Herb Baumeister:Indiana Serial Killer
Herb Baumeister was born on April 7th, 1947 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada on July 3rd, 1996. He was 49 at the time of his death.
Herb was the first child born to Elizabeth (Schmidt) and Dr. Herbert Eugene Baumeister. Dr. Baumeister was a successful anesthesiologist. The couple would have a total of four children.
Herb attended Eastwood Junior High School and later North Central High School on Indianapolis’ northeast side. He was in the class of 1965. North Central was also the high school that Jared Fogel attended much later. He is known for being the spokesperson for Subway restaurants in the early 2000’s and recently was convicted on child pornography charges. He is currently incarcerated. But, don’t hold that against North Central. It’s a perfectly normal high school with thousands and thousands of wonderful graduates.
As an adolescent Herb had a fascination with urine. He urinated on a teacher’s desk and talked with friends about the idea of drinking urine. He was also not averse to playing with dead animals.
Herb’s parents tried over the years to get mental health help for their oldest child. He was diagnosed as a teen as a paranoid schizophrenic with antisocial personality disorder.
Herb attended Indiana University for a semester in 1965 but dropped out. He returned to I.U. in 1967 for a time. In 1972, he went to Butler University briefly as well. Eventually he just began working and was a very dedicated worker.
In November of 1971, Herb married Julie Saiter. Six months after their wedding, Herb’s Dad had him committed for two months to a mental institution. Was Herb struggling with his sexuality or his criminal tendencies or both? We don’t know. Herb came back and seemed ready to be a good husband and productive member of society. Julie and Herb later had three children.
From 1971-1985 Herb Baumeister worked for the Indiana Department of Motor Vehicles. He always wore a suit to work and when he left in 1985 he was making a very enviable salary of almost 31,000 dollars a year. That was big money in 1985 Indiana. (In 1991, I made 10,000 per year as an assistant manager in a shoe store in Terre Haute, Indiana.)
In 1988 Herb founded a thrift store called Sav-a-lot and the business grew into a very successful chain.
Sav-a-lot stores were busy and successful. Herb was a workaholic and seemed determined to get past his early peculiarities. It seemed to his family that he had straightened up, matured and was on the path toward success.
Herb and Julie bought a big house north of Indianapolis called Fox Hollow Farm. It was nestled in a wooded area and had many amenities like an indoor pool. It seems like everything was perfect for the Baumeister family.
But, Herb’s wife and children had no idea that their perfect life was all a facade. Herb was a workaholic and he did indeed travel to his various Sav-a-lot locations frequently but he also had a deadly side.
Herb would go to gay bars and pick up young men. Being openly gay wasn’t something he felt he could do. Many men, even today, live their lives like this. They have a seemingly perfect Norman Rockwell family life at home and in public. But they frequently seek out sexual partners in gay bars or today on Grindr or other online forums.
But, Herb wasn’t just cheating on his wife with men. Herb was murdering many of these men and boys that he picked up. For a time he was leaving their bodies in rural areas along Interstate 70. Later he would bring these men home to Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield, Indiana and kill them there.
One day in the early 1990’s at Fox Hollow Farm the Baumeister children brought home human bones that they had found in the woods. Mrs. Baumeister was horrified and told Herb. He said that the skeleton was a medical specimen that had belonged to his father. He said he had buried it out there and animals must have dug up the bones. Herb’s father had been a doctor, after all. He said he would take care of the problem. He put the full skeleton in a box and stored it in the garage for awhile. Later he re-buried it in the garden. Julie Baumeister believed her husband. Just about anyone would have believed him. He had a very carefully crafted public persona. Serial killers are very good at pretending to be regular people.
Who were Herb’s victims? Well, they were mostly poor and marginalized. Many were estranged from their families. Homosexuality was frowned upon by most of society in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s. Victims were blamed for living a risky lifestyle. Anytime we blame victims…we create an atmosphere where we maybe don’t investigate deep enough. We maybe think there is nothing we can do to stop this dangerous behavior. So, Herb got away with many, many murders.
Michael Shawn Petree was only 15. He lived near Indianapolis’ downtown area. He was part of a big family and they were struggling. Michael frequented gay bars and accepted money for sex. When you grow up poor and nothing ever seems to improve you can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that nothing matters. Maybe Michael was feeling like that. Maybe these gay bars were full of music and dancing and people who understood what it was like to be a gay teenager in Indiana.
