Episode Description:
In this chilling episode of From The Void, we sit down with director Alex Jablonski to explore one of the most disturbing true crime cases in American history—the Fox Hollow Farm murders. Alex is the director behind the gripping new docuseries Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer, now streaming on Hulu.
In Part 1 of our conversation, we unpack the terrifying story of Herb Baumeister, the suburban father and businessman suspected of being a serial killer whose estate—Fox Hollow Farm—still holds secrets that may never fully be unearthed. We talk about the strange paranormal elements, the haunting nature of the property, and what drew Alex to tell this deeply unsettling story.
If you’re into true crime, the paranormal, and stories that blend both, you’re not going to want to miss this one.
🔗 Watch the Docuseries:
🎥 Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer — now streaming on Hulu
🌐 Learn more about Alex Jablonski and his work:
Director’s Website → https://www.alexjablonski.com
🎧 Listen to From The Void Podcast:
Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-the-void-podcast/id1572325461
Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2EyjQEb5O52NfLlHACAMcM
Follow us on Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/thefromthevoidpodcast/
🕵️♂️ Want to be part of the mystery?
Check out our new FTV Paranormal Investigations service!
If you’ve got a haunted home or strange property activity, we want to investigate. Head to www.fromthevoidpod.com and click the FTV Paranormal Investigations tab. Fill out the contact form—we might even feature your case on a future episode!
⭐️ If you enjoyed this episode…
Please rate, review, and subscribe to From The Void on your favorite podcast platform—and share it with your fellow seekers of the strange and unexplained.
👀 Stay tuned for Part 2 of our interview with Alex Jablonski—coming next week.
Until then… keep looking into the void.
00:00:01 --> 00:00:07 From the darkest reaches of space, to the deepest corners of your mind,
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 welcome to From the Void.
00:00:15 --> 00:00:19 There are some places that refuse to let go of their past.
00:00:19 --> 00:00:23 Fox Hollow Farm, an unassuming state in the Indiana countryside,
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 holds a dark and terrifying history.
00:00:26 --> 00:00:31 It was once the home of Herb Baumeister, a man suspected of luring men to his
00:00:31 --> 00:00:33 property, never to be seen again.
00:00:34 --> 00:00:38 Authorities believe he was responsible for the deaths of at least a dozen victims.
00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 There remains scattered in the woods behind his house.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 But decades later, chilling new evidence is coming to light,
00:00:44 --> 00:00:48 and the truth may be even more horrifying than we ever imagined.
00:00:49 --> 00:00:53 A brand new docuseries, The Fox Hollow Murderer's Playground of a Serial Killer,
00:00:53 --> 00:00:57 now streaming on Hulu, takes a fresh look at this infamous case uncovering new
00:00:57 --> 00:01:01 details, new theories, and even new potential victims.
00:01:01 --> 00:01:06 Today, I'm joined by the series director, Alex Jablonski, to discover what went
00:01:06 --> 00:01:10 into making this groundbreaking documentary, the shocking revelations he uncovered,
00:01:11 --> 00:01:16 and what it was like stepping into a crime scene that still seems to whisper its secrets.
00:01:16 --> 00:01:20 This is From the Void, and you're about to step into the darkness.
00:01:22 --> 00:01:28 Music.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:32 All right. Welcome to the podcast, Alex. Thank you so much for spending some
00:01:32 --> 00:01:34 time this afternoon with me on the show today.
00:01:34 --> 00:01:38 Yeah, thanks for having me. Absolutely. So tell the audience a little bit about
00:01:38 --> 00:01:39 your background and kind of the work that you do.
00:01:40 --> 00:01:44 Yeah, I'm a documentary filmmaker, make TV series and feature-length documentaries,
00:01:44 --> 00:01:48 done commercials as well, but not necessarily a true crime person,
00:01:48 --> 00:01:54 but always a focus on documentary and trying to bring a kind of cinematic feel into nonfiction.
00:01:54 --> 00:01:59 Yeah, absolutely. I just I just caught this new documentary series on the Fox Hollow Farms murders.
00:02:00 --> 00:02:04 And this is a very complex and sort of unique. We were talking before we started
00:02:04 --> 00:02:08 a very unique kind of true crime story. What first attracted you to the story?
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 You just said that, you know, you don't typically dive into true crime.
00:02:11 --> 00:02:14 So what about this particular story kind of made you think, hey,
00:02:14 --> 00:02:18 I'd like to make a documentary series about this? So I was approached when folks
00:02:18 --> 00:02:22 already had a kind of a little bit of the framework for the series.
