A bone fragment found on the Fox Hollow Farm of suspected serial killer Herb Baumeister, bottom inset, was identified as belonging to Jeffrey A. Jones, top inset, who was reported missing in August 1993. (Baumeister: Indianapolis police; Jones: Hamilton County Coroner’s Office; Screengrab: WHTR/YouTube)
A coroner in Indiana recently announced that medical examiners identified the bone fragment belonging to another victim from the 10,000 human remains recovered from the farm of alleged serial killer Herb Baumeister.
Jeffrey A. Jones, who last lived in Fillmore, Indiana, was reported missing in August 1993. Jones is at least the 12th victim out of the staggering amount of remains first recovered in 1996 at the 18-acre Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield, said Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison. With DNA technology improving over the last three decades, Jellison has renewed efforts to identify more victims.
The effort has yielded three identifications so far with four more DNA profiles sent to the FBI for possible identification, according to Jellison. Several law enforcement agencies, labs and DNA experts from colleges including the FBI, Indiana State Police Laboratory, University of Indianapolis and Texas-based Othram Laboratory have pitched in their expertise, Jellison said.
“Because many of the remains were found burnt and crushed, this investigation is extremely challenging; however, the team of law enforcement and forensic specialists working the case remain committed,” he said.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Allen Livingston — a queer man who was just 27 years old when reported missing in 1993 — was identified back in October.
Baumeister died by suicide in 1996 shortly after a warrant for his arrest was issued and Indianapolis police had begun questioning him about a string of gay men who went missing from the area during the 1980s and 1990s.
Key to the case was an informant identified as Tony Harris, who claimed that he had met Baumeister at an area gay bar in 1994 and spent a horrifying evening with him at his home. Harris’ friend, Roger Goodlet, had gone missing around that same time and Harris suspected Baumeister may have been responsible. According to an A&E documentary on the case entitled “The Secret Life of Serial Killers,” Harris would later tell police that when he approached Baumeister, who introduced himself as “Brian Smart” and had spent a good chunk of the evening staring at Goodlet’s missing poster hanging in the bar.
When Baumeister — posing as Smart — invited Harris back to his place for a swim and a late night cocktail, Harris accepted and the men went to Fox Hollow together. He said they began to have sex and in the middle of it, the man he thought was Smart tried to strangle him to death with a pool hose as part of foreplay. Harris said he only managed to escape with his life after pretending to pass out.
Harris went to authorities, but locating the farm to match his description proved difficult for police and it wasn’t until more than a year later that Harris would cross paths with “Brian Smart” again — and be able to give police a critical tip.
Virgil Vandagriff, a now-retired Marion County detective who had years earlier opened an investigation into missing queer men in the region, including Goodlet, told local NBC affiliate WTHR that when the informant spotted “Smart” that second time, Harris deftly managed to record “Smart’s” license plate number. This ended up being instrumental in helping to identify “Brian Smart” as Herbert Baumeister.
By this time, Baumeister’s marriage of more than 20 years to his wife Julie had all but fallen apart.
The couple had three children, including a 15-year-old son who made a grisly find in the woods behind their Fox Hollow home almost two full years before the couple divorced in 1996. According to local ABC affiliate WRTV, in 1994 — around the same exact time that Indianapolis police first started searching for a serial killer targeting gay men — Baumeister’s son discovered a human skull on the property.
Detectives said Julie Baumeister made her son leave it the woods until his father returned home. When she confronted him about it later, Herbert Baumeister told his wife it must have been left over from his father’s physician’s practice. She left it at that for two years, but changed her mind upon filing for divorce. Police reported that an initial attempt to search the Baumeisters’ property had been rebuffed by both husband and wife, but on a later attempt, once Herbert wasn’t home, Julie had police search the property.
They found a skull, teeth and other bone fragments.
![Law enforcement and members of the coroner's office in Hamilton County, Indiana scoured the 18-acre Fox Hollow Farm in the 1990s searching for human remains. They located more than 10,000 bone fragments or pieces belonging to victims they suspect were killed by Hebert Baumeister. YouTube screengrab courtesy of WTHR.](https://am22.mediaite.com/lc/cnt/uploads/2023/10/SEARCH.jpg)
Law enforcement and members of the coroner’s office in Hamilton County, Indiana scoured the 18-acre Fox Hollow Farm in the 1990s searching for human remains. They located more than 10,000 bone fragments or pieces belonging to victims they suspect were killed by Hebert Baumeister. YouTube screengrab courtesy of WTHR.
By this time, however, Baumeister, 49, was already on the run to Ontario, Canada. Once there, police say he killed himself. WRTV reported that he left a suicide note at the scene but made no mention of his victims, only grieved his failing thrift store business and marriage.
While poring over Fox Hollow farm grounds in the mid to late 1990s, police found 11 human DNA samples along with bone fragments, The Associated Press reported. Of those, eight young men were identified and matched with the samples.
The charred bones or bone fragments found at the farm, the county coroner suspects, represent at least 25 individuals killed. By 1999, police had already connected Baumeister to at least 16 men who went missing over the previous decade and whose bodies were found in streams in rural Indiana as well as parts of western Ohio.
It was November 2022 when Jellison, the coroner, announced a partnership with the University of Indianapolis’ forensic laboratory and Indiana State police to redouble DNA extraction efforts for the 10,000 remains found at Fox Hollow, CBS News reported.
The victims’ families had gone more than a quarter century without answers, Jellison said, and he was determined to bring them closure. In fact, it was victim Allen Livingston’s cousin who approached Jellison last year and expressly urged him to expedite the identification process.
Livingston’s mother Sharon, already in her mid-70s and long holding onto hope for information about her son, had been stricken with two forms of terminal cancer, the cousin said.
Sharon Livingston told WTHR in 2022 that she kept a landline in her home for more than 30 years because it was the only number her son knew at the time he vanished since cellphones weren’t part of the equation yet.
She said she waited just a few days without hearing from him before she reported him missing.
“I know that man got him, I just know,” Livingston said of Baumeister in an interview last year with WTHR. “I’m pretty sure they are going to find him. I just know they are.”
Jellison expressed amazement in October after positively confirming Allen Livingston’s remains. A positive ID had not been made since the 1990s.
“What are the odds, out of 10,000 remains? Out of 10,000, we selected 44 and the first identification is a person from the family that initiated this whole thing,” he said. “Where does that come from?”
Jellison said his office’s first reaction was to celebrate the success of identifying Livingston, but it was quickly tempered by the realization that yet another murder victim was turned up.
The current owner of Fox Hollow has continually turned up fragments and submits them to authorities, WTHR reported.
Indiana Police and the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office continue to urge people who know someone missing from that time period to reach out to the coroner’s office.
Brandi Buchman contributed to this report
The post Officials ID victim among the 10,000 human remains found on alleged serial killer’s farm first appeared on Law & Crime.
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Author: David Harris
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