HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh Herbie. Oh Herbie, why'd you do it? Herbie. Oh I've been meaning to have a long talk with you, Herbie. I'm hearing the men scream and I just, no, I can't sleep. Okay? If you're gonna murder these men, Herbie-
MARCUS PARKS
Herbie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) If you're gonna be murdering these men, honestly can you keep it to in town? Can't you take it downtown? You used to do it by the highway. Now it's just all day long with the gagging and the choking and the dying and the cumming and I need it to stop there, Herbie. Okay?
MARCUS PARKS
Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left, ladies and gentlemen.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh Herbie.
MARCUS PARKS
My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) No, it's me, it's Julie Baumeister. Hi!
MARCUS PARKS
That's your Indiana accent?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh Herbie's being bad. Oh no, he tried to get to The Jackson 5 but they don't go down to the gay bars.
MARCUS PARKS
And of course Ed Larson.
ED LARSON
Hello! How is everybody?
MARCUS PARKS
And today we're gonna be returning to heavy hitter territory with Herb Baumeister.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. What a charmer!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know it's weird-
ED LARSON
Unfortunately I think he might have been.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well no. I want to ask this question. We'll get to it but I want to ask this question to our audience. Now Herb Baumeister is a character.
MARCUS PARKS
He is. Herb Baumeister was a serial killer from Indianapolis who murdered up to 35 gay men over a period of about 15 years. We do not however know a lot of specifics when it comes to Herb's killings because Herb was never actually convicted for the murders. Rather, Herb put a gun to his head in the Canadian wilderness after the cops found human remains on his property. So while he's technically a suspected serial killer, it's a near impossibility that he didn't murder all those men whose bones were found scattered across his 18 acres of land.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were 60 ft from his house, half of them. So he definitely did it. But we'll see what god says.
ED LARSON
Could have been an elaborate prank.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I keep saying this. I keep saying this. You never know, those bone twins, you never know what they're up to. But Herb Baumeister, what a relief to not be talking about David Icke anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That now we're talking about Herb Baumeister and there's almost a smile, like I'm almost smiling.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this is familiar territory, this is true crime. This is bread and butter stuff.
ED LARSON
He's somehow more likable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He really is. He is. Herb Baumeister-
ED LARSON
At least he knows what he likes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes. He's clear.
MARCUS PARKS
Responsible for less pain and destruction than David Icke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Herb Baumeister is a great example of when we cover serial killers, a lot of what we know from the serial killer is from the mouth of the serial killers themselves.
MARCUS PARKS
The last surviving witness as they often call it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And then we see a phenomenon a lot of times in true crime of serial killers that love to talk.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And want everybody to know everything that they've done and quite often exaggerate. Henry Lee Lucas, probably Ted Bundy but also was an extremely dangerous human being. But he definitely exaggerated. Those people who talk, right? There's the loquacious type. But then there's this guy who is just like reminds me of Samuel Little, reminds me of these other characters like where he probably killed more than what was found than not. Like he specifically was a hidden predator.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I mean there was no exaggeration, he never mentioned it to any living soul.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah because if he did it would be bad.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's also almost positive that Herb Baumeister had two phases as a serial killer. While the majority of his murders occurred on the property that he shared with his wife and three children, Herb is highly, highly suspected of also being the I-70 Strangler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is different than the I-70 Killer.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. In that series of murders, 11 men were found dumped in rivers, streams, and ditches in the rural countrysides along Interstate 70 throughout the 1980s. It's thought that Herb was the perpetrator because he spent a lot of time driving on I-70 and those killings abruptly stopped when Herbie bought his property in 1991.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh Herbie's not like that, his whole thing, that's just where his favorite Steak n Shake was on the highway. That's what he likes, he likes to drive. Because he told me, he said oh Julie, you know what I love to do? Cruising. And I was like oh me too! Why can't I go?
ED LARSON
Yeah. He's listing his rest areas from favorite to least favorite.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) And I was like why can't I go? What's so glorious about these holes?
MARCUS PARKS
Now when it comes to Herb Baumeister's personality and modus operandi, I describe him as kind of John Wayne Gacy by way of John Waters.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yikes.
MARCUS PARKS
See in my opinion, Gacy is a little too on the nose for a John Waters character.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I mean Serial Mom is closest to John Wayne Gacy maybe but not really.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Hey, is this the cocksucker residence I love the Serial Mom so fucking much.
ED LARSON
Serial Mom is great but she didn't have an act.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
Gacy had an act.
MARCUS PARKS
Gacy had an act. But to that point, Waters himself said that Gacy was quote "the worst dressed mass murderer we've ever had".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh shade.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Bad bad taste, not good bad taste. And Waters at one point actually used a John Wayne Gacy painting as a deterrent, hanging one in a guest bedroom to keep certain people from staying over at his house for too long.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
That's classic Waters. Baumeister however was a closeted owner of a chain of shitty thrift stores, a hoarder who kept several mannequins surrounding his indoor pool-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His audience.
MARCUS PARKS
And he filled his house with weird tchotchkes like gigantic mascara tubes and styrofoam horse heads as well as used toilet paper. And that doesn't even get into the raccoon infestation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Those raccoons were gentrifying that home.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And I don't know if you can really call used toilet paper like a keepsake.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eddie, this is one of those stories where you find out like one man's trash is another man's treasure.
MARCUS PARKS
State of mind, bro.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You view shit as like a thing that's wasted, right?
ED LARSON
It's weird. No, I love shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's the trauma that was created by Big Toilet-
ED LARSON
I also love getting rid of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah Rob, looking at you who is a former plumber. Because they made shit be dirty. But shit-
MARCUS PARKS
So you gotta use their toilets to get rid of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what they're saying, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's how they control where all the shit goes. Where if I keep shit in my house, it's like hey, I made it. Don't try to take things I made from my hands. What is this, communist Russia?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
You know what people don't know is that you can actually take your own shit, make it into bricks, and build your house out of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what they did in Peru. I think?
ED LARSON
Yeah, these buckets don't fill themselves.
MARCUS PARKS
Baumeister even got fired from the BMV for pissing on his boss's desk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they do that at Christmas.
MARCUS PARKS
And this was all while he was murdering several people a year and burning their bodies in his backyard before crushing up the bones and scattering them across the yard. If all that doesn't say filthiest person alive, I don't fucking know what does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's pretty gross.
MARCUS PARKS
Now one of the things that fascinates me about true crime is why some serial killers are remembered and others are forgotten. And I think John Wayne Gacy and Herb Baumeister are great examples of that contrast.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They really are. It's really like Elvis and Orion.
MARCUS PARKS
Both murdered gay men in large numbers, almost the exact same body count in fact. And both, with some exceptions, kept the remains of their strangled victims on their own property. Baumeister, according to one of his surviving victims, even set up his strangulations by asking the victim if he wanted to see a neat trick, just like Gacy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly like Gacy.
ED LARSON
And they're like 500 miles away or less from each other.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Des Plaines, Illinois. Yeah. Illinois and Indiana, yeah.
ED LARSON
And killing people around the same time, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I literally have chills going up my spine because we're also going to talk about another serial killer that was also operating at the same exact time during this time period in the exact part of the United States that this was all fucking happening.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Baumeister picked up where Gacy left off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Around then, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he's later on, he's 90s.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
More like 80s/90s.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually he started in '81.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Baumeister started in '81.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like what was the guy that did Buster Poindexter?
MARCUS PARKS
David Johansen?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, David Johansen started Buster Poindexter in 1981. And I'm pretty certain he might also be a serial killer as well. That might be slander and I might get sued by the Buster Poindexter family.
MARCUS PARKS
David Johansen is not a serial killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you know that for sure?
MARCUS PARKS
Well we'll fucking find out when we do our New York Dolls series on No Dogs in Space coming later this summer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll find out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If he becomes a serial killer then that becomes Last Podcast, buddy. Okay?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't even fucking take material from us, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
We'll bring you on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I've always wanted to get inbetween him and his wife.
MARCUS PARKS
Ugh. Now as far as why Gacy is remembered, there's obviously the clown angle which is huge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's packaging. Marketing in that way.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But Gacy was also a blue-collar, working class Joe, a successful business owner and politician who'd once been photographed with the first lady. And you just saw, did you just see this picture for the first time recently with Gacy and the first lady?
ED LARSON
No, I haven't.
MARCUS PARKS
You haven't?
ED LARSON
Which lady?
MARCUS PARKS
Rosalynn Carter.
ED LARSON
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That fucking bitch.
ED LARSON
Oh man. She was hot.
MARCUS PARKS
She met Jim Jones and John Wayne Gacy in the same year.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait a second. You just said Rosalynn Carter was hot Elle Macpherson.
ED LARSON
Have you not seen younger pictures of her? She was hot. That just shut down the podcast.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's fine.
MARCUS PARKS
She's pretty cute. She's very cute.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My first thought wouldn't have been like goddamn.
ED LARSON
I mean 60 years ago I'm talking about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but there was what's his putz? We had other big breasts. We had other sexy people 60 years ago.
MARCUS PARKS
Barbara Bush?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Barbara Bush is not attractive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. No, what are you talking about, man? It's in her last name.
MARCUS PARKS
All right, John Wayne Gacy.
ED LARSON
So hot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Now that's hot.
MARCUS PARKS
You wanna talk about breasts! Well Gacy was a guy anyone might know, he's a local character who threw good parties. And finally Gacy's last victim, the one that got him caught, was not a transient gay youth or a kid born from poverty like his previous victims. Gacy killed a popular local boy, Robert Piest, which kicked off an immediate search that led police directly to Gacy and the bodies buried underneath his house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
John Wayne Gacy is on obviously the very dark Mount Rushmore of serial killers because of this fact. I think that because he has these quote unquote "X factors" about him, he has the clown angle mixed with the politician angle mixed with the everybody loves this guy angle.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he was on television.
ED LARSON
A showman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was a business owner. And then the idea of living this extreme second life was something that blew everybody's minds. Because it's like in America, we really do believe that appearances tell you everything because we worship appearances in this country. But not this type of ostentatiousness does not a good serial killer make all the time. Even though John Wayne Gacy is extremely unique in being a super predator and have this level of attention. Where somebody like Herb Baumeister is one of the actual boogeymen that ramble through the highways and byways of America that kill anonymously and only kill for their own self satisfaction. They don't really care. I think because someone like John Wayne Gacy in some way, in the back of his head, knows that when I get caught I'm gonna be like a celebrity.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh he's got the ego.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
He's got the ego. He wants to be that guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. He wants to be it.
MARCUS PARKS
Grand Marshall of the Polish Day Parade.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then Jeffrey Dahmer is an example of somebody like Herb Baumeister that he did have to get fucking drunk to do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jeffrey Dahmer had to get drunk to do it.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't think Baumeister had to get drunk to do it. I think Baumeister really liked doing it. He was process, not product.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes he was. But then he... We'll get to it.
MARCUS PARKS
I think he enjoyed the product part. We'll get into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
His favorite television show was watching bodies rot in a fucking pyramid while he drank Millers. So I don't know. Maybe he only drank when he was watching them rot.
MARCUS PARKS
Baumeister was more of a loner. He was a failed businessman with a long suffering wife and no friends to speak of. He was a weirdo and a dick, unpopular, kind of gross, and smart enough to stay in a marginalized victim pool, gay men. And this was during a time when investigating the murders of gay men was considered a little icky.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. They always thought they'd get like cum on their badge.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Especially in places like Indianapolis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh Midwest.
MARCUS PARKS
My god. No, I mean Milwaukee, Indianapolis. The Indianapolis police were just absolutely fucking awful in this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's be frank, it was the time period. Because we saw the same thing when we covered Randy Kraft, it was happening in SoCal too. It was happening in the liberal areas of the country too. There was plenty.
MARCUS PARKS
Miami.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Basically we're just talking about within police institutions, like going after these crimes made them feel icky so they didn't want to deal with it. And they just assumed that all gay dudes, when they have sex, punch and choke each other. And a lot of times it's just jerking each other off while watching the Golden Girls. From what I've seen. Or like young men that are having problems at practice.
MARCUS PARKS
At practice?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, for whatever sport they're doing. It's always like they're at like-
MARCUS PARKS
You been watching documentaries?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, not those. But I've seen clips from them. Where it's like you see them and it's always some guy going like hey, Bran! My shoes are too tight. And him going like oh Greg, I see your pants fell down, man. And he says like oh no, what's gonna happen now, bro? And then he just starts getting at him.
MARCUS PARKS
Sounds pretty similar to the heterosexual documentaries.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like they have more plot sometimes.
