Seventeen-year-old Ruth Ellen Shelton was working the late shift at the Burger Chef in Speedway, Indiana, on the night of November 17, 1978, when she and three co-workers — Jayne Friedt, 20; Daniel Davis, 16; and Mark Flemmonds, 16 — disappeared between about 11:00 PM and midnight after the restaurant had closed. A later-returning employee found the back door ajar and the safe open with about $580 missing; the restaurant was cleaned and reopened the next day, a decision that investigators later said may have destroyed evidence.

Two days later the four employees were found dead in a wooded area in Johnson County, still wearing their Burger Chef uniforms. The deaths were violent and varied: Shelton and Davis had been shot execution-style with a .38 caliber firearm, Friedt had been stabbed, and Flemmonds died of blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.

A major development came in 1986 when Donald Forrester, then incarcerated for rape, confessed to Shelton’s and Davis’s killings and led investigators to a location where he said the murder weapon had been disposed of; no weapon was recovered and he later recanted. Investigators have also examined theories ranging from a botched robbery by a gang to the possibility an assailant was recognized by an employee, as well as possible ties to the local drug trade. No arrests or prosecutions have been made.