Show Notes
Herbert Baumeister was born in Indiana in 1947 and grew up in a middle-class family near Indianapolis. Even as a young man he showed troubling signs, and he spent time in a mental institution as an adult. Still, he built what looked like an ordinary life. He married Julie Saiter in 1971, raised three children, and ran a chain of successful thrift stores called Sav-A-Lot. To neighbors and customers, he seemed like a respectable businessman and family man. Behind that image was a double life. In the early 1990s, Baumeister began visiting gay bars in Indianapolis under the name "Brian Smart." He lured men back to Fox Hollow Farm, his large estate in Westfield, Indiana, while his wife and children were away. There he strangled them, and he buried and scattered their remains across his wooded property. The first hint of trouble came in 1994, when one of his sons found a human bone in the yard. Baumeister brushed it off as a medical skeleton. The truth surfaced through a survivor. A man who had escaped went to police and helped them connect the disappearances to "Brian Smart," who was eventually identified as Baumeister. In 1996, while he was away, his wife allowed investigators to search the farm. They uncovered thousands of charred bone fragments, the remains of at least eleven men. Baumeister did not stay to face the case. He fled to Canada and, on July 3, 1996, shot himself at a provincial park in Ontario. He left a suicide note that mentioned his failing marriage and business but never confessed to the killings. Investigators later suspected he may also have been responsible for a series of unsolved murders in which bodies were dumped along highways in Indiana and Ohio. Because he died before any trial, much about his crimes remains uncertain. Efforts to identify his victims from the recovered remains have continued for decades, giving names back to some of the men lost at Fox Hollow Farm. Sources Full list on patreon Jenny Labalme, "Suicide note mentions marriage, business but not bones," The Indianapolis Star, July 6, 1996 (pp. 1–2). — The three-page suicide note's contents. (Anchor contemporary source for the death.) The New York Times, July 1996 — Quoting Hamilton County Sheriff's Sgt. Kenneth C. Whisman that the note "did not mention the deaths or remains." (Exact headline/date/URL not independently verified — fetch blocked; attribution confirmed second-hand.) Associated Press wire, early July 1996 — Breaking discovery / body-count coverage ("bodies found on Westfield estate"). People, "While Julie Was Away," Dec. 23, 1996 (Richard Jerome & Fannie Weinstein) Indianapolis Monthly, Dec. 1996 — Julie Baumeister's own first-person essay. Reuters / Indianapolis Star-News wire (c. 1996–1999) — Dr. Stephen Nawrocki, "Our minimum number at the site is 11. There could be more."; Det. Bill Clifford on the DNA signatures. Detective Mary Wilson's 12-page handwritten memo, dated June 27, 1996 — Obtained via public records and published by WRTV (Vic Ryckaert), "Forgotten at Fox Hollow," 2023. WRTV / WCPO, "Forgotten at Fox Hollow" (Vic Ryckaert), 2023 — the memo and case documents from the Hamilton County Sheriff Fannie Weinstein & Melinda Wilson, Where the Bodies Are Buried (St. Martin's, 1998) Rob Graves & Richard Estep, The Horrors of Fox Hollow Farm (2019) Stephen Nawrocki et al., "A Taphonomic Analysis of Human Cremains from the Fox Hollow Farm Serial Homicide Site" University of Indianapolis Human Identification Center (Dr. Krista Latham) — remains curation/analysis; Latham's "marginalized in life… in death" quotes. Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, "Herbert R. Baumeister" (indyencyclopedia.org) — timeline, the Sept. 12, 1996 first-four IDs, "concluded he was responsible." Indianapolis Monthly, "Unburying the Truth," Eve Batey (Dec. 2024; updated Nov. 4, 2025) — Jellison's "eight gay men from Indianapolis, what do we care?" and "blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls from Carmel or Fishers" quotes; the Livingston landline detail.
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Support the show and get bonus content at patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast On the top floor of a hotel in Sydney, on ground that was a convict hospital in 1788, two women on two different nights woke up to a sailor standing at the foot of the bed, looking at them. In a castle on the coast of Northern Ireland, a receptionist sent up the tower stair to sweep up a broken glass was shoved from behind on the top step and went down the whole flight. In Room 217 of the Stanley Hotel, a man hid under the covers at three in the morning while his wife whispered that something was bent over the bed with its mouth at her ear, and that she could still feel its breath. In a ground-floor suite in the Ozarks that used to be a cancer quack's office, four friends propped a vodka bottle against the inside of their door, came back at eleven, and found a row of cards laid out on the carpet in front of it with the two jokers turned face up. On a ship in Long Beach, a mother woke to a man made of darkness sitting on the other twin bed, and he sat there until dawn. Today we're counting down the ten most haunted hotels in the world, from number ten to number one. We're going from Sydney to the Scottish Highlands, the Antrim coast, London, the Canadian Rockies, the French Quarter, a California beach, a Cunard liner, an Arkansas mountaintop, and Estes Park, Colorado.