MARCUS PARKS
The gay ones?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, the straight ones.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah. I'm stuck in the laundry machine. There's a lot of fucking plot to that. That's so much plot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well basically, you know what that's all about? The problem in America that we can't fix our fucking machines, right?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what this is about.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh you're talking about planned obsolescence?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what that's all about! It's all about it.
ED LARSON
Big Mayfair.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Baumeister also offed himself before he was arrested. And even though there was the same sort of mass investigation of his property like Gacy's, you didn't have the dramatic footage of men carrying body bags filled with goopy remains like you did at Gacy's house in Des Plaines, Illinois. But because Baumeister didn't reach star status, so to speak, only one somewhat reliable true crime paperback was written covering his life and crimes. That's our main source today, 'Where the Bodies are Buried' by Fannie Weinstein and Melinda Wilson.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I did read the somewhat bitchily titled 'You Don't Know Who I Am' that was also about Herb Baumeister but it's one of those Amazon books where it's just all filled with fake shit.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah, you can't trust that shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's like the Jack Rosewood books that are just total fucking horseshit. But for our other source, which we'll get into next episode, we've got something that I've never seen in a serial killer story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Yeah, that's what makes this one fucking good.
MARCUS PARKS
But before we get into all that, let's tell the story of Herb Baumeister himself, starting with his childhood in Indianapolis. So Herbert Richard Baumeister was born to a comfortable middle class life in 1947 Indianapolis as the eldest of four children, the son of a successful anesthesiologist and a housewife.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Love it already! Wish I could be in there.
MARCUS PARKS
Now when Herb was a small boy he wasn't exactly abnormal, more accurately, Herbie was just a fucking nerd.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Super nerd, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
For example, he and a friend formed what they called the weather club where they'd pick a random spot on the globe and quote "report on the weather there". Herby would then moderate the discussion that followed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a bit exacting. But I knew a lot of nerds that kind of had this sort of... I had a kid growing up that was super obsessed with the MTA.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right. So he was super into all the buses and the trains, I think now they call that something different. But they also have had other things where we go like I had the chess club, that was kind of nerdy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I mean chess club is fine.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it was so horny. Like that's the thing about the weather club is like I wonder whether or not like, yeah, they're all talking about clouds-
MARCUS PARKS
Did you said the chess club is horny?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Really?
ED LARSON
You were in the chess club?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
And it was honry.
ED LARSON
You got laid?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I had girlfriends.
ED LARSON
You had girlfriends.
MARCUS PARKS
But did you meet them through the chess club?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
So what are you basing the chess club being horny on?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nerds are horny.
ED LARSON
You'd go home and jerk off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, nerds are super horny.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, everyone's super horny.
ED LARSON
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, not all people. Some people aren't apparently.
ED LARSON
At 16 everyone's horny.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sometimes they're more angry.
MARCUS PARKS
But once Herbie reached adolescence, his behavior morphed into something more antisocial. He had a hard time fitting in with others not because he was a nerd but because he started saying and doing odd shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was jacked from the batter. Like he was one of those guys that was like never quite, he never fit into any social rhythm at all.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
What did he do?
MARCUS PARKS
His childhood friend Bill said that Herbie would ask people uncomfortable, unprompted questions like hey, what do you think it'd be like to drink human urine?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly I think it'd be difficult to catch and I think a lot of it is probably I don't like yellow drinks.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I feel like that's not that crazy of a question.
MARCUS PARKS
But if you ask it again and again to a lot of people-
ED LARSON
Yeah, no. You ask it once or twice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, what do you think about human urine? You think it tastes like lemons?
MARCUS PARKS
It's the frequency.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Yeah. Can I have some of that urine, please? Also I imagine then you become urine boy. You know how it is in high school.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you do one thing that's outlier, then you become that thing and then you're locked into that. Unless you show up at the talent show, do that lip sync that changes your entire fucking career around inside of the fucking school. Retrofit it.
MARCUS PARKS
That's nice. Did you do the lip sync?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I was already way more popular. I was running the talent show. And then I was the gatekeeper. Yeah. And I had a little office, people would come in there.
ED LARSON
You had an office in high school?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They'd come in the little back area. And then first of all I'd be like do you tap? And they'd go like yeah. And I was like do you tap naked?
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Learned how to be a producer.
MARCUS PARKS
On another occasion Herbie found a dead crow, hid it in his jacket, brought it to school, and left it on a teacher's desk. It's rumored but not proven that after the crow incident and after Herbie got obsessed with the idea of drinking piss that his father had him committed to a mental hospital.
ED LARSON
Kids do that kind of stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just needs an adjustment.
MARCUS PARKS
It's rumored. We don't know that for sure.
ED LARSON
I knew this one kid, he showed up to school covered in blood one day and they were like what happened? He's like oh I was whittling a stick and a raccoon jumped at me and then I stabbed it and it bled all over me. And we were like you killed that raccoon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you stabbed a raccoon to death. Yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's a long road to hoe to get to killing a raccoon.
ED LARSON
But he lived on a farm and he was like the only person in Boca Raton that lives on a farm.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah but still, killing a raccoon is pretty rough. On the way to school? Yeah, it's not felling a cow to eat. It's not going through the chickens for food.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. You chased down a raccoon and stabbed it to death.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Also put on your gym shorts for the day or something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Should have changed. But people said that Herbie thought that it was like funny.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was a guy very similar to Jeffrey Dahmer that was the kook. So people thought he was funny in a way but most of the time people said that he was invisible.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean Herbie was supposedly diagnosed with schizophrenia in the mental hospital. But again, this claim is from fairly dubious sources that only reference each other for proof that Baumeister was actually committed as a teenager.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, nothing's on the books saying that he has schizophrenia.
MARCUS PARKS
What we do know however was that Herbie's father was a strict disciplinarian who would verbally and physically abuse his son.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the only time he's not wrong.
MARCUS PARKS
But we can't say that. Because that's the thing is that you can have-
ED LARSON
He created him!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, that's the thing is that's the shit that leads to the killing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, man. Made Jermaine Jackson, bring him back up, man, super talented kid.
ED LARSON
Yeah, he is doing great.
MARCUS PARKS
Why are you so obsessed with the Jackson family getting beat into talent?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we're in Indiana.
MARCUS PARKS
This is like the 10th time you've brought up like oh yeah, Michael Jackson, good thing he got hit!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's because I'm saying-
ED LARSON
Thank god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish that somebody had cared about me so much.
MARCUS PARKS
To beat you? But your mother did beat you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A couple of times.
ED LARSON
Not hard enough. She couldn't finish the fucking job.
MARCUS PARKS
Well because he was abused, Herbie shut down emotionally at a young age and stopped reacting altogether when his father punished him. He also withdrew socially, choosing to go home straight after school to watch TV and eat peanut butter sandwiches and carrots instead of playing with friends or siblings. In fact besides the friend who remembered all the piss talk, nobody else remembered Herb Baumeister at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. You gotta make a moment for yourself.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure. But even though Herb's relationship with his father wasn't the best, what with the physical abuse and the mental institutions and such, Herb still wanted to emulate his father's career. So he attended Indiana University in 1965 where he majored in a very serial killer specialization, anatomy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. This is his attempt, we see this I think a lot with serial killers where he was like I'm gonna give being normal a shot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My father does this. He obviously created, his DNA created me, right? And I kind of feel weird but maybe this is where I can go and not feel weird. I can go into this. Because in anatomy, like a surgeon, then you get to cut up bodies and play with fucking disposable tits and like cut off people's butts and stuff and play with their organs and stuff.
ED LARSON
Is that what surgeons do?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
ED LARSON
Guys, I have surgeons in my family and they never bring that up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they get paid to do it. They get paid to go through someone's intestines going oh spaghetti! Oh spaghetti!
MARCUS PARKS
Oh sorry, I gotta go do a butt-ectomy. I gotta go cut off a butt this afternoon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that is a completely responsible way to exorcise these feelings.
ED LARSON
I'll have to ask my brother-in-law.
MARCUS PARKS
Herb however still had no idea how to fit in. But instead of being antisocial he went too far in the other direction, accommodating people to the point where it was uncomfortable while putting on such a show of caring for others that it became suspicious.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He did it because he thought people were watching and he thought that people thought that this is what normal people do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And it's the Midwest.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's got a lot to do with it as well.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know, man. How many times have you been to Indiana?
ED LARSON
A couple times.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not a friendly place.
ED LARSON
I've been to Indianapolis.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not a friendly place at all.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Well they got lots of sausage.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just remember that one time when you had collapsed before the show and we couldn't do that live show in Indiana. And we went to that bar in Indianapolis and then we met the COVID nurse that was like super racist and saying a bunch of weird stuff and then saying about how COVID didn't exist. But she had a wedding ring on and she was talking about her husband and then she started making out with another man. And he was like groping her and stuff and people were taking pictures and stuff and she was like laughing. And then I think they went and had sex in the bathroom.
ED LARSON
Hell yeah, shout out to our first responders.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Herb was also a creature of contradictions. He insisted on being meticulously dressed at all times despite the fact that it was the mid to late 60s, when being a square wasn't in style. But he also drove around in a hearse outfitted with the siren, which combined with his style cut an unsettling figure.
ED LARSON
So he liked the Ghostbusters.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's an Addams Family cousin.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's one of those guys who shows up because he's just like hi, everybody. Hey. Because he's immediately strange out the box.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he wants to stand out but he doesn't quite know how to do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Well if he wanted to stand out he should have drank the piss.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly!
MARCUS PARKS
I think he did.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I think it's safe to say he did.
ED LARSON
You don't ask, you're like this is what piss tastes like.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll tell you what, it tastes like piss.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well maybe we're putting the emphasis on the wrong word. Maybe it should have been like what do YOU think piss tastes like?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Because I think-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
But the interest in cars was how her first bonded with his soon to be wife, the long suffering Julie Baumeister.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) I love a siren on a hearse. Because all the bodies get to the cemeteries quicker. They go to sleep so much faster.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as she put it, she liked Herb because they both like cars and they were both young republicans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that is like such an example of being a contrary fuck during the coolest time period to be in America.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like that was like an awesome time.
MARCUS PARKS
It was really stressful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But to be in the counterculture? That sounded like a fucking blast! And you had total impunity to go be a part of the most amazing moment in American youth culture.
MARCUS PARKS
That's why all of the fucking nursing homes, all the baby boomers, all the nurses say you gotta wear gloves because they all have hepatitis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And they fucked everything up!
MARCUS PARKS
Well Julie also liked that Herb was strange. And during college, she thought that he was fun and creative because he stapled hubcaps to his walls instead of putting up posters like the other kids, which shows you how low the bar for fun and creative was for the future Mrs. Baumeister.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) He was simply a ball of laughs. Sometimes he said the funniest things like his favorite color was green. And I was like oh Herbie, they broke the mold when they made you. (choking) Don't choke me, don't choke me.
ED LARSON
He's a decorator like WALL-E was a decorator.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Actually yeah, very similar to WALL-E.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was a decorator like Jeffrey Macdonald was a decorator.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But when they got married in 1971, Julie discovered that strange isn't always a good thing. For example, on their wedding night, when young lovers are supposed to be deep in the throes of passion, Herbie chose to instead read a magazine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh you know how it is. He likes to get his stretches in and then we did a couple of rounds of making makeups on each other and then he read his favorite magazine, which is called Wedding Night Magazine. And I don't need all the sweat.
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, no. They didn't. I mean it's the modern day equivalent of getting married and then scrolling through your phone all night.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Julie is if obtuse was a person.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because I don't know whether or not, we'll get to the idea of whether or not she knew or what she knew and all that kind of stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
What she wanted to know I think is the best way to put it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She had that incredible ability that only moms seem to be able to achieve of recreating history in a Stalin-like fashion where they can just delete whole things that happened. All moms do this apparently.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Deleting eras.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eras!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And ways they behaved and creating entire scenarios where they're the hero and everyone around them is a incompetent villain.
ED LARSON
Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And I don't know why, I don't know why moms have that ability. And fathers just go away inside. Fathers just retreat to the inside.
ED LARSON
Anytime you call a mom a liar, they're like I'm a storyteller.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's a Zebrowski trait.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Julie actually claimed that over the 25 years they were married, they had sex half a dozen times. She actually counted, six times. She never actually saw Herb naked because those half a dozen times were in a pitch black room and he'd always sleep in full body pajamas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) What I kind of felt was fun about it was that I was like oh, this is how Stevie Wonder has sex.
ED LARSON
Now is she counting just the vagina?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) He didn't even put it all the way in. He just kind of put what we call the semen half in. And just so I could get it up in my guts.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And that's the thing is that he actually had, I mean he was like three for six. He had three kids with her.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
ED LARSON
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he saved his cum.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. No, I don't think he did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He saved his baby cum.
