Uncovering the Dark Secrets of Fox Hollow Farm: The Chilling Tale of Herb Baumeister

[Music] [Music] [Applause] hey crime St listeners welcome back to another episode of crime salad where we talk True Crime my name is Ashley and I'm Ricky and we're so glad that you could join us thank you so much for supporting our show now this week's episode we are going to discuss the Fox Hollow Farm murders now just to heads up this episode will discuss violence murder this content may be unsettling for certain [Music] listeners so this story takes us to Westfield Indiana and there live the B Meister family who appeared to be just your average well-off family Herbert Richard Bal Meister was one of four children and he was the oldest he was born on April 7th 1947 his father Dr Hubert e balme was an anesthesiologist and his mother Elizabeth balister was a homemaker they provided a loving home with the essentials however Herbert or herb as he was called often had early signs of troubled behavior and was often believed that his behavior was a red flag for what was about to come from a young age herb had what was described as a disturbing fascination with death and Decay and it was to an alarming Point like we're talking playing with dead animals all right that's pretty dark yeah now he did struggle a little socially it was difficult for him to form relationships so for the first few years he was very isolated I mean maybe his morbid curiosity pushed his peers away and then there was his strange Behavior at school he would display disruptive behavior such as urinating on the teacher's desk and placing a dead crow on another's so behavior that you wouldn't normally see yeah it's pretty odd now these behaviors caused his father to become concerned and during his teenage years herb was diagnosed with schizophrenia despite that diagnosis he never received the necessary treatment that could have possibly helped manage his condition this was around the early mid 1960s so just keep that in mind patients could be placed in a psychiatric hospital often for extended periods of time and there were also various treatments like Psychotherapy electroconvulsive therapy and the early use of anti psychotic medications right so it's nothing like it is today right and what I did find interesting too was during this time there were many institutions that were overcrowded and underfunded which led to poor living conditions so sometimes these treatments were harsh and patients they didn't seem to have a lot of say in their care honestly though with the father being involved in medicine and not letting him get the treatment that he probably needed was probably just because of his knowledge of the industry in general that's a good assumption because like you said he was in the medical field I didn't find anything as to why he didn't receive treatment however living with this condition it didn't stop him from graduating high school and attempting to go to college so in his early 20s he lived on his own and he enrolled at Indiana University but it was a struggle for him to fit in and to focus on schoolwork so he dropped out and he took a series of jobs he worked at the Indianapolis Star which is a newspaper company and was also a clerk at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles despite showing initial promise in these rules his unpredictable behavior and instability to get along with co-workers often led to him leaving those jobs or getting fired I'm curious for the jobs that he was fired like what happened so I did find that he urinated on a letter addressed to the governor and that was the icing on the cake and the confirmation as to who urinated on his supervisor's desk a few months earlier wait so he did this in school too though right he did it in school and then he did it a few more times as an adult working a job it's a Serial peer when he was 24 years old he married Julie in 1971 and he was working at a thrift store which seemed to be a better fit for him after 3 years of working there he opened up his own thrift store with his wife Julie and called it sabot they had kids over the years and appeared to be normal with their business earnings they bought Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield Indiana and it turned out to be the perfect place to raise a family the kids could enjoy the wooded area and ride their bikes around on the property it was very private and isolated but Herbert kept this Darkness Brewing inside him and well a second life he frequented gay bars during the times when Julie would take the kids on a long weekend trip or on an extended trip during the summer months staying with a family member he would stay behind stating that he needed to be home for their store the business was failing and it put some strain on their relationship I feel like it's hard with a couple having a business and then it not doing well it definitely affects you especially in today's economy I feel like it's it's a struggle for sure now while it appears that he was living out this secret love life he had a change of heart maybe he was stressed out in his marriage he had a much darker and Sinister goal you see it all started to come to the surface around 1993 when men began to disappear from the Indianapolis area Johnny Bear 20 years old was last seen on his way to a job at McDonald's Jeff Jones who was 30 was last seen coming out of a Salvation Army rehab center Richard Hamilton who was 20 was last seen leaving his apartment at 2 a.m. to get cigarettes Allan Livingston who was 28 was last seen getting into a white vehicle on