The Brown's Chicken Massacre was the popular name for a mass murder which occurred at a Brown's Chicken restaurant in Palatine, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago in the United States in 1993.

On January 8, 1993, seven people were slain at the Brown's Chicken and Pasta in Palatine. The victims included the owners, Richard E. Ehlenfeldt, 50, and his wife, Lynn W., 49, of Arlington Heights, Illinois. Also slain were five employees: Guadalupe Maldonado, 46, of Palatine, the cook; Michael C. Castro, 16, and Rico L. Solis, 17, both Palatine high school students working there part-time; and Palatine residents Thomas Mennes, 32, and Marcus Nellsen, 31.

When Palatine police found the bodies, it was more than 5 1/2 hours after the 9 p.m. closing. Parents of one employee had called police, concerned that their son had not returned home from work.

When officers arrived at the store, they spotted the rear door open at the restaurant at 168 W. Northwest Highway. Inside, they found the seven bodies, some face down, in a cooler and in a walk-in refrigerator.

The building no longer exists. It was razed in April, 2001, after housing a dry cleaning establishment, then standing vacant for several years with its dark windows marked with X's.

The Solution

More than nine years after seven people were slain in a Brown's Chicken & Pasta in Palatine, police were questioning two men in the case after making a DNA match between one suspect and crime scene evidence.

Police said a former girlfriend of one suspect told investigators she had overheard at least one suspect admit to the slayings.

The former girlfriend had been picked up for questioning in an unrelated case when she told police details of the Brown's case that had not been made public before. She then led investigators to the two suspects, sources said.

Palatine police took the two suspects, Juan Luna and James Degorski--one a former employee of the restaurant--into custody on May 16, 2002. The pair, who met at Palatine's Fremd High School, got away with around $1,900 in cash.