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The Horrors Of The Fox Hollow Farm Serial Killer · The conspiracy

0:00
Speaker 1: It began with bones in the quiet woods behind a
0:03
Speaker 1: wealthy Indiana estate. Investigators made a grizzly discovery, scattered fragments
0:09
Speaker 1: of human remains buried beneath the leaves, burned, broken and forgotten.
0:14
Speaker 1: And what they uncovered in that soil would unravel the
0:17
Speaker 1: facade of a man who, by all appearances at it
0:21
Speaker 1: all a thriving business, to loving family, a mansion hidden
0:25
Speaker 1: among the trees. But behind closed doors, something unthinkable was happening.
0:29
Speaker 1: He was charming, respected, a devoted husband, and he was
0:34
Speaker 1: stalking young men and dragging them into the dark. This
0:37
Speaker 1: is not just the story of a killer, as a
0:39
Speaker 1: story of an entire community that wasn't heard, a survivor
0:43
Speaker 1: who refused to stay silent, and the horrifying truth buried
0:48
Speaker 1: beneath the surface of a seemingly perfect life. This is
0:51
Speaker 1: a story of Herb Baumeister. Crime, conspiracy, celts, serial killers,
0:56
Speaker 1: and murder, all things that I love to consume and
0:59
Speaker 1: I know you do too, You you sick, twisted, beautiful,
1:01
Speaker 1: intellectually minded, free. I sounded like a burp, Sorry about that.
1:09
Speaker 1: Yet today we're getting into a big case, a case
1:12
Speaker 1: that was highly recommended. I saw dozens of comments requesting
1:17
Speaker 1: this case. It has taken a while to get done,
1:20
Speaker 1: but we are here. It is absolutely horrifying, So trigger
1:25
Speaker 1: warning there, but without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts,
1:27
Speaker 1: go mock five down the highway, slam on the brakes,
1:29
Speaker 1: and buster this windshield into this horrifying case together. So.
1:48
Speaker 1: Herbert Richard Baumeister was born in Indianapolis on April seventh,
1:52
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven, and he was the oldest of four
1:54
Speaker 1: children and a comfortable middle class family, and his father,
1:57
Speaker 1: doctor Herbert E. Baumeister, was an anistysiologist, and his mother, Elizabeth,
2:02
Speaker 1: was a homemaker. So outwardly, Herb's early childhood seemed pretty normal,
2:07
Speaker 1: but as he entered adolescence, disturbing behavior began to emerge,
2:12
Speaker 1: like we see with many serial killers in their early adolescents,
2:16
Speaker 1: just doing the most fucked up shit. So classmates and
2:20
Speaker 1: teachers noted that young Herb developed morbid fascinations, one being
2:25
Speaker 1: he was intensely curious about the taste of human urine. Yeah,
2:30
Speaker 1: we're really we're really getting into it really quick with
2:32
Speaker 1: this one, so you know, buckle up. And also you
2:36
Speaker 1: guessed it had a tendency to play with dead animals.
2:39
Speaker 1: Just we're making that serial killer stew real quick. And
2:43
Speaker 1: in one incident, he placed a dead crow on a
2:46
Speaker 1: teacher's desk at North Central High School. Kid was fucked
2:49
Speaker 1: up two ways to Sunday. And on another occasion, he
2:52
Speaker 1: urinated on his teacher's desk, just shocking his entire classroom.
2:57
Speaker 1: It's like he needed that shock factor, he needed to
3:00
Speaker 1: be the center of attention in the most morbid ways.
3:04
Speaker 1: And such bizarre antics went far beyond typical teenage rebellion
3:08
Speaker 1: and hinted at a deeply, deeply troubled mind. I mean,
3:12
Speaker 1: we had some jokesters in high school, but nobody was
3:15
Speaker 1: pissing on the teacher's desks and leaving you know, effigies
3:19
Speaker 1: of dead crows there too. So it's just like a
3:22
Speaker 1: little too much. So alarmed by his son's behavior, Herb's
3:26
Speaker 1: father arranged for a psychiatric evaluation during Herb's teens. Good on, dad,
3:31
Speaker 1: Usually we don't hear this. We just hear the parents
3:33
Speaker 1: ignoring this. So that's good at least. And he was
3:35
Speaker 1: a doctor, so that makes sense. And the doctors diagnosed
3:38
Speaker 1: her with paranoid schizophrenia as well. As antisocial personality disorder.
3:44
Speaker 1: So you know, we have nature nurture. There's both going
3:47
Speaker 1: on here. He's got an excuse, but also not Okay,
3:51
Speaker 1: it's not an excuse. It's not an excuse as to
3:53
Speaker 1: it's harming things and doing horrible things, you know. But
3:57
Speaker 1: at least you know they nipped it in the bud. Great,
4:00
Speaker 1: he's going to get some medication maybe and he'll be great,
4:02
Speaker 1: right right, No, No, we wouldn't. We wouldn't be here
4:07
Speaker 1: talking if if that were the case. So having these
4:09
Speaker 1: disorders meant that HERB might suffer delusions or extreme paranoia
4:14
Speaker 1: and had a diminished sense of empathy or regard for
4:17
Speaker 1: social norms. So something quite literally out of his control.
4:21
Speaker 1: So again I'm not going to give him anything, but
4:23
Speaker 1: there is something that he can't control on his own,
4:26
Speaker 1: at least without therapy or medication or anything like that.
4:29
Speaker 1: But despite this diagnosis, there is no evidence HERB received
4:32
Speaker 1: sustained treatment at that time, and that's the big issue
4:36
Speaker 1: because it could have been a different story if he
4:38
Speaker 1: actually got the real help that he needed or actually
4:42
Speaker 1: stayed with some sort of treatment, but he did not,
4:44
Speaker 1: and instead he was eventually just returned to school. The
4:49
Speaker 1: kid didn't know what's going on. He's got a fucked
4:51
Speaker 1: up brain, and they're just like, ah, he'll be all right.
4:54
Speaker 1: So for a brief period, Herb's behavior improved enough to
4:57
Speaker 1: appear socially acceptable, and he managed to graduate high school
5:02
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty five. However, his reputation had already been
5:05
Speaker 1: tainted by his earlier outbursts and macawb interests and classmates
5:10
Speaker 1: shunned him, remembering the boy who toyed with dead creatures
5:13
Speaker 1: and caused classroom disruptions, So her But became increasingly withdrawn
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Speaker 1: and reclusive during his late teens. You have the nature
5:22
Speaker 1: where it's like he can't help but have this these
5:25
Speaker 1: awful disorders that he can help. And then there's the nurture,
5:29
Speaker 1: which is like he's clearly not being nurtured through this,
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Speaker 1: he's not being treated for this, and he's just kind
5:35
Speaker 1: of being thrown to the wolves in a very vulnerable,
5:38
Speaker 1: fucked up state. Again, I'm not I am, by no
5:42
Speaker 1: means justifying what he's going to do in the future,
5:44
Speaker 1: because I think he should burn in hell. But when
5:47
Speaker 1: you're a kid, hopefully you can get that help. And
5:50
Speaker 1: this kid did not get any meaningful help, and I'll
5:53
Speaker 1: leave it at that. It's part of the reason why
5:55
Speaker 1: I actually like looking into these cases, because I like
5:58
Speaker 1: looking at the psychological eyepe and nature versus nurture and
6:02
Speaker 1: how they were raised and what caused it and all
6:04
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And sometimes there's just a shiny,
6:08
Speaker 1: tiny little inkling of sympathy here and there when they're
6:11
Speaker 1: like kids and they can't do anything about it, but
6:13
Speaker 1: it's all gone when they're adults. You know, you learn
6:16
Speaker 1: societal norms and you know you might suffer with these
6:19
Speaker 1: kinds of things, but unless you get help, I don't
6:24
Speaker 1: know what you can do. I'm not a doctor. I'm
6:26
Speaker 1: just a stupid YouTuber. But Herb, like many other serial killers,
6:30
Speaker 1: had those early warning signs that are almost all there
6:33
Speaker 1: for most cases we go through, and that is obsession
6:37
Speaker 1: with your nation or wedding the bed, and obsession with
6:40
Speaker 1: death and volatile emotional outbursts. All we're missing at this
6:44
Speaker 1: point is arsony, basically, But in the conservative nineteen sixties
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Speaker 1: such behavior was often quietly swept under the rug. Different time,
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Speaker 1: so Herb Baumeister was a troubled young man who learned
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Speaker 1: to mask his oddities when needed. A skill he would
7:00
Speaker 1: later use to hide far darker impulses knowingly. And this
7:05
Speaker 1: is where we get into the Oh, he knows what
7:07
Speaker 1: he's doing is wrong. That's wrong, and that's terrible, and
7:11
Speaker 1: that makes you evil. So after high school, Herb's attempts
7:14
Speaker 1: at higher education and steady employment were checkered, and even
7:19
Speaker 1: enroll in Indiana University in nineteen sixty five, but would
7:22
Speaker 1: drop out after one semester, and he returned to IU
7:25
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, where he would meet his future wife,
7:28
Speaker 1: Juliana or Julie Satyr, but again left before completing a term.
7:33
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy two, Herb tried taking classes at
7:36
Speaker 1: Butler University, with similar results, quitting after a single semester.
7:40
Speaker 1: Guy has commitment issues, and during this period, in November
7:44
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy one, twenty four year old Herb Baumeister
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Speaker 1: married Juliana Sator, who was a former high school journalism
7:50
Speaker 1: teacher who he had courted in college. And Julie, by
7:53
Speaker 1: all accounts, was a smart and patient woman, which you
7:57
Speaker 1: needed to be if you were with this fuing guy,
8:00
Speaker 1: and notably a fellow young conservative, so the two had
8:04
Speaker 1: bonded in part over working together at the university's Young
8:07
Speaker 1: Republicans club, and to Julie and others, Herb could seem
8:11
Speaker 1: eccentric but essentially harmless. So nobody really saw those red
8:15
Speaker 1: flags because nobody knew about these outbursts that happened when
8:19
Speaker 1: he was younger. I mean, it was the sixties. It's
8:20
Speaker 1: not like he was posted it online or anything. If
8:23
Speaker 1: he was able to quite literally shove all that under
8:25
Speaker 1: the rug. So they would settle into a home in
8:28
Speaker 1: an Indianapolis suburb and would go on to have three
8:31
Speaker 1: children together in the coming years. But Herp's personal eccentricities
8:36
Speaker 1: did not disappear during this time, because it was only
8:39
Speaker 1: six months into the marriage. His mental health faltered very badly,
8:43
Speaker 1: and he became so depressed and erratic that his father
8:47
Speaker 1: had him committed to a psychiatric hospital for about two
8:50
Speaker 1: months in nineteen seventy two. Quote he was hurting and
8:53
Speaker 1: needed help unquote. Julie later explained of that period. So again,
8:58
Speaker 1: at least he's getting help at this point that he
9:01
Speaker 1: really didn't get as a kid. So Herb would recover
9:05
Speaker 1: enough to assume a normal life, that he continued to
9:08
Speaker 1: exhibit unusual behavior and struggled to hold jobs, similar to
9:13
Speaker 1: him dropping out all the time. You just got tired
9:15
Speaker 1: of stuff really fast, and that could be very much
9:18
Speaker 1: a part of the disorders she already has and part
9:21
Speaker 1: b that he just thought he was too good to
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Speaker 1: be a part of anything that was going on in society.
