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Serial killer Herb Baumeister (AKA The I-70 Strangler) was an odd man... In this week’s episode, Professor Michael Drane explores the psychology of Erotophonophilia & Auto-Erotic Asphyxiations. We’ll also discuss a psychological profile of Herb Baumeister, prolific serial killer and murderer who turned his massive estate, "Fox Hollow Farm" into a burial ground. This episode also includes original music written by Michael!

Show Notes

Hello dear friends, welcome to our show notes. This episode is the very first in our SERIAL KILLERS Series.

Appropriately nicknamed the I-70 Strangler, Herb Baumeister is famously known for a series of murders in the Midwest during the 1980's. We later learn that he turned his massive estate into an enormous graveyard, following a horrific string of sexually charged murders.

According to Indy Star (as of May 2019), some of the Fox Hollow property is up for sale.

The home itself and the remaining 10 acres of the Fox Hollow Farm estate are owned by Vicki and Rob Graves, who paid $987,000 for the property in the early 2000s after it was originally put on the market for $2.8 million

However, as Rob and Vicky Graves are well aware, Fox Hollow Farm is anything but pleasant.

“In Carmel, Indiana, a beautiful quiet suburb, Rob and Vicky are thrilled to have found the perfect home. One that matches everything they were looking for, it was huge, gorgeous and.... surprisingly cheap? They take the cheap price and feel blessed over their good fortune. Within weeks, the two are riddled with disturbing nightmares that compel them to physically run away from the house in their sleep. Imagine waking up from a dead sleep to the feeling of the night air, the feeling of the grass under your feet. Quickly, they experience extreme paranormal situations, together and separately from one other. Sightings of a man in a red shirt standing in the woods watching them become part of their routine existence. The pressure becomes too much to handle. This inexpensive picturesque house apparently came with a serious catch. They go to the real-estate agent and demand answers. Rob & Vicky are stunned to learn that their Dream Home, formerly a symbol of decadence and luxury is in fact a mass grave and the site of horrific murders by one of the nation's most pseudo anonymous serial killers in American history: Herb Baumeister.”

A Close Encounter

According to Medium, Tony Harris was responsible for helping catch Herb Baumeister. After Tony’s friend Roger Goodlet vanished without a trace, Tony swore to Roger’s family that he would help figure out what happened to him. It’s the early 1990s, and at this point in time, no one is particularly interested in helping locate men who’ve gone missing from gay bars. Carmel Indiana was a small, conservative town in the Midwest. Because the local media was not covering these disappearances, Tony began plastering missing posters of his friend all over town. Either by crazy coincidence or plain bad luck, Tony finds himself face to face with Brian Smart, a pseudonym Herb created for himself, at a bar one night.

After Herb takes Tony back to the property, they engage in sexual intercourse. According to Medium, Tony informed Brian that he knew he was behind the disappearances, and that he was going to go to the police. Herb reportedly laughed, saying that no one would believe him. And yet for some reason, Herb lets Tony go. Later on, Tony follows “Brian Smart” out of a bar one night, and writes down his license plate number. Police trace it back to Herb Baumeister.

Paranormal Investigations & Media Coverage

Due to gruesome nature of the crimes committed on Fox Hollow Farm, there have been multiple claims of paranormal activity on the premises. In ‘The Haunting of Fox Hollow Farm’ six different paranormal investigation teams explored the property, noting that authorities uncovered at least 5,000 human bone fragments scattered across the property. It is believed that Herb Baumeister murdered at least 17 victims, but only 5 of them were identified.

One of the frequently identified ghosts on the property is a man wearing a red shirt. It is believed that many of the victims were murdered in or by the swimming pool, where Herb had several mannikins positioned around the pool.

The A&E television series Investigative Reports aired an episode about Baumeister titled The Secret Life of a Serial Killer in 1997.

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE:

HERB BAUMEISTER

What often distinguishes a good serial killer from a great serial killer is their ability to hide in plain sight. They live as normal of a life as you and I. They have a job, a spouse, a family, neighbors, friends—even people that know them and speak well of them. Which is why no one suspects a thing until it’s too late. It took a trail of bodies and a police investigation to stump witnesses and neighbors. They were dumbfounded that someone they thought they knew so well could be capable of such horrors.

While some serial killers are created through repeated trauma, excessive violence and/or neglect, but some, like Herb Baumeister, were born this way. Beginning in his early childhood, Herb exhibited bizarre behavior. In elementary school he told his classmates he wanted to taste human urine. He would pick up dead crows off of the side of the road and plant them in his teacher's desk drawers. Herb's father suspected that something was amiss and took him to be psychologically examined. After extensive testing, the results revealed that Herb was "schizophrenic, or having a two-or-more-sided personality base." However, Based on what we know of Herb Baumeister, there is no evidence of schizophrenia or multiple personalities. In fact, these are two very different diagnoses. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder involving hallucinations, delusions, paranoia or catatonia, caused by a myriad of psychological trauma, but it can also be genetics or induced through a traumatic brain injury or drug use.