00:02:22 --> 00:02:25 And the series is called The Fox Hollow Murders. It's on Hulu.
00:02:25 --> 00:02:30 And what it is about is that there was a serial killer in the mid-90s named
00:02:30 --> 00:02:33 Herb Baumeister who preyed upon gay men in Indianapolis.
00:02:34 --> 00:02:39 Eventually, they found the remains, just the bones, the skeletal remains of
00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 a number of people still determining how many people exactly. Yeah.
00:02:43 --> 00:02:48 But it amounted to 10 bones and bone fragments on his property in suburban
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 Indianapolis in an area called Hamilton County.
00:02:51 --> 00:02:57 And so the reason this story came to the surface recently is that a new coroner
00:02:57 --> 00:03:01 by the name Jeff Jellison became the coroner of Hamilton County and decided like,
00:03:01 --> 00:03:07 oh, my God, I can't believe that we haven't actually found who these city's
00:03:07 --> 00:03:09 young men were, who these remains were.
00:03:09 --> 00:03:15 So she wanted to go back and do DNA testing on these remains to find out who they belong to.
00:03:15 --> 00:03:18 So that was the present tense piece of the story.
00:03:18 --> 00:03:23 And I think what interested me is that, you know, most true crime is about an
00:03:23 --> 00:03:27 adjudicated case, a case that went to trial that had some resolution.
00:03:27 --> 00:03:31 And the majority of it is in the past tense. It kind of walks you through a
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 timeline of this happened and this happened.
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 And there are twists and turns, but you ultimately know where it's going.
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 But that's not really the type of filmmaking I'm interested in.
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 I really like present tense stories.
00:03:41 --> 00:03:45 So my previous series prior to this one was called Navajo Police Class 57.
00:03:45 --> 00:03:50 It's on HBO. And that is a story that unfolds in front of you of a class of
00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 recruits going through the Navajo Police Training Academy.
00:03:53 --> 00:03:58 And so what interested me about this story, this is a long way to get to answer
00:03:58 --> 00:04:03 your question, but what interested me about this story is that it took place in the present,
00:04:03 --> 00:04:07 that there was an aspect where you were going to be able to see things about
00:04:07 --> 00:04:10 this case unfolding in front of you.
00:04:10 --> 00:04:12 And so I was really interested in that.
00:04:13 --> 00:04:19 Were we going to see the coroner identify new victims? Were we going to see him find new bones?
00:04:19 --> 00:04:21 Were we going to see new breaks in the case?
00:04:22 --> 00:04:26 And inevitably, all of those things began to happen. Yeah, it's a really sort of unique situation.
00:04:27 --> 00:04:33 One comparison I've heard to Herb Baumeister is some of the prior serial killers
00:04:33 --> 00:04:37 that we know from the 70s and 80s, who also preyed on gay victims.
00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 So there is definitely, you kind of shied a light on some of the,
00:04:40 --> 00:04:44 you know, some of the prejudice that took place in the original investigation,
00:04:44 --> 00:04:47 but there's so much more to it. There's so many more layers to it.
00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 And so one of the things you mentioned were the bones.
00:04:50 --> 00:04:55 So kind of for people who aren't as familiar, kind of describe the property
00:04:55 --> 00:04:58 that we're talking about, because obviously it takes place in Indianapolis,
00:04:58 --> 00:05:03 Indiana, and he's pulling victims from sort of the metropolitan area,
00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 but he's taking him back to this kind of unique.
00:05:07 --> 00:05:11 Home and property that's kind of very unique to this case, I think.
00:05:11 --> 00:05:16 Yeah. I mean, it's called Foxolo Farm, but the term farm, it is not a working farm.
00:05:16 --> 00:05:20 I think that's a marketing, you know, ploy, if anything, because really what
00:05:20 --> 00:05:22 this is, is like this palatial estate.
00:05:22 --> 00:05:27 So it's 18 acres and it has forced paddocks on it and a barn,
00:05:27 --> 00:05:31 but it's not a farm in the sense of growing crops or anything like that.
00:05:31 --> 00:05:35 So it's 18 acres, heavily wooded. And in In the mid-90s, when these crimes were
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 taking place, it was even more kind of remote than it is now.
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 I think suburban sprawl has encroached on it.
00:05:41 --> 00:05:45 But it was very isolated. And it's this large, I think, 10-bedroom,
00:05:45 --> 00:05:49 two-door mansion that is probably, I would say, 6 square feet.
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 And it has these woods that come right up to the back of the property.
