Murders at the Burger Joint (2022) - full transcript

I think when you have a secret,

it gives you power,

and as soon as you share

that secret,

you lose that power.

A lot of people in this case

have kept their secrets.

It's this all-American group of kids

working at a Burger Chef,

and they are all killed brutally

in the woods.

Imagine, what type of torture

did they go through?

There had to be pure terror.

ANNOUNCER: It's one of

the state's most infamous crimes:

the kidnapping and killing

of four Burger Chef workers

in Speedway.

If I knew what the hell

was going on that night,

I would have walked over there

and got involved.

I probably would

have got shot and killed.

There's one gentleman

that I think has a big secret,

and I think he knows what happened.

Open wide, America:

Burger Chef's got thick, juicy,

terrific burgers for you,

a hundred percent all beef.

We really work hard...

Burger Chef was actually based

in Indianapolis,

had been founded there in 1954.

Open wide America,

you never can forget,

You get more, more, more to like

at Burger Chef.

Burger chef geared

some of their marketing toward kids,

to bring their parents in,

of course, too.

VOICEOVER: The Burger Chef family

would like to have your family

over for dinner.

They were big back then.

The local Burger Chef in Speedway,

I would go to regularly

'cos my friend worked there.

Burger Chef

was kind of like McDonald's.

I hung out over there.

Everybody'd go round there

showing off their cars.

Burger Chef had

the first Happy Meal.

They had cartoon characters:

Burger Chef and Jeff.

What's a fun burger?

It's a delicious burger with a smile

on the wrapper and a prize inside.

Incredi-burger-ble!

I worked at the Speedway

Burger Chef, 1978.

I was a back line cook.

When I started working

at Burger Chef, I was nervous.

Back then, I was a very shy kid.

Burger Chef

was a big-time competitor.

It was up there with McDonald's.

Loved their food. Miss it today.

My name is Aine Cain.

And I'm Kevin Greenlee.

And we're The Murder Sheet.

After we cover the Burger Chef case,

The Murder Sheet

will continue to investigate

different

restaurant-related homicides

for the rest of season one.

In Indiana, where I live,

the rumour was

that Burger Chef

made their hamburgers out of worms.

And so because of this,

my parents forbade me

from ever stepping foot

into a Burger Chef,

which became a problem when they

started selling Star Wars posters.

Hello. Welcome to Burger Chef.

We'd like a Star Wars poster please.

I knew it!

Finally, after I pleaded with them,

they let me go in, buy a meal

so I'd get the Star Wars poster,

and then I had to throw the food out

immediately.

R2, I think we better leave.

Burger Chef was actually

based in Indianapolis.

When we're talking about Speedway,

this is the corporation's backyard.

Speedway in 1978 had the facade

of being just a casual small town

on the edge of Indianapolis.

The reality was a bit darker.

There were chop shop rings and a lot

of drugs moving through the area.

So while the surface was very placid

and nice and small-town Americana,

there was a lot of crime going on.

We're at

the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It was hippies and bikers.

You didn't run your mouth to people

if you didn't know 'em

'cos you probably

would have got your butt kicked.

OK, come on in.

Dude, I was a grease monkey

at the age of ten.

I started taking

my dad's cars apart,

and boy, did he get (BLEEP).

Back in 1978, you know,

I was hell on wheels.

I used to do burnouts

around the Burger Chef.

Jayne Friedt, my friend,

would get so upset

'cos there'd be so much smoke

rolling off the rear tyres.

She'd open the little serve window,

give me the finger:

"Don't you do that no more,"

and I'd be laughing my butt off.

Imagine that.

Speedway in '78

I considered a very redneck town.

We didn't have too many

African Americans in this city.

Speedway, to me, was racist.

Speedway cops were notorious

for pulling over black people

in the neighbourhood.

They look at it

like it's their town.

That's the way I took it, you know?

KEVIN: Back in the day,

Speedway was totally unprepared

for what happened

out at the Burger Chef.

There was a young lady that worked

at the Speedway Burger Chef.

I thought she was cute,

and I asked her out.

She was scheduled

to work that night,

so she asked Mark Flemmonds

to take her place,

and Mark said yes.

Believe it or not,

that was my first date of my life.

November 17th, 1978

was a Friday night.

