September 3, 2025 • 40 mins
Nearly thirty years after gay men go missing from nightclubs in Indianapolis, one man’s call to the new coroner in town sets off an investigation into what happened at Fox Hollow. Now, there’s a desperate push to excavate the remains of dozens of suspected murder victims whose bodies were burned and crushed beyond recognition.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
It was clearly skeletal remains of a human. It makes
me wonder what would happen if his son had not
made that discovery. I mean, would there be a whole
bunch of skulls and skeletons out in the woods. You
have all of these fragments, how do we figure out
who these people are?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
In nineteen ninety six, authorities discovered thousands of human remains
on the property of a wealthy Indianapolis business owner. The
more investigators dug into the wooded grounds, the more they
found femurs, jawbones, ribs sticking out of a muddy embankment.
Police were in the midst of one of the most
(00:53):
prolific serial killers of our time. But the discovery of
human remains didn't lead to an arrectest. It didn't even
lead to an in depth investigation of who died on
the property. In fact, it took nearly thirty years to
reopen the case. But even now, does anyone really know
the truth of what happened at Fox Hollow Farm. I'm
(01:18):
Alan Lancelesser and this is America's crime Lab. This is
part two of the Fox Hollow Story. If you missed
part one, you'll want to go back and listen. Producer
Catherine Fenalosa is here, And when we left the story,
police were digging up hundreds of human bones at Fox Hollow. Meanwhile,
(01:40):
Herb Baumeister was away at the family lake house with
one of his kids.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, and his wife Julie is worried about what he
might do because Herb knows that police have found human
remains behind the family home. So Julie gets an emergency
restraining order to have her son brought back to her.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Honestly, I still can't wrap my head around why the
police haven't brought in Herb for questioning, or at least
have him under surveillance.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
You would think, right, based on everything that they've found
on the property. The police do go with this emergency
order in their hand. They go up to the lake
house and they see Herb and they talk to him
and they say we need to bring your son Eric
back and he says okay, and they leave. They don't
(02:27):
question him.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So Herb is just free. They don't question him. Nope,
what's the thinking there.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
One of the excuses that law enforcement makes at the
time is, well, all of our resources were at the
Fox Hollow farm securing the property. And overseeing this whole
search of these remains that we really didn't have the
man power to surveil, and we didn't really have enough
(03:02):
evidence to bring him in for questioning.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I just think about urgency. You know, the bones will
be there there, continuing the search, not to slow that down,
but it does seem like a priority to get information
beyond the bones. Yes, while you can, because people can move,
whereas the yard is going to stay there.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
So Herb is left by himself now, and Detective Steve
Ainsworth says, that's when Herb starts to panic.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
And it was right after that that Baumeister realizes that
the jig is up, and then he heads to Canada.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
So it seems like he's on the run.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Within a few days. Place in Ontario, Canada, see a
guy sleeping in his car, and they go to talk
to him, you know, to let him know that he's
got to move along. But then they noticed something in
his car.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
They reported there at least one box full of videotapes
in the backseat of his car.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Videotapes. This is the mid nineties, when I'm picturing like
old school VHS.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Tapes, Yeah, exactly. I think Herb was known for filming
a lot of family events, and Steve says evidence photos
taken at Fox Hollow showed that there was video equipment
in the house.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
There were two video recorders, one on top of each other,
plugged into each other so that he could dubbed tape. Now,
what are those tapes up?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Investigators suspect that Herb had hidden video cameras in the
ceiling of the basement pool area to secretly record whatever
was going on down there.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Are they blackmail tapes of people having sex with these guys?
Are they snuff films? What exactly is on those tapes?
Because there reportedly was a whole lot of them.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
So maybe when they see the box of tapes in
his car, maybe he was removing incriminating evidence.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
The next day, Herb is located.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
There are no videotapes in his car, and he's found dead.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
He's found dead of a gunshot wound in a park.
Police say it's a suicide. He's left a rambling three
page note.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
What's in the note?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
So he mentions marriage trouble, he mentions that his business
is failing. He mentions a peanut butter sandwich. What There's
a lot in the note where he's kind of feeling
sorry for himself, not taking any personal responsibility for his
(05:27):
marriage troubles or his financial problems. He doesn't mention the
crimes at all. He doesn't express any guilt, remorse anything.
So now Herb is dead, he's really the one and
only suspect, and the police drop the case.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Wait wait, wait they drop the case. What about all
the people that are in the woods in herbs backyard.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
At the time police say eight men who disappeared from
the Indianapolis nightclub scene were probably victims of her Baumeister.
But then they go on to say that the real
victims in this case are Julie and the three kids.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
What I mean, I get that they may also be
victims in some way if they truly didn't know what
was going on. I mean, how traumatic. Absolutely, But I mean,
come on, there are all these people who died and
they're not even identified. Oh my god, I know.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
So law enforcement takes the remains that they find and
keep in mind, a lot of these remains are just
little shards of bone. There are femurs, there's a jaw
bone with teeth. They take these bits of actual people
to the University of Indianapolis, and that's where they're stored.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
And what do they tell the families of all these
men who went missing?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
This is also shocking. They say, if you want to
know if your loved one was killed at Fox Hollow,
you can pay to have your DNA tested against the remains. Essentially,
like we're all done here?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
What we also? Okay? I sorry, I'm just my mind
is blown right now because I mean, what is like
a government for but to do services like this where
there's potentially a mass murder or a series of who
(07:34):
knows how many murders? I mean, how do we know
how many people might be victims? And also we don't
even one hundred percent know that it was Herb who
did it? Like have they really gotten to the bottom
of it, he didn't admit to it. What evidence exactly
do they have? And then on top of that, each
of those remains would probably need to be tested. I
(07:57):
mean that costs money. How is like a random person
and supposed to fund that?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, it is baffling.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
These are people who died.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Herb Baumeister was forty nine when he was found dead.
His wife, Julie, changes her name and she and the
kids move out of the house detectives and the corner
at the time move on to new cases, but the
families of the missing men are left with no answers.
