The Brown's Chicken Massacre was a mass murder that occurred on January 8, 1993 in Palatine, Illinois, when two robbers killed seven employees at a Brown's Chicken fast-food restaurant. The case remained unsolved for nearly nine years, until one of the assailants was implicated by his girlfriend in 2002. Police used DNA samples from the murder scene to match one of the suspects, Juan Luna. Luna was put on trial in 2007, found guilty of seven counts of first degree murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment. James Degorski, the other assailant, was found guilty in 2009 on all seven counts of first degree murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Incident On January 8, 1993, seven people were shot and killed at the Brown's Chicken & Pasta at 168 West Northwest Highway in Palatine. The victims included the owners, Richard and Lynn Ehlenfeldt, and five employees: Guadalupe Maldonado, Michael C. Castro and Rico L. Solis (Castro and Solis were Palatine High School students working there part-time), Thomas Mennes, and Marcus Nellsen. The assailants stole between $1,800 and $1,900 from the restaurant, . Two of the Ehlenfeldts' daughters were scheduled to be at the restaurant that night, but weren't present at the time of the killing. A third daughter, Jennifer, was later elected to the Wisconsin State Senate. Michael Castro's parents called the police a couple hours after closing time. Later, Guadalupe Maldonado's wife also called the police, concerned that her husband did not return home from work and that his car was still in the apparently closed Brown's Chicken parking lot. When officers arrived at the building, they spotted the rear employees' door open. Inside, they found the seven bodies, some face-down, some face-up, in a cooler and in a walk-in refrigerator. When Palatine police found the bodies, it was more than 5½ hours after the 9 p.m. closing. Perpetrators 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, then aged 18, 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.