MARCUS PARKS
So you think that the cum that he was having with the gay men was different from the cum that he gave... You think that's different? Do you think you can consciously, a man can consciously choose to have different types of cum that he shoots?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think the unconscious is something that we don't understand. And I think that if you're having sex, maybe it's because if the swimmers know there ain't no egg, maybe the swimmers-
MARCUS PARKS
They take the night off?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well maybe that's where the lazy ones go.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe. Interesting theory. Sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com.
ED LARSON
When was the last time you shot baby cum?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh god knows. I actually think that mine are all retired. I think that they quit.
MARCUS PARKS
You got weed cum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I slow it down, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
Now while the Baumeisters outwardly appeared to be a stereotypical heterosexual white American couple complete with ostentatious National Lampoon-style Christmas displays every year, things were much darker behind closed doors.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Much darker.
MARCUS PARKS
As Julie put it, her world was controlled by Herb. She had no friends so she didn't know that almost never having sex with your husband was in any way abnormal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh yeah, he told me he only has six cums, he has six cums in his life inside of his balls.
MARCUS PARKS
Julie also had no family and therefore nowhere to go, especially after they had kids. So Herb controlled his wife using childish mind games. In one case shortly after they got married, Herb and Julie got into a fight. So Herb moved into the room upstairs and didn't speak to his wife for a year.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) There was one time for Christmas that Herbie, he said oh let's roleplay. And I was like oh I'm not an actress, I didn't go to drama school, I'm shy. But then he did this thing for Christmas. I dressed up as Mrs. Claus, he dressed up as Santa Claus. And I was like oh we're gonna maybe kiss, maybe we'll kiss. And then that night I go to sleep and I wake up and downstairs he's choking this man dressed as a reindeer. And I was like Herbie, why at Christmas time?
ED LARSON
What happened to all the sugar plums?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh and then honestly, because whatever cum he was covered in, that man, that reindeer, I guess he couldn't get pregnant. He must have been on his period.
MARCUS PARKS
But continuing that behavior, Herb also held grudges which would develop easily and last forever, hinting at more of a borderline personality than schizophrenic. Family members would be cut off at the smallest slight. And he once didn't speak to his mother for four years simply because she said something he didn't like.
ED LARSON
Good for her.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Good for her. Way to go, good job. Four years without this shithead. This demeanor of course made Herb perfect for his first career track. Medical school was definitely not in the cards for Herb.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
So his father used his connections to get him a job at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles as the Director of Financial Operations.
ED LARSON
And you wonder why they have a bad reputation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's guys like Herb Baumeister in charge. Like you wonder like the fucking road, I've said it before, the roads of Indiana almost killed me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. There's a lot of these. When you think about Dennis Rader worked as a dog catcher.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he worked for an HOA.
ED LARSON
Killed dogs for a living.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is what he did for a living. You look at even John Wayne Gacy is a contractor. Talk about one of the most mysterious careers that exist. Because a contractor is the closest thing that humans have to knowing ghosts because of the way they disappear. They just go away.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so ugh god, it is all of these people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I mean not to besmirch all our civil service workers out there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no.
MARCUS PARKS
I know we got a lot of good mail people out there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love the BMV.
ED LARSON
But if you're at the BMV, take the headphones out and help some people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We love the BMV. We definitely don't need any more problems at the BMV.
ED LARSON
I'm getting my driver's license soon.
MARCUS PARKS
Congratulations.
ED LARSON
Thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's never had it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I had it but I got rid of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they got rid of it for you.
ED LARSON
They took it from me.
MARCUS PARKS
Can you vote?
ED LARSON
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh nice. Okay.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I vote like three or four times an election.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Now the reviews Herb's coworkers gave of his behavior were mixed because at this point he was still trying to fit into society. But he was slipping. One coworker said that he was an excellent people-oriented boss while another said Herb gave up one of his vacation days to drive her 140 miles to a bank when she was going through a rough divorce. At the same time though, Herbie's mental state was precarious to say the least. He would rant and rave about odd shit for no real reason, then would spend hours crying alone in his house. At one point he got into a car accident that triggered a full mental breakdown and got him a stay in a mental health ward, possibly his second.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have a theory where he... So during this time period he was starting to... Apparently he went through this... He always would have problems spending money, right? He would just spend money extravagantly and we'll get more into it. But he was sort of dressing really nice. That was his first foray into I'm normal. Guys, I'm normal. I'm a people-oriented boss. I'm the fun boss. And so for a while they were doing stuff where he was one of those like tit for tat guys.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was like look at all these nice things I did, I'm not a crazy person, I'm not a bad person. Even though he would rant and rave about nonsensical things. Unfortunately a lot of this does sound like my style as a boss. But I do show up every day.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I've never done anything too untoward.
MARCUS PARKS
No!
ED LARSON
No.
MARCUS PARKS
No!
ED LARSON
Not yet. Imagine that long car ride and he's just like do you mind if I pee in this bottle?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, gotta pee. Like ooh man, I am thirsty. But no.
MARCUS PARKS
Do you need to pee?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Do you need to pee? What does your urine taste like? But my theory is that I think what happened was that he was doing a proto practice run before he started killing where something happened in this, where he picked up a hitchhiker and something happened.
MARCUS PARKS
This wasn't a hitchhiker. This was somebody that worked at the BMV with him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I'm talking about the full mental breakdown after the car accident. I have a feeling that the father, his father helped cover something up with Herbie where something happened that was like oh no, I've done something really bad and either I'm gonna get caught for it or someone's gonna say something. I'm gonna pick up a young hitchhiker. I'm gonna do that thing where it's ass, grass, or gas. Whatever, right?
MARCUS PARKS
Gas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're gonna talk about this. I'm gonna maybe try to... Because he's already starting to dabble in the gay bar scene a little bit. And so it's like maybe now we have some kind of sexual encounter. Maybe I choke a kid, maybe I'm choking somebody and I'm doing something. And then I think that he reached a breaking point and told or said something.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they put him into a mental asylum and then it didn't help.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Certainly not a good advertisement for that mental asylum.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's why Reagan closed them.
MARCUS PARKS
He came out worse!
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like he came out even more odd. I mean he exhibited a need for exactness that bordered on neurotic. Once when he was picking out a Christmas tree with his wife, he insisted that it had to be exactly 40 ft tall, which is town square size.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) And I said oh you know the mayor doesn't even have a tree that big. But you know Herbie.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Yeah, you can't get him out and not getting something large inside of him.
ED LARSON
Where are you gonna put that tree? Bend over, I'll show you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll show you.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
This tree was either a part of Herb's ostentatious outdoor display that year or he was giving his wife an impossible task that he could use to berate her when the quest failed. And I have a bit of a theory as well that just kind of hit me about his stay in the mental asylum. I think maybe he was trying to push down his urges to kill.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh sure.
MARCUS PARKS
I think he was trying to push them down and it became too much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And then when he got out, he said fuck it. And then he just went for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because there's no way he wasn't already playing with autoerotic asphyxiation.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he was definitely playing with it because that's how it all begins, with sexual curiosity. And I guess there's really nothing what's wrong with autoerotic asphyxiation.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely not. I mean it's highly dangerous and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody and if you do it regularly I'd say stop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But you know what you need? A spotter.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. You always need a spotter.
ED LARSON
Call a buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Phone a friend.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Have a sex spotter.
MARCUS PARKS
Although it did result in like one of the funniest, I mean World's Greatest Dad.
ED LARSON
Oh yeah, incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Slowly but surely though Herb's behavior turned from helpful to abrasive at work. He would brag about how his father was a successful doctor and how much his outfits cost, making sure to tell anybody who accidentally stepped on his shoes hey buddy, those are $300 shoes, you watch it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
These shoes are worth more than your life! I just went down to another, I listen to Howard Stern all the time and there's a guy that was a Wack Packer named Elegant Elliott Offen. And he was like this where he would come in and be like look at me! Look at me! Look at my rings! $240,000 worth of jewelry on my body! And I could just see Herb Baumeister like coming in, just being like take a look at the shoes, take a look at the fucking pants. These pants are made out of pure eel leather.
ED LARSON
And people still didn't fucking remember him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He also had an extremely shallow intellect and was unable to hold an in depth conversation about anything. People actually started to wonder how he was able to keep his job because he would regularly disappear from work at random hours and just wouldn't come back. Herb pushed the envelope even further when he pissed on his boss's desk.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He loves the pee-pee.
ED LARSON
Loves pee-pee. He loves pee-pee.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the weird thing is that after this the pee stops.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well as far as we know.
MARCUS PARKS
Okay, he pissed on his boss's desk. He got away with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He got away with that! Think about this. They let him continue to work after.
ED LARSON
It's the BMV, you can't find good people. You can't. He showed up everyday for 8 hours.
MARCUS PARKS
No, he didn't show up everyday. He left all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If you went to the Indiana Board of fucking Motor Vehicles during this time period and asked for his superior, that's the man you'd reach, the guy who's entirely fine being like people piss sometimes. Like what am I gonna do? Shut him down?
MARCUS PARKS
Well it was the second piss job that got him fired. He pissed on a letter to the Governor of Indiana.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this was my legacy.
ED LARSON
That I understand by the way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. No, piss on the letter to the Governor of Indiana. Yeah, for that he was finally fired and started jumping from job to job. When he was between jobs he'd pick up on the housework, sometimes quote unquote "cooking" a specialty dish he called pizza crackers.
ED LARSON
I thought you were gonna say people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. No, no, no. He loved his urine smoothies.
MARCUS PARKS
Pizza crackers were saltines with a dollop of tomato sauce topped with a slice of hot dog or bologna, which for some reason just sounds like a dish someone from Indianapolis would come up with.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) It's actually the state dish. When the governor first served pizza crackers to the president of Iran, that was one of the most special days in Indiana history. And I was just a little girl seeing it on the news and it was like the moon landing.
MARCUS PARKS
Now even while Herb was working at the BMV, he was also becoming an accomplished collector of junk, or as my friends Chris and Joe put it on Show & Sell, their YouTube channel about thrifting and flipping, Herb was quite the trash dragon. They hoard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like Smaug.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, like Smaug, trash dragon. Herb would troll yard sales, estate sales, thrift stores, and dumpsters for clothes, car parts, and light fixtures as well as novelty items like oversized footballs, giant maple leafs, used political bumper stickers, anything that might have a smidgen of value.
ED LARSON
A used bumper sticker?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. His wife said that like he once fished like a used Vote for Nixon bumper sticker out of the trash.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Anything with Nixon on it. That's what my Herbie loves.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they were both staunch republicans.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But along with his so-called treasures, Herb exhibited other extreme hoarding behaviors like saving used toilet paper and other disgusting bits of human detritus. About the only whimsical thing Herb Baumeister ever did, which is still kind of sort of sinister-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Was demand that his home always have a fully decorated Christmas tree year round.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love Christmas! It's amazing! Everything's in shiny papers! I love it! Boxes are not normal anymore. Boxes are now fun.
ED LARSON
Yeah. And in my Ohio family, they keep the Christmas tree up too long and then they just decorate it for Valentine's Day and then Easter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a sign of depression. Herb Baumeister, is there maybe like what does this sound like to you? Getting into thrifting, getting into flipping, is it his own way of being like... Because he has no skills, he's not super smart, the epitome of mediocrity, everything he touches turns to shit. What if when he goes and he goes thrifting, is there something along the lines of oh look, like I can make something out of nothing. Of like oh look, look what I can do, I'm adding value to the world like in that way, which is actually I think a lot of people's impulses of doing thrifting. Or is it just like... Because hoarding is about control?
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's about anxiety.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I think Herb Baumeister, you know also he had a stay in a mental hospital.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You think he was anxious?
MARCUS PARKS
I think he had massive amounts of anxiety and this was a way to control, again like control things and it just calmed him down. Some people just get that hit of dopamine from just buying something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do that.
MARCUS PARKS
They just fucking buy. But when it gets to this point though, it's like you're just buying little tiny tchotchke-like, just bullshit things to fill your house up with. Or he would fish them out of dumpsters. I don't know, maybe it gave him some sense of worth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean it definitely stops me from buying more T-shirts. I have thousands of T-shirts and one thing that always, like once I want to buy another T-shirt, I just kill five or six dogs and I just feel better. So like I kind of get that, I get like where his anxiety had to go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The steam release, yeah. Now after bouncing around various low skilled jobs for years, Herb finally got a job at a thrift store which is like an alcoholic working as a bartender. It's a fucking bad idea.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But after a short period of time just working at a thrift store, Herb got the bright idea to open his own. Herb got it into his head that he was gonna open a chain of upscale thrift stores, something that he thought was a ticket to the American dream. And eventually Herb got his wish in 1988 when he and his wife borrowed $35,000 from Herb's mother and opened their first Sav-A-Lot thrift store on 46th street in Indianapolis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sav-A-Lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Sav-A-Lot.
