Latest / Kat Has Questions: True Crime and Unsolved Mysteries / Herb Baumeister & Fox Hollow Farm (Part 2): Indiana’s Serial Killer and the I-70 Strangler Mystery

Transcript

Herb Baumeister & Fox Hollow Farm (Part 2): Indiana’s Serial Killer and the I-70 Strangler Mystery · Kat Has Questions: True Crime and Unsolved Mysteries

0:07
Speaker 1: Welcome to Kat Has Questions. Curiosity, stories, and the strange
0:12
Speaker 1: corners of everyday life. Hello, hello. Welcome back to Kat
0:19
Speaker 1: Has Questions, and I'm Kat. Okay, also, welcome back to
0:24
Speaker 1: part two of the Herb Baumeister case. We're just gonna
0:28
Speaker 1: jump right in today because I know you're all dying
0:31
Speaker 1: to know how this one ends if you don't know
0:33
Speaker 1: the story. In part one, we followed Herb from his
0:37
Speaker 1: childhood in Indianapolis through his marriage, his businesses, the purchase
0:42
Speaker 1: of Fox Hollow Farm, and the disappearance of men from
0:46
Speaker 1: Indianapolis' gay community. Eventually, investigators connected Herb to a surviving witness.
0:53
Speaker 1: We learned about the human skull his son had found
0:55
Speaker 1: in the woods behind the family home. And finally, the
0:59
Speaker 1: investigators got permission to search Fox Hollow. And what they
1:03
Speaker 1: found was staggering. Thousands of human bones and bone fragments
1:07
Speaker 1: were scattered across the property. But by the time police
1:10
Speaker 1: realized the scale of what they were dealing with, Herb
1:13
Speaker 1: Baumeister was already gone. So today, we're picking up right there.
1:18
Speaker 1: We're going to follow Herb as he flees Indiana, talk
1:22
Speaker 1: about the men whose remains were found at Fox Hollow,
1:25
Speaker 1: including victims who weren't identified until decades later, and then
1:29
Speaker 1: get into one of the biggest unanswered questions in this case.
1:33
Speaker 1: Was Fox Hollow really where Herb Baumeister started killing? Or
1:38
Speaker 1: had he already been doing it for years? By the
1:42
Speaker 1: time the search of Fox Hollow became a recovery operation,
1:44
Speaker 1: Herb Baumeister was already away from the property. Once investigators
1:49
Speaker 1: began finding human remains, they needed to locate him immediately.
1:54
Speaker 1: Herb apparently had no intention of coming home. When investigators
1:58
Speaker 1: entered Fox Hollow on June 24, 1996, Herb was believed
2:04
Speaker 1: to be staying at his family's lake property in northern Indiana.
2:08
Speaker 1: Lake Wawasee is roughly two hours north of Indianapolis. And
2:13
Speaker 1: at some point, as the investigation at Fox Hollow intensified,
2:16
Speaker 1: Herb left. The exact minute Herb realized police had discovered
2:21
Speaker 1: human remains isn't documented. So we don't know whether someone
2:25
Speaker 1: called him... or like if he saw something on TV,
2:29
Speaker 1: whether his attorney contacted him, or whether he simply just
2:33
Speaker 1: knew that allowing the police onto Fox Hollow meant the
2:37
Speaker 1: secret was over. But by the end of June, he
2:41
Speaker 1: was moving north. And investigators were trying to figure out
2:45
Speaker 1: where he had gone. One of the first useful leads
2:50
Speaker 1: came from Herb's younger brother, Brad. Brad told investigators that
2:55
Speaker 1: Herb had contacted him from Michigan. According to later accounts
2:59
Speaker 1: of the investigation, Herb said that he was on a
3:02
Speaker 1: business trip and needed money. That explanation already had a problem.
3:08
Speaker 1: Save-A-Lot was falling apart. Police were digging human remains out
3:12
Speaker 1: of his backyard. And Herb was supposedly taking a completely
3:17
Speaker 1: normal business trip through Michigan. But Brad sent him money.
3:21
Speaker 1: Then Brad learned about what investigators were finding at Fox Hollow.
3:24
Speaker 1: So he had given the money to him before kind
3:27
Speaker 1: of realizing what was actually going on. So Brad contacted police,
3:33
Speaker 1: but Herb had called again. And this time he was
3:36
Speaker 1: farther north. And Brad told him that police wanted to
3:40
Speaker 1: speak to him. But Herb did not return to Indiana.
3:44
Speaker 1: He kept going. By approximately June 30th, Investigators believed Herb
3:50
Speaker 1: had crossed the United States-Canada border into Ontario. From there,
3:56
Speaker 1: he traveled through the Sarnia area near Lake Heron. And
4:00
Speaker 1: this is an important point in the story. Herb wasn't
4:03
Speaker 1: racing towards some carefully prepared hideout. There's no evidence that
4:07
Speaker 1: he had an elaborate new identity waiting for him. There
4:10
Speaker 1: isn't evidence of a secret house somewhere overseas. He appears
4:15
Speaker 1: to have been living largely out of his car, so
4:18
Speaker 1: I'm guessing he kind of, like, realized what was happening
4:20
Speaker 1: and just took off. He was driving in his car,
4:22
Speaker 1: sleeping and eating, moving from place to place, and writing.
4:28
Speaker 1: For someone who had spent years maintaining an enormous house, businesses,
4:32
Speaker 1: a wife, three children, and the appearance of success, Herb
4:36
Speaker 1: Baumeister's world had suddenly been reduced to whatever he could
4:39
Speaker 1: carry in his vehicle. On July 2nd, an Ontario police
4:44
Speaker 1: officer reportedly encountered Herb sleeping in his car under or
4:48
Speaker 1: near a bridge. Herb told the officer that he was
4:52
Speaker 1: a tourist who had become tired and stopped to rest.
4:56
Speaker 1: There was really no obvious reason to arrest him at
4:58
Speaker 1: that moment, so the officer allowed him to continue. I'm
5:01
Speaker 1: sure also the officer obviously didn't realize who he was,
5:05
Speaker 1: that he was running from the police, that sort of thing.
5:08
Speaker 1: So the officer allowed him to continue. But one detail
5:12
Speaker 1: from that encounter would become extremely interesting later. According to
5:17
Speaker 1: accounts of the officer's observations, there were suitcases inside Herb's
5:22
Speaker 1: vehicle and a stack of videotapes, VHS tapes to be exact.
5:27
Speaker 1: The officer had no reason at the time to know
5:30
Speaker 1: what those tapes might mean or that they were important.
5:33
Speaker 1: But after Herb's death, investigators learned something disturbing. The tapes
5:39
Speaker 1: were gone. and they were not recovered with him, and
5:44
Speaker 1: no one has ever established what was on them. There
5:48
Speaker 1: has been speculation for years that the videotapes contained recordings
5:52
Speaker 1: of Herb's crimes. That theory became even more disturbing because
5:56
Speaker 1: investigators reportedly found video equipment at Fox Hollow Farm, including
6:01
Speaker 1: a camera associated with the pool area, the frickin' mannequin
6:04
Speaker 1: pool area. Former Hamilton County Investigator Carey Milligan has publicly
6:10
Speaker 1: said that he personally believed Herb may have videotaped his crimes.
6:14
Speaker 1: But that's a theory. We don't have the tapes, so
6:18
Speaker 1: we don't know what was recorded on them. They could
6:22
Speaker 1: have contained completely unrelated material. They could have contained family recordings, which,
6:27
Speaker 1: why would you bring that with you, though? Pornography, movies,
6:30
Speaker 1: business material, or evidence. We just simply don't know. And
6:35
Speaker 1: because the tapes disappeared... Somewhere between that officer seeing them
6:39
Speaker 1: and investigators recovering Herb's belongings, unfortunately we probably will never know.
6:45
Speaker 1: People have speculated that Herb threw them into Lake Heron
6:49
Speaker 1: or otherwise destroyed them. Again, possible, not proven. But if
6:54
Speaker 1: those tapes did contain evidence, Herb may have destroyed one
6:57
Speaker 1: of the most important records investigators could have ever had
7:01
Speaker 1: of what happened at Fox Hollow Farm. So now we're
7:05
Speaker 1: at July 3rd, 1996. So let's see. He started running.
7:10
Speaker 2: End of June.
7:11
Speaker 1: It was June 24th, I believe, when the police got
7:13
Speaker 1: to his property. So this is July 3rd. Herb reached
7:17
Speaker 1: Pinery Provincial Park near Grand Bend, Ontario. The park sits
7:23
Speaker 1: along the shore of Lake Heron, and it is an
7:26
Speaker 1: enormous natural area filled with forest, sand dunes, and shoreline.
