DNA-leftovers link nabs 2 in '93 Brown's massacre

Nation's Restaurant News,  May 27, 2002  

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PALATINE, ILL. -- Police charged two local men on May 18 with the 1993 execution-style slayings of seven people at a Brown's Chicken & Pasta unit here after DNA tests matched a suspect to saliva left on a partly eaten chicken dinner preserved in a freezer as evidence.

Juan Luna, 28, a former employee of the fast-food restaurant, and James Degorski, 29, were arrested May 16 for the murders of franchisees Richard and Lynn Ehlenfeldt and five of their employees. Luna and Degorski were being held without bond.

Frank Portillo, president of the Oak Brook, Ill.-based, 94-unit Brown's Chicken chain, which suffered a $1 million sales decline in 1993 and struggled for years thereafter, reversed his fanner criticism of the prolonged police investigation and expressed gratification at the arrests.

In April 2000 investigators said DNA analysis of the chicken bones had ruled out the victims and all former suspects. An ex-girlfriend of Degorski's later changed her statements and implicated Luna and Degorski while describing previously unreported details of the crime scene, leading to the DNA test linkage to Luna, police said.

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