In the summer of 1994, a 33-year-old white male named Roger Allen Goodlet spent a July day helping his mother assemble a bench before returning to his Indianapolis home to play with his new kitten. Later that evening, on July 22nd, he went out to a local gay bar. This would be the last time he was seen alive. His failure to return home was highly out of character, prompting his concerned friends and family to report him missing.
Goodlet's disappearance became one of a series of unnerving vanishings of gay men in the Indianapolis area during the early 1990s, creating a cloud of fear and uncertainty within the community.
The investigation into Goodlet's and other similar missing persons cases eventually led authorities to a sprawling eighteen-acre property in Westfield, Indiana, known as Fox Hollow Farm, the home of a well-to-do businessman named Herbert Richard Baumeister. A private investigator, hired by the families of two of the missing men, including Goodlet, began to zero in on Baumeister after a witness came forward about an unsettling encounter with a man he met at a downtown bar who identified himself as 'Brian Smart' but whose license plate was registered to Baumeister. This breakthrough led police to Fox Hollow Farm. While Baumeister initially denied any involvement and refused a search of his property, his wife's eventual consent while he was away on business unlocked a gruesome discovery.
In June 1996, investigators unearthed a horrifying scene at Fox Hollow Farm, discovering thousands of human bone fragments scattered across the property. The remains of at least eleven men were eventually found, though it is believed there were more victims. Among the remains, some were identified as belonging to Roger Allen Goodlet, initially through dental records and later confirmed nearly three decades later through advanced DNA analysis. It is believed that Baumeister lured his victims from gay bars to his home, where he would then murder them.
As the net closed in, an arrest warrant was issued for Herbert Baumeister. However, before he could be brought to justice, he fled to Ontario, Canada. There, in a park near Lake Huron, Baumeister took his own life, leaving behind a note that spoke of his failing marriage but made no mention of the horrific crimes he was suspected of committing. While he was never tried or convicted, law enforcement has named him as the prime suspect in the deaths of the men found on his property, as well as potentially being connected to a string of other unsolved murders along Interstate 70. The case of Roger Allen Goodlet and the other victims of Fox Hollow Farm remains a chilling chapter in Indiana's history.
