Herb Baumeister / The I-70 Strangler

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When Herb and Juliana Baumeister purchased Fox Hollow Farm in 1991, they felt as though they had struck gold. The home was a majestic 11,000 square foot Tudor-style building sitting on 18 acres of lush green pastures. Located in Westfield, Indiana, it was about 20 miles north of Indianapolis, giving the young family privacy without being too far from the city.

The idyllic life the Baumeisters could have had at Fox Hollow Farm never came to be, however. Instead, it turned into a very real nightmare.

A Disturbed Youth

Herbert (Herb) Baumeister was born in Indianapolis on April 7, 1947, to Herbert E. and Elizabeth Baumeister. The elder Herbert was an anesthesiologist and Elizabeth a homemaker. Herb was the oldest of four children. By all accounts, he had a normal, uneventful childhood.

When Herb reached his teens, things changed. His behavior became increasingly bizarre and erratic. Obsessed with death and decay, he would pick up dead animals and birds, take them to school and leave them on teachers’ desks. Another time, he was reported to have been caught urinating on a teacher’s desk. He was failing his classes and distracting other students. Something was clearly very wrong.

Herb Baumeister, still fascinated with dead animals as an adult, gave an interview about a dead raccoon found on the side of the highway which was painted over with yellow road marking paint.

Deeply troubled, Herb’s teachers reached out to his parents. Herbert Sr. and Elizabeth had noticed concerning changes in their son also, and decided to have him psychiatrically evaluated. Herb was diagnosed with schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. Despite the severity of his diagnoses, Herb did not receive any treatment.

Treatment for schizophrenia during the 1960s was primitive and mainly consisted of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), a controversial treatment which doesn’t aim to cure patients, but rather make them more docile and less likely to lash out. I would understand not wanting to put a loved one through such an aggressive and unpredictable form of treatment.

Herb managed to graduate high school with good enough grades to attend Indiana University. However, he only completed one semester before dropping out. In 1967, after being pushed by his father, he returned to university, but once again only stayed for one semester before dropping out for a final time.

A Meaningful Relationship

Herb and Julie Baumeister married in 1971 (source: The Line Up)

After spending most of his life an outcast, Herb met Juliana (Julie) Saiter, a high school teacher and part time student at Indiana University. The pair hit it off right away. Both had similar values and goals, in that they were politically conservative (they were members of the Young Republicans at IU), they were both interested in cars and hoped to one day run their own businesses. In November 1971, Herb and Julie married.

Herb continued to suffer with mental illness, but Julie stood loyally by his side through his darkest times. Just 6 months after they were married, Herb’s father had his son committed to a mental institution. It is not clear whether there was a specific incident which prompted him to do this. Nevertheless, Julie was not fazed and waited two months for her husband to come home.

Turning Over A New Leaf

Herb’s job prospects weren’t great, given he never completed his university education nor went to trade school. His father, being a well-respected doctor and esteemed member of the community, managed to help Herb land a low-level job at the Indianapolis Star as a copy boy. Driven and hardworking, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the work. It wasn’t long, however, before he began to get on his co-workers’ nerves for being overbearing and irritating. He required constant praise from the higher-ups, and when he didn’t get it, he became bitter and moody. Fed up, he quit and found a new job at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV).

Herb carried over his strong work-ethic and eventually became program director. He was not well liked by his co-workers, however, and was known to be unpredictable and volatile. His co-workers avoided him as best they could, viewing him as an oddball who made them uncomfortable, and fearing his unexpected outbursts over small, insignificant things.

In 1985, Herb was fired for urinating on a letter (?!) addressed to the Governor of Indiana at the time, Robert Orr.

After being fired, Herb was arrested several times, once for his involvement in a hit-and-run accident while drinking and driving. In 1986, he was charged with stealing his friend’s car. Somehow, he managed to wriggle out of these charges and never served any time in prison.

