Herbert “Herb” Baumeister is a well-known serial killer who lived in Westfield, Indiana, a fast-growing suburb of Indianapolis. Before he became famous for killing people, Herb Baumeister was well-liked around town as the founder, in 1988, of the Sav-a-Lot shopping chain. A husband, father, entrepreneur and supporter of local charities, usually normal and affable on the surface, Baumeister fit the profile of a sociopath to a tee.
As a teenager, Baumeister already showed signs of being “different.” He was seen, for example, stuffing a dead crow into his pocket and later putting it on his teacher’s desk. His father, an anesthesiologist, had the boy tested, and the diagnosis was schizophrenia. There was apparently, however, no follow-up treatment, and the odd, repugnant incidents continued.
Through his high school and college years, Baumeister never exhibited any interest in dating and conducted himself as a geeky loner. He never graduated from college, hiring on as a copyboy at the Indianapolis Star instead. Reportedly, the man simply did not fit in at the newspaper, either. He took a step down and changed jobs to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. His twisted mind led him to urinate on the desk of his boss, something he had also been seen doing in school years before. Somehow, however, he was kept on for a while.
He married and had three children in short order, and finally lost his job at the BMV, after which he worked at a thrift store for three years. It was during this time that he got the idea to start his own thrift store, which he named Sav-a-Lot Thrift. Successful from its inception, there was soon another store.
It was in 1991, after becoming a solid success, that Herb Baumeister moved his family to upscale Westfield. Relocating to a mansion with an indoor pool and riding stables, all on 18-½ prime acres in the “burbs,” the Baumeister family had arrived.
But trouble, as always, came to paradise. The couple fought and separated for brief spates, and Baumeister spent more and more time on what he called business trips between home and Ohio, a route which later yielded nine skeletal bodies of victims strewn there over the years.
Eventually, Baumeister was caught and exposed. The only mystery is why it took so long. The killer had covered the back yard of his large estate, where his children played, with crushed and broken human bones. Pieces of burned skeletons were partially buried everywhere, with only a light dusting of dirt to hide them.
Herb Baumeister, AKA Brian Smart, was proven to have murdered the eleven gay men whose skeletons were found in his yard. Speculation has it that he killed as many as fifty. Only four of his victims were identifiable. Police now estimate that “Strange Herb” killed at least nine others, whose bodies were, in time, found carelessly dumped along I-70, the freeway the murderer traveled on his many “business trips.”
Baumeister’s warped life ended when he learned that he was found out, decided to do everybody a favor and shot himself in the head.
(Source: westfield-indiana.funcityfinder.com)
In the early 1990s investigators with the Marion County Sheriff’s Department and the Indianapolis Police Department began investigating the disappearances of gay men in the Indianapolis area. In 1993, investigators were contacted by a man claiming that a gay bar patron calling himself “Brian Smart” had killed a friend of his, and had attempted to kill him. The detectives told him to contact them in case he ever saw the man again. In November 1995, he called them and supplied the man’s license plate; after checking the license registry, investigators discovered that “Brian Smart” was actually Herb Baumeister.
Investigators approached Baumeister, told him he was a suspect in the disappearances, and asked to search his house. When Baumeister refused, investigators confronted his wife, Julie, who also forbade police to search the house. By June 1996, however, Julie Baumeister had become sufficiently frightened by her husband’s mood swings and erratic behavior that, after filing for divorce, she consented to a search. The search of the 18-acre estate named “Fox Hollow Farm” was conducted while Baumeister was on vacation; it turned up the remains of 11 men, only 5 of whom were never identified.
Baumeister escaped to Ontario, where he committed suicide at Pinery Provincial Park by shooting himself in the head. In his sucide note, he described his failing marriage and business as his reason for killing himself. He did not confess to the murders of the men found in his backyard.
In addition to the murders at his estate, Baumeister is also suspected of killing nine more men, the bodies of whom were found in rural areas along the corridor of Interstate 70 betweeb Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana. Julie Baumeister told authorities that her husband made as many as 100 business trips to Ohio, on what he said was store business.
The A&E Network television series The Secret Life of a Serial Killer aired an episode about Baumeister in 1997. The History Channel featured the case in their “Perfect Crimes” series. The case was also featured on The Investigators on TruTV in 2008.
The oldest of four children, Baumeister’s childhood was reportedly normal. By the onset of adolescence, however, he began exhibiting antisocial behavior; acquaintances later recalled the young Baumeister playing with dead animals and urinating on a teacher’s deak. As a teenager, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but did not receive further psychiatric treatment. As an adult, he drifted through a series of jobs, marked by a strong work ethic, but also by more and increasingly bizarre behavior.
He married in 1971, a union that produced three children. He founded the Sav-a-Lot chain of discount stores in 1988, and quickly became an affluent, well-liked member of the community.
Birth name: Herbert Richard Baumeister
Alias: Brian Smart
Born: April 7, 1947 in Indianapolis, Indiana
Death: July 3, 1993 in Grand Bend, Ontario
Cause of Death: Suicide
Number of Victims: Undetermined
NEVER ARRESTED, CHARGED, OR CONVICTED
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