9:25
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11:22
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, he worked as a copy boy
11:25
Speaker 1: at the Indianapolis Star newspaper and later landed a position
11:28
Speaker 1: at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, which was BMV.
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Speaker 1: And at the BMV, Herb initially impressed colleagues with his
11:36
Speaker 1: strong work ethic, but his bizarre conduct soon resurfaced. See again,
11:41
Speaker 1: the sky didn't last long, and people will start to
11:44
Speaker 1: notice that Herb had a dark, offbeat sense of humor
11:47
Speaker 1: and a tendency to flout norms. And at one point
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Speaker 1: he sent his coworkers an inappropriate Christmas card showing himself
11:55
Speaker 1: and another man dressed in drag, which is like today,
12:00
Speaker 1: you know, but in the nineteen sixties psycho psychiatric prison,
12:05
Speaker 1: you know. So the prank did not go over well
12:07
Speaker 1: in the conservative office environment, shockingly, so as time went on,
12:11
Speaker 1: Herb grew domineering and aggressive with his colleagues, started to
12:16
Speaker 1: get an ego, and the breaking point came in nineteen
12:18
Speaker 1: eighty five when BMV officials discovered that someone had urinated
12:23
Speaker 1: on the manager's desk. You guessed it, issoul. Herb loves
12:29
Speaker 1: pissing on shit like a dog, which is what he is,
12:33
Speaker 1: just a dirty, disgusting dog, as we will see. So
12:38
Speaker 1: Herb was caught having urinated on a letter addressed to
12:41
Speaker 1: the governor, and it was determined he was likely responsible
12:44
Speaker 1: for the earlier incident of urine left on his manager's desk.
12:48
Speaker 1: So this utterly shocking misbehavior obviously got Herb fired in
12:53
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, and it was just a humiliating end
12:56
Speaker 1: to his government job. And it just foreshadowed the increasing
13:00
Speaker 1: erratic pattern of Herb's adult life. So by his late thirties,
13:03
Speaker 1: Herb Baundmeister was outwardly a married father of three, but
13:07
Speaker 1: he was also a man grappling with mental illnesses and
13:10
Speaker 1: concealed desires, and unbeknownst to his wife, Herb began spending
13:15
Speaker 1: time in Indianapolis's gay night life scene after losing his
13:19
Speaker 1: b and the job. So on top of everything else,
13:22
Speaker 1: Paranoids gets fronty of personality disorder. He's also by all
13:26
Speaker 1: accounts gay, but he has to internalize it, whether it's
13:30
Speaker 1: just because of the time period, or that he's embarrassed,
13:32
Speaker 1: or because he has a family and he's cheating on
13:35
Speaker 1: his wife, all the stuff. So he's got a lot
13:37
Speaker 1: of things internally building up, which is really bad with
13:41
Speaker 1: somebody that who tends to be violent and have outbursts.
13:46
Speaker 1: So he would go out drinking at gay bars, likely
13:48
Speaker 1: exploring a side of himself that he kept hidden at home.
13:51
Speaker 1: And in nineteen eighty five and nineteen eighty six he
13:54
Speaker 1: had two run ins with the law, one for a
13:56
Speaker 1: hit and run while driving drunk and another for conpharsee
14:00
Speaker 1: to commit theft, and both charges were eventually dropped. But
14:04
Speaker 1: these incidences just show herb skirting the edges of criminal
14:07
Speaker 1: behavior years before his killing Spury even began, so we
14:11
Speaker 1: already had this superiority complex building inside of himself because
14:16
Speaker 1: he could get away with everything, you know, besides pissing
14:19
Speaker 1: on his manager's desk or whatever. He got fired for
14:21
Speaker 1: that at least, And this is when friends and family
14:23
Speaker 1: noticed changes as well, because at home in the suburban
14:26
Speaker 1: Steinmeyer neighborhood, neighbors found her odd and unpredictable because it
14:31
Speaker 1: could be generous in one moment, handing out free magazines
14:35
Speaker 1: and concert tickets to neighbor kids, and in the next
14:37
Speaker 1: moment he'd get explosively angry over trivial things. And this
14:42
Speaker 1: is this is with the personality disorder coming to head,
14:45
Speaker 1: probably on top of the paranoid schizophrenia. And Julie later
14:48
Speaker 1: revealed an intimate detail that spoke volumes about their marriages
14:52
Speaker 1: because in over twenty five years together, she and Herb
14:56
Speaker 1: had only been silly intimate only six times times, and
15:00
Speaker 1: she had never even seen him fully nude. So this
15:04
Speaker 1: lack of physical closeness suggests Herb's several interests late elsewhere
15:10
Speaker 1: as we know, I mean he liked to go to
15:11
Speaker 1: gay bars, I can safely assume was just using Julie
15:15
Speaker 1: as a beard, as the kids may say nowadays, which
15:18
Speaker 1: is basically a cover like he wanted to appear like
15:21
Speaker 1: he had straight life, when in actuality he was gay
15:25
Speaker 1: and internalizing all sorts of horrible feelings, like the violent ones.
15:30
Speaker 1: Not that you're gay. You can be gay, that's totally fine,
15:32
Speaker 1: But in the sixties it was a different story. So indeed,
15:35
Speaker 1: Herb was living a closeted life, maintaining the appearance of
15:38
Speaker 1: a straight, conservative family man while secretly engaging with men
15:42
Speaker 1: at gay bars. So the conflict between his public persona
15:45
Speaker 1: and private desires would only intensify in the coming years,
15:49
Speaker 1: setting the stage for his double life as a serial killer.
15:53
Speaker 1: So by the late nineteen eighties, Herbautmeister seemed to find
15:55
Speaker 1: his footing as an entrepreneur, even as his personal oddities persisted,
16:00
Speaker 1: and in nineteen eighty eight, with financial help from his mother,
16:03
Speaker 1: Herb opened a thrift store called Save a Lot in Indianapolis.
16:07
Speaker 1: It's a great name, Herb, and Herb would just pour
16:11
Speaker 1: his energy into this store like he hadn't done with
16:14
Speaker 1: any other job before, and his hard work would pay
16:18
Speaker 1: off because Save a Lot was clean, well organized, and
16:21
Speaker 1: stocked with quality used goods, quickly setting it apart from
16:25
Speaker 1: other thrift shops, and it became a modest success, and
16:29
Speaker 1: Herb's confidence would just grow from this, because it didn't
16:32
Speaker 1: take much for this guy's head to just blow up
16:35
Speaker 1: with ego. So over the next few years he expanded,
16:37
Speaker 1: eventually operating two and by some reports three Save a
16:41
Speaker 1: Lot thrift store location in the Indianapolis area. So with
16:45
Speaker 1: this business boom came a significant lifestyle upgrade, and in
16:49
Speaker 1: November of nineteen ninety one, despite recent marital strains, Herb
16:52
Speaker 1: and Julie made a bold purchase, which was a sprawling
16:56
Speaker 1: eighteen acre estate in Westfield, just north of Indianapolis, and
17:01
Speaker 1: the estate, which Herb named Fox Hollow Farm. Yeah Yeah,
17:06
Speaker 1: this is the place, featured a one thousand plus square
17:09
Speaker 1: meter Tudor style mansion completed with elegant features like stained
17:13
Speaker 1: glass windows, multiple fireplaces at an indoor swimming pool, and
17:17
Speaker 1: the property was reportedly worth nearly one million dollars, which
17:22
Speaker 1: was a testament to the outward success the Bowmeisters projected
17:26
Speaker 1: and to neighbors and friends, the Bowmeister's family now seemed
17:29
Speaker 1: to be living the American dream, a booming business, country
17:33
Speaker 1: manor home and three happy children, and Julie continued to
17:36
Speaker 1: stand by Herb, working in the business and raising their
17:40
Speaker 1: son and two daughters. So few could have cast the
17:43
Speaker 1: turmoil in secrets that festered behind closed doors at Fox
17:48
Speaker 1: Hollow Farm, because despite the beautiful new home and thriving stores,
17:53
Speaker 1: Herb's double identity was intensifying, and as coworkers and employees
17:57
Speaker 1: began noticing that their boss's behavior grew more volatile in
18:00
Speaker 1: the early nineteen nineties, because Herb would be absent from
18:04
Speaker 1: work for long stretches during the day without any sort
18:07
Speaker 1: of explanation and became increasingly irritable and erratic when present
18:12
Speaker 1: and financial problems also started to mount, and by nineteen
18:16
Speaker 1: ninety four, the Save a Lot enterprise was faltering because
18:19
Speaker 1: the second store had not replicated the success of the first,
18:23
Speaker 1: and debts were starting to pile up and vendors were
18:26
Speaker 1: suing for unpaid bills. Guy pulled the trigger before he
18:29
Speaker 1: actually reached like a state of success. It was all
18:32
Speaker 1: about image for Herb. He needed to have that manner,
18:36
Speaker 1: to have that outward appearance of being like the perfect
18:39
Speaker 1: American family, but in actuality was much different, and under
18:43
Speaker 1: all the strain, Herb's marriage was deteriorating to say the least,
18:48
Speaker 1: and in early nineteen ninety one, in just months before
18:50
Speaker 1: buying Foxhall of Farm, Herb had briefly moved out of
18:53
Speaker 1: the family home and even filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences,
18:58
Speaker 1: which for Herb means he likes men and not women.
