On the night of November 28, 1994, 23-year-old Brian Foguth clocked in at the Duke and Duchess convenience store in Brimfield, Ohio. He wasn’t supposed to be there. Brian had agreed to cover a shift for a coworker, a last-minute favor he didn’t hesitate to accept. The store sat at the edge of town, where the quiet stretches of State Route 43 met the lonely lanes of Interstate 76. At 2:00 a.m., it was the only light in an ocean of darkness, a fluorescent beacon against a backdrop of cold Ohio fields.
Brian was no stranger to late nights. He’d taken the night shift to help pay his bills, living on North Beal Drive just a few minutes away. Friends described him as dependable and kindhearted, someone who wouldn’t turn down a friend in need. In this small-town world of Brimfield, he was an ordinary young man with quiet ambitions. But that night, under the harsh glow of the gas station lights, he became the unwilling center of one of Ohio’s most haunting cold cases.
Just after 2:00 a.m., Brian was mopping the floor, finishing up the usual nightly duties. At that hour, few customers ever came in, and those who did were usually tired truckers or locals passing through. The night was quiet until it wasn’t. A masked man walked through the door, and in an instant, Brian’s fate was sealed.
Security footage captured the moment. The masked figure entered, gun pointed squarely at Brian. Startled, Brian froze, then quickly moved as the man demanded, guiding him to the small back office out of the camera’s sight. For sixty tense seconds, they were alone. No one knows what words passed between them, if any. What happened in that room, away from the camera’s view, only the two of them knew. But when they reemerged, the masked man was close behind, still holding Brian at gunpoint.
The tape showed Brian opening the cash register, methodically placing bills into a bag under the robber’s watchful gaze. But with one small, brave movement, Brian’s hand reached beneath the counter and pressed a hidden button—the store’s silent alarm. It sent a signal directly to the Brimfield Police Department, setting in motion a chain of events Brian hoped might save him.
Then came an unexpected twist. A car pulled up to the gas pumps outside. Inside the store, a bell rang, a simple alert that a customer had arrived. For the robber, already on edge, it was too much. Maybe he mistook it for an alarm; maybe it was just a jolt of nerves. Either way, something snapped, and in that brief window of confusion, Brian made his move. He lunged, throwing a punch that connected with the man’s face. In those few seconds, Brian was fighting for his life.
Chief Robert Burgess of the Brimfield Township Police Department, who would later lead the investigation, described what happened next:
“Brian, of course, went in with his hands raised with the gunman behind him, and they spent approximately 60 seconds in that back room, out of camera range.”
In that split second, a shot rang out. The struggle ended with a single bullet. And just like that, Brian was gone. In less than three minutes, the masked man had entered, robbed, killed, and vanished, leaving nothing but echoes in an empty convenience store.
The Investigation and the Tapes
At 2:04 a.m., police arrived in response to the silent alarm. Outside the store, they spotted a man walking out—an ordinary customer, shaken and confused, who’d entered and found the store abandoned. Mistaking him for a suspect, officers detained him briefly, only to realize he was just an innocent witness, completely unaware of the horror that had unfolded mere minutes before.
Inside, they found Brian’s body in the back room, a tragic ending to an otherwise quiet shift. The surveillance footage was the police department’s only tangible lead. It showed the masked man entering the store—a white male, aged roughly 18 to 30, approximately 5’9” tall. There was one unusual detail: a strange hump on his back. Detectives speculated it might be a ponytail tucked under his coat or an odd physical characteristic. But beyond those basics, the tape provided little that could reveal the man’s identity.
The video only covered the front of the store. Those sixty seconds in the back office—the ones that mattered most—remained a blank spot in the investigation, a haunting reminder of the time Brian and the man spent alone.
Yet the struggle left behind another clue: a small bloodstain on the carpet, one that didn’t belong to Brian. Detectives believed Brian’s punch had injured the assailant, perhaps breaking his nose, leaving a few drops of blood that might one day identify him. They ran the sample through national DNA databases, hoping for a match, but every test came back empty. Chief Burgess and his team would return to this evidence repeatedly over the years, revisiting it each time new technology or databases became available.
Brian’s murder struck a chord far beyond Brimfield. The case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, drawing the attention of audiences around the country. It caught the interest of true crime enthusiasts and podcasters alike, who delved into the tragedy and mystery of Brian’s death, reexamining the clues in the hope of uncovering something new. But no matter how many theories were explored, no one could crack the case.
A Case Gone Cold
As of 2022, 28 years later, Brian Foguth’s murder remains one of Brimfield’s most haunting unsolved mysteries. Nearly three decades have passed, and yet, the grainy surveillance footage, the silent alarm, and the bloodstain still echo in the minds of those who remember Brian. In that small town, many still think of him, the young man who covered a shift out of kindness and was lost in a moment of violence.
The police and the community continue to search for answers. Every few years, Chief Burgess’s team revisits the file, hoping that advancements in DNA technology or a new tip might finally shed light on Brian’s killer. The surveillance footage still sits in the evidence locker, an unchanging reminder of that November night.
Somewhere, the masked man might still carry the scar from Brian’s punch—a quiet, hidden mark that ties him to a crime almost three decades old. And in Brimfield, Brian’s family waits for the moment his story might finally be closed. Until then, it remains open, the silent alarm still ringing, a question waiting for its answer.
Deep Lore 