[Intro Music]
Hello and welcome to another spine-chilling episode of Beyond the Unknown. I'm your host, Joli, and I’m Quinn, and today, we're diving deep into the disturbing case of missing and murdered men in Indiana. This is the story of killer Herb Baumeister, a man whose suburban façade concealed a horrifying secret.
[Transition Music]
Herbe Baumeister, the eldest of 4 was born on April 7th, 1947 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Herb has a seemingly normal childhood, playing around the suburbs with his siblings and neighbours. But things changed when he was around the age of 10, as Herbe started to demonstrate signs of anti social behaviour and he had urophilia, which is a sexual interest in urine. Some of his childhood friends recall him talking many times about what it would be like to taste human urine. This interest in urine escalated to urinating on teachers desks at school and then crossed into the realm of playing with dead animals.
Alarmed by his behavioural change, Herbe’s father took him to a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder… But no treatment was administered, so Herbe just got worse. He withdrew even more from social interaction within and outside of school.
After high school, Herbe joined and left two college programs before giving up the college track and starting his career, bouncing around from place to place. Many who worked with Herbe noted his excellent work ethic but very unusual and erratic behaviour. He eventually founded a thrift store chain called Save-a-lot in Indianapolis which would be the focus of Herbe’s career.
In November, 1971, Herbe married Juliana (or Julie) Saiter. After 6 months, Julie reached out to Herbe’s father because she too noticed that his erratic and alarming behaviour. Herbe was committed to a psychiatric hospital for 2 months. Once he returned home, he seemed better but he wasn’t what we’d consider to be quote normal. Julie recounted that over their 25 year marriage, where they conceived 3 children together, they only had sex 6 times, and she never, ever, saw him nude.
Aside from their sexual history, Julie and Herbe were a little distant. Herbe focused on the business, it was all consuming, and Julie focused on raising the children. So, it wasn’t uncommon for Julie to take the children out of town while Herbe stayed home to “work” on the business that was slowly failing.
Sadly, working on the business was the last thing Herbe was doing while Julie and the kids were out of town. What he actually did was much more sinister.
Around the same time near Indianapolis, patterns of a serial killer were emerging. Many young gay men were disappearing around town, and over time, bodies began to appear along interstate 70 (or I-70). It all started when 15 year old Micheal Sean Petrie was found strangled on the side of the road on June 16th, 1980, 9 days after he was reported missing. Witnesses had reported seeing Michael in a strangers vehicle around town, but no body knew who this person was and if it was related to the murder.
Two years later, another young man, 22 year old Maurice Allan Taylor was found deceased along the same route. Although the autopsy was inconclusive, police suspect the victim was also strangled to death based on the condition of the body.
Between 1980 and 1991, 9 more bodies of missing men were found dead, by cause of strangulation.
The 11 victims found alongside I-70 over an 11 year period had some things in common. All men were homosexual, they were frequent patrons of local gay bars, many had been known to solicit sex for money, and a handful had been seen in a vehicle with a man around the time of their disappearance. But no one could provide a similar enough story to what this person looked like or the car they were driving. So, police didn’t have a clear suspect in mind.
Around 1991, the I-70 strangler … seemed to stop. No more bodies appeared. But that didn’t mean the disappearance of gay men had stopped. And, well that’s because Herbe and Julie had purchased an 18 acre homestead called Fox Hollow Farms in Westfield, Indiana. This farm land was very private, had its
Do you know what the average American home size is in square feet? 2,000.
This home was a whopping 11,500 sq ft. And it had my biggest pet peeve which is a really weird ratio of bedrooms to bathrooms. There were 4 bedrooms, one for the parents, and each child. But there are 10 bathrooms?! The home also had an indoor pool, a 5 car garage and two horse stables.
Sorry for the rant. Back to Herbe and his lack of activity along I-70. Because he now lived on a gigantic secluded property, he didn’t need to dispose of his victims along the highway anymore…
Two years after the I-70 stranger vanished, men started to go missing again. The disappearances came in waves, seemingly in higher numbers between the spring and summer months and police had no idea who was behind this, or if it was even one person. That is until 1994, when a man named Tony Harris alerted police that a man named Brian Smart, who frequented gay bars in town, might have been behind the disappearance of his friend Roger Goodlet, who went missing on July 22nd, 1994.
Tony didn’t just pull this hunch out of thin air. He suspected Brian Smart as the potential killer because not too long before Roger Goodlet went missing, Roger told Tony that he met this guy Brian at the bars and they both went back to his mansion on a large property, and there he was almost strangled to death with a pool hose during an erotic asphyxiation session. Roger and Brian Smart were seen at a few gay bars since the incident and then Roger vanished.
So police FINALLY had a potential suspect. But Brian Smart couldn’t be identified, no matter how hard they searched. And Tony Harris wasn’t letting this guy get away. He was on the look out for Brian Smart, and finally, one day in August of 1995, he saw him again in his vehicle. And this time, he wrote down his license plate. He gave that to police and this time they were able to trace the vehicle to a local business man - Herbe Baumeister.
Police requested a search of Fox Hollow Farms but Herbe and Julie declined because they didn’t have a warrant. But not too long after, Julie became scared of Herbe because his behaviour was getting more and more erratic and she eventually filed for divorce. During this time, she remembered that while her sons were playing in the field on their property, their son had found a fully intact human skull. But, she was told by Herbe that it was a skeleton from his fathers medical office since he was an anethesiologsit and when he was clearing out the garage he decided to bury it. Apparently that was all they needed to put that concern to rest. But now Julie thinks it was something more sinister. So, while Herbe was out of town in June 1996, she allowed police to search the property.
And what they found was shocking…
They unearthed the remains of 11 men from shallow graves, 8 of whom were identified and they found over 10,000 fragments of human remains that weren’t identifiable. Immediately, they put out a warrant for his arrest. When Herbe got word that police had found bodies, he fled to Ontario, Canada, where he committed suicide by gunshot at Pinery Provincial Park on Lake Huron. He left a 3 page suicide note, which detailed his regret for what he was about to do at this public park, his sadness for his broken marriage, and failing thrift store businesses, but he failed to mention any of his victims or crimes committed.
In 1996, they tied Herbe Baumeister to the 11 victims on his property and the 11 along I-70. But police suspected there were more victims. And in October of 2023, 30 years later, victim Allan Lee Livingston was identified as one of the sets of remains on the property. He went missing on August 6th, 1993.
On January 25th, of 2024, they identified another victim, Manuel Resendez, from the remains. And they’re still trying to ID as many victims as possible from the 10,000 fragments they have. Police believe that Herbe buried at least 25 bodies on the Fox Hollow Farm property between 1988 and 1996.
It’s worth calling out that this isn’t the first serial killer to prey on the under represented LGBTQ+ community, especially during that time, where homosexual men were outcasted from society and had little support from police, which made for easy targets for killers like Herbe, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Colin Ireland who we’ll be covering in a future episode, and many more.
The case of Herb Baumeister serves as a sobering reminder that evil can lurk in the most unassuming of places, concealed beneath the façade of a happy family man.
[Transition Music]
Quinn: Thank you for joining us for another episode of "Beyond the Unknown." If you have a story you’d like to share, please email us at moody.mediaprod@gmail.com. You can reach out on our website, and who knows, your story might be featured in our next episode.
Joli: All of our sources for this episode can be found on our website: beyondtheunknownpod.com.
And don’t forget, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review.
Quinn: Until next time, listeners. Stay curious and remember that the unknown is always just beyond the shadows.
Both: BYEEEE
