Unearthing the Dark Secrets of Fox Hollow Farm
Tucked deep in the shadowy woods of Indiana, Fox Hollow Farm carries a weight far heavier than its trees and grounds. Once a serene estate, it became the chilling playground of suspected serial killer Herb Baumeister in the 1990s. The air here feels thick with the past—an uneasy energy that seems to hum beneath the surface. In a cruel twist of fate, animals and the elements scattered and commingled the remains of Baumeister’s suspected victims across the property, leaving behind fragments of lives unjustly stolen. Today, this place remains haunted not just by its history, but, according to many who have investigated it, by something far more active.
Investigators have reported unsettling encounters with a dark figure lurking in the woods, watching from the shadows, as if still guarding the secrets of Fox Hollow Farm. The estate has since become a chilling beacon for those who dare to seek answers about what may remain there—experiences that, at times, seem far more interactive than simple residual echoes of the past.
Baumeister’s Grisly Legacy: Hauntings Beyond the Grave
By the early 1990s, young men were disappearing from Indianapolis’s gay community, many of them last seen in or around the city’s gay bars. Behind the facade of a seemingly ordinary suburban life, Herb Baumeister would eventually become the central suspect in a horrifying series of disappearances and deaths. Authorities also came to suspect him in a separate series of earlier murders attributed to the so-called I-70 Strangler, although Baumeister died before he could ever be charged or tried for those crimes.
One of the most interesting pieces of that theory is the timing. The Baumeister family moved to the secluded 18-acre Fox Hollow Farm in 1991, around the time the earlier series of murders came to an end. Investigators theorized that if Baumeister was responsible for those earlier murders, acquiring a secluded property of his own may have changed the way he disposed of his victims. In the years that followed, another group of men disappeared from Indianapolis’s gay community, with their remains eventually recovered from Baumeister’s property.
By the time investigators finally searched Fox Hollow Farm in 1996, Baumeister had fled. He later took his own life in Canada without confessing to the murders. The thousands of burned, crushed, weathered, and commingled bone fragments recovered from the property have kept the investigation alive for three decades.
This investigation, thanks to the support of No Nonsense Paranormal and the generosity of the Graves family, allowed me to step into the thick of that dark history. Special thanks to Tiny, Marlena, J.S., and Brad for their invaluable help in exploring this eerie location.
Chilling Encounters: Ghosts of Fox Hollow Farm
Paranormal investigators and psychics have reported unusual phenomena at Fox Hollow Farm, from sudden temperature changes to disembodied voices and unexplained figures. The indoor pool area figures prominently in accounts of Baumeister’s encounters with men he brought to the property, including the account of a surviving witness who said Baumeister attempted to strangle him with a pool hose. During our investigation near that area, we captured EVPs that included faint voices and what sounded like responses to questions.
What interested me most was the apparent timing of some of those responses. Rather than simply sounding like stray voices caught on a recorder, several seemed to react to us in real time—the kind of interaction that keeps me interested in the possibility that we may be dealing with something beyond a residual haunting.
My personal experience at Fox Hollow Farm left me speechless. After years of investigations, the sheer intensity of what we experienced there was unlike anything I’d encountered.
The Paranormal Evidence Unfolds
From the moment we arrived, there was an overwhelming sense of something unseen surrounding us. Investigators have frequently reported temperature drops, disembodied voices, shadow figures, and other strange activity on the property. Near the pool area, we captured EVPs that seemed, at times, to respond directly to us.
I’ve visited many reportedly haunted locations, but Fox Hollow Farm was uniquely unsettling. Whatever the explanation, the experience was gripping, intense, and difficult to simply shrug off.
Reflections on the Haunting: Lessons from Fox Hollow Farm
Fox Hollow Farm is more than just a haunting—it’s a place where violence and loss left a permanent scar on the landscape. Whether anything of the victims remains there beyond the physical evidence is a question none of us can answer with certainty. But standing on that property, knowing what happened there and hearing what we captured, it is difficult not to wonder whether some part of that history is still capable of answering back.
