The I-70 Strangler - Part One [01]

Herb Baumeister spent his days as a father, a husband, and a businessman. But at night, he committed murderous acts in front of an audience that could never tell a soul. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
represent those of I Heart Media, Stuff Media, or its employees.
Listener discretion is advised from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV.
Monster presents Insomniac. I'm Scott Benjamin and everything I'm about

(00:30):
to tell you is real. This is Insomniac. On July two,

(00:50):
a Canadian trooper cautiously approached the driver of a vehicle
parked under a bridge. The man behind the wheel was asleep,
and when asked, he claimed was a tourist just stopping
for some rest. As the trooper talked with the American traveler,
she noted that the back seat held some luggage and
a large stack of videotapes. However, since there was really

(01:14):
no cause for alarm, the two parted ways. The truth
was the tourists had been living out of his car
for several days at this point. The very next day,
on July three, that same American visitor was in Pinery
Provincial Park in Grand Bend, Ontario, Canada. The stack of

(01:38):
videotapes in the back seat was now nowhere to be found,
and next to him was rambling three page handwritten letter
on yellow note paper, stating that his marriage was failing,
his business was failing, and he was sorry for messing
up the park. After all, he had planned to do
this somewhere else. He finished his long note with the

(02:02):
line that he simply wanted to eat a peanut butter sandwich,
his favorite snack, and then go to sleep. With that,
he pulled out a three fifty seven magnum and shot
himself in the forehead. By the time his body was
discovered later that evening by some campers, he had been

(02:23):
missing for eight days. What really brought this man four
miles from his comfortable Midwestern home and why did he
feel the need to end it also abruptly with a
bullet to the brain. Was it really the pressures of
a failed marriage and business or was there something more
sinister to the story? As it turns out, there was

(02:47):
a lot more. In fact, the dark truth was only
beginning to be unearthed in his hometown of Westfield, Indiana,
just one day before his death, and people in the
small town we're already beginning to talk. Most killers aren't

(03:12):
very open about their murdering ways, and that's with good reason.
But that presents a problem for the killer. Well, secrecy
is absolutely necessary. A lot of killers find they need
to share what they've done. They feel the need to
brag and receive recognition they think they deserve for the
depraved acts. Of course, that's dangerous for the killer. Tell

(03:36):
the wrong person and you'll end up in prison for
life or receiving a death sentence. You're gonna learn how
the I seventies strangler found a way around this dilemma.
How he found a way to share his terrible secret
with an entire group of onlookers, and he knew that
none of them would ever report him to the police.

(03:56):
How could he be so sure of their loyalty. We'll
answer that question along the way. To begin our story,
we have to start almost exactly twenty five years ago
in a city known as the Crossroads of America, Indianapolis, Indiana.

(04:21):
By the mid nineteen nineties, the Indianapolis Police and the
Marion County Sheriff's Department knew they had a problem. Gay
men from the area surrounding Indianapolis, all matching a similar
physical description, age, height, and wait, we're disappearing. Ten had
disappeared in the previous two years. Beginning in the spring

(04:42):
of nine, but the problem wasn't exactly new to the
authorities either. From to the mid nineteen nineties, the discarded
dead bodies of men were being found in the rural
areas along the corridor of Interstate seventy between Indianapolis, Indiana,
and Columbus, so Hio. All of them had been strangled

(05:03):
to death. At the time, the investigators couldn't piece it
all together. There were no witnesses, and there just wasn't
enough usable evidence left behind. The only known connection was
the missing men's ties to the gay community. A lot
of them were taken on their way to or on

(05:24):
their way home from India's gay nightclubs. But now in
the fall of things were about to change. Following a
tip from an informant, one that wanted to remain anonymous,
the hunt for another man, someone known as Brian Smart,

(05:47):
was on. According to the informant, he visit one of
India's gay nightclubs and he saw another man who was
overly interested in a missing person's poster that had been
tacked on the club's wall. The poster featured a photo
of the informants friend, Roger Goodlett. Goodlet had gone missing
in July. Intrigued and more than a little suspicious of

(06:13):
the stranger, the informant introduced himself to the man. He
said his name was Brian Smart and he was a
landscaper from Ohio. The informant tried to get Smart to
talk more about the missing goodlet, but every time he
mentioned the missing man, Smart became evasive and changed the subject.