I talked with Mark and found out

that he had to work that night.

His schedule changed,

so I said, "Man, will you walk home

with me once you get off work?"

Speedway at night, for a black man,

that wasn't good.

We were always together

or with someone.

It's about 11:30, quarter to 12,

I'm like, "Well, I better mosey on

across the parking lot there

and get with my buddy

so we can walk on home."

Shortly after the date,

we drove by the Burger Chef,

and my date noticed

Jayne's car was gone.

I mean, the manager

should be there on a close,

and with the store lights on,

it is odd.

So I walk up to the door,

I'm looking inside,

I don't see nobody.

I'm just banging on the door.

Nothing.

I'm thinking, like,

"Where the hell is he?

He know we had to

walk home tonight."

And I got there, and I bam!

The door's open.

So I walk over,

and I just stuck my head.

"Jayne, Jayne, Mark."

No one ever answer.

Something just told me,

"Don't go in there,

do not go in there,"

and I didn't.

I dropped my date off

at her house around 12,

and I drove back to the Burger Chef.

I would come back

and help them close.

The back door was cracked open

and there was light shining out.

I walk in there,

and nobody is there.

I checked everywhere.

I checked in the walk-in,

the freezer. Nobody's around.

The women's coats were left there.

I walk in the manager's office,

and the first thing I notice

is the safe door is wide open.

All the dollar bills were gone.

So I called the police.

Four kids are missing.

The family members were notified.

No one knew where they went.

AINE: The four missing employees are

Assistant Manager Jayne Friedt

and her crew of three employees,

Ruth Shelton, Danny Davis,

and Mark Flemmonds.

Mark was a real open person.

He was big-hearted, you know.

His family was Jehovah's Witnesses,

and they was rather strict on him.

ALLEN: Jayne was a very sweet,

bashful young girl.

Every time you saw her,

she had a smile on her face.

I enjoyed talking to her.

I kind of always wanted her

to be my girlfriend,

but it never got that far.

My brother woke me up.

He just said, "Wake up, Theresa,

wake up, Ruth's been kidnapped."

My older sister, Ruth,

she was very quiet

when you first met her.

Ruth wanted to be

a computer programmer.

They had just started classes

at the high school back then.

Danny Davis was a 16 year old,

but he had some big dreams:

he wanted to join the Air Force.

People who knew him tell us

he was very new to Burger Chef.

So, you know,

I'm lying in the bed sleep,

I kept hearing this knock

at my window.

I get up and look.

It's Mark's sister.

She said, "Well, Kirk,

I'm gonna tell you now,

they believe that

they've been kidnapped."

I'm like, "What the hell

are you talking about?"

When Mark's sister told me

that the Burger Chef employees

was missing,

I walked back to the Burger Chef.

Man, there's Speedway cops

all over the place,

Indiana State Police, news cameras.

I talked with the investigators.

I told them everything

that I saw that night.

They took my story, and they was

treating me like a suspect.

The police, they were saying

that they thought they had

just taken the money

and went out to have a good time,

and that makes no sense whatsoever.

First of all, Ruth, Jayne,

Mark, and Danny worked together.

They didn't hang out together.

They were different ages

from different schools.

Unfortunately, they allowed

the other staff from the restaurant

to come in and clean the restaurant.

They let the restaurant

open up the next day.

There was no crime scene

to be processed.

It was devastating to this case.

The media got involved.

It was on the radio and television

that these four kids were missing.

There was a search conducted

with volunteers and police officers.

On Sunday, a man

stumbles across an awful sight.

He stumbles across the bodies

of Danny Davis and Ruth Shelton,

lying next to each other face down

in their Burger Chef uniforms.

And a short distance away,

there is the body of Jayne Friedt,

and also Mark Flemmonds.

And he's seen the news coverage,

he sees these Burger Chef uniforms,

and he knows what's happened,

and so he goes and calls the police.

00:11:29.600 -- 00:11:31.360

Welcome to our house.

Oh, Hank. He's our favourite dog,

named after Hank Williams Senior.

Best little dog in the world.

I was appointed to

the Indiana State Police in 1972.

I was promoted to sergeant.

I spent most of my time

from 1978 through '86 involved with

the Burger Chef investigation.

