By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories There is a place in Indiana. It's a spacious house sitting on several, wooded acres, which for many years became the final, but not restful place for young men, the victims of a ruthless killer. His name was Herb Baumeister, born on April 7, 1947, the son of Dr. Herbert and Elizabeth Baumeister. He was one of four children. His father was an anesthesiologist who had been practicing since the late 1950s. One has to wonder what Dr. Baumeister thought of the oldest of his four children. His behavior was disturbing from an early age, but it became undeniable when he reached puberty. He started to develop a fascination with death, and wondered aloud what urine would taste like. He would chase his male classmates asking for a drink. Herb would torture animals and play with the corpses. Another time he took the carcass of a dead crow he found on the road, and placed it on his teacher's desk. These were indicators of antisocial disrespect for authority. A psychiatric evaluation rendered after his father took him to secret psychological tests, were that he suffered from schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. This diagnosis indicated that Herb could be a danger to himself, and those around him. During his high school years Herb was not known to date, and he met his future wife when he attended the University of Indiana. Shortly after his marriage to Juliana "Julie" Saiter in 1971, under his father's direction Herb was committed to a psychiatric ward for two months. This was after Julie said her husband was "hurting and needed help." Perhaps Dr. Baumeister feared the new bride would leave, now becoming aware of just how strange her new husband was. Dr. Baumeister ran interference for his son again and got him a job as a copy boy at The Indianapolis Star. This was short-lived and he went on to work for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV), which some suspect was through his father's connections as well. He was a difficult and odd co-worker, and he sent Christmas cards with him and another man dressed in drag. After ten years he was promoted to program director. By then Julie had quit her job and became a stay-at-home-mom to their three children, Erich, Marne and Emily, born between 1979 and 1984. In May, 1985 the body of Eric Roettger, 17, was found in a creek bed in Preble County, Ohio. During the coming years, the bodies of other young men would be found, but the cases became cold. This was the same year Baumeister was terminated from his job at the BMV, after sending a letter to Governor Robert D. Orr that he had urinated on. Prior to this he had urinated on his boss' desk. He was arrested for DUI and auto theft; both which he beat. His father died in November, 1986. He was spared from seeing the heinous acts his son was committing, and which would come to light in a few years. Herb Baumeister at one point went to work for a thrift store, and saw the potential for starting a new business. In 1988, the Baumeisters established the Sav-A-Lot thrift store in conjunction with the highly respected Children's Bureau of Indianapolis, a centenarian charity benefiting the area's families. The couple borrowed $4,000 from Herb's mother. The business was so successful that they moved to the 18-acre estate called Fox Hollow Farm that same year. Despite the appearance of normalcy, and the efforts of those around him to ignore the fact that Herb had been diagnosed with a serious mental illness, it would raise its ugly head throughout the years. Did his wife ever suspect he led a double life? Under the ownership of the Baumeisters the grounds of the farm became overgrown, and inside according to neighbors and associates, the house was cluttered, dirty and unkempt. Julie would leave with the children for weeks to visit their paternal grandmother at her condo on Lake Wawasee. Herb would not accompany them supposedly because of the business. In the 1990s, several gay men went missing from the Indianapolis area. When a comparison was made of their description, they all shared the same general appearance. Without a corpse it would be hard to prove a crime had been committed, but police feared that they had a serial killer on their hands which was adept at hiding his handiwork. Two of the missing men were found dead; one in Ohio, the other in Indiana, but there was no way to connect the crimes of what was dubbed the I-70 Strangler. The cases went cold. While Herb Baumeister was secretly trolling gay bars, his brother Richard was found floating in a hot tub in an apartment complex in Austin, Texas. He was 36 years old, and the M.E. showed a preliminary cause of death to be accidental drowning, pending the results of the toxicology test which were never made available. Was this a suicide? Vergil Vandagriff a retired crime investigator turned private eye, started correspondence with Mary Wilson an investigator with the Indianapolis Police Department. They were both convinced the disappearance of several gay men in the early 1990s were connected. They caught a break in 1993, when a patron at a gay bar said that a mystery man known as "Brian Smart" had killed his friend with a pool hose, and then tried to murder him as well. But the police were stumped since the mystery man's description was general and nondescript. Despite his erratic behavior, none could have connected Brian Smart to Herb Baumeister, who was a successful businessman. It all started to unravel in 1994. The business was in trouble, and