the same night Manuel rendez who was 31 went missing and the last time he was seen was with friends at a nightclub but when the night was over he wasn't there so in 1994 more names and faces of young men continued to go missing Allan brossart who was 28 was last seen at a gay bar that he often went to and then Roger Allen goodlet who was 33 went missing in July of 94 after leaving for a night out his mother reported him missing and demanded for the police to take immediate action however the missing person's Department had to give it at least 30 days to wait and see if anything turned up 30 days that is a long time yeah I mean especially you're a parent imagine how that would make you feel and you know something's wrong you know it's it's completely out of character that he hasn't shown up at home I mean a lot of things can happen in 30 days it would be very frustrating now all of these missing persons were young men in the same area and police were not sure if these men were just missing or they left on their own accord or if maybe they were linked to one specific murderer it was a big question mark you know what this case reminds me of is Jeffrey dmer yeah a lot of people say that yeah Jeffrey dmer or also John Wayne gasy cuz he targeted young men also and a lot of them very similar cases it's really strange how it all kind of happened sort of around the same time too right although I feel like this case didn't get nearly the amount of attention that like gayy or dmer got yeah no way private investigator Virgil Vandergriff has his look into these missing cases around the area and once he found out that there were close to 12 men who were missing from the area it was shocking to him and even more so knowing that because they were gay or thought to be gay the urgency of finding these missing men wasn't a top priority and so he put the matter into his own hands especially since the police were a bit reluctant to investigate by getting the Flyers out to the public even posting them at local bars and clubs around town and communicating with people of the gay community in the area while this was all happening information started to piece together because people of the community started to come forward a friend of a victim who went missing and who prefers to be called Tony Harris for privacy reasons noticed a quiet man at one of these nightclubs one night and he was by himself he appeared uncomfortable and he was looking over the missing flyer of his friend Roger goodlet and his demeanor wasn't very genuine at all when he talked to him about it and he mentioned how he felt very uneasy at the time thinking maybe he had something to do with his disappearance so he continued have this conversation with him and soon enough he was invited over to his place he went by the name Brian smart and explained to Tony that he was taking him to his employer's home where he has a pole and they can sit by the pole and have some drinks and talk more when they approached the house the house was in a secluded area and when they got inside it was noticably dusty and dirty and there were mannequins everywhere dressed up posing around the house he told him that the owner didn't want to be alone Herbert took him to the pool house on the property where Tony was standing in the pool Herbert got on the topic of what his interests are and the next thing Tony knows is a hose is wrapped around his neck now he didn't attack him but he only kind of playfully put it around his neck and asked if this was something that he was into oh so like a sexual thing yeah so Herbert in a convincing manner mentioned that that's what he's into he's into choking and strangling and even asked Tony if he could do that for him so Tony explains that he did it Herbert lost Consciousness and he ended up falling in the pool and he would tell him that it was a rush to him then Herbert did it to Tony and explained what he liked about it in gruesome detail he explained that he enjoys seeing the eye bulge out of the face and the lips puffing up and sometimes splitting Tony spoke up and said that he's hurting people and he's going straight to the authorities when Tony said this Herbert laughed and said no one would believe someone like [Music] you now Tony wasn't killed that night for some reason Herbert let him go and Tony did what he said he was going to do he went straight to the police the police were looking for that house that Tony was at and they couldn't find it they got his name ran smart however that ended up being his Alias it's weird that he let him go it makes me wonder if he regrets not killing him that night yeah well it's interesting because Herbert kept trying to find Tony after this incident so he would call him on numerous occasions asking to have him come over hang out let's have a repeat session and so the family decided to put a tracker on his phone and his comments to Tony would be very telling he would say things like he's familiar with what death looks like and he would explain how he would have accidents in these situations or a bad night and how these accidents happened to at least 50 to 60 different people oh ow how scary for him though I mean he's sitting there in the murder room right potentially could become the next victim that's terrifying now looking at Herbert without even knowing what he was actually capable of he appeared to be a very kind sociall looking person and honestly from looking at a picture of him he does appear to look like a normal guy yeah he does he was someone you would feel safe to to talk to someone who didn't give off creepy