Next weekend will mark the 45-year anniversary of the multi-murders and mass-murders in Indiana and Guyana.
(I will quickly note that the calendar, in 1978, was the same as this current year 2023. The date of this blog topic, here in 2023, was on the same day of the week back in 1978.)
On Friday, November 17, 1978, four employees at a Burger Chef in Speedway, Indiana were kidnapped, around closing time of the store location. Their bodies were discovered Sunday, November 19, 1978 in a wooden area in Johnson County, Indiana.
The Burger Chef Murders victims ranged between ages 16 to 20. The store manager, Jayne Friedt (b. May 2, 1958), the eldest, was age 20. Working under her were 17-year-old Ruth Shelton (b. December 19, 1960) and 16-year-olds Mark Flemmonds (b. December 31, 1961) and Daniel Davis (b. September 6, 1962).
Law enforcement made the mistake of assuming that, with the store abandoned, the four were being irresponsible—attributed to young age—and did not consider the Burger Chef location a crime scene. So, they allowed business to resume the next day. To this date, the murders are still not solved.
It is suspected, by some, that Friedt was targeted. That this may have been motivated by drugs and money. After 45 years, with some suspects dead, and with a crime scene cleaned up, it may never get solved.
Burger Chef was a defunct burger chain restaurant which began in 1954 Indianapolis, Indiana. It was headquarters for Burger Chef. This is Marion County, Indiana. This is the county in which this Speedway store was located.
For a video recommendation, on the Discovery+ app is Murders at the Burger Joint.
Also…
Recommended reading:
Wikipedia — Burger Chef murders
Next In Line: The Burger Chef Murders
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On Saturday, November 18, 1978, the Reverend Jim Jones murdered over 900 of his followers from the People’s Temple, formerly located in San Francisco, California, in Guyana. (Some of the members did commit suicide.)
The body count, from initial reports, was woefully underestimated. Days into recovering the victims is when it was discovered that more than 700 were among the dead. That number turned out to be 918. Among the dead included roughly 300 children. Multiple numbers of actual family members were among the victims. Members of Jones’s family were also among the victims. Jim Jones (born May 13, 1931) himself was among the dead.
Leading up to the massacre, there were growing concerns from people concerned about what was going on with the People’s Temple and their members. With a visit in Guyana by Leo Ryan (born May 5, 1925), a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives (whose district partly included San Francisco), he agreed to look into the People’s Temple and investigate Jones. Ryan was joined by members of his staff and, among others, NBC News correspondent Don Harris (b. September 8, 1936) and cameraman Bob Brown (b. February 8, 1942) as well as San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robertson (b. October 21, 1951). Several members of the People’s Temple let Ryan know they wanted out of Guyana.
As the group and Ryan’s people were at the airstrip in Port Kaituma, a village less than 10 miles from the commune, other members of People’s Temple ambushed the group and gunned down four. Ryan, Harris, Brown, and Robertson were all dead. So, too, was People’s Temple member Patricia Parks (b. April 29, 1934). She and her family—including her husband, their daughters, her mother-in-law—were attempting to leave.
Surviving the attack were several who either pretended to be dead or, on foot, fled. One who survived, even though she was shot numerous times, was Ryan staffer Jackie Speier. Born in 1950, she was age 28 in 1978, Speier later won election to Ryan’s congressional seat in 2008, won re-elections through 2020, and served in the United States House of Representatives from 2009 to 2022.
Jim Jones was a con man. He convinced people, for years, he was a charismatic and powerful man of God. He was, perhaps, psychotic and a different form of evil. It may be that members of the People’s Temple thought Jones offered them salvation. He brought them death.
Recommended reading:
Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple
Note: I may post additional videos, in the Comments, on these murders. I did not want to overwhelm this blog topic post with too many. I do recommend the embedded video on the Jonestown Massacre, titled “1978-1982 Special Report: Jonestown Aftermath” (Part I), which YouTube is not allowing to appear outside its website. It is by Hezakya Newz & Films. This a source which has hundred of historically and culturally relevant videos which show how the nation and the lives of its people were affected.
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