ED LARSON
Sav-A-Lot.
MARCUS PARKS
They left the E off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's what makes it cool.
ED LARSON
Save money on the sign thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Which automatically, that's the thing, he wants the upscale store. I see Sav-A-Lot, I know that's a cheap place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See it could be funky. You know when they do that like funky is different because funky means it's well curated.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it sounds like he didn't do that.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
He was so in the closet that he opened two closets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. He's just being like (Midwest accent) you know there's amazing things inside of this closet. Oh wow, look at this coat. I could kill a man in this coat.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Herb and his wife did surprisingly well in their first year running the store together and made enough money to open a second store in 1990.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They made not enough money to open the second store.
MARCUS PARKS
They made it, I mean they did it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a problem obviously.
MARCUS PARKS
But Herb and Julie already didn't have the best marriage, owning and running two retail stores only made matters worse. Little did Julie know however that Herb's private life was far darker than she could have ever imagined. Because for the previous decade, Herb Baumeister had been one of Indiana's most prolific serial killers. I mean I'm fucking making the reveal here but this entire time he's been killing dudes.
ED LARSON
Yeah?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
When he's opening the store?
MARCUS PARKS
All of it. The entire time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's been killing people this whole time.
ED LARSON
But he's not definitely the I-70 Killer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He is. It's pretty close.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean it's very close.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I-70 Strangler. Because the the I-70 Killer is somebody else.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It's nice.
MARCUS PARKS
See it had been common knowledge in the Indianapolis gay community throughout the 80s that an increasing number of young gay men had either disappeared or turned up dead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can I get a true crime sound bed after this when we put it in the editing? (ominous music) And that's when he went down to the seedy underworld of gay sex dungeons. And they're just bars.
ED LARSON
Yeah, they're just bars.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they're just bars.
ED LARSON
They're watching sports.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the way they just talk about it-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they're all bars. Every true crime... Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's literally no difference.
ED LARSON
They're just playing poker and watching sports.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Indianapolis.
ED LARSON
There's a pinball machine. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Seedy gay underground. Yeah, yeah, they're just eating cheese curds.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And like hanging out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I remember I went to a bar in Indianapolis once and it was supposed to be like a goth night but the kids that ran the goth night couldn't figure out how to get the PA system going.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So we just sat there in silence for an hour while they just fucked around with it.
ED LARSON
I mean what's more goth than that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The silence of the grave.
MARCUS PARKS
What, incompetence? The extreme incompetence?
ED LARSON
Yeah and silence. Both.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in all, the bodies of 11 teenagers and adults were discovered naked or partially clothed near Interstate 70, all of whom have been strangled to death. These men however were not hitchhikers nor was the killer a trucker like the moniker of the I-70 Strangler suggests. I guess that's the I-70 Killer. That's the trucker, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the trucker.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or they think is the trucker.
MARCUS PARKS
They think. Instead most of the victims had met their killer in popular gay bars with great fucking names. You had the Vogue Theater-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
You had the Broad Ripple. I love that, I'd go to the Broad Ripple. They even had a Brothers.
ED LARSON
Hey!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think Brothers-
ED LARSON
It's all over, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very common.
ED LARSON
My dad used to always make fun every time we passed the Brothers. He was like I'm not going there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile like but you keep bringing it up, dad. You know what I mean?
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You keep bringing it up and you have this weird sort of like tinge tense obsession with Brothers. And every time we go by it you say that you don't want to go in there.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're like why would I assume you would go in there, dad? That's a gay bar. You are though, you keep mentioning it though.
ED LARSON
Yeah. He would always say the same thing about Choices where Cunanan used to go.
MARCUS PARKS
Interesting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The gay steakhouse club.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where just being like but you're obsessed with this, dad. It seems like you're curious. It seems like you want to go in there. You want to check it out. Because it might be nice because then he'd probably make up nice conversation with other men.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You don't always gotta suck dick.
MARCUS PARKS
Not always. My favorite thing my dad would do when we were driving around is every time we passed a strip club he'd go uh oh! And then he'd say the name of the strip club.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Uh oh, Chit Chat Club!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's funny. My dad, my favorite thing that my dad used to do, quote unquote "favorite thing" was that if someone was crossing the streets, he'd always go like 90 points! About killing them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, my dad had that joke as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Childbearing. That's 180 points.
ED LARSON
He was a cop, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Love my father. He's doing great. And where did it come from? Where did that sense of humor come from?
MARCUS PARKS
Well starting with a sex worker named Michael Petree in 1980, Baumeister, if he was indeed the I-70 Strangler, killed at a clip of about one a year but usually between August and October but sometimes as early as may, it was always during the warm months.
ED LARSON
Is that like common?
MARCUS PARKS
Actually showing that amount of restraint isn't common.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
For 10 years? Usually the guys, they go more often because you get less of a return on the dopamine each time, you get less of a return on the pleasure each time.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So the cooling off period is shorter and shorter. But to kill one a year for 10 years is very uncommon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he's probably-
MARCUS PARKS
Or at least that's the thing, it's uncommon amongst those who get caught.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then I think that having that space inbetween allows enough time to go that people kind of forget. You could see that Herb Baumeister, just from already talking about all of this, is fighting every day tooth and nail to not kill and rape. He is literally like a moment away.
ED LARSON
You think he didn't want to do it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he created, what we talk about with serial killers a lot is they create circumstances in which then they can say it is now beyond my control. I had to kill. So they start slowly ramping up. Probably, that's why I think it started with just some activity with sex workers.
MARCUS PARKS
Usually does.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I think a lot of it probably is that he got his steam released by doing extreme sex with sex workers that did not involve death, that like he probably was still just getting violently choked out and choking out somebody else without killing them every once in a blue moon to blow off the steam. And then he would then go into a fugue state, he would become this shadow other person when he was sexually engorged and he would choke and choke and choke and choke and then wake and be like... Once he came his pants, he was like oh no. And had to deal with.
ED LARSON
But we would have had more stories then, right? Or no.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not unless they were happy with it. There's a consensual, there's some of it that's probably some form of consensual.
ED LARSON
And I imagine sometimes you're blackout drunk and don't remember what happened.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Sometimes. And you also remember like this is the 80s, the 90s in Indiana.
ED LARSON
It's a secret.
MARCUS PARKS
And Indiana is a rapidly racist and homophobic place.
ED LARSON
I know.
MARCUS PARKS
So these guys aren't gonna be coming out and telling their stories. One guy did, we will get to later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But most of the time what happens with guys like him, this happened with Gacy, is they're getting into it, they're doing like weirder and weirder and more violent like sexual shit. And then they accidentally kill someone for the first time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then it's on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And then after they accidentally kill someone, they recognize the feeling that they get when they do and they're like I've never felt anything that good in my entire life. I want to do that all the time. But they also know that it's wrong. They know that if they do keep doing it, they're gonna get caught and they're gonna go to jail.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So really tamping down the urge to not do it isn't because like oh I don't wanna do this, it's because I know if I do this too much I'm gonna get caught.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's all I wanna do. It's the opposite.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like remember when you first made your very first cheesesteak? It's like that.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I mean I never looked back. And now I eat them in secret.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep. Oh my god, you're the Herb Baumeister of cheesesteaks. It's the I-8-70 Cheesesteaks Killer.
MARCUS PARKS
Using ropes and other objects as strangulation aids, Baumeister would murder his victims and leave them in ditches or near streams or abandoned railroad tracks, not exactly where people would quickly find them but definitely in places where someone would eventually find them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the two are similar because they are process killers and not product killers.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Making things even more complicated was the fact that Herb Baumeister was not the only person murdering gay men in the region in the early 80s.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude. They were all, it was bad there, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Between 1982-1984, a man named Larry Eyler tortured and murdered at least 21 young men from Illinois and Indianapolis. That's between '82-'84. It's two fucking years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was a dangerous place in the world in time to be a twink, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. From like the 70s to the 80s, I mean yeah, like John Wayne Gacy, he has 32 or 33 that we know about.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That we know. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's likely that it's far, far more.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
50-60. He traveled around, there's more counts of him killing people in other areas.
ED LARSON
Yeah because he killed people in California too, right?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And him going on work trips and killing people. They're pretty certain that he did. I think John Wayne Gacy could be like 70, like 70-80.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Very much so. Yeah because I mean Gary Ridgway is something like, what was it, 90?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
50!
MARCUS PARKS
No, Gary Ridgway is like something like 90-something.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because he did it... It's fucked. Like you know how Stanley Tucci makes dinner? Where like if you see these videos-
ED LARSON
He took his time?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's just always like-
ED LARSON
He fucked his wife on top of it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's always got like a little scarf on and he sits there and he's just being like you know we had prosciutto di montagnana last night and I had a little bit left and some liguori pasta and I had a little bit of truffle oil and I just whipped up... And there's something about doing it low effort and simply in a way where you're just there to fucking cum in your pants by strangling somebody to death that can really allow you to kill a lot of people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like if your process is not super elaborate, it's actually way easier to get along without getting caught.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's like the less imagination you have, the less of a chance you are at getting caught.
ED LARSON
That that makes a lot of sense. But with Gacy, he's big, like he's scary. This guy's tiny looking, he doesn't look tough at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All you had to do is get somebody blackout drunk and put him in a vulnerable situation.
MARCUS PARKS
And it's not just blackout drunk because we'll get into later, he probably had other methods for putting these guys under. A lot like Dahmer did.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Well this guy who had killed 21 between '82-'84, Larry Eyler, his signature had been to drug, handcuff, and disembowel his victims, then pull their pants around their ankles as a final indignation. He'd then leave them off remote highways. But thankfully he was caught in 1984 and died of AIDS on death row 10 years later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So they got one of them.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
So he got AIDS in prison.
MARCUS PARKS
Nope.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
He got AIDS before.
ED LARSON
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
Well at least as far as I know.
ED LARSON
10 years? If he died in '84...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well once he got in prison then he technically got healthcare.
ED LARSON
I mean I don't think you're gonna have AIDS for 10 years back then. I mean maybe I'm an idiot.
MARCUS PARKS
You can. You very much can.
ED LARSON
Yeah?
MARCUS PARKS
AIDS, you didn't-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one knew.
MARCUS PARKS
THere's some people who actually got AIDS back then who actually survived. That being very, very few. But yeah, it really affected a lot of people in different ways. Some people would go very quickly, some people would linger on for a long time.
ED LARSON
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's where I'm gonna end this now because I don't know any more.
MARCUS PARKS
You don't wanna know anymore about HIV and AIDS?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We don't know that much either.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you're talking to two people who only just know that much more about it.
MARCUS PARKS
I know a fair amount. I've looked into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now to be fair, there was an FBI task force formed to try and find the I-70 Strangler. But they were unable to come up with even a suspect before they were forced to shut down the investigation. The bodies also stopped in 1991 but gay men continued to disappear from the gay bars of Indianapolis and of course the fucking Indianapolis PD, like they all are, they said at the time that they didn't have the resources to investigate the disappearances of these gay men. I mean if there were fucking white cheerleaders going missing like every few months-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Then yeah, I think they might find the fucking resources but back then-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If they were killing congressmen.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But even now I don't think that the fucking police departments would give that much of a fuck about missing... Especially gay sex workers, they're not gonna fucking care.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is my question to the audience I wanted to pose. Sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com. So we know that Herb Baumeister was super uncomfortable sitting in these gay bars.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So the common theme seemed to be that he'd hang out and he'd look like, he'd be at the gay bar and he would look like he did not want to be there. But he'd still go home with a guy.
MARCUS PARKS
He'd look like a republican at a gay bar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Dressed nice. And yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well no, kind of whatever. It's just more so like very much in the closet, hiding in a gay bar. But he'd still go home at night with somebody. And I'd love to know from our people who go out there, what would make somebody fuck a weirdo like Herb Baumeister? Same thing with Jeffrey Dahmer. Like in this period, yeah, sure, I wonder is it just slim pickins?
MARCUS PARKS
I mean I think we'd have to, I mean if we have any of our older gay listeners.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'd love to know.
MARCUS PARKS
We'd have to ask them. It's like what was it like in like 1989-1991?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What is it about... Because Jeffrey Dahmer was a fucking weirdo. Same thing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Well you could say the same thing, plenty of nice women go home with horrible dudes all the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I guess.
ED LARSON
It's just like if you're persuasive enough and you're buying enough drinks, people are gonna go home with you sometimes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wasn't charming. He was not.
ED LARSON
Charming and aggressive and haunting you and going... That persistence is a different thing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or just waiting.
