Murder of the Brown's Chicken Employees

On the night of January 8, 1993, seven people were killed at the Brown's Chicken & Pasta restaurant at 168 West Northwest Highway in Palatine, Illinois. The victims were restaurant owners Richard E. Ehlenfeldt, 50, and Lynn A. Ehlenfeldt, 49, along with employees Guadalupe Maldonado, 46, Michael C. Castro, 16, Rico L. Solis, 17, Thomas Mennes, 32, and Marcus Nellsen, 31. Castro and Solis were Palatine High School students working part-time. All seven were killed inside two walk-in freezers. Six victims were shot multiple times; Lynn Ehlenfeldt's throat was slashed before she was shot once, and Michael Castro was stabbed after being shot. In total, 21 rounds were fired inside the restaurant. Before leaving, the perpetrators collected shell casings, mopped up blood, and cut the electricity, stopping the restaurant clock at 9:52 p.m. Between $1,800 and $1,900 was stolen.

Two of the Ehlenfeldts' daughters had been scheduled to work that night but were not present. The bodies were discovered more than five and a half hours after the restaurant's 9 p.m. closing time, after Michael Castro's parents and Guadalupe Maldonado's wife separately contacted police concerned about their failure to return home.

The case remained unsolved for more than nine years. During that period, Paul Dennis Reid, later arrested for fast-food restaurant murders in Tennessee, was considered a possible suspect based on shoe size, vehicle description, and height, though he was never charged in the Palatine case. In March 2002, Anne Lockett came forward and implicated her former boyfriend, James Degorski, and his associate, Juan Luna, a former Brown's Chicken employee. In April 2002, police matched a DNA sample from Luna to saliva on a partially eaten piece of chicken recovered from the crime scene garbage in 1993, which had been preserved and repeatedly tested as forensic technology advanced. Luna and Degorski were taken into custody on May 16, 2002. Both men confessed during interrogation, though their attorneys later argued the confessions were coerced.

Juan Luna was found guilty of all seven counts of murder on May 10, 2007, and sentenced to life in prison without parole on May 17, 2007; a jury vote of 11-1 for the death penalty fell short of the unanimity required to impose it. James Degorski was found guilty of all seven counts on September 29, 2009, based largely on testimony from Anne Lockett and another woman, Eileen Bakalla, who both said Degorski had confessed to them separately; Luna's earlier confession also implicated Degorski. Degorski was sentenced to life without parole on October 20, 2009. Degorski's later appeals, filed in 2016 and 2022, challenging Lockett's credibility and asserting Luna acted alone, were denied.

The killings led to a significant decline in sales across the Brown's Chicken franchise, and the company closed 100 restaurants in the Chicago area. The original restaurant building was demolished in 2001, and a bank branch was later built on the site.