My wife and I were driving back home

and I heard on

the police radio dispatch

about kids missing

from the Burger Chef in Speedway.

You could have

just hit me with a brick

when I found out

that they'd been murdered.

The Speedway Police Department

and Indiana State Police

announced that the bodies had been

discovered late this afternoon

in Johnson County, Indiana.

This area right here

was where the bodies were found.

This is about 20 miles

from the Burger Chef.

The fact that these kids

were driven 20 miles

to this specific location

makes you wonder

what the purpose was.

Perhaps the perpetrators

wanted to interrogate one.

Perhaps the kidnappers panicked

and weren't

really thinking straight.

In all the fast food homicides

we've looked into

that involved mass murders,

the vast majority took place

within the restaurant.

It's incredibly rare

for a group of people

to be taken elsewhere

and then killed.

So these four kids

were actually killed

in three different ways.

Two of them were shot,

one of them was stabbed,

and one of them was beaten.

The way things occurred,

there had to be more than one person

involved in this, if not three.

I truly believe

Mark was outnumbered,

or they had to have a gun on him

for him not to react

and try to fight his way

out of a situation.

At the murder scene,

it had a gravel road right here.

Danny and Ruth were

just over that embankment,

lying face down,

shot execution style.

The bullets were recovered

from the bodies -

.38 calibre bullets,

no shell casings.

There wasn't a lot to collect.

You had the bodies

and what was on them or in them.

That was about the extent

of the evidence.

They found Jayne

about 50 to 75yd away, face down.

Her clothes weren't torn.

Somebody from behind came over her

and with two striking blows

stabbed her twice through the heart.

The knife handle

snapped off at the hilt.

Mark was found to the left.

He was on his back.

His feet were bent under him.

His toes were actually like that.

It looked like somebody

pulled him back,

got on top of him, and beat him.

They killed him, surely.

He actually died of a bloody nose,

strangled on his own blood.

Had he been on his side,

he'd probably have survived.

There was no gun recovered.

There were

no shell casings recovered.

This might suggest that

whoever committed this crime

was very careful

and very meticulous.

The crime scene

was searched with metal detectors.

The roadway ditches were searched.

Farm buildings

in the reasonable proximity,

and nothing was found.

When you look at

the actual crime scene,

Mark and Jayne's deaths

both feel more personal.

Mark died of blunt force trauma.

Jayne was knifed to death.

When people see that, they think

they were singled out on some level.

ANNOUNCER: Assistant Manager

Jayne Friedt's car

was found abandoned in the morning

a few miles away

near the police station.

Jayne Friedt,

her car was found abandoned,

parked right here in this area.

We don't know why

they chose this spot.

We don't know

if they met somebody here.

We just don't know

why they took her vehicle.

Somebody you go to school with,

and suddenly she ends up dead,

that's a hard thing to deal with.

It shocked me.

You know, I come in,

report a robbery,

the police don't know

what's going on.

What I really realise is,

by the grace of God,

I wasn't one of 'em.

I could have easily

walked in on that.

I maybe missed 'em

by five, ten minutes.

Meet my mother here, Mrs Thompson.

When they said they found them

all murdered,

man, it took the life

out of all of us.

Mr Ken, he worked at the mortuary

that had Mark's body...

Yeah? ..and he told me

the condition of the body.

And I said, "Oh, my goodness."

They beat him to death.

They beat him bad.

For years, I've dealt with that

on the inside,

and...that bothered me for years.

I had nightmares back then.

I dreamed of him all the time, man.

THERESA: Ruth's funeral was...

It was very hard for me.

She was young,

and a lot of people

were in distress.

The funeral home

had closed her casket for the night.

As my mother draped her body

over that casket,

just cried and sobbed,

I couldn't help feeling that

this is the absolute worst pain

that you could ever experience.

What I wondered about was,

who was there present close to

the Burger Chef when this occurred?

KIRK: Indiana State Police

had a lot of theories.

They would ask me,

what type of person is Mark?

Did Mark do drugs?

Do you do drugs?

It got to a point where, "Hey,

can we take a lie detector test?"

I always felt that they tried

to imply that I was lying.

You know, the police,

they wanted to hypnotise me, right?