7:31
Speaker 1: And sometime that day, Herb began writing. He used several
7:35
Speaker 1: pages of yellow paper, and the result was a three-page
7:40
Speaker 1: suicide note. If you're expecting Herb Baumeister's final message to
7:46
Speaker 1: contain some enormous revelation, unfortunately, it doesn't. He does not confess.
7:53
Speaker 1: He doesn't list victims. He did not explain the bones.
7:56
Speaker 1: He didn't apologize to the families of the missing men.
8:00
Speaker 1: He doesn't tell police where additional bodies might be located.
8:04
Speaker 1: He didn't really acknowledge investigators were digging up human remains
8:07
Speaker 1: at the property. Instead, Herb wrote about himself, his marriage,
8:13
Speaker 1: his businesses, his financial problems, and the collapse of his
8:17
Speaker 1: life that he had built. He reportedly described his marriage
8:21
Speaker 1: as beyond repair and his business situation as hopeless. He
8:26
Speaker 1: wrote about his travels, he indicated that he had considered
8:29
Speaker 1: dying somewhere else, but changed his mind because children were nearby,
8:35
Speaker 1: and he apologized for what his death would do to
8:37
Speaker 1: the appearance of the beautiful park. Think about that for
8:41
Speaker 1: a second. Investigators are recovering tens of thousands of human
8:46
Speaker 1: remains from his house. Families have been wondering where their
8:50
Speaker 1: loved ones were for years, and Herb expresses concern about
8:54
Speaker 1: disturbing the scenery of the park he's at, not, you know,
8:57
Speaker 1: killing people. There is no expression in the note at
9:02
Speaker 1: least in the portion described publicly. No meaningful acknowledgement that
9:07
Speaker 1: they even existed. Toward the end of the note, Herb
9:10
Speaker 1: wrote about eating a peanut butter sandwich. Then he said
9:13
Speaker 1: he was going to sleep. And later on July 3rd,
9:16
Speaker 1: Herb Baumeister died by suicide of a gunshot wound. He
9:20
Speaker 1: was 49 years old and his body was discovered at
9:24
Speaker 1: Pinery Provincial Park. And essentially at the same time, police
9:28
Speaker 1: in Indiana discovered finally had the evidence they needed to
9:32
Speaker 1: close in on him. Only their suspect was dead. Former
9:36
Speaker 1: Hamilton County Deputy Prosecutor Kathleen Clark traveled to Canada after
9:41
Speaker 1: Herb's body was discovered. She observed the autopsy and helped
9:46
Speaker 1: gather evidence. And when investigators examined Herb's vehicle, something else
9:51
Speaker 1: stood out. According to Clark, the car had been stripped,
9:55
Speaker 1: the carpeting had been removed, and again, Investigators had to
9:59
Speaker 1: watch out.
10:00
Speaker 2: Why.
10:01
Speaker 1: Was Herb attempting to eliminate forensic evidence? Had someone been
10:05
Speaker 1: transported in that vehicle? Was there blood, hair, fibers, maybe DNA?
10:11
Speaker 1: By the time investigators had access to it, whatever might
10:15
Speaker 1: once have been inside the carpeting was gone. There's something
10:19
Speaker 1: especially frustrating about that because Herb's vehicle might have helped
10:22
Speaker 1: connect him directly to victims. Like, I'm guessing he probably
10:26
Speaker 1: was picking up men at those bars and then he
10:29
Speaker 1: would give them a ride home. I mean, even Mark's account,
10:33
Speaker 1: the one we listened to in part one, he said
10:36
Speaker 1: he got in that guy's car but wasn't paying attention
10:38
Speaker 1: to where they were driving. So I'm sure there was
10:40
Speaker 1: DNA evidence in there or some type of evidence. So
10:43
Speaker 1: investigators wanted evidence showing exactly... what Herb himself had done. Obviously,
10:49
Speaker 1: bodies on the property is enormously suspicious, but he was
10:55
Speaker 1: trying to destroy things, or potentially destroy things, and that
10:59
Speaker 1: made it harder to reconstruct the crimes later. Carpets were gone,
11:03
Speaker 1: videotapes were gone, Herb was dead, and he also left
11:07
Speaker 1: nothing behind. I don't know if he was just hoping
11:08
Speaker 1: people would assume, based on the suicide note, that it
11:12
Speaker 1: was because of his failing marriage and businesses that he,
11:14
Speaker 1: you know, committed suicide, but He clearly was in denial.
11:20
Speaker 1: But since he was dead, there would be no interrogation,
11:22
Speaker 1: no trial, no plea agreement, and no opportunity to confront
11:27
Speaker 1: him with photographs of the men who had disappeared. Legally,
11:31
Speaker 1: Herb Baumeister was never convicted of murder and never stood
11:35
Speaker 1: trial for one. Instead, the case against him rests on
11:39
Speaker 1: an enormous body of circumstantial and forensic evidence. The multiple
11:44
Speaker 1: human remains on his private property identified victims from the
11:48
Speaker 1: same community investigators believed he had targeted, his use of
11:52
Speaker 1: a false name in gay bars, Mark Goodyear's account of
11:55
Speaker 1: being taken to Fox Hollow and choked, and Herb's refusal
12:00
Speaker 1: to allow a search. In his flight, as soon as
12:03
Speaker 1: the property began finding human remains there, it's all pretty suspicious.
12:10
Speaker 1: Because Herb died before prosecutors could take the case to court,
12:14
Speaker 1: the families lost not only the possibility of a conviction,
12:18
Speaker 1: but the possibility of forcing him to answer questions. And
12:22
Speaker 1: Herb could have answered at least some of the questions
12:24
Speaker 1: investigators still wrestle with today. Questions like, who was his
12:29
Speaker 1: first victim? How did he choose which men he brought home?
12:33
Speaker 1: Were they all killed at Fox Hollow? Why were they
12:37
Speaker 1: burned and fragmented? Were the handcuffs or shotgun shells connected?
12:41
Speaker 1: Because if you remember, some of them, they couldn't necessarily
12:43
Speaker 1: determine how they had died, and there was kind of
12:45
Speaker 1: like a mix of ways, I suppose. Did he record
12:49
Speaker 1: what he was doing? Did he have somebody help him?
12:53
Speaker 1: And perhaps the biggest question of all, when did Herb
12:57
Speaker 1: Baumeister actually start killing? Because if you look only at
13:01
Speaker 1: Fox Hollow Farm, you might assume the murders begin after
13:04
Speaker 1: Herb moved there in the early 1990s. But Investigators were
13:09
Speaker 1: beginning to wonder whether Fox Hollow represented the end of
13:13
Speaker 1: Herb Baumeister's killing career, not the beginning. So in Indiana,
13:18
Speaker 1: the forensic work continued without him. Investigators had those thousands
13:22
Speaker 1: of bone fragments, and they had to determine who the
13:25
Speaker 1: bones belonged to. And initially, the task was incredibly difficult.
13:29
Speaker 1: Some had been burned or crushed. Some had been outside
13:33
Speaker 1: for years. Some victims were represented by very little recoverable material.
13:39
Speaker 1: Investigators began comparing remains against missing persons cases. Dental records
13:45
Speaker 1: became particularly important. And just months after the search began,
13:50
Speaker 1: several families finally received answers. In September of 1996, authorities
13:56
Speaker 1: announced some of the first identifications. Among them were men
14:01
Speaker 1: whose names had already appeared in the missing person investigation.
14:05
Speaker 1: men whose disappearances had helped lead Virgil Vandegrift and Mary
14:09
Speaker 1: Wilson toward the mysterious man calling himself Brian. And over
14:13
Speaker 1: the next several years, investigators would ultimately identify eight men
14:18
Speaker 1: from the remains at Box Hollow Farms using technology available
14:22
Speaker 1: at that time.
14:23
Speaker 2: Eight.
14:25
Speaker 1: But there were more remains than that. Investigators had established
14:30
Speaker 1: DNA profiles representing additional people, people that they couldn't name,
14:35
Speaker 1: And the case kind of stalled for years, and then
14:38
Speaker 1: decades started to pass. Boxes containing human remains from Fox
14:43
Speaker 1: Hollow were preserved, but there were families continuing to live
14:47
Speaker 1: without answers. And advances in DNA technology slowly transformed what
14:52
Speaker 1: was scientifically possible. Eventually, investigators would reopen the identification effort.
