Brown's Chicken massacre

Incident

On the evening of January 8, 1993, seven people were murdered at a Brown's Chicken & Pasta restaurant located at 168 West Northwest Highway in Palatine. The dead included the owners, Richard E. Ehlenfeldt, 50, and his wife Lynn A. Ehlenfeldt, 49, along with five 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 victims were found in two walk-in freezers. Six had been shot multiple times. Lynn Ehlenfeldt also had her throat cut before being shot once, and Castro was stabbed in the stomach after being shot. A total of 21 rounds were fired inside the restaurant.

Before fleeing, the killers collected all shell casings, mopped up some blood, and cut the power, leaving the restaurant's clock stuck at 9:52 PM. They stole between $1,800 and $1,900. Two of the Ehlenfeldts' daughters had been scheduled to work that night but were not present. A third daughter, Jennifer, later served in the Wisconsin Senate.

Michael Castro's parents called police a couple hours after closing. Later, Guadalupe Maldonado's wife also called, worried because her husband hadn't come home and his car remained in the parking lot of the seemingly closed restaurant. When officers arrived, they found the rear employee door open. Inside, they discovered the seven bodies, some face-down and some face-up, in a cooler and a walk-in refrigerator.

The bodies were found more than five and a half hours after the 9 PM closing time. The last recorded sale at the restaurant was a four-piece meal purchased at 9:08 PM.

Perpetrators

For years, police considered Paul Dennis Reid a potential lead in the Brown's Chicken case. Reid had been arrested in 1997 for three separate murders committed during fast food robberies in Tennessee, roughly 500 miles away. The similarities went beyond the type of crime: Reid's shoe size matched prints left at the scene, he drove a red car similar to one possibly seen near the restaurant, and like the suspect, he was taller than average. Then, in March 2002—over nine years after the murders—a woman named Anne Lockett came forward.

She implicated her ex-boyfriend, James Degorski, and his friend Juan Luna. Degorski and Luna had grown up together and attended William Fremd High School. Luna, who was 18 at the time of the murders, had previously worked at the restaurant. The following month, Palatine police matched Luna's DNA to saliva found on a piece of partially eaten chicken recovered from the crime scene's garbage.

That chicken had been stored in a freezer for most of the years since the murders. According to trial testimony, it wasn't frozen for several days after discovery and was thawed multiple times for testing, as investigators hoped newer forensic methods would eventually yield a match. On May 16, 2002, police arrested both men. During questioning, Luna confessed, though his lawyers later argued the confession was coerced through police brutality and threats to deport his family, who were Mexican nationals.

Degorski also confessed, and an audio recording of his statement was played at trial, but his lawyers similarly claimed it was obtained under duress. Both cases went to trial. On May 10, 2007, a jury found Juan Luna guilty on all seven murder counts. He was sentenced to life without parole on May 17.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, but the jury voted 11-1 in favor of execution, one vote short of the unanimous decision required. In 2017, the U.S. government moved to revoke Luna's naturalized citizenship, which he had acquired between the murders and his arrest. A court denied that motion in 2019.

Aftermath

The Brown's Chicken massacre devastated the franchise. Restaurant sales plummeted by 35 percent within months, and roughly 100 Chicago-area locations were eventually shuttered. The building later housed a dry cleaner before being demolished in April 2001. The lot sat empty for years until a Chase Bank branch opened there in 2009. Both Luna and Degorski were originally incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center. After that facility closed in 2025, Luna was transferred to Danville Correctional Center, while Degorski was moved to Graham Correctional Center.