Herb was arrested again for DUI. Not surprisingly the marriage suffered for it, however the worse was yet to come. Erich Baumeister, 13, found a skull on the grounds of the property. His father explained that it was part of a medical skeleton left to him by his father. Julie Baumeister said that soon after the discovery, the bones disappeared and she assumed animals carried them off. If it raised any alarms with her, she kept it well hidden, when she commented, “It wasn’t like I was sitting at home with nothing else to think about." Was she sticking her head in the sand, and ignoring how disturbed her husband was? Then in 1995, the man who had reported on Brian Smart to Wilson and Vandagriff gave them a solid clue, which was a license plate number. The information led to Herb Baumeister. When the police asked to search the premises of Fox Hollow Farm they were refused. With nothing else but the fact that Baumeister was a patron at gay bars, the police could not secure a warrant. Julie Baumeister again decided to ignore incidents that now indicated she was married to a monster. Herb was undeterred by the police coming to his home, and he continued stalking patrons at gay bars. Several went missing and dead, and once police determined they all knew Herb Baumeister they zeroed in on him. Herb told his wife that police were falsely accusing him of theft, and told her not to allow them access to the premises. Eventually the police told Julie the real reason they wanted access to the home, and the grounds. Despite the police suspecting Herb was a serial killer she refused to let them enter. Did her decision allow others to become victims? Herb grew violent with his employees, and it was suspected he was drinking heavily. His behavior which was uncertain in the past descended to frightening levels, and Julie filed for divorce in January, 1996. The business closed six months later. There was a crucial piece of information that Julie had told her attorney and kept from the police, and it was the incident where her son had found the skull. She had gone outside and found even more bones. Her attorney contacted Detective Wilson with the information. The police went out to Fox Hollow Farm, and were finally able to do a search of the property. Julie allowed them access when Herb left town for a few days. Perhaps she feared that Herb would turn on his own family, or that somehow she would be accused of being complicit in covering up for her husband. Police found bones and body parts covered with leaves on top of the ground, in a wooded area 50 to 60 feet behind Baumeister's house. Herb who had already been visited by the police regarding the murders, knew he was a suspect. He went to the family's summer lake house and took his son with him. He also emptied the bank account. Fearing he would do something to Erich, Julie served him with custody papers before the news was published about what was found at Fox Hollow Farm. Later on, Julie Baumeister revealed she had sex with her husband less than a dozen times after being married for close to 25 years. Incredibly he impregnated her on these occasions with their children. He would not allow her to see him naked, because of his scrawny body. How many other intimate but disturbing clues did Julie Baumeister ignore throughout the years? It didn't take long before they found where all those missing men had gone. The remains of eleven men were found buried all over the property. Three of them remained unidentified. Police believed he'd killed many others, and dumped their bodies along lonely stretches in Ohio and Indiana. Authorities suspected he carried out these killings on his frequent business trips. Those men that were found dead on the grounds were lured to the farm when Herb would go cruising to gay bars. He would give them a story that the house belonged to his boss, and he was a groundskeeper. They would end up at the pool house where he would give them alcohol. Herb it seemed delighted in engaging in sex, while asphyxiating his partner. When police showed up to arrest Herb Baumeister he fled to Ontario, Canada. On July 2, 1996, a state trooper found Herb sleeping in his car. He told the officer he was just a tourist. The trooper saw a large stack of video tapes in the back seat, but despite his suspicious behavior, he was allowed to go on his way. On July 3, Baumeister drove to Pinery Provincial Park and shot himself, leaving behind a 3 page suicide letter. He said that family and financial troubles caused him to take his own life. He ended the note by saying “I am going to eat a peanut butter sandwich and go to sleep.” He made no mention of the murders he committed for several years. However that didn't matter because there was so much evidence recovered at Fox Hollow Farm, that it was undeniable he murdered at least 20 men, if not more. The video tapes the trooper saw were not found in the vehicle, and it's suspected that he got rid of them because they probably contained images of him killing the men he brought to the pool house. More than 5,000 bone fragments were recovered from the 18-acre woods surrounding the main house. The larger ones were found further out, and the smaller pieces were burned and left behind the house. Authorities also believe Herb Baumeister was the one who dumped the partially nude bodies of men found in shallow streams along I-70 across Central Indiana, and western Ohio during the 1980s. Fast forward to 2009, when Vicky and Rob Graves bought Fox Hollow Farm. They paid $987,000 after it was originally