15:00
Speaker 1: And nearly 30 years after Herb Baumeister died, Fox Hollow
15:04
Speaker 1: began giving up names again. Men whose families had gone
15:08
Speaker 1: decades without knowing where they were. And before we ask
15:12
Speaker 1: whether Herb killed even more people as a suspected I-70 strangler,
15:18
Speaker 1: we need to start with the people we know were
15:19
Speaker 1: at Fox Hollow. Not the bodies. Not a victim count.
15:24
Speaker 1: People whose names investigators have spent decades trying to restore.
15:29
Speaker 1: Because Herb chose not to explain what he did. but
15:32
Speaker 1: the forensic evidence he left behind has continued speaking for him.
15:37
Speaker 1: Herb's death ended any chance of prosecuting him. But the
15:41
Speaker 1: work at Fox Hollow was only the beginning. The University
15:45
Speaker 1: of Indianapolis helped recover and catalog the thousands of burned, crushed,
15:49
Speaker 1: and commingled fragments. With the technology available in the 1990s,
15:54
Speaker 1: they found eight people identified. These are the people we
15:58
Speaker 1: know were at Fox Hollow. The earliest disappearance among the
16:03
Speaker 1: original Fox Hollow victims was John Lee, or Johnny, Bayer.
16:08
Speaker 1: Johnny was 20 years old, and on May 28, 1993,
16:11
Speaker 1: he said goodbye to his mother and left for his
16:14
Speaker 1: shift at a fast food restaurant, and he never came home.
16:19
Speaker 1: That is the beginning of the Fox Hollow timeline as
16:21
Speaker 1: investigators understand it. Years later, investigators identified Johnny among the
16:26
Speaker 1: remains recovered from Herb's property, and what his mother ultimately
16:30
Speaker 1: received is is almost impossible to comprehend. A rib. One
16:36
Speaker 1: rib bone had been matched to her son. She buried
16:39
Speaker 1: it in a cemetery near where Johnny had grown up.
16:43
Speaker 1: Years later, she said that even after holding a funeral,
16:46
Speaker 1: the loss still didn't feel completely real because there was
16:49
Speaker 1: so little of him to bury. This is one of
16:52
Speaker 1: the brutal realities of Fox Hollow. For some families, identifying
16:56
Speaker 1: their loved ones didn't mean getting a body back. It
16:59
Speaker 1: meant receiving whatever piece investigators could prove belonged to them.
17:04
Speaker 1: Then came Jeffrey Allen Jones. Jeff was from Indianapolis and
17:08
Speaker 1: disappeared on July 6, 1993. He was one of the
17:13
Speaker 1: men investigators associated with Fox Hollow during that original case.
17:17
Speaker 1: In 2024, modern DNA testing confirmed another set of fragments
17:22
Speaker 1: as his. So Jeff's story demonstrates one of the biggest
17:26
Speaker 1: problems investigators face even today. He was one of the
17:30
Speaker 1: men investigators associated with Fox Hollow during the original case.
17:34
Speaker 1: But nearly 30 years later, the renewed investigation found something important.
17:39
Speaker 1: Additional previously unidentified remains recovered from the property belonged to Jeff.
17:44
Speaker 1: So in 2024, with modern DNA testing, confirmed another set
17:48
Speaker 1: of fragments to be his. So Jeff's story demonstrates one
17:52
Speaker 1: of the biggest problems investigators face even today. A person
17:56
Speaker 1: can already be listed as an identified victim while pieces
17:59
Speaker 1: of that same person are still sitting in the unidentified
18:02
Speaker 1: collection and being sorted through. So this is what makes
18:06
Speaker 1: it so tricky because a new profile might represent a
18:08
Speaker 1: new victim or it might just be connecting more pieces
18:12
Speaker 1: of the puzzle for a previously established victim. And the
18:15
Speaker 1: only way to find out is to test every single piece.
18:19
Speaker 1: The next victim is Richard Douglas Hamilton Jr. who disappeared
18:23
Speaker 1: on July 31st, 1993. He was 20 years old, according
18:28
Speaker 1: to the original missing person chronology, and his family called
18:31
Speaker 1: him Richie. And decades later, his sister Debbie Falls had
18:35
Speaker 1: continued speaking publicly about him and about the way his
18:38
Speaker 1: case was handled. When Richie's remains were identified, his family
18:43
Speaker 1: did not receive a complete skeleton, and Debbie had described
18:46
Speaker 1: burying the few pieces they were given in a tiny casket.
18:49
Speaker 1: They found fragments. Years later, Debbie said the case still
18:53
Speaker 1: did not feel closed to her. In modern DNA, work
18:57
Speaker 1: has now linked additional foxhole fragments back to Richard as well.
19:01
Speaker 1: Only days after Richard disappeared, Manuel Resendez vanished. Manuel was
19:07
Speaker 1: seen on August 6, 1993, and he has ties to
19:10
Speaker 1: Lafayette and Indianapolis. His remains were among those associated with
19:15
Speaker 1: the original investigation. But in 2023, Manuel's family provided investigators
19:21
Speaker 1: with a new DNA reference sample that allowed scientists to
19:25
Speaker 1: go back into the enormous collection of unidentified fragments and
19:29
Speaker 1: ask a question that they couldn't reliably answer in 1996.
19:33
Speaker 1: Do any more of these belong to Manuel? And the
19:36
Speaker 1: answer was yes. So August 6th, 1993 is important for
19:41
Speaker 1: another reason. So that was the last day Manuel was seen.
19:44
Speaker 1: But that same day, another man disappeared from Indianapolis. And
19:49
Speaker 1: his name was Alan Lee Livingston. Alan was 27 and
19:54
Speaker 1: disappeared roughly a month before his 28th birthday. Unlike Manuel
19:59
Speaker 1: and all the previous men we've talked about, Alan was
20:01
Speaker 1: not one of the eight men identified in the original investigation.
20:05
Speaker 1: For decades, Alan's family would not know for certain what
20:08
Speaker 1: happened to him. His mother, Sharon, kept the same home
20:12
Speaker 1: telephone number active for years, and her reasoning was incredibly
20:15
Speaker 1: simple and heartbreaking. When Alan disappeared, cell phones were not
20:20
Speaker 1: a part of everyday life, and that landline was the
20:23
Speaker 1: number her son knew, so she kept it, just in
20:26
Speaker 1: case someday he called. As the years passed, Sharon became
20:30
Speaker 1: convinced that Alan was probably among the men of Fox Hollow.
20:34
Speaker 1: But believing something and proving it are very different things. Then,
20:38
Speaker 1: Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison took office. In 2022, his
20:43
Speaker 1: office began a renewed effort to identify the remains using
20:46
Speaker 1: modern DNA. Allen's relatives submitted a sample. And in October
20:51
Speaker 1: of 2023, 30 years after Allen disappeared, investigators announced that
20:56
Speaker 1: they had matched previously unidentified Fox Hollow remains to him.
21:00
Speaker 1: And Allen Livingston became the ninth named victim. And his
21:04
Speaker 1: mother had been right. He had been there all along.
21:08
Speaker 1: And this is why reopening identification work matters. Herb was dead,
21:12
Speaker 1: and there would never be a prosecution, but the case
21:15
Speaker 1: was not over for Sharon Livingston or Allen's siblings. DNA
21:20
Speaker 1: couldn't bring Allen home, but it could finally tell his
21:22
Speaker 1: family where he had been. And I know this is
21:25
Speaker 1: a lot of names, but I definitely want to make
21:27
Speaker 1: sure that we touch on all of these victims here.
21:30
Speaker 1: The disappearances continued into 1994. Stephen Sperlin Hale disappeared from
21:35
Speaker 1: Indianapolis on April 1st. His remains were identified in the
21:40
Speaker 1: original investigation. And Stephen is another example of why I
21:44
Speaker 1: don't want to just confidently give you one giant age
21:47
Speaker 1: list from the internet. Different published records assign slightly different
21:51
Speaker 1: ages to several of the men, including Stephen. The important
21:55
Speaker 1: facts are consistent, though. Stephen disappeared in 1994. Human remains
22:00
Speaker 1: were recovered from Fox Hollow and identified as his. And
22:03
Speaker 1: his name remains among the 10 people now associated with
22:07
Speaker 1: the property. Then on June 6, 1994, Alan Wayne Browser disappeared.
22:13
Speaker 1: Alan's case is especially important because his family simply refused
22:17
Speaker 1: to accept that he was gone. They're the ones who
22:19
Speaker 1: hired that private investigator, Virgil Vandegrift, as we talked about earlier,
22:23
Speaker 1: and that decision helped turn a single missing person investigation
22:27
Speaker 1: into something much larger. When Vandegrift began asking questions in
22:32
Speaker 1: Indianapolis gay bars, he realized Alan wasn't the only man missing.