Are these spirits seeking justice? Are they simply echoes of lives violently interrupted? Or are we interpreting something we still don’t understand through the history we already know?
One thing is clear: Fox Hollow Farm’s dark legacy will continue to intrigue and haunt our psyches for years to come.
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Historic Timeline:
• 1991: The Baumeister family purchases Fox Hollow Farm, an 18-acre property in Westfield, Indiana, with a large Tudor-style home, horse pastures, an indoor swimming pool, and dense woods. The move is significant because investigators later associate Baumeister with the earlier I-70 Strangler murders, a series that largely subsides around the time he acquires the secluded property.
• Early 1990s: Young men connected to Indianapolis’s gay bars begin disappearing. Baumeister is later suspected of strangling men he met in the city’s gay nightlife scene. Investigators believe some victims were burned and their remains crushed or scattered on the Fox Hollow property. Contemporary reporting also records claims that bone fragments were found in areas used like gravel or landscaping.
• 1994: Baumeister’s teenage son discovers a human skull on the property. Baumeister reportedly explains it away as an anatomical specimen that had belonged to his physician father.
• 1994: The families of Allen Wayne Broussard and Roger Allen Goodlet hire retired Marion County Sheriff’s investigator Virgil Vandagriff to investigate their disappearances. Vandagriff and his investigators distribute missing-person posters in Indianapolis gay bars and begin recognizing a larger pattern of missing men.
• Early-to-mid 1990s: A surviving witness later publicly identified as Mark Goodyear—and referred to for years in earlier accounts under the pseudonym “Tony Harris”—describes meeting a man calling himself “Brian Smart” at an Indianapolis gay bar. Older accounts describe a strangulation encounter at a large suburban home with an indoor pool. Goodyear’s more recent public accounts differ on some details, making the precise circumstances of the encounter less settled than earlier versions of the story suggested.
• August 1995: A friend of Goodyear’s spots a man matching the description of “Brian Smart” and records the license plate of his vehicle. Detective Mary Wilson traces the plate to Herbert Baumeister, providing investigators with the crucial link between the mysterious man associated with Indianapolis’s gay-bar disappearances and the Westfield businessman.
• 1995-1996: Investigators attempt to question Baumeister and search Fox Hollow Farm, but he refuses access to the property. His marriage and business are also unraveling.
• June 1996: As the Baumeisters separate, Juliana Baumeister consents to a search of the property while Herb is away. Investigators begin discovering human remains scattered through the wooded acreage. The remains are badly fragmented, burned, crushed, weathered, and in many cases commingled.
• Late June-July 1996: The search expands across the property. Investigators recover human bones and teeth, along with other items including handcuffs and shotgun shells. Modern accounts place the total recovery at approximately 10,000 bones and bone fragments.
• July 1996: Baumeister is found dead in Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, less than two weeks after the discovery of human remains at Fox Hollow Farm. His suicide note discusses his failing marriage and business but does not confess to the killings or explain the remains.
• 1996-1990s investigation: Eight victims are identified from remains recovered at Fox Hollow Farm: Roger Alan Goodlet, Manuel M. Resendez, Steven S. Hale, Richard D. Hamilton, Johnny Bayer, Allen Wayne Broussard, Jeffrey A. Jones, and Michael Keirn. Other remains cannot be identified with the forensic technology then available.
• Late 1990s and after: Investigators also examine Baumeister as a suspect in the earlier I-70 Strangler murders, in which male victims were found nude or partially nude in waterways across Indiana and western Ohio. Because Baumeister died before arrest or trial, those attributions remain investigative conclusions rather than criminal convictions.
• Mid-2000s: The property is sold to Rob and Vicki Graves, along with a silent partner, at a reduced price because of its notorious history. Fox Hollow Farm later becomes known not only as a crime scene but as a location associated with reports of paranormal activity.
• 2022: Newly elected Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison launches a renewed effort to identify the Fox Hollow remains using modern STR DNA testing, mitochondrial DNA, forensic genetic genealogy, and family reference samples. The project brings together the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office, Indiana State Police, the University of Indianapolis Human Identification Center, and outside forensic laboratories.