Arguably, his personality traits are more consistent with Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

The first is Reckless Disregard for the safety of others. Isn't this obvious since he's a serial killer? (Coworkers from a newspaper job he had recalled a time that they attempted to include him, inviting him to a football game and Herb offered to drive. The day came and he literally showed up in a hearse. They reluctantly obliged, but were shocked and horrified when he flashed the lights the whole way there, as cars moved over, and laughed maniacally.) The second thing is Deceitfulness as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure (As we learned from Donovan's story, Baumeister uses the alias "Brian Smart" to lure gay men back to his home and murder them for his own sexual pleasure). The third thing is Failure to conform to social norms, with respect to, lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest. (We see this consistently from Baumeister, even in his early childhood- putting the dead bird in his teacher's desk and as we'll see coming up, a history of trouble with peers at work. This constant prankster behavior feels malicious and is indicative of what is to come from Baumeister later in his life.) He was alone in high school and even in college, and was consistently known to his peers as an outcast. While in college at Indiana University, he studied anatomy, and this suggests a fixation with the construction and deconstruction of the body—which is common in serial killers. But where he differs from a lot of popular serial killers is the social aspect, or being even kind-of liked by his peers. Take somebody like Ted Bundy or Charlie Manson. People find them very charming and ingratiating, but Baumeister had a prankster mentality and a bizarre sense of humor.
          His father helped him get several jobs, the first of which being an advertising executive for the newspaper. He was known, yet again, as an outsider by his peers, but his superiors remember him to be "eager" and thought he tried too hard.
          He got another job through his father, at the BMV. Again, his superiors noticed a "go-get-em attitude mixed with a high degree of intelligence" Although to the people that truly knew his daily reality, they described his behavior as bizarre. So we know he's smart and ambitious, which are characteristics of the more popular serial killers. But, he doesn't seem to have the third characteristic that these people have: manipulation. In order to be manipulative, your peers have to like you. His behavior was constantly perceived as awkward and bizarre. And it was.
          He urinated on his boss desk about a year after being at the BMV and although his coworkers were sure of the culprit, they couldn't prove it. He would inevitably be fired later on, because he urinated on a letter addressed to the Governor of Indiana.
          During the BMV job, he did manage to meet his wife, Juliana. After he was let go from the BMV, they were able to open a Sav-A-Lot in conjunction with a local Children's Charity, in 1988. Within a couple years, they opened another. Herb's intelligence and ambition paid off and he thrived as an independent business man.

Because they were so successful, in 1991, they moved to a huge mansion, called Fox Hollow Farm on eighteen-and-a-half acres, 20 miles outside of the city, hoping to live the typical American Dream with their three kids.
          However, their happily ever after was cut short as marriage started to show signs of strain within a couple years. The house reflected this disarray in their lives. The land became overgrown and the house full of unkempt clutter and trash. The few friends they had described their relationship as dangerously lopsided, saying that Juliana seemed unable to be herself, and that Herb was too overpowering. Juliana was documented in therapy sessions later in their marriage as having only had sex with Herb 6 times in their 25 years of marriage and that she had never seen him naked. Imagine what it would be like to be married to a monster for 25 years and have no idea. The dynamic of their marriage shows Herb's need to aggressively control others, and the fact that they've barely had sex, shows that he's not aroused by conventional things. Also, the fact that she had never seen him naked hints at a sense of shame he might have had about his own sexuality, maybe even sexual repression.
           You might be listening to this thinking any one of these is a red flag. What would it take to shake this woman out of her complacency, of how blind she is to the world she's actually living in? But before we get too judgemental, let's put this into perspective. Imagine your loved one, your girlfriend, boyfriend, husband or wife. Now imagine they are secretly a killer, a mass-murderer. Could anyone in your life convince you that this is true? What would it take for them to convince you? We can't underestimate the power of denial. Maybe it would take something tangible, like a photo or a body....... For Juliana, that day came in 1994 when her ten-year-old son took her out to the backyard to find bones and a human skull, and asked "Mom, what's this?" In this investigate report, Julie Baumeister recounts how it felt to discover the remains of human bodies in her backyard.