19:01
Speaker 1: But yet I don't think Julie knew that, Or maybe
19:03
Speaker 1: she did know that, I don't really know yet. He
19:06
Speaker 1: and Julie reconciled later that year, deciding to give the
19:09
Speaker 1: marriage another try. While moving into the new Westfield State,
19:12
Speaker 1: but still the relationship remained very rocky, and Julie noticed
19:17
Speaker 1: Herb's moods swinging wildly, and former colleagues later describe Herb
19:21
Speaker 1: as a quote perfectionist given to sudden, unprovoked rages. Sounds
19:28
Speaker 1: awful just recalling how the smallest thing could just set
19:31
Speaker 1: him off. And these fits of anger, just combined with
19:34
Speaker 1: Herb's secretive habits, made life at Foxholell Farm increasingly tense
19:39
Speaker 1: for his family, and Julie would later admit that her
19:42
Speaker 1: husband was becoming quote erratic and difficult to live with
19:45
Speaker 1: during this period. And crucially, Herb's hidden life continued alongside
19:50
Speaker 1: his family life because at night, or when his wife
19:53
Speaker 1: and kids were out of town, Herb frequented gay bars
19:56
Speaker 1: in downtown Indianapolis, introducing himself to strangers as Brian Smart.
20:02
Speaker 1: He even called himself smart. He got to make up
20:05
Speaker 1: a name for himself and he called himself smart. What
20:08
Speaker 1: a fucking dumbass. But during this time he was living
20:11
Speaker 1: out urges he could not openly acknowledge in his conservative household.
20:15
Speaker 1: So this clandestine behavior just suggested that Herb felt he
20:19
Speaker 1: had to compartmentalize his identity and the respectable heterosexual family
20:24
Speaker 1: man in one compartment and the gay man seeking anonymous
20:27
Speaker 1: encounters in another. And it is within the secret, nocturnal
20:32
Speaker 1: world that Herb's darkest tendencies began to manifest. Because Herb's
20:36
Speaker 1: ability to maintain his facade of normalcy kept suspicions at
20:40
Speaker 1: bay for a while, because by day he was a
20:43
Speaker 1: store owner and dad driving his kids to school, and
20:45
Speaker 1: at night he prowled gay bars at night with the
20:48
Speaker 1: fake name Brian Smart. So he just straddled these two worlds,
20:52
Speaker 1: and for a time he managed to keep each from
20:54
Speaker 1: discovering the other. And in hindsight, the contradictions in Herb
20:57
Speaker 1: Baumeister's life were very stark, because he lived in a mansion,
21:02
Speaker 1: yet his businesses were verging on bankruptcy. And he presented
21:06
Speaker 1: as a devoted husband yet had almost no physical intimacy
21:09
Speaker 1: with his wife, and you know, cheated honor with the
21:12
Speaker 1: other men. And he championed family values in public, yet
21:16
Speaker 1: spent his free hours cruising gay clubs in secret. And
21:19
Speaker 1: friends and family who knew her in the early nineties
21:22
Speaker 1: would later struggle to reconcile the duality that they observed.
21:27
Speaker 1: So by the early nineteen nineties, gay men in Indianapolis
21:30
Speaker 1: were quietly vanishing without explanation, and in May of nineteen
21:34
Speaker 1: ninety three, the trend became alarming because one by one,
21:37
Speaker 1: young men who frequented Indianapolis gay bars were reported missing.
21:41
Speaker 1: And at first these disappearances attracted little public attention because
21:45
Speaker 1: there was no bodies immediately found, just men who went
21:49
Speaker 1: out for the evening and never returned home. And within
21:52
Speaker 1: the LGBTQ plus community, words spread that something was terribly wrong,
21:56
Speaker 1: and amid this backdrop, Herb Baumeister was about to begin
21:59
Speaker 1: his killing spree in earnest. So investigators now believe Herb's
22:03
Speaker 1: murderous activities started around the nineteen eighties, possibly as early
22:07
Speaker 1: as the mid eighties, and then escalated in the nineteen nineties.
22:11
Speaker 1: So authorities suspected that Baumeister may have been an uncaught
22:15
Speaker 1: serial killer known as the I seventy Strangler, which we
22:19
Speaker 1: briefly talked about in one of my three part video series.
22:23
Speaker 1: But I feel like I should do like a full
22:24
Speaker 1: blown video on that person which could have been Herb Baumeister,
22:29
Speaker 1: because throughout the nineteen eighties, between nineteen eighty and nineteen
22:31
Speaker 1: ninety one, at least eleven men were found strangled and
22:35
Speaker 1: dumped in rural areas near in a state, seventy in
22:38
Speaker 1: Indiana and Ohio. And these victims were mostly young gay
22:42
Speaker 1: men who had last been seen at Indianapolis gay bars,
22:45
Speaker 1: and they're not clothed or partially clothed. Bodies were discarded
22:49
Speaker 1: off highways, in streams or ditches, and the killings mysteriously
22:54
Speaker 1: stopped in nineteen ninety one, the same year, Herb purchased
22:57
Speaker 1: Foxhall of Farm, and in nineteen ninety eight, investigators noted
23:00
Speaker 1: that once Herb had his secluded eighteen acre property, he
23:04
Speaker 1: no longer needed to risk dumping bodies along the interstate.
23:08
Speaker 1: That's the theory, and there's reasons why we can't confirm this,
23:11
Speaker 1: but I'll get into that later. But if all true,
23:14
Speaker 1: Herb Bowmeister's murder career had begun well before he ever
23:17
Speaker 1: killed on his own property, and as possible, he honed
23:21
Speaker 1: his methods on those highway killings, and then once he
23:24
Speaker 1: had Foxhall a farm as a private murder ground, he
23:27
Speaker 1: brutally reached new heights. So by nineteen ninety three, Bowmeister
23:31
Speaker 1: was actively hunting victims in Indianapolis. Specifically the Indianapolis gay bars,
23:36
Speaker 1: and he typically targeted men in their teens to twenties
23:40
Speaker 1: or even thirties, though one victim was as old as
23:43
Speaker 1: forty six, and usually Herb's victims were white males. And
23:47
Speaker 1: Herb's m was both cunning and predatory because he would
23:51
Speaker 1: spend the evening cruising popular gay bars like the five
23:54
Speaker 1: ozho One Club or others along Massachusetts Avenue, and he
23:58
Speaker 1: presented himself as a friendly, fun loving man named Brian
24:02
Speaker 1: Smart and Baumeister would single out a potential victim, often
24:06
Speaker 1: someone who was alone, and he would strike up a
24:10
Speaker 1: conversation and he had a practical charm and was generous
24:14
Speaker 1: with free drinks as well, and eventually he'd invite the
24:17
Speaker 1: target out to his home, mentioning the indoor pool or
24:20
Speaker 1: promising a private after party at his estate. And the
24:24
Speaker 1: offerer must have sounded tempting a trip to a mansion
24:27
Speaker 1: with an apparently friendly, successful man, I mean, sounds like
24:31
Speaker 1: a dream. Right, Never go to a second location with
24:34
Speaker 1: the stranger, because tragically accepting the offer was a fatal
24:39
Speaker 1: mistake for many young, unfortunate men. Because at Foxhall of Farm,
24:44
Speaker 1: Herb had carefully prepared a killing ground that hid behind
24:48
Speaker 1: the trappings of luxury, and the indoor swimming pool area
24:51
Speaker 1: in his mansion was decorated with mannikins posed infestive positions, psychotic,
24:59
Speaker 1: as if a never ending party were happening. This is
25:03
Speaker 1: it's so disturbing to even think about. Like it sounds
25:08
Speaker 1: made up. It sounds like a hormone, but it's real
25:10
Speaker 1: and it's it is horrifying. In this specific detail suggests
25:14
Speaker 1: Herb's peculiar sense of atmosphere and perhaps an attempt to
25:19
Speaker 1: put his guest at ease or disorient them. When they
25:21
Speaker 1: first walk in or close they could see maybe shadows,
25:24
Speaker 1: and they could see that maybe there's others people in here.
25:26
Speaker 1: So it's chill, it's fine, everything's fine, and he gets
25:29
Speaker 1: them to put their guard down, but in actuality they're
25:33
Speaker 1: store mannequins, and once alone with his victim, Herb would
25:37
Speaker 1: initiate sectivity and introduce a dangerous twist because he loved
25:42
Speaker 1: erotic shit. Of course, of course, of course you like this,
25:48
Speaker 1: and according to later testimony from a survivor, Herb known
25:52
Speaker 1: as Brian, would suggest they chook each other during intimate
25:55
Speaker 1: acts to heighten the pressure, and again if you're in
25:58
Speaker 1: a you know, a consenting situation. It doesn't seem that crazy.
26:02
Speaker 1: I guess whatever you're into, I don't know. It's just
26:05
Speaker 1: it's so incredibly sad for these men. I can't even
26:09
Speaker 1: imagine the fear that would come upon them like during
26:12
Speaker 1: these acts. It's so incredibly horrible. But this particular practice
26:18
Speaker 1: involves temporarily cutting off oxygen for arousal, and it's a
26:22
Speaker 1: risky act even when consensual. But for Herb, however, it
26:27
Speaker 1: was more than a game. It was his means to
26:30
Speaker 1: a kill. And he would encourage the victim to let
26:32
Speaker 1: him tighten something around their neck, such as a pool
26:36
Speaker 1: hose or a belt, and this was under the pretense
26:39
Speaker 1: of a consensual kink. And then at the crucial moment,
26:43
Speaker 1: Herb would refuse to release his scripe and he would
26:46
Speaker 1: derive gratification from the act of doing this to someone
26:51
Speaker 1: until they were dead, just exerting total control over the
26:54
Speaker 1: victim's life. And detectives later concluded that Baumeister likely murdered
26:59
Speaker 1: his victims right there by the pool, where the sound
27:02
Speaker 1: of struggle would be muffled by the walls and waters acoustics,
27:06
Speaker 1: and Herb was very hands on killer, literally feeling the
27:09
Speaker 1: life drained from his victims as part of his depsidistic satisfaction,
27:14
Speaker 1: and after the victims stopped breathing, Bowmeister set about the
27:18
Speaker 1: grim task of disposing of the body. And as we know,
27:21
Speaker 1: he had eighteen acres of isolated land at his command
27:25
Speaker 1: and he used it to its full advantage. And under
27:28
Speaker 1: the cover of darkness, herb would take his now deceased
27:31
Speaker 1: victim out into the wooded sections of his property behind
27:34
Speaker 1: the house. There he engaged in what investigators believe were
27:38
Speaker 1: post mortem quote rituals to prevent identification of the victim
27:43
Speaker 1: in case they actually were dug up, and evidence suggests
27:47
Speaker 1: Bowmeister dismembered some victims and burned many of the bones,
27:51
Speaker 1: using the farm's remote grounds as his personal dumping site.