And then one day in twenty twenty two, everything changes.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
So at the time I was transporting for the City
of Indianapolis for the Coroner's office.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
A young guy named Eric Pranger had recently gotten a
job with the City of Indianapolis Corner's office transporting bodies,
which basically means if someone dies at a crime scene
or in a nursing home but they have no family,
he goes and collects the body.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
One night, it was he was kind of slow and
we were bored. We were just chatting about cold case
files and everything like that, and it dawned on me
that my cousin's a possible victim of her boumeister and
he's never been identified.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Who is Eric's cousin.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
His name was Alan Livingstone. He was twenty seven years
old when he went missing in August of nineteen ninety three,
and the last time anyone saw him he was getting
into a car in Indianapolis.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
He was a pretty fun going guy, loved a party,
always the center of attention. He would always put a
smile on your face.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Eric was only six when Alan went missing, and Alan
get this. Eric actually grew up down the street from
the Save a Lot store, you know, the business that
Herb and Julie Baumeister owned.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
So I remember the thrift store shut down, and my
mom told me that the owner is the possible killer
of my cousin Alan, But I was too young to
really get in detail conversation. I didn't get deep into
it until I got into the funeral industry.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Eric goes to his aunt Sharon, who's Alan's mom, and
he starts to ask, tell me about the story. When
did you last see Alan? And she says, well, he
called me every single weekend and one weekend he didn't call,
(10:40):
and he was supposed to come over a couple of
days later and he never showed up. And that was
not Alan. She knew he was gay. She actually herself
was gay. The family had no problem with it. They
loved Alan's personality, his style. He was funny, he was
(11:01):
very caring. He wore big ear rings and tied I T.
Shirts and he really took care of his mom. And
she says to Eric, her nephew, I think that Alan
was murdered and I actually think that he was murdered
on the Fox Hollow property.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
My aunt Sharon made several calls to the detectives, to
the coroner. She was always getting the same answer, you know,
that they're investigating it, and she's never heard back, and
she gave up hope.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
She really feels that the case just sat there because
Alan was gay and that nobody cared.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
As you talk about Alan, it just strikes me as
so often I think when people are the victims, they're
also immediately stigmatized, like somehow, how implicitly we as humans,
maybe we have this thought like, oh maybe it was
their own fault on some level. It's like this double
(12:11):
layer or this intersection of stigma where it's like you're
a victim and you're gay, you just become more and
more dehumanized and less and less important and totally misrepresented. Yes,
everybody has a family and a story and that's forgotten
(12:33):
in all this.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
And Sharon has kept a landline all of these years
because that was the number that Allan would call her on.
Oh so if he calls, and so she's like, I'm
not giving up the number, like on the off chance, wow,
that there's some story of he left town and wasn't
(12:56):
able to reach me. He knows this number. So Alan's
cousin Eric, his coworkers, tell him he's got to find
out what happened to Alan. And on top of that,
Alan's mom has been diagnosed with cancer. So Eric calls
the Corner's office in Hamilton County and Jeff Jellison answers
(13:18):
the phone.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
I ask him to bring my cousin home to his
mother before she passes away. Is shed terminal cancer And
that was enough right there to get Jeff listening.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
When Eric first calls, Jeff Jellison isn't even the elected
corner yet, he's the chief deputy in the Corner's office.
He had been a police officer in the eighties and
nineties and then went on to own a few businesses.
Then in April of twenty twenty two, he takes the
call from Eric Pranger saying, my aunt has terminal cancer.
(14:12):
Please take this case before it's too late. I need
to find out if Ellen Livingston was murdered at Fox
Hollow Farm.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
So how do you say no? I mean you can't
and you know I have no clue that individuals had
not been identified and families had any closure.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
What did Jeff Jellison know about the Foxhallow case before
that phone call?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
He's aware of the Fox Hollow murders because he actually
lives not too far from the property. But you know,
as has happened like roughly thirty years ago, he assumes
that back then that law enforcement thoroughly investigated the case,
that bodies were identified. He has no reason to think
(14:59):
anything thing otherwise. So Jeff says to Eric, sure, I'm
going to look into this. Let me see what I
can find out. So Jeff Jealoison calls the university where
the bone fragments that were retrieved from the Fox Hollow
property are being stored, and he speaks to the sort
of head custodian who's overseeing the archive of all of
(15:22):
these bones.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
And I said, just just what do we have there?
And she said ten thousand bone and bone fragments. And
I heard her say one thousand, and I thought, oh, okay,
we can deal with that, you know, I mean, that's manageable.
And she said no, Jeff, I said ten thousand, And
(15:43):
I said what I mean? Also? I said, what have
I just gotten into?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I mean, where do you even begin?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
So Jeff puts down the phone and he goes home
to talk with his wife.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
I spent several nights the cow with a very supportive wife.
The statutory duty of the corner is to identify the
deceased found in this county. The other corners were presented
with that opportunity, they chose not to do it. I
explained to my wife, this is going to be life changing,
(16:21):
and I mean she agreed.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
And he says, I need to give this guy an answer.
But I know that I'm essentially pulling a thread of
a massive case that is going to really like rock
the boat in this town.
Speaker 5 (16:48):
This is the second largest case of unidentified human remains
in this country, second only to the world trace Her.
Before I took over as corner, you know, we may
have had three deputy corners in this office plus the
elected corner. Did he have the staff or did the
(17:10):
former corners have the staff to conduct an investigation like this?
And when it boils down to it, I'm just going
to be very blunt. It doesn't matter, doesn't matter if
you had the staff or not, doesn't matter if law
enforcement had the time and resources you have to make
it happen. These are people, These are families and you
(17:33):
can't say, well, we just can't do it.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
So Jeff goes public and he talks to like any
TV station or newspaper or radio outlet, like anybody that
will give him some time, and he says, listen, if
you have a friend relative, if you know of any
person who disappeared in the early nineties, please come forward.
(18:00):
He set up a system, and what he really wanted
was people to come and give a DNA sample, a
mouth swab, because now they're going to start DNA testing
these fragments and try and match them up with living relatives.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Wow, weich probably should have happened decades earlier.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
So not everybody is on board. And Jeff is contacted
by a former county councilman who was a local politician
during the time of the Fox Hollow case. The guy
wants to know why in the world corner Jeff Jellison
(18:43):
would spend any of the county resources on opening this investigation.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Now.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Jeff is also reaching out to family members who had
filed missing person reports back in the nineties.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
We made no promises, explained to them that this is
an extremely challenging investigation because of the conditions of the remains.
They were burnt, they were crushed, you know, they set
in the woods for however long before they were recovered.
Carnivores are chewed on them. Some of them are the
(19:26):
size maybe a fingernail, you know, in size comparison. But
we're never going to get it done if we don't try.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
And I'm assuming he's getting DNA swaps from the families,
but I mean, with ten thousand bone fragments, how do
you figure out what to test?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Well, Jeff works with the University of Indianapolis and those
folks figure out which bones have the best chance of
getting usable DNA, and he also pulls in more experts.
