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Herbert The Pervert · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:19
  Welcome to ten Minute Murder, Brief and Bingeible True Crime. I'm Joe the
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  host. Thank you for joining today, and I'm a little bit sleepy today.
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  I'm gonna be honest. I stayed up too late last night. I
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  wish I could blame that on someone else, but the call is coming from
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  inside the house on this one. I mean, it's kind of your fault.
• 0:38
  Some of you have asked me to watch Barry and let me know what
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  I think about it, and I'm almost afraid to tell you what I think
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  so far. I'm not even finished with the first season, but it's a
• 0:51
  struggle. It's not that good. I wanted it to be really good.
• 0:55
  And maybe the problem is it's the main role of Barry, who is hired
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  killer. That's what he is, the main role. It's played by a
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  guy who I've only ever seen in comedies, and I keep expecting him to
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  be funny, and he's not funny. But I think any moment now he's
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  gonna say something funny, and it's not funny. And another part of the
• 1:15
  problem may be that one of my favorite all time shows is Dexter a serial
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  killer, and this is Barry. I guess kind of a serial killer.
• 1:23
  He's a hired killer, so he is a serial killer. It just feels
• 1:26
  like a low key rip off. I don't know, but that's why I'm
• 1:30
  tired. I'm trying to get through the first season and so far, no
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  boy now. And I know you guys keep telling me it's going to get
• 1:37
  better. You have to wait through the boring parts and it eventually gets better.
• 1:40
  So I'm waiting on that, so we'll see how it goes. Hey,
• 1:42
  if this is your first time listening to ten Minute Murder, please subscribe
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  please leave a rating and review any place that is possible. Go to
• 2:00
  ten Minute Murder dot com for all things related to ten Minute Murder. Now
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  to today's story. In the nineteen nineties, gay men were an easy target
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  for prowling killers and sexual predators. Many witnesses would avoid coming forward, refusing
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  to admit that they'd been having a homosexual encounter or been present at a gay
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  bar. In a way, some of these victims could have been killed an
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  almost plain sight. People would pretend they didn't see it, But investigators in
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  the Indianapolis Police Department had been working hard for years trying to make connections between
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  missing gay men who seemed to have several common characteristics similar height, similar weight,
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  and age, last seen in the same general location. It all had
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  the makings of the work of a serial killer. Finally, in nineteen ninety
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  two, a breakthrough came when a witness came forward, identifying himself as Tony
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  Harris. Tony told investigators that he believed his friend, Roger Goodlett, had
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  been murdered by a regular at a gay bar that they attended. Tony had
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  noticed that the suspect, who went by the name Brian Smart, had also
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  shown unusual amount of interest in Roger's disappearance. Also, Tony knew that Brian
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  was violent. In the past, Brian had attempted to asphyxiate Tony to death
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  with a poolho'se Tony managed to escape the attack, but Brian Smart was an
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  alias, and without the man's real name, there were no further leads.
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  Three years later, Tony saw Brian again. He recognized his assailant instantly.
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  He followed his car and was able to write down the license plate number.
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  Once again, Tony went straight to the police with his findings, and this
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  time it gave them the connection they needed to move the investigation forward. A
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  name. The license plate number that Tony wrote down belonged to a local man
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  by the name of Herbert Ballmeister. From an early age, Herb Baumeister was
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  already earning the media nickname that would one day be given Herbert the Pervert.
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  By all accounts, there was no childhood trauma that led him to developing his
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  obsession with obscure and obscene sexual fetishes. In fact, he led the cookie
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  cutter childhood. Born to well off parents and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana,
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  along with three younger siblings, Herb wasn't shy about discussing his fascination with one
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  particular body function, urine. He was obsessed, and several of his childhood
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  friends remembered young Herbert wondering what would it be like to taste human urine?
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  In school, he acted out by urinating on the desks of several teachers.
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  It wasn't just urin that fascinated Herbert, though, he was also intrigued by
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  death and dying. This led to a frequent antisocial hobby of playing with the
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  corpses of dead animals. When Herbert's father, a very well respected anaesthesia logists,
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  found out about Herbert's strains obsessions, he took action immediately. Herbert was
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  assessed by a mental health professional who diagnosed the young boy with both antisocial personality
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  disorder and schizophrenia. However, despite these serious diagnosises at such a young age,
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  there was never any push for Herbert to receive any further mental health treatment.
