SPEEDWAY — A new documentary sheds new light on the 1978 killings of four young Burger Chef workers.
Australian filmmakers Luke Rynderman and Adam Kamien spent six years researching, interviewing and learning about the unsolved crime to make "The Speedway Murders," which is being released on Friday.
"We thought maybe, if we look long and hard and speak to enough people, we might be able to turn up some new evidence and shed a bit of light," Kamien told WRTV in an interview Monday.
"I think the way that we've structured the film, we've centered it around bringing the victims to the center of it, rather than having them as kind of just names," Rynderman said.
In one of Indiana's most notorious unsolved crimes, four workers were kidnapped from a Burger Chef on Crawfordsville Road on Nov. 17, 1978.
Two days later, authorities found the bodies of Jayne Friedt, 20, Ruth Shelton, 17, Mark Flemmonds, 17, and Daniel Davis, 16, in a remote area of Johnson County.
"The Speedway Murders" uses actors to portray these four workers. These victims talk to each other in the film, moving through their restaurant as they debate and debunk various theories as to who killed them and why.
The filmmakers said they took great care in creating the scene with vintage clothing, greasy burgers and classic cars. They even built a 1970s Burger Chef restaurant in Adelaide, Australia.
Kamien and Rynderman interviewed family, friends, investigators and witnesses to the crime. They say the documentary reveals new leads on a suspect stemming from a witness who had never before been interviewed by police or media.
The film is being released Friday at select theaters and on streaming platforms. Locally, you can catch it at Landmark Glendale 12 Theatre, 6102 N. Rural St., Indianapolis.
Filmmakers Kamien and Rynderman and others who appear in the movies will be in Indianapolis for a special screening followed by questions and answers at 7 p.m. Friday at the Landmark Glendale 12. Tickets, $12.50 for adults, are available at landmarktheatres.com.
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Here are five questions for the filmmakers.
Question: Why did you decide to do a documentary about the Burger Chef killings?
Adam Kamien: We came across it in a forum online where we're both true crime devotees.. And initially it was just kind of the intrigue of a crime that didn't get the attention that it deserved, because on the same weekend that the Burger Chef murders happened, you had the Jonestown Massacre. So the Burger Chef murders really should have had a lot more attention, but got a little bit lost in the shuffle. We felt like no one had really sort of done a deep dive, so we turned our attention to it, and we pretty quickly found out that there was some pretty dodgy police work early on that ultimately caused the case to be unsolved 40 years after the fact. We thought maybe, if we look long and hard and speak to enough people, we might be able to turn up some new evidence and shed a bit of light.
Luke Rynderman: We also wanted to come at it from a pretty unique perspective. And I think the way that we've structured the film, we've centered it around bringing the victims to the center of it, rather than having them as kind of just names, you know. After meeting the families and everything, we thought the only way that we could really do the story justice is by including them in their own story.
Q: What was the most challenging thing about making this documentary?
Kamien: I think the most challenging thing about it is probably the time. Forty years is a long time when we started to look at it. People's memories fade. People's memories change over time. So that was a really big challenge.
Rynderman: Touching on that was kind of deciphering all the information that we learned and also filmed into a, you know, cohesive piece of,for lack of a better word, entertainment that was also informative.
Kamien: Just to add to that, another one of the challenges was we didn't want to be salacious or gratuitous. We really felt a responsibility to the people, in particular the families of the victims who trusted us with their story, to do it justice. That weighed really heavily on us and, you know, hopefully we've achieved that.
Q: What surprised you about this project?
Kamien: Gosh. What didn't surprise us? I think the thing that surprised me the most is that there are a handful of popular theories, and then there's a whole raft of theories that exist sort of more on the fringes. But there are probably four or five theories that, if I sat you down, and I told you about those theories in isolation, you would walk away from that conversation believing that you knew what happened. In isolation, they are incredibly compelling. What we sort of found is that when you scratch the surface, some of those popular theories don't hold up. And we weren't expecting that. That took us in a in a completely different direction.