He creates a team with the FBI, a police center
for Human Identification, and also Steve Ainsworth.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Oh yes, Steve, he's the former homicide detective who now
works at AUTHROM. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And it's a two step process because remember a lot
of the men who went missing back in the nineties
were never reported to police. So first, about forty four
bones are selected for testing, and Steve says they would
compare the DNA profile of each bone to the DNA
swabs that family members had submitted.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
So they can do basically a wonder when a relationship
like a mother or a sibling or something like that,
and they could identify him that way. And then after
they had done that and made those comparisons, if they
didn't match any of the familiar references, then they send
them to AUTHROM.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
The second step of this process is doing forensic genetic
genealogy on the remains that don't have a familial DNA.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Hit right, because I mean, with no family reference, they
need to build out a family tree to find out
who this person is.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah, and Alen, in October of twenty twenty three, they
make the first identification I ever.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Forget that phone call. I saw it was the state Police,
so I went ahead and answered it and they said
we have a match. I said who is it? And
they said our O Livingston And I said, you know,
(21:28):
don't joke with me like that. You know, what are
the odds And they said, no, it's our Olympicston And
I knew right then, you know that's God's work. I
walked outside my office and called all my deputies together
and there was a lot of high fives, a lot
(21:50):
of celebrations, and then it just like it hit us
all that we've just identified a murder victim, and we
have many, many more where to go.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
So the first human remains that are identified from Fox
Hollow after thirty years belonged to Alan Livingstone, and it
was his cousin who essentially reopened this case with his
phone call. Does Alan's mom live long enough to hear
the news? She does.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
She's heartbroken, but she said she knew in her gut
all along that Alan was a victim of her Baumeisters.
Now Alan had been identified from his femur bone, and
Jeff calls Eric to tell him he can finally take
his cousin home.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
I was like, when can I come get him?
Speaker 5 (22:54):
Can I come right now? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:59):
I rushed to get that. When I left my house
to go pick up Allan's remains, I stopped at Alan's brother,
James's house, and at James and I drove up to
the Hamilton County Corner's office and picked him up. And
it was pretty emotional. It was exciting to to be
(23:21):
able to shake Jeff's hand after all that hard work.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Since Eric works in the funeral industry, he was able
to cremate Alan's bone himself and give his aunt an
earn with Alan's ashes. She kept the urn in her
living room until she died, and Alan's bone was the
first to be identified. But since then they've found more
of his remains.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Have they identified more people? Since then?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
When I spoke to Jeff Jellison, they had identified eleven
victims at Fox Hollow. But here's the thing, it's still
a very open case. Steve Ainsworth and Jeff have been
back to the property to another search.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
When we went out there with cadaver dogs, Jeff and
I found what we think are three bone fragments, just
in areas where that dirt would wash down and collect
stay on a route or against a rock or something
like that, and you start digging in there and start
finding little pieces, and we found a couple, I think
three that were quite possibly bone fragments. So there's still
(24:22):
some out there.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
The fact that they're still finding bones speaks to how
large this crime is, but also the lengths to which
Herb and maybe accomplices, if he had accomplices, went to
destroy evidence. Do we know how these men were murdered?
They have some theories.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Remember this whole case unravels when Herb's son finds the
skull in the woods. Steve says that is the only
fully intact skull that's ever been found there.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
So that's the most readily identifiable part of a person.
And I think he was actually got very very cautious
and started crushing the bones. So once they're decomposed to
the point where you could crush him, I think he
was crushing him. And in fact, there were statements made
by the witness there was some sort of a large
piece of heavy equipment that would drive back and forth
(25:14):
across the property.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
I remember there was a burn pile too, right, so
I could see maybe that was herb trying to make
it harder to find or id people.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
You can understand why this case has been so challenging
and really just overwhelming, and it was a challenge for
AUTHORM for a couple of reasons. First, David Middelman says,
the bone fragments were mixed up. I mean, investigators think
they're possibly fifty six victims and the remains are charred
and they've been left out in the woods for decades.
Speaker 6 (25:47):
They've got a bunch of skeletal fragments, no clues, so
there are no leads to associate these remains or fragments
of remains with an actual person. Was this in fact
a victim of that serial killer? This is the perfect
time to use a technique like DNA testing that could
at least tell you whose remains these are, and then
(26:08):
with that information at hand, you're in a position to
make some decisions.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
This is one case that David's wife Kristen, actually had
to step away from.
Speaker 7 (26:18):
Some of these cases are so horrifying that you don't sleep.
There are some that you can't. You just you can't.
And I think about how many people We're human, right,
we're human, and this affects us. I think that's the
part people don't understand. We're scientists, yes, and the science
(26:41):
is solid, and it's based on ken is it feasible
or is it not? And you know how many markers
can you get here and where can you upload? And
what algorithms are you using? And all of that is
black and white. But the emotions that come with each
one of these cases are not. It's horrified.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Recently, another set of remains were sent to AUTHRAM. The
DNA had no familial hits, so this person was never
reported missing to police. Genetic genealogy led them to a
possible identification, but Jeff Jellison says there were unexpected problems.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
We find out his brother is deceased, his mother is deceased,
and his father is deceased. So we're thinking his entire
family has deceased. How are we going to do this?
So we find out that the mom had died of
a drug overdose in a neighboring county. To us, they
(27:38):
had a DNA card.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
What's a DNA card?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
A DNA card is a way for medical examiner to
collect and store blood so that the person's DNA can
be tested later, and it's usually used when there's an
unidentified body or if someone dies under suspicious circumstances. And
it's interesting. The card absorbs and dries the blood, saving
(28:02):
the DNA. So Jeff is able to get this particular
DNA card and sends that to authorm.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
To develop a DNA profile of his mom, who had
already died.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Yeah, and from that they find another relative who is alive.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
The next day, we find out that this person has
a daughter that lives in North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
The man who died, he had a daughter.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
She said that my parents divorced when I was very young,
so I never knew my dad and I always wondered
about my dad.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Her dad was Daniel Thomas Hallerin. He was roughly twenty
four when he was murdered. His daughter Coral said that
over the years the family had looked for him. They
had even hired a private detective and contacted social service agencies.
They were just looking for any trace of him.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
And sudden me, I feel closer to my dad now
that you were able to make this identification.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
That's so interesting. I do think there's something about just
knowing what happened. It literally can make you feel closer
to the person you lost. And maybe you also know,
like they weren't avoiding me all these years, there's a
reason they disappeared. I feel like knowledge of the truth
has so much power. But I'm also curious what happened
(29:34):
to the Fox Hollow property.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Well, a guy named Robert Graves bought it. He and
his family were aware of what happened at Fox Hollow,
and the grounds have changed. The woods don't come right
up behind the property like they used to, and some
of the eighteen acres has been sold off and developed.