ED LARSON
Are we gonna go home and fuck? Are we gonna go home and fuck? Well maybe we should go home and fuck. We can go home and fuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And then eventually they're like fine! Shut the fuck up!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, we'll do it. Or you just wait til 4 o'clock in the morning when everything is closing and then you just kind of figure out who's the last loopy-eyed person and then you kind of convince him to go in your car and then no one sees him ever again.
ED LARSON
Exactly. It's the guy who's-
MARCUS PARKS
And it's all fucking awful.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now not so coincidentally, 1991 was the same year that Herb Baumeister and his family moved to an 18 acre property called Fox Hollow Farm, which gave Herb ample room to dispose of corpses in a more private setting. Now Fox Hollow Farm was far above the Baumeister's budget. He always lived beyond his means. The house was a 10,000 square foot Tudor-style property with 15 rooms including five bathrooms. But the most important part of the house for Herb Baumeister was the bizarre indoor swimming pool in the basement.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Midwest, man. Have you ever gone on like Zillow Gone Wild or any of those things where they show like accounts of like houses in the middle of fucking nowhere?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The Midwest has the sex-filled indoor pool on lockdown.
ED LARSON
Well it's cold for most of the year.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. But there's something about an indoor pool that just says dad strangles gay prostitutes in here. Like there's something about, I don't know what it is.
ED LARSON
It was one of those things, it's creepy and then you think about it it's like I want one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, I do too!
MARCUS PARKS
Actually that sounds kind of cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But what will happen to us if we have one? This is the problem. Do we just become a Herb Baumeister?
ED LARSON
Or you get thinner from exercising.
MARCUS PARKS
No, you just swim a lot.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Just having fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually feel like I never swim for exercise, I always kind of float and drink.
MARCUS PARKS
You do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Good for you.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well the pool is where it's thought that Herb committed most if not all of his murders between 1991-1996. In all, it's been proven that unless some other guy was dumping bodies in Herb's backyard, Baumeister murdered and disposed of 25 men in just five years at Fox Hollow Farm.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there's just no way that it's just 25. I think it is way more and that's just what they could even find. It's just what they found and what they even put together.
MARCUS PARKS
They collected every bit of bone, they DNA tested all of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They could.
MARCUS PARKS
And they came up with, yeah, 25.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now because Herb and Julie refused to pay for a cleaning service and they were too busy running the thrift stores to clean themselves-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Yeah, no one's gonna sell these pool noodles that you found in the dump.
MARCUS PARKS
The manor at Fox Hollow Farm soon became filthy and jam packed with junk and trash. Eventually the attic became infested with raccoons, so many that some of the ceilings in the upstairs bedrooms were visibly soaked in raccoon urine and feces.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, can you imagine just being that raccoon in the attic? You're taking a dump like you do every night and you're watching through the hole in the ceiling that you've created with your own acidic urine. And you're watching the guy that like is your landlord ostensibly like murder man after man after man in the pool. And it's a raccoon. That's gotta be traumatizing. You're just sitting there, like you already gotta deal with so much. You're an unhoused animal. You're there, you're hanging out-
MARCUS PARKS
No, you're a housed animal.
ED LARSON
You're housed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well you're squatting.
MARCUS PARKS
You're the definition of a housed animal.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Squatting. You're sitting there, you're smoking, watching him kill people, just being like (Midwest accent) I just wish that somebody got this guy another hobby because I hate watching this, this is bumming me out.
ED LARSON
Maybe they liked eating people. You don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually feel like the raccoons are extremely innocent here.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually a lot of animals on the property did eat the remains. So I'd imagine those raccoons-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're actually kind of happy.
MARCUS PARKS
Did actually eat quite a few bodies.
ED LARSON
Of course they did, they eat anything.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they were hanging out because they're getting fed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
How many bones were in the attic? Because they're thieves.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh whoa, did we check? But I think raccoons eat bones.
ED LARSON
Sure, why not? I know wolverines do but who knows.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Who knows what Hugh Jackman does.
MARCUS PARKS
Well like his home, Herb's thrift stores soon became filthy as well and were piled with mountains of garbage bags full of donated clothes that Herb refused to throw away or go through because they were too dirty. Again, a man of contradictions. The problem was that Herb had chosen terrible locations for his stores in bad neighborhoods. The donations were usually from locals who tended to be poor. So his dream of opening an upscale shop wasn't happening and it therefore seemed like he was losing interest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he thought he was gonna make a consignment shop.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And it was not happening because he does not have... I've seen consignment shops and normally they're lovely, they're curated by like lovely Instagram ladies. And they're always like doing like a fun little video about all the fun 70s clothes they have. That's a consignment store. This is a dump.
MARCUS PARKS
He'd again often disappear in the middle of the day, telling employees he was going to the bank, then he wouldn't return for hours on end. Other times he'd show up with a quote unquote "male friend" and liquor on his breath and the two of them would continue to drink at the shop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh you know Herbie, he's got all his buddies. It's like Jesus with his disciples, hanging out, enjoying each other's company, having sex with each other.
MARCUS PARKS
But out of all the quote unquote "male friends" that Herb Baumeister had, only one who visited the farm survived to tell the tale. And it's from this man, Tony Harris, that we get even a peek into Herb Baumeister's serial killer MO.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it's very similar to this one survivor of John Wayne Gacy that we had.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup. Now Tony Harris didn't know Herb Baumeister as Herbie from the thrift store. Instead Tony knew him as Brian Smart, a closeted gay Indiana republican with leathery skin who hung around a gay bar called the 501 Tavern.
ED LARSON
This just shows gay people, they'll buy new clothes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
They're not going to the thrift store.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now after Tony and Herb had a brief chat one night at the 501, Herb asked if Tony wanted to go out to what he said was his employer's house for a drink and a swim. This was of course Herb's place at Fox Hollow Farm, which was empty that night because his wife and kids had gone out of town as they often did. They had to have gone out of town a lot. I mean 25 guys, that's 25 trips out of town. I think every single time his wife and kids left, like they'd go up to his mother's place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
She had a condo on the lake like 100 miles north.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That was their vacation spot.
MARCUS PARKS
Every single time they left, he went and picked up a guy and killed him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I think that he may have done it while they were in the house too. I think that he brought them downstairs.
MARCUS PARKS
You think so? Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that this was the denial that was happening in this house was at a... It's just the most denial that there's ever been.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like besides Michael Jackson's nanny. It's like the most denial that's ever existed.
MARCUS PARKS
I'd put it on par with like Jerry Brudos.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
The amount of denial that his wife had about him. Jerry Brudos was a serial killer, he was killing women in his garage. And his wife lived with him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was home.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like he was making casts out of the breasts that he had cut off of women he killed and putting them on his mantle and she was just like blank.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Not accepting it at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I feel like predators are really, really good at reading people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're extremely able to know who is going to fucking come at me. You're also talking about this time period which was like there was still that full stripe of misogyny. Like I mean obviously it's still embedded in the country but wives were supposed to listen and not question their husbands.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And these women were born with that put inside of their brains. And so they were just kind of like under this idea of like well if he's paying for stuff and he's not beating me, that's the bar, right.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is not healthy and we need to change in this country.
ED LARSON
He was awful too.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
So she was probably happy to not be around him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean I think the only guy who I think truly pulled it off where the wife had no idea and it's like okay, I get it, was Dennis Rader.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I think his wife had zero idea that he was BTK.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well he was such a meticulous control freak.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. It was his whole life was his balancing his second life and his first life.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now Tony was well aware of the danger of going to a stranger's secluded house, especially considering how so many gay men in Indianapolis had gone missing over the last decade or so. This was 1994 and Herb had committed as many as 20 murders by this point.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that's not including the I-70 Strangler.
MARCUS PARKS
That is including the I-70 Strangler.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You think so? Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
94? Yeah, he'd only been at the house for a few years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh okay, good, good.
ED LARSON
Yeah, three years.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now one of Tony's friends, Allen Goodlet, had actually been one of the men who'd gone missing. But Tony nevertheless rolled the dice that night with Herb. Well aware of the risks, Tony insisted that he ride out to Herb's farm in Herb's car. So if Tony were to say go missing, his abandoned car would serve as a marker that he'd disappeared.
ED LARSON
In a weird way, it's like good that he did this.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This person knew that they were entering into a risky situation. Which they might have found erotic.
MARCUS PARKS
Some people do.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you go and yeah. But that's also fi you're going to be risky erotically, then do some safety measures in there. Have a spotter. Yeah, phone a friend.
MARCUS PARKS
Now once they got to the house it was completely dark. Herb said that the power was off upstairs but the basement was fully juiced and that's where Herb had his indoor pool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Set the scene here, Marcus. Like you're in the middle of the fucking Indiana woods. You've driven out in the middle because that was the thing, right.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's the suburbs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're in the suburbs. But still it's like a 30 minute drive.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It's a huge property.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Huge property. You were just in downtown Indianapolis or wherever their city was, they're hanging out, right. Normal gay bar. You're gonna go to a second location which we always say never do. Never go to a second location. You're out in the middle of the fucking woods.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You see this mansion, this mansion in the middle of nowhere, big land.
ED LARSON
Broken down mansion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Already dilapidated.
ED LARSON
Disgusting looking.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There was a pit, like there's things in there that are already super weird. He's got stuff just hanging out in the fucking yard, right. Like all of his treasures and his junk is all just kind of hanging out in this yard.
ED LARSON
It really is Addams Family-like.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very scary. You're driving in and then you go into his... Like he takes you through his dark house.
MARCUS PARKS
But he's saying it's not my house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not my house!
MARCUS PARKS
It's my employer's house.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not my house. You go through this house, reeks of piss. They say the whole place was horrifying, it's a hoarder's house.
ED LARSON
No way, this guy?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know! But you go to his house and he's just like well actually this is not even mine, the power is out, you gotta see the pool. And then you go down to the pool and this is what you see. Inside it's all like cheesily done with tile and shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The first alarming thing that Tony noticed upon descending into the pool room were all the mannequins. Two were upright next to the pool, one was facedown, and another was standing off to the side wearing only a woman's wig. Four mannequins just hanging out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Staring.
MARCUS PARKS
And when Tony asked hey, what's with the mannequins? That's kind of strange.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, what do you have all these mannequins for?
MARCUS PARKS
Herb replied that he got lonely out there and didn't like to be alone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bad answer.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And this is a weird thing to say, not least because Herb had said at the bar that he was only in town for a couple of weeks and had also said that it was his employer's place. This meant that if you were following Herb's story that he would have had to have brought the mannequins with him from another location for a two week stay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well how do you think I save 30 minutes going either way in the HOV lane?
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You ever seen Today's Special on Nickelodeon when you were a kid? He believes they come alive, they have a great time in the pool, they come back, they're mannequins.
MARCUS PARKS
But when Herb sensed the confusion and felt the follow up questions coming, he changed the subject to cocaine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's always good. That's a good diversion. If you don't want anybody to question your audience of mannequins, always offer cocaine.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Tony declined and played it safe with a joint but Herb also kept pushing Tony to have a drink. Tony kept refusing and every time Tony refused, Herb got more and more annoyed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because guess what was in the fucking alcohol?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well I mean who knows? Because to me it seems like alcohol was probably a part of Herb's MO.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what Jeffrey Dahmer did.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes. Either Herb counted on getting his victims drunk enough where fighting back would be difficult or he spiked their drinks. Jeffrey Dahmer used Haldol. But smartly, Tony kept refusing. Eventually Herb left. And that's the thing, anytime anyone's pushing a drink on you, say no and go away.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just go away!
MARCUS PARKS
Say no and leave.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You are better off in the woods.
MARCUS PARKS
On foot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
You know where the main road is. Just start walking towards the main road.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Go I gotta go to the bathroom and book it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Eventually Herb left and returned energized, probably because he'd done a lot of cocaine in the other room.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
ED LARSON
You know it hits you harder when you stick it in your ass.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm staring at the mannequins, don't you come to life tonight, mannequins! Because I'm busy!
MARCUS PARKS
Well as such, Herb had a case of the gacked out jabber jaws.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
MARCUS PARKS
And went on and on about his mom, his dad, and being gay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Woo!
MARCUS PARKS
All while Tony politely listened.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like my shirt? Like this shirt? Cost me $100! Like these shoes?!
MARCUS PARKS
Now eventually Herb convinced Tony to take a swim. But while they were in the pool, Herb asked Tony if he wanted to see a neat trick. This neat trick was autoerotic asphyxiation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(nervous giggling) That's not a trick.