22:36
Speaker 1: And without his family pushing for answers, Maybe Vandegrift would
22:40
Speaker 1: never start comparing those disappearances. Maybe Mark Goodyear never becomes
22:44
Speaker 1: connected to the investigation. So Allen isn't just one of
22:48
Speaker 1: the people whose remains were found at Fox Hollow. His
22:51
Speaker 1: disappearance is part of the reason investigators ultimately found Fox
22:54
Speaker 1: Hollow at all. Modern testing has now again connected fragments
22:59
Speaker 1: from the collection to Allen, this time using forensic genetic genealogy.
23:05
Speaker 1: Then came Roger Allen Goodlett. Roger disappeared on July 22, 1994,
23:10
Speaker 1: and he was 33. We also talked about Roger earlier
23:14
Speaker 1: because he had spent part of the day with his
23:16
Speaker 1: mother and then left and never returned. His family had
23:20
Speaker 1: also hired Virgil Vandegrift, and he would become one of
23:23
Speaker 1: the originally identified victims at Fox Hollow. And just realize,
23:27
Speaker 1: these last two that we talked about... are what, like
23:30
Speaker 1: the 11th and 12th victims, when they went missing, they're
23:33
Speaker 1: the reason this like bigger investigation started going on. So
23:37
Speaker 1: all of those previous men had already disappeared before these
23:39
Speaker 1: private investigators like took over and started actually helping this community.
23:45
Speaker 1: So he was also one of the original victims and
23:48
Speaker 1: identified later again with more modern testing. The final known
23:54
Speaker 1: Fox Hollow disappearance came in 1995. Michael Frederick or Mike, Kierne,
24:01
Speaker 1: was last seen on March 31st. He was believed to
24:04
Speaker 1: be one of Herb's last known victims at Fox Hollow.
24:08
Speaker 1: Mike's story is one of the reasons the identification project
24:11
Speaker 1: was revived. In 2022, while reviewing the paperwork surrounding the
24:16
Speaker 1: original eight identified men, Jeff Jellison noticed something strange on
24:20
Speaker 1: Mike's record. There was no cemetery listed, so he started looking.
24:26
Speaker 1: He found that Mike had a cemetery plot, he had
24:28
Speaker 1: a headstone, his family had believed arrangements had been made
24:31
Speaker 1: for him. But Mike's remains had never actually been released
24:35
Speaker 1: for burial. For roughly 26 years, his grave had been
24:40
Speaker 1: waiting for him. So Jellison contacted the family. A funeral
24:44
Speaker 1: home had offered to help, and the cemetery agreed to assist.
24:48
Speaker 1: And after more than two decades, arrangements were finally made
24:52
Speaker 1: for Mike's remains to be placed beneath the marker bearing
24:54
Speaker 1: his name. And that discovery forced a much larger question.
24:59
Speaker 1: If something like that could be missed for 26 years,
25:02
Speaker 1: what else had been left unfinished? So when Jeff Jellison
25:06
Speaker 1: was elected as Hamilton County Coroner in 2022, and instead
25:11
Speaker 1: of treating Fox Hollow as a closed historical case, he
25:14
Speaker 1: decided to go back through it. So as I've been discussing,
25:17
Speaker 1: for the first eight men we've talked about, they were
25:20
Speaker 1: found in the original investigation... And there had been one
25:24
Speaker 1: more that had been discovered from this second round of
25:28
Speaker 1: DNA testing, this newer round of DNA testing. So by
25:32
Speaker 1: May of 2026, 175 fox hollow remains had been submitted
25:37
Speaker 1: for testing. Remember, there was 10,000 pieces. And this work
25:42
Speaker 1: found something the original investigators had missed. At least two
25:45
Speaker 1: previously unidentified people were represented among the remains. One of
25:50
Speaker 1: them was Alan Livingston, who we've already talked about. The
25:53
Speaker 1: other was a man investigators had no idea they were
25:56
Speaker 1: looking for. His name was Daniel Thomas Halloran. Daniel was
26:01
Speaker 1: not one of the original victims, and his remains sat
26:05
Speaker 1: unidentified for three decades. And there was another problem. Investigators
26:10
Speaker 1: didn't have a straightforward family sample sitting in their files
26:13
Speaker 1: waiting to match him. So his case went to forensic
26:16
Speaker 1: genetic genealogy. Researchers built out the family lines and connected
26:21
Speaker 1: the unknown DNA. Eventually, they arrived at Daniel, and then
26:26
Speaker 1: investigators contacted his relatives. Daniel had a daughter named Coral.
26:32
Speaker 1: She had been almost two years old when her father
26:34
Speaker 1: returned to Indiana. Then he disappeared from her life. For decades,
26:40
Speaker 1: Coral lived with a question that is completely different from
26:42
Speaker 1: the one most Fox Hollow families had. She didn't necessarily
26:46
Speaker 1: know that her father was dead. Part of her had
26:49
Speaker 1: to wonder whether he had simply left her, Her mother
26:53
Speaker 1: had hired private investigators. She contacted agencies. They tried to
26:57
Speaker 1: find him, but nothing. Then Coral provided DNA. And in
27:02
Speaker 1: April 2025, investigators announced that the unidentified Fox Hollow remains
27:07
Speaker 1: belonged to Daniel Thomas Halloran. And he became the 10th
27:11
Speaker 1: identified person from Fox Hollow Farms. For Coral, the answer
27:16
Speaker 1: was devastating. But it also answered something she had wondered
27:20
Speaker 1: about for essentially her entire life. Her father hadn't simply
27:23
Speaker 1: chosen never to contact her again. Something had happened to him.
27:28
Speaker 1: And this is where the case stands now. Not in 1996.
27:32
Speaker 1: Not when Herb died. Now in 2026. Ten men have
27:37
Speaker 1: names connected to Fox Hollow. But investigators are not finished.
27:42
Speaker 1: Because modern testing has produced at least one DNA profile
27:46
Speaker 1: that still does not have a name attached to it.
27:49
Speaker 1: And investigators have gotten tantalizingly close. Through forensic genealogy, they
27:54
Speaker 1: identified his father, a man named Jerome Clarence Jerry Harvey.
28:00
Speaker 1: Jerry Harvey was about 6'5, and lived much of his
28:03
Speaker 1: life in Indianapolis and worked in construction. He may also
28:07
Speaker 1: have operated a furniture store in Fort Wayne during the
28:10
Speaker 1: early 1970s and had connections to New Albany. Investigators traced
28:15
Speaker 1: the genetic family tree back generations, but then they hit
28:18
Speaker 1: a wall. They still couldn't identify the victim's mother. And
28:22
Speaker 1: without her identity, they couldn't confidently determine which of Jerry
28:26
Speaker 1: Harvey's sons was among the remains at Fox Hollow. By
28:32
Speaker 1: April 2026, investigators had narrowed the unidentified victim's likely birth
28:37
Speaker 1: period to be between 1959 and 1972. They believe he
28:42
Speaker 1: disappeared as a young adult during the early to mid-1990s.
28:47
Speaker 1: DNA phenotyping suggests he likely had very pale to pale skin,
28:51
Speaker 1: brown to dark brown or auburn hair, and hazel brown eyes.
28:56
Speaker 1: Investigators had even considered the possibility that he was adopted,
28:59
Speaker 1: placed in foster care, or raised by someone other than
29:02
Speaker 1: his biological parents. Somewhere, there may be someone who remembers him.
29:08
Speaker 1: A half-sibling, a cousin, a childhood friend, a woman who
29:11
Speaker 1: had a baby fathered by Jerry Harvey decades ago. Someone
29:15
Speaker 1: who doesn't realize that the answer to a mystery in
29:17
Speaker 1: their own family may be sitting inside one of those boxes.
29:21
Speaker 1: And this is why I think saying Herb Baumeister had
29:24
Speaker 1: 25 victims is too simple. He may have, but he
29:29
Speaker 1: may have had fewer or he may have had more.
29:31
Speaker 1: They're still sorting through all of those remains. And according
29:36
Speaker 1: to the Indiana State Police's May 2026 report, even two...