Yes, a teen boy should not be near a bar. Yes, he should have been at home. If he needed money why didn’t he get a paper route? Well, he did have a paper route for a while. But, not everyone’s life is like a t.v. Sitcom. Some kids feel alienated. Some kids struggle with depression and anxiety. Some kids grow up around abusive people. I don’t know if Michael had any of those challenges but he might have. Most people don’t get a television sitcom life. They certainly didn’t in the 1970’s.
On Saturday June 7th, 1980, he mysteriously disappeared. He was found on June 16th 1980 by a farmer and his dog along Cynthianne Road. Michael was nude and face down in a water filled ditch near Strawtown. He had been strangled.
Strawtown is a little rural community North of Indianapolis and east of Cicero and the Morse Reservoir. If you’re in Indianapolis you can take Fall Creek/Binford/ IN 37/I-69 straight to Strawtown.
His body went unidentified at first. Sadly, several families of missing young men were looking for their children. His body was in a state of decomposition that made things like eye color difficult to determine. Authorities identified the remains as Michael Petree and he was buried. But later they exhumed and examined the body again. Dental records would finally confirm that this was indeed 15 year old Michael Petree.
In 1982, Maurice Allen Taylor was 22 and struggling. He had found shelter in the boiler room of an apartment building. It’s incredibly difficult to get a job when you don’t have an address. It’s even more difficult for a young gay man. So Maurice found himself doing what a lot of poor people do. He was a sex worker in order to eat and survive.
Maurice was found on July 21st, 1982 in Hamilton County. His shirt was missing. He was found in Weasel Creek in a rural area. He had also been strangled. Weasel Creek feeds into the Morse Reservoir eventually. So, this isn’t far from where Michael Petree was found two years earlier.
I wonder if Baumeister’s Dad had a boat when Baumeister was growing up. I wonder if they went out to Morse Reservoir sometimes. He was familiar with that area. He felt comfortable going there.
Delvoyd Lee Baker was only 14. He had also fallen into the trap of sex work at gay bars. There were many men living closeted lives that wanted gay sex but couldn’t live an open life as a gay man. So, they dipped in and out of the scene. They used aliases and they paid sex workers. Not all of these men were violent killers. But, Delvoyd Baker met a killer on Saturday October 2nd of 1982. He was found the next day also near a river and also in Hamilton County. Witnesses who last saw him said he was leaving with white man who had a mustache and was driving a van.
Are you seeing yet that there were patterns here already if an investigator had wanted to follow up on them? Victim blaming, homophobia, and racism are attitudes that allow crime to flourish.
On June 5th 1983, Michael Andrew Riley was found in a ditch in Hancock County near Greenfield. He had last been seen at the Vogue nightclub in the Broadripple neighborhood in Indianapolis. A witness came forward in 1998 to report that they thought that Herb Baumeister was the man that Michael Riley left the club with that night.
In early 1985, Eric Allen Roettger disappeared. He was later found strangled and discarded in Preble County Ohio. His disappearance was a daytime occurrence. He had been waiting at a bus stop and heading out to job interviews. Had he accepted a ride from a stranger instead of taking the bus?
On August 15th 1986, the body of Michael Allen Glenn was found in a ditch near Eaton, Ohio. That’s in Preble County. He was not identified for three years.
James Boyd Robbins Jr. left his mother’s home in Indianapolis and was walking south in the city on Thursday, October 15th. It was about 10 p.m. On October 17th, 1987, he was found naked in a ditch in Shelby County south of Gwynneville. That’s roughly southeast of Indianapolis. Gwynneville is a small town northeast of Shelbyville. James Robbins Jr. was only 21. People reported a red Jeep Wrangler or Chevy Blazer near the scene there.
In August of 1989, Steven Lynn Elliott was found in Preble County, Ohio. He had also been strangled and left in a ditch.
You can see the pattern more easily with the passing of time like this. Many murders are happening around Indianapolis but mostly on the Northeast side or southeast of town. He wasn’t going west much yet. People stick to roads and areas that they are familiar with. Most of the Midwest was laid out on a grid system. So, if you get off an interstate, you can find your way back to the interstate fairly easily. Baumeister was dipping into Preble County, Ohio. He’s purposefully orchestrating a look of randomness. He wants these murders to seem unrelated. But, the pattern is there. With everything else going on at the time it probably didn’t jump out to anyone. But, we can see it now.
Clay Russell Boatman was found in a ditch near Eaton, Ohio. (Again Baumeister is taking a victim to Eaton which is in Preble County.) Boatman was from Richmond, Indiana. He was a 32 year old licensed practical nurse. He was last seen at a gay bar called Our Place in Richmond on August 14th, 1990.
