Brown's Chicken massacre
| Brown's Chicken massacre | |
|---|---|
| Location | Palatine, Illinois, United States |
| Coordinates | 42°07′22″N 88°02′53″W / 42.12278°N 88.04806°WCoordinates: 42°07′22″N 88°02′53″W / 42.12278°N 88.04806°W |
| Date | January 8, 1993 |
|
Attack type
|
Mass murder |
| Weapons | Snub-nosed Smith & Wesson Model 60 .38-caliber revolver |
| Deaths | 7 |
| Perpetrators | Juan Luna James Degorski |
The Brown's Chicken massacre was a mass murder that occurred at a Brown's Chicken restaurant in Palatine, a northwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois, on January 8, 1993, when two assailants robbed the restaurant and then proceeded to murder seven employees.
The case remained unsolved for nearly nine years, until one of the assailants was implicated by his girlfriend in 2002. Police used DNA samples from the murder scene to match one of the suspects, Juan Luna. Luna was put on trial in 2007, found guilty for seven counts of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment. James Degorski, the other assailant, was found guilty in 2009 on all seven counts of murder, and also sentenced to life imprisonment.
On January 8, 1993, seven people were killed at the Brown's Chicken and Pasta at 168 W. Northwest Highway in Palatine. The victims included the owners, Richard and Lynn Ehlenfeldt, and five employees: Guadalupe Maldonado, Michael C. Castro and Rico L. Solis (the latter two Palatine High School students who were working there part-time), Thomas Mennes, and Marcus Nellsen. The assailants stole less than $2,000 from the restaurant. Two of the Ehlenfeldts' daughters were scheduled to be at the restaurant that night, but happened not to be present at the time of the killing; a third daughter, Jennifer, was later elected to the Wisconsin State Senate.
When Palatine police found the bodies, it was more than 5½ hours after the 9 p.m. closing. Michael Castro's parents called the police a couple hours after closing time. Later, Guadalupe Maldonado's wife called police, concerned that her husband had not returned home from work and that his car was still in the apparently closed Brown's Chicken parking lot. When officers arrived at the building, they spotted the rear employees' door open. Inside, they found the seven bodies, some face-down, some face-up, in a cooler and in a walk-in refrigerator.
The building was razed in April 2001, after briefly housing a dry cleaning establishment and then a deli, and then standing vacant for many years. A Chase branch office was constructed at the former Brown's location.
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Wikipedia