29:40
Speaker 1: two of the original eight identified victims have not yet
29:43
Speaker 1: been reestablished through this current round of testing. And it
29:47
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't mean that those men weren't victims. It means
29:51
Speaker 1: science is still trying to connect the fragments in the
29:53
Speaker 1: boxes to people who have been attached to the case
29:56
Speaker 1: for decades. So if they haven't even been able to
29:58
Speaker 1: attach all of them Currently, that certainly means there could
30:03
Speaker 1: be more victims in there that we just don't even
30:05
Speaker 1: know about yet. There is still another group of men, though,
30:08
Speaker 1: whose names investigators already know. Men whose bodies were not
30:14
Speaker 1: found at Box Hollow. They were found years earlier, along highways,
30:19
Speaker 1: in streams, across Indiana and Ohio. Most had been strangled,
30:24
Speaker 1: and then something strange happened. Around the time Herb Baumeister
30:29
Speaker 1: moved onto the 18-acre estate where he could hide the
30:31
Speaker 1: bodies in his backyard, those roadside murders stopped. Which brings
30:36
Speaker 1: us to perhaps the biggest unanswered question in the entire
30:39
Speaker 1: Herb Baumeister case. Was Fox Hollow where Herb started killing?
30:44
Speaker 1: Or was it simply where he stopped needing to leave
30:46
Speaker 1: the bodies somewhere that they could be found? So before
30:50
Speaker 1: Fox Hollow was the I-70 Strangler. Once investigators realized what
30:54
Speaker 1: Herb Baumeister had been apparently doing on that property, another
30:58
Speaker 1: question emerged. What had Herb been doing before Fox Hollow?
31:03
Speaker 1: Because Herb was already 44 years old when he and
31:06
Speaker 1: Julie bought the estate. If investigators were right that he
31:09
Speaker 1: killed multiple men between 1993 and 1995, was it really
31:14
Speaker 1: reasonable to assume that a man in his mid-40s had
31:17
Speaker 1: suddenly began killing people for the first time? I don't
31:20
Speaker 1: think so, but maybe. Serial killers do not all begin young,
31:25
Speaker 1: but there was another reason investigators started looking backward. There
31:30
Speaker 1: were already an unsolved series of murders involving men in
31:33
Speaker 1: Indiana and Ohio. Many of the victims were young, many
31:38
Speaker 1: of them had connections to Indianapolis' gay community, and their
31:41
Speaker 1: bodies were nude or partially nude, and they had been strangled.
31:46
Speaker 1: This sounds a lot like his M.O. And they all
31:49
Speaker 1: had been dumped in rural areas, often near streams, culverts,
31:53
Speaker 1: or other shallow bodies of water. The murders stretched back
31:57
Speaker 1: to 1980. And then, as I mentioned, right when Herb moved,
32:02
Speaker 1: the roadside bodies stopped appearing. And that series of murders
32:06
Speaker 1: became known as the I-70 Strangler murders. Just so there's
32:11
Speaker 1: no confusion, if you Google this case later, there is
32:14
Speaker 1: also an I-70 killer who carried out a completely different
32:18
Speaker 1: series of shootings at small businesses in across several states
32:21
Speaker 1: in 1992. But that's not this case. We're talking about
32:25
Speaker 1: the I-70 Strangler, which was a series involving boys and
32:29
Speaker 1: men found dead in Indiana and Ohio during the 1980s
32:34
Speaker 1: and early 1990s. And for years, nobody knew who was responsible.
32:39
Speaker 1: So the earliest murder that investigators would later formally connect
32:43
Speaker 1: to Herb Baumeister was that of Michael Petrie. Michael was
32:47
Speaker 1: only 15 years old, and his body was discovered on
32:51
Speaker 1: June 16, 1980, in Hamilton County, Indiana, and he had
32:55
Speaker 1: been strangled. In June of 1980, her would have been
32:58
Speaker 1: about 33 at the time, and this kid was 15.
33:02
Speaker 1: Michael's body was found nude in a rural area, and
33:05
Speaker 1: investigators learned that despite his age, he had been spending
33:08
Speaker 1: time around Indianapolis' gay nightlife scene and had reportedly been
33:13
Speaker 1: exchanging sex for money. I want to be careful with
33:16
Speaker 1: how we talk about that because Michael was 15. He
33:19
Speaker 1: wasn't like an adult sex worker making some completely independent
33:23
Speaker 1: lifestyle choices. He was literally a child moving through an
33:28
Speaker 1: environment where adults could exploit him. And whoever killed him
33:31
Speaker 1: apparently knew where to find vulnerable young men and boys.
33:35
Speaker 1: At the time Michael died, Herb Baumeister was married to Julie.
33:39
Speaker 1: He was working for the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
33:43
Speaker 1: He hadn't yet opened the Save-A-Lot stores, and Fox Hollow
33:48
Speaker 1: was not part of his life yet. There was absolutely
33:51
Speaker 1: nothing at that point publicly connecting Herb to Michael's murder.
33:55
Speaker 1: Michael's death was simply an unsolved homicide. Two years later,
33:59
Speaker 1: another young man was found dead in Hamilton County. Maurice
34:03
Speaker 1: Taylor was 22. His body was discovered July 21, 1982,
34:07
Speaker 1: in northeastern Hamilton County. he was found in or around
34:13
Speaker 1: Weasel Creek, and he was partially unclothed. Investigators believed his
34:17
Speaker 1: death fit the same emerging pattern. Maurice had also spent
34:21
Speaker 1: time around the Indianapolis gay community and appeared to have
34:25
Speaker 1: been living an especially vulnerable life at the time of
34:27
Speaker 1: his death. And because nobody had an obvious suspect, the
34:31
Speaker 1: cases continued accumulating. And I know I also talked about
34:34
Speaker 1: this in part one, but obviously in the 1980s, 1990s,
34:39
Speaker 1: the gay community would not have been given the same
34:43
Speaker 1: priority to police as maybe other people. So I feel
34:48
Speaker 1: like a lot of this got looked the other way
34:51
Speaker 1: until those private investigators stepped in. By the early 1980s,
34:56
Speaker 1: investigators were already wondering whether several murders of gay men
34:59
Speaker 1: and boys might be connected. And the police did create
35:03
Speaker 1: a task force. The FBI became involved examining a broader
35:06
Speaker 1: cluster of murders. And importantly, Investigators eventually concluded that not
35:12
Speaker 1: every murdered man in that area necessarily had been killed
35:16
Speaker 1: by the same person. Because once a serial killer becomes
35:20
Speaker 1: known to be operating in an area, there is a
35:23
Speaker 1: temptation to attribute every kind of vaguely similar murder to him.
35:27
Speaker 1: But some cases were separated out. And some were believed
35:31
Speaker 1: to involve a different perpetrator. One of the serial killers
35:34
Speaker 1: operating in the Midwest during this kind of same broad
35:37
Speaker 1: time period was Larry Ehler. who targeted young men and
35:41
Speaker 1: boys and dumped victims along highways. I'll have to cover
35:43
Speaker 1: him too at some point. So investigators were dealing with
35:47
Speaker 1: overlapping victim populations and overlapping geography and potentially multiple killers.
35:53
Speaker 1: And that makes the I-70 Strangler attribution much messier than
35:57
Speaker 1: the simplified version we sometimes hear today. Then came the
36:01
Speaker 1: case that would eventually provide the strongest direct connection to
36:04
Speaker 1: Herb Baumeister. Michael Andrew Riley was 22 years and he
36:09
Speaker 1: disappeared on May 28, 1983. Michael had been at The
36:14
Speaker 1: Vogue in Indianapolis. Today, The Vogue is known as a
36:17
Speaker 1: concert venue in a nightclub in Broad Ripple. During that period,
36:23
Speaker 1: published accounts described it as a place connected to gay nightlife.
36:27
Speaker 1: Before Michael disappeared, a witness saw him leaving with another man.
36:31
Speaker 1: And then, on June 5, Michael's nude body was found
36:34
Speaker 1: in a ditch in Hancock County, southeast of Greenfield, and
36:38
Speaker 1: he had been strangled. Investigators believed some type of cloth,
36:43
Speaker 1: possibly a towel, may have been used, but the man
36:46
Speaker 1: seen leaving with Michael was not identified. And the case
36:50
Speaker 1: went cold for roughly 15 years. And then after Fox
36:54
Speaker 1: Hollow happened and Herb died, his photograph was everywhere after
36:58
Speaker 1: he'd committed suicide. And in February of 1998, a witness
37:02
Speaker 1: contacted investigators. He had remembered Michael Riley, but more importantly,
37:07
Speaker 1: he remembered the man Michael had left with that night
37:10
Speaker 1: in 1983. Investigators showed him photographs, and according to law
37:15
Speaker 1: enforcement accounts released at the time, the witness identified Herb
37:19
Speaker 1: Baumeister as that man, and that was huge. For the
37:22
Speaker 1: first time, investigators had something more than, these murders kind
37:26
Speaker 1: of look similar to what Herb did, they had a
37:28
Speaker 1: witness potentially placing Herb with one of the victims shortly
37:32
Speaker 1: before that victim was murdered. Hancock County investigators began comparing
37:37
Speaker 1: Michael's case with other unsolved strangulations, and then sheriffs from
37:42
Speaker 1: several counties began comparing files. Indiana, Ohio, different years, different jurisdictions,
37:50
Speaker 1: but remarkably similar deaths. So on May 7, 1985, Eric
37:53
Speaker 1: Allen Roetgert disappeared. Eric was 17 years old. His body
37:59
Speaker 1: was found two days later in a creek bed in
38:01
Speaker 1: rural Ohio. He was partially clothed. He had been strangled.