MARCUS PARKS
And after Herb claimed that it could give a man the most intense orgasm imaginable, Tony was reluctant but intrigued. So he agreed to try it. Taking a length of hose, Herb wrapped it around Tony's neck gently at first. But then he began tightening the hose more and more until Tony felt lightheaded. Realizing that he was in trouble, Tony pretended to pass out and fell limp into the water. After Herb relaxed, Tony jumped up and screamed that Herb was the one who'd killed his friend Allen, who killed all the men who'd gone missing. Tony then started choking Herb, who turned blue, passed out, and slipped under the water. But like a monster in a horror movie, Herb shot out of the water moments later, coughing, and after a bit he smiled at Tony and said, quote, this is what Tony said that herb said:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Wow, you could have killed me. But that was so cool. It was such a rush. But you're supposed to hold me above water when I lose consciousness."
MARCUS PARKS
Like just fucking blanking on him, just like oh yeah, this is something that happens all the time. That was great! Let's keep going!
ED LARSON
Good job, yeah. Well it's great deflection to be honest with you.
MARCUS PARKS
It is.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He understood what he just did. Because he couldn't get him fully in and then he didn't kill him. And now it's too late. I guess he could have killed him but what's weird is I think that when he came back and choked him, he was like oh this guy's cool.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like oh this guy fucking gets it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Or he's actually like stronger than him.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Probably.
ED LARSON
Not hammered also.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and not super hammered.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He realizes like this isn't gonna work, so let's just-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess we'll just have normal sex tonight.
MARCUS PARKS
Well perhaps relaxing a bit at Herb's nonchalant attitude, Tony listened as Herb gave specific instructions on how you're supposed to do autoerotic asphyxiation, saying that he should see how beautiful it looks when someone's lips change color when you're doing it to them. To demonstrate in a better atmosphere, Tony and Herb got out of the pool and sat on a couch where Herb pulled out a necktie and told Tony to choke him while he jerked off. He said this is how you do it. Tony obliged, then they switched. Tony pretended to fall unconscious again, then started arguing once more about Herb possibly killing Tony's friend Allen. Now since Tony had gotten a ride with Herb, he agreed to spend the night but faked falling asleep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine sitting in that bed where you just know that all the mannequins are awake and the raccoons are in the ceiling and everything smells like piss?
ED LARSON
It fucking reeks.
MARCUS PARKS
I think he kept him downstairs in the basement the entire time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, definitely, definitely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And once Herb was out, Tony called his sister to tell her that the guy he was with wasn't right. He then stayed up all night trying to work up the courage to find some trace of his friend Allen. The next morning though, Herb went out to run an errand which left Tony alone in the house to finally explore the upstairs in the light of day. What struck him, he said, was how messy and disorganized it was. But he specifically noticed how much video recording equipment and videotapes Herb had in his possession. He thought he was a film producer of some kind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not good.
ED LARSON
Why would he leave him there?
MARCUS PARKS
This was the weird thing about Herb Baumeister and we'll get into it a little bit later. He left everything everywhere. He just didn't care. He just didn't care.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I view him in the, what they talk about with psychopaths of like we talk about it's shallowness. So there is a thing there where with psychopaths, that's like one of the main issues is that they can't feel feelings. So they need excitement and they crave excitement and some form of like they wanna be pushed into feeling something. And so I think with him is that you see it with the I-70 Strangler murders and these murders and the way he disposed of the bodies, he did it in the most lazy way possible. And it's like number one, it's because humans are not human to him. Humans are objects. He views everything as a 2D paper cut out, right.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like nobody has any, you don't have a soul to him. And so you're just somebody he can cum on. And so he does that and then once it's out of him, I really, the idea that he goes away, that Herb Baumeister that you know goes away, this shadow Herb steps forward, does the thing in a fugue state, cums at the end of it. He's just like that's done. And then he just sort of moves on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so like all of that stuff that night, I think he was just like just having a normal day. Met this guy, don't know this guy, like literally just kind of I'm now gonna go put my Herb mask on and I'm gonna go to the store.
MARCUS PARKS
Finally though, Herb came home and offered to take Tony back to his car at the 501 club. Once they returned, they exchanged numbers. And just before leaving, Herb said quote:
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"I had a really good time. You really know how to play, sport."
MARCUS PARKS
And then said see you later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bye! See you soon!
MARCUS PARKS
Now Tony definitely escaped his own death that night.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And as I said earlier, Herb had killed as many as 20 men by the time Tony had his weird night in the country. And now that I think about it, it was '94, 20-25. I would put that, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe 25. Because that's the other thing, we also have very little idea of the frequency with which he killed. We just know it's 25 in five years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And that's it. The question here though is if Herb was no longer dumping bodies along I-70, where was he putting them? The answer-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The upside down! It's a Stranger Things tie-in.
MARCUS PARKS
The answer quite simply was the 18 acres of property he owned. But Herb wasn't burying the bodies. Instead Herb was killing men, burning off the flesh, crushing the bones, and scattering the remains above ground for anyone to find. And that was when Herb was feeling motivated. Sometimes he'd just leave the bodies out in the open to decompose. He did it once as far as we know and he did that in the fall of 1994 when his own son found one of Herb's murder victims.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoopsie!
ED LARSON
Yeah. I should probably burn these and bang them up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I actually thought I had beat the curiosity out of you, son.
MARCUS PARKS
Well just about 60 ft from the back patio of their home, Herb's 13 year old son found a full human skeleton lying in the undergrowth under some trees.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just hanging out.
MARCUS PARKS
Perhaps used to finding weird shit around the house, this kid took the skull and put it on a stick so he could use it to chase around his sisters.
ED LARSON
How old was he?
MARCUS PARKS
13!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh I'm certain this kid's fine, I think he's fine. There's no way he's gonna have any problems.
ED LARSON
If he was like 8 or 9 I'd be like I probably would have done it and not thought twice about it. But 13, you should know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, I'd play with the human skull up to about 25.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Before now I understand like all the issues with it but if I found a human skull, unfortunately when I was younger, the first thing I would have done would be like hey, how you doing? And like playing with it.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The jaws and stuff, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now his mother Julie was was horrified when she saw the skull on a stick and asked where he'd found it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Where did you find these toys? Oh did the cat do this? Full human skull.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Herb's son brought her to the spot where she found a full human skeleton looking like, as she put it, as if someone had just laid down and died. Now instead of calling the police, Julie went to her husband and asked him why there was a skeleton in their backyard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) I gotta ask here. Have you been letting skeletons sleep in the backyard? And I don't have a problem with it, I don't, whatever you want to do. But it seems that they're just lazy.
ED LARSON
But if you're just throwing a body in your backyard and it's decomposing to the point where it's a skeleton, like it had to have reeked.
MARCUS PARKS
Well what he had probably done, and this was his MO again and again, it's not like he just left the body felt, just like killed a guy and then left the body. He would kill a guy, burn the body immediately.
ED LARSON
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And then he probably dragged the body somewhere else to decompose.
ED LARSON
That's why there was no clothes on the skeleton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, why there were no clothes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was burning the skin as much as he could off and then the rest of it would kind of melt.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, all the flesh. So yeah. And then animals honestly, animals took care of the rest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So yeah, it could have been very much like a skeleton mostly picked clean.
ED LARSON
Now what is that? What have they got around there? I guess they got badgers and wolverines.
MARCUS PARKS
In Indiana?
ED LARSON
Wolves, coyotes.
MARCUS PARKS
Raccoons.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Raccoons. Wow, it's a whole world of cannibal raccoons. Human flesh-consuming squirrels.
MARCUS PARKS
Do raccoons-
ED LARSON
Don't tell Travis Irvine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's his third movie!
MARCUS PARKS
Well when Julie asked her husband like what the fuck? Herb casually said that it was an old anatomical skeleton of his father's that he'd stored in the garage until just recently and he decided to get rid of it by just throwing it into the treed area behind the house. That's how you get rid of stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Okay, yup.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Okay, bye bye!
ED LARSON
Pretty good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not the craziest story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's one of those lies that it's like it's so weird it's real!
MARCUS PARKS
Because Herb, I mean he was a hoarder and his father was a doctor. And a week later the skeleton was gone and Julie put the human skeleton that was found basically in her backyard out of mind.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Yeah, that skeleton probably got a job and moved on.
ED LARSON
Yeah. It's like 20 years later, you're like oh my god, that skeleton.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) No.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually it was two years later.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well partly Julie was able to forget about this because life was falling apart for the Baumeisters. They were behind on their bills, the thrift stores were failing, and the Baumeister marriage was reaching its natural conclusion although the process would be long and drawn out. They'd stayed together for 25 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And they got almost divorced like three or four times. And then he'd somehow keep pulling it back. I don't know if it's just because she just didn't wanna go or like just scared, straight up just scared to be single, scared of him.
MARCUS PARKS
She had nobody.
ED LARSON
Did she have a job?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well working at the thrift store.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They ran the thrift store.
ED LARSON
Oh she worked at the thrift store, that's right.
MARCUS PARKS
She co-owned the thrift stores, like he ran one store and she ran the other one. Julie filed for divorce in 1994 and Herb moved into the in-law suite on their property. But the impending divorce freed up a lot more time for Herb to go see his favorite band, a white guy blues outfit based out of Madison, Wisconsin called Dr. Bop and the Headliners.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is absolute garbage. Did you watch any of it?
MARCUS PARKS
I did.
ED LARSON
I watched some. I might go see it.
MARCUS PARKS
It's fine.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not garbage.
ED LARSON
It's a cover band in Indiana.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It just feels like they play, I mean it's just the type of band where they like play at retirement homes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Now Herb was obsessed with Dr. Bop and would drop everything to go see a Dr. Bop show.
ED LARSON
Everyone needs a fan.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, they do. And I mean Dr. Bop was big. They were a big regional band. And they're reasonably entertaining for a regionally popular band. Now to give a little more insight into Dr. Bop and perhaps Herb Baumeister, Henry will now read the Dr. Bop entry from the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum on Route 66, which is weird considering how this band is from Wisconsin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey there, cats and dogs! Get you all your ducks in a row because these pigs are about to come out of the hen house. Now it was the early 70s, the emergence of Dr. Bop and the Headliners was one of the surest signs that the protest era that had dominated the University of Wisconsin campus and the national news in recent years was coming to a close.
MARCUS PARKS
It's weird that they're celebrating that so much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Long hairs! All these long hairs were packed in Marsh Shapiro's Nitty Gritty to see a band that violated every rule of the then current hip code. They wore stage suits, each member portrayed a likable character, they smiled, they talked to the audience, they were funny, they embraced every showbiz cliche in the book and they played 50s music. The classic early Dr. Bop lineup was singer The White Raven, Jerry Lee Larry, Troy Sharmell-
ED LARSON
Jerry Lee Larry?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Are you serious?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's me.
ED LARSON
I used to be Jerry Lee Lewis but he ruined the name.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep, I wanted to be him but then he got that cousin fucker playing that piano irresponsibly. We've got the Ferret De Monte Cristo. Oh it's 'Ferray'.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pronounced 'Ferray'.
MARCUS PARKS
And don't forget about Troy Sharmell and Speedo.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And on the drums and expertly handling the duties of master of ceremonies, Mike Riegel, AKA Dr. Bop.
MARCUS PARKS
And so on and so forth. The entry is very long.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dr. Bop sounds like a super flu that would be in a Stephen King novel.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's Captain Trips, Dr. Bop. Yeah. Interestingly, Dr. Bop just celebrated their 50th year as a touring band in 2021.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
They're still doing it?
MARCUS PARKS
They're still-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Through COVID?
ED LARSON
There was no COVID in Indiana.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
How did you make it through COVID?
MARCUS PARKS
Oh I forgot, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We learned.
MARCUS PARKS
That doctor who tried to help me, yeah. She was skeptical.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Which was not-
ED LARSON
That's because she was listening to Dr. Bop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) That's the problem. My doctor is Dr. Bop.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the funny thing is that Dr. Bop, they edged out Herb Baumeister's age at the time of his death by a year.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Baumeister was 49. But as Baumeister was rocking out at Dr. Bop performances, authorities were slowly but surely, and I do mean slowly-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Closing in on their suspect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish we could play some Dr. Bop so you could imagine Herb Baumeister just going like yeah! Woo! Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Now the person who found the first link to Herb was not a member of the Indianapolis police but a private detective with the perfect PI name of Virgil Vandagriff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's cool.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He'd been hired to investigate the disappearance of a man named Allen Broussard, who'd last been seen coming out of the gay bar Brothers in June of '94.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is always for all of you to remember which we talk about, we talk about the less dead, people saying like sex workers getting murdered. When the police and the killer's mentality is that no one's looking for these people but that is completely not true. There is always somebody in some level like depending on what's going on, like these people have families, they have friends, they have social workers that they connect with a lot of times. Like there are people looking for them. And they are a lot of times the people that crack the case.