Family Man

It’s unclear whether Julie ever found out why Herb was really fired from the BMV. Maybe she did and did not believe it, or she chose to ignore it (likely the latter in my opinion). While Herb has been employed at the BMV, Julie had given birth to three children - Marie in 1979, Erich in 1981, and Emily in 1984.

When it became clear that Herb was not going to find another job anytime soon, he took on the role of full-time dad while Julie began teaching again, Herb showed another personality as a father. He was not volatile and unpredictable as he had been at work. Quite the contrary, he was caring, patient and appeared to enjoy being a dad.

Herb Baumeister and his family (source: here)

A New Venture

Herb’s next job was at a thrift store. Still driven by the idea of one day running his own business, he put up with the work that he considered himself to be too good for, and concentrated on learning the trade.

Three years later, in 1988, Herb and Julie made the leap into entrepreneurship. They borrowed $4000 from Herb’s mother, Elizabeth, and opened their own thrift store which they named Sav-A-Lot. The store was a hit. It was so successful, the couple opened a second location the following year. They gave an annual donation of $50,000 to children’s charities. The Baumeisters had achieved what they had been dreaming of for so long. To celebrate, they purchased Fox Hollow Farm. The million-dollar home was perfect; Julie described it as “utopia” where the kids “could Rollerblade without having to worry about cars coming around the corner.”

Things Begin To Go South

Herb Baumeister’s 1986 mugshot (source: Wikipedia)

Despite the appearance that life was good for the Baumeisters, this was not the case. Herb was difficult to work with, as he had been in his previous jobs. He treated Julie as though she was an employee and not co-owner. While this annoyed her, she laid low, in an effort to avoid confrontation with her husband. Unsurprisingly, their marriage also began to suffer. During the summer, Julie began taking the children to stay with Herb’s mother at her condo in Lake Wawasee.

Herb was happy to stay at home and ‘look after the stores’ as he told Julie. The reality was quite different.

According to employees at the Sav-A-Lot stores, Herb became careless and neglectful of his duties. Half of the time he did not even show up to work, and when he did, he was rude and unwelcoming. Employees quit and the stores began to deteriorate. Business took a turn for the worse.

Herb Baumeister’s Other Life

Everything in Herb Baumeister’s life was falling apart. But through it all, he paid extra careful attention to the pool house at Fox Hollow Farm.

He made sure to always keep the bar fully stocked, and liked to position dressed up mannequins around the swimming pool to create the illusion of a fancy pool party (if you remember anything from this story, I guarantee it will be this creepy anecdote…)

While Juliana and the kids were away, Herb began frequenting gay bars in downtown Indianapolis. How long he had been doing this isn’t really known, but there is no question (in my mind, anyway) that he was gay and in denial. Indiana is a conservative state now and was even more so in the 70s and 80s. By marrying Juliana and projecting an image of himself as a family man and a staunch Republican, he was able to mask his true self. Juliana would later say that in 25 years of marriage, they had only had sex 6 times.

Something dark was going on in Indianapolis. Starting around 1991, the same year Herb and his family moved to Fox Hollow Farm, young gay men began disappearing from downtown Indianapolis. The men ranged in age from 20 to 46, all were white and had similar physical features.

Vandagriff & Associates Inc.

In 1994, Virgil Vandagriff, a retired Marion County Sheriff who ran his own private investigation firm in Indianapolis, became involved in investigating the disappearances of the young men. He was contacted by the mother of Alan Broussard (28) who was last seen leaving gay bar in downtown Indianapolis. Broussard was reported missing in early June 1994.

Days later, the mother of Roger Goodlet (32) contacted Vandagriff. Her son was last seen under similar circumstances, and was reported missing in late July 1994.

Vandagriff threw himself into the investigation of the two missing men, spending evenings at the bars they frequented, interviewing patrons and putting up posters. He soon found out that it was not only a couple of missing persons he was dealing with; the number was closer to a dozen. It became clear that these disappearances were the work of a meticulous serial killer and not random one-off killings.