Vibes and obviously someone who made you feel comfortable enough to feel safe enough to go over to their house after the bar but this was all intentional his victims would take the bait and leave the bar with him to his pool housee he would slip drugs into their drinks and well as Tik Tock would have you say he unived them by strangling them with a hose and would burn and dispose of their bodies on his 18 Acres of land jeez and all of this went down when Julie and the kids were on their trips right yeah so they're out of town they're gone and he's just living this crazy second life and his wife never knew she never had any you know hints that this was happening or murderer yeah now his wife started to grow suspicious when their son and his friend were walking around in the woods in the backyard and they came AC cross bones it appeared to be a human skull and a number of other bones it looked just like a skeleton was laying there like whoever died there was laid there and decomposed Herbert explained that these were the bones that his father had from medical school and he just held on to them kept them in the garage well yeah that would make sense if these bones were maybe in the house or on display or in a box or something but these are like scattered out in the yard of the farm yeah isn't that bizarre really weird why why are they out here then now initially this made sense to Julie I mean his father was a doctor and Herbert never threw anything away he told his wife that he would clean it up and within a week the bones were gone jeez it's definitely weird but it's one of those things like she didn't know what he was capable of she didn't see that side right living second life you would never think that he's capable of doing something like that so you wouldn't put the two together but then at the same time there's all these reports of boys going missing and men going missing whatever you have to kind of connect the dots well a lot of people believe that she was in denial and she was in denial for quite some time during the roll out of this case now if you remember Herbert he was trying to get in contact with Tony he was inviting him over saying hey let's have another session well Tony was out at the bar and loone behold that guy was there again Tony had to have been thinking wow he's sitting there waiting for his next victim Tony asked a friend to go outside and write down his license plate number because as we mentioned the police had nothing on this guy more people are missing and this has to be put to a stop so they took the license plate number to the police and he was not Brian smart but a man by the name of Herbert balme right the Alias yeah he was confronted at the Sabal lot store and he was asked about the number of missing people in the area and how his car was located at one of the bars but he said he had never been there he wasn't very good at hiding his body language in front of the investigators the officer would describe him as looking like he wanted to just fall apart a moment where he had to have been thinking that they were finally on to me and that guy who he let go he has to have something to do with this he's a risk it all started to come to light for Julie once the police got in contact with her they approached her with the shocking news that they were looking into her husband being a suspect in a homosexual homicide this was an immediate shock for Julie who never suspected a thing and she would tell the police that she didn't believe them and Julie refused to allow the search Julie in disbelief would call the officer on the phone telling them that there's just no way he is the father of their children he's never raised his voice at their children never even SLA slapped them he never showed any aggression or aggravation towards her at all or to the family there's just no way that her husband could be capable of being a murderer so that only led to the police needing to get more evidence to be allowed to get a search warrant they did do a search by helicopter using infrared light in hopes that they could find a king of a body but there was nothing now around this time the bow meisters were in a bit of a marital struggle Herb's Behavior was becoming more erratic and Julie even recalls times where he would talk about this guy named Tony Harris The One That Got Away and would say that we should be afraid of him the business was flopping and she had spent the holidays alone with the kids it was becoming very financially difficult for Julie herb randomly closed down the thrift store and left with their one son to go on a trip to Lake waasi as time went on Julie questioned the thought that could this all be true putting all the pieces together away from the initial shock of the police knocking on the front door the human skull her son found Herbert's strange behavior and then leaving home taking their son running away from the police suspecting him she became very concerned and mostly concerned for her son she filed for divorce in early June of 1996 filed for custody for both of their children and was able to get their son back from herb she was now living with the fear that her husband was to blame for so many victims you had gone missing the divorce wasn't even finalized and she allowed the police to search their property on June 25th this search led to the discovery of numerous human remains on the property even though the trees were all grown in and Greenery was covering most of their backyard confirming her worst fears about her husband and also confirming the tip that Tony left with authorities