27:55
Speaker 1: Just an absolute fucking monster, and years later forensic teams
27:59
Speaker 1: would find sit yards of charred bone and ash in
28:02
Speaker 1: fire pits and scattered through the dirt, indicating attempts to
28:05
Speaker 1: cremate the bodies in open air. But Bawmeister was thorough
28:09
Speaker 1: and he likely crushed some of the larger bones to
28:12
Speaker 1: fragments and even pulled out some of the teeth from
28:15
Speaker 1: skulls to hinder identification, and one investigator learned through a
28:19
Speaker 1: confidant of Herbs that he allegedly had a habit of
28:22
Speaker 1: using particular tools to extract his victim's teeth, then tossing
28:26
Speaker 1: the teeth down a hallway like tick tax in a
28:30
Speaker 1: grotesque display of triumph, which is beyond words, fucked up,
28:36
Speaker 1: it's vomited, ducing, it's sick. But all these details just
28:40
Speaker 1: paint a picture of a man reveling in the aftermath
28:43
Speaker 1: of murder, taking steps to ensure his victims became anonymous
28:48
Speaker 1: piles of forgotten bones, and neighbors would never report anything
28:52
Speaker 1: terribly amiss, and Bawmeister orchestrated his crimes around his family's schedule,
28:58
Speaker 1: and Julie and the children were nearly always away when
29:00
Speaker 1: the murders took place, because during summer breaks, Julie would
29:04
Speaker 1: take the kids to visit her mother at a lake
29:06
Speaker 1: cottage in northern Indiana, leaving Herb alone at Vauxhallo Farm
29:11
Speaker 1: for weeks at a time, and those lonely stretches of
29:14
Speaker 1: summer were Herb's opportunity to hunt, and investigators later determined
29:18
Speaker 1: that each known victim's disappearance coincided with times when Herb's
29:22
Speaker 1: wife and children were out of town, which again is
29:25
Speaker 1: just so sick to know that your husband and your
29:28
Speaker 1: father was doing this kind of stuff when you were gone.
29:31
Speaker 1: Oh god, it just I just don't know how how
29:35
Speaker 1: do you even get over that? Or you probably don't
29:38
Speaker 1: at all. And on some occasions, Herb likely also exploited
29:41
Speaker 1: business trips or claimed to be working late to cover
29:44
Speaker 1: his lethal outings. And this pattern just shows deep, deep calculation,
29:49
Speaker 1: like murder in the first first degree. He's always planning
29:53
Speaker 1: it out. But Baumeister just compartmentalized his life so effectively
29:59
Speaker 1: that he could there were all a man to death
30:01
Speaker 1: in his pool one night, then cheerfully host a family
30:04
Speaker 1: barbecue in the same spot the next week as if
30:08
Speaker 1: nothing happened. Just no sense of remorse. So from nineteen
30:12
Speaker 1: ninety three to nineteen ninety five, the disappearances continued uninterrupted,
30:16
Speaker 1: and young men would vanish from downtown Indianapolis and were
30:19
Speaker 1: never seen alive again, and no bodies were immediately found
30:23
Speaker 1: as we know, so the link between these missing persons
30:26
Speaker 1: was not obvious, but within the gay community, fear was
30:29
Speaker 1: mounting because someone who met men in bars was preying
30:33
Speaker 1: on them, and police seemed slow to catch on. And
30:36
Speaker 1: although Herb seemed to really hone in his perfect killing scheme,
30:41
Speaker 1: mistakes were starting to be made and close calls were
30:44
Speaker 1: bound to accumulate because the more he killed, the greater
30:48
Speaker 1: chance that eventually something or someone would blow his cover,
30:52
Speaker 1: And by late nineteen ninety four, events were set in
30:54
Speaker 1: motion that would lead to Herb Baumeister's downfall. So the
30:58
Speaker 1: known victims of her Baumeister's foxhol Of Farm murders were
31:02
Speaker 1: all men who vanished in the mid nineteen nineties, leaving
31:05
Speaker 1: behind distraught families and friends, and it took years for
31:09
Speaker 1: investigators to piece together their identities from the bone fragments
31:13
Speaker 1: found on Baumeister's property, And as of twenty twenty five,
31:17
Speaker 1: ten victims have been positively identified and several more are suspected.
31:22
Speaker 1: And these men's lives and tragic ends illustrate the horrific
31:26
Speaker 1: scope of Baumeister's crimes. And I want to go over
31:29
Speaker 1: these key victims and their fates as understood from the investigation.
31:34
Speaker 1: So first we have Roger Allan Goodlett, who was thirty
31:37
Speaker 1: three years old and was a resident of Indianapolis, and
31:40
Speaker 1: Roger was reported missing on July twenty second, nineteen ninety four,
31:45
Speaker 1: and he was last seen leaving a downtown gay bar,
31:48
Speaker 1: heading out with a man who introduced himself as Brian Smart.
31:52
Speaker 1: And Roger's disappearance deeply alarmed his family and frustrated with
31:56
Speaker 1: the police's slow progress, Roger's mother and friends blast the
32:00
Speaker 1: city with missing persons posters, and Roger's case would become
32:03
Speaker 1: pivotal because a friend of his was turned amateur sleuth
32:07
Speaker 1: under the alias Tony Harris ultimately would help crack the mystery,
32:11
Speaker 1: but sadly, Roger never came home, and years later, authorities
32:15
Speaker 1: confirmed that some of the remains were covered at Foxhall
32:18
Speaker 1: of Farm belonged to Roger Goodlett, and he is believed
32:21
Speaker 1: to be one of Baumeister's victims strength on the estate
32:24
Speaker 1: in the summer of nineteen eighty four. And then there's
32:26
Speaker 1: Alan Wayne Broussard who's twenty eight years old, and Alan
32:30
Speaker 1: was also from Indianapolis and had disappeared on June sixth
32:33
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety four, and like Roger, Allan was last
32:36
Speaker 1: seen at an Indianapolis gay bar and never returned, and
32:39
Speaker 1: Alan's mother grew concerned and also reached out for help,
32:42
Speaker 1: and she and Roger Goodlett's mother enlisted the aid of
32:45
Speaker 1: a private investigator because the police weren't doing shit. And
32:49
Speaker 1: this private investigator was Virgil Vandergriff And it wasn't until
32:52
Speaker 1: the Foxhall of Farm bones were analyzed that the truth
32:55
Speaker 1: would emerge that Alan Broussard's remains were found among the
32:59
Speaker 1: thousands of m regments, confirming he had fallen victim to
33:02
Speaker 1: the killer as well. And then there was Johnny john Behar,
33:05
Speaker 1: who was twenty years old and one of the youngest
33:09
Speaker 1: identified victims. Johnny Bear was an Indianapolis man who went
33:13
Speaker 1: missing on May twenty eighth, nineteen ninety three, and he
33:16
Speaker 1: was reportedly working at a fast food restaurant at the time.
33:18
Speaker 1: And Johnny said goodbye to his mother on his way
33:21
Speaker 1: to work one day and then just vanished. And for
33:24
Speaker 1: years his family heard nothing, and only a single rib
33:28
Speaker 1: bone of Johnny's was eventually recovered at Foxhall of Farm,
33:31
Speaker 1: found among the thousands of pieces of remains, and that
33:34
Speaker 1: rib would be DNA match to Johnny in the late
33:36
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, finally giving his mother an answer, and in
33:40
Speaker 1: a heartbreaking statement, Johnny's mother said in nineteen ninety nine,
33:44
Speaker 1: one rib bone. Even though they gave me his rib
33:47
Speaker 1: bone and we had the services, it's not real to me.
33:51
Speaker 1: I can still see him someday coming up to the door.
33:54
Speaker 1: And her hope for her son's return had been cruelly
33:56
Speaker 1: destroyed by the confirmation of his death. And Johnny Bayer's
34:01
Speaker 1: name was among the first confirmed in the investigation, and
34:04
Speaker 1: he represents the many young men whose lives were cut
34:07
Speaker 1: short just as they were starting out. And then there
34:10
Speaker 1: was Richard A. Douglas Hamilton, who was also twenty years old.
34:14
Speaker 1: He was also a local to Indianapolis and his last
34:16
Speaker 1: sighting was on July thirty first in nineteen ninety three,
34:19
Speaker 1: and little is publicly recorded about the circumstances of Richard's disappearance,
34:24
Speaker 1: but by September nineteen ninety six, Richard Hamilton's remains had
34:28
Speaker 1: been confidently identified by forensic anthropologists sorting through all the
34:32
Speaker 1: bones found at Vauxhola farm. And then there was Steven
34:34
Speaker 1: Sperlin Hale who was twenty six years old and vanished
34:38
Speaker 1: on April first, nineteen ninety four, and he was also
34:41
Speaker 1: from Indianapolis and was working as a custodian at a
34:44
Speaker 1: restaurant at the time and on the night of April first,
34:47
Speaker 1: he was last seen in Indianapolis Central Library, a known
34:50
Speaker 1: a gay meetup spot. But unfortunately, his bones would also
34:54
Speaker 1: be analyzed from Fauxhola farm and it would be confirmed
34:56
Speaker 1: that he had been killed on the property. And then
34:58
Speaker 1: there was Manuel Manny Rissindez, and Manny was a bit
35:02
Speaker 1: different from the other victims in that he was from Lafayette, Indiana,
35:06
Speaker 1: which was about an hour north from Indiana, and he
35:09
Speaker 1: was reported missing in early August of nineteen ninety three,
35:12
Speaker 1: and for decades, Manny's fate was unknown and an a
35:15
Speaker 1: testament to dogged work of forensic experts. Manuel's remains were
35:20
Speaker 1: finally DNA confirmed in twenty twenty four, nearly thirty years
35:23
Speaker 1: after he vanished, but at least his family could get
35:27
Speaker 1: some semblance peace and knowing that he was found, but
35:31
Speaker 1: obviously it's still horrible, but this would make headlines in
35:34
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, bringing closure to the Rassendas family after
35:39
Speaker 1: so many years. And then there was Jeffrey Allen Jeff Jones,
35:43
Speaker 1: and he was also an Indianapolis man who went missing
35:45
Speaker 1: on July sixth, nineteen ninety three, at the age of
35:47
Speaker 1: thirty one, and he was suspected early on as a
35:50
Speaker 1: possible victim of the Fox Hollow Killer via earlier identification,
35:55
Speaker 1: but it wasn't until May of twenty twenty four that
35:57
Speaker 1: Jeff's remains were conclusively identified through genetic genealogy. And then
36:01
Speaker 1: there was Michael Frederick Mike Kern, who was forty six
36:05
Speaker 1: years old, one of the oldest victims, and he would
36:08
Speaker 1: go missing on March thirty first in nineteen ninety five.
