Herb Baumeister

Infobox Serial Killer
name=Herb Baumeister


caption=
birthname=Herbert Richard Baumeister
alias=Brian Stewart
birth=April 7, 1947
location=Currier & Ives Butler-Tarkington, Indiana
death=July 3, 1996
Grand Bend, Ontario
cause=suicide
victims=Undetermined
country=USA
states=Indiana
beginyear=Unknown
endyear=1996
apprehended=
penalty=

Herbert Richard "Herb" Baumeister (April 7, 1947—July 3, 1996) was an alleged American serial killer from suburban Westfield, Indiana outside of Indianapolis. He was the founder of the successful thrift store chain Sav-a-Lot in Indiana. Baumeister committed suicide before he could be brought to trial, and never confessed to the crimes he was alleged to have committed.

Early life

The oldest of four children, Baumeister's childhood was evidently normal. By the onset of adolescence, however, he began exhibiting antisocial behavior; acquaintances later recalled the young Baumeister playing with dead animals and urinating on a teacher's desk. As a teenager, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but did not receive further psychiatric treatment. As an adult, he drifted through a series of jobs, marked by a strong work ethic, but also by more and increasingly bizarre behavior.

He married in 1971, a union that produced three children. He founded the Sav-a-Lot chain in 1988, and quickly became an affluent, well-liked member of the community.

Investigation

Vergil Vandagriff is a professional private investigator in Indianapolis. He is a retired major crime investigator from the Marion County Sheriff's Department. He communicated with Mary Wilson an investigator with the Indianapolis Police department. The two detectives began investigating the disappearances of gay men in the area in the early 1990s, both convinced the crimes were related. In 1993, they were contacted by a man claiming that a gay bar patron calling himself "Brian Smart" had killed a friend of his, and had attempted to kill him. The detectives told him to contact them in case he ever saw the man again. In November 1995, he called them and supplied the man's license plate; after checking the license registry, Vandagriff and Wilson discovered that "Brian Smart" was actually Herb Baumeister. Wilson approached Baumeister, told him he was a suspect in the disappearances, and asked to search his house. When Baumeister refused, she confronted his wife, Julie, who also forbade police to search the house. By June 1996, however, she had become sufficiently frightened by her husband's mood swings and erratic behavior that, after filing for divorce, she consented to a search. The search, conducted while Baumeister was on vacation, yielded the remains of 11 men; only four were ever identified.

Panicked, Baumeister escaped to Ontario, where he committed suicide at Pinery Provincial Park through a gunshot wound to the head.. In his suicide note, he described his failing marriage and business as his reason for killing himself. He did not confess to the murders of the seven men found in his backyard.

In addition to the murders at his estate, Baumeister is also strongly suspected of killing nine more men, the bodies of whom were found in rural areas along the corridor of Interstate 70 in Indiana and Ohio between Indianapolis and Columbus. Julie Baumeister told authorities that her husband made as many as one hundred business trips to Ohio, on what he said was store business.

In popular culture

The A&E Network television series "The Secret Life of a Serial Killer" aired an episode about Baumeister in 1997.

The case was also featured on "The Investigators" on TruTV in 2008.

External links

* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/baumeister/side_1.html Herb Baumeister at CrimeLibrary.com]
* [http://www.charliemanson.com/crime/baumeister.htm Herb Baumeister at CharlieManson.com]