Police identify ninth victim buried on estate of closeted Republican murderer

Police in Indianapolis have identified a ninth body buried on the estate of now-deceased wealthy Republican businessman Herbert Baumeister, a closeted gay man who is believed to have murdered over 20 men and boys that he met in Indianapolis gay bars during the mid-1980s and ’90s.

DNA and forensic genetic genealogy testing helped police determine that a bone found on Baumeister’s 18-acre Fox Hollow Farm estate in Westfield belonged to Allen Livingston, the Associated Press reported. Livingston, who was 27 at the time of his 1993 disappearance, was identified using a DNA sample provided by his mother, Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison said.

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Livingston’s mother provided the sample after Indianapolis police asked relatives of young men who went missing between the mid-1980s and ’90s to submit DNA samples to help investigators identify over 10,000 human bones and bone fragments discovered on Baumeister’s estate in 1996. About 30 families donated samples for the effort.

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Jellison said that one of Livingston’s cousins contacted him last year to state his family’s belief that Livingston was one of Baumeister’s victims. The cousin mentioned that Livingston’s mother was in poor health “and the family would like to provide her with some closure” before her death.

Previous to now, police had only identified eight bodies found on the estate using DNA samples extracted in the 1990s — an effort which was complicated by the fact that many of the bones from the estate had been burned or crushed, “probably the two worst things that you can do to remains,” Jellison said.

Police used that DNA from the 1990s investigation to create profiles for three other victims who have yet to be identified. To assist in the effort, investigators recently sent 44 bones and fragments to the Indiana State Police Laboratory for further DNA analysis. Livingston’s identity was discovered from that analysis.

“What are the odds, out of 10,000 remains? Out of 10,000, we selected 44 and the first identification is a person from the family that initiated this whole thing,” Jellison said. “Where does that come from?”

Jellison’s staff experienced “an emotional day” after discovering Livingston’s identity. The staff celebrated as Jellison called Livingston’s mother on Monday to inform her that they had identified her son after 30 years of being missing. However, “[my staff and I] very quickly turned to the stark reality that we’ve got another murder victim” despite the good news, Jellison added.

Baumeister was a married father of three and the founder of the local Sav-A-Lot thrift stores that made him wealthy. His wife of 25 years said that she and Baumeister only had sex six times during their marriage and that she never saw him nude. In 1994, his 13-year-old son found a partly buried human skeleton on the estate, but Baumeister said the cadaver had belonged to his father who was a doctor.

In the early 1990s, when Indiana State Police began investigating the murders of gay men who had last been seen at Indianapolis gay bars, one man identified Baumeister as a person who nearly suffocated him to death during a sexual encounter at Baumeister’s estate. Concerned about Baumeister’s increasingly erratic behavior, Baumeister’s wife allowed police to search the family’s estate while he was out of town.

Police initially found evidence of 11 bodies on the estate’s grounds and issued a warrant for his arrest. In response, Baumeister lethally shot himself in the head at Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada.

Police also suspect that Baumeister may have been the “I-70 Strangler,” a serial murderer who dumped his naked or partially clothed victims’ bodies near Interstate 70 during the late 1980s. Though the serial killings remain officially unsolved, in April 1999, police named Baumeister as their prime suspect in the case, noting that bodies stopped appearing on the interstate after Baumeister purchased his estate in 1991. Baumeister’s victims ranged in age from 14 to 45.

Jellison said that he found it “unacceptable” that human remains have been sitting on a shelf for decades without being identified. “These remains represent people. These people are someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s father. They’re not just a box of bones. They’re people and we have to pursue it,” he said.