00:05:54 --> 00:05:58 And that was where he would dispose of the victims, in these woods behind his house.
00:05:58 --> 00:06:03 Yeah, one of the other interesting aspects of this case is that this home also has this indoor pool.
00:06:03 --> 00:06:07 And one of the things that was sort of unique to Herb Baumeister is he seemed
00:06:07 --> 00:06:11 to have this fascination with mannequins and he had these mannequins like all over the property.
00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 And also, you know, his money came from and you could talk a little bit about
00:06:15 --> 00:06:16 this. He owned a business.
00:06:17 --> 00:06:21 He was a business owner and he had mannequins just everywhere in that space, too.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 And so some of the people you you spoke with in the documentary series talk
00:06:24 --> 00:06:27 about like this sort of weird fascination with mannequins.
00:06:27 --> 00:06:32 Yeah, I mean, he ran what were called save-a-lots, which were essentially thrift
00:06:32 --> 00:06:36 stores, like a Goodwill, but a for-profit thrift store.
00:06:36 --> 00:06:40 And so he would have kind of mannequins that he would buy from distressed,
00:06:40 --> 00:06:44 you know, clothing stores that were going out of business. He would buy their
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47 mannequins, and then he would use them at his thrift stores.
00:06:47 --> 00:06:52 But then he would position them in his little playroom, in his bar area downstairs,
00:06:52 --> 00:06:55 and in the pool area downstairs as well.
00:06:55 --> 00:07:00 And he had this indoor pool. For the longest time, the belief was that the indoor
00:07:00 --> 00:07:03 pool was a bit of like a lure to bring men back to the house.
00:07:03 --> 00:07:06 Like, hey, do you want to come back to my place? I've got an indoor pool where
00:07:06 --> 00:07:08 you can go swimming, that type of thing.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:12 And the understanding of the case is that most of the criminal activity took
00:07:12 --> 00:07:15 place in the pool area or the adjoining bar area.
00:07:15 --> 00:07:20 And so like a lot of serial killers, he also has he has sort of his public life
00:07:20 --> 00:07:22 and then he has his private life.
00:07:22 --> 00:07:27 And Herb was was a married man with kids. And so how did he get away with,
00:07:27 --> 00:07:30 as you research this case, how did he manage to keep those two lives very separate?
00:07:31 --> 00:07:35 So I think that, you know, what we discovered, and I think the police found
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 this as well, is that he had this...
00:07:37 --> 00:07:41 Separate lake house that was, I think, about two hours away,
00:07:41 --> 00:07:44 maybe two and a half hours away at Lake Wawasee.
00:07:44 --> 00:07:49 And my understanding is that this was a family lake house, something like his parents had owned.
00:07:49 --> 00:07:55 And so he would send his wife and their kids off to the lake house for a week
00:07:55 --> 00:07:57 in the summer or for a weekend.
00:07:57 --> 00:08:00 And it was during that time that he would go to the gay bars.
00:08:01 --> 00:08:05 Find his victims, bring them back to Fox Hollow, kill them and dispose of the
00:08:05 --> 00:08:10 body. all in the span of time while his family was out at the lake house.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:15 You know, there's this bifurcated life, this kind of two separate lives is a question mark.
00:08:16 --> 00:08:19 I mean, I think in the house, you know, the downstairs, when you're in the actual
00:08:19 --> 00:08:23 property, the downstairs is the pool area, it's the bar, there's a bathroom,
00:08:23 --> 00:08:26 and you can shut the door to the pool area and not even know it's there.
00:08:26 --> 00:08:28 It feels like it's totally separate.
00:08:28 --> 00:08:31 So there's literally like a sense of two separate lives.
00:08:31 --> 00:08:34 At the same time, and I think a lot of viewers have this question as well,
00:08:34 --> 00:08:36 There is some question as to what his wife knew.
00:08:37 --> 00:08:41 How much could she not have known? I think that one thing that's interesting
00:08:41 --> 00:08:46 to me is that the way that Herb selected his spouse is not all that dissimilar
00:08:46 --> 00:08:47 from the way he selected his victims.
00:08:48 --> 00:08:52 So he would select his victims knowing that they didn't have very strong family ties.
00:08:52 --> 00:08:55 Maybe they were estranged. Oftentimes they were poor, they were hustlers,
00:08:55 --> 00:08:56 they were looking for money.
00:08:56 --> 00:09:01 Julie Baumeister didn't have very strong family She was not super close with
00:09:01 --> 00:09:04 her parents, and she did not come from a lot of money.
00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 And so in many ways, Herb was her lifeline.
