Brown's Chicken Massacre in the Palatine, Illinois, Restaurant on January 8, 1993.

On January 8, 1993, two assailants robbed the restaurant and then proceeded to murder seven employees at Brown's Chicken and Pasta at 168 W. Northwest Highway in Palatine, Illinois.

The victims included the owners, Richard E. Ehlenfeldt, 50, and his wife, Lynn W Ehlenfeldt, 49, of Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Restaurant owners Richard Ehlenfeldt, 50, and Lynn Ehlenfeldt, 49.

Also killed were five employees: Guadalupe Maldonado, 46, of Palatine, via Mexico, the cook; Michael C. Castro, 16, and Rico L. Solis, 17, both Palatine High School students who were working there part-time; and Palatine residents Thomas Mennes, 32, and Marcus Neilsen, 31.

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 the 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.

Officers spotted the rear employees' door open when they arrived at the building. Inside, they found the seven bodies, some face-down, some face-up, in a cooler and walk-in refrigerator.

The victims of the January 8, 1993 massacre at the Palatine Brown's Chicken & Pasta were, top from left, franchisees Richard and Lynn Ehlenfeldt and employees Michael Castro, Guadalupe Maldonado, and bottom from left, Thomas Mennes, Marcus Nellsen, and Rico Solis.

Emergency crews remove a body from a Brown's Chicken restaurant in Palatine on January 9, 1993, a day after seven workers were shot to death during a robbery.

The building no longer exists. It was razed in April 2001, after housing a dry-cleaning establishment and a deli, then stood vacant for several years. A Chase branch office is located at the former Brown's location.

In March 2002, more than nine years after the murders, Anne Lockett came forward and implicated her former boyfriend, James Degorski, and his associate, Juan Luna, in the crime. Luna was a former employee of the restaurant.

In April 2002, the Palatine Police Department matched a DNA sample from Luna to a sample of saliva from a piece of partially eaten chicken found in the garbage during the crime scene investigation. The chicken was kept in a freezer for most of the time since the crime; testimony at trial indicated it was not frozen for several days after discovery and was allowed to thaw several times for examination and testing in the hope of an eventual match via increasingly sophisticated testing methods not available in 1993.

The Palatine Police Department took the two suspects into custody on May 16, 2002.

Luna confessed to the crime during interrogation, though his lawyers would later claim that he was coerced to do so through corporal punishment and threats of deportation. The pair met at Palatine's William Fremd High School and subsequently went to trial.

On May 10, 2007, Juan Luna was found guilty of all seven counts of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole on May 17. The state had sought the death penalty, which was available then, but the jury's vote of eleven-to-one in favor of the death penalty fell short of the required unanimity to impose it.

On September 29, 2009, James Degorski was found guilty of all seven counts of murder, mainly on the testimony of his former girlfriend Anne Lockett and another woman, who both stated that Degorski had confessed to them. On October 20, 2009, he was sentenced to life without parole. All but two of the jurors had voted for the death penalty.

The incident hurt the entire Brown's Chicken franchise. Sales at all restaurants dropped 35 percent within months of the incident, and the company eventually had to close 100 restaurants in the Chicago area.

Jury Awards Brown's Chicken Killer $451K in Civil Rights Case.

In March of 2014, a jury awarded James Degorski $451,000 in compensation and punitive damages for being beaten by a Sheriff's deputy in Cook County Jail in May 2002. He suffered facial fractures requiring surgery; the deputy was eventually dismissed.

Chicago Tribune Article on March 8, 2014 - Jury awards Brown's Chicken Killer $451K in civil rights case. 

A judge ordered a reduction of $120,000, and the Illinois Department of Corrections demanded that it get the money to pay for the upkeep of  Degorski. However, no claims against the award were reportedly made by any of the families of the seven murder victims.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The History of Chicago's Rear Houses.

Prior to 1890, frame cottages were ubiquitous residences for the working class in Chicago. Typically one-story, rectangular buildings of four to six rooms, these cottages often were built without permanent foundations of brick or stone. Resting upon cedar posts sunk below the frost line, most cottages sat on narrow lots, usually 25 by 125 feet. These narrow lots permitted a row of cottages to crowd one against another and still provide ample space within the interior of a city block.

During the 1880s in neighborhoods near the Loop where land values rose dramatically, the crowding of two and even three cottages upon a single lot became profitable for immigrant homeowners. In districts where factories displaced residences, landowners purchased old cottages intended for demolition. Without permanent foundations or plumbing, these structures were raised and moved easily to another location, often the rear portion of a lot. In other instances, landowners moved older cottages from the front to the rear of their lots and then constructed larger brick buildings on the front of the lot.

Chicago's housing reformers universally condemned rear houses as dirty, miserable firetraps overrun with bugs and rats. In Polish and Bohemian neighborhoods on the West Side, rear houses appeared on one-fourth to one-third of all lots in the 1890s. With the increased construction of three-story brick tenements, these neighborhoods became notorious for dark, damp, and narrow passageways (gangways) that prohibited adequate light and ventilation.

On occasion, rear houses were raised on brick foundations, creating two floors. The new brick first floor sometimes contained primitive toilets or stables. The presence of numerous stables and inadequate sanitation compounded the problems of overcrowded lots. Without adequate space, great numbers of children played in dangerous gangways and foul alleys. Despite building codes, these conditions persisted.

In heavily populated districts like the Back of the Yards or the Black Belt[1] on the South Side, rear houses presented a negligible problem since they appeared only occasionally. In industrial suburbs like East Chicago or Cicero, rear houses resembled their inner-city counterparts. But they appeared only in small, concentrated areas that housed the most recently arrived immigrants.

While rear houses remain common in older sections of Chicago, urban renewal decreased their numbers. Refurbished rear houses also remain in a few gentrified portions of the city such as Lincoln Park. Ironically, housing once condemned as a social evil now offers a trendy address for a young, upwardly mobile population.

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[1] From the turn of the twentieth century until after World War II, the term “Black Belt” was commonly used to identify the predominately Black community on Chicago's South Side. Originally a narrow corridor extending from 22nd to 31st Streets along State Street, Chicago's South Side Black community expanded over the century until it stretched from 39th to 95th streets, the Dan Ryan Expressway to Lake Michigan.

Looking East, Downtown Chicago, Illinois.

Looking East, Downtown Chicago, Illinois.