In 1977, a charismatic former Seventh-day Adventist named Roch Thériault led a small group of followers into the woods of Quebec’s Gaspé region to await the end of the world. He renamed himself Moïse, after Moses, and told his followers God would end the world in February of 1979. When the apocalypse never came, he kept them anyway. The group lived in handmade cabins, cut off from their families, working so relentlessly that outsiders called them the Ant Hill Kids. Thériault took nearly all of the women as his wives and fathered more than twenty children with them. In 1984, after a brief prison stint, he moved the commune to a remote property near Burnt River, Ontario, where almost no one was watching. What happened there over the next five years is among the most horrific abuse ever documented in a Canadian cult. Thériault drank heavily and ruled through torture, forcing members to break their own limbs, pull out their own teeth, and sit naked in the snow. He performed brutal “surgeries” with kitchen tools. In 1988 one of his wives, Solange Boilard, died after he cut open her abdomen. The end came in 1989, when another follower, Gabrielle Lavallée, had her arm hacked off with a cleaver after years of mutilation. She escaped, walked into a hospital, and told police everything. Thériault pleaded guilty to murder and received a life sentence. In 2011 he was killed by his cellmate in a New Brunswick prison.
Support the show, get ad free and bonus content patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast Carl Tanzler was a German-born radiology technician who emigrated to the United States and by 1927 was working at the Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida. He claimed that as a young man he had been visited by the spirit of an ancestor who showed him the face of his destined true love, and in 1930 he became convinced he had found her in Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, a 21-year-old Cuban-American patient dying of tuberculosis. Tanzler showered her with gifts and attempted to treat her with homemade tonics and X-ray equipment, but she died in 1931. He paid for an elaborate mausoleum, visited it nightly, and in 1933 removed her body and brought it home. Over the next seven years he reconstructed her decaying corpse with wire, plaster, wax, glass eyes, and her own hair fashioned into a wig, dressed it in a wedding gown, and kept it in his bed while dousing it in perfume to mask the odor. In 1940 Elena's sister heard rumors, confronted him, and found the body, leading to his arrest for grave robbing. The charge was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired, and much of the public, swept up by the press coverage, viewed him as a tragic romantic rather than a criminal. Elena was reburied in an unmarked grave, and Tanzler died in 1952, reportedly with a life-sized effigy of her by his side. ICK Sources Harrison, Ben. Undying Love: The True Story of a Passion That Defied Death. Key West, 1997; expanded edition 2001. Swicegood, Tom. Von Cosel. iUniverse, 2003. Source of the body-switch theory. Sloan, David L. Ghosts of Key West. Phantom Press, 1998. Sloan also discussed the 1982 Michelfelder article on the NightMerica podcast, February 3, 2021. Peričić, Marija. Exquisite Corpse. Ultimo Press, 2023. Novel; ABC News (Australia) profile of the book and the Trial Bay internment, November 18, 2023. Tanzler von Cosel, Karl. "The Secret of Elena's Tomb." Fantastic Adventures, vol. 9 no. 5, September 1947, Ziff-Davis, Chicago. Full scan at archive.org (Fantastic_Adventures_v09n05_Ziff-Davis_Sep_1947). Von Cosel's journal, final entry ("Human jealousy has robbed me of the body of my Elena"), as quoted in Harrison and in later retellings. Miami Herald, October 1940. Source of Nana Medina's statements: "She never loved him… She looked upon von Cosel as a grandfather" and the "wedding… or a funeral" warning. Key West Citizen, October 1940. Hearing coverage before Justice of the Peace Enrique Esquinaldo, October 8–9, 1940; $1,000 bond; charge wording. The Tennessean (Nashville), October 1940. Cousin's statement that Elena "finally died hating her rescuer." Death certificate of Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, October 25, 1931, as reported by Michelfelder (below); no autopsy performed. DePoo, Dr. Julio, and Dr. Foraker. Recollection of the 1940 examination, first stated 1972; DePoo interviewed on HBO's Autopsy series, 1999 ("I found a tube wide enough to permit sexual intercourse…"). Perez, Bienvenido (Key West chief of police, 1940). Statement to Men True Adventure magazine, undated ("I'll kill her, if necessary, to fulfil my destiny"). Michelfelder, William. Article in Detective Cases, 1982. Source of the unverified "wolfsbane… aconite" note and the "dormant epilepsy" death-certificate wording. Wikipedia, "Carl Tanzler" (with its cited sources: Harrison, Swicegood, Sloan, HBO Autopsy). Dates of birth, marriage, emigration (Rotterdam, February 6, 1926), Hoyos family dates, hearing, viewing, citizenship 1950, death July 3, 1952. WLRN, "A Love That Would Not Die: Key West Tells Its Most Macabre Legend," February 11, 2018. HistoryHub.info, "Twists in a Twisted Tale: The Exploitation, Defilement and Murder of Elena Hoyos."
