Serial Killer’s Secret: 10,000 Bone Fragments Found on Property, Spree Ended with Son’s Chilling Discovery

Herb Baumeister seemed to live a quiet family life in a wealthy suburb of Indianapolis.

He shared a $1 million estate in Westfield, dubbed the Fox Hollow Farm, with his wife and three kids, and owned a string of successful thrift stores.

However, authorities said that during the 1990s, he lived a double life, targeting gay men at nightclubs and then luring them back to his home, where he killed and buried them around his sprawling estate.

He is believed to be one of the most prolific serial killers in Indiana history.

His life and prolific crimes are now the subject of a four-part series, The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer, produced by One Traveler, an All3Media Company, for ABC News Studios, premiering Feb.18 on Hulu.

The series follows Hamilton County coroner Jeff Jellison as he works to identify — using new DNA technology — the 10,000 human bones and fragments found at Baumeister’s 18-acre farm, many of which were burned and crushed. (An exclusive trailer is shown below.)

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The serial killer’s murder spree came to an end in 1994 when his 13-year-old son found a human skull and a pile of bones in the woods around Fox Hollow Farm.

Baumeister claimed the bones came from a skeleton that his late father, an anesthesiologist, obtained in medical school, PEOPLE reported in 1996.

Two years later, police found thousands of human bones and bone fragments at the estate. But, before he could be taken into custody, Baumeister was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a park in Canada. He was 49.

Police were able to identify eight of his victims in 1999.

The case wallowed for decades until 2022 when Jellison launched a renewed effort to identify some of Baumeister’s victims, this time using advances in DNA technology including genetic genealogy, the Associated Press reported.

Jellison and his team began asking for DNA samples from relatives of men who vanished in the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, per the AP.

So far, they have received about 40 DNA samples, according to the AP.

In May 2024, Jeffrey Jones, who went missing in 1993, was identified as one of Baumeister’s victims. Jones was the third victim to be identified from Jellison’s renewed investigation.

The following year, Jellison and his team identified another of Baumeister’s presumed victims, Allen Livingston, according to the AP.

Baumeister is also suspected of the murders of at least 11 boys and men whom authorities had initially believed were victims of the “I-70 Strangler,” a notorious serial killer whose identity remains a mystery, according to NBC 5 Chicago.

The series also includes interviews with Baumeister survivor Mark Goodyear, investigators, relatives of Baumeister’s victims and the current owner of Fox Hollow Farm.

The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer premieres Feb. 18 on Hulu.