life in prison.
Over the years, Donald Forrester was questioned by investigators about the murders of the four Speedway Burger Chef employees. He confessed and recanted multiple times. He was never tried for those crimes.
The four young people who lost their lives that night were all grieved intensely by their families and community. Many crimes were happening in Indiana in the mid to late 1970’s. This murder of four young people really shook a lot of people up.
I’ve talked about the culture of victim blaming in this blog before. Society places different values on people. They shouldn’t. All people deserve the same respect and value. All life is precious. Things like skin color, culture, age, gender, sexual orientation, substance abuse, mental illness, disability, and socioeconomic status shouldn’t matter. But, people still do place more value on certain victims. A woman showing up battered and naked was not believed. Would a naked boy victim have been more readily believed? What about an old woman? What about a naked and drunk old man? What about a naked young man with Down’s syndrome? Would they have let a naked little black girl in the house? There shouldn’t be a hierarchy in our minds when it comes to empathy for victims. But, we humans aren’t perfect. We have to really work on overcoming our prejudices. If we are ever going to become a better society we have to look past stereotypes and stop victim blaming. If we can, there will be enormous benefits in the realm of crime solving.
In that totally bizarre constructed hierarchy of victims; the Burger Chef employees were victims that many people immediately felt deep sympathy and a kinship with. You could look at their pictures in the newspaper and they looked like people you knew. They were clean cut kids who were working hard. Hard work is valued highly in the Midwest.
This case has many lessons. Police everywhere should study it carefully. If only the responding officers had not dismissed the situation. Even if you have doubts…treat it like a crime scene. Take photos of everything. Document everything. Don’t let anyone clean until crime scene investigators do a thorough job.
They dismissed the missing crew as just a bunch of irresponsible young people who took the money and went out to party. If you’ve ever worked at a restaurant you know that four people aren’t going to conspire to steal such a small amount of money and abandon their families, high school and college ambitions all for one night of partying. I’ve worked at places where young employees conspired to steal but it was usually a little bit here and there. They got caught too. Four very different young people aren’t going to all decide unanimously to throw it all away one night. It would fairly be difficult to get four people to agree on pizza toppings.
The types of crimes happening in the 1970’s taught a great many lessons to investigators and to society as a whole. Crime then was one a whole other level. I feel sorry for police officers back then. Crime was absolutely wild, horrific and happening on a scale that was unprecedented. So many crimes were unlike anything they’d ever seen or could even imagine.
If you would like to hear more about this case I recommend a podcast called The Murder Sheet. It is available on most major podcast platforms or just Google it to listen on their site. They interviewed investigators and went into this case in great detail.
The murders of Jayne Friedt, Daniel Davis, Mark Flemmonds and Ruth Ann Shelton are still unsolved. Every murder victim deserves Justice.
If you have a tip about this case please contact the Indiana State Police at (317) 899-8577 or 1-800- 852-8400.
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