On January 8, 1993, Richard Earl Dick Ehlenfeldt, 50, was one of eight people killed in an armed robbery at the Brown’s Chicken restaurant in Palatine, Illinois. Richard and his wife, Lynn Anne Wiese Ehlenfeldt, had recently left other jobs to run the Brown’s Chicken franchise. The assailants entered the restaurant, shot the victims execution-style and put the bodies into walk-in freezers. The motive reported was robbery; the perpetrators took about $1,800 to $1,900.

The victims named include Richard and Lynn Ehlenfeldt and employees Guadalupe Maldonado, Michael C. Castro, Rico L. Solis, Thomas Mennes, and Marcus Nellsen. The case went unsolved for nearly nine years until one assailant was implicated by a girlfriend in 2002 and later linked by DNA; both Juan Luna and James Degorski were subsequently arrested and later convicted and given life sentences without parole.

Richard is remembered in the report as a dedicated and caring husband and father whose death was a devastating loss to his family.