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 And so he could isolate her.
00:09:09 --> 00:09:13 And she wasn't having big family parties where people are going,
00:09:13 --> 00:09:15 Herb is acting strange. Or like, God, the house smells weird.
00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 Or any of the other things that, you know.
00:09:17 --> 00:09:21 You would hope that your extended family would say. And so I think in some ways
00:09:21 --> 00:09:26 he selected his spouse to be someone who was almost like conducive to these
00:09:26 --> 00:09:29 activities, which I think he knew he was going to be doing.
00:09:29 --> 00:09:32 Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense, because that certainly is one that
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 pops up, you know, not just in his case, but a lot of cases of serial killers
00:09:35 --> 00:09:39 who who are married, like the Green River Killer and BTK.
00:09:39 --> 00:09:41 It's like, how did their families not know?
00:09:41 --> 00:09:47 Because obviously this is a time-consuming activity where he's not only engaging
00:09:47 --> 00:09:50 with these individuals and murdering them, but he also has to dispose of the
00:09:50 --> 00:09:55 body and presumably clean up afterwards in such a way that no one would know,
00:09:55 --> 00:09:56 no one would be the wiser.
00:09:56 --> 00:10:01 Well, I'll tell you this. So it's not in the series, but we had someone reach
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 out to us who had been friends with one of Herb's children.
00:10:04 --> 00:10:08 And, you know, the story goes that, and the evidence is there,
00:10:08 --> 00:10:11 that at a certain point, her began burning these bodies.
00:10:11 --> 00:10:16 So he was burning these bodies in essentially like a pyre out in the woods.
00:10:17 --> 00:10:21 And that's why we have so many small bone fragments, because when bones burn.
00:10:21 --> 00:10:23 They shatter and break into really small pieces.
00:10:24 --> 00:10:30 And this woman who at the time had been, you know, I think 13 or 14 year high
00:10:30 --> 00:10:33 and had gone over to the Baumeister property, she said that to this day,
00:10:33 --> 00:10:35 she cannot forget the smell.
00:10:35 --> 00:10:38 And if you think about it, like, yeah, burning corpses are going to have a very
00:10:38 --> 00:10:42 kind of unique odor, and maybe at that time that's what she was smelling.
00:10:43 --> 00:10:45 But this also gets to like, how much did the family know, how much did the family
00:10:45 --> 00:10:51 not know if there was this kind of odor of death and burned flesh in the house? Yeah, absolutely.
00:10:53 --> 00:10:57 Have you ever felt like something isn't quite right in your home?
00:10:57 --> 00:11:01 Footsteps when no one's there? Cold spots? Whispers in the dark?
00:11:02 --> 00:11:06 We've launched FTV Paranormal Investigations, and we want to hear from you.
00:11:06 --> 00:11:11 Whether it's your house, a historic building, or a property that you own,
00:11:11 --> 00:11:14 if you think something unexplained is going on, we'll come investigate.
00:11:15 --> 00:11:19 Just head to our website, www.fromthevoidpod.com,
00:11:19 --> 00:11:23 and click on the FTV Paranormal Investigations tab.
00:11:23 --> 00:11:28 Fill out the contact form with all the details, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.
00:11:28 --> 00:11:33 And here's the best part. If we catch anything compelling, your case could end
00:11:33 --> 00:11:36 up featured on an upcoming episode of From the Void.
00:11:36 --> 00:11:41 So if you think you're not alone, maybe you're right. Now, back to the show.
00:11:42 --> 00:11:47 So talk a little bit about how ultimately, because there's a unique character
00:11:47 --> 00:11:50 that adds a very unique twist to this entire story.
00:11:50 --> 00:11:54 And ultimately, that's the character in this in this story that that eventually
00:11:54 --> 00:11:58 leads to Herb's, you know, discovery, so to speak.
00:11:58 --> 00:12:01 He's never quite arrested. But, you know, we can get to that part.
00:12:01 --> 00:12:05 But talk about that unique character who initially kind of paints themselves
00:12:05 --> 00:12:10 as this person who, you know, was a would be victim and managed to escape.
00:12:10 --> 00:12:12 And as far as we know, probably the only one.
00:12:12 --> 00:12:15 So talk. Yeah, I mean, and we're going to, they're going to be spoilers.
00:12:15 --> 00:12:18 So if you're listening to this podcast, pause it, go watch the series,
00:12:19 --> 00:12:21 come back and then you can resume
00:12:21 --> 00:12:23 and trust me, it'll be a richer conversation if we hadn't watched it.
