In 1984, Willsey was a 34-year-old detective who had already been on the force for 16 years. Unlike Vandagriff and many of his comrades, Willsey had never been assigned to assist in the Burger Chef Murders, though he had followed the investigation from afar through the media and water-cooler talk around the office. That changed that November when he got a tip than an inmate imprisoned at the Pendleton Correctional Facility was ready to confess to the killings.

Jailhouse confessions are a staple of criminal investigations. Inmates overhear a fellow convict bragging or unburdening himself or herself about a crime, and the informants flip that information to authorities in hopes of a reduced sentence or charges in their own case. Or a guilty party is ready to ’fess up themselves and maybe hand over his or her accomplices in exchange for preferential treatment. The tit-for-tat nature of these info exchanges, more often than not, amounts to little more than rumor-mongering. But investigators usually think it’s worth at least looking into these inmates’ stories—especially in a high-profile case that is going nowhere.

The inmate, Donald Wayne Forrester, definitely wanted something. He was 34 and had just been convicted of raping a woman in Hamilton County. He had been sentenced to 95 years in prison, and was about to be transferred as a sex offender into the general population of the notoriously rough Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. “He didn’t want to go to Michigan City,” says Willsey. “No one wants to go to Michigan City.”

But once Willsey and his partner sat down across from Forrester, there seemed to be much more to his story than conjecture. Willsey already knew from background checks that Forrester had grown up in New Whiteland, in Johnson County, not far from where the bodies had been found. He was living in Speedway—having been recently released from a prior rape conviction—on the day of the crime. Willsey and his partner got a court order to bring Forrester back to Marion County, where he eventually confessed to Willsey, on tape, that he had shot Davis and Shelton.

More than that, Forrester seemed to know things that only a witness would know. The detectives put Forrester in the back of a car and drove him out to Johnson County. Willsey says Forrester directed them to the wooded area, which had been a secluded make-out spot for local teens for years. Forrester walked the officers back into the forest, right to the scene, and without any prompt, described where he shot Davis and Shelton and outlined precisely where and in what position the bodies were found two days later. “He was correct,” says Willsey. “That got our attention.”

Over the next two years, Forrester gradually fed Willsey and his partner more and more information. According to Forrester, Jayne Friedt’s brother, James, owed money from a drug deal—a fact that jibed with James Friedt’s criminal record—so he and the associates, the dealers, came simply to threaten Jayne. Flemmonds stepped in to protect her. A scuffle ensued outside the restaurant and Flemmonds fell and hit his head on the bumper of the assailants’ van (thus accounting for the trauma). Believing they had killed Flemmonds, the gang decided to take all four of the employees to Johnson County and eliminate any potential witnesses.

Forrester told the detectives that he had shot the two youths, but gave the names of three other people he said were involved. Forrester knew about the broken handle on the hunting knife found in Jayne Friedt, a detail not yet widely publicized. He said that he had thrown the gun into the White River and directed the cops to the bridge from which he chucked the weapon. Nothing was found. But, Willsey tracked down Forrester’s ex-wife, who told him that days after the murders, Forrester had taken her to the wooded area, where he left her in the car while he retrieved three or four shell casings. She said he took them back to their house and flushed them down the toilet. Willsey and his partner went to the house, now owned by someone else, and found that it ran on a septic system. They obtained a warrant and dug up the septic tank, in the middle of an Indiana summer, and sifted through gallons of raw sewage. “It was August,” says Willsey. “It was awful.” But sure enough, deep in the muck, they found several .38-caliber shell casings.

Willsey’s blood was up, as was that of dozens of cops who had dedicated so much of their time, so much of themselves to finding these killers and stitching a wound on the city that had been open and festering for a decade. Even Vandagriff, who had invested years chasing other theories and leads, was convinced that Willsey had their man. But prosecutors weren’t quite ready to pull the trigger on an arrest. Forrester’s criminal history and circumstances were suspect, to say the least. “I felt certain that we knew who committed the crime,” says Vandagriff, referring to Forrester. “We had communications with all the agencies, running over everything with a fine-tooth comb, trying to come up with that one thing we might have overlooked that would clinch it.”

Then it all suddenly fell apart. On November 14, 1986, someone inside the department with knowledge of the investigation leaked the details of Forrester’s confession and cooperation to the press. Perhaps spooked by the possibility of retribution from his associates, Forrester recanted three days later. Losing his confession was one thing; Forrester was still on tape admitting to the deeds. But without the inmate’s continued cooperation, progress in gathering more evidence stalled.

On December 22, Marion County Prosecutor Stephen Goldsmith announced that Forrester would not be charged in this case. In fact, Goldsmith added, with the case gone cold again, he doubted anyone ever would be.