MARCUS PARKS
Yup. Virgil's big break finally came when he talked to Tony Harris, the guy who'd survived his night with Herb Baumeister. Problem was Tony only knew him as Brian Smart and all searches Virgil made on the name Brian Smart of course turned up nothing. But in the summer of 1995, Tony Harris was hanging out with some of his friends at a gay bar called Varsity when who else but Brian Smart walks through the door.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey everybody. Ha, hoo, ha!
MARCUS PARKS
Thinking fast, Tony told one of his friends to go get this guy's license plate number while Tony distracted Herb by asking like hey, show my friends how to do that chokey jerk off thing you do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's actually great. It's very smart because now he's like showing evidence.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, he's showing everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh no, it's very good. Yes. And he was getting super uncomfortable, like he did not know how to respond to this while he was doing this.
ED LARSON
Oh he didn't just put on a show for everybody?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like this!
MARCUS PARKS
He'd taken no lessons from Dr. Bop.
ED LARSON
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the friend did manage to get the license plate number which was passed on to detective Mary Wilson with the Indianapolis PD, who seemed to be the only person who gave a damn about all the missing men. She found that the car was registered to Herb Baumeister but the registration was still attached to the address at Herb's old house.
ED LARSON
Now is this the hearse with the lights on it?
MARCUS PARKS
No, no, this is a gray Buick.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
Ooh I had one of those. They're nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh wow.
ED LARSON
I had a '82 LeSabre. I am not the bad guy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What if we start calling those cars Baumeisters? Would that be bad?
MARCUS PARKS
No, I don't think gray Buicks really exist anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, Buick's around.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but gray?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well meanwhile Herb's life was falling apart in every way it could.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. I don't know how to tell you this, Eddie, but yeah, he wasn't ready to be a business owner.
MARCUS PARKS
No. No. The Sav-A-Lot stores were close to bankruptcy, divorce proceedings with his wife were on and off, and lawsuits were being filed by creditors. But Sav-A-Lot is also where Detective Wilson got Herb's new address at Fox Hollow Farm. After discovering Herb, she became a regular customer at the store, hoping that Herb would show his face. After weeks of browsing he finally showed up. So Mary Wilson politely asked if she could ask him some questions about some missing persons cases.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah sure, yeah, that'd be great! Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
I'd love to help!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'd love to help!
ED LARSON
We're not selling them here!
MARCUS PARKS
He agreed to talk the next day but when Detective Wilson showed up asking about men going missing from gay bars-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't think men miss gay bars at all.
MARCUS PARKS
Herb said he'd never been to a gay bar and he wasn't gay anyway so I really don't know why you're talking to me about all this. But when Detective Wilson said that his license plate was taken from a gay bar parking lot, Herb admitted all right, you got me, I go to gay bars but don't tell anyone because my my wife doesn't know. That however was all Herb was willing to give up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's very common within like murder.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is like they'll always try to, it's what they do with police officers, what they do when they get you into an interrogation. The goal is to get you the small little things that will open you up to telling the entire story. Because our entire judicial system basically depends upon a confession.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They want a confession or a murder weapon. Otherwise circumstantial evidence, they say no body, no murder all the time, right. Where like it's hard to convict without the physical evidence. Where like this guy, like she set it all up for him and he knew that maybe if I cop to just being gay and say this is why I'm so shady-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
People then will sort of like kind of leave me alone.
ED LARSON
Yeah but then he just admitted that he was there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But from then on Herb directed all his questions to his lawyer, a guy named James Voyles. Interestingly, Voyles had previously represented an accomplice to the gay serial killer that I mentioned earlier, Larry Eyler. So it's pretty positive that Herb knew what was coming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. If you hire the guy that just defended the newest serial killer in town, it's a bit suspicious.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Also why would you hire him? He got convicted.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey. But he knows that he won't ask a bunch of questions.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well changing tact, Detective Wilson then asked Herb's wife Julie if she could get permission from her to search their home, telling her that they were investigating her husband in relation to quote "homosexual homicide".
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh wait a second, homosexual homicide? That don't sound like my Herbie.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Can you imagine if it did? If she was like (Midwest accent) oh homosexual homicide? Yes, did my husband's favorite color is the lips of a dead man? It is one of his favorite things. He said something, it's just so fun for him to cum big when he's choking. Because sometimes these guys, they go to sleep and they don't get back up. But that's nice for them to be dreaming, right? Homosexual homicide! Is that his favorite cologne?
MARCUS PARKS
Shocked, Julie again went to Herb who said that an ex-employer was harassing him with false accusations. There's definitely no homosexual homicide going on here. This again-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a hard position to be in.
MARCUS PARKS
It really is. He like plays it all off, it's all casual. It's like that, that's fucking bullshit. Fucking that dude that I fired two weeks ago, he's trying to get me in trouble.
ED LARSON
Yeah, I'm sure he was like (laughs) homosexual homicide! Cut a rug!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh my god. Leave the jokes to the comedians!
ED LARSON
I'm gonna go in the swimming pool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Excuse me, I gotta go outta town.
MARCUS PARKS
This again was good enough for Julie or at least good enough for Julie to once again avoid a horrific truth. So she also refused a search on Fox Hollow Farm. Now while Detective Wilson hit nothing but dead ends for another two years because she didn't have enough evidence to get a search warrant for the place, she had to have permission, Herb and Julie's relationship ebbed and flowed. First they were getting a divorce, then they weren't, then they were again. At certain points they sued each other and the thrift stores would open and close again and again. It's just fucking chaos and turmoil constantly. But for some reason the last straw came on June 20th, 1996. That day, Herb told Julie that he was intending to take their children to a six week program at Culver Military Academy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just wanted to get rid of the family. He literally was just trying to get rid of everybody out of the house.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And after this, Julie said fuck him and called Detective Wilson to finally give her permission to search Fox Hollow Farm.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, it took so fucking long. Because you remember what happened with John Wayne Gacy. I actually feel like in some ways he was aware because he hired that serial killer's lawyer and because obviously John Wayne Gacy was an extremely famous case, that I think that he saw a little bit of the patterns within John Wayne Gacy and wanted to emulate it and saw... Because you remember, when John Wayne Gacy, once they finally got divorced and he admitted that he was bisexual and he was doing all this stuff. He then he got to really play. Right?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So I wonder if in his mind he's like I'll get rid of the kids, my wife and I will finally divorce, and then finally I can be the gay devil in here that I want to be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Do you think during those two years was he still killing people?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
He was. Oh yeah. No, he absolutely was. At that point he probably killed anywhere between 6- 12.
ED LARSON
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Busy boy.
MARCUS PARKS
Now at first investigators who weren't as familiar with the case as Detective Wilson assumed that this was just a wife trying to get back at her husband for some reason or another, which as we know from other serial killer cases, it happens.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Every time they put out a call, like it happened with the Son of Sam.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It happened with Boston Strangler. Like a wife will call up and say my husband did it.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a bastard!
ED LARSON
It's like they're assholes or something.
MARCUS PARKS
No, they're always fucking terrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they're pieces of shit.
MARCUS PARKS
They always look into him and like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No one gets accused of being the Son of Sam because they're like a fun guy.
MARCUS PARKS
But once Detective Wilson convinced them that Baumeister was the best and only suspect concerning most of the disappearances and murders of gay men over the last 15 or so years, officers began searching the property.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As soon as Detective Wilson got there, the first thing she said was wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like Owen Wilson.
ED LARSON
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Wow.
ED LARSON
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Well very quickly-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't kill.
ED LARSON
He's popular, he's popular. Why don't they just bring a police dog and like throw a tennis ball over and be like oh look, he came back with a bone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Uh oh! There he goes!
MARCUS PARKS
That's really good. It's very, very good, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a good way to do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well very quickly investigators saw that there were hundreds of bone fragments around a burn pile in the backyard, most smaller than a thumb and all charred from fire. The bones had been shattered and the area was also scattered with teeth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have no idea how honestly that Julie wasn't also immediately arrested. When they arrived... And it's not, again, they're scattered in the backyard.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not deep in the lands. It is right here.
MARCUS PARKS
It's 60 ft from the backyard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's visible from the home. These are obviously, these are shattered human bones.
ED LARSON
Well I mean it's not like there's a landscaper. So I imagine the grass is probably like really tall.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Maybe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And it's hard to like-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Quite possible.
ED LARSON
You're not gonna see it out the back window.
MARCUS PARKS
Very true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very possible.
ED LARSON
And she's not gonna go mow the grass herself because she's a sloppy woman, no offense.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's still littered with human bones.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Now Marcus, as a bone man-
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
ED LARSON
Would you be able to tell if a human bone was all smashed up, if it was a human bone or different?
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely not.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Absolutely not.
ED LARSON
Right?
MARCUS PARKS
I would not be able to tell in any way whatsoever. Nobody would.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
By sight?
ED LARSON
The teeth I feel like you could tell.
MARCUS PARKS
The teeth, I would say that looks like a man's molar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess.
MARCUS PARKS
But on the other hand, it could also be like a small, like it's not like we're the only mammals with molars or incisors or anything like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean possibly you could say let's check that out. That's what I would say. Let's go ahead and check that out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
If he's not a taxidermist or if he's not a habitual hunter or works for a slaughterhouse, why in the living fuck would he have a pit of just animal bones?
MARCUS PARKS
Raccoons. Getting rid of the raccoons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're all alive in the house! They are actively roommates with the family.
MARCUS PARKS
But there's so many raccoons, you gotta keep killing the raccoons all the time. But then more raccoons show up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wouldn't you hear the raccoons scream?
ED LARSON
I bet you heard all kinds of shit out of that attic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was just like (whistling) just Swiffering her one little clean spot where her butt sits.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe that's what he told her every time she was out of town, like well time to kill the raccoons. I gotta go up there, I'll kill as many as I can.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Oh but Herbie, it seems like there's still about 20-25 up there so.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but last week there was 40.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Midwest accent) Herbie, I love ya. Oh Herbie.
MARCUS PARKS
Now the captain who had thought all this was just a spat between a married couple, they kept insisting that these bones were from animals. But once forensics got a hold of the-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just fucking didn't want to deal with it.
MARCUS PARKS
It's just so crazy how some of these cops-
ED LARSON
Well it's like okay, so you're killing a bunch of animals?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But it's like it's not even a hard case! It's right there!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All the bones are right there! You can just scoop it all up.
MARCUS PARKS
It's so weird how some of these cops just deny, deny, deny. They just don't... I think you're right, Ed. I think they just don't want to deal with it.
ED LARSON
Yeah, they're so skeeved out about gay stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. At this point they don't know it's gay, they don't know what it is. They just know like oh there's a lot of bones around here. But Mary Wilson is telling them like yeah, it is probably gay dudes.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But these are the bones of like gay men that have gone missing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they went wow.
ED LARSON
There you go, buddy.
MARCUS PARKS
There you go. You got it, you got the genuine laugh.
ED LARSON
Should I call Lorne Michaels and say you're ready to go again?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I refuse! I will not host!
MARCUS PARKS
Well after searching the property further, they found a larger bone area where they found a full human humerus.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nothing funny about that.
MARCUS PARKS
It soon became clear that Herb Baumeister's property was a literal bone yard with thousands of fragments scattered across the property. Tens of thousands of fragments. To expand the investigation, the head of forensics called in two of his assistants known to everyone as the bone twins.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, these are my twin boys. It is I, the bone slicer! This is my twins, this is Herman and Merman. They love the family business! Carving and searching. We love a boneyard! We also love a buffet.
MARCUS PARKS
Well their job was to lay orange flags at every location where a bone was found. And within 30 minutes, they dropped 100 flags.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Gonna need more flags!
ED LARSON
Just get a big one and put it in the backyard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's kind of the whole thing. It's kind of the whole process here.
ED LARSON
And whenever the sun sets, you bring it down, you fold it, you bring it up, put it back up in the morning.
MARCUS PARKS
According to those present, the Baumeister property soon looked like a mass disaster scene. It was like a plane crash or a terrorist attack. The majority of the bone fragments however were concentrated around an area that the police were soon calling the mulch pile. This pile was so named because it appeared as if Herb was placing the dead bodies in this spot, burning them the best he could, then covering them with debris. Animals would then pull the dead bodies apart and drag pieces down to the creek where they'd float away. And then eventually he would smash up the bones and scatter them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See this is where it's kind of cute for the animals in one way because they get to eat and it's gotta be fun for them. And in a way those animals view this probably is like the most incredible spot, like this is their vacation.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean if you're a scavenger, then yeah, this is gonna be, I mean this is fucking horrible but yeah, you're feeding the animals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's kind of nice.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because animals-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In that way.
MARCUS PARKS
The animals will come back to a place where they're fed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I bet there's a bunch of vultures and stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's Indiana. I don't think they have vultures in Indiana.