Rynderman: Reading about this case and then, you know, flying over there from Australia and actually being with the likes of Theresa (Jefferies, the sister of Burger Chef worker Ruth Shelton) who actually are still affected. It's still real. Seeing how raw and how still relevant the pain is from the people that were directly affected surprised me the most.
Kamien: I was shocked by just how generous people were with their time. And sort of to Luke's point, this is still an open wound for so many people. When you're sort of in the research, it's not something that you take into account. And then you go and you meet these people... They're just lovely people with that kind of Midwestern hospitality. But the second and probably more important reason is that they're desperate for answers. All these years, you know, so much water's gone under the bridge, and they are still desperate to know what happened to their loved ones in that two-hour period between 11:30 p.m. and about 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 17-18, 1978.
Q: Now that it's finished, what are you most proud of?
Kamien: I'm most proud of the new information that we turned up, I think in so many of so much of the true crime fare that's out there is really just a straight up and down retelling of an event that happened. We really took the time to immerse ourselves in the research. We were adamant that, you know, somewhere out there, there's someone that knows something. And we were able to find a person like that, who, you know, certainly changed my view of the case. I think I'm really proud of that, and I'm also proud of the sensitivity with which we kind of handled our recreations. We weren't there for sensational reasons. We weren't there for gratuitous reasons... We wanted to pay tribute to the victims. In this case, we wanted to depict them as people with their lives ahead of them. Because this really is a senseless tragedy. The ending of the film, I hope, kind of resonates with people in that way.
Rynderman: What I'm most proud of is bringing the victims to life. It really felt like we were seeing these people in their lives. We were lucky enough to know family members of some of the victims, (so) that we could really do the research and form the characters. And our young cast, who are Australian and New Zealand by the way, being able to take on Midwest 1970s accents flawlessly, like they are incredible. And that we were really lucky enough to build the Burger Chef in Adelaide, Australia, down to the period detail is incredible. Down to the cup and sourcing those cars. I think we had every 1970s American car that was in Australia in our film. Just bringing that to life and being able to have them, you know, kind of in that space, tell the story. I just don't think true crime documentaries get made like that. I think we were incredibly lucky that we were able to go that different avenue.
Kamien: That restaurant was an empty shell of an old Chinese restaurant. And the team, they gutted the building, knocked down walls, put windows in, and it was like something that you've never seen, to the point where people were trying to come in because they thought it was a new burger restaurant that had opened in the area. We were able to kind of source the original, the actual uniforms. Some of the cast were wearing the actual Burger Chef uniform. That's just all surface, but seeing the characters and the kids and, you know, sending the photo of the actress that played Ruth to Theresa, and Theresa sending us back a photo of them side by side. You know, it's just heart wrenching and beautiful.
Q: Do you think anyone will ever be arrested for this crime?
Kamien: I really hope so. Unfortunately, there's a few things that will make that really difficult. The chief among them is just the lack of physical evidence, which is why I think this case remains unsolved. That's the stark reality here... Barring a confession, or someone being in possession of the murder weapon, I think it's unlikely. It's a very high bar, after all these years, for police to be able to kind of make an arrest.
Rynderman: We went into it like, always thinking that we could solve it... it was almost this kind of obsession that we were like, we're one phone call away, or one, you know, uncovering this person who knows this person, away... It's very hard to do something like murder (and) for people and not talk about it to anybody... How do you live with that? And I think, obviously the film speaks of that. But, as Adam said, it's very hard to make an arrest without having something definitive. I'm always hopeful that that answer will come one day.
More: Former Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway to be torn down 45 years after murders | 1978 Burger Chef murders haunt retired detective: 'This is the type of case that I will take to my grave' | New documentary explores 1978 Burger Chef murders
FBI files: A link to the full FBI file on the Burger Chef murders is available below:
Contact WRTV reporter Vic Ryckaert at victor.ryckaert@wrtv.com or on X/Twitter: @vicryc.