36:10
Speaker 1: And Mike's disappearance came relatively late in Bowmeister's spree, and
36:14
Speaker 1: it suggests herb had not yet been deterred, even after
36:17
Speaker 1: a suspicious incident in nineteen ninety four, and we'll say
36:20
Speaker 1: more on that soon because it is freaked up. And
36:23
Speaker 1: then there was Alan Livingston who was twenty seven years
36:26
Speaker 1: old and he was last seen getting into someone's car
36:29
Speaker 1: in downtown Indianapolis in August of nineteen ninety three, and
36:32
Speaker 1: Sharon Allan's mother began to suspect that he was among
36:35
Speaker 1: the Foxhall of Farm victims when news broke about Bowmeister
36:38
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six, but she would continue to hold
36:41
Speaker 1: on to hope that her son would maybe return, and
36:44
Speaker 1: she allegedly kept her home phone line connected for decades
36:47
Speaker 1: in the hope that Allan might call, which is so
36:50
Speaker 1: heartbreaking because this was the only number he would have
36:54
Speaker 1: known to call. But his remains would finally be identified
36:57
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. And then there were Daniel Thomas
37:01
Speaker 1: Hollerin whose age is unknown. And Daniel wasn't reported missing
37:05
Speaker 1: nor even suspected as a victim, yet his remains were
37:08
Speaker 1: discovered amongst the bones in Foxhall of Farm. And then
37:11
Speaker 1: there was Jerry Williams Comer who was thirty four years old,
37:15
Speaker 1: and he would go missing on August eighth, nineteen ninety five.
37:18
Speaker 1: And while Jerry was confirmed to have been a victim
37:20
Speaker 1: of Bowmeister, this discovery was not from the Foxhall of
37:24
Speaker 1: Farm remains. His vehicle was discovered after his disappearance, and
37:27
Speaker 1: he fit the victim profile as a young gay man
37:30
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis. But these names, excluding Jerry, are only the
37:34
Speaker 1: identified victims from Foxhall of Farm. In total, more than
37:38
Speaker 1: ten thousand bone fragments were recovered on the property, which
37:43
Speaker 1: represents an estimated twenty five or more individuals that Bawmeister
37:48
Speaker 1: may have murdered, which is sickening, and that means over
37:51
Speaker 1: a dozen victims remain unidentified to this day, and their
37:55
Speaker 1: families might still not know what became of their loved
37:58
Speaker 1: one who disappeared in the nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties.
38:02
Speaker 1: And among those still unnamed could be some victims of
38:05
Speaker 1: the I seventy strangler killings that are now attributed to her.
38:09
Speaker 1: Again unconfirmed, but it's likely, it seems, and it's also
38:15
Speaker 1: possible Bowmeister killed additional men who remains have not been
38:18
Speaker 1: found at all, and if he chose to dump a
38:20
Speaker 1: body elsewhere, or if some evidence on the farm was
38:23
Speaker 1: completely missed, But the full extent of his carnage might
38:26
Speaker 1: never be known, but authorities firmly believe at least twenty
38:30
Speaker 1: five murders can be laid on Herb Baumeister's feet, and
38:33
Speaker 1: the impact of these murders on the Indianapolis LGBTQ plus
38:37
Speaker 1: community was profound and traumatic because during the early nineteen nineties,
38:42
Speaker 1: as gay men kept going missing, fear spread that a
38:45
Speaker 1: serial killer was specifically targeting their community, and many also
38:48
Speaker 1: felt that the police were not taking the disappearances seriously
38:52
Speaker 1: enough because the victims were gay and at the time
38:55
Speaker 1: relationships between law enforcement and LGBTQ plus citizens were often
39:00
Speaker 1: trained by prejudice and mistrust, and a former publisher of
39:03
Speaker 1: a local gay magazine, Josh Thomas, voiced the community's frustration
39:07
Speaker 1: bluntly saying, quote, if somebody were killing cheerleaders at a
39:11
Speaker 1: suburban high school, nobody would rest until the killers were
39:14
Speaker 1: found unquote, and you would tell the press this in
39:17
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six. But because it was only quote only
39:21
Speaker 1: gay men, the urgency was lacking, and families of missing
39:24
Speaker 1: gay men sometimes encountered apathy or harmful assumptions, and police
39:29
Speaker 1: might suggest that a missing man had simply run off
39:32
Speaker 1: to quote live the gay lifestyle somewhere else, rather than
39:37
Speaker 1: treat it as a potential crime that it was. And
39:40
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis, this dynamic led several families to take matters
39:43
Speaker 1: into their own hands, hiring private investigator Virgil Vandergriff to
39:48
Speaker 1: look for their loved ones, and as mentioned, Vandergriff quickly
39:51
Speaker 1: noticed the pattern multiple gay men disappearing in the same
39:54
Speaker 1: area in a short timeframe, and the Mountain community pressure
39:57
Speaker 1: eventually forced the police to acknowledge the poss the disability
40:00
Speaker 1: of a serial killer to do their fucking job. But sadly,
40:04
Speaker 1: by the time the case broke open, many lives had
40:07
Speaker 1: already been lost. But the fact that the members of
40:09
Speaker 1: the LGBTQ plus community banded together to demand action was
40:14
Speaker 1: significant and it ensured that these victims were not forgotten
40:18
Speaker 1: and helped bring a killer spree to an end. So
40:21
Speaker 1: let's get into that. So, throughout the early nineteen nineties,
40:24
Speaker 1: as young men vanished in and around Indianapolis, their families
40:28
Speaker 1: grew desperate for answers and missing persons reports piled up,
40:32
Speaker 1: but initial police response was sluggish and fragmented. And then
40:35
Speaker 1: part of the challenge was that multiple jurisdictions were involved.
40:39
Speaker 1: Some men disappeared from Indianapolis, while others from surrounding areas
40:43
Speaker 1: or even other cities like Lafayette. In the case of
40:46
Speaker 1: men well and without bodies or crime scenes, police departments
40:50
Speaker 1: had little evidence to go on, and the pattern tying
40:52
Speaker 1: the cases together wasn't immediately recognized or cared about clearly.
40:57
Speaker 1: And additionally, the aforementioned fact that many vics were gay
41:00
Speaker 1: may have contributed to a lack of urgency on the
41:03
Speaker 1: part of the investigators, who assumed the men just might
41:06
Speaker 1: have left town voluntarily. So nineteen ninety three turned into
41:10
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, and the list of missing persons just
41:12
Speaker 1: started to lengthen, and it became harder to ignore that
41:15
Speaker 1: something sinister was afoot. And a major turning point in
41:19
Speaker 1: the investigation came thanks to the determination of a private
41:22
Speaker 1: investigator and a brave survivor. So former Marion County Sheriff's
41:26
Speaker 1: detective Virgil Vandergriff had retired from law enforcement and started
41:30
Speaker 1: a private investigation firm, and in nineteen ninety four he
41:33
Speaker 1: was hired by the families of Roger Goodlett and Alan Hussard,
41:38
Speaker 1: just two mothers who refused to let their sons disappearances
41:41
Speaker 1: be shrugged off, and Vandergriff took their concern seriously, you know,
41:45
Speaker 1: like the police should have. And he began comparing notes
41:48
Speaker 1: with police and other families and realized at least eight
41:50
Speaker 1: young men had gone missing under similar circumstances in a
41:54
Speaker 1: short span of time. So sinsing the hallmarks of a
41:56
Speaker 1: serial offender, Vandergriff coordinated an informal task force. He and
42:01
Speaker 1: his associates visited the gay bars, distributed quote missing flyers,
42:06
Speaker 1: and interviewed patrons to gather any clues and this grassroots
42:10
Speaker 1: sleothing paid off because they learned that many in the
42:14
Speaker 1: gay community felt a predator was lurking in their midst
42:17
Speaker 1: and one name, or rather alias would surface, and that
42:21
Speaker 1: was Brian Dumbass I mean Smart, because some Bargoers were
42:26
Speaker 1: counted encounters with a middle aged man who called himself
42:29
Speaker 1: Brian and who was friendly, if a bit odd, and
42:32
Speaker 1: who sometimes invited people out to his quote a state
42:36
Speaker 1: and it sounded benign at first, but at least one
42:39
Speaker 1: man had a terrifying story about Brian Smart, and he
42:44
Speaker 1: lived to tell the tale. And that man is known
42:46
Speaker 1: by the pseudonym Tony Harris. And in nineteen eighty four
42:50
Speaker 1: Tony Harris approached authorities with a haunting account. He believed
42:54
Speaker 1: he had survived an encounter with a serial killer. That
42:57
Speaker 1: Tony was a good friend of Roger Goodlef and after
43:00
Speaker 1: Roger vanished, Tony grew determined to find out what happened,
43:04
Speaker 1: So he spent time at the bars Roger used to frequent,
43:07
Speaker 1: on the lookout for any information, and in the course
43:10
Speaker 1: of this investigation of his own, Tony met a man
43:14
Speaker 1: calling himself Brian Smart. And Brian was sociable and allegedly
43:18
Speaker 1: said he was from out of town temporarily living at
43:21
Speaker 1: a client's farm estate, and one night Brian invited Tony
43:25
Speaker 1: to go for a swim at the place he was staying,
43:28
Speaker 1: and Tony accepted, hoping he might learn if Brian was
43:32
Speaker 1: involved in Roger's disappearance. Which is extremely brave but also terrifying.
