His downfall began with a phone call to retired officer and private investigator Vergil Vandagriff. The caller, referred to as Tony, was a friend of a missing person Vandagriff was looking for. Robert Goodlet, 32, had been reported missing by his mother when he hadn’t returned home after a night out at a downtown gay bar. Tony had seen a man apparently obsessively admiring the missing person poster that Vandagriff had passed out after Goodlet’s mother had contacted him. Something about the way the man looked at the poster made Tony think he knew something, so Tony had begun a conversation. What followed would result in the finding of 11 bodies at a horse ranch, where Herbert Baumeister lived with his wife and children (Blanco; Montaldo).
Herbert Baumeister was born to Dr. Herbert Baumeister and Elizabeth Baumeister of Indianapolis, Indiana on April 7, 1947, the oldest of their four children. Baumeister had a reportedly normal childhood until he reached adolescence, when his behavior became unusual and erratic. He developed an obsession with dark, vile things, and developed a sense of humor described as macabre. Rumors circulated at school that he had urinated on a teacher’s desk, and he left a dead crow he had found on one as well. Baumeister appeared to lose the ability to judge if something was right or wrong and became disruptive and volatile in class. His parents had also noted these changes and sought out a medical evaluation for him. He was found to have schizophrenia, and in some reports multiple personality disorder, but it appears no further help was sought for him after diagnosis. While he continued public high school post-diagnoses and maintained good grades, he suffered socially (Blanco; Montaldo; Redd).
Baumeister attended Indiana University in 1965 for one semester before dropping out, his unusual behavior marking him an outcast again. In 1967, after his father pressured him, he returned for another semester and studied anatomy. As before, he dropped out. While at the university he met Juliana Saiter, a high school journalism teacher and part-time student. The two hit it off and were married in 1971. Six months into their marriage, his father had him committed to a mental institution for two months for unknown reasons; this did not damage their marriage (Blanco; Montaldo).
Dr. Baumeister was able to pull some strings and get his son a job with the Indianapolis Star as a copy boy, where he eagerly, and annoyingly to his superiors, strived for positive feedback. He soon left for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV), where he attempted to imitate the behavior he believed to be good supervisory behavior. He was bossy and lashed out at his coworkers. Despite this, after 10 years there he was promoted to program director, only to be terminated in 1985 for urinating on a letter addressed to the Governor of Indiana at the time, Robert Orr (Montaldo; Redd).
His first child with wife, Juliana, was born in 1979, Marie Baumeister, followed in 1981 by her brother, Ethic, and in 1984 by her sister, Emily. Before losing his BMV job, Juliana had quit her job to be a stay-at-home mother. Unfortunately, the stay-at-home father lifestyle was not enough for Baumeister, who was reportedly a loving and caring father, and he began to drink and spend time at local gay bars without his wife’s knowledge. During this time, he was charged twice, once with a hit-and-run while driving drunk and once for stealing a friend’s car, but beat the charges both times. In 1988, Baumeister borrowed $4,000 from his mother and started a thrift store, Sav-a-Lot, which quickly led to a second store. Within three years, the family had become rich. They were able to buy their dream home, an 18-acre horse ranch called Fox Hollow Farm, in 1991 (Blanco; Montaldo).
Vergil Vandagriff began investigating the disappearances of gay men occuring in the area in the 1990s, along with active investigator Mary Wilson. During his investigation, he was contacted by the mother of Alan Broussard, 28, and the mother of Robert Goodlet, 32, to investigate their disappearances. Both young men looked alike, lived similar lifestyles, and were around the same age, and both disappeared enroute to local gay bars. Goodlet was last seen willingly entering a blue car with Ohio plates. Vandagriff was also notified by a local gay magazine publisher that several gay men had disappeared in recent years, and learned of the Interstate 70 killings. It was during this investigation that Vandagriff received the call from Tony, detailing his own harrowing experience with a man he called Brian Smart. Tony claimed that Smart, who had been looking at the missing person poster of Goodlet when he met him, had invited him to his house in northern Indianapolis. While Tony was not familiar with the area, he knew there were large houses and horse ranches where they went. Smart led him into the house through the side door, into the pool area where mannequins were set up around the pool. Tony suspected that Smart had done cocaine during his time there, and the two eventually got onto the topic of autoerotic asphyxiation. Smart suggested they do it together and had Tony choke him with a hose while he masturbted. He then suggested Tony try it, but during the event Tony realized Smart wasn’t going to let go and pretended to faint. When he opened his eyes, Smart panicked and claimed to have been scared when he passed out. The two were supposed to meet up again and Vandagriff was going to have them followed, but Smart never showed. A year later, Tony called again with the plates to Smart’s car – he had seen him again at the same bar (Montaldo; Blanco; Redd).
