Was Herb Baumeister the Notorious I-70 Strangler? Compelling Evidence Indicates He Likely Was
Recent evidence and discoveries have linked former Indianapolis businessman Herb Baumeister with the disappearance and murder of as many as 25 men and boys during the 1980s and 90s
Early Life and Troubles
On April 7th, 1947, Dr. Herbert Eugene Baumeister and his wife Elizabeth welcomed the birth of their first child, a son whom they named Herb. The Baumeister’s resided in Indianapolis, Indiana. The couple would go on to have three additional children.
Herb’s early life was quite normal, and not much is known about his childhood days. However, the problems for Herb Baumeister began before he’d reached his teenage years.
Herb began demonstrating traits of an antisocial personality disorder prior to his teens. According to the few friends he had, Herb developed a strange infatuation with urine, even quoting him as saying he “pondered what it would be like to taste human urine.”
This strange infatuation led to Herb urinating on the desks of his teachers at school. Beyond these grotesque impulses, Herb also frequently occupied himself by playing with the decomposing corpses of small animals.
These strange behaviors did not go unnoticed by Herb’s parents. Concerned for his son’s mental well-being, Dr. Baumeister sent Herb for mental evaluations in his teens. The psychologists returned with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder.
However, likely fearing social stigma, Herb’s family did not pursue any further psychiatric treatment. Herb did not manage to improve his social life, as a result, he became increasingly more isolated.
Marriage
After graduating from North Central High School, Baumeister began attending Indiana University in 1965, but he only stayed one semester before dropping out. In 1971, Herb married Juliana Saiter. The following year, Herb enrolled in courses at Butler University, but he once again dropped out after only a semester.
With his higher education days behind him, Herb began bouncing from job to job. Though he reportedly had a strong work ethic, his behavior became more and more erratic and peculiar.
In his personal life, things were no less bizarre. Though Julie and Herb had three children over the course of their marriage, Julie would later testify that they had only been intimate six times in the entire union. Additionally, she had allegedly never seen her husband fully nude.
The I-70 Strangler
From June 1980 to October 1991, a series of boys and men were found dumped along Interstate 70, which runs between Indiana and Ohio. The first known victim, Michael Petree, was only fifteen at the time of his death.
All the bodies were found either naked or very scantily clothed. In each of these cases, coroners ruled the cause of death as strangulation.
The victims were all connected by multiple gay bars within a four-block radius in Indianapolis. In total, eleven murders were attributed to the I-70 Strangler, though there may have been more.
The victims were presumably picked up by the killer at one of the bars and then later dumped on the side of the interstate. The bodies abruptly stopped appearing in 1991. The case remains officially unsolved, but there is compelling evidence that points to Herb Baumeister being responsible.
Fox Hollow Farm
In 1988, Herb’s career took a positive turn. He successfully established the Sav-A-Lot chain of discount grocery stores in Indianapolis. As a result, Herb and Julie purchased a large piece of rural property known as Fox Hollow Farm.
The home on the property, built in 1978, featured 4 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, an indoor pool, horse stables and a 5-car garage. Though it looked to be a picturesque place to raise a family, this land would see untold horrors over the next several years.
In 1994, Baumeister’s son made an appalling discovery while playing in the yard: an intact human skeleton buried in a shallow grave. The child immediately reported his discovery to his parents, but Baumeister was ready with an explanation: he told his family that this was one of his father’s skeletons used for dissection practice.
Baumeister stored the skeleton in the garage temporarily until he could bury it again in the garden. Though Herb was able to temporarily quell his family’s fears, he could not explain away what investigators would find in the years to come.
Unmasking Brian Smart
Though bodies were no longer being found around I-70, men of similar stature and appearance continued to vanish from Indianapolis gay bars. The Marion County Sheriff’s Department began working with the Indianapolis Police Department to investigate the disappearances.