38:06
Speaker 1: And now this geographical area was expanding. They were now
38:10
Speaker 1: appearing across state lines. And Interstate 70 provided an obvious
38:14
Speaker 1: corridor between central Indiana and western Ohio. In August of 1986,
38:20
Speaker 1: another body was found in Preble County, which was where
38:23
Speaker 1: Eric was found. Michael Glenn was 29. the same situation
38:28
Speaker 1: where he was discovered in a creek bed. Again, a
38:31
Speaker 1: young man, rural location, strangulation, that same broad pattern. And
38:35
Speaker 1: at this point in Herb's life, that's when his life
38:38
Speaker 1: was in upheaval. He had been fired from the BMV
38:41
Speaker 1: that year. He had been arrested following the drunk hit
38:44
Speaker 1: and run and then arrested again in 1986 on the
38:48
Speaker 1: conspiracy to commit theft charge that was eventually dropped. His
38:52
Speaker 1: dad had died. and Herb was moving toward the thrift
38:54
Speaker 1: store business that would eventually transform his financial life. If
38:58
Speaker 1: he was the I-70 Strangler, this would mean his killing
39:01
Speaker 1: career was continuing right through those very public changes in
39:05
Speaker 1: his life. On October 15, 1987, James B. Robbins disappeared.
39:12
Speaker 1: He had left his mother's home in Indiana. Two days later,
39:15
Speaker 1: his nude body was found in a remote area of
39:17
Speaker 1: Shelby County, Indiana, and he had been strangled. And this
39:21
Speaker 1: is where something important happens in Herb's own timeline. In 1988,
39:25
Speaker 1: Herb and Julie opened the Save-A-Lot store, and the business
39:28
Speaker 1: became successful. If investigators' later theory is correct, the respectable
39:33
Speaker 1: businessman may simultaneously have been strangling men and dumping their
39:37
Speaker 1: bodies in rural areas, two completely separate Herb Baumeisters occupying
39:42
Speaker 1: the same life. On August 12, 1989, Stephen L. Elliott,
39:48
Speaker 1: was found in Ohio, and he was 26. Then on
39:53
Speaker 1: August 14, 1990, the body of Clay Russell Boatman was
39:57
Speaker 1: found near a bridge in Preble County. He was 32,
40:01
Speaker 1: and he was a licensed practical nurse. Accounts say he
40:05
Speaker 1: had planned to go to a local bar called Our Place.
40:08
Speaker 1: He had been found partially clothed, and he had been strangled.
40:11
Speaker 1: Clay's family reportedly disputed suggestions that he was gay and
40:14
Speaker 1: And that's another reason I don't want to flatten every
40:17
Speaker 1: one of these men into the same biography. Law enforcement
40:21
Speaker 1: saw connections between their cases, but that does not mean
40:25
Speaker 1: every victim lived exactly the same life. Some were openly gay,
40:29
Speaker 1: some were not. Some were reportedly involved in sex work
40:32
Speaker 1: while others weren't. Some families knew about their relationships or nightlife,
40:37
Speaker 1: where others strongly rejected what police or witnesses were saying.
40:42
Speaker 1: What tied the cases together was not a single identity.
40:45
Speaker 1: It was a pattern investigators believed the killer was following.
40:49
Speaker 1: I know this is a ton of victims, but that's
40:53
Speaker 1: what's crazy about this is literally how many people he killed.
40:56
Speaker 1: But this is the last one that I'm going to
40:57
Speaker 1: talk about. So less than a month later, another young
41:01
Speaker 1: man was dead. Thomas R. Clevenger Jr. was 19. His
41:05
Speaker 1: body was discovered on September 12, 1990, along an abandoned
41:10
Speaker 1: railroad bed in Dark County, Ohio. His death was also
41:13
Speaker 1: connected by strangulation and he was partially nude. Thomas had
41:17
Speaker 1: experienced significant difficulties in his young life. Published accounts describe
41:22
Speaker 1: intellectual disability, involvement with the juvenile justice system, and reports
41:27
Speaker 1: that he sometimes exchanged sex for money. Like several men
41:31
Speaker 1: in this series, Thomas was especially vulnerable. Whoever was responsible
41:36
Speaker 1: was operating during the AIDS crisis among young men and
41:39
Speaker 1: boys whose disappearances were not always met with an immediate
41:42
Speaker 1: coordinated response. And that gave the killer room to operate
41:46
Speaker 1: because if people weren't acting quickly on it, he kind
41:49
Speaker 1: of just could keep doing it. But by the end
41:51
Speaker 1: of 1990, nine deaths spread across the Indiana counties and
41:55
Speaker 1: two Ohio counties had characteristics investigators would eventually consider closely connected.
42:02
Speaker 1: But then something changed. the bodies stopped appearing in the
42:05
Speaker 1: same way. And around that same time, Herb and Julie
42:09
Speaker 1: acquired Fox Hollow Farm. Suddenly, Herb had 18 acres of
42:13
Speaker 1: private land. He didn't need to use rural ditches and culverts.
42:18
Speaker 1: If he wanted to make somebody disappear, he had woods
42:20
Speaker 1: behind his own house. You'll sometimes hear this presented as
42:25
Speaker 1: a perfect timeline. I-70 murders happen, Herb buys Fox Hollow,
42:29
Speaker 1: I-70 murders immediately stop, and the Fox Hollow murders immediately begin.
42:34
Speaker 1: It is compelling, but it's also a little too neat. First,
42:39
Speaker 1: published sources disagree slightly over whether the Baumeisters purchased or
42:43
Speaker 1: moved into Fox Hollow in 1991 or 1992. Second, the
42:48
Speaker 1: earliest currently identified Fox Hollow victim disappeared in May of 1993.
42:54
Speaker 1: So there's not a seamless documented handoff from one series
42:57
Speaker 1: to the other. And third, the broader collection of cases
43:01
Speaker 1: commonly called the I-70 Strangler murders, sometimes includes victims outside
43:06
Speaker 1: the nine murder victims investigators specifically attributed to Herb in 1998.
43:11
Speaker 1: For example, modern summaries sometimes include Otto Gary Becker, whose
43:16
Speaker 1: body was found in rural Henry County, Indiana in October
43:20
Speaker 1: of 1991. Some lists also contain additional victims whose cases
43:25
Speaker 1: were considered part of the larger I-70 Strangler investigation at
43:29
Speaker 1: different points. So that's why you'll see sources call the
43:33
Speaker 1: I-70 Strangler responsible for nine murders, 11, or 12. They're
43:38
Speaker 1: not necessarily talking about exactly the same group of cases.
43:42
Speaker 1: For our purposes, I think the most defensible number is this.
43:47
Speaker 1: In 1998, investigators from Indiana and Ohio publicly attributed nine
43:53
Speaker 1: specific earlier murders to Herb Baumeister. And those are the
43:58
Speaker 1: nine that we were talking about here. So, About two
44:03
Speaker 1: years after Herb's death, investigators from Hamilton, Hancock, and Shelby
44:07
Speaker 1: counties in Indiana, along with investigators connected to Preble and
44:12
Speaker 1: Dark counties in Ohio, gathered all the evidence that they
44:16
Speaker 1: had accumulated, and they compared the cases. So that last
44:20
Speaker 1: group of men we were just talking about. They believe
44:24
Speaker 1: Herb Baumeister had killed those nine men. Hamilton County Sheriff
44:28
Speaker 1: James Bradbury explained the similarities... that the victims had been
44:32
Speaker 1: found in small bodies of water or near culverts, they
44:35
Speaker 1: were partially nude, they were young white men, they had ties,
44:39
Speaker 1: according to investigators, to the gay community, and investigators believed
44:44
Speaker 1: one person was responsible. And most importantly, they now had
44:49
Speaker 1: the Michael Riley witness, that person who said they had
44:51
Speaker 1: seen Michael leaving with him and identified him as Herb
44:55
Speaker 1: Baumeister 15 years later. To the investigators involved, the circumstantial
45:00
Speaker 1: picture was convincing enough, and they considered Herb their killer.