ED LARSON
You got vultures everywhere.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, everywhere. Every state in America has vultures.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is that true?
MARCUS PARKS
Or buzzards.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
ED LARSON
They're just different types of vultures.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I thought vultures are just in the desert.
ED LARSON
No! I had them all the time in Florida. We had turkey vultures.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I remember turkey vultures but those aren't vultures.
ED LARSON
They're not? Why do they have the name?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They're turkeys.
MARCUS PARKS
What?
ED LARSON
Turkeys are turkeys.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, turkeys are turkeys.
ED LARSON
Vultures are vultures.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think turkey vultures are a style of turkeys.
ED LARSON
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With the hood down.
ED LARSON
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's like a convertible turkey.
MARCUS PARKS
Turkey vultures are style of vulture.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Otherwise they'd be called vulture turkeys.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not necessarily.
MARCUS PARKS
A vulture turkey would a be a turkey-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I will be vindicated!
ED LARSON
I don't think so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sidestorieslpotl@gmail.com.
MARCUS PARKS
I can fucking prove you wrong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I will wait.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh my god, I'm looking. That is the fucking definition of a goddamn vulture.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm looking forward and not looking at your propaganda. Either way, they're letting the animals do the work.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, I mean he is.
ED LARSON
I mean it's helpful.
MARCUS PARKS
Well judging by the cans of Miller Genuine Draft found at the mulch pit, it seems as if Herb sat there drinking beer while watching the bodies burn to the point where the bones became brittle enough to smash to bits.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Essentially that was his favorite television show. That's like what he'd do. He'd go outside for hours just burning bodies, drinking beers, vibes, no phones.
MARCUS PARKS
And this had been going on for years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
ED LARSON
Man, imagine if he had a Bluetooth speaker.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, dude.
ED LARSON
It'd be so much better.
MARCUS PARKS
Listening to Dr. Bop.
ED LARSON
Yeah. So much better.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just nothing but Dr. Bop. Ugh, burying bodies to Dr. Bop. Do you think Dr. Bop ever thought about that?
ED LARSON
I bet every day he thinks about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He might not know.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know if Dr. Bop knows.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless Dr. Bop is also an intricate serial killer.
MARCUS PARKS
Let us not malign Dr. Bop.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know, I don't want him to sue us.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm sure one of our listeners knows, like Dr. Bop's my fucking grandpa.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I hope he hasn't killed.
ED LARSON
No, unfortunately on stage and off he has not killed.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the prevailing theory is that the mulch pit was the original disposal spot but out of laziness or arrogance, Herb began placing the bodies closer and closer to the house. By the end of it he'd been burning and leaving bodies within eyeshot of the house's back porch. The inside of the house however was proving to be a nightmare for forensics. It was a classic hoarder house filled with clutter and garbage from floor to ceiling. The raccoon infestation had essentially destroyed the upstairs bedrooms to the point where the ceiling had collapsed in spots where the raccoon waste had soaked it so thoroughly.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey guys, listen, I know that it's like weird to have a bunch of raccoons living in here. But let me tell you fucking man, seriously not the weirdest shit that's going on in this house. Right?
ED LARSON
It's just nice to finally have a place where we can all piss and shit on top of each other.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Honestly for us this is a godsend. For a lot of people, it's not a nice place. But we're really enjoying ourselves.
MARCUS PARKS
There was also the matter of the mannequins which just sort of weirded everyone out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. What, the bone pit? Oh these mannequins are creepy. Meanwhile there is a literal decomposition pit.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well the mannequins plus the bone pit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, together. I honestly though would be creeped out by the mannequins.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But I would be thinking about the bone pit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, definitely.
ED LARSON
Who cares about the mannequins? He's a hoarder.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah but the way they're set up-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
With their wigs on there and they're all staring at the pool where all the murders happened obviously.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There were also hundreds of videotapes but investigators noticed that one shelf was conspicuously missing its tapes. One group of guys were tasked to watch all of the tapes for evidence of Herb's crimes. But when it was all said and done, the cops said there was nothing incriminating, extrapolating further by saying that they'd never watched so many episodes of Dallas in all their life. He loved Dallas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Loved Dallas.
MARCUS PARKS
Videotaped every episode. Herb however had obviously taken some extremely incriminating evidence from the scene. And by the time forensics were done with the house, they had no serial killer souvenirs or strangulation ligatures. All they had were the bones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The bones! But he knew and he had plenty of time to get his shit out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now it seems as if Herb may have known what was coming because he and his videotapes were, during the search, at his mother's lakeside condo 100 miles north of Indianapolis.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have to go return some videotapes.
ED LARSON
Be kind, please rewind.
MARCUS PARKS
After three days of digging, 5500 bones, bone fragments, and teeth were found but no skulls. Those had either been taken somewhere else or smashed beyond recognition. It was also possible that the skulls had been taken down to the creek and floated downstream.
ED LARSON
But why take the teeth out?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's how you identify people.
ED LARSON
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, that's right.
MARCUS PARKS
Following that lead, investigators searched a drainage ditch down the way from Fox Hollow Farm and found intact ribs, vertebrae, lower jaws, and entire spines. Later the ditch would be dubbed Skull Creek by the local kids.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Appropriate. Yeah.
ED LARSON
Oh my god. I would be in that creek every day looking for bones.
MARCUS PARKS
All the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, dude! Absolutely. I would be fascinated.
ED LARSON
The entire summer would be we're looking for bones.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're looking for human bones. Isn't this the funnest day of our lives?
MARCUS PARKS
Now by this time the news had broke that over 5000 human bone fragments had been found on a property in Indianapolis. And we can speculate that Herb heard about it on the news while he was in northern Indiana. So he got in his gray Buick and drove across the border to Ontario via Detroit. After crossing the border, Herb pulled off underneath an underpass to sleep but was awoken by a Mountie. While the Mountie didn't have any reason to detain Herb, just move along, he did notice a large amount of videotapes in Herb's backseat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Canadian accent) Hey there, buddy. I can't help but tell you, I'm looking back here and if I was you, the first thing I'd do is I'd take this bunch of, you gotta take these back to the video store. You don't even know what the kind of... When you're holding onto inventory-
ED LARSON
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(Canadian accent) There's people like me, I'm waiting, I've been waiting for Cool World for weeks now and you're holding onto it. I should arrest you on the spot!
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's thought that Herb filmed every murder he ever committed at Fox Hollow Farm on CCTV. And he brought the tapes with him just to get rid of the incriminating evidence and to destroy them.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have two theories. One is either he had a camera and filmed it while it was happening. But I think that it might have been too conspicuous or he had a camera hidden maybe.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But the cameras were big at the time. So a little harder to hide. My thing is that I think that it happened after the deaths and that was when he was having his little bit of maybe last night with Mary Jane-style dressing straight. I actually think it might have been an entire production that we did not see.
MARCUS PARKS
Maybe.
ED LARSON
Also some people are into getting videotaped while they fuck.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely. Like Dennis Rader, when he did his own self photography and stuff like that, I can kind of see a world where this was another form of trophy for Herb Baumeister to put his secret self on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I guarantee the lighting was awful.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, not good, not good, friend.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But after being awoken by the Mountie, Herb found his way to Pinery Provincial Park along the shores of Lake Huron. There at a sandy picnic area he composed a suicide letter, apologizing for leaving his family in financial ruin and for making an ugly mess in such a beautiful park.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Aw.
MARCUS PARKS
He also made sure to put all the blame for all of his problems on his wife but never once mentioned a single murder.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, weird, huh?
MARCUS PARKS
Finally he ended the note by saying he was gonna eat a peanut butter sandwich and go to sleep. Then signed the note as THE Herb Baumeister.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, one night only! Yes!
MARCUS PARKS
He then put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. That was the end of Herb, who went to his grave having never mentioned the murders to a single living person.
ED LARSON
Hold on a second, did he have the sandwich or not?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I searched for the suicide letter for days, I could not find the suicide letter. Most of what we know about it from what I have gathered is that it was extremely boring and it was all just the description of this. It was just him driving, going sleeping under the overpass. He just described his day.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And that was it.
MARCUS PARKS
Now to date, 10,000 bone fragments have been found at Fox Hollow Farm and victims are still being identified as recently as last year.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is why we're even doing this story is because in February of this year they found new evidence.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The current owner says that he still finds fragments to this day. And notice I say current owner. See usually the sites of sea killings get torn down or are abandoned completely.
ED LARSON
Especially with a coveted raccoon piss and shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes, yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And the people who buy the property almost never want to talk about the terrible things that happened there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it hurts the home value.
MARCUS PARKS
What I've always wondered is if those places are ever haunted. And in this case, the author of 'Horror at Fox Hollow Farm' says that the answer is a resounding yes. And it's with next week's episode that we'll fully explore the intense paranormal activity that supposedly plagues Herb Baumeister's former killing grounds.
ED LARSON
Whoa! I thought the second episode we were just gonna get more into the killings!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, dude.
MARCUS PARKS
No! We're gonna get into the haunting of Fox Hollow Farm.
ED LARSON
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It really is-
MARCUS PARKS
And supposedly like Herb himself haunts the fucking place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This next half is like what makes this one of the more unique stories that we've covered under like the banner of serial killers because not only is the paranormal activity well documented, it really is unlike other ghost stories we've covered. There's always something dubious in the nature of it. This place I think is like unbearably haunted. It's like wildly haunted.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Soaked with energy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. And we're gonna talk about it next week. I love it, man! We got fucking, we got it all in one go. It's all of Last Podcast almost in one go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. If only aliens showed up, then we'd be good.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The only alien involved is Herb Baumeister.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All right. Well this is fucking awesome. We're gonna come back next week. We have a bunch of stuff we can't even announce yet. And we're not going to. So we will announce other things first. Patreon.com/lastpodcastontheleft if you want to see us.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
If you want to see the actual video of this episode, go to patreon.com/lastpodcastontheleft.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And there's plenty of other perks there including exclusive interviews. You guys just did an interview with the guy who made the octopus murders documentary on Netflix.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
ED LARSON
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
That I know a lot of people are really getting into right now. So you can go to patreon. com/lastpodcastontheleft if you want to hear that. And it's not expensive, we actually give a lot of shit for not too much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're doing our best. And then you go down to TikTok which is hopefully gone soon @LPontheleft. You go check that out, also on the Instagrams. I don't know why that's less evil but that's fine. And then go to twitch.tv/LPNTV to watch all of our wares on Twitch and then go to our Youtube channel to see it after it has been aired live. And finally come see us on tour!
ED LARSON
Oh my god. I can't wait for this fucking tour.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Australia in the summer, in August, can't wait to be there. It's all set, locked in. I think you are allowed to legally, I think you're allowed to enter the country.
ED LARSON
Yeah I know, just stop bringing it up on air.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We'll figure it out when we get there. And then North America, come see us on our JK Ultra tour. Can't fucking wait.
ED LARSON
Hell yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So good. Tickets are selling out. Go to lastpodcastontheleft.com to see all of the various cities that we're coming to.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you get those tickets.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Denver in May, Seattle in June, DC in July, and so forth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So forth!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah. Right here in LA, we're gonna be doing Brooklyn, we're gonna be doing King's Theater in Brooklyn.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
ED LARSON
King's Theater, I'm so excited for King's Theater, I can't even tell you.
MARCUS PARKS
It's such a cool show. Yeah.
ED LARSON
I love that place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I cannot fucking wait. Guys, this is wonderful. Hail Satan. And honestly if you feel like you're gonna kill or wanna kill, join the army.
ED LARSON
Yeah! Do it legally.
MARCUS PARKS
Talk to somebody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, the army.
MARCUS PARKS
No, we don't want these people in the army. We want people, those dudes that are in the army-
ED LARSON
We want them in the Navy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The men and women in our armed forces need to be able to fucking count on the person next to them. We don't need psychopaths in there, we need capable human beings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're probably right. We love our boys in green.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, go talk to somebody about your feelings and all that. Go talk to somebody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
It's better than killing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Or get into acting.
MARCUS PARKS
And I guarantee turkey vultures are vultures.
ED LARSON
They're vultures.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm not a fucking bird guy.
ED LARSON
Yeah well I watched them eat dead animals.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's cause you're boring.
MARCUS PARKS
I was once almost killed by a buzzard.
ED LARSON
Really?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, my mom was driving us down, I was like five, and a buzzard flew straight into our windshield and almost lost control.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sounds like that buzzard was suicidal.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I guess that's what happens when you eat nothing but human flesh.
MARCUS PARKS
They love it.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Was its last name Baumeister?
MARCUS PARKS
Buzzard Baumeister.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein, everyone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan!
ED LARSON
Hail raccoons!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Bye.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Little hands.