They kept trying to make him

say he was in there,

and I said,

"They're looking for somebody

to blame this murder on,

or kidnapping or whatever,

but they're not gonna blame it

on my child."

AINE: When people talk

about this case,

they tend to think

that either Mark or Jayne

were the primary target

in the homicides,

and that's for a couple of reasons.

As the investigation went on,

there was leads that were called in

revolving around drugs,

revolving around relatives

involved in drug activity.

Mark Flemmonds,

there were news reports in 1978

that he was involved in drugs

in some capacity.

His father reported

that at one point

he found Mark in an apartment

where there was a large amount

of marijuana present.

Could Mark have had a secret life

that I didn't know about?

I don't think so.

But if he was involved,

it never happened around me.

The big first lead that came forward

was a male from Speedway,

came to the police department

and told 'em,

"Hey, I was up at the Burger Chef

last night.

We had a couple of guys

approach me and my girlfriend,

two male individuals."

They elicited a description.

Someone offered to prepare

two lifelike clay busts

of these composite drawings.

The end result of releasing those

was to have phone call

after phone call after phone call.

ANNOUNCER: Investigators made

these clay busts.

This went national news.

It was definitely a media circus.

ANNCR: Desperate for leads,

state police begged for

the public's help.

Right now, they're running up

lots of false leads.

We had officers from Marion County,

state police, the FBI and the ATF.

It was a nightmare

to try to manage it.

They had a tip line,

the phone rang off the hook

in the first weeks constantly.

When you have a situation

where it's like a fire hose

of information coming in,

that makes it hard to separate

the wheat from the chaff,

and it bogged down the investigation

very early on.

A lot of activity was generated

as a result of those leads,

but nothing much

that came back to the crime in hand.

Ruth was my older sister.

We were five years apart.

I idolised her.

She seemed to do

everything perfectly

and showed no fear

with a lot of things.

Ruth was very much my role model.

I have hers and my

high school class rings.

Look how tiny she was.

And that has always bothered me,

is that someone...

This was not an adult

that someone killed.

Someone saw a child and killed them.

I also have Ruth's name tags.

With the name tags, if you look,

you'll notice it says Ruth.

It doesn't say victim.

None of them...were named victim.

They each had a name.

You know,

so often we hear, four victims.

If you can call someone a victim,

you've taken their identity away.

You've made it more important

of how they died than who they were.

In the first three years

after the Burger Chef murders,

there were really

no dramatic developments

in the investigation.

So the next big lead

that erupts happens in 1981.

The scene is the Marion County jail.

A scuffle is breaking out

on the floor

between two inmates.

One is James Friedt.

He's the older brother

of Burger Chef victim Jayne Friedt.

The other is this small,

red-headed guy named Allen Pruitt.

He had been arrested on probation

violation charges, we think.

It's hard to find

correctional records that far back.

James Friedt had been arrested

on a cocaine charge,

a substantial charge.

The confrontation happens because

Pruitt made some sort

of comment to James:

"Sorry about your sister,"

essentially.

As a result of this fight,

Pruitt ends up going to one of

the counsellors at the jail

and telling him that,

"I have information

on the Burger Chef murders."

I was the last person to see

them victims alive that night

at the Burger Chef.

00:22:40.440 -- 00:22:43.760

We got a call to go

to the Marion County jail.

Allen Pruitt, who'd been

in some type of confrontation

with James Friedt,

Jayne Friedt's older brother -

Allen, he had told us a story

that he went to the Dunkin' Donuts

on the night

of the Burger Chef murder,

and then he walked out and he heard

a commotion over at the Burger Chef.

Me and my friend,

we were both really intoxicated.

I hadn't ate nothing all that day,

with a gutful of beer.

Burger Chef looked like

it was already closed,

so we decided to go

to Dunkin' Donuts,

and the Dunkin' Donuts

was right next to the Burger Chef.

Came out to have a cigarette,

and I saw the orange van.

It was standing right about here,

the van,

so I had a clear view shot of it.

I saw two guys that I recognised,

Tim Willoughby and Jeff Reed.

I saw Jeff Reed

go into the Burger Chef.

I saw Jeff Reed come out

the back of the building

holding Mark by the collar

of the shirt,

slammed him into the van.

I heard the thump.

Jeff Reed lowered Daniel Davis

and Ruth into the van.

