By Nancy Price
A podcast investigating new details of the murders of four employees of a Speedway Burger Chef 42 years will be released on the anniversary of the day the young adults disappeared.
On Nov. 17, 1978, Jayne Friedt, 20, an assistant manager; Ruth Shelton, 17, a student at Northwest High School; Mark Flemmonds,16, a Speedway High School student; and Danny Davis, a 16-year-old student at Decatur Central High School, were working the night shift and were last sent at about 11 p.m.
Two days later, their bodies were discovered in a wooded area now known as Timber Heights neighborhood, near Center Grove High School. “Two of the four were shot in the back of the head,” said Kevin Greenlee, an attorney who represents Shelton’s sister in the murder case. “One victim, Jane Friedt, had been stabbed twice in the heart and stabbed with such fury the blade from the knife had broken off.”
The body of Mark Flemmonds was discovered badly beaten, but not enough to have caused a fatality. The way he fell to the ground after he had been beaten “caused him to choke to death on his own blood,” Greenlee said.
Greenlee has been involved with the case for the past four years. Last year, Aine Cain, a reporter with Business Insider, a financial and business news website, was researching the case for an article when she connected with Greenlee. Cane became so interested in the unsolved murders that she and Greenlee decided to start a podcast called the Murder Sheet. Details of the Burger Chef murders will be shared through a miniseries, called “You Can Never Forget,” and include interviews from the victims’ family, persons of interest, a witness who claims the perpetrators attempted to murder him after the murders and investigations from law enforcement officers.
Many theories about the case have been shared throughout the past four decades and will be addressed in the podcast, including why the employees were taken and murdered, why reported sightings of their whereabouts have not been seriously, why the crime scene at the Burger Chef was never investigated after the employees went missing and why there have been no arrests in the murders to date.
“We’re hoping to give listeners a bird’s eye view of the case and hope that they have a full understanding of the crime and its many theories,” Cain said. “We feel we’ll be providing our audience with new details they may not have heard before. We’re hoping to provide a real overview of the case that’s not just focusing on a single theory of the investigation.”
To listen to the podcast’s trailer, go to buzzsprout.com/1452037. The miniseries starts Tuesday, Nov. 17. For more information go to facebook.com/MSheetPodcast, twitter.com/MurderSheet or instagram.com/murdersheet.