43:38
Speaker 1: But it's like a movie. It's absolutely insane, but also
43:41
Speaker 1: like the police are doing shit. So Tony is just
43:45
Speaker 1: like main character. He like what a guy, absolutely insane
43:51
Speaker 1: but amazing at the same time, just wanting to get
43:54
Speaker 1: justice for his friend and figure out what the's going on.
43:57
Speaker 1: But Tony Harris's decision almost cost him his life because
44:00
Speaker 1: he would ride out with Brian out to this unfamiliar
44:03
Speaker 1: property in the suburbs, which we know as Foxhallo Farm,
44:07
Speaker 1: and it was dark when they arrived, but Tony noticed
44:09
Speaker 1: that the home was large and very isolated, and inside,
44:13
Speaker 1: Brian led him to the indoor pool, where mannequins stood
44:17
Speaker 1: around as if attending an endless cocktail party with statues.
44:23
Speaker 1: The fuck I can't even imagine just seeing that and
44:27
Speaker 1: being like, Okay, I need to I need to run,
44:31
Speaker 1: I need to closeline and run out of here, but
44:35
Speaker 1: he didn't. I guess Brian smart somehow explained that away
44:40
Speaker 1: or Tony just wanted to figure out more information, and
44:43
Speaker 1: they would swim and engage in some consensualle activity. And
44:48
Speaker 1: Tony's accounts actually vary during this, but this is this
44:52
Speaker 1: is like the main one that I'm giving you right now.
44:55
Speaker 1: So Brian would offer Tony a drink, which Tony switched
44:59
Speaker 1: out with when Brian wasn't paying attention, which is so
45:03
Speaker 1: smart because he had just a weird vibe from the
45:05
Speaker 1: whole situation. Then Brian suggested something unexpected and he asked
45:10
Speaker 1: Tony to him to enhance the experience as we know erotication,
45:16
Speaker 1: and Tony would go along with this and Brian's eyes
45:19
Speaker 1: would light up with excitement as he did so. And
45:22
Speaker 1: when Brian then wanted to reciprocate to Tony because if
45:26
Speaker 1: you do this thing where Brian or herb would let
45:30
Speaker 1: them him first to kind of gain that trust, and
45:33
Speaker 1: then he'd be like, Okay, now I'll do it to you.
45:35
Speaker 1: It's like this really psychological thing, just planning, like he
45:39
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing. It's all part of his plan.
45:41
Speaker 1: But Tony would feel uneasy and decline the offer, and
45:45
Speaker 1: that's when the mood shifted, because, according to Tony's account,
45:49
Speaker 1: Brian suddenly wrapped a pool hose around Tony's throat and
45:53
Speaker 1: began to try to still him, and there were allegedly
45:57
Speaker 1: multiple attempts like this throughout the evening, and it's mentioned
46:01
Speaker 1: in a few accounts that Tony even faked passing out
46:04
Speaker 1: to cause Brian to stop. But at some point, for
46:06
Speaker 1: reasons unknown, perhaps because Tony was a larger man than
46:10
Speaker 1: Brian which made killing him difficult, or that Tony was
46:13
Speaker 1: not incapacitated from the drink he avoided. Brian then drove
46:17
Speaker 1: Tony back to Indianapolis. So he was now certain that
46:22
Speaker 1: Brian Smart was the one responsible for Rogers disappearance and
46:26
Speaker 1: likely many others, and Tony Harris immediately went to the
46:30
Speaker 1: police with the story, and he provided a description of
46:33
Speaker 1: Brian Smart and recounted the location as best he could
46:37
Speaker 1: because he hadn't known the actual address since he was
46:39
Speaker 1: driven there. But unfortunately, locating both Brian and the farm
46:43
Speaker 1: proved to be very difficult because it wasn't until several
46:47
Speaker 1: months later that Tony would cross paths with Brian again
46:51
Speaker 1: and this time, he made sure to get Brian's license
46:53
Speaker 1: plate number, which is again so smart, and when police
46:56
Speaker 1: ran the plate, it came back registered to her Bell
47:00
Speaker 1: of Westfield, Indiana, and this was the break. They desperately
47:04
Speaker 1: needed a concrete lead linking the pseudonyms to a real individual,
47:09
Speaker 1: and at this point, Herb Baumeister, a man with no
47:12
Speaker 1: criminal record of violence, popped up on the radar of
47:15
Speaker 1: authorities investigating the missing men, and detectives from Hamilton County
47:19
Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department and the Indianapolis's Police Department quietly began looking
47:24
Speaker 1: into Herb's background, and what they found was intriguing, to
47:28
Speaker 1: say the least, because Baumeister owned Fox Hollow Farm, matching
47:32
Speaker 1: Tony's description of the estate with an indoor pool, and
47:35
Speaker 1: Herb also had a history of mental instability and erratic behavior,
47:39
Speaker 1: which fit the profile of a disturbed avender. However, the
47:42
Speaker 1: police knew that suspicions were not enough. It's circumstantial. But
47:47
Speaker 1: also they had the account of Tony literally getting strangled
47:51
Speaker 1: by this guy. So I don't really know why the
47:53
Speaker 1: can't just jump in. But what do I know. You know,
47:55
Speaker 1: I'm not a cop, I'm just a stupid YouTuber, but
47:58
Speaker 1: they would need evidence to serve the Bowmeister property, so
48:01
Speaker 1: in late nineteen ninety five, they approached her directly asking
48:05
Speaker 1: for permission to search Fox Hollow in connection with the
48:08
Speaker 1: missing men and Bowmeister. He was pissed, he was outraged
48:13
Speaker 1: and very uncooperative, and he would just flatly refuse the
48:18
Speaker 1: search request, just adamantly denying any involvement and likely feigning
48:24
Speaker 1: shock at the implication. Oh what me what? No, I
48:27
Speaker 1: have a family, and I had a large property, and
48:29
Speaker 1: I'm bankrupt, and i'm and I'm I'm in the closet
48:33
Speaker 1: and I'm very sad, and I like to kill people.
48:36
Speaker 1: What what was that? Oh? Nothing? I trailed off. I
48:39
Speaker 1: blackedchaut for twenty seconds. What's going on again? Just a
48:41
Speaker 1: fun monster, a piece of shit. So without a warrant
48:44
Speaker 1: or consent, law enforcement was stuck because they didn't have
48:48
Speaker 1: enough for a judge to grant a search warrant at
48:50
Speaker 1: the time, which again I don't understand, because they literally
48:53
Speaker 1: have a victim saying he was like attempted murder. I
48:56
Speaker 1: don't really know why that should be a reason. You know,
49:00
Speaker 1: I don't really understand that, But again, what do I know?
49:02
Speaker 1: I'm a stupid you tuber. During this time, Herb surely
49:05
Speaker 1: realized that as long as he didn't allow a search,
49:08
Speaker 1: the police had nothing concrete on him because it was
49:11
Speaker 1: only a survivor's word versus his, So investigators would then
49:14
Speaker 1: turn their heads over to his wife, Julie Baumeister, in
49:18
Speaker 1: hopes of gaining an ally. So in late nineteen ninety five,
49:21
Speaker 1: two detectives met with Julie and delicately informed her that
49:26
Speaker 1: her husband was under investigation for a quote, homosexual homicide.
49:31
Speaker 1: Why is that different than regular homicide? Why is it
49:34
Speaker 1: called homosexual homicide? It's just faking homicide anyway, different time, really,
49:38
Speaker 1: not that long ago whatever. But it was a phrase
49:41
Speaker 1: that Julie didn't even understand it first, and Julie was
49:45
Speaker 1: incredulous and certain that Herb, her husband of over two decades,
49:50
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly be a violent killer, which, like you know,
49:55
Speaker 1: I'm always just like, how do you not know? But
49:58
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. I no, he seemed to
50:01
Speaker 1: be very very premeditated, very calculated, and he put on
50:05
Speaker 1: quite the facades, so I feel like there is absolutely possibility.
50:10
Speaker 1: She literally had no idea, like she knew he was
50:12
Speaker 1: a bit crazy, but like other than that, she was
50:15
Speaker 1: just blissfully unaware, I guess. But she would say, quote,
50:19
Speaker 1: you're wrong, that can't be true, and she would be
50:21
Speaker 1: extremely angry with the detectives. And it was unnatural response
50:25
Speaker 1: because as far as we know, she'd only ever known
50:28
Speaker 1: her as a quirky, difficult man, but not someone capable
50:31
Speaker 1: of murder. And the investigators persisted describing the pattern of
50:35
Speaker 1: missing men and the incident with quote Brian Smart, and
50:39
Speaker 1: Julie asked them what quote homosexual homicide even meant, and
50:44
Speaker 1: the concept that her straight laced husband might be secretly
50:47
Speaker 1: gay and murdering people was almost beyond her comprehension, which
50:51
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine, because first you find out that
50:53
Speaker 1: your husband's been cheating on you with Ben, and then
50:57
Speaker 1: you find out that he's also been murdering these Men's
51:00
Speaker 1: lot to take on. You know, if she didn't know,
51:02
Speaker 1: that's horrib I mean, it's horrible. It's all horrible, and
51:05
Speaker 1: you want to be like, how did you how did
51:06
Speaker 1: you not know? You know, how did you not know?
51:09
Speaker 1: But you know, some people just aren't as observant and
51:11
Speaker 1: they're just living in their life and they're just not
51:13
Speaker 1: not caring, I guess, but that's too blows for sure.
51:19
Speaker 1: Can't even imagine the thought process there. So this whole
51:21
Speaker 1: thing was just an exceedingly frustrating time for law enforcement
51:25
Speaker 1: just explaining this to Julie. And they had very strong,
51:28
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence against Herb, but no physical evidence. And meanwhile,
51:33
Speaker 1: HERB surely sensed the heat, so police likely surveillanced Foxhall
51:38
Speaker 1: of farm when they could, just hoping Herb might slip up.
51:42
Speaker 1: But Herb kept a very low profile, and notably, no
51:46
Speaker 1: known murders occurred after late nineteen ninety five, suggesting bau
51:50
Speaker 1: Myser may have stopped killing once he knew he was
51:53
Speaker 1: under suspicion, and Michael Mike Kern's disappearance in March of
51:57
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five and at Jerry Williams in August of
52:01
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five are the latest victims linked to him.
