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More than four decades after Fox Hollow serial killer Herb Baumeister left 10,000 pieces of human remains scattered around his Indiana farm, authorities are still seeking to identify at least four victims.
Baumeister is believed to have killed at least 25 people between the late 1980s and the early 1990s. He hunted mostly gay men in the Indianapolis suburb of Westfield, Indiana, where he lived on an 18-acre property known as Fox Hollow Farm.
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office and Coroner’s Office have named nine victims of the notorious Fox Hollow Farm killings, but four still remain a mystery.
“The complexity and the amount of remains they have, which is over 10,000 stored, is second only to 9/11,” Linda Znachko, founder of He Knows Your Name, an Indiana-based ministry for the unidentified deceased, told Fox News Digital. “And the intricacy and the amount of manpower that this investigation is continuing to need and require, plus money to do pathology and all the DNA work, is just huge.”
Baumeister went untraced for more than a decade. But when his 15-year-old son discovered some charred bone fragments and the human skulls in 1994, it all came crashing down.
The nine victims who have been identified so far are Jeffrey Allen “Jeff” Jones, Allen Lee Livingston, Manuel Resendez, John Lee “Johnny” Bayer, Richard Douglas Hamilton Jr., Steven Spurlin Hale, Allen Wayne Broussard, Roger Allen Goodlet and Michael Frederick “Mike” Keirn.
Last week, the nine victims were publicly honored by the community for the first time.
“My organization purchased an outdoor sculpture from an artist in Canada [David Perrett], and we placed it today with the [victims’] names listed with an opportunity for more names to go on that list if more are there and also place an ossuary there so that any future remains or any family member that would like to use that ossuary and have their loved one buried right there at that memorial site, and free of charge,” Znachko told Fox News Digital.
Authorities believe Baumeister used the vast grounds and adjacent trail of his Westfield home to hide 10,000 decomposed pieces of remains from his victims.
A human skull was found by Baumeister’s teenage son in 1994, who then showed it to his mother. When Baumeister’s wife confronted him about the skull, he said it was likely left over from his father’s work as a physician. She accepted that explanation for two years, but the couple eventually divorced.
Police found the remains, including bone fragments, a skull and teeth, two years later after authorities searched the property while Baumeister wasn’t home, and dug up the remains of several victims, leading to a warrant for his arrest.
After police named Baumeister as a suspect in 1996, he fled to Ontario, Canada, where he fatally shot himself.
More remains were discovered later the same year when police returned to the property after his death.
Baumeister was never charged with the murders and he did not admit to any of the crimes in his suicide note.