Support the show at patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast Does evil run in the family? Cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr. murdered at least 10 women and girls in the Los Angeles area between October 1977 and February 1978. They would use the "cop ruse" posing as plainclothes police officers, pull women over or approach them on the street, and take them to Buono's upholstery shop in Glendale. There they raped, tortured, and strangled their victims, then dumped the bodies on hillsides around the city. Their victims ranged in age from 12 to 28. Bianchi would eventually be arrested in washington after two more kills, tried to fake multiple personality disorder to escape before agreeing to plead guilty and testify against Buono. Buono's trial was one of the longest criminal trials in American history, running from 1981 to 1983. He was convicted of nine of the ten LA murders and sentenced to life without parole. He died in prison in 2002. Bianchi is still alive and incarcerated in Washington State. Sources: - full list on patreon ABC News. (2021). ‘City of Angels, City of Death’: Inside the hunt for Los Angeles’ string of serial killers. https://abcnews.com/US/city-angels-city-death-inside-hunt-los-angeles/story?id=81231947 Balagtas, T. (2026, July 16). All about Hillside Stranglers Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, and the victim they spared because of her famous father. A&E. https://www.aetv.com/articles/all-about-the-hillside-stranglers-angelo-buono-kenneth-bianchi-victim-they-spared-because-of-her-famous-father Bardsley, M. (2015). Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Stranglers [19-chapter feature]. Crime Library, TruTV. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/2015/http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/stranglers/rampage_1.html Barnes, M. (Producer & Director). (1984). The mind of a murderer, Parts I and II [Television documentary transcript]. Frontline, WGBH/PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/206.html Board denies parole for Hillside Strangler. (2010, August 18). Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/hillside-strangler-denied-parole.html Boren, R. W. (2000). The Hillside Strangler trial. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 33(2), 707–725. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol33/iss2/ Chavez, S., & Gorman, A. (2002, September 22). ‘Hillside Strangler’ dies at 67. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-sep-22-me-hillside22-story.html Chavez, S., & Gorman, A. (2002, September 23). Angelo Buono Jr. dies at 67. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2002/09/23/angelo-buono-jr-dies-at-67/5e2b4952-bb96-47a2-af4f-9cc744ffb281/ Convicted ‘Hillside Strangler’ serial killer is denied parole, will be eligible in a decade. (2025, July 10). Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-10/hillside-strangler-a-convicted-serial-killer-gets-denied-parole-will-be-eligible-in-a-decade Crabtree, M. (2026, July 4). The disturbing story of Angelo Buono, the ‘Hillside Strangler’ who tormented 1970s Los Angeles. All That’s Interesting. https://allthatsinteresting.com/angelo-buono Dismissal of Buono murder counts asked. (1981, July 14). Los Angeles Times, p. 1. Edwards, M. (2025, July). ‘Hillside Strangler’ Kenneth Bianchi, convicted in 1970s serial killings, is denied parole. CBS News Los Angeles. https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/hillside-strangler-kenneth-bianchi-denied-parole/ Farr, B. (1981, July 26). Prosecution memos list holes in Strangler case. Los Angeles Times, pp. 1, 3, 24–25. Find a Grave. (n.d.). Memorial pages for Dolores Ann “Dolly” Cepeda, Cindy Lee Hudspeth, Sonja Marie Johnson, Elissa Teresa “Lissa” Kastin, Evelyn Jane King, Kimberley Dianne “Kim” Martin, Judith Lynn “Judy” Miller, Beulah Mae Stofer, Lauren Rae Wagner, and Kristina Weckler. https://www.findagrave.com