listed on the market for $2.8 million. They were not ignorant of the property's gruesome history. Joe LeBlanc, Rob's co-worker, rented one of the apartments close to the main house. Before long it was evident that some of those men killed, refused to leave the place of their last agonizing moments. Joe started to experience horrific nightmares where he was being chased. Electrical appliances would inexplicably become unplugged, malfunction or just turn off on their own. The only ones living in the apartment was Joe and his dog. Joe LeBlanc would also hears knocks in different parts of the apartment. Another time blows sounded so heavily on the front door that it rattled in its frame. There was no one there when he opened the door. He closed it, and his dog started to growl, and the doorknob started to swivel back and forth. Then the door smashed open with so much force that splinters sprayed everywhere. Then Joe saw the shadow of a running man flit through the apartment. To him, it seemed the figure of someone trying to escape. Who was it that made the door thunder, a victim or the sadistic Herb? This was not the only time that knockings would sound at the front door. It didn't matter if it was day or night. He would open it, but there was never anyone there. He did feel as if someone was watching him. Then once he caught movement from the corner of his eye, and his dog would growl. The pet, once friendly, would routinely snarl and bark at empty air. Others living on the estate were pushed and poked by unseen hands. Pots, pans and furniture would move on their own, and disembodied voices were heard. One day Vicky Graves looked out the window and saw a man wearing a red t-shirt wandering on the grounds. She believed it was a trespasser and went outside to find him, but she stopped in her tracks when she saw he had no legs and was floating along over the ground. Then he vanished. Red T-Shirt Man was seen again by Joe when he was walking his dog. The animal chased it, until it vanished. Later other human bones were discovered buried on the property, in the same area where the apparition was seen. Once the remains were removed the ghost ceased to appear. Jeremy, Joe's friend, after hearing about the weird happenings decided to satisfy his curiosity and came over to visit his friend. They took a swim in the pool where Baumeister had killed his victims. Despite being a hardcore skeptic, Jeremy went on to describe that once he got in the water, unseen hands prodded him, tried to pull him under and grab him by the throat. Joe seemed to be the target of the ghostly haunting at Fox Hollow Farm. He felt that he was being constantly followed, and the weird noises in his apartment continued. More than once he saw shadowy figures moving around in the dark. Another time he heard metal scraping from the kitchen. When he investigated, he found a knife had been moved to the counter and there were marks cut into the wall. Joe then tried to record electronic voice phenomena (EVP). During his first attempt he asked the identity of the ghost in the kitchen, and a man's voice replied, "the married one." Since all of Baumeister's victims were single, it was assumed it was Herb. Is there any way to erase the dark deeds committed at Fox Hollow Farm? Is it inevitable that it's haunted by the victims, and their victimizer in a never-ending loop of their horrific deaths? In 1999, investigators released the name of certain men that were identified from the skeletal remains recovered at Fox Hollow Farm. They were returned to their families for interment. They were:
Those who thought that Fox Hollow Farm had yielded all its secrets were wrong, when in 2022 investigators with cadaver dogs found one human bone, and about 20 locations where others might be buried underground. Robert Graves the present owner, said without searching for them they occasionally come across bones, which they turn over to the University of Indianapolis. In October 2023, the Hamilton County Coroner identified the remains found on Fox Hollow Farm of a man who went missing in 1993. His name was Allen Livingston, 27, and DNA was used to identify him. This was done via a familial sample submitted in 2022. Manuel Resendez, 33, went missing on August 6, 1993. His remains were recovered at Fox Hollow Farm in 1996, and his identity was established via a bone fragment, however his family wanted confirmation with DNA. In January, 2024, there was no doubt he was a victim of Baumeister. Police have linked Herb Baumeister to at least 10 men on the property located off 156th Street and the Monon Trail in Westfield. In June 1996, it was estimated the remains of 25 men were found throughout the 18 acre property, who police suspect are victims Herb Baumeister lured to the lonely farm, while his wife and children were away. Presently the University of Indianapolis has more than 10,000 pieces of remains recovered at Fox Hollow Farm, many which hold viable samples of DNA. Places that have a history of tragedy and death begs the question, was it something there, already cursed that caused these events to take place, or is it a human being's last anguished moments that act like a magnet for other deeds of evil to repeat themselves on those grounds? Whether one or the other, paranormal occurrences plague these places, refusing to be forgotten or just a reminder that evil never dies.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Stranger Than Fiction StoriesM.P. PellicerAuthor, Narrator and Producer Archives
November 2024
Categories
All
|