Walk onto the grounds of Fox Hollow Farm today and you might just see a beautiful, sprawling estate in Westfield, Indiana. It looks peaceful. It looks expensive. But for anyone who followed the news in the mid-nineties, those woods carry a weight that hasn't lifted in thirty years. When people talk about the fox hollow murders true story, they aren't just talking about a crime; they are talking about a vacuum of logic where a successful businessman lived a double life that ended in the discovery of thousands of bone fragments behind his swimming pool.
Herb Baumeister was the man next door. Or, more accurately, he was the wealthy guy who owned the Sav-A-Lot thrift stores. He had a wife, Julie, and three kids. He had a million-dollar home. He also had a 18-acre backyard that eventually became one of the most gruesome crime scenes in American history.
It’s wild how long he got away with it. Between 1980 and 1996, gay men were disappearing from the Indianapolis area at an alarming rate. They weren't just "missing." They were vanishing into thin air. Many of them were last seen at bars like "The Varsity" or "Our Place." For a long time, police didn't connect the dots, or maybe they didn't want to. It was a different era. The investigation was slow, and the killer was smart enough to hide behind a veil of suburban normalcy.
The Chilling Discovery at Fox Hollow Farm
The breakthrough didn't come from a brilliant detective move. Honestly, it came from a teenager finding a skull.
In 1994, Herb’s son was playing in the woods behind their home when he found a human skeleton. He showed his mom. Imagine that for a second. You’re living your life, raising your kids, and your son hands you a piece of a person. Herb told Julie it was a medical mannequin from his father’s doctor practice. He was convincing. He was calm. She believed him because she had to. You don't want to believe your husband is burying bodies in the woods while you're upstairs sleeping.
But the suspicion didn't die. By 1996, the police were knocking. Herb refused to let them search the property. Julie, eventually sensing the walls closing in and terrified by Herb’s erratic behavior—he was becoming increasingly moody and distant—finally gave consent for a search while Herb was away.
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What they found was a nightmare.
Investigators didn't just find a body. They found a graveyard. They spent days sifting through the dirt. They found over 10,000 charred bone fragments and teeth. Because Herb had burned many of the remains, identifying the victims was a forensic jigsaw puzzle that took decades. Even now, in 2026, DNA technology is still being used to put names to the bones found at Fox Hollow Farm.
The Dual Life of Herb Baumeister
Herb wasn't a "monster" in the way movies portray them. He was a dork. He was socially awkward. He would often go to bars using the alias "Brian Smart."
He targeted men who were vulnerable. He’d pick them up, take them back to the estate when his wife and kids were at their second home (a condo at Lake Wawasee), and then things would turn lethal. The the fox hollow murders true story is defined by this horrific contrast: a man who could balance a family budget and run a retail empire during the day, then spend his nights as a predator.
Psychologists who studied the case later noted that Herb likely struggled with his own sexuality in a way that manifested as violent self-hatred. He didn't just kill these men; he erased them.
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The Victims We Know (And Those We Don't)
The list of identified victims is a somber roll call of lives cut short. Men like Roger Goodlet, Steven Hale, and Richard Hamilton. For years, their families wondered if they had just run away. The truth was much worse.
- Roger Goodlet vanished in 1994. His mother put up posters all over Indianapolis. Little did she know, her son was just a few miles away, buried in a shallow grave on a multimillion-dollar farm.
- Many victims remain unidentified. Just recently, the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office has been working with the DNA Doe Project to use modern genetic genealogy to identify the remaining fragments. This isn't ancient history; it's a living investigation.
Why He Never Faced a Jury
The most frustrating part of the fox hollow murders true story is the lack of a trial. Herb Baumeister knew the end was coming. When the police started digging up his backyard, he fled to Ontario, Canada.
On July 3, 1996, he pulled his car into Pinery Provincial Park. He wrote a suicide note. In it, he apologized for the "mess" he left behind, but he never actually confessed to the murders. He blamed his failing business and his crumbling marriage. Then, he took his own life.
He took the answers with him. He never had to look the families in the eye. He never had to explain why.
The I-70 Strangler Connection
There is a massive theory that Herb Baumeister was also the "I-70 Strangler." Throughout the 1980s, several men were found dead along the I-70 corridor between Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio. The MO was similar. The victims were similar. While Herb was never officially charged (obviously, he was dead), many investigators are convinced he was responsible for those deaths too. If true, his victim count could be over 20 people.
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The Haunting Legacy of the Farm
People say Fox Hollow Farm is haunted. There have been documentaries, paranormal shows, and endless podcasts about the "screams in the woods."
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the property is objectively heavy. The current owners have been remarkably open about the history, even allowing investigators and sometimes film crews on the land. But the real "ghosts" are the unidentified men whose DNA is still being processed in labs.
The case changed how the Indianapolis police handled missing persons reports within the LGBTQ+ community. It exposed a massive gap in how "marginalized" victims were tracked. It’s a dark lesson in how someone’s status—as a wealthy, white businessman—can act as a shield against suspicion.
Actionable Insights for True Crime Followers:
- Support Cold Case Research: If you follow cases like this, consider donating to organizations like the DNA Doe Project. They are the ones currently helping identify the final victims from the Baumeister estate using advanced sequencing that wasn't available in the 90s.
- Check the Hamilton County Coroner's Updates: They periodically release new information when a "John Doe" bone fragment is finally matched to a name. It’s the only way these families get closure.
- Visit the Memorials: There are small, informal memorials and community-led remembrances in Indianapolis for the victims of the "I-70 Strangler" and the Fox Hollow murders. Acknowledging the names of the victims—not just the killer—is the best way to respect the history.
- Educate on Modern Safety: The Baumeister case is a textbook example of predatory grooming. Understanding how he used his "Brian Smart" persona can help in recognizing similar patterns in modern dating and social interactions.
The story of Fox Hollow Farm isn't just about a serial killer. It’s about the failure of a system to protect people who were considered "invisible" and the incredible resilience of forensic teams who refuse to let these victims remain nameless forever.