(06:33):
As the night wore on, Smart became emboldened and invited
his new friend for a late night swim at the
house he said he was temporarily living in. The man
noted that Smart was driving a gray Buick with Ohio
license plates. Since the informant wasn't familiar with the area
north of Indianapolis, he didn't know exactly where the house

(06:55):
was located, but he was able to describe where they
ended up that evening. It was an area surrounded by
big homes, long split rail fences, and horse ranches. The
house they drove to was a large, tutor style home,
and the pair entered from a side door. He noticed

(07:15):
that the interior was crowded with dust covered furniture and boxes.
As they made their way through the house, then down
some stairs to the bar, an indoor pool area. Smart
offered his guest to drink that he had prepared himself,
but the informant wisely refused it. Smart then excused himself,

(07:36):
and when he returned he was a lot more talkative
than before. The informants suspected that Smart had just snorted
some cocaine. He knew enough about the drug to notice
the telltale behavioral changes it produced. Soon, Smart brought up
the topic of autoerotic asphyxiation. That's when someone received he's

(08:00):
pleasure from suffocation or being choked, either during intercourse or masturbation,
often to the edge of death. Smart asked the informant
to strangle him first, and he went along with it.
He choked Smart with the pool hose while he masturbated
and passed out. After Smart revived, claiming a sexual rush

(08:23):
like no other, it was the informants turn he was.
At this point, Smart began choking him with the pool hose,
but when it was clear that he wasn't going to stop,
the informant pretended to pass out and Smart released him.
When the informant finally opened his eyes, Smart appeared rattled,

(08:45):
and he claimed he was scared because the man had
lost consciousness. The truth was Smart didn't expect his late
night pool guests to wake up at all, and that's
what spooked him. It was apparent that Smart had done
this before, and the man said that his hands were

(09:05):
strong and confident around his neck as he strangled into
the edge of death. When they had finished their pool
side fun, the pair collected themselves and Smart drove the
man back to Indianapolis, where they agreed to meet up
again the following week. The informant felt that Smart's deviant
behavior in the pool that evening might explain what happened

(09:27):
to his missing friend Roger Goodlett. He called to tell
the authorities about a suspicion. However, that following week, at
the time and place they agreed to meet, Smart never
showed and for a while he remained a ghost. Oh

(09:50):
and one more creepy detail shared by the informant about
the large house somewhere north of Indianapolis. There were mannikins
all over the place and in different postures, including lounging
around the pool area. They were well dressed, almost as
if they were attending an upscale pool party. When asked

(10:13):
about the mannequins, Smart replied that the owner of the
house didn't want to be lonely. He kept them around
for company. So why mannequins. What's the fascination. Well, it's

(10:39):
due to a condition called a gaunt ophelia, which is
the sexual attraction to a statue or a doll, or
a mannequin or any other similar figurative object, most often
one that has a female form. Those that have this
condition are sexualizing good doll. The homeowner in today's case

(10:59):
just half wants to be sexualized in a group of
life sized dolls. If you know where to look, examples
of a gametophilia can be found in lots of places.
It appears in the arts. Hans Bellmer created and photographed
life sized fetish dolls in the nineteen thirties, and the
sexualized doll photography of German artists Helmutt Newton is another example.

(11:22):
There are instances of this in novels and movies too,
and dating much earlier. There's the Greek myth of Big Malion,
a sculptor who fell in love with the statue he
had carved. If you're looking for modern examples, those are
easy to find too. For instance, Ronald Dotson, age thirty
nine at the time was arrested in the city of

(11:45):
Royal Look, Michigan, in two thousand seven. Police spotted dots
In near a smashed out storefront window that displayed a
mannequin wearing a French made outfit. This arrest came just
a week after he was paroled for his sixth breaking
and entering conviction over the course of thirteen years. Now,
not all of Dotson's crimes involved mannequins, but a lot

(12:07):
of them did. One notable arrest in his past came
after police had found him in an alley behind a
woman's clothing store with three mannequins, all were dressed in lingerie.
This is clearly a man who has a sexual fetish
for female mannequins and simply can't control his urges, even
if that means breaking into a business to satisfy his needs.