45:05
Speaker 1: And there was another similarity that would be impossible for
45:07
Speaker 1: investigators to ignore. Strangulation. Mark Goodyear, the witness that they had,
45:13
Speaker 1: had told police exactly what Herb was interested in, choking.
45:17
Speaker 1: He described Herb wanting to be choked and then trying
45:20
Speaker 1: to choke Mark with the pool hose after he had
45:23
Speaker 1: told him not to. Investigators believed the Fox Hollow victims
45:27
Speaker 1: had been killed through strangulation or asphyxiation. And now they
45:31
Speaker 1: were looking backward at a series of men whose deaths
45:33
Speaker 1: involved strangulation also. It is pretty compelling circumstantial evidence, but
45:39
Speaker 1: it still is circumstantial. So unfortunately, it's not conclusive because
45:43
Speaker 1: there's publicly no known DNA or fingerprints tying Herb to
45:47
Speaker 1: the I-70 scenes. No confessions, no victim lists, no recovered
45:53
Speaker 1: trophies that he would have been keeping that would have
45:54
Speaker 1: linked him to it. And the strongest eyewitness evidence came
45:59
Speaker 1: 15 years after the witness had seen Riley leave the nightclub.
46:02
Speaker 1: That's a long time to forget what somebody looks like.
46:05
Speaker 1: And then also to all of a sudden start seeing
46:06
Speaker 1: Herb on the news. It's like, oh yeah, he looks familiar.
46:09
Speaker 1: So that's why I think saying Herb Baumeister was the
46:12
Speaker 1: I-70 strangler goes slightly farther than evidence allows. But investigators
46:18
Speaker 1: believed it was him. Some believe it very strongly. I
46:21
Speaker 1: believe it was him. But it was never proven in court.
46:25
Speaker 1: And no publicly known forensic evidence has closed that gap.
46:28
Speaker 1: And there were also other reasons to be cautious about
46:31
Speaker 1: grouping all of this because earlier investigators and the FBI
46:35
Speaker 1: had already been concluding that there were some similar murders
46:40
Speaker 1: of gay men in the region from a different killer.
46:43
Speaker 1: Larry Ehler, who I talked about a little bit earlier,
46:46
Speaker 1: but he was also active in the Midwest during overlapping years.
46:50
Speaker 1: So we can't take every single man that was strangled
46:52
Speaker 1: in the Midwest in the 1980s and 90s to Herb.
46:56
Speaker 1: Some of them could be attributed to Larry. So if
47:01
Speaker 1: we combine those initial nine murders from the highways to
47:06
Speaker 1: the 10 people who are for sure identified from Fox Hollow,
47:10
Speaker 1: we're already talking about approximately 19 people potentially connected to
47:14
Speaker 1: Herb Baumeister. That still does not include the unidentified Fox
47:19
Speaker 1: Hollow profile investigators are working on right now, whose remains
47:23
Speaker 1: were completely destroyed or never found. Or if there are
47:27
Speaker 1: other I-70 cases that could potentially be linked, but just
47:30
Speaker 1: don't have enough evidence to be linked. So there's honestly
47:34
Speaker 1: no definitive victim count. And if Herb really did kill
47:38
Speaker 1: Michael Petrie in 1980... Then that skull found behind Fox
47:42
Speaker 1: Hollow in 1994 was not evidence of a man who
47:46
Speaker 1: suddenly became violent. It may have been evidence of someone
47:49
Speaker 1: who had been killing for 14 years, adapting his methods,
47:53
Speaker 1: and eventually acquiring a place where victims no longer had
47:56
Speaker 1: to be left where anyone could find them. So what
48:01
Speaker 1: Herb left behind? Herb Baumeister died on July 3, 1996.
48:06
Speaker 1: But Fox Hollow Farm did not become a closed case
48:09
Speaker 1: with him. Instead, everyone else was left to deal with
48:12
Speaker 1: what he had done. His family, the victim's families, investigators,
48:17
Speaker 1: and forensic scientists who would still be working the case
48:20
Speaker 1: decades later. Only months after Herb's death, Julie Baumeister tried
48:25
Speaker 1: to explain what her life had looked like from the inside.
48:28
Speaker 1: In December 1996, she told her story in a first-person
48:33
Speaker 1: Indianapolis Monthly article titled Life in Limbo. In one of
48:37
Speaker 1: the most striking things about Julie's account, is that she
48:40
Speaker 1: didn't describe 25 years of living beside someone she obviously
48:44
Speaker 1: recognized as a monster. She described a family. Not a
48:48
Speaker 1: perfect family, but a family she believed was happy. Julie
48:52
Speaker 1: wrote that Herb came home for dinner, they did yard
48:54
Speaker 1: work together, they built things for the children. Herb was
48:57
Speaker 1: involved at school, he made lunches, and he participated in
49:00
Speaker 1: their lives. And until relatively near the end of their marriage,
49:05
Speaker 1: Julie said she believed what they had was normal enough.
49:09
Speaker 1: Looking back, she realized there had been things she hadn't understood.
49:13
Speaker 1: Herb could be controlling, he could be cruel. He could
49:17
Speaker 1: suddenly refuse to speak to people for long stretches. and
49:20
Speaker 1: their sexual relationship had been almost non-existent his businesses became
49:25
Speaker 1: chaotic his behavior became increasingly difficult but there's a huge
49:29
Speaker 1: psychological distance between my husband is strange and controlling and
49:33
Speaker 1: my husband may have murdered 19 people and buried their
49:36
Speaker 1: bodies behind our children's home and Julie had to cross
49:40
Speaker 1: that distance incredibly quickly. One day, police were telling her
49:44
Speaker 1: they wanted to search their property. Then she was showing
49:47
Speaker 1: them the skull. Then her husband fled, and he was dead.
49:52
Speaker 1: And then the world knew their name. The divorce Julie
49:56
Speaker 1: had filed would never reach the normal conclusion of a
49:58
Speaker 1: divorce proceeding because Herb died while it was still underway. Instead,
50:04
Speaker 1: Julie was left trying to protect their three children while investigators, journalists,
50:09
Speaker 1: and the public tried to understand what their husband and
50:11
Speaker 1: father had done. There is relatively little reliable public information
50:16
Speaker 1: about the family's life after that period, and I'm comfortable
50:19
Speaker 1: leaving it that way. Herb's children did not choose any
50:23
Speaker 1: of this. And what matters to this story is that
50:26
Speaker 1: investigators found no evidence that Julie or the children knew
50:30
Speaker 1: murders were taking place at Fox Hollow. Julie ultimately became
50:34
Speaker 1: the person who gave police access to the property. And
50:37
Speaker 1: without that decision, there's no way to know how much
50:40
Speaker 1: longer those remains might have stayed hidden. So the house itself,
50:45
Speaker 1: which is kind of strange to think about because Fox
50:48
Speaker 1: Hollow is kind of synonymous with Herb Baumeister, I feel
50:51
Speaker 1: like nowadays. So it's easy to imagine the property being
50:55
Speaker 1: bulldozed after the investigation, but it wasn't. The house still stands.
51:00
Speaker 1: The indoor swimming pool still exists, the woods are still there,
51:04
Speaker 1: but Fox Hollow has changed. Portions of the original 18-acre
51:08
Speaker 1: estate were eventually separated from the main property. As of
51:12
Speaker 1: the renewed searches beginning in 2022, the current owner, Robert Graves,
51:18
Speaker 1: owned the house and approximately 10 acres of the original estate.
51:21
Speaker 1: And rather than preventing investigators from returning... Graves has cooperated
51:25
Speaker 1: with them. He has also had a surreal responsibility that
51:29
Speaker 1: almost nobody who buys a house could imagine. Human bones
51:32
Speaker 1: have continued turning up. Graves told WRTV that he doesn't
51:37
Speaker 1: personally go searching for them, but when bones are discovered
51:41
Speaker 1: on the property, he turns them over to University of Indianapolis.
51:46
Speaker 1: And in December of 2022, investigators came back. So remember
51:51
Speaker 1: we talked about the property being extensively searched in 1996,
51:57
Speaker 1: and then they came back to do kind of a
51:58
Speaker 1: second round of more modern DNA testing. So when they
52:03
Speaker 1: came back in December of 2022, dogs were alerting to
52:07
Speaker 1: different locations and about 20 locations were flagged during this search.
52:14
Speaker 1: Investigators recorded GPS coordinates so that they could evaluate those
52:18
Speaker 1: locations later. And during the search, another bone was recovered.