So, we've found that Baumeister's personality traits are consistent with psychopathic behavior, and we know now that he was not only responsible for the gay men who went missing in the 1980's, but also the 1-70 murders a decade before.
    Often times, Serial killers will commit their murders far away from home, then as their confidence grows, they get closer to home. This can help establish a pattern of behavior. Baumeister started strangling people on the I-70 in Ohio and eventually got more confident and comfortable and close to home in Indiana, which ultimately led to his downfall as he collected bodies at his own home. Has anyone ever seen the show Dexter? The main character of the show is a serial killer who is always meticulous, taking great care to avoid such pitfalls. This requires a mind that is thinking 10 steps ahead and considering every contingency.Serial killers will often target a population they feel is weaker than them. Herb Baumeister targeted intoxicated and disarmed gay men at bars. Targeting gay men of similar look, size, etc. suggests Baumeister had a specific person in his past that is the source of all of this. Although, we'll probably never know. It could also indicate he was either worried or frustrated about being gay himself or with others thinking he's homosexual. By strangling gay men, it's possible that he's able to purge himself of this bottled-up sexual impulse.
    This kind of murder is known as a lust-murder. Psychologists coin this term "Erotophonophilia." Erotophonphiles get sexual pleasure from killing or thinking about killing their partners. These fantasies are extremely violent, often involving mutilating, torturing and murdering their victims during sex. What's unique about them is that they are continually dissatisfied, and this is why serial killers are the kind of people that are most likely to be erotophonophiles. "One of the most cited studies in the area of lust murder is a 1990 paper by Dr. P.E. Dietz and colleagues published in the Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. They examined 30 sexual sadists (most of which were sexual murderers). They found that the majority were employed white males (75%), and many were married (50%), had a history of homosexual experience (43%)," All of these are the case with Herb Baumeister.
    As a weird sidenote, before anyone knew he was an infamous serial killer, Herb Baumeister was interviewed by his local news station for finding a photographing a dead animal on the side of the highway. Wonder why he was hanging out near the highway? It's shocking too, that this story made the news—just shows how truly small-town it was, and furthermore just shows how shocked everyone was to find out about their own resident serial killer. We're not talking about some hardened inner-city was violence and murder run rampant, we're talking about a sleepy, conservative, rural community where painted squirrels on the freeway make the news.YOU DON'T ALWAYS KNOW PEOPLE THE WAY YOU THINK YOU DO. In the case of Juliana Baumeister, she lived on top of a mass gravesite for more than a decade and slept next to a serial killer and never knew. As disparaging as all of this might be, don't let it keep you from making new friends. Just have a healthy skepticism! As the old Russian proverb goes "Trust, but verify."

It's been a couple years since the night Donovan Baxter narrowly escaped being murdered, and police are still looking for "Brian Smart" who we now know is Herb Baumeister.
    Up until this point he has successfully gotten away with murder after murder, and this is how he gets caught. Donovan Baxter, the man who escaped being murderered at Fox Hollow Farm by pretending to pass out is out in the world on an ordinary day in 1994, and spots "Brian Smart" again. "Brian" is sitting in his car at a stop sign and Donovan is able to write down his license plate number. He calls into the police station and reports the license plate number, reminding them that "Brian Smart" tried to kill him at his home and also probably killed his missing friend, Roger Goodlet.
    The police immediately investigate and find that "Brian Smart" is an alias for a man named Herb Baumeister. When they come to the door of Fox Hollow Farm, Baumeister is uncooperative, and without more evidence police are unable to investigate further.
    Driven by escalating paranoia that he's been found out, Baumeister unravels. Within the six months after police visit his door—his business, marriage and mental health crumble.
    Bewildered and shocked after their son finds a skull in the backyard, Juliana finally understands the gravity of the situation. This is when she cracks. Abashed by the man she's been living with, she calls the police one day while Herb is on vacation, allowing them to search the property. Alone in his hotel room, Herb Baumeister finds out his home is being searched, and knowing that it is littered with bodies, he feels his freedom slip through his fingers. This infamous investigation uncovers 5,500 bones and teeth buried at the residence of Herb Baumeister. The corpses are barely identifiable, but the few of them that are—confirmed Donovan Baxter's story of "Brian Smart."
        Upon even further investigation and his name and face surfacing to the public, Baumeister is tied to the 1-70 stranglings, less than a decade before. This was a series of nine murders across Interstate 70 in Indiana and Ohio that police were still trying to solve. Many believe that Herb Baumeister's face match the drawings of witness sightings of this infamous "I-70 strangler." Also, because none of the bodies were found for these murders, many believe that they were the unidentified bodies on Fox Hollow Farm.
        While on vacation, Baumeister hears word of the investigation and panics, fleeing to Canada. In a suicide note, he writes that he feels sorry for his failed business and failed marraige, but never mentions any of the murders. Sitting on a lake shore in Ontario, he shoots himself in the head.
        The scene of Baumeister's death is described as: "A sand mound like an altar for himself, he laid on it with his arms stretched out, and he had placed dead birds around in a ritualistic fashion."

References

1. The Haunting of Fox Hollow Farm
   Erotophonophilia And the psychology of sexual homicide

2. This Breathtaking Estate Witnessed Brutal Murders And Became A Massive Burial Ground

3. MurderPedia: Listing on Herb Baumeister

4. IndyStar

About UPC

Unpopular Culture Podcast is a psychology podcast hosted by Professor & Psychoanalyst Michael Drane. With help from professionals in different fields, he seeks to shine light into the broken underbelly of society.

Listen as he takes on the psychology behind subjects like:

True Crime: serial killers, murders, stalkers, cults, forensic analysis

Psychology: mental illness, social phenomenon, mob mentality, psychoanalysis, etc. 

Culture: Sexuality, Satanic Panic, love, Tv analysis, movie analysis. 

We are an independent psychology podcast. Help us keep UPC free of ads and on the air. Please consider supporting the show and get access to our "Stalkers Only" archive, and help be a part of the creative process.

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