(12:32):
For his crime and Royal Oak, the judge gave Doubts
in a harsh sentence a year and a half in prison,
but that's likely because he was a repeat offender with
many prior convictions, and the judge reason that Dotson's behavior,
even though he never really harmed another human, struck fear
in the community. With the information and descriptions provided by

(13:02):
the informant, the police staked out the gay bars in Indianapolis.
He interviewed bar patrons and posted flyers, but they weren't
able to locate anyone named Brian Smart or anyone who
fit the description, and the killings continued. Finally, a year later,

(13:24):
in the fall of the police got another break. The
informant had spotted Brian once again, and this time he
got the man's license plate. The Indianapolis police ran a
check on the license plate number, and the results pointed
back to the car's owner. Brian Smart was actually Herb Baumeister,

(13:52):
a resident of the nearby suburb of Westfield, Indiana. Herbert
Richard Baumeister was born on April seven in Indianapolis, Indiana.
He was the eldest child of Herbert and Elizabeth Baumeister,

(14:13):
and he led us seemingly happy childhood, but in adolescence
he started developing antisocial behaviors. There were rumors of him
urinating on a teacher's desk. He started playing with dead animals,
and friends remember him speaking of wondering what it would
be like to taste human urine. Secretly, Herb's father had

(14:36):
him take psychological tests tests that indicated her was a
schizophrenic and that he had multiple personality disorder. The odd
thing is that there's no record of her ever receiving
treatment for either condition. By Herbert graduated high school and

(14:57):
was accepted into Indiana University. He dropped out of college
after just one semester and went to work as a
copy boy for the Indianapolis Star newspaper, but returned to
IU in the fall of nineteen sixty seven, and that's
when he met his future wife, Julianna or Julie as
she preferred to be called. In November of nineteen seventy one,

(15:20):
Herb was twenty four years old, and he and Julie
were married in the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties.
The two had three children together, two girls and a boy, Marie, Eric,
and then Emily. In nineteen seventy two, not long after

(15:41):
his marriage to Julie, Herbs spent two months in a
psychiatric hospital committed by his own father. Julie agreed with
the decision, saying her was tired and he needed help.
By nineteen seventy four, have been taking a job with
the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and was eventually promoted to

(16:04):
program director. This success didn't last long, however, as signs
of his mental illness began to show, and his position
was finally terminated in the nineteen eighties when he urinated
on a letter which was to be sent to the
then governor of Indiana, Robert or. The next several years

(16:25):
weren't much better for her either. On September three, Herb nowty,
committed a hit and run, well intoxicated, but there was
no severe punishment. Then. Less than one year later, in
March of Herb was charged with auto theft and conspiracy

(16:47):
to commit theft, but he once again avoided punishment and
somehow beat the charges against him. That very same year,
Herb's father died. On the positive side, her had taken
a job at a local thrift store that inspired him
and his wife, Julie to start a business of their own.

(17:08):
In Herb's mother, Elizabeth Balmeister, loan him the money to
open his own thrift store. The balmister is called their
new thrift store Save a Lot, not to be confused
with the chain of grocery stores to go by a
similar name, and it was initially successful, earning a couple

(17:28):
of small fortune in the first year alone. The pair
soon opened a second location and things were beginning to
look up for the young family. Herb was a domineering
business partner, which Julie didn't like but tolerated, and the
employees of Save a Lot noticed that Herb would often
disappear for several hours at a time, right in the

(17:51):
middle of the workday, and he always returned smelling like alcohol.
Despite Herb's questionable management style, the small Save a Lot
chain was successful enough to allow the Bombasters to buy
a new home, a much bigger home outside of the city,

(18:12):
somewhere with a lot of property and privacy, where Herb
could conduct a different kind of business. I inherited a

(18:36):
fascination with true crime from my father. Other members of
our family would shake their heads and wonder why he
was drawn to such dark material, But I always understood
it's voyeurism, the front row seat to view the thoughts
and actions of monsters. They're victims, their families and the
authorities who hunt them. Now it's my job to research

(18:59):
these stories to the fullest extent, to study them every day.
I know it sounds like a dream to some of you,
and I thought it would be too, But I was wrong.
True crime isn't the escape that it once was for me,
It's become the opposite. Making this show has unlocked something
inside of me, something I've kept a secret until now.