52:23
Speaker 1: So 26 years later, Fox Hollow was still producing evidence.
52:27
Speaker 1: There may never be a moment where investigators can say
52:30
Speaker 1: with absolute certainty, we've recovered everything. So as we talked about,
52:35
Speaker 1: as of 2026, 10 people have been positively named from
52:40
Speaker 1: the Fox Hollow set of murders, but that work is
52:43
Speaker 1: still ongoing. And there was another development that happened in 2025.
52:49
Speaker 1: So investigators are considering whether there are still places on
52:52
Speaker 1: the property that need to physically be excavated again. Certified
52:57
Speaker 1: cadaver dogs alerted on some isolated areas. But one dog
53:01
Speaker 1: alerting somewhere doesn't automatically mean human remains are present. They
53:05
Speaker 1: can make mistakes. But two certified dogs independently showing interest
53:10
Speaker 1: in the same location was enough for investigators to take
53:13
Speaker 1: it seriously. So on October 18th of 2025, so literally
53:19
Speaker 1: as of last year, representatives from the Hamilton County Coroner's
53:22
Speaker 1: Office and forensic experts from University of Indianapolis returned to
53:27
Speaker 1: Fox Hollow Farm for a targeted excavation. This time, though,
53:32
Speaker 1: they did not recover any additional remains. And just like
53:35
Speaker 1: I said, the case remains active, and that is where
53:38
Speaker 1: we're at now. Another kind of modern investigation question that
53:43
Speaker 1: goes on with this is, did Herb handle everything at
53:46
Speaker 1: Fox Hollow alone? There is no proven accomplice. No second
53:51
Speaker 1: person has been charged or convicted in connection with the
53:54
Speaker 1: Fox Hollow murders. But the Hamilton County coroner has publicly
53:58
Speaker 1: questioned whether Herb could realistically have moved, burned, broken down,
54:02
Speaker 1: and scattered adult human remains through dense wooded terrain repeatedly
54:07
Speaker 1: without assistance. He has said that the logistics make the
54:10
Speaker 1: possibility of an accomplice worth investigating. Possibility is definitely not proof.
54:16
Speaker 1: The disposal process may also have happened differently than investigators
54:20
Speaker 1: are currently imagining. Jellison has nevertheless been critical of parts
54:24
Speaker 1: of the original investigation, including what he sees as missed
54:27
Speaker 1: opportunities to pursue additional victims and potential helpers. That criticism
54:33
Speaker 1: can coexist with the reality that the 1996 investigators faced
54:37
Speaker 1: an extraordinary scene and still recovered thousands of fragments, identified
54:42
Speaker 1: multiple men with far more limited technology, and, through Mary
54:47
Speaker 1: Wilson's persistence, found Herb in the first place. Another thing
54:51
Speaker 1: to keep in mind, those missing videotapes have still remained unresolved,
54:57
Speaker 1: they've never been recovered, and that's why it's fueled speculation
55:01
Speaker 1: that he recorded sexual encounters or crimes, because he clearly
55:03
Speaker 1: wanted to get rid of it. Retired detective Kerry Milligan
55:08
Speaker 1: has recalled noticing a suspicious air vent in the lower
55:12
Speaker 1: entertainment and pool area, raising the possibility that a camera
55:16
Speaker 1: could have been positioned there. No recovered recordings ever proved that,
55:21
Speaker 1: and they remain missing. So there are still so many questions,
55:25
Speaker 1: basic questions even, that investigators cannot answer. How many people
55:30
Speaker 1: did Herb kill? When did he start? Did everyone die
55:34
Speaker 1: at Fox Hollow that was represented there? Did he record
55:37
Speaker 1: the crimes or have help? And how many remains were
55:39
Speaker 1: destroyed beyond recovery? And how many families still don't know
55:44
Speaker 1: that someone they lost decades ago could be connected to
55:47
Speaker 1: Fox Hollow? And that last question, though, is one the
55:50
Speaker 1: investigators can still do something about. When a major ABC
55:55
Speaker 1: News studio documentary about this case premiered in 2025, something
55:59
Speaker 1: happened that demonstrates exactly why people are still talking about
56:02
Speaker 1: this case. the county coroner received more than 500 calls
56:06
Speaker 1: and tips after that documentary came out. Some were simply
56:10
Speaker 1: people asking questions, but others came from families. Families of
56:14
Speaker 1: missing people, people willing to submit DNA, people who had
56:18
Speaker 1: spent years wondering whether their missing brother, uncle, son, or
56:22
Speaker 1: father could possibly be one of the unidentified men. Then,
56:26
Speaker 1: in July 2026, so literally a couple months ago, another
56:30
Speaker 1: follow-up installment, Return to Fox Hollow, was released. By that point,
56:34
Speaker 1: investigators had 10 identified victims and an active effort underway
56:38
Speaker 1: to identify more. 30 years after Herb died, and new
56:42
Speaker 1: information is still coming in. And there's one thing about
56:46
Speaker 1: the modern investigation that feels particularly important. For decades, Fox
56:51
Speaker 1: Hollow Farm was associated almost entirely with Herb Baumeister. Google
56:56
Speaker 1: the case and Herb's face is everywhere. But in August
56:59
Speaker 1: of 2024, that began to change. At Hamilton Memorial Park
57:03
Speaker 1: in Westfield, a permanent memorial was dedicated to the victims
57:07
Speaker 1: of Fox Hollow Farm. The monument contains the names of
57:10
Speaker 1: the identified victims, and intentionally, there is room for more.
57:16
Speaker 1: There's also a permanent place where unidentified remains and newly
57:19
Speaker 1: identified fragments can be respectfully added. I think the memorial
57:23
Speaker 1: gets at something that the original investigation never really had
57:26
Speaker 1: the opportunity to do. Herb Baumeister made himself the center
57:30
Speaker 1: of this story. By refusing to talk, by running, by
57:34
Speaker 1: killing himself, by having a stupid suicide note that only
57:39
Speaker 1: talked about himself. For 30 years, everybody has been asking
57:42
Speaker 1: questions about him. But the work happening now asks a
57:46
Speaker 1: much simpler question. Who were they? And every time another
57:50
Speaker 1: fragment produces DNA, every time another family provides a cheek swab,
57:55
Speaker 1: the case becomes slightly less about Herb Baumeister and slightly
57:59
Speaker 1: more about the people he tried to erase. There's something
58:03
Speaker 1: uniquely unsettling about the Herb Baumeister case because there isn't
58:07
Speaker 1: really an ending. Herb died without confessing, leaving investigators to
58:12
Speaker 1: wonder how many people he had killed. For years, that
58:16
Speaker 1: let him keep one final piece of control. But as
58:20
Speaker 1: science changes, we learn more and more about what he's done.
58:26
Speaker 1: So yes, Herb Baumeister may have been one of the
58:29
Speaker 1: most prolific serial killers in the Midwest. He may have
58:33
Speaker 1: murdered 20 people, 25, possibly more, and we may never know.
58:39
Speaker 1: But I don't think the most important number is Herb
58:41
Speaker 1: Baumeister's victim count. It's the number that keeps getting smaller.
58:45
Speaker 1: The number of people at Fox Hollow who still don't
58:48
Speaker 1: have their name back. And as of 2026, investigators are
58:53
Speaker 1: still working to bring that number down. Because the story
58:57
Speaker 1: of Fox Hollow Farm isn't over. Herb's part is, but
59:01
Speaker 1: theirs isn't. And that is the case of Herb Baummeister
59:05
Speaker 1: and Fox Hollow Farm. With the identification work that is
59:09
Speaker 1: still active, this is absolutely a case I'll update if
59:13
Speaker 1: investigators give another victim their name back or uncover anything
59:17
Speaker 1: that changes what we know about Herb's crimes. As always,
59:22
Speaker 1: all of my sources are linked in the show notes.
59:24
Speaker 1: And if you are interested in supporting the show, You
59:27
Speaker 1: can join the supporters club where you can.
59:29
Speaker 2: Pay $ 2. 99 a month and listen to the episodes ad-free.
59:35
Speaker 2: And like I said, just support the show so I
59:37
Speaker 2: can keep on making it for you. If you liked
59:39
Speaker 2: this two-part deep dive, make sure you are following the
59:43
Speaker 2: show wherever you listen and send it to somebody else
59:48
Speaker 2: who will immediately have just as many questions as we do.
59:52
Speaker 1: Until next time, stay curious. Thanks for listening to Cat
1:00:00
Speaker 1: Has Questions. If you liked this episode, follow the show
1:00:03
Speaker 1: and share it with someone who loves a good spiral.
1:00:05
Speaker 1: See you next week.