Thomas Ray Clevenger, Jr. was found in Greenville, Ohio. From Interstate 70, Herb Baumeister would have turned North instead of South toward Eaton. Thomas Ray Clevenger Jr. was only 18. He was from Indianapolis and had disappeared in September of 1990.
Otto Gary Becker was 42. He was found in a Henry County Ditch in August of 1991. Witnesses had seen him in a vehicle traveling on I-465. That’s the loop around Indianapolis. Henry County is east of Indianapolis and I-70 will take you there easily.
But, Baumeister wasn’t just abducting, murdering and discarding men that he encountered in bars. When his wife and children were out of town he would bring men back to his home in Westfield. Fox Hollow Farm had been owned by Baumeister since May of 1988. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, Herb would pick up a victim from a bar and bring them back there. He went by the alias “Brian Smart”.
The woods of Fox Hollow Farm have been searched multiple times. The first search on June 24th, 1996, turned up bones from 11 victims. Other searches were conducted and other burial sites were found. In December of 2022, one more bone was found and 20 other potential burial sites were found. Roughly 10,000 bones and bone fragments were recovered.
The work to identify all the victims found at Fox Hollow Farm is ongoing. So far, these victims have been identified:
John Lee “Johnny” Bayer. He was 20 when he went missing on Friday May 28th, 1993 at the start of Memorial Day Weekend.
Jeffrey Allen Jones was 31 years old when he disappeared on July 6th, 1993.
20 year old Richard Douglas Hamilton Jr. went missing on July 31st 1993.
Allen Lee Livingston went missing on August 6th, 1993. He was only 27. His remains were identified in 2023.
Manuel Resendez, aged 34, was also last seen on August 6th, 1993. He was 45. His remains were recovered in 1996 from Fox Hollow Farm but not identified until 2024.
Daniel Thomas Halloran went missing in the early 1990’s. He was around 21 or 22. He was identified in 2025 by forensic genealogy. On Find a grave his date of death is 1993.
Steven Spurlin Hale was 28 when he went missing on Friday April 1st, 1994.
Allen Wayne Broussard went missing on Monday June 6th 1994. He was 28.
Roger Allen Goodlet was 33 when he went missing on Friday July 22, 1994.
Michael Frederick Keirn was last seen on March 31st, 1995.
Jerry Williams-Comer disappeared on August 8th, 1995. His car was found at Castleton Mall in 1995. His remains have not yet been found but he is believed to also be a victim of Baumeister. Hopefully his remains will one day be found and identified.
Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s there were people in the gay community in Indianapolis who were noticing that people were disappearing. As bodies were being found, a community newspaper began to assist investigators and push for more efforts to find this killer. They had also assisted in tracking down another killer of men, Larry Eyler.
One of the biggest breaks in the investigation surrounding Baumeister came when a victim escaped. He described Fox Hollow Farm and Baumeister and his car. He gave details about the indoor pool area. He described being choked with a hose during sex by the indoor pool and realizing that Baumeister was a dangerous man. He left the house as quickly as he could. He told other people in the gay community and also went to the police. Tony Harris also saw Baumeister in 1995 and followed his car to get a plate number. He had been friends with Roger Goodlet and knew that Goodlet had gone home with Baumeister before he disappeared. Both men knew him as “Brian Smart” at the time.
Police approached Herb Baumeister’s wife Julie. She couldn’t believe that her workaholic nerdy husband could be gay let alone be a serial killer. She did relate the story of the kids finding a “medical specimen” skeleton in the woods.
Police informed Herb Baumeister that he was a suspect in several murders and they asked to search his home. Both he and his wife denied police permission to search the property.
Julie Baumeister’s suspicion had been raised though. She was alarmed at Herb’s behavior after police had spoken with them. She filed for divorce. Then she contacted the police and allowed them to search the property on the 24th of June of 1996 while Herb Baumeister was on vacation. 11 sets of remains were recovered and 8 were identified quickly. An arrest warrant was made out for Herb Baumeister.
Herb Baumeister fled to Canada before police could arrest him. He killed himself with a .357 magnum. He wanted a quick and easy death for himself it seems.
My thoughts always go back to the victims. Being gay in a state like Indiana in those decades was rough. You had to worry about being outed, ostracized, disowned, fired from your job and shunned. You had to worry about AIDS and HIV. You had to worry about being beaten up just for being gay. And there were also two serial killers of young men roaming the state freely at the time: Larry Eyler and Herb Baumeister.
Investigation and identification is still ongoing. If you have a tip that may help please reach out to investigators in Hamilton County, Indiana at (317) 773-1872.
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