57. Herb Baumeister

Herbert Baumeister was born in Indiana in 1947 and grew up in a middle-class family near Indianapolis. Even as a young man he showed troubling signs, and he spent time in a mental institution as an adult. Still, he built what looked like an ordinary life. He married Julie Saiter in 1971, raised three children, and ran a chain of successful thrift stores called Sav-A-Lot. To neighbors and customers, he seemed like a respectable businessman and family man.

Behind that image was a double life. In the early 1990s, Baumeister began visiting gay bars in Indianapolis under the name "Brian Smart." He lured men back to Fox Hollow Farm, his large estate in Westfield, Indiana, while his wife and children were away. There he strangled them, and he buried and scattered their remains across his wooded property.

The first hint of trouble came in 1994, when one of his sons found a human bone in the yard. Baumeister brushed it off as a medical skeleton. The truth surfaced through a survivor. A man who had escaped went to police and helped them connect the disappearances to "Brian Smart," who was eventually identified as Baumeister. In 1996, while he was away, his wife allowed investigators to search the farm. They uncovered thousands of charred bone fragments, the remains of at least eleven men.

Baumeister did not stay to face the case. He fled to Canada and, on July 3, 1996, shot himself at a provincial park in Ontario. He left a suicide note that mentioned his failing marriage and business but never confessed to the killings.

Investigators later suspected he may also have been responsible for a series of unsolved murders in which bodies were dumped along highways in Indiana and Ohio. Because he died before any trial, much about his crimes remains uncertain. Efforts to identify his victims from the recovered remains have continued for decades, giving names back to some of the men lost at Fox Hollow Farm.

Sources Full list on patreon

• Jenny Labalme, "Suicide note mentions marriage, business but not bones," The Indianapolis Star, July 6, 1996 (pp. 1–2). — The three-page suicide note's contents. (Anchor contemporary source for the death.)
• The New York Times, July 1996 — Quoting Hamilton County Sheriff's Sgt. Kenneth C. Whisman that the note "did not mention the deaths or remains." (Exact headline/date/URL not independently verified — fetch blocked; attribution confirmed second-hand.)
• Associated Press wire, early July 1996 — Breaking discovery / body-count coverage ("bodies found on Westfield estate").
• People, "While Julie Was Away," Dec. 23, 1996 (Richard Jerome & Fannie Weinstein)
• Indianapolis Monthly, Dec. 1996 — Julie Baumeister's own first-person essay.
• Reuters / Indianapolis Star-News wire (c. 1996–1999) — Dr. Stephen Nawrocki, "Our minimum number at the site is 11. There could be more."; Det. Bill Clifford on the DNA signatures.

• Detective Mary Wilson's 12-page handwritten memo, dated June 27, 1996 — Obtained via public records and published by WRTV (Vic Ryckaert), "Forgotten at Fox Hollow," 2023.
• WRTV / WCPO, "Forgotten at Fox Hollow" (Vic Ryckaert), 2023 — the memo and case documents from the Hamilton County Sheriff

• Fannie Weinstein & Melinda Wilson, Where the Bodies Are Buried (St. Martin's, 1998) 
• Rob Graves & Richard Estep, The Horrors of Fox Hollow Farm (2019) 

• Stephen Nawrocki et al., "A Taphonomic Analysis of Human Cremains from the Fox Hollow Farm Serial Homicide Site" 
• University of Indianapolis Human Identification Center (Dr. Krista Latham) — remains curation/analysis; Latham's "marginalized in life… in death" quotes.

• Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, "Herbert R. Baumeister" (indyencyclopedia.org) — timeline, the Sept. 12, 1996 first-four IDs, "concluded he was responsible."

• Indianapolis Monthly, "Unburying the Truth," Eve Batey (Dec. 2024; updated Nov. 4, 2025) — Jellison's "eight gay men from Indianapolis, what do we care?" and "blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls from Carmel or Fishers" quotes; the Livingston landline detail.