• 2023: Previously unidentified remains are matched to Allen Livingston, who disappeared in 1993. Livingston becomes the ninth named victim identified from Fox Hollow Farm.
• 2024: The renewed DNA effort establishes that remains from at least 13 distinct individuals are represented among the material recovered from Fox Hollow Farm. Investigators continue to say the enormous collection of commingled remains could ultimately represent substantially more people.
• 2025: Daniel Thomas Halloran, born in 1972 and missing since the 1990s, is identified through forensic genetic genealogy. He becomes the tenth named victim identified from Fox Hollow Farm. Additional DNA profiles and unidentified remains remain under investigation.
• February 2025: ABC News Studios’ four-part docuseries The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer premieres on Hulu, following Jellison’s reopened investigation and bringing several figures from the case before cameras. The series later receives an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Crime & Justice Documentary and becomes ABC News Studios’ most-watched Hulu docuseries of 2025.
• July 2026: The follow-up special Return to Fox Hollow: New Victims, Darker Secrets begins streaming on Hulu. The documentary explores new leads, missing evidence, changing witness accounts, and the possibility that Baumeister may not have acted alone. It raises renewed questions surrounding Thomas Ackerman, who died in 2024 and was never charged. Any suggestion that Ackerman was involved remains an allegation or investigative theory presented in the documentary, not a criminal finding.
• 2026 and continuing: The forensic work remains active. A May 2026 account from the Indiana State Police Forensic Services Division describes the Fox Hollow material as a mass-disaster-scale identification problem: more than 10,000 highly fragmented and commingled bones and bone fragments, with modern DNA testing gradually sorting fragments by individual and returning names to victims who went unidentified for decades.
Herbert ‘Herb’ Baumeister
(aka Brian Smart, Bryan Stats; suspected by investigators as “The I-70 Strangler”):
• Born: 1947, the oldest of four children of Herbert and Elizabeth Baumeister.
• Adolescence: Baumeister reportedly displayed troubling behavior and underwent psychiatric evaluation. Later accounts have described diagnoses including schizophrenia or other psychiatric disorders, but retrospective descriptions of his mental health vary considerably and should not be confused with a modern clinical assessment.
• November 1971: Marries Juliana (Julie) Saiter.
• 1972: Baumeister undergoes a period of psychiatric hospitalization. Contemporary and later accounts differ in the terminology used to describe his diagnosis, with reports including compulsive personality disorder and other psychiatric conditions.
• 1980s: The couple builds a secondhand-store business through Thrift Management Inc. and the Sav-A-Lot stores in Indianapolis. The business initially succeeds but later suffers serious financial problems.
• 1991: The Baumeister family purchases Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield. Investigators later regard the timing as significant because the earlier series of murders attributed to the I-70 Strangler diminishes around this period.
• 1990s: Baumeister becomes the central suspect in the disappearances of men from Indianapolis’s gay community. Private investigator Virgil Vandagriff, hired by the families of missing men Allen Wayne Broussard and Roger Goodlet, helps uncover the pattern that eventually leads investigators toward Baumeister.
• 1995: Baumeister writes a letter to a judge falsely claiming that his wife is dead and that he is a single parent in an effort to avoid serving a short drunken-driving sentence.
• 1996: Human remains are discovered at Fox Hollow Farm after Juliana Baumeister permits investigators to search the property. Herb Baumeister flees and is later found dead in Ontario, Canada, at age 49 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He leaves no confession to the murders.
• Posthumous investigation: Investigators recover approximately 10,000 bones and bone fragments from Fox Hollow Farm. Eight victims are identified during the original investigation. Baumeister is also investigated posthumously as the likely I-70 Strangler, but he is never charged, tried, or convicted of those killings.