it's crazy human bones kept being found on the property dig after dig bone after bone and the number kept growing dental records confirmed the identity of at least four victims that were known to be missing Roger goodlet Steven hail Manuel rendez and Richard Hamilton during the investigation they actually found over 10,000 bone fragments all that were tested and confirmed to be human wow yeah and are currently still being pieced together these bone fragments were found in the backyard where they appeared to be burned and crushed now as we mentioned herb was left he was gone he had their son with them she hasn't heard from him so the police began to search for herb they eventually get notified when he was found at a public park in Canada and he had committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound he left a note explaining the financial struggles the flopping business the marital problems but never once did he mention that he had murdered anyone so he took the coward way out and took it all to the Grave yep and his last words on on that note where I'm going to make a peanut butter sandwich and go to sleep interesting so we can probably assume here that he heard the news that the remains were found and he most likely shot himself for that reason possibly now these identified victims that have been murdered they were in the newspaper when they were identified and it was even mentioned along with their name in their picture that some were arrested for prostitution wow is that necessary right and what's also disgusting is they would give Herbert or her the title land owner or businessman like okay you mean murderer or serial killer monster like you don't have to yeah exactly and this caused families in the gay community to really be upset with how the media was handling this case and the victim it was disgusting now this case even led to the question if Herbert was the cause to even more bodies that were found along I70 this is what connects Indiana to Ohio victims bodies started showing up along the interstate and they appeared to be strangled and it was found that they were all last scene at a gay bar and Julie would even explain that he had to make multiple trips to Ohio for whatever reason for their business so could this have been like an opportunity to get a few murders in probably yeah yeah I mean it's pretty bold and confident to just leave a victim out on the side of the road like you almost want to be caught yeah that's what it seems like and there were mentions that it seemed like there was a pattern of how he disposed of bodies most of their land was wooden and it seemed that as the killings happened the bodies would get closer and closer to the house so like when he first started he would put him all the way in the back of the woods probably buried you know yeah and it seemed like he got more comfortable more comfortable like lazy maybe more confident so this kind of coincided with could he be the i7 killer yeah I mean he's killed so many people at this time he's probably feeling invincible like they're not going to catch me I've done this now they never identified the person responsible for the murders that happened on I70 but you know it kind of makes sense like the gay bars the young men they're all like 20 30 years old well it seemed like the police didn't really even care to look into these Murders At least more than surface level being that they were gay yeah the case of Herbert malme a suspected serial killer who prayed on young gay men in the 1990s continues to unfold decades after his death because many of the remains were found burnt and crushed this investigation continues to be challenging recent advancements in forensic technology have led to the identification of more of his victims bringing some closure to the families as of today they have positively identified 12 suspected victims that's great but there's so many more yeah I mean I saw that in a college in Indiana there's just cases and boxes of remains that are just sitting on a shelf it's nuts so hopefully more victims get identified now in 2023 Jeffrey Jones who went missing in 1993 was identified Allan Livingston who also was missing during that time was identified in October of 2023 and Manuel rendes was identified in January of 2024 so things are happening hopefully there's more to come these discoveries were made possible through the dedicated effort of the Hamilton County coroner's office and the University of Indiana using DNA profiling techniques and also I got a little tea along with your crime salent if you'd like tea and salad would you like to hear it I would Julie has told media that she never seen herb fully naked and the only time they had intercourse was three times he was a never nude never nude well that wraps up this week's episode of crime salad as always thank you for joining us on this journey into the dark and often chilling world of True Crime don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform it helps us reach more True Crime enthusiasts like you and if you found this episode intriguing please share it with a friend or a family member for sure that helps so much yeah stay safe stay curious and as always remember to keep your ears and eyes open Don't Close Your Ears Ricky I'll leave them open because sometimes the truth is closer than you think also check us out on patreon patreon.com crimes solid podcast where you can get AdFree listening and some behind the scenes stuff and also what like 30 some episodes that aren't available anymore yeah behind the cheese behind the cheese [Music]