On May 28, 1983, 22-year-old Michael Andrew 'Mick' Riley vanished after a night out at The Vogue Theater, a nightclub in Indianapolis. He was seen leaving with a man who was not identified at the time. This evening would be the last time he was seen alive, marking the beginning of a grim mystery that would take years to partially unravel.
Just over a week later, on June 5, 1983, a discovery was made in a creek in Blue River Township, a rural area within Hancock County.
A resident looking over a bridge saw the partially submerged, nude body of a young man in the water below. The remains were soon identified as those of Michael Andrew Riley. An autopsy would later confirm the cause of death was ligature strangulation, indicating he had been killed with a rope-like object.
For years, Riley's case remained cold, one of a string of similar unsolved homicides of young men in central Indiana. Investigators noted a disturbing pattern in these cases: many of the victims were last seen in Indianapolis's gay bars, and their bodies were often found discarded in rural areas. Police began to suspect a connection between Riley's death and at least nine other murders in the region.
It wasn't until February 1998 that a significant break in the case occurred. An Indianapolis resident came forward and identified the man last seen with Riley as Herb Baumeister, a local businessman. This information solidified Baumeister as the prime suspect in Riley's murder and connected him to the series of killings dubbed the 'I-70 Strangler' cases. By the time this lead surfaced, however, Baumeister was already deceased. In 1996, as investigators closed in on him following the discovery of human remains on his Fox Hollow Farm property, Baumeister fled to Canada and took his own life. Though he was never charged in connection with Michael Andrew Riley's death, he remains the primary suspect in the unsolved murder.
