Authorities are trying to identify the victims of serial killer Herb Baumeister

Baumeister’s coat of armsHis gruesome double life began to unravel in 1994, when his 13-year-old son found a human skull and a pile of bones in the woods of Fox Hollow Farm, his million-dollar estate in Westfield, Indiana.

Baumeister, who owned several thrift stores, had an easy explanation for this chilling discovery: the bones came from a skeleton his late father, an anesthesiologist, had acquired in medical school. PEOPLE reported in 1996

Two years later, Baumeister, 49, faced many more questions when police discovered thousands of human bones and bone fragments on the property.

The day after police made the gruesome discovery, Baumeister disappeared. Eight days later, he was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a park in Canada.

Investigators soon learned that Baumeister was probably one of the most prolific serial killers in Indiana history. One of them is believed to have preyed on his victims in gay bars while his wife and three children stayed at the family’s lakeside home.

In 2022, Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison said in a news release that investigators believe the 10,000 human bones and fragments found by police on Baumeister’s property in the 1990s may include the remains of 25 victims.

That same year, Jellison renewed efforts to identify some of the suspected serial killer’s victims, this time using advances in DNA technology, including genetic genealogy, according to the Associated Press.

Jellison and his team continue to search for DNA samples from relatives of men who disappeared in the mid-1980s and 1990s. CBS News and AP report.

According to researchers, the team compares these samples to DNA profiles that scientists collected from most of the charred remains found on Baumeister’s 18-acre property. ABC News and AP.

The team received about 40 DNA samples submitted by people who believe their missing relatives may have been one of Baumeister’s victims, Jellison claims, AP reports.

Baumeister is suspected of killing at least 12 men in the early 1990s and hiding their bodies on his property, NBC5 in Chicago reports.

He is also suspected of murdering at least 11 boys and men whom authorities believed were victims of the “I-70 Strangler,” a notorious serial killer whose identity remains a mystery, according to NBC 5 Chicago.

Who were Baumeister’s victims?

Jellison announced that in 2022 that it is taking an initiative to try to identify the remains of the victims.

According to a release from the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office, in May 2024 it identified one of the victims as Jeffrey Jones of Fillmore, Indiana, who was reported missing in 1993 and whose remains were found in 1996 at Fox Hollow Farm.

Jones was the third victim identified in Jellison’s renewed investigation into more than 10,000 remains found at Fox Hollow Farm, according to the release.

“Because many of the remains were found burned and crushed, the investigation is extremely difficult; However, the law enforcement and forensic team working on this case remains committed,” the release said.

In October 2023, Jellison announced that the team had identified alleged victims of another Baumeister, Allen Livingston, according to AP.

Livingston’s sister, Shannon Doughty, told the AP she was relieved to learn what happened to her older brother. “Just getting to know it comes with a lot of emotions,” she said. “You wanted to know, but you didn’t want to know. But you had to know.

Relatives of the missing men who wish to provide familial DNA samples to identify the remains can contact the Indiana State Police Missing Persons Hotline at 833-466-2653 or the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office at 317-770-4415.