But Alin, the new owner has kept the house pretty
much exactly how it was when the Baumeisters live there.
(30:00):
The basement indoor pool is still there. The dark Library.
Robert Graves sleeps in the same bedroom that Herb did,
and he's a self proclaimed student of Herb Baumeister. He
even wrote a book about the murders called The Horrors
of Fox Hollow Farm.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Okay, I'm sorry, but there's something about that that creeps
me out. Do we know if Herb had any accomplices,
because I'm realizing since he died by suspected suicide and
the original investigation was dropped, do we know anything more now?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well, no one I spoke to thinks Herb did this
all by himself. Steve Ainsworth, the investigator working with Authorm,
told me that a few different men at the time
said they were approached at various gay bars in Indianapolis
by a man, but that man was not Herb.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
A potential victim identified a person who picked him up
at a bar and said, Hey, I've got this really,
really wealthy friend. He's got this great house, he's got
an indoor swimming pool. You've got to come and see it.
And so he was taken out there. And it wasn't
by Baalmeister to have had two witnesses that came forward
(31:17):
and told us about a young man that was shot,
and he was shot by Balmeister, but he was being
held and was possibly be handcuffed by two or three
other people, and their accounts are almost identical.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I wonder iful'll ever know the full truth of what
happened at Fox Hollow Farm or who was involved.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, so far, Jeff says
they've extracted DNA from roughly one hundred and fifty bone fragments,
but I mean, they still have thousands more to test.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I could see how testing the bones could also produce
more leads, because maybe if they talked to friends and
family of the men who died, they could find out
who they'd last been seen with. I mean, some family
members could have ideas about who lured them out there,
and that could be an actual way to find out
who else was involved. You know.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
That's something Kristin Middleman says is really important, especially in
crimes involving serial killers.
Speaker 7 (32:14):
When you hide a victim, disfigure a victim, destroy a victim,
and there isn't that victim identity, it's really difficult to
work that crime. It's immediately stalled. And I think a
lot of serial killers, they get away with it, and
they do it over and over and over again in
almost the same manner. And once the victims start getting identified,
(32:39):
then it's pretty easy to connect who was connected to
all of these victims.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And there's another part of this story, you know, I
had mentioned back in nineteen ninety six, when the remains
were first discovered, Jeff says, the attitude of county officials
was like, well, I mean, let these families pay for
the identification themselves.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
They didn't support the families. You know, when some of
these remains were returned in the nineties, they called these
family members in and they said, we've got your loved
ones remains. We need to return them to you. They
gave them paper sacks with raw bones in them. I mean,
(33:22):
damn it, are we so lacking and compassion that we're
just going to hand them a raw bone.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
It's not always as easy as returning remains to families
when they're identified. Sometimes relatives don't have the money to
bury the remains, or it's frankly, just too painful to
reopen that wound. So Jeff worked with local authorities and
organizations to cremate the remains for free and if the
family doesn't want to take the ashes home. There's a
(33:56):
memorial for the victims not far from Fox Hollow where
their remains can be buried, and.
Speaker 5 (34:02):
It's really become a very special place. I don't live
far from it, and I drive by it every morning
to work, and I've actually seen families visit.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
It is just wild to me that this is a
story that so few people have heard of. It seems
like quite often stories like this don't hit the media,
the information isn't disseminated if it doesn't go to trial,
because it's at the trial where the truth is really
(34:37):
hammered out. It's discussed, it's in the public domain, it's
in the air, it's reported on, and so in a
way by Herb Baumeister potentially killing himself or I guess,
we don't know exactly what happened, but it's like that
opportunity to fully understand what happened, to fully know who
(34:59):
the victims are, and to address the underlying social issues
that maybe need to be addressed, that is all lost.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
I think that's something Jeff and the team at Authrum
are working to do, not only give back these victims
their names, but to try and give families answers and
as they say, to right the wrongs of the past. Recently,
Jeff and Steve invited some family members to walk the
grounds of Fox Hollow, Whoa and Alan Livingstone's cousin Eric went.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
It was very intense and overwhelm me, very scary too,
like just walking through the woods, thinking about everything that
happened there. Being in the swimming pool room, I did
not fit I other than everybody that was in there,
(35:52):
I did not feel alone.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I can't even imagine.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Authoram has identified multiple victims at Fox Hollow. In addition
to Daniel Hollerin, there's thirty one year old Jeffrey Jones,
who went missing in nineteen ninety three, and investigators say
they plan to announce more identification soon. And allen, as
shocking as this case is, sadly there are tens of
(36:17):
thousands of unidentified human remains all over the country. The
Department of Justice calls it a silent mass disaster.
Speaker 7 (36:26):
And it is more common that any of us think.
It is so common. There are so many cases out
there where because the body isn't discovered yet, because the
body is out in the middle of a field, somewhere
in a dumpster in a trash bag underground. The case
(36:48):
isn't even a case. No one even is trying to
figure out the crimes, and for the first time, there's
a solution. This technology is being used universally to try
to all of these unsolvable crimes, and victims' families have hope.
I can't tell you the amount of time that family
writes to me today and tells me because of your technology,
(37:11):
I have hope that my case is next, that the
person I'm missing will one day be identified. That's the
greatest feeling in the world.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Fox Hollow is still a very active case. Authoram is
working with these tiny, charred and degraded bone fragments so
we can finally discover who all of the victims are,
and Jeff Jellison is hoping to hear from more families
so he can collect more DNA samples because ultimately these
remains need to be returned home to their families.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
If you have a missing person, call me. I don't
care where they're missing from, I don't care when they
went missing. You never know. Contact law enforcement. Make sure
that they take your DNA because that's the most efficient
way of identifying any missing person. Case one remains are found.
(38:13):
We're identifying remains and providing people with answers, and we're
not going to stop as long as I'm in this position.
You know, the old cop that me comes out and
it's like, get out of my way, because we're going
to do.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
This next time. On America's Crime Lab, I knew when
I looked down at my phone and it said that
it was Chief James Frye calling that it was probably
(38:52):
something big. I don't typically get a call in the
middle of a Sunday afternoon from the cheap We had.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
Four people that killed, no eyewitnesses, and we had to
start from basically with nothing and try and figure everything out.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor, and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fenalosa, Emily
Foreman and Jessica Albert. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne,
Mangesh Hadigadour and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart
(39:35):
Katrina Norville and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne,
Will Pearson, Kerrie Lieberman, Nikki Etoor Nathan Etowski, John Burbank,
and the entire team at Authrum. I'm Alan Lance Lesser.