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  For the rest of his high school years, Herb remained socially withdrawn and
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  outcast. In adulthood, Herbert continued to make everybody around him uncomfortable. He
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  was a bizarre mix of character traits, managing to hold down jobs because of
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  his dog work effort and then losing them in a repeated cycle. He got
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  married in nineteen seventy one, and he had three children with his wife,
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  Julianna. Despite Julianna reporting that she has never seen Herbert naked, and in
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  fact the couple had sexual intercourse less than ten times during their twenty five year
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  long relationship, Julianna tried her best to be understanding about Herb's glaring health issues,
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  which placed a significant strain on their relationship. Within six months of their
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  wedding, Herb's father had him committed to a mental hospital. Initially, after
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  investigators got a hold of Herbert's license plate number, he refused to allow investigators
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  to search his property, and Julianna backed up her husband's demands. There was
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  no hard evidence to connect him to the case, and police couldn't really push
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  that any further. However, Herbert's unusual and often frightening behavior was getting worse,
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  and shortly after he was identified as a suspect in the missing persons cases,
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  Julianna decided that she wanted to get a divorce. She'd had enough of
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  Herberts and his secrets, and she held one final trump card over him.
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  After she filed for divorce, she finally gave investigators permission to search the farm
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  they lived on while Herbert was out of town. A search of Herbert's property
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  confirmed suspicions that he was a killer. Eleven sets of human remains were located,
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  with eight bodies able to be positively identified. What investigators didn't realize was
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  that one of these bodies had possibly been discovered earlier by Herbert's own child.
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  One day in nineteen ninety four, Herbert's son found a human skeleton buried in
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  the backyard of the family home. He told his parents about what he had
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  found, and Herb reassured him that the skeleton was actually a dissecting skeleton that
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  had been given to him by his father. Then he reburied it with no
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  explanation as to why it was in their yard in the first place. And
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  it's honestly pretty incredible that this lie was believed by anyone, because who buries
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  a medical specimen in their own yard and then later reburies it. It was
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  obvious that Herb's family had seen the skeleton of one of the missing men.
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  Police issued a warrant for Herbert's arrest, suspecting that his property had been searched,
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  and knowing that his secret he had spent so long concealing was about to
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  be revealed. Herb could not allow himself to be arrested, and his opinion,
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  his life was already in town and this was the final straw. He
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  drove to Lake Huron and shot himself in the head at a park, leaving
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  behind a three page suicide note which incredibly did not mention the disappearances or explain
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  the eleven bodies found on his property. Instead, he used his suicide note
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  to express regret for his failed career and impending divorce. The bodies found on
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  Herbert's land were called the Fox Hollow Farm Victims, the name of Herbert's eighteen
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  acre woodland's property. Although eight of the victims were able to be identified,
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  all of the males who went missing in Indianapolis, most of them Gay,
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  three are still unknown, despite the coroner's office making public appeals for members of
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  the public to carry out DNA tests. It's widely believed that there are many
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  more human remains on the property and that these were not Herbert's only victims.
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  In fact, Herbert is believed to be responsible for more than just the Fox
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  Hollow Farm killings. He became the prime suspect in another case, uncaptured serial
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  killer known as the I seventy strangler. As the name suggests, this killer
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  strangled his victims to death then dumped them close to Interstate seventy throughout the eighties
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  and early nineties, and like Herbert, he preferred to target men, but
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  also killed young boys. Bodies of the ice seventy Strangler's victims stopped being dumped
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  near the Interstate during nineteen ninety one, exactly when Herbert bought the Farm Hollow
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  property. Investigators believed that with eighteen acres of woodland at his disposal, Herbert
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  switched from dumping the bodies and risking evidence being discovered to disposing of his victims
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  on his own property. If Herbert truly was the I seventy Strangler, his
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  victim count is much higher than the reported number. There were eleven confirmed victims
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  of the strangler in addition to the still unknown amount of bodies on Herbert's farm.
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  Two other missing gay men, Alan Livingstone and Jerry Williams Comber are also
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  believed to have been killed by Herbert, Although the bodies were never found.
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  It's unknown if Herbert ever had any other disposal sites for bodies or if Interstate
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  seventy and Foxhallow Farm were the only resting places for his victims. In twenty
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  twenty two, a fresh search of Foxhollow Farm located yet another piece of human
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  body, as well as identifying a total of twenty separate locations where human remains
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  may have been buried deep underground. So many questions remain, what was his
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  motive, why did he start killing? And who was his first victim?
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  And the big question, how many victims are there in total? In Herbert's
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  final action, by putting a gun to his own head and leaving behind a
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  pointless suicide note, he ensured that those answers would be as difficult to find
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  as possible. Although Herbert the Pervert left his victims families and his own family
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  without closure or justice, some of his darkest secrets are likely still buried on
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  the farm that he, his wife, and his children once called home.