The Burger Chef Murders Are One Of Indiana's Lesser-Known, Most Baffling Crimes
By Tori Jane|Published August 30, 2021
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Tori Jane
Author
Tori Jane is a storm chaser, writer, photographer, and the village idiot - in that order. When she's not out and about dancing with the meanest storms on planet Earth for funsies she can be found wandering, shooting landscapes, writing, editing photos, and otherwise up to no good. Legend has it that she can also be occasionally spotted typing up short bios in the third person, but those rumors are unsubstantiated.
It was a chilly night on November 17, 1978. There were four people working at the Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway, Indiana when the unthinkable happened, but due to nothing but circumstance, the full scope of the horror wouldn’t be understood for another 48 hours. What initially seemed like a petty robbery became a brutally vicious unsolved crime in Indiana’s history, and to this day, thanks to a bungled investigation, the facts are still hardly known at all.
The last Burger Chef restaurant closed its doors in 2006.
What unsolved crime in Indiana keeps you up at night? Have you ever read the brutal tale of Sylvia Liken’s murder at the hand of her caretaker (and her caretaker’s children)? It was so horrific that it inspired a movie.