They pursued any and all tips they could get, but it brought them no closer to finding their suspect. That was until 1994, when Tony Harris, a regular patron of the local gay bar scene, came forward.
Tony claimed that a man by the name of Brian Smart was potentially responsible for the disappearance of his friend, Roger Goodlet. According to Tony, Brian Smart had taken a strange interest in Goodlet’s disappearance.
Also, according to Tony, Brian Smart had almost killed him while engaging in an erotic asphyxiation session. With nothing more than a description, police were not able to track down anyone with that name in the area, suggesting that Brian Smart was likely an alias.
The following year, in 1995, Harris saw Brian again, and this time he managed to follow his car and note the plate number.
After Tony turned over Brian’s description and vehicle license plate number, investigators were able to identify the man as none other than Herb Baumeister. Police informed Baumeister that he was a suspect in the ongoing investigation.
They asked permission to search his property, but Herb and Julie denied them the right to do so. Without evidence to obtain a search warrant, the police were stuck.
Horrifying Discoveries
However, in 1996, Julie had a change of heart. Growing concerned with her husband’s increasingly strange behavior and likely still rattled by the skeleton found in their yard, Julie went back to the police while Herb was on vacation.
She filed for divorce from her husband and granted police permission to conduct a search of Fox Hollow Farm. To Julie’s horror, the initial search of the property returned eleven bodies. Of those corpses, eight were identified as missing persons from the investigation of disappearances from gay bars in Indianapolis.
Suicide
Police immediately issued a warrant for the arrest of Herb Baumeister. When he caught wind of the news, Herb fled the country, escaping to Ontario. With police pursuing him, Herb Baumeister decided to take his own life with a handgun at a park on Lake Huron.
He left behind a 3-page suicide note. The note was as peculiar as the individual who wrote it. Herb never mentioned anything about his connection to any disappearances or murders, but he confessed the guilt he felt about his marriage, his business shortcomings, and “messing up the park.”
According to Herb’s note, he had intended to take his own life at another location, but when he arrived, there were children present, so he changed his plan.
With Herb dead, there was never a trial, but he was named responsible for all the bodies discovered on his property. Additionally, investigators strongly believe Herb to be the I-70 strangler.
Given both the similarity in M.O. and the fact that the bodies stopped being dumped shortly after the purchase of Fox Hollow Farm, circumstantial evidence points to Herb Baumeister as the culprit.
Updates and Ongoing Investigation
Though Herb Baumeister died in 1996, the investigation of Fox Hollow Farm continues into 2024. In May of this year, police made another identification of a body found in the initial 1996 investigation.
The remains belonged to Jeffrey Jones, who had gone missing in 1993 from the Indianapolis area.
There have been four additional DNA profiles discovered at Fox Hollow Farm that are yet to be identified. This brings the total number of bodies discovered to 12 from the farm property alone.
According to investigators, identification has been “extremely challenging” due to the fact that most of the remains had been burned and crushed. Herb Baumeister’s official kill count is unknown, but authorities estimate that he was responsible for the deaths of 25 men and teenagers over the course of his sickening hunting spree.
Sources:
Flowers, Ashley. “Serial Killer: Herb Baumeister.” Crime Junkie Podcast, 10 Nov. 2023, crimejunkiepodcast.com/serial-killer-herb-baumeister/.
“Herb Baumeister.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 July 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Baumeister.
Keane, Isabel. “10,000 Human Remains Found on Serial Killer’s Farm - and Authorities Are Still Identifying Victims.” New York Post, New York Post, 3 June 2024, nypost.com/2024/06/02/us-news/serial-killer-herb-baumeisters-farm-had-10000-human-remains/.
Ryckaert, Vic. “Here’s What We Know about Notorious Indiana Serial Killer Herbert Baumeister.” WRTV Indianapolis, WRTV Indianapolis, 28 Nov. 2022, www.wrtv.com/news/local-news/crime/heres-what-we-know-about-notorious-indiana-serial-killer-herbert-baumeister.