00:12:24 --> 00:12:27 So, I'm hearing you speaking about as Mark Goodyear.
00:12:27 --> 00:12:31 And I think it's really important that folks understand that this series,
00:12:31 --> 00:12:35 at a certain point, almost on a minute-by-minute basis, is breaking new ground
00:12:35 --> 00:12:37 on a serial killer case that's 30 years old.
00:12:37 --> 00:12:42 So up until this series, the conventional wisdom and the public's understanding
00:12:42 --> 00:12:47 of the Baumeister case was this, that Baumeister was killing these men.
00:12:47 --> 00:12:51 He was meeting them at a series of gay bars in a small area in downtown Indianapolis.
00:12:51 --> 00:12:55 He was bringing them back by himself to his property.
00:12:55 --> 00:12:58 He was then strangling them and leaving their bodies in the woods.
00:12:58 --> 00:13:04 In August of 1994, a guy comes forward to Mary Wilson, a detective with the
00:13:04 --> 00:13:08 Indianapolis Police Department's Missing Persons Division, and says,
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 I went home with a guy and he attacked me.
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 And I think he's the one who's been kidnapping or abducting these gay men and
00:13:14 --> 00:13:16 causing them to go disappear.
00:13:16 --> 00:13:20 And this guy's name, the survivor's name, was Mark Goodyear.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:25 And he said that the person he'd gone home with had said that his name was Brian,
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 which was an alias that supposedly Herb would use.
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 And so Mary Wilson, the detective, gets very interested in this.
00:13:31 --> 00:13:33 She says, great, take me out to the house.
00:13:33 --> 00:13:37 They make multiple trips out there at least three times. He says,
00:13:37 --> 00:13:38 gosh, I just can't find it.
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 She says, OK, well, if you learn of anything else, let me know.
00:13:41 --> 00:13:43 So that's August of 1994.
00:13:43 --> 00:13:48 Not until I believe it's July of 1995 or August of 1995.
00:13:48 --> 00:13:53 So a full year later, this same person, Mark Goodyear, says,
00:13:53 --> 00:13:54 I've got his license plate number.
00:13:54 --> 00:13:59 I've got Herb Baumeister's license or Brian's license plate number. Gives it to Mary Wilson.
00:13:59 --> 00:14:03 Mary Wilson runs the plates and comes up with her Baumeister in Hamilton County.
00:14:03 --> 00:14:07 That discovery of his plates eventually leads to getting onto the property where
00:14:07 --> 00:14:11 they, you know, but not for another six months, where they find human remains.
00:14:12 --> 00:14:16 That is the conventional story. Mark Goodyear is a hero. He is the one who brought
00:14:16 --> 00:14:17 the police to her Baumeister.
00:14:18 --> 00:14:23 And that is ultimately what led to Baumeister killing himself and the discovery of all these remains.
00:14:23 --> 00:14:28 In our series, there are two things to happen. One is that we interviewed Goodyear.
00:14:28 --> 00:14:32 The other is that we go back into the police files, police files that hadn't
00:14:32 --> 00:14:34 seen the light of day in 30 years.
00:14:34 --> 00:14:39 What happens in your understanding of this case because of what we discovered
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 is that you realize that Mark Goodyear did not just spend one night.
00:14:42 --> 00:14:45 It was not a one night stand with Herb Baumeister.
00:14:46 --> 00:14:50 He says, actually, I lied to the police. I had a two year long relationship,
00:14:50 --> 00:14:54 which he hesitates to define as romantic, but certainly sounds romantic.
00:14:54 --> 00:14:56 Was it financial? we don't know.
00:14:56 --> 00:14:59 But he said, I had a two-year-long relationship with Balbeister.
00:14:59 --> 00:15:00 This is while the murders were
00:15:00 --> 00:15:04 happening, and some of Goodyear's friends were ones who were murdered.
00:15:05 --> 00:15:07 And then at the same time, in the police file.
00:15:08 --> 00:15:11 So if you just had that, you'd go, maybe this guy's a fabulous,
00:15:11 --> 00:15:15 maybe he's making this stuff up, maybe there's, you know, he wants the attention
00:15:15 --> 00:15:19 or the proximity to a serial killer, and he gets off on that kind of.
00:15:20 --> 00:15:23 That kind of fame or notoriety. You can totally say that.
00:15:23 --> 00:15:28 Except when you dig into the police files, you have Baumeister's business attorney
00:15:28 --> 00:15:32 calling the police and saying, Herb had called me and he said he was very worried
00:15:32 --> 00:15:34 about this person named Mark Goodyear.
