Fox Hollow Farm Serial Killer: Victims, DNA, and Accomplices

The Fox Hollow Farm serial killer was Herbert “Herb” Baumeister, an Indianapolis thrift-store owner suspected of murdering at least a dozen young men from the city’s gay community during the 1980s and 1990s and burying them on his 18-acre estate in Westfield, Indiana. When investigators searched the property in June 1996, they recovered roughly 10,000 bone fragments. Baumeister fled to Canada and shot himself before he could be arrested. Three decades later, forensic scientists are still working to put names to every set of remains.

Who Herb Baumeister Was

Baumeister was born in Indianapolis in 1947. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder, and in 1972, shortly after he married Juliana Saiter, his father had him committed for two months for severe depression.¹

He worked at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles, rising to program director before being fired in 1985 after urinating on a letter addressed to the governor and on his manager’s desk. In 1988, with $4,000 borrowed from his mother, he opened the first of two Sav-A-Lot thrift stores in the Indianapolis area. By 1993 the business was struggling and facing lawsuits for nonpayment.¹ Baumeister and Juliana raised three children on Fox Hollow Farm, a Tudor-style estate in Westfield, a suburb north of Indianapolis.

How He Chose and Killed His Victims

Baumeister used the alias “Brian Smart” at gay bars in Indianapolis. He would approach young men, strike up a conversation, and invite them out to the rural estate, often mentioning the indoor pool. The pool area was decorated with mannequins.² Once he had a victim there, he would strangle him, sometimes under the guise of autoerotic asphyxiation.³ Authorities believe he targeted more than 20 men during the mid-1980s and 1990s, most of whom frequented the same bars. He is said to have carried out the killings while his wife and children were away on summer vacations.⁴

How the Case Broke Open

In 1994, a man named Mark Goodyear contacted Indianapolis Police missing-persons detective Mary Wilson. Goodyear described a frightening encounter with “Brian Smart,” who had put a hose around his neck and told him, “You know, sometimes mistakes happen.” Goodyear suggested that other missing men might have had similar experiences.² The break came when an acquaintance of another survivor spotted the suspect at a bar, followed him, and wrote down his license plate. It was registered to Herb Baumeister.⁵

Around the same time, in late 1994, one of the Baumeister children found a human skull and bone fragments in the woods on the family property. When Juliana confronted her husband, he claimed the bones came from a medical skeleton that had belonged to his late father, an anesthesiologist.⁴ After more bones turned up, Juliana contacted her attorney. She filed for divorce on January 4, 1996, shortly after police questioned her about her husband’s possible connection to several disappearances.¹

What Investigators Found at Fox Hollow Farm

In June 1996, with her husband out of town, Juliana consented to a police search.⁶ On June 24, 1996, the bones the children had previously found were confirmed to be human.² Hamilton County sheriff’s deputies and a forensic team, including anthropologist Dr. Stephen Nawrocki and university graduate students, worked across the 18-acre estate.

They recovered roughly 10,000 bone fragments, scattered across the property, in a nearby creek, and along an adjacent hillside. Animal activity had dispersed many of the remains. Several hyoid bones were broken, evidence consistent with strangulation. Dr. Nawrocki gave a preliminary estimate of 11 bodies.²⁷ DNA testing for most of the fragments was not funded at the time, which stalled identifications for years.⁶

Why Baumeister Was Never Charged

Baumeister vanished the day after investigators began uncovering remains. He drove to Canada and, on July 3, 1996, shot himself at Pinery Provincial Park on Lake Huron, near Grand Bend, Ontario. He was 49.⁴⁸

He left a three-page suicide note that apologized for his failing marriage, his crumbling businesses, and for “spoiling the scenery” of the park. It said nothing about the missing men or the bones on his property.⁴ Because he died before he could be arrested, Baumeister was never formally charged or convicted.

The I-70 Strangler Link

Investigators also connected Baumeister to a separate string of killings known as the “I-70 Strangler” murders. Between 1980 and 1991, the bodies of 11 young men were found strangled and often partially nude near streams in rural areas along Interstate 70 in central and western Ohio. The victim profiles and method closely resembled the pattern at Fox Hollow Farm, and Baumeister was reportedly seen in western Ohio during that period.¹

One I-70 victim, Michael Riley, was last seen in 1983 leaving the Vogue Theater in Broad Ripple, Indianapolis. A witness who described the man Riley left with was later shown a photograph of Baumeister and identified him as the likely suspect. Investigators from the Ohio counties involved concluded that Baumeister was the I-70 Strangler. The Ohio dump sites stopped around the time he bought Fox Hollow Farm.¹⁹

The Reopened Investigation and DNA Work

For more than two decades the case largely stalled. In 2022, Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison reopened it. The catalyst was a family trying to identify a missing relative before the man’s terminally ill mother died.¹⁰ Jellison partnered with the University of Indianapolis Human Identification Center, led by forensic anthropologist Dr. Krista Latham, and the Indiana State Police laboratory.