However, when Vandagriff went to the police with his findings, they shrugged him off. Indiana was hardly the most accepting place to be a gay person in the 90s; Indianapolis, being a city, was slightly more liberal . But when gay men disappeared, authorities did not take it very seriously. Often they assumed the men had probably just run off to practice their “gay lifestyles”.

Vandagriff’s investigation temporarily hit a wall.

Bones In The Backyard

Around the same time the young men were being reported missing from Indianapolis gay bars in 1994, Herb’s son Erich, who was 13 at the time, made a discovery while playing in the woods on the Baumeister property: a human skull. He picked it up and brought it into the house to show his mother. Julie was justifiably freaked out. She asked Erich to take her to where he had found it. On further inspection, the pair found a pile of bones - if reassembled it would make a fully formed human skeleton.

Julie demanded answers from Herb. The story he came up with sounded incredibly far-fetched - he told her that the skeleton was an old anatomical skeleton used by his late father (who was a doctor). Julie took him at his word, or at least she did not want to question him further, given how oddly he’d been acting of late. Herb never gave any explanation as to why an anatomical skeleton was buried in their yard. Julie didn’t press him further.

A Promising Lead

Virgil Vandagriff of Vandagriff & Associates Inc. (source: allinvestigations.com)

Just as Vandagriff was beginning to lose hope that any progress would be made in the investigation, a man who went by Tony Harris (not his real name) surfaced with his own story.

Tony had been friends with Roger Goodlet, one of the men who had disappeared. One evening, while hanging out at a gay bar he had been to several times before, he met a man who introduced himself as Brian Smart. The two spent much of the night chatting and drinking together. Smart asked Tony if he would like to come back to his employer’s home (where he was supposedly living while doing construction work). Tony obliged.

Smart led Tony to a car with an Ohio license plate. They drove north, but it was hard for Tony to tell where they were going; it was dark, he was drunk, and he had not spent much time north of Indianapolis.

They arrived about 30 minutes later at a large, stately, Tudor-style home. Smart led Tony to the pool house. The place struck Tony as weird; he noted the mannequins around the pool and immediately felt uncomfortable. Smart offered him a drink, which he turned it down. He then asked Tony if he had ever engaged in erotic asphyxiation before, and if he would like to try it. Smart was hyped-up, as though he had been snorting cocaine. Not wanting to anger this strange, unpredictable man, Tony agreed to try it. With a hose, Tony choked Smart while Smart masturbated.

Then the two swapped positions and began the act. Tony could feel the hose getting tighter and tighter with no sign of stopping. He realized that Smart was going to kill him. He pretended to pass out, and the hose around his neck loosened. When Tony opened his eyes, Smart was shocked; he thought he had killed Tony.

Smart clearly wanted to get rid of his guest. The two got back in Smart’s car and he drove Tony back to Indianapolis. To try and mask his strange behavior, Smart suggested the two meet up again the following week. Tony agreed. But when the time came, Smart never showed up.

A Culprit, At Last

Vandagriff was convinced that Smart was responsible for the disappearances of the young men he was investigating. For nearly a year, Vandagriff and Tony tried to track Smart down, but they had no luck.

Then, at the end of August 1995, Tony ran into Smart at a gay bar downtown. He ran outside, found the car he had rode in with Smart the previous year, and wrote down the license plate number. When Vandagriff traced the license plate, it did not turn up Brian Smart as owner of the vehicle. It was Herb Baumeister.

In November 1995, detectives showed up at Fox Hollow Farm, asking if they could search the property. Herb vehemently refused. They then tried Julie at the Sav-A-Lot store. She also told them no. When she asked Herb about it, he told her he had nothing to do with what they were accusing him of. She accepted what he told her.

Detective Mary Wilson, who specialized in missing persons cases and was a good friend of Vandagriff, had been heavily involved in the case up until that point. She had liaised with Tony Harris previously, trying to help him find where he had gone that night with Herb Baumeister. Now, she needed to get a warrant to search Fox Hollow Farm. Hamilton County officials refused her request, however, telling her the evidence against Baumeister was flimsy and she would need more to justify her request.