I saw Tim Willoughby

and Jayne Friedt

come out the back door,

and they were arguing

with each other.

She said something like (BLEEP).

I never heard Jayne

ever cuss in her life.

I thought, well, maybe Jayne

stepped on somebody's toes

and (BLEEP),

and they were out here,

you know, settling the score.

I didn't know anybody

was being abducted.

They took off.

That was the last I saw.

If I knew what the hell

was going on that night,

I would have walked over there

and got involved.

I probably would have

got shot and killed,

but I didn't give a (BLEEP).

Tim Willoughby and Jeff Reed

were the two men that Allen Pruitt

named in his statement to police.

Jeff Reed was known

for fighting people.

He did a lot of drugs. He seemingly

was involved in the drug trade.

We've heard that he possibly acted

as some sort of enforcer

for different organisations

within the drug trade,

and he was not afraid

to get violent.

Tim Willoughby sold drugs:

cocaine, I think, mostly, in school.

He was always acting

like he was better than you.

He was just a cocky-ass type guy.

Pruitt, Jayne Friedt,

and Tim Willoughby

all were graduates

of the same high school.

KEVIN: Jayne was a country girl.

People who knew her

talked about her smile.

People gave her the nickname

Sweet Jayne.

But we have spoken

with one of Jayne's friends

who knew her very well,

and she says that Jayne had

gotten involved with selling drugs

and that she was entangled

with her older brother, James,

who was a drug trafficker.

And so she paints

a bit of a darker picture,

saying that she was going in

this direction of getting

more involved with the drug trade.

I'd never heard of drugs

being as prevalent in Speedway.

Now, I'm probably believing

that there was a little bit

more prevalence of drugs,

and I was just very sheltered.

While working at Burger Chef,

I always liked Jayne.

I thought she was

a super-nice manager.

But Jayne was known to

up and vanish for a little bit...

..throughout the night.

I interrogated Allen Pruitt

about the Burger Chef.

AINE: Allen Pruitt had

very little to gain

in going to the police

with this story.

He didn't get any big reward,

and he didn't ask for any time off.

All of that makes him

quite a credible witness.

So as Pruitt is talking to Cramer,

he reveals what happened

the day after the killings.

He didn't realise that any murder

had been committed.

I was outside the Dairy Queen.

Tim Willoughby and Jeff Reed

pulled up in an orange van,

with a girl in the back,

Mary Ann Higginbotham.

She was Tim Willoughby's girlfriend.

I asked Tim Willoughby,

I said, "What was the deal

up at the Burger Chef?

What kind of beef did you have

with Jayne?"

He kind of acted

like I was his best friend.

They wanted to know if I wanted

to go out riding around,

drink some beers

and smoke a couple of joints.

I said, "Sure, why not?"

Jeff Reed was driving the van.

Tim Willoughby

was in the passenger seat.

Mary Ann Higginbotham

was in the back.

I saw a nickel-plated

'38 calibre revolver.

Mary Ann seemed like

she'd been crying.

And then she said, "Allen,

I think they're going to kill me."

And I'm like, "Do what?"

She goes, "I think

they're gonna kill me."

I didn't know what to do because

I didn't know what was going on.

Tim Willoughby was

whispering something to Jeff Reed,

and I thought, "Man,

I'm feeling uneasy about this."

Mary Ann yelled at Tim, "You need to

quit doing this stupid (BLEEP).

If you don't stop,

I'm going to the cops."

Tim Willoughby reached back

behind the seat

and smacked Mary Ann

across the face,

told her to shut the (BLEEP) up.

I was scared to death.

The van pulls up to the bridge -

Devil's Backbone.

Walked down to the creek,

Mary Ann turned to me and said,

"Allen, run as fast as you can

because I think

they're gonna kill you."

I turned around and I bolted

as fast as I could.

As I was running, I heard a gunshot.

I figured at that point

they were trying to kill me.

Test, test.

'On our podcast,

we dug into Alan Pruitt's story.'

Through our investigation,

we discovered shocking details

about Mary Ann Higginbotham,

we visited the creek

in Mooresville, Indiana.

KEVIN: Back in June of 1979,

a teenage boy

found a sealed barrel in a creek.