The work is slow. Thousands of the fragments are no larger than a thumbnail, and many were damaged by fire and exposure. Testing each fragment risks destroying it, so if an extraction fails, that sample may be lost. Latham’s team submits roughly 30 fragments per quarter for profiling.¹¹¹⁰ Remains too degraded for current methods are being preserved for future technology.¹²

The team uses forensic genetic genealogy, working with Othram, Inc. and the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification. Families of men who vanished between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s have been asked for DNA reference samples; about 40 have been collected and entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System.¹² The coroner’s office has also used DNA phenotyping, a technique employed by Dr. Susan Walsh of Indiana University to predict physical appearance from genetic data.¹⁰

The Victims Identified So Far

As of mid-2026, ten victims have been positively identified from the Fox Hollow Farm remains, and the coroner’s office says work continues on at least two more.¹³

John Lee “Johnny” Bayer, 20, last seen May 28, 1993.
Jeffrey Allen Jones, 31, last seen around July 6, 1993.
Richard Douglas Hamilton Jr., 20, last seen July 31, 1993.
Allen Lee Livingston, 27, last seen August 6, 1993; identified in October 2023 as the ninth known victim.
Manuel Martinez Resendez, 31, last seen August 6, 1993.
Steven Spurlin Hale, 28, last seen April 1, 1994.
Allan Wayne Broussard, 28, last seen June 6, 1994.
Roger Allen Goodlet, 33, last seen July 22, 1994; initially identified via dental records in 1996 and confirmed by DNA in November 2025.
Michael Frederick Keirn, 45, disappeared March 31, 1995.
Daniel Thomas Halloran, identified in April 2025 as the tenth victim through Othram’s forensic genome sequencing after his daughter, Coral Halloran, submitted a DNA sample.

Coral Halloran, who had spent more than 30 years not knowing what happened to her father, said the identification brought closure. “I feel more put together knowing that my dad’s not just out there roaming around and, you know, abandoning me as a child,” she told reporters. “Now I know that he’s my guardian angel for sure.”¹⁴

Indiana State Police scientists have extracted eight unique DNA profiles from the bones analyzed so far. Five matched known victims; three remain unidentified, and two additional profiles are still being tested. Forensic analysis has raised the count of Baumeister’s presumed victims to at least 12.¹²

The Unidentified Victim and a Public Appeal

One victim whose DNA profile has been developed remains unidentified. Through forensic genealogy, investigators determined that his biological father was Jerome Clarence “Jerry” Harvey, a 6-foot-5 construction worker who spent most of his life in Indianapolis and may have run a furniture store in Fort Wayne in the early 1970s. Harvey was married four times, but genetic evidence indicates that none of his known former wives was the victim’s mother.¹⁵

DNA phenotyping by Dr. Susan Walsh suggests the unidentified man had very pale to pale skin, brown to dark brown auburn hair, and hazel brown eyes. Coroner Jellison has publicly appealed for anyone who knows of a male child connected to Jerry Harvey, or the child’s mother, to contact the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office. Investigators are building family trees encompassing roughly 3,000 individuals in an effort to identify the mother.¹⁰¹⁵

Questions About Accomplices

A four-part docuseries, The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer, produced by ABC Studios, premiered on Hulu on February 18, 2025. It follows Coroner Jellison’s renewed investigation and raises questions about the original handling of the case, including potential accomplices and missing evidence.¹⁶

Central to the series is Mark Anthony Goodyear, whose tip eventually led police to Baumeister. In his first on-camera interview, Goodyear described meeting “Brian” at a downtown Indianapolis gay bar and alleged that Baumeister had a fascination with strangulation. Investigators and filmmakers have noted that his account has shifted over the years. Paranormal filmmaker Jane Gerlach, who interviewed Goodyear separately, called his statements “puzzling” and cited a letter in which he wrote: “Not an accomplice, not a victim, never attacked. What am I?”³

Goodyear has never been charged with any crime related to the case. He has denied involvement in the murders, maintaining that while he introduced Baumeister to others, he warned them not to be alone with him. Jellison has acknowledged shortcomings in the original 1990s work, saying, “When you look at the original investigation back in the ’90s, when the search warrant was served, I don’t think we were prepared to really handle an investigation like that.”¹⁶

A Memorial for the Victims

On August 29, 2024, the first public ceremony honoring the Fox Hollow Farm victims was held at the Prairie Waters Event Center in Westfield, nearly 30 years after the remains were discovered. It was organized jointly by the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office and He Knows Your Name, an Indiana-based ministry. A monument created by Canadian artist David Perrett lists the names of the nine victims identified at that time and includes space for additional names. An ossuary beside the monument allows families to lay their loved ones to rest at no cost.¹⁷

Linda Znachko, founder of He Knows Your Name, described the ceremony as an expression of “respect, neighborly love, support and sorrowful humility.” Jellison said it was meant to “properly and publicly remember these members of our community.”¹⁷

The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office continues to seek DNA reference samples from families of men who went missing between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. The office can be reached at 317-770-4415, and anonymous tips go to Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262-TIPS.¹⁵

1
Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. Herbert Baumeister
2
Oxygen. Herb Baumeister Victims Fox Hollow Farm
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Good Morning America. New DNA Technology, Witness Revelations Expose Dark Secrets
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WRTV. Heres What We Know About Notorious Indiana Serial Killer Herbert Baumeister
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Indianapolis Monthly. Unburying the Truth
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Forensic Magazine. DNA Confirms Identity of Likely First Fox Hollow Farm Victim
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Deseret News. Human Bones Found on Indiana Farm
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Toronto Sun. Crime Hunter: Serial Killer Herb Baumeister Ended It in Ontario Park
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The Advocate. Herb Baumeister Ninth Victim
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Newsweek. Serial Killer Case Gets Update 30 Years Later
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WISH-TV. Advances in DNA Technology Help Identify Victims of Westfield Serial Killer
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Associated Press. 30 Years After Discovery of Remains, DNA Could Identify All of a Serial Killers Victims
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Current in Westfield. Forum Focuses on Fox Hollow Murders
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ABC11. Fox Hollow Farm Indiana: Daniel Thomas Halloran Identified as Victim
15
Fox 59. Coroner Needs Help IDing Victim of Suspected Indiana Serial Killer
16
ABC News. New DNA Technology, Witness Revelations Expose Dark Secrets
17
Current in Westfield. Fox Hollow Victims to Be Laid to Rest in Public Funeral