• Suspected I-70 victims: Authorities examined similarities between Baumeister and a series of murders in Indiana and Ohio involving men and teenage boys whose nude or partially nude bodies were found in or near waterways. Names historically discussed in connection with that investigation include Michael S. Petrie (Petree), Maurice A. Taylor, Michael Andrew Riley, James B. Robbins, Thomas R. Clevenger Jr., Eric Allen Roetiger, Michael Allen Glenn, Steven L. Elliott, and Clay Russell Boatman. These should be understood as suspected or investigative connections, not adjudicated Baumeister victims.
• Other cases: Authorities also examined similarities in the 1989 death of John Talbot, 27, whose body was found in an Ohio creek. In 2008, unidentified remains were exhumed from a New Albany cemetery to determine whether they belonged to Jerry Williams-Comer, another potential victim.
• Potential accomplices: Questions about whether Baumeister acted alone have existed for decades. Historical speculation included possible overlap with convicted serial killer Larry Eyler, but no partnership between the two was ever established. The renewed investigation and the 2026 Hulu documentary have again raised the possibility of an additional suspect or accomplice. Those theories remain unresolved.
• 2022-2026: Coroner Jeff Jellison’s renewed identification effort uses modern DNA methods to re-examine the Fox Hollow remains. Allen Livingston is identified in 2023 and Daniel Thomas Halloran in 2025, bringing the number of named Fox Hollow victims to ten. Testing has demonstrated that additional distinct individuals are represented among the remains, and identification work continues.
• Legacy: Three decades on, the basic architecture of the case is still unsettled — how many men died there, whether the I-70 murders belong entirely to Baumeister, and whether he acted alone or had help he was never made to answer for. The case that seemed to end with a gunshot in a Canadian park in 1996 is, in a real sense, still open.
References:
• “Bones Found at Estate Are Human.” Indianapolis News, 28 June 1996.
• Campbell, Richard M. “Wife Agrees to Search for Missing Men.” Noblesville Ledger, 24 Feb. 1997.
• Campbell, Richard M. “Wife Agrees to Search for Missing Men.” Noblesville Ledger, 20 Mar. 1997.
• Johnson, B. R. “Store Chain Seeks Bankruptcy Protection.” Indianapolis Star, 15 Sept. 1996.
• “Remains of 5 Found at Estate.” Journal and Courier, 4 July 1996.
• “Self-Inflicted Gunshot Ends Suspected Serial Killer’s Life.” Indianapolis Star, 6 July 1996.
• Smith, John. “Murder Mystery Unravels in Indiana.” The Tribune, 28 Apr. 1998.
• “The Dark Secrets of Fox Hollow Farm.” Indianapolis Star, 28 Oct. 2012.
• “The Double Life of Herbert Baumeister.” Indianapolis Star, 24 Nov. 1996.
• “Unraveling the Mystery of the I-70 Strangler.” Noblesville Ledger, 6 Jan. 1997.
• Associated Press. “Effort to ID thousands of bones found in Indiana pushes late businessman’s presumed victims to 13.” 21 May 2024.
• Associated Press. “30 years after discovery of remains, DNA could identify all of a serial killer’s victims.” 7 Jan. 2025.
• Sabes, Adam. “Fox Hollow Farm serial killer’s 10th victim identified: coroner.” Fox News, 30 Apr. 2025.
• Crouch, Kristine. “Fox Hollow Murders: Victim Identification Effort.” The ISHI Report, May 2026. Indiana State Police Forensic Services Division.
• Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. “Herbert R. Baumeister.”
• WRTV. “This private investigator cracked the case of notorious serial killer Herbert Baumeister.”
• WRTV. “Remains found at Fox Hollow Farm identified as man missing since 1993.”
• ABC News Studios/Hulu. The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer, 2025.
• ABC News Studios/Hulu. Return to Fox Hollow: New Victims, Darker Secrets, 2026.
• ABC News Studios. “Return to Fox Hollow: New Victims, Darker Secrets ... Streams July 8 on Hulu.” Press release, 3 July 2026.
Additional sources:
• Wikipedia.org
• Findagrave.com
• Radford University Department of Psychology
• Virtualglobetrotting.com
— Thank you so much to Eunice Specter & your impeccable research!
— Evel Ogilville
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