52:04
Speaker 1: But still the stalemate continued into the spring of nineteen
52:08
Speaker 1: ninety six, and investigators periodically checked in with Julie baumeisur
52:12
Speaker 1: gently urging her to reconsider and allow a search of
52:15
Speaker 1: the property that each time she declined, torn between loyalty
52:20
Speaker 1: to her husband and the disturbing allegations she was hearing.
52:23
Speaker 1: If somebody came up to me and told me that
52:25
Speaker 1: my husband was just all this stuff, I'd be like, yeah,
52:28
Speaker 1: check the property to rule that out, like put my
52:32
Speaker 1: pride away, check that shit out. There was a chance
52:35
Speaker 1: I was living with a murderer. It just doesn't make
52:37
Speaker 1: sense to me. But whatever, what do I know. I'm
52:39
Speaker 1: just stupid, you tuber, I don't know anything. So then
52:42
Speaker 1: as they kept contacting Julie, she recalled thinking, quote, what
52:46
Speaker 1: if the police are right and I'm wrong. There we go, Julie,
52:50
Speaker 1: she's getting it now, and you know, benefit of the doubt.
52:53
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine getting that news and just like hoping,
52:57
Speaker 1: just that hope that there's still the wrong guy. Couldn't
53:01
Speaker 1: be him. That's all she's ever known is this guy
53:03
Speaker 1: that's been a good husband. And then I don't know,
53:06
Speaker 1: you probably just start watching him and being like, yeah,
53:08
Speaker 1: maybe he could be So I'm not I'm never gonna
53:12
Speaker 1: victim blame. And in this situation, if she didn't know
53:14
Speaker 1: absolutely a victim in this, it's just all like looking
53:17
Speaker 1: on it, You're like, what, but we don't know, we
53:20
Speaker 1: weren't there, you know. So the breakthrough finally came from
53:24
Speaker 1: within the Bellmeister family, and by early nineteen ninety six,
53:28
Speaker 1: Herb and Julie's marriage had reached a breaking point and
53:31
Speaker 1: the financial strain from the thrift stores had worsened. One
53:35
Speaker 1: store was severely struggling, and Herb's behavior was getting more
53:39
Speaker 1: and more erratic, And in early nineteen ninety six, after
53:43
Speaker 1: police approached her with the allegations, Julie decided to file
53:47
Speaker 1: for divorce. Nice Julie high five, Hell yeah. This was
53:50
Speaker 1: a bold move, signaling that her faith in Herb was waiting,
53:54
Speaker 1: and importantly, as part of the divorce and custody process,
53:58
Speaker 1: Julie took steps that gave her more leverage over the
54:01
Speaker 1: property because she's turning into a boss as bitch now. So.
54:05
Speaker 1: By June nineteen ninety six, Julie had found herself reflecting
54:07
Speaker 1: on the detective's warnings and shared a number of worrying
54:11
Speaker 1: incidences with her lawyer, and one in particular had been
54:14
Speaker 1: nagging at her memory. And this is where I go
54:16
Speaker 1: back and I'm like, how didn't you know? But again,
54:19
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm gonna give it the benefit of the
54:20
Speaker 1: doubt because what do I know? But it's because a
54:24
Speaker 1: skeleton was found on the property by her son two
54:30
Speaker 1: years earlier, and she knew about this incident, and she
54:34
Speaker 1: just was like, Ah, it's probably a dog, even though
54:38
Speaker 1: it's a human skull. I don't know. So that's where
54:41
Speaker 1: I go back, and I'm like, well, I don't think she.
54:44
Speaker 1: I think she just really wants to be in a
54:45
Speaker 1: nice house and maybe just not not want to hold
54:48
Speaker 1: her husband accountable. But again, I feel like that can't
54:51
Speaker 1: be possible with her like knowing he was a murderer.
54:54
Speaker 1: But anyway, I'm digressing deeply. Let me know what you
54:57
Speaker 1: think in the comments. But really strange, which kid found
55:01
Speaker 1: a human skeleton on the property, And this whole skeleton
55:05
Speaker 1: finding incident from nineteen ninety four suddenly seemed a little
55:08
Speaker 1: bit more sinister than I guess it did back then.
55:12
Speaker 1: So the unraveling of Herb Baumeister's deadly secrets began with
55:16
Speaker 1: a gruesome discovery at his home. And that was a
55:18
Speaker 1: discovery that incredibly was overlooked because in the late fall
55:22
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety four, Herb's then thirteen year old son
55:26
Speaker 1: was playing in a wooded area in the fox Hall
55:28
Speaker 1: of Farm when he stumbled upon a human skull lying
55:31
Speaker 1: on the ground, and not far from the skull where
55:34
Speaker 1: several more bone fragments were found later on from a
55:38
Speaker 1: human skeleton. And this boy, his son, would bring the
55:42
Speaker 1: skull home to show his mother, And when Julie confronted
55:45
Speaker 1: Herb about this morbid find, Herb had a ready explanation.
55:50
Speaker 1: And this is where I'm back to. You know, he
55:52
Speaker 1: was really good at talking Julie, like, why would Julie,
55:55
Speaker 1: why would you think that your husband can do that?
55:58
Speaker 1: You know, he'd liked it, So I'm back, I'm back,
56:00
Speaker 1: I'm back with Julie. But he calmly told his wife
56:03
Speaker 1: that the skull was an old medical specimen, likely part
56:06
Speaker 1: of a skeleton used in anatomy study that his late father,
56:10
Speaker 1: remember doctor Baumeister was a physician, had owned and left
56:14
Speaker 1: among his belongings, and Herb even suggested that perhaps his
56:18
Speaker 1: father's medical skeleton had been stored in their garage and
56:21
Speaker 1: animals dragged it into the woods. So animals don't eat
56:24
Speaker 1: bones or skulls. Usually it's left because there's no meat
56:28
Speaker 1: on it. But okay, so it was an odd story,
56:32
Speaker 1: but Herb delivered it earnestly and astonishingly Julie believed him,
56:38
Speaker 1: or at least accepted the explanation at the time, which
56:41
Speaker 1: again I'm just I'm gonna give it the benefit of
56:44
Speaker 1: the doubt. But she later said Herb was so matter
56:47
Speaker 1: of fact and reassuring about it that she saw no
56:50
Speaker 1: reason to suspect otherwise, which okay, sure, and Herb then
56:54
Speaker 1: took the skull from her and said he would dispose
56:57
Speaker 1: of it. Unlikely he threw it back onto the pile
57:00
Speaker 1: remains in the woods, or hit it elsewhere on the grounds,
57:03
Speaker 1: and this incident in nineteen ninety four was perhaps the
57:06
Speaker 1: closest Herb came to being exposed during his act of
57:09
Speaker 1: killing years. And it's chilling to realize that if things
57:13
Speaker 1: had gone differently, the case might have been blown open
57:16
Speaker 1: then or he could have hurt his family. So it's
57:19
Speaker 1: almost I don't know, I mean, it's so many lives
57:24
Speaker 1: would have been saved if there was some deeper thinking
57:28
Speaker 1: going on, just so horrifying and unfortunate. However, the seed
57:32
Speaker 1: of doubt was planted, and even if Julie didn't fully
57:35
Speaker 1: realize it, because that skull sighting effectively ended Herb's killing
57:39
Speaker 1: spree for a time, and investigators believe Herber was so
57:43
Speaker 1: alarmed at a Sun's discovery that he stopped murdering in
57:46
Speaker 1: late nineteen ninety four, at least until the spring of
57:48
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five because he had come perilously close to
57:52
Speaker 1: being caught and likely become more cautious. So fast forward
57:56
Speaker 1: to June nineteen ninety six, Julie Baumeister, now in the
57:59
Speaker 1: midst of divorce proceedings, was reflecting on her life with
58:02
Speaker 1: Herb and all the peculiar, unsettling moments, including that skull. Meanwhile,
58:07
Speaker 1: the police were still politely knocking on her door, armed
58:11
Speaker 1: with new urgency after hearing that herb's business was failing
58:15
Speaker 1: and the marriage was collapsing, stressors that might prompt HERB
58:18
Speaker 1: to flee or destroy evidence. So Julie finally reached a
58:22
Speaker 1: tipping point, and on June twenty fourth, nineteen ninety six,
58:26
Speaker 1: she contacted her attorney and authorities and gave them the
58:30
Speaker 1: green light they'd been waiting for, and that was permission
58:33
Speaker 1: to search Fox Hollow Farm, and critically, she chose a
58:36
Speaker 1: moment when HERB was out of the house. So with
58:39
Speaker 1: HERB safely away, Julie met with Hamilton County detectives and
58:42
Speaker 1: allowed them onto the property, and one could only imagine
58:45
Speaker 1: her dread and resolve in that moment. She likely hoped
58:49
Speaker 1: nothing would be found, yet part of her must have
58:52
Speaker 1: feared the worst, and investigators would waste no time because
58:56
Speaker 1: now armed with consent and by extension, a property search,
59:00
Speaker 1: weren't Teams from the Hamilton County Sheriff's Offfix and the
59:03
Speaker 1: Indianapolis's Police, along with forensic anthropologists from the University of Indianapolis,
59:08
Speaker 1: descended onto Foxhall of Farm in the last week of
59:11
Speaker 1: June nineteen ninety six, and what they found was beyond
59:15
Speaker 1: anyone's imagination because in that wooded area near the back
59:19
Speaker 1: of the house, an officer spotted what looked like a
59:23
Speaker 1: human leg bone just laying on the ground, almost immediately,
59:28
Speaker 1: like bones were just laying on the property, and upon
59:32
Speaker 1: closer inspection, the surrounding soil glinted with white fragments of
59:36
Speaker 1: bone shards and they were everywhere. And as they ventured further,
59:41
Speaker 1: investigators found a sort of dumping ground, just a pile
59:45
Speaker 1: of burned, charred bone pieces didn't even care enough to
59:50
Speaker 1: bury them, and two main clusters of remains were identified
59:54
Speaker 1: in the woods and Another section of the property to
59:56
Speaker 1: the west of the house revealed yet more bones. The
1:00:00
Speaker 1: sheer volume of these bones were staggering, and over the
1:00:03
Speaker 1: next several days, evidence technicians collected bone after bone, teeth,