Thanks for listening
Speaker 5 (40:00):
The ind
It was clearly skeletal remains of a human. It makes
me wonder what would happen if his son had not
made that discovery. I mean, would there be a whole
bunch of skulls and skeletons out in the woods. You
have all of these fragments, how do we figure out
who these people are?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
In nineteen ninety six, authorities discovered thousands of human remains
on the property of a wealthy Indianapolis business owner. The
more investigators dug into the wooded grounds, the more they
found femurs, jawbones, ribs sticking out of a muddy embankment.
Police were in the midst of one of the most
(00:53):
prolific serial killers of our time. But the discovery of
human remains didn't lead to an arrectest. It didn't even
lead to an in depth investigation of who died on
the property. In fact, it took nearly thirty years to
reopen the case. But even now, does anyone really know
the truth of what happened at Fox Hollow Farm. I'm
(01:18):
Alan Lancelesser and this is America's crime Lab. This is
part two of the Fox Hollow Story. If you missed
part one, you'll want to go back and listen. Producer
Catherine Fenalosa is here, And when we left the story,
police were digging up hundreds of human bones at Fox Hollow. Meanwhile,
(01:40):
Herb Baumeister was away at the family lake house with
one of his kids.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, and his wife Julie is worried about what he
might do because Herb knows that police have found human
remains behind the family home. So Julie gets an emergency
restraining order to have her son brought back to her.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Honestly, I still can't wrap my head around why the
police haven't brought in Herb for questioning, or at least
have him under surveillance.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
You would think, right, based on everything that they've found
on the property. The police do go with this emergency
order in their hand. They go up to the lake
house and they see Herb and they talk to him
and they say we need to bring your son Eric
back and he says okay, and they leave. They don't
(02:27):
question him.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So Herb is just free. They don't question him. Nope,
what's the thinking there.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
One of the excuses that law enforcement makes at the
time is, well, all of our resources were at the
Fox Hollow farm securing the property. And overseeing this whole
search of these remains that we really didn't have the
man power to surveil, and we didn't really have enough
(03:02):
evidence to bring him in for questioning.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I just think about urgency. You know, the bones will
be there there, continuing the search, not to slow that down,
but it does seem like a priority to get information
beyond the bones. Yes, while you can, because people can move,
whereas the yard is going to stay there.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
So Herb is left by himself now, and Detective Steve
Ainsworth says, that's when Herb starts to panic.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
And it was right after that that Baumeister realizes that
the jig is up, and then he heads to Canada.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
So it seems like he's on the run.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Within a few days. Place in Ontario, Canada, see a
guy sleeping in his car, and they go to talk
to him, you know, to let him know that he's
got to move along. But then they noticed something in
his car.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
They reported there at least one box full of videotapes
in the backseat of his car.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Videotapes. This is the mid nineties, when I'm picturing like
old school VHS.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Tapes, Yeah, exactly. I think Herb was known for filming
a lot of family events, and Steve says evidence photos
taken at Fox Hollow showed that there was video equipment
in the house.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
There were two video recorders, one on top of each other,
plugged into each other so that he could dubbed tape. Now,
what are those tapes up?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Investigators suspect that Herb had hidden video cameras in the
ceiling of the basement pool area to secretly record whatever
was going on down there.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Are they blackmail tapes of people having sex with these guys?
Are they snuff films? What exactly is on those tapes?
Because there reportedly was a whole lot of them.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
So maybe when they see the box of tapes in
his car, maybe he was removing incriminating evidence.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
The next day, Herb is located.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
There are no videotapes in his car, and he's found dead.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
He's found dead of a gunshot wound in a park.
Police say it's a suicide. He's left a rambling three
page note.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
What's in the note?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
So he mentions marriage trouble, he mentions that his business
is failing. He mentions a peanut butter sandwich. What There's
a lot in the note where he's kind of feeling
sorry for himself, not taking any personal responsibility for his
(05:27):
marriage troubles or his financial problems. He doesn't mention the
crimes at all. He doesn't express any guilt, remorse anything.
So now Herb is dead, he's really the one and
only suspect, and the police drop the case.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Wait wait, wait they drop the case. What about all
the people that are in the woods in herbs backyard.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
At the time police say eight men who disappeared from
the Indianapolis nightclub scene were probably victims of her Baumeister.
But then they go on to say that the real
victims in this case are Julie and the three kids.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
What I mean, I get that they may also be
victims in some way if they truly didn't know what
was going on. I mean, how traumatic. Absolutely, But I mean,
come on, there are all these people who died and
they're not even identified. Oh my god, I know.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
So law enforcement takes the remains that they find and
keep in mind, a lot of these remains are just
little shards of bone. There are femurs, there's a jaw
bone with teeth. They take these bits of actual people
to the University of Indianapolis, and that's where they're stored.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
And what do they tell the families of all these
men who went missing?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
This is also shocking. They say, if you want to
know if your loved one was killed at Fox Hollow,
you can pay to have your DNA tested against the remains. Essentially,
like we're all done here?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
What we also? Okay? I sorry, I'm just my mind
is blown right now because I mean, what is like
a government for but to do services like this where
there's potentially a mass murder or a series of who
(07:34):
knows how many murders? I mean, how do we know
how many people might be victims? And also we don't
even one hundred percent know that it was Herb who
did it? Like have they really gotten to the bottom
of it, he didn't admit to it. What evidence exactly
do they have? And then on top of that, each
of those remains would probably need to be tested. I
(07:57):
mean that costs money. How is like a random person
and supposed to fund that?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, it is baffling.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
These are people who died.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Herb Baumeister was forty nine when he was found dead.
His wife, Julie, changes her name and she and the
kids move out of the house detectives and the corner
at the time move on to new cases, but the
families of the missing men are left with no answers.
And then one day in twenty twenty two, everything changes.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
So at the time I was transporting for the City
of Indianapolis for the Coroner's office.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
A young guy named Eric Pranger had recently gotten a
job with the City of Indianapolis Corner's office transporting bodies,
which basically means if someone dies at a crime scene
or in a nursing home but they have no family,
he goes and collects the body.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
One night, it was he was kind of slow and
we were bored. We were just chatting about cold case
files and everything like that, and it dawned on me
that my cousin's a possible victim of her boumeister and
he's never been identified.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Who is Eric's cousin.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
His name was Alan Livingstone. He was twenty seven years
old when he went missing in August of nineteen ninety three,
and the last time anyone saw him he was getting
into a car in Indianapolis.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
He was a pretty fun going guy, loved a party,
always the center of attention. He would always put a
smile on your face.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Eric was only six when Alan went missing, and Alan
get this. Eric actually grew up down the street from
the Save a Lot store, you know, the business that
Herb and Julie Baumeister owned.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
So I remember the thrift store shut down, and my
mom told me that the owner is the possible killer
of my cousin Alan, But I was too young to
really get in detail conversation. I didn't get deep into
it until I got into the funeral industry.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Eric goes to his aunt Sharon, who's Alan's mom, and
he starts to ask, tell me about the story. When
did you last see Alan? And she says, well, he
called me every single weekend and one weekend he didn't call,
(10:40):
and he was supposed to come over a couple of
days later and he never showed up. And that was
not Alan. She knew he was gay. She actually herself
was gay. The family had no problem with it. They
loved Alan's personality, his style. He was funny, he was
(11:01):
very caring. He wore big ear rings and tied I T.
