Herbert Baumeister was accused of murdering at least two dozen men and boys he lured from gay bars in Indianapolis to his rural estate
Authorities in Indianapolis are reaching out to the public in a renewed effort to identify the remains of more victims of notorious serial killer Herbert Baumeister, who has been linked to the deaths of at least two dozen men and boys in the 1980s and ’90s.
Clues to Baumeister’s horrific crimes first came to light in 1992, when a gay man contacted police to claim that an individual who called himself “Brian Smart” had picked up a friend of his at a local gay bar and killed him. He told cops the same man tried to strangle him with a hose when they had sex.
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Three years later, the man saw Baumeister again and shared his license plate number with police.
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Authorities approached Baumeister and asked to search his 18-acre property, known as Fox Hollow Farm, in Westfield, Indiana, north of Indianapolis. They were rebuffed by Baumeister and his wife.
A year later, frightened by her husband’s erratic mood swings and increasingly violent behavior, Baumeister’s wife filed for divorce and gave the police permission to search the property. She later maintained she and her husband had sex only six times during their marriage and she never saw Baumeister naked.
The wealthy landowner made his fortune as founder of Indiana’s Sav-A-Lot grocery store chain.
An initial search of the estate and subsequent discoveries revealed a grisly history of death and dismemberment: over 10,000 bones, many crushed and burned, were uncovered on the sprawling property. Other evidence included handcuffs and shotgun shells.
Police believe Baumeister killed and buried his victims after luring them to the property from gay bars in Indianapolis, while his wife and child were away on trips.
Evidence of 11 bodies on the estate’s grounds were found in the initial search, prompting authorities to issue a warrant for Baumeister’s arrest. A week later, Baumeister shot and killed himself in a park in Ontario, Canada. He was 49.
Over three years, authorities were able to identify eight men using dental records and available DNA technologies. Those efforts stopped when a funding request to continue work on the case was denied, while the identities of at least 17 victims remained a mystery.
That decision “essentially halted further efforts to identify the victims and placed the cost of a homicide investigation on family members of missing people,” current Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison told the AP.
“I can’t speak for those investigators, but it was just game over,” Jellison said.
Then in 2022, the cousin of a man he believed to be another of Baumeister’s victims stepped forward, asking authorities if they could establish a forensic link to his relative with the bones kept in storage since work on the case was halted.
“How do you say no to that? That’s our job as coroners by statute, to identify the deceased,” Jellison said.
Police took DNA samples from the suspected victim’s mother and sister. From among a select group of samples from the 10,000 bones in storage, Jellison found a match.
Police also suspect that Baumeister may have been the “I-70 Strangler,” a serial murderer who dumped his naked or partially clothed victims’ bodies near Interstate 70, a major east-west artery that runs through Indianapolis, during the late 1980s. Though the serial killings remain officially unsolved, in April 1999, police named Baumeister as their prime suspect in the case, noting that bodies stopped appearing on the interstate after Baumeister purchased his estate in 1991.
Baumeister’s victims ranged in age from 14 to 45.
Relatives of men who went missing and were possible victims of Baumeister’s crimes in the Indianapolis area are encouraged to contact the Indiana State Police missing persons hotline at 833-466-2653 or the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office at 317-770-4415.
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