00:15:34 --> 00:15:38 He spelled his name. He said that he left a note for his wife about Mark Goodyear.
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41 He said he left a note at the store about Mark Goodyear.
00:15:41 --> 00:15:46 You have a witness who says, I saw a murder take place at Fox Hollow and Mark
00:15:46 --> 00:15:50 Goodyear was there and Herb Baumeister shot the guy, one where Goodyear held his hands.
00:15:50 --> 00:15:54 And then you have the interview that I did with Goodyear himself,
00:15:54 --> 00:15:59 where he seems to kind of skirt right up to the edge of admitting at least being
00:15:59 --> 00:16:03 present for the murders, and then will veer the conversation in a different way.
00:16:03 --> 00:16:09 He confirms that he had a relationship with Baumeister. He even says that he stopped Baumeister.
00:16:09 --> 00:16:12 And so all of a sudden, our understanding of this case, our understanding.
00:16:13 --> 00:16:16 The collective understanding of the past 30 years goes out the window.
00:16:16 --> 00:16:19 And now we have to look at it in a totally different way, because one of the
00:16:19 --> 00:16:23 other really interesting things is everything that we know about the case,
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 the manner of death, how these victims were lured to Fox Hollow,
00:16:26 --> 00:16:28 it all came from Mark Gooding.
00:16:29 --> 00:16:32 And so the question becomes, well, what was he not saying or what was he saying
00:16:32 --> 00:16:36 to lead the police off of the scent if he himself wasn't all?
00:16:37 --> 00:16:39 Yeah, he is. He is quite an interesting character.
00:16:39 --> 00:16:45 And you do such a great job of sort of showing that he is one who clearly likes
00:16:45 --> 00:16:50 to sort of put on a performance and is very, you know, sort of theatrical type character.
00:16:50 --> 00:16:53 And it's and I think the other thing you do a great job of in the documentary
00:16:53 --> 00:16:56 series is you don't quite know from one moment to the next if what he's saying
00:16:56 --> 00:17:01 is true or if he's, as you said, sort of embellishing on things that that were true.
00:17:01 --> 00:17:04 And so you're kind of left kind of wondering, like, who is this guy.
00:17:05 --> 00:17:07 You know, and what involvement did he have?
00:17:07 --> 00:17:10 At this point, like what, you know, why did the police not look further?
00:17:10 --> 00:17:13 So there's two theories on why the police didn't look further.
00:17:13 --> 00:17:17 And just to get back to the way you were kind of setting up this question,
00:17:17 --> 00:17:22 you know, my hope for the series was that people were going to have the exact
00:17:22 --> 00:17:26 reaction that they're having, which is, I don't know what to, what is going on here?
00:17:26 --> 00:17:30 Like, because I think that it would have been totally inauthentic for me to
00:17:30 --> 00:17:34 say, and this This is what we know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:17:34 --> 00:17:36 And like wrap it all up in a bow and give you a conclusion.
00:17:36 --> 00:17:40 Instead, I wanted the audience to kind of have the experience I had of,
00:17:40 --> 00:17:43 oh, my God, it's like everything starts shifting underneath your feet.
00:17:43 --> 00:17:45 Your understanding is changing moment by moment.
00:17:45 --> 00:17:47 You're getting this piece of information. And so all of a sudden,
00:17:47 --> 00:17:49 what good you're saying seems real.
00:17:49 --> 00:17:50 Then you're getting this piece
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 of information. And well, I don't know if I should believe that or not.
00:17:53 --> 00:17:57 And then what ends up happening is that more and more of what good you're saying
00:17:57 --> 00:18:03 is actually being corroborated by very hard evidence from either journalists or police reports.
00:18:03 --> 00:18:08 So, you know, I think that the question as to why the police did not pursue
00:18:08 --> 00:18:09 this case, there's two theories.
00:18:10 --> 00:18:15 The first is that these men were young gay men, some of them were sex workers,
00:18:15 --> 00:18:21 and they just were not that interested in solving it because of a kind of systemic homophobia.
00:18:21 --> 00:18:25 This was also at the time of AIDS, where you had, you know, the Reagan administration
00:18:25 --> 00:18:30 kind of blaming gay men for the AIDS crisis and not willing to fund AIDS research
00:18:30 --> 00:18:34 leading to the deaths of gay men, the unnecessary deaths of gay men.
00:18:34 --> 00:18:38 And so there was almost this kind of like societal sense of like,
00:18:38 --> 00:18:42 oh, these people don't matter as much as, say, a single white female.