Shirts and he really took care of his mom. And
she says to Eric, her nephew, I think that Alan
was murdered and I actually think that he was murdered
on the Fox Hollow property.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
My aunt Sharon made several calls to the detectives, to
the coroner. She was always getting the same answer, you know,
that they're investigating it, and she's never heard back, and
she gave up hope.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
She really feels that the case just sat there because
Alan was gay and that nobody cared.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
As you talk about Alan, it just strikes me as
so often I think when people are the victims, they're
also immediately stigmatized, like somehow, how implicitly we as humans,
maybe we have this thought like, oh maybe it was
their own fault on some level. It's like this double
(12:11):
layer or this intersection of stigma where it's like you're
a victim and you're gay, you just become more and
more dehumanized and less and less important and totally misrepresented. Yes,
everybody has a family and a story and that's forgotten
(12:33):
in all this.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
And Sharon has kept a landline all of these years
because that was the number that Allan would call her on.
Oh so if he calls, and so she's like, I'm
not giving up the number, like on the off chance, wow,
that there's some story of he left town and wasn't
(12:56):
able to reach me. He knows this number. So Alan's
cousin Eric, his coworkers, tell him he's got to find
out what happened to Alan. And on top of that,
Alan's mom has been diagnosed with cancer. So Eric calls
the Corner's office in Hamilton County and Jeff Jellison answers
(13:18):
the phone.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
I ask him to bring my cousin home to his
mother before she passes away. Is shed terminal cancer And
that was enough right there to get Jeff listening.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
When Eric first calls, Jeff Jellison isn't even the elected
corner yet, he's the chief deputy in the Corner's office.
He had been a police officer in the eighties and
nineties and then went on to own a few businesses.
Then in April of twenty twenty two, he takes the
call from Eric Pranger saying, my aunt has terminal cancer.
(14:12):
Please take this case before it's too late. I need
to find out if Ellen Livingston was murdered at Fox
Hollow Farm.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
So how do you say no? I mean you can't
and you know I have no clue that individuals had
not been identified and families had any closure.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
What did Jeff Jellison know about the Foxhallow case before
that phone call?
Speaker 3 (14:39):
He's aware of the Fox Hollow murders because he actually
lives not too far from the property. But you know,
as has happened like roughly thirty years ago, he assumes
that back then that law enforcement thoroughly investigated the case,
that bodies were identified. He has no reason to think
(14:59):
anything thing otherwise. So Jeff says to Eric, sure, I'm
going to look into this. Let me see what I
can find out. So Jeff Jealoison calls the university where
the bone fragments that were retrieved from the Fox Hollow
property are being stored, and he speaks to the sort
of head custodian who's overseeing the archive of all of
(15:22):
these bones.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
And I said, just just what do we have there?
And she said ten thousand bone and bone fragments. And
I heard her say one thousand, and I thought, oh, okay,
we can deal with that, you know, I mean, that's manageable.
And she said no, Jeff, I said ten thousand, And
(15:43):
I said what I mean? Also? I said, what have
I just gotten into?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I mean, where do you even begin?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
So Jeff puts down the phone and he goes home
to talk with his wife.
Speaker 5 (15:57):
I spent several nights the cow with a very supportive wife.
The statutory duty of the corner is to identify the
deceased found in this county. The other corners were presented
with that opportunity, they chose not to do it. I
explained to my wife, this is going to be life changing,
(16:21):
and I mean she agreed.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
And he says, I need to give this guy an answer.
But I know that I'm essentially pulling a thread of
a massive case that is going to really like rock
the boat in this town.
Speaker 5 (16:48):
This is the second largest case of unidentified human remains
in this country, second only to the world trace Her.
Before I took over as corner, you know, we may
have had three deputy corners in this office plus the
elected corner. Did he have the staff or did the
(17:10):
former corners have the staff to conduct an investigation like this?
And when it boils down to it, I'm just going
to be very blunt. It doesn't matter, doesn't matter if
you had the staff or not, doesn't matter if law
enforcement had the time and resources you have to make
it happen. These are people, These are families and you
(17:33):
can't say, well, we just can't do it.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
So Jeff goes public and he talks to like any
TV station or newspaper or radio outlet, like anybody that
will give him some time, and he says, listen, if
you have a friend relative, if you know of any
person who disappeared in the early nineties, please come forward.
(18:00):
He set up a system, and what he really wanted
was people to come and give a DNA sample, a
mouth swab, because now they're going to start DNA testing
these fragments and try and match them up with living relatives.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Wow, weich probably should have happened decades earlier.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
So not everybody is on board. And Jeff is contacted
by a former county councilman who was a local politician
during the time of the Fox Hollow case. The guy
wants to know why in the world corner Jeff Jellison
(18:43):
would spend any of the county resources on opening this investigation.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Now.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Jeff is also reaching out to family members who had
filed missing person reports back in the nineties.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
We made no promises, explained to them that this is
an extremely challenging investigation because of the conditions of the remains.
They were burnt, they were crushed, you know, they set
in the woods for however long before they were recovered.
Carnivores are chewed on them. Some of them are the
(19:26):
size maybe a fingernail, you know, in size comparison. But
we're never going to get it done if we don't try.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
And I'm assuming he's getting DNA swaps from the families,
but I mean, with ten thousand bone fragments, how do
you figure out what to test?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Well, Jeff works with the University of Indianapolis and those
folks figure out which bones have the best chance of
getting usable DNA, and he also pulls in more experts.