He reached into the barrel

and a rotting skull

came tumbling out.

Mary Ann Higginbotham's body was

found sealed in a 55 gallon drum.

She had been shot and murdered.

Her remains were found

about seven months after

the Burger Chef murders occurred.

According to the statement

that we took from Allen Pruitt,

he would have been the last person

to have seen

Mary Ann Higginbotham alive.

We're here now

at the Devil's Backbone.

This is where Allen Pruitt said

he was chased by Jeff Reed

and Tim Willoughby.

Mary Ann Higginbotham,

she was killed by a gunshot wound

to the head.

Which would fit with Pruett's story.

Yes.

To this day, I still believe

Mary Ann, she knew that

Tim Willoughby and Jeff Reed

committed them murders.

I think what he did

was kill her to shut her up.

The next time I ran into Jeff Reed,

he pointed a gun at me and said,

"You know what's gonna happen

if you run your mouth?"

And I said, "Yeah, I guess I do."

We know for a fact Allen Pruitt

was there at the Burger Chef.

The question is, is Allen Pruitt

a witness or is he a suspect?

Jim Cramer thought

from the very beginning

that he had his man.

He was a (BLEEP).

Allen Pruitt, he came across as

not being, uh, overly intelligent.

They wanted me

to take a polygraph test,

and I passed every question

they asked with flying colours.

We had him run on a polygraph,

and he didn't pass.

I think he didn't pass because

he wasn't telling the whole story.

Cops gave me the sodium pentothal,

which is a truth serum.

Well, that's a lie. That's funny.

I've heard that before, actually.

Sitting here today, I don't know

whether I believe him or not.

We know Pruitt was there,

so either he is telling us the truth

or he is lying.

And if he's lying, why is he lying?

Tim Willoughby and Jeff Reed

were the two men that Allen Pruitt

named in his statement to police.

Neither of them were brought in

for official questioning afterwards.

In the case of Tim Willoughby,

he was actually missing

at that point.

Willoughby went on the run

after facing charges

around a car theft ring -

technically a fugitive.

Now, Jeff Reed was still around.

Jeff Reed we had trouble locating.

I finally found out that he was

an inmate in Danville jail.

Reed was gonna be released,

and I thought, "Here's my chance."

I went to the jail. I knew

he didn't have any money.

I picked him up,

and I took him to get him breakfast,

to talk to him.

We ate. I never accused him,

but I told him,

"I think you're involved."

He sat there and had his meal.

He never said one word.

He didn't say, "I didn't do this.

I'm not involved."

He didn't say a word.

You know, when you don't

have anything to go on,

I was giving it a shot.

We really didn't have

anything to go forward with.

Even with Pruitt's story,

we couldn't verify it.

We didn't have any evidence

to prove things.

You've got a statement there

that's questionable.

He's not a believable witness.

You couldn't go forward with it.

There are a lot of rumours

about Mark,

bolstered by the fact that Mark

seemed to be singled out

for a beating

over the course of the murders.

Was somebody

targeting him specifically?

Mark often gets brought up

because there were news reports

in 1978

that he was involved in drugs

in some capacity.

People who knew him well

pushed back against that narrative.

I never knew him

to be involved with drugs.

No, don't attach that to my friend.

I won't stand for it.

I will defend him

until I'm in my grave.

Mark was the only

African American victim.

The other three were white,

and Kevin and I feel like

there's some racial undertones

when people are talking about

how Mark must have been the target.

The rumours about Mark,

I really believe it was racist.

This is what I knew of Mark.

This is my story.

The biggest roadblocks we had

was the lack of evidence

at the Burger Chef,

the lack of evidence in the woods

and no shell casings.

After so long of something

not being solved,

you give up hope.

I just can't get my hopes up

and let down and up and down.

I guess I've gotten to the point

where it leaves you numb.

Just when the case went cold again,

it's 1989

and there's another bombshell.

Someone confessed to the murders.

So this new suspect in the case

is a man named Donald Forrester.

He is a man

with a terrifying history.

Donald Forrester had been arrested.

He abducted a girl, he raped her.

Donald Forrester was convicted

and sentenced to 95 years.

Forrester knew a lot of information

that only the killer would know.

(TAPE RECORDER STARTS)

INTERROGATOR: Today's date

is January 9th, 1989.