00:18:42 --> 00:18:46 And so the cops, once Baumeister killed himself, they said, hey,
00:18:46 --> 00:18:49 look, we're not going to trial with this.
00:18:49 --> 00:18:53 Why would we need to work this case? Our suspect is dead. Forget it.
00:18:53 --> 00:18:57 That's one theory. But the thing about that is, what I still,
00:18:58 --> 00:19:01 to this day, cannot understand is that you have someone who calls the police
00:19:01 --> 00:19:05 and says, I saw a murderer, and this person was present, because he mentions
00:19:05 --> 00:19:07 people other than Mark Goodyear.
00:19:07 --> 00:19:10 He says, this person was present, this other person was present,
00:19:10 --> 00:19:14 this other person was present, and they didn't bring any of those folks into question.
00:19:14 --> 00:19:18 You know, Steve Ainsworth, who's this cold case detective who's in our series,
00:19:18 --> 00:19:20 one of the things he said to me is he said, look, crazy people,
00:19:21 --> 00:19:24 you know, you can think this Leroy Bray was crazy. maybe you want to dismiss
00:19:24 --> 00:19:27 him as like, oh, you know, he was high or whatever.
00:19:27 --> 00:19:31 People who are high, people who are crazy, people who are a little weird see crimes all the time.
00:19:32 --> 00:19:36 And it doesn't make what they say any less valid. And so to him,
00:19:36 --> 00:19:39 he was like, they should have at least went and talked to these other folks
00:19:39 --> 00:19:42 that he named because he named, I think, three individuals who the cops were
00:19:42 --> 00:19:44 aware of and they never brought those guys into the question.
00:19:44 --> 00:19:48 So one theory is there was systemic homophobia, they didn't care,
00:19:48 --> 00:19:52 and they just let it go and they thought they would move on to other things.
00:19:52 --> 00:19:58 The issues with that theory are that Hamilton County only had about two or three homicides per year.
00:19:58 --> 00:20:02 So it's not as though there was this like massive caseload and it's Baltimore
00:20:02 --> 00:20:06 or LA where it's like, oh my God, the cops are so overworked.
00:20:06 --> 00:20:09 They've got to move on to the next one. And there's another victim who needs justice, et cetera.
00:20:09 --> 00:20:13 It was like, I don't know what it was they were moving on to, you know?
00:20:13 --> 00:20:21 So then you get to the darker, more conspiratorial theory, which is that were there forces at work.
00:20:22 --> 00:20:28 That incentivized the police to not look in to this case, to not look deeper into it.
00:20:29 --> 00:20:32 And I think that's, you know, that's a question.
00:20:32 --> 00:20:37 Yeah, absolutely. Because there is some, you bring forth the question,
00:20:37 --> 00:20:40 Herb Baumeister, for those who, you know, you Google him and you see a picture
00:20:40 --> 00:20:41 of the guy, he's not a big guy.
00:20:42 --> 00:20:45 And he somehow managed to get countless bodies.
00:20:46 --> 00:20:49 We still don't know how many out into the woods, which is, you know,
00:20:49 --> 00:20:52 if you see the map of the property is a bit of a distance from the house.
00:20:52 --> 00:20:55 And so there's a lot of question as to whether or not he would have physically
00:20:55 --> 00:20:58 been able to carry these out single-handedly without help.
00:20:58 --> 00:21:02 And so that sort of then continues to point another finger towards Mark Goodyear
00:21:02 --> 00:21:04 as perhaps being an accomplice.
00:21:04 --> 00:21:08 Yeah, I think the question of how do you dispose of these bodies by himself
00:21:08 --> 00:21:11 has always been a huge question.
00:21:11 --> 00:21:15 Because, you know, we know from the dates of disappearances And when Julie was
00:21:15 --> 00:21:18 coming back from the lake house, Julie, Baumeister, Herb's wife,
00:21:19 --> 00:21:24 that he would have like maybe 24 to 48 hours to kill this person and dispose of their body.
00:21:24 --> 00:21:30 And so one of the working theories was that he, you know, strangled these guys in the pool.
00:21:30 --> 00:21:33 And the reason, just get into some real murder 101.
00:21:34 --> 00:21:38 But the reason the thinking was he strangled them in the pool is that if you
00:21:38 --> 00:21:41 are a smaller guy, he was like 180 pounds. so it wasn't that big,
00:21:41 --> 00:21:45 and you're strangling someone, they're naturally going to fight back.
00:21:45 --> 00:21:48 If they're in a pool, what they're pushing off of, they're just kicking against
00:21:48 --> 00:21:50 water and it's actually easier to overpower them.