He creates a team with the FBI, a police center
for Human Identification, and also Steve Ainsworth.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Oh yes, Steve, he's the former homicide detective who now
works at AUTHROM. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And it's a two step process because remember a lot
of the men who went missing back in the nineties
were never reported to police. So first, about forty four
bones are selected for testing, and Steve says they would
compare the DNA profile of each bone to the DNA
swabs that family members had submitted.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
So they can do basically a wonder when a relationship
like a mother or a sibling or something like that,
and they could identify him that way. And then after
they had done that and made those comparisons, if they
didn't match any of the familiar references, then they send
them to AUTHROM.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
The second step of this process is doing forensic genetic
genealogy on the remains that don't have a familial DNA.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Hit right, because I mean, with no family reference, they
need to build out a family tree to find out
who this person is.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah, and Alen, in October of twenty twenty three, they
make the first identification I ever.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Forget that phone call. I saw it was the state Police,
so I went ahead and answered it and they said
we have a match. I said who is it? And
they said our O Livingston And I said, you know,
(21:28):
don't joke with me like that. You know, what are
the odds And they said, no, it's our Olympicston And
I knew right then, you know that's God's work. I
walked outside my office and called all my deputies together
and there was a lot of high fives, a lot
(21:50):
of celebrations, and then it just like it hit us
all that we've just identified a murder victim, and we
have many, many more where to go.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
So the first human remains that are identified from Fox
Hollow after thirty years belonged to Alan Livingstone, and it
was his cousin who essentially reopened this case with his
phone call. Does Alan's mom live long enough to hear
the news? She does.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
She's heartbroken, but she said she knew in her gut
all along that Alan was a victim of her Baumeisters.
Now Alan had been identified from his femur bone, and
Jeff calls Eric to tell him he can finally take
his cousin home.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
I was like, when can I come get him?
Speaker 5 (22:54):
Can I come right now? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (22:59):
I rushed to get that. When I left my house
to go pick up Allan's remains, I stopped at Alan's brother,
James's house, and at James and I drove up to
the Hamilton County Corner's office and picked him up. And
it was pretty emotional. It was exciting to to be
(23:21):
able to shake Jeff's hand after all that hard work.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Since Eric works in the funeral industry, he was able
to cremate Alan's bone himself and give his aunt an
earn with Alan's ashes. She kept the urn in her
living room until she died, and Alan's bone was the
first to be identified. But since then they've found more
of his remains.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Have they identified more people? Since then?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
When I spoke to Jeff Jellison, they had identified eleven
victims at Fox Hollow. But here's the thing, it's still
a very open case. Steve Ainsworth and Jeff have been
back to the property to another search.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
When we went out there with cadaver dogs, Jeff and
I found what we think are three bone fragments, just
in areas where that dirt would wash down and collect
stay on a route or against a rock or something
like that, and you start digging in there and start
finding little pieces, and we found a couple, I think
three that were quite possibly bone fragments. So there's still
(24:22):
some out there.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
The fact that they're still finding bones speaks to how
large this crime is, but also the lengths to which
Herb and maybe accomplices, if he had accomplices, went to
destroy evidence. Do we know how these men were murdered?
They have some theories.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Remember this whole case unravels when Herb's son finds the
skull in the woods. Steve says that is the only
fully intact skull that's ever been found there.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
So that's the most readily identifiable part of a person.
And I think he was actually got very very cautious
and started crushing the bones. So once they're decomposed to
the point where you could crush him, I think he
was crushing him. And in fact, there were statements made
by the witness there was some sort of a large
piece of heavy equipment that would drive back and forth
(25:14):
across the property.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
I remember there was a burn pile too, right, so
I could see maybe that was herb trying to make
it harder to find or id people.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
You can understand why this case has been so challenging
and really just overwhelming, and it was a challenge for
AUTHORM for a couple of reasons. First, David Middelman says,
the bone fragments were mixed up. I mean, investigators think
they're possibly fifty six victims and the remains are charred
and they've been left out in the woods for decades.
Speaker 6 (25:47):
They've got a bunch of skeletal fragments, no clues, so
there are no leads to associate these remains or fragments
of remains with an actual person. Was this in fact
a victim of that serial killer? This is the perfect
time to use a technique like DNA testing that could
at least tell you whose remains these are, and then
(26:08):
with that information at hand, you're in a position to
make some decisions.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
This is one case that David's wife Kristen, actually had
to step away from.
Speaker 7 (26:18):
Some of these cases are so horrifying that you don't sleep.
There are some that you can't. You just you can't.
And I think about how many people We're human, right,
we're human, and this affects us. I think that's the
part people don't understand. We're scientists, yes, and the science
(26:41):
is solid, and it's based on ken is it feasible
or is it not? And you know how many markers
can you get here and where can you upload? And
what algorithms are you using? And all of that is
black and white. But the emotions that come with each
one of these cases are not. It's horrified.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
Recently, another set of remains were sent to AUTHRAM. The
DNA had no familial hits, so this person was never
reported missing to police. Genetic genealogy led them to a
possible identification, but Jeff Jellison says there were unexpected problems.
Speaker 5 (27:17):
We find out his brother is deceased, his mother is deceased,
and his father is deceased. So we're thinking his entire
family has deceased. How are we going to do this?
So we find out that the mom had died of
a drug overdose in a neighboring county. To us, they
(27:38):
had a DNA card.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
What's a DNA card?
Speaker 3 (27:41):
A DNA card is a way for medical examiner to
collect and store blood so that the person's DNA can
be tested later, and it's usually used when there's an
unidentified body or if someone dies under suspicious circumstances. And
it's interesting. The card absorbs and dries the blood, saving
(28:02):
the DNA. So Jeff is able to get this particular
DNA card and sends that to authorm.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
To develop a DNA profile of his mom, who had
already died.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Yeah, and from that they find another relative who is alive.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
The next day, we find out that this person has
a daughter that lives in North Carolina.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
The man who died, he had a daughter.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
She said that my parents divorced when I was very young,
so I never knew my dad and I always wondered
about my dad.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Her dad was Daniel Thomas Hallerin. He was roughly twenty
four when he was murdered. His daughter Coral said that
over the years the family had looked for him. They
had even hired a private detective and contacted social service agencies.
They were just looking for any trace of him.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
And sudden me, I feel closer to my dad now
that you were able to make this identification.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
That's so interesting. I do think there's something about just
knowing what happened. It literally can make you feel closer
to the person you lost. And maybe you also know,
like they weren't avoiding me all these years, there's a
reason they disappeared. I feel like knowledge of the truth
has so much power. But I'm also curious what happened
(29:34):
to the Fox Hollow property.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Well, a guy named Robert Graves bought it. He and
his family were aware of what happened at Fox Hollow,
and the grounds have changed. The woods don't come right
up behind the property like they used to, and some
of the eighteen acres has been sold off and developed.
But Alin, the new owner has kept the house pretty
much exactly how it was when the Baumeisters live there.
