Walk onto the grounds of Fox Hollow Farm today and it looks like a dream. It’s an 18-acre estate in Westfield, Indiana, featuring a sprawling Tudor-style mansion, lush woods, and a quiet, indoor pool. But in the mid-1990s, this property was a graveyard. It’s where Herb Baumeister, a seemingly mundane thrift store owner and family man, lived a double life that ended in the discovery of thousands of bone fragments.
People still talk about it. They talk about the ghosts. They talk about the woods. But honestly, the reality of the Fox Hollow Farm serial killer is much more grounded in human failure and a terrifyingly effective disguise of normalcy.
Herb Baumeister wasn’t some shadowy figure lurking in alleys. He was a father of three. He owned the Sav-A-Lot thrift stores. He was a member of the local business community. Yet, while his wife and children were away at the family’s lake house, Herb was frequenting gay bars in Indianapolis, picking up men, and bringing them back to this very estate. Most of them never left.
The Horror Behind the Sav-A-Lot Success
To understand how Herb Baumeister became the Fox Hollow Farm serial killer, you have to look at the atmosphere of the early 90s. This was a time when disappearances in the LGBTQ+ community were often overlooked by law enforcement. Between 1992 and 1996, men were vanishing from the Indianapolis area at an alarming rate.
Herb was smart. Or maybe he was just lucky for a long time.
He stayed under the radar because he looked the part of a successful suburbanite. But inside the mansion, things were different. Investigators eventually learned that Baumeister would lure men to his home for sexual encounters, often involving erotic asphyxiation, before killing them. He then disposed of their bodies in the wooded area behind his house. He didn't just bury them; he burned them and crushed the bones.
The scale of the carnage is hard to wrap your head around.
When investigators finally got onto the property in 1996—after Herb’s wife, Julie, finally gave consent despite her initial fears—they didn't just find a body. They found a debris field of human remains. We are talking about over 10,000 charred bone fragments and teeth. For decades, the official death toll sat at 11, based on the remains that could be identified at the time. However, recent forensic pushes have suggested the number could be much higher.
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Why the Investigation Took So Long
It’s easy to blame the police, but the situation was complicated. Virgil Vandagriff, a private investigator and former sheriff's detective, was one of the first to really push the theory that a serial killer was operating in the area. He saw the pattern. The victims were all similar—young men, often with some connection to the local gay bar scene, who simply stopped showing up to work or calling their families.
The problem? Herb Baumeister wouldn't let the police on his land.
Without probable cause, they were stuck. Even when a man named Tony Harris told police that he had been to the estate and narrowly escaped a dangerous encounter with a man he identified as "Brian Smart" (Herb’s alias), the legal hurdles were massive. It wasn't until Herb’s marriage started crumbling and his behavior became too erratic for Julie to ignore that the door finally opened.
She found a skull.
Her son had actually found a human skull on the property years earlier and showed it to her. Herb told her it was a medical mannequin from his father’s doctor practice. She believed him. She wanted to believe him. That’s the thing about these cases—the people closest to the killer often develop a sort of protective blindness. Eventually, that blindness wore off, and the search warrants were executed while Herb was away.
The Recent Breakthroughs in Identifying Victims
For a long time, the story of the Fox Hollow Farm serial killer felt like a closed chapter of Indiana history. Herb fled to Ontario, Canada, and died by suicide before he could ever be tried or questioned. He took his secrets to the grave, leaving dozens of families with no closure.
That changed recently.
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Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison reopened the case in 2022. Why? Because those 10,000 fragments were still sitting in storage. With modern DNA technology, "unidentifiable" isn't a permanent status anymore.
- Allen Livingston was identified in 2023. He had been missing since 1993.
- Manuel Resendez was identified through DNA comparison with his family.
- Jeffrey Jones was another name added back to the list of the known.
The process is grueling. Forensic anthropologists have to sort through thousands of tiny, burnt pieces of bone to find enough genetic material to sequence. It's a reminder that the "serial killer" narrative isn't just about the murderer—it's about the decades of quiet suffering endured by the families who never knew where their sons went.
The Haunted Reputation of Fox Hollow Farm
You can’t talk about this place without mentioning the paranormal. It’s featured on every "most haunted" show you can think of. The current owners and various investigators have reported seeing "The Man in the Gray Knit Shirt" wandering the woods.
Is it haunted? Honestly, that depends on what you believe.
But from a psychological perspective, the "haunting" is the weight of the history. Knowing that you are standing on a spot where dozens of lives were extinguished in the most brutal way possible changes the way you see the landscape. The woods feel heavier. The silence of the mansion feels more like a void.
The estate has changed hands over the years, and it remains a private residence. It’s not a museum. It’s not a tourist attraction. It’s a place where someone tries to live a normal life on top of a massacre.
What This Case Teaches Us About Predators
Herb Baumeister was a "power-assertive" killer. He used his status, his wealth, and his large home as tools of entrapment. He knew that the men he targeted were often living on the margins or were hesitant to go to the police because of the era's social stigmas.
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He didn't fit the "monster" profile. He was a dork. He was awkward. He was a business owner.
This is the most chilling takeaway: the most dangerous people often look like the most boring people. They are the neighbors who complain about the lawn. They are the guys running the local charity drive. Herb used the "Sav-A-Lot" brand to build a wall of respectability that took years for the police to dismantle.
If you’re interested in the details of the forensics or the victim advocacy side of this case, here are the most important steps to take for staying informed or helping out.
Support the Hamilton County Investigative Efforts The coroner’s office is still looking for DNA samples from families who had loved ones go missing in the Indianapolis area between 1980 and 1996. If you have a family connection to a cold case from that era, reaching out to the Hamilton County Coroner can provide the missing link needed for a DNA match.
Educate on Cold Case Advocacy Organizations like the DNA Doe Project often take on cases like those from Fox Hollow Farm. Supporting these non-profits helps fund the expensive genetic genealogy required to identify victims who have been "nameless" for thirty years.
Verify the Sources Don't rely on sensationalized TV dramatizations. If you want the real story, look into the original reporting from the Indianapolis Star or the investigative work of the Hamilton County Sheriff's Department. The forensic reports from the University of Indianapolis archeology department provide the most accurate picture of what was actually found in those woods.
The story of the Fox Hollow Farm serial killer isn't just a ghost story for a campfire. It’s an ongoing forensic investigation that is finally giving names back to the victims Herb Baumeister tried to erase. Every new identification is a small victory over the silence he tried to leave behind.