1:00:09
Speaker 1: and even personal items, and then covered handcuffs suggesting restraints
1:00:14
Speaker 1: were used on victims. They found shell casings from a firearm,
1:00:18
Speaker 1: though it's not believed herb ever shot any of his victims,
1:00:22
Speaker 1: so the casings might have just been from shooting on
1:00:24
Speaker 1: the property. But by the end of the two week search,
1:00:26
Speaker 1: more than ten thousand human bones and fragments had been recovered,
1:00:30
Speaker 1: and these remains would later be analyzed and found to
1:00:33
Speaker 1: represent at least eleven distinct individuals, and possibly up to
1:00:37
Speaker 1: seventeen more, though only the ten that we went over
1:00:40
Speaker 1: earlier are confirmed as of twenty twenty five. So for
1:00:43
Speaker 1: a quiet Indianapolis suburb, this discovery was the stuff of nightmares,
1:00:49
Speaker 1: a serial killer's burial pit right in their backyard, and
1:00:52
Speaker 1: Julie Baumeister, who was present during some of the search,
1:00:55
Speaker 1: was absolutely distraught as the evidence mounted that her husband
1:00:59
Speaker 1: had indeed been killing men on their property and the
1:01:02
Speaker 1: realization that she and her children had lived alongside this
1:01:06
Speaker 1: horror was almost too much to bear. I can't even
1:01:09
Speaker 1: imagine finding that out like how horrible. And as the
1:01:12
Speaker 1: news of the find broke, Herb Bowmeister got wind that
1:01:16
Speaker 1: the police were searching Foxhall of Farm and Herb's reaction
1:01:20
Speaker 1: was swift and he would flee Indiana almost immediately. So
1:01:24
Speaker 1: on June twenty ninth, the police formally issued a warrant
1:01:26
Speaker 1: for Herb's arrest on multiple homicide charges, but they were
1:01:30
Speaker 1: too late, and Baumeister had already driven north, crossing the
1:01:34
Speaker 1: border into Ontario, Canada, so a multi state and international
1:01:38
Speaker 1: alert went out for him, but his exact whereabouts were
1:01:41
Speaker 1: unknown for a few days, which is so scary. And
1:01:44
Speaker 1: then on July third, nineteen ninety six, two days after
1:01:47
Speaker 1: my birthday, campers in Pinery Provincial Park, a large park
1:01:50
Speaker 1: on Lake Huron in Ontario, found a man's body inside
1:01:54
Speaker 1: a parked car, and it was Herb Baumeister, taking the
1:01:58
Speaker 1: easy way out, like the peace shit, he is just
1:02:01
Speaker 1: avoiding any sort of consequences. And Baumeister's body was discovered
1:02:05
Speaker 1: just as law enforcement back home was closing in, and
1:02:08
Speaker 1: he chose to take his own life rather than face
1:02:12
Speaker 1: any sort of consequences or capture. So Herb's taking of
1:02:15
Speaker 1: his own life meant that he would never stand trial
1:02:17
Speaker 1: for his crimes, never answer the questions that so many had,
1:02:21
Speaker 1: so many family members had. However, he did leave behind
1:02:24
Speaker 1: a note, which was just a rambling three page letter
1:02:29
Speaker 1: addressed mainly to his wife and children. But in it
1:02:33
Speaker 1: Herb oddly apologized for quote messing up the scenery of
1:02:37
Speaker 1: the Canadian park where he took his own life, and
1:02:40
Speaker 1: he expressed regret over the breakup of his marriage and
1:02:43
Speaker 1: the failure of his business, citing those as reasons for
1:02:47
Speaker 1: his impending ending of life. And telling lye what Herb's
1:02:51
Speaker 1: note did not mention was anything about the eleven plus
1:02:55
Speaker 1: men whose remains had been found at his home, and
1:02:58
Speaker 1: he made no confession or reference to the murders at all.
1:03:02
Speaker 1: And this omission infuriated investigators and just devastated the victim's families.
1:03:07
Speaker 1: These Bawmeister died without ever acknowledging or taking responsibility for
1:03:12
Speaker 1: the lives he had brutally taken. It was as if
1:03:15
Speaker 1: in Herb's mind those young men simply just did not matter,
1:03:19
Speaker 1: and even in death, he stuck to the narrative that
1:03:22
Speaker 1: he was the victim of the circumstance with his failed
1:03:26
Speaker 1: marriage and business woes, and that he was not a murderer.
1:03:30
Speaker 1: So police and prosecutor's publicly voiced frustration that Baumeister's final
1:03:34
Speaker 1: act was one of cowardice and silence, robbing the families
1:03:39
Speaker 1: of any chance at answers or justice in court. And
1:03:42
Speaker 1: with herb dead, the case moved from a man hunt
1:03:44
Speaker 1: to a massive forensic identification effort. So throughout late nineteen
1:03:48
Speaker 1: ninety six and into nineteen ninety seven, anthropologists and law
1:03:52
Speaker 1: enforcement worked tirelessly to identify the bone fragments recovered from
1:03:57
Speaker 1: Foxhollow Farm, and it was painstaking work because the burned, crushed,
1:04:01
Speaker 1: and intermingled bones made it extremely challenging to match pieces
1:04:05
Speaker 1: to specific individuals. And still progress was made, and by
1:04:09
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine authorities announced they had confidently identified the
1:04:13
Speaker 1: remains of several men from the property, and the identifications
1:04:16
Speaker 1: were done via methods like dental records DAN and a
1:04:18
Speaker 1: comparisons with family members and personal items found, and each
1:04:22
Speaker 1: identification brought a mix of sorrow and relief to the families,
1:04:26
Speaker 1: sorrow to have confirmation of death, but relief to finally
1:04:30
Speaker 1: know and to be able to hold funerals. For instance,
1:04:33
Speaker 1: when bones belonging to Alan Bussard were identified, his mother
1:04:36
Speaker 1: Sharon felt vindicated in her long held intuition that quote,
1:04:41
Speaker 1: I know he's there at Fox Hollow. I just know it.
1:04:44
Speaker 1: A mother always knows. And the scope of Baumeister's crimes
1:04:48
Speaker 1: had fully come to light for the public, and the
1:04:50
Speaker 1: case would just shock Indiana and the entire nation, revealing
1:04:55
Speaker 1: that a serial killer had been active and under the radar,
1:04:58
Speaker 1: targeting gay men in the heart of the Midwest. And
1:05:01
Speaker 1: the search of Foxhallo Farm didn't end with Herb's death,
1:05:05
Speaker 1: because over the years, additional searches were conducted as technology
1:05:08
Speaker 1: improved or as new tips emerge, and remarkably, as late
1:05:12
Speaker 1: as December twenty twenty two, investigators returned to Fox Hollow
1:05:16
Speaker 1: with cadaver dogs and located yet another bone fragment and
1:05:20
Speaker 1: several new spots of interest on the property and the
1:05:23
Speaker 1: shows that even decades later, the ground of Fox Hollow
1:05:26
Speaker 1: may still hold secrets and small pieces of young men
1:05:29
Speaker 1: who never made it home. And a renewed effort in
1:05:32
Speaker 1: the twenty twenties, spearheaded by Hamilton County corner Jeff Jellison
1:05:36
Speaker 1: has focused on using modern DNA techniques like forensic genetic
1:05:40
Speaker 1: genealogy to identify the remaining unknown victims and in twenty
1:05:43
Speaker 1: twenty three. In twenty twenty four, these efforts paid off
1:05:46
Speaker 1: and they would identify Alan Livingston, who had vanished in
1:05:49
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, and the aforementioned for Zendez and Jones,
1:05:53
Speaker 1: and Jellison emphasized that it was quote not acceptable for
1:05:57
Speaker 1: these people to remain nameless, essentially left on a shelf
1:06:01
Speaker 1: in storage for years. So thanks to improved the DNA testing,
1:06:05
Speaker 1: he said, quote we need to make every effort possible
1:06:08
Speaker 1: to identify these people and return them to their loved ones,
1:06:12
Speaker 1: which is just amazing. It's amazing that technology has become
1:06:16
Speaker 1: what has become and people are so determined to bring
1:06:20
Speaker 1: family's peace. I think it's so incredible. So the case
1:06:23
Speaker 1: officially remains open and an unsolved homicide investigation in the
1:06:27
Speaker 1: sense that not all victims are accounted for and no
1:06:31
Speaker 1: charges wherever filed due to herbs taking of his own life,
1:06:34
Speaker 1: and for the detectives and scientists involved, there is a
1:06:37
Speaker 1: commitment to continue working until as many of the victims
1:06:40
Speaker 1: as possible have their names restored and Herb Baumeister's death
1:06:44
Speaker 1: marked the end of a criminal case against him, but
1:06:47
Speaker 1: it did not end to the haunting questions, which is
1:06:50
Speaker 1: why did he do it? And how did no one notice?
1:06:53
Speaker 1: And could it have ever been stopped sooner? And these
1:06:56
Speaker 1: questions have been explored in the years since through profile
1:07:00
Speaker 1: documentaries and countless discussions among true crime followers. But to
1:07:04
Speaker 1: understand her Bawmeister is to delve into a perplexing psyche,
1:07:09
Speaker 1: one that on the surface managed a normal life, but
1:07:12
Speaker 1: underneath was driven by dark compulsions. Because what could drive
1:07:16
Speaker 1: a man like her Bowmeister to commit such unspeakable acts?
1:07:20
Speaker 1: And we can contemplate and theorize, but at the end
1:07:23
Speaker 1: of the day, we'll never know, because that piece of
1:07:26
Speaker 1: shit took his own life and hopefully he's rotting in hell.
1:07:31
Speaker 1: But that is Fox Hollow Farm and her Bowmeister. What
1:07:36
Speaker 1: a monster, I mean, horrible, But just the community involves
1:07:42
Speaker 1: and everyone stepping up and Tony and the moms and
1:07:47
Speaker 1: the private investigator and all the scientists. Now it is
1:07:50
Speaker 1: quite amazing what people banding together can do. And I'm
1:07:55
Speaker 1: just going to choose to remember the victims in the
1:07:57
Speaker 1: situation and not the Afroma piece of shit. But let
1:08:02
Speaker 1: me know what other cases you want me to deep
1:08:03
Speaker 1: dive into in the comments below. I always read the comments,
1:08:07
Speaker 1: and also please stay safe out there and I will
1:08:09
Speaker 1: see you in the next video. Okay bye,