(30:00):
The basement indoor pool is still there. The dark Library.
Robert Graves sleeps in the same bedroom that Herb did,
and he's a self proclaimed student of Herb Baumeister. He
even wrote a book about the murders called The Horrors
of Fox Hollow Farm.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Okay, I'm sorry, but there's something about that that creeps
me out. Do we know if Herb had any accomplices,
because I'm realizing since he died by suspected suicide and
the original investigation was dropped, do we know anything more now?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well, no one I spoke to thinks Herb did this
all by himself. Steve Ainsworth, the investigator working with Authorm,
told me that a few different men at the time
said they were approached at various gay bars in Indianapolis
by a man, but that man was not Herb.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
A potential victim identified a person who picked him up
at a bar and said, Hey, I've got this really,
really wealthy friend. He's got this great house, he's got
an indoor swimming pool. You've got to come and see it.
And so he was taken out there. And it wasn't
by Baalmeister to have had two witnesses that came forward
(31:17):
and told us about a young man that was shot,
and he was shot by Balmeister, but he was being
held and was possibly be handcuffed by two or three
other people, and their accounts are almost identical.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
I wonder iful'll ever know the full truth of what
happened at Fox Hollow Farm or who was involved.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, so far, Jeff says
they've extracted DNA from roughly one hundred and fifty bone fragments,
but I mean, they still have thousands more to test.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I could see how testing the bones could also produce
more leads, because maybe if they talked to friends and
family of the men who died, they could find out
who they'd last been seen with. I mean, some family
members could have ideas about who lured them out there,
and that could be an actual way to find out
who else was involved. You know.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
That's something Kristin Middleman says is really important, especially in
crimes involving serial killers.
Speaker 7 (32:14):
When you hide a victim, disfigure a victim, destroy a victim,
and there isn't that victim identity, it's really difficult to
work that crime. It's immediately stalled. And I think a
lot of serial killers, they get away with it, and
they do it over and over and over again in
almost the same manner. And once the victims start getting identified,
(32:39):
then it's pretty easy to connect who was connected to
all of these victims.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And there's another part of this story, you know, I
had mentioned back in nineteen ninety six, when the remains
were first discovered, Jeff says, the attitude of county officials
was like, well, I mean, let these families pay for
the identification themselves.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
They didn't support the families. You know, when some of
these remains were returned in the nineties, they called these
family members in and they said, we've got your loved
ones remains. We need to return them to you. They
gave them paper sacks with raw bones in them. I mean,
(33:22):
damn it, are we so lacking and compassion that we're
just going to hand them a raw bone.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
It's not always as easy as returning remains to families
when they're identified. Sometimes relatives don't have the money to
bury the remains, or it's frankly, just too painful to
reopen that wound. So Jeff worked with local authorities and
organizations to cremate the remains for free and if the
family doesn't want to take the ashes home. There's a
(33:56):
memorial for the victims not far from Fox Hollow where
their remains can be buried, and.
Speaker 5 (34:02):
It's really become a very special place. I don't live
far from it, and I drive by it every morning
to work, and I've actually seen families visit.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
It is just wild to me that this is a
story that so few people have heard of. It seems
like quite often stories like this don't hit the media,
the information isn't disseminated if it doesn't go to trial,
because it's at the trial where the truth is really
(34:37):
hammered out. It's discussed, it's in the public domain, it's
in the air, it's reported on, and so in a
way by Herb Baumeister potentially killing himself or I guess,
we don't know exactly what happened, but it's like that
opportunity to fully understand what happened, to fully know who
(34:59):
the victims are, and to address the underlying social issues
that maybe need to be addressed, that is all lost.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
I think that's something Jeff and the team at Authrum
are working to do, not only give back these victims
their names, but to try and give families answers and
as they say, to right the wrongs of the past. Recently,
Jeff and Steve invited some family members to walk the
grounds of Fox Hollow, Whoa and Alan Livingstone's cousin Eric went.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
It was very intense and overwhelm me, very scary too,
like just walking through the woods, thinking about everything that
happened there. Being in the swimming pool room, I did
not fit I other than everybody that was in there,
(35:52):
I did not feel alone.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I can't even imagine.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Authoram has identified multiple victims at Fox Hollow. In addition
to Daniel Hollerin, there's thirty one year old Jeffrey Jones,
who went missing in nineteen ninety three, and investigators say
they plan to announce more identification soon. And allen, as
shocking as this case is, sadly there are tens of
(36:17):
thousands of unidentified human remains all over the country. The
Department of Justice calls it a silent mass disaster.
Speaker 7 (36:26):
And it is more common that any of us think.
It is so common. There are so many cases out
there where because the body isn't discovered yet, because the
body is out in the middle of a field, somewhere
in a dumpster in a trash bag underground. The case
(36:48):
isn't even a case. No one even is trying to
figure out the crimes, and for the first time, there's
a solution. This technology is being used universally to try
to all of these unsolvable crimes, and victims' families have hope.
I can't tell you the amount of time that family
writes to me today and tells me because of your technology,
(37:11):
I have hope that my case is next, that the
person I'm missing will one day be identified. That's the
greatest feeling in the world.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Fox Hollow is still a very active case. Authoram is
working with these tiny, charred and degraded bone fragments so
we can finally discover who all of the victims are,
and Jeff Jellison is hoping to hear from more families
so he can collect more DNA samples because ultimately these
remains need to be returned home to their families.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
If you have a missing person, call me. I don't
care where they're missing from, I don't care when they
went missing. You never know. Contact law enforcement. Make sure
that they take your DNA because that's the most efficient
way of identifying any missing person. Case one remains are found.
(38:13):
We're identifying remains and providing people with answers, and we're
not going to stop as long as I'm in this position.
You know, the old cop that me comes out and
it's like, get out of my way, because we're going
to do.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
This next time. On America's Crime Lab, I knew when
I looked down at my phone and it said that
it was Chief James Frye calling that it was probably
(38:52):
something big. I don't typically get a call in the
middle of a Sunday afternoon from the cheap We had.
Speaker 6 (38:59):
Four people that killed, no eyewitnesses, and we had to
start from basically with nothing and try and figure everything out.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor, and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fenalosa, Emily
Foreman and Jessica Albert. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne,
Mangesh Hadigadour and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart
(39:35):
Katrina Norville and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne,
Will Pearson, Kerrie Lieberman, Nikki Etoor Nathan Etowski, John Burbank,
and the entire team at Authrum. I'm Alan Lance Lesser.
Thanks for listening
Speaker 5 (40:00):
The ind
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