The plates brought them to Baumeister. When Baumeister was informed by Wilson that he was a suspect, he refused to allow a search of the home, as did Juliana when she was asked. However, this was when the marriage really began falling apart. Baumeister became erratic and unpredictable, scaring Juliana. She remembered their son, Erich, finding a skeleton in their yard a couple years earlier and Baumeister explaining it as something his father had from his research that he chose to bury after his father’s death. She had believed it at the time, but with the investigators showing up and his erratic behavior, she wasn’t so sure anymore. She informed Wilson of the incident, and filed for divorce and custody of their children. She gave investigators permission to search the property, where they uncovered the remains of an estimated 11 victims and identified four on June 24, 1996. At the time of the search, Erich was with Baumeister, making Juliana and investigators nervous. Juliana put in her claim to custody during this, before the find hit the news and Baumeister could hurt Erich (Blanco; Montaldo).
While Baumeister disappeared after the discoveries at Fox Hollow Farm, Juliana helped investigators link him to the Interstate 70 murders. According to her, Baumeister was often going between Indiana and Ohio for business, as he would tell her. After the remains were found on their farm, however, she wondered if he may have something to do with the murders that happened to end when they bought Fox Hollow Farm (Blanco; Montaldo; Redd).
On July 3, 1996, Baumeister was found in his car with a gunshot wound to his head in Pinery Park, Ontario, Canada. He left a suicide note where he talked about his failing marriage to Juliana and their failing business, Sav-a-Lot, which began to fail as his life fell apart and he let the locations fall into disrepair. The suicide note was a whopping three pages long, but never once mentioned the remains found on Fox Hollow Farm (Blanco; Montaldo). Some reports say campers found Baumeister lying next to his revolver, with the suicide note nearby (Redd).
As of now, there are eight victims attributed to Baumeister that have been identified. Johnny Bayer, 20, Allen Wayne Broussard, 28, Roger A. Goodlet, 33, Richard D. Hamilton, 20, Steven S. Hale, 26, Jeff Allen Jones, 31, Michael Kiern, 46, and Manuel Resendez, 31. All of his known victims were gay men, generally from their mid-20s to 30s, with a couple outliers at 20 and one at 46 (Blanco). All of his victims had been out at gay bars when they disappeared, likely lured away like Tony had been. He would pick them up at gay bars while Juliana was away, like when she would take the kids and spend time at his mother’s condo when their marriage began to become stressful, and bring them back to the pool in their house. There, he would drug their drinks and strangle them using a hose before burning their remains and burying them (Redd).
Officially, due to not being able to be charged, Herb Baumeister is still just a suspect in the murders, but the remains on his property are convincing for most (Redd). As it stands, there are still remains that have not been identified in Indianapolis, Indiana. Someday, perhaps we will find out who these victims were and bring some kind of closure to their families.
Montaldo, Charles. “Richard ‘Herb’ Baumeister: Founder Of Sav-A-Lot And Serial Killer”. Thoughtco, 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/herbert-richard-baumeister-973121.
Blanco, Juan. “Herbert Richard Baumeister | Murderpedia, The Encyclopedia Of Murderers”. Murderpedia.Org, https://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/baumeister-herbert.htm.
Redd, Wyatt. “Herb Baumeister Picked Up Men From Gay Bars, Then Buried Them In His Yard”. All That’s Interesting, 2018, https://allthatsinteresting.com/herb-baumeister.
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