A Change of Heart

At a loss as to what to do, Detective Wilson was left with no choice but to let it lie for a while. Then, in June 1996, Julie Baumeister appeared at her office. Julie told the detective about how her husband Herb was basically having a nervous breakdown, their business was in ruins and she was filing for divorce. The image of the skeleton Erich had found in the backyard two years before had not left her mind. She told the detective about this. Lastly, she granted Detective Wilson permission to search her home.

A Gruesome Discovery

While Herb was away, Detective Wilson and three other Hamilton County officers arrived at Fox Hollow Farm to carry out the long-awaited search. It did not take long for them to realize something was very wrong. On closer inspection of the gravel which lay alongside the grass in the Baumeister’s backyard, they realized it was not gravel at all. It was charred, crushed up bone. Forensics confirmed that they were human.

In the following days, the site was excavated. Over 5,000 bone fragments and teeth were recovered from the site. It was believed they belonged to a total of 11 men, however, only 8 were eventually identified. They were: Roger Goodlet (34), Stephen Hale (26) Richard Hamilton (20), Manuel Resendez (31), Mike Kiern (46), Johnny Bayer (20), Allen Broussard (28) and Jeff Jones (31).

Herb Baumeister’s victims (left to right): Manuel Resendez, Allen Broussard, Jeff Jones, Richard Hamilton, Stephen Hale, Roger Goodlet, Mike Kiern, Johnny Bayer (source: Youtube).

No Justice

A warrant was put out for Herb’s arrest. Once he realized what was going on, he fled from his mother’s home (where he had been staying while the search had taken place), crossing the border to Canada.

It was on July 3 1996 that a group of hikers discovered the body of Herb Baumeister in Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario. He had suffered a single bullet wound to his forehead. Next to him lay a .357 magnum revolver.

A suicide note was also recovered at the scene. In the note, Herb cited his failed business, the impending bankruptcy and the upcoming divorce as his reasons for taking his life. He made no mention of the young men whose remains were discovered in his backyard.

Further investigations into Herb Baumeister’s secret life resulted in further disturbing revelations. Between 1980 and 1990, the bodies of 9 young gay men had been discovered dumped along Interstate-70 between Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio. These men shared similar characteristics in terms of age and looks to the men whose remains were discovered in Baumeister’s yard. They had all been strangled to death.

Up until 1998, the unsolved murders had been attributed to a serial killer dubbed the “I-70 Strangler”. In February 1998, a witness came forward explaining he had seen a photo of Baumeister and recognized him as the man who he had seen Michael Riley leaving an Indianapolis club with in 1983. Riley’s body was later discovered in a stream off the I-70 just outside of Indianapolis.

In 1991, bodies stopped turning up along the I-70, which corresponded with when Baumeister moved to Fox Hollow Farm. The grounds of his new home provided him with plenty of space to discard his victims’ remains.

When Baumeister killed himself, any hope of justice for the young men and their families died along with him. While sentencing Baumeister to spend the rest of his life in prison would never bring their sons, brothers and friends back, it would have been helpful for them to see the man who had ripped their loved ones from this world suffer the consequences of his abhorrent actions. I can only hope that time has eased their pain.

Ghost Stories

If you are interested in the paranormal aspect of Fox Hollow Farm, I recommend reading this article.

The pool at Fox Hollow Farm where Baumeister took his victims (source: The Line Up)

Fox Hollow Farm has become a spectacle in the Indianapolis area and beyond. People are captivated by the beauty of the estate, but more so by the supposed paranormal activity which is said to take place there.

While it has become a hotspot for fans of true crime just wanting a peak at where Herb Baumeister lived and discarded the remains of his victims, it goes a step beyond that. Self-proclaimed ghost-hunters and paranormal experts have described the home as “the most haunted house in Indiana.”

A number of strange happenings have been said to occur in the home, including doors flying open at random and inanimate objects moving overnight, amongst other things. Different people have reported sightings of a legless man wearing a red shirt.