Herb Baumeister

Herbert Richard Baumeister (April 7, 1947 – July 3, 1996) was an American businessman and suspected serial killer. A resident of the Indianapolis suburb of Westfield, Indiana, Baumeister came under investigation for murdering over a dozen men in the early-to-mid 1990s, most of whom were last seen at gay bars. Police found the remains of eleven men, eight identified, on Baumeister's property. Baumeister died by suicide after a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was later linked to a series of murders of at least eleven men along Interstate 70, which occurred in the early 1980s to the mid 1990s.
Herb Baumeister was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 7, 1947, the oldest of four children born to anesthesiologist Dr. Herbert Eugene Baumeister (d. November 12, 1986) and Elizabeth Baumeister (née Schmidt; d. April 7, 2013). Baumeister's childhood was reportedly normal, but he began exhibiting antisocial behavior by the onset of adolescence. Friends later recalled his urophilia and how he used to "ponder what it would be like to taste human urine." He also enjoyed urinating on teachers' desks and playing with dead animals. In his teens, Baumeister's behavior caused his father to have him submit to mental examinations. He was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder, but did not receive further psychiatric treatment.
In 1965, Baumeister attended Indiana University for a semester before dropping out, but returned in 1967. In 1972, he attended a semester at Butler University. As an adult, Baumeister drifted through a series of jobs, marked by a strong work ethic but also by increasingly bizarre behavior. Baumeister married Juliana "Julie" Saiter in November 1971, a union that produced three children. Saiter later said they had been sexually intimate only six times in over twenty-five years of marriage and never saw her husband nude. Six months after his marriage, Baumeister was committed to a psychiatric hospital by his father for two months; his wife said he was "hurting and needed help." Baumeister eventually founded the successful Sav-A-Lot thrift store chain in Indianapolis in 1988.
The I-70 Strangler is the nickname of an unidentified American serial killer who killed at least eleven young boys and adult men in Indiana and Ohio between June 1980 and October 1991, dumping their bodies near Interstate 70. The killer met his victims in popular gay bars and other similar establishments within a four-block radius in Indianapolis. All of the victims were later found naked or partially clothed near Interstate 70, often dumped in rivers, streams and ditches in the rural countryside. Each had been strangled to death. Though officially unsolved, Baumeister was named the prime suspect in the case in April 1999 by law enforcement. According to investigators, bodies related to the I-70 Strangler case stopped being found in 1991 after Baumeister bought the Fox Hollow Farm, which he would use as a burial site for his subsequent victims.
In May 1988, the Baumeisters purchased and moved to Fox Hollow Farm, an 18-acre property built in 1978 off 156th Street and the Monon Trail in Westfield, Indiana. In 1994, Baumeister's son had been playing in the family's wooded backyard when he found a complete, partially buried human skeleton. Baumeister explained to his family that it had been one of his father's dissecting skeletons; he then had it stored in their garage and buried it in the garden again after he had cleaned out the garage.
On June 24, 1996, investigators recovered human bone fragments of at least eleven people buried in the woods at Fox Hollow. A new search on December 4, 2022, found one bone and identified twenty additional locations that might have more remains buried under the ground. Only eight people have been identified since the initial discovery. The additional three remains are still unidentified although they are all believed to be male and to have been victims of homicide. Hamilton County Coroner's office have appealed to the public requesting anyone with missing family members from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s in the Indianapolis area to complete a DNA test in an effort to help identify the victims' remains. As of January 2024, forensic experts continue working in an effort to identify nearly 10,000 portions of human remains recovered from an unknown number of victims at Fox Hollow Farm.
Authorities have publicly and posthumously linked the unsolved disappearance of Jerry Williams-Comer, 34, to Baumeister. Williams-Comer was last seen in Indianapolis on August 8, 1995. After his disappearance, his vehicle was found at Castleton Square Mall. As a young gay man, Williams-Comer fit the profile of Baumeister's victims, despite the fact that his remains were never recovered from Baumeister's residence.
By the early-1990s, investigators with the Marion County Sheriff's Department and the Indianapolis Police Department began investigating the disappearances of gay men of similar age, height, and weight in the Indianapolis area. In 1994, they were contacted by a man named Tony Harris claiming that a gay bar patron calling himself "Brian Smart" had likely killed a friend of his, Roger Goodlet. Harris’ suspicion was based on his own encounter with “Smart” who had attempted to kill him with a pool hose during an erotic asphyxiation session in his mansion after he had met him at the 501 Club, a local Indianapolis gay bar. Harris eventually saw this man again in August 1995, following his car and noting his license plate number.
Police identified "Brian Smart" as Herb Baumeister. Investigators approached Baumeister, told him he was a suspect in the disappearances, and asked to search his house. Both Baumeister and his wife, Julie, refused to allow a search of their property. By June 1996, however, Julie had become sufficiently frightened by her husband's erratic behavior that, after filing for divorce, she consented to a search. The search of the estate was conducted while Baumeister was on vacation. It turned up the remains of eleven men, eight of whom were identified.
With a warrant out for his arrest, Baumeister fled to Ontario, where he committed suicide at Pinery Provincial Park on Lake Huron by shooting himself in the head with a .357 Magnum handgun. Baumeister left a 3-page suicide note, written on yellow notepaper. He regretted messing up the park, he wrote, and felt badly about his broken marriage and failing business, but he did not mention the remains of his victims or admit to any crime. He described items on his trip, including his intention to kill himself in a different place, but seeing children there had changed his mind. His final meal was a peanut butter sandwich.
The A&E television series Investigative Reports aired an episode about Baumeister titled The Secret Life of a Serial Killer in 1997. History featured the case in their Perfect Crimes series. The case was also featured on The Investigators on TruTV in 2008, Behind Mansion Walls on Investigation Discovery (ID), Paranormal Witness on Syfy in 2012, and Ghost Adventures in May 2014. An independent documentary film titled The Haunting of Fox Hollow Farm also explores the crimes and the possibility of hauntings on the grounds of Baumeister's former estate.
ID featured the case again on the series True Nightmares, in October 2015. The Crime Junkie podcast released an episode on Baumeister on March 4, 2018. The Monster Presents: Insomniac podcast released a two-part episode about the case on June 27, 2019. The All Things Comedy Mexican podcast Leyendas Legendarias released an episode where they talked about the case on October 14, 2020.
Georgia Hardstark covered the case on the podcast, My Favorite Murder, in episode 67, "Live at the Egyptian Room", during a live performance in Indianapolis. The podcast The Last Podcast on the Left covered Baumeister across a three-part series from March to April 2024. In 2025, Hulu released a four-part documentary about the case called, The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of A Serial Killer, which promoted the theory that Baumeister had an accomplice.