Law enforcement

took Donald Forrester

to the crime scene

in Johnson County,

and he demonstrated to them

where the bodies were located

and how they were positioned.

Forrester said that Jayne Friedt

would visit a particular house

in Speedway to buy drugs.

Forrester was actually able

to give investigators

something incredibly concrete.

He had taken the investigators

out to a place

where he threw some shell casings.

He had flushed them down a toilet.

The house he lived at

at the time

was on a septic tank,

and that means that when

he flushed them down the toilet,

they just went into the septic tank

just a few feet away from his house.

Detectives dig into the yard

of that house

to get to the septic tank,

and they actually find

three shell casings.

It's an incredible scene to picture

these detectives

literally digging in filth.

Sheriff's Department

worked with Forrester.

They went to this residence

where he had flushed

these shell casings,

and they actually did recover

shell casings.

However,

they were the wrong calibre.

.22 calibre shell casings

were found in the septic tank.

Ruth and Danny were killed

with a .38 calibre weapon,

so that doesn't match.

His confession fell apart.

Forrester says that

the victims were bound,

and there are no signs whatsoever

that any of the Burger Chef victims

were bound in any fashion.

Said he was at the murder scene.

Said he saw Jayne stabbed.

Jayne had been stabbed twice

in the chest, through the heart.

Donald Forrester was interviewed

in a room that had case information,

crime scene photos or suspect photos

on the walls.

He'd been spoon-fed information.

He was a con, and that's what I felt

like he was doing the entire time.

He was a liar,

and we could prove he was a liar.

Donald Forrester's confession

completely falls through.

Forrester actually had

a very strong incentive

to keep Marion County detectives

interested in him.

Donald Forrester, he had gotten

this 95-year sentence for the rape.

He had been told by the deputies

that if he solved

the Burger Chef case,

they could guarantee him

a lesser sentence.

That's exactly what he wanted.

I told him he'd go back to prison,

and he smacked that table hard

and looked at me.

He glared at me.

"If you send me back to prison,

you'll never solve this case."

Now, end of story.

He's a liar.

Donald Forrester died in prison

of cancer in 2006.

We have no resolution.

The case remains unsolved

four decades later.

Burger Chef, that location,

after the murders

their business went way down.

It eventually closed.

Burger Chef eventually

was sold to parties.

The Burger Chef restaurant chain

was shut down in 1982.

Burger Chef does not exist

anywhere at all.

I think this case

can definitely be solved

if it's kept out there in public.

Hopefully, one day

somebody may come forward.

There's one gentleman

that I think has a big secret,

and I think he knows what happened.

Them kids today could still be alive

if I had walked over there.

I could have probably

saved them kids' lives.

I knew Jayne so well,

and the way she was killed...

..and how somebody could be

so damn evil

to go out and kill them

four kids over nothing.

I don't really know why God

keeps me...

I should have died years ago.

This case is a bit like

an oasis in the desert.

You keep walking towards it,

thinking you're about to get there,

and then it just disappears.

But I think Kevin and I

are both very stubborn people,

so we just wanna keep walking.

Over the years, there's been

a couple of false confessions.

There's been lots of family members

says, "Oh, my uncle, my brother..."

But they've never solved the case.

It's very frustrating.

It's been a minute

since I've been inside of here.

I haven't been back here since 1978.

I have this warm feeling over me now

just looking around, man.

Wow.

I hurt for all of 'em, man.

They were cool people.

None of them deserve

what happened to them.

They tore my heart

right out of my body, man.

It says, "Ruth Shelton.

Kind, with a big heart."

This tree means that Ruth's life

has not been forgotten.

I feel like if you know

something about this case,

it's time that you speak up.

We can't change the past,

but we can change the future.

I still think about this case

every day.

From the bottom of my heart,

I do not know

who committed this crime.

I get upset about this.

It isn't anything compared to what

the Davises or the Friedts

or the Clements or Mrs Shelton

has felt.

They deserve to have an answer.

I only hope,

in my remaining years, that...

..that someone

gets an answer to this.

I apologise if I made any mistakes.

I apologise to the families

for not being successful.

Unfortunately, the answer to this

is still a secret.

And that's the problem:

somebody knows.