(19:28):
I have nightmares, extremely realistic dreams that prevent me from sleeping,
sometimes for several nights in a row. Nightmares that are
filled with monsters, real life killers like the I seventies strangler.
These nightmares are so vivid they disturb my reality, blurring

(19:51):
the lines between waking and sleeping. But the worst part
is that sometimes the monster in my nightmare is me
When I wake up. The whole day, I avoid eye
contact with everyone, certain that I'm guilty of something horrible

(20:11):
and they can somehow read it in my sleep deprived,
bloodshot eyes. I know these killers, their stories, and I'm
hoping that by sharing their cases, I can take away
the power that they have over me and get some
much needed rest. And I'm telling you my secret because

(20:32):
I know I can't be the only person who's struggling
with this. Well research in this case, I came across
something highly unusual, something I never really expected, and fairly
rare among the ranks of serial killers, similar to Herb.

(20:54):
I found a short video clip that shows what amounts
to a chance encounter with a serial killer by a
local television station in Indianapolis. The new station was w
i s h TV channel eight, and the reporter interviewed
her Baumeister right at the height of his crimes. There's
no indication in the video as to what year the

(21:14):
interview took place, but I have figured to be between
the background of the shot is clearly bout Wister's property.
There's no doubt it's his fields, his driveway, and his fence.
In fact, you can match the location with crime scene
photos taken to the property years later. We'll play the

(21:37):
audio for you in a moment. But here's how all
of this came to be. Herb and his son were
near the road just outside of the property, and they
witnessed a road striping crew passing by. There also happened
to be a dead raccoon on the road. As the
crew approached, Herb said to his son, I think he's

(21:57):
going to lay a paint stripe right over that dead racoon.
Sure enough, the crew did just that. Apparently, this angered
Herb so much that he decided to take photographs of
what he witnessed and share them with the local news
station to alert them to this wrongdoing. It's a very

(22:18):
strange interview. There's Herb standing on the edge of his property,
wearing a suit and tie and looking exactly how you
would imagine a successful small business owner might look in
the early nineteen nineties. Nothing seems to be out of
the ordinary. He's relatively calm, he's amiable and even laughs

(22:39):
a bit. But at the same time he seems appalled
at the callous treatment of this dead raccoon. I find
this extremely strange. Listen to his interview and see if
you agree. Herb Baumeister of Karmel saw it all. I
said to my son, they're gonna hit that raccoon with

(22:59):
this way God. And sure enough they just striped right
over it space and neck and I didn't even move.
But you had no effort to, you know, get it
out of the way. So I haven't have a polaroid
with me, so I took a shot at the fact
a raccoon which met its demise on the yellow line
became one with the paint. The raccoon has since been removed.
This is all that's left. This was just you know,

(23:22):
a Painter should have had a chocolate brought around his
career by state officials. There was no excuse for that.
I mean, the poor thing to deserve a better faith
than that. The poor thing deserved a better faith than that.
The question is this, has herb really that upset about
the treatment of a dead raccoon? Whereas he using this

(23:42):
as an opportunity to try to blend in, trying to
appear a little more normal than the way he was
perceived by everyone around him. Was he attempting to pretend
to be a normal, functioning member of society. I guess
we'll never know the answer. The Bellmeister family was ready

(24:04):
to move into the new dream home, but the cracks
were beginning to show, and her secret life couldn't stay
secret for long. Eric herbs Son was about to make
a gruesome discovery in the woods, something that should make
Julie question everything she believed about her husband, but she

(24:24):
ignored it. Next time on Insomniac. Insomniac is a production
of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, written and hosted
by Scott Benjamin and produced by Miranda Hawkins, Alex Williams,

(24:45):
Matt Frederick, and Josh Thane. Music composed by Makeup and
Vanity Set and cover by Trevor Eisler, and a special
thanks to Joe Malillo and Wish TV. Follow on Twitter
and Facebook at Insomniac Pod, on Instagram at Insomniac Podcast,
and at our website insomniac podcast dot com. For more
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(25:08):
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