Catherine Rusoff
A renewed effort to identify thousands of bones found on the Indiana property of a long-deceased person businessman suspected of a series of murders brought the number of his alleged victims to 13, a coroner said Tuesday, marking another grim update in a decades-old case.
Four new DNA profiles were obtained through the effort to identify the remains and they will be sent to the FBI for a genetic genealogy analysis to identify them, Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison said.
Nine men were previously identified as alleged victims of Baumeister Herbwho killed himself in Canada in July 1996 while investigators were trying to question him after about 10,000 charred bones and bone fragments were found on his sprawling property, Fox Hollow Farm.
Jellison said investigators believe the bones and fragments could represent the remains of at least 25 people.
“We know that we currently have 13 victims found on the Fox Hollow Farm property,” Jellison said Tuesday.
Investigators believe Baumeister, a married father of three who frequented gay bars, lured men to his home and killed them on his property in Westfield, about 15 miles north of Indianapolis.
In 2022, Jellison launched a renewed effort to compare Baumeister’s other potential victims with the thousands of charred and crushed bones and fragments that authorities found on his property in the 1990s and later placed in storage.
“As many of the remains were found burned and crushed, this investigation is extremely challenging; however, the team of forensic and law enforcement experts working on the case remains committed,” Jellison said, according to WTTV, a CBS affiliate.
Jellison continues to ask family members of young people who disappeared between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s to submit DNA samples for the new identification effort.
“This is the most efficient way to identify these remains,” he said.
So far, this effort has identified three men based on DNA extracted from the bones. Two of them were among eight men identified in the 1990s as potential victims of Baumeister: Jeffrey A. Jones and Manuel Resende.
Jones was 31 and Resendez was 34 when they were reported missing in 1993. Jones’ remains were identified last week through a forensic genetic genealogy analysis performed by the FBI and Jellison’s office, the coroner said Tuesday -fair. Resendez’s remains were identified using the same technique in January.
Last October, with the help of a DNA sample provided by his mother, other bone fragments were confirmed to be that of 27-year-old Allen Livingston. According to Donate Network, Livingston disappeared the same day as Resendez. At that time, Livingston’s identification made him the ninth alleged victim identified by investigators.
“Unusual place to find bodies”
WTTV reported The case began in June 1996, when Baumeister’s 15-year-old son discovered a human skull about 200 feet from the house.
The investigation began while Baumeister and his wife of 24 years were in the middle of divorce proceedings, WTTV reported. The day after her son found the bones, Baumeister’s wife received an emergency order of protection and custody to keep him away from her and their three children.
At the time, Baumeister explained the discovery by saying it was part of his late father’s medical practice, the outlet reported.
Three days after the boy discovered the remains, more remains were found by Hamilton County firefighters, leaving investigators baffled, the station reported.
“It’s an unusual place to find bodies,” then-Sheriff Joe Cook told The Indianapolis Star.
Anyone who believes they are related to a missing person who may be connected to the case is asked to contact the Hamilton County Medical Examiner’s Office.