00:21:51 --> 00:21:54 But then you have where the botanists were discovered, which.
00:21:55 --> 00:21:59 Was like 600, 750 feet at times in the woods.
00:21:59 --> 00:22:03 So how does he get them from the pool area into the woods?
00:22:03 --> 00:22:06 And the woods, having to walk the woods at that time, there were no paths cut
00:22:06 --> 00:22:10 into the woods. It was very thick. There were downed trees.
00:22:10 --> 00:22:15 There were weeds and vines all over it. If you were to drag them,
00:22:15 --> 00:22:17 it would have been a very brutal task.
00:22:17 --> 00:22:21 A wheelbarrow wouldn't get through there. If you're putting them on your shoulder,
00:22:21 --> 00:22:26 that's also going to be very tough. And, you know, from talking to detectives
00:22:26 --> 00:22:28 who've moved dead bodies, they say it's just it's really difficult.
00:22:29 --> 00:22:33 How would he have been able to do that so quickly with such a high volume where
00:22:33 --> 00:22:37 he's killing sometimes two people in the span of two weeks? So that was one question.
00:22:38 --> 00:22:42 And then the other theory was maybe he put a gun on these guys and he tied them
00:22:42 --> 00:22:46 up and then he walked them back there and he shot them.
00:22:46 --> 00:22:50 But then you also get this question of like, well, so someone's going to both
00:22:50 --> 00:22:55 hold a gun and tie someone up at the same time like that, or he drugged them
00:22:55 --> 00:22:57 and tied them up and then marched them out there.
00:22:57 --> 00:23:00 But it seems like very difficult for one person to do.
00:23:01 --> 00:23:04 And none of the remains showed evidence of gunshot wounds.
00:23:04 --> 00:23:10 So that also, just in terms of evidentiary, the dentistry piece,
00:23:10 --> 00:23:14 we don't have any evidence that anyone died of a gunshot wound at the same time
00:23:14 --> 00:23:17 the skulls were missing. You know, again, there's so many questions to this case.
00:23:17 --> 00:23:21 But yeah, it seems, having walked those woods, having been out there,
00:23:21 --> 00:23:25 it strikes me as nearly impossible to do the work that he did and to commit
00:23:25 --> 00:23:27 the crimes that he did all by himself.
00:23:28 --> 00:23:34 Music.
00:23:34 --> 00:23:38 That was part one of my conversation with Alex Chablonski, director of the chilling
00:23:38 --> 00:23:42 new docuseries, The Fox Hollow Murders, Playground of a Serial Killer,
00:23:43 --> 00:23:45 available to stream right now on Hulu.
00:23:45 --> 00:23:49 But we've only just begun to scratch the surface of the secrets that surround
00:23:49 --> 00:23:53 Herb Baumeister and the dark legacy he left behind.
00:23:53 --> 00:23:57 Part two of our interview drops next week, where we'll dig even deeper into
00:23:57 --> 00:24:01 the investigation and what Alex uncovered while filming this unnerving story.
00:24:02 --> 00:24:05 If you're enjoying these journeys into the unexplained, please don't forget
00:24:05 --> 00:24:10 to rate, review, and subscribe to From the Void on your favorite podcast platform.
00:24:10 --> 00:24:14 And share this episode with someone who loves a good mystery.
00:24:14 --> 00:24:18 Because the more we talk about the darkness, the more light we bring to it.
00:24:19 --> 00:24:25 Until next time, stay curious, stay cautious, and keep looking into the void.
00:24:26 --> 00:25:26 Music.
Related Episodes
Melissa Tittl "Alien Encounters" pt. 2
In Part 2 of this fascinating conversation, host John Williamson continues his deep dive with investigative journalist and television personality Melissa Tittl on the topic of UFOs and extraterrestrial life. In this episode, Melissa unpacks the next layer of the phenomenon — from her research into a...
Melissa Tittl "Alien Encounters" pt. 1
UFOs, Ancient Secrets, and the Truth Behind Disclosure (Part 1) – with Melissa Tittl 🗓️ Episode Summary: In this two-part episode of From The Void, host John Williamson sits down with investigative journalist, television producer, and truth-seeker Melissa Tittl to explore one of the most captivatin...
Alex Jablonski "Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer" pt. 2
We’re back with Part 2 of our deep-dive interview with director Alex Jablonski, the mind behind the new Hulu docuseries Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer. In this follow-up episode, we go further into the chilling story of Herb Baumeister—the suburban family man and suspected serial ...