In the autumn of 1982, the life of 14-year-old Delvoyd Lee Baker was tragically cut short. An African-American male, Delvoyd was an eighth-grade student who disappeared from downtown Indianapolis on the evening of October 2nd. He had ridden his bicycle into the city and later called his parents around 10:30 p.m. to say he would be late because he wanted to see a movie, a statement that concerned them as they knew he had no money with him.
Witnesses reported seeing Delvoyd for the last time near the Marion County Central Library, getting into a blue van driven by a young white man with a bushy mustache.
The following morning, on October 3, 1982, his body was discovered in a drainage ditch alongside Lantern Road near Fishers in Hamilton County. He was found semi-nude, and the cause of death was determined to be ligature strangulation. His death was one of a series of unsolved slayings of young men and boys that occurred in the Midwest between 1980 and 1991, attributed to an unidentified serial killer often referred to as the 'I-70 Strangler.' The victims were often found in rural areas near waterways after being strangled. Delvoyd was the youngest and the only Black victim linked to this string of murders.
The investigation into Delvoyd's murder led authorities to question several individuals, though no one was ever charged with the crime. One man, Duncan V. Patterson, a 47-year-old from Florida, admitted to paying Delvoyd for a sexual act in a motel room on the Southside of Indianapolis. However, he claimed he dropped the boy off at the library afterward, where he saw him get into another vehicle. Patterson passed a polygraph test and was ultimately cleared as a suspect in the murder. Another man, a former Carmel businessman named August F. 'Gus' Caito, was brought before a grand jury in connection with the case. He refused to answer questions, even after being granted immunity, and was jailed for contempt of court, but a lack of evidence meant no charges were filed against him.
Years later, the case, along with the other 'I-70 Strangler' murders, would be unofficially linked to Herb Baumeister, an Indiana businessman and suspected serial killer who died by suicide in 1996 as investigators closed in on him for the murders of at least eleven men whose remains were found on his property. The killings attributed to the 'I-70 Strangler' ceased around the time Baumeister purchased the property where the bodies were later discovered. Despite these suspicions, the murder of Delvoyd Lee Baker officially remains a cold case, leaving his family without justice for decades.
