The Brown's Chicken Massacre: 23 Years Later

PALATINE, IL - “Seven in the cooler at Brown’s.”

That was the call that came across the police scanner in Palatine on the night of Jan. 8, 1993 - now 23 years ago.

What that puzzling call actually meant turned out to be far worse than anyone could have imagined. Seven people were found dead in the freezer at the Brown’s Chicken and Pasta restaurant on Northwest Highway. Six were found shot to death, while one was found brutally stabbed.

The gruesome discovery prompted nearly a decade-long manhunt for the killers and remained one of suburbia’s greatest mysteries until a vital lead came through nine years later.

The seven killed were all employees of Brown’s, including the owners: Richard E. Ehlenfeldt and his wife, Lynn W. Ehlenfeldt, of Arlington Heights. The five employees killed were Guadalupe Maldonado, 46, of Palatine, Michael C. Castro, 16, and Rico L. Solis, 17, both Palatine High School students who were filling in that night in place of others who opted to attend the big Palatine-Fremd basketball game and Palatine residents Thomas Mennes, 32, and Marcus Nellsen, 31.

The mystery lasted for nine long years as investigators sorted through thousands of leads. Finally, in 2002, the ex-girlfriend of one of the two perpetrators came forward with information she had since the time of the incident.

Anne Lockett said she had been threatened by her then-boyfriend, James Degorski, not to tell anyone about the murders or else she would die herself. Degorski and Juan Luna, a former employee at that same Brown’s location, were both convicted of the crime and are now serving life sentences behind bars. Degorski and Luna were friends who met while attending Fremd High School.

Lockett claims the primary murder weapon, a revolver, was thrown in the Fox River on the night of the crime near Algonquin and Carpentersville.

An episode of “Cold Blood” - fittingly titled “Seven in the Cooler” - featured the murders and how DNA evidence from a piece of chicken Luna ordered that night linked him to the act. In 1993, using DNA evidence to solve crimes was in its infancy and the piece of chicken left in the trash could not be used to find the killer.

Not yet anyway. The partially consumed piece of chicken was saved by evidence collectors at the time and nine years later linked to Luna.

The “Cold Blood” episode showed Luna was questioned during the initial investigation in 1993, as all former Brown’s employees were, but was not considered a suspect at the time.

Luna confessed to the crime in May of 2002 at the Hoffman Estates Police Department. He told detectives he and Degorski entered the restaurant as it was closing at 9 p.m. and ordered a four-piece chicken dinner before forcing the employees to the back of the store and executing them.

As a former employee, Luna knew there were no alarms and that money was stored in the backroom safe. The pair tried to conceal their actions by using a sweater to open the front door and wore latex gloves to prevent fingerprints from being left at the scene. They also walked up to the store in the snow in a motion that would not leave footprints.

According to a Daily Herald timeline of events regarding the case, an Elgin man who’d recently been in the restaurant and had shouted threats against employees was arrested within hours of the crime when police stormed his home. But he was released two days later, and eventually he won a civil suit against Palatine. Other arrests had been made in the coming months, but nothing that led to any type of prosecution.

Today, the Northwest Highway corridor near Smith Street in Palatine is not unlike business centers in other suburbs north of Chicago. There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts, a CVS Pharmacy and a currency exchange.

There’s also a Chase Bank, at the site of the former Brown’s Chicken. Brown’s closed following the murders and was replaced in the same building with a short lived dry-cleaning business. The building was demolished in 2001, and the site remained vacant for another decade until Chase opened.

“I have not walked in there,” Chase customer Cathy Leach told ABC 7 Chicago in 2013. “I’ve just gone through the drive-thru. I won’t walk in the building. To me, it’s a sacred place where people lost their lives.”

A small measure of closure has been reached for the families of the victims with the 2007 conviction of both Luna and Degorski. But few will forget the pain and nine years of confusion that stemmed from one of Chicagoland’s most notorious crimes.