Herb Baumeister was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 7, 1947, the oldest of four children in a family with a medical background; his father, Dr. Herbert Eugene Baumeister, was an anesthesiologist. Although his early years seemed typical, Herb began showing disturbing behaviors as he entered adolescence. He exhibited unusual interests, including a fascination with urophilia and a habit of playing with dead animals. At school, he escalated to acts like urinating on teachers' desks.

Recognizing these troubling signs, his father had Herb undergo mental health evaluations, which resulted in a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder. Unfortunately, Herb did not receive ongoing treatment for these conditions. During his time at North Central High School, he struggled socially and felt isolated, largely keeping to himself and not dating.

Herb's academic journey was unstable; he briefly attended Indiana University in 1965 before dropping out, although he returned to college in 1967. He also spent a semester at Butler University in 1972. In November 1971, Herb married Juliana "Julie" Saiter, and they had three children together. Julie later revealed their marriage lacked intimacy, and she had rarely seen her husband unclothed. Early in their marriage, Herb's father had him briefly committed to a psychiatric hospital, noting he was “hurting and needed help.”

Despite these personal challenges, Herb achieved business success and, in 1988, founded the Sav-A-Lot thrift store chain in Indianapolis. This success helped Herb and Julie purchase a large property called Fox Hollow Farm. The property’s serene setting was disrupted in 1994 when their son found a human skeleton buried in the backyard. Herb claimed it was an anatomical skeleton from his father's medical teaching days and temporarily stored it in their garage before reburying it in the garden.

From 1980 to 1991, at least eleven young men disappeared across Indiana and Ohio, later linked by investigators to the “I-70 Strangler.” Victims were found strangled and often discarded in rural ditches and streams along the highway. Witnesses sometimes reported seeing them leaving gay bars with a mustached white man in a blue van—details later associated with Baumeister.

In 1991, after purchasing Fox Hollow Farm, Baumeister shifted his dumping ground from public areas to his private property. Between 1993 and 1995, several more men vanished after visiting bars in downtown Indianapolis.

In 1994, a man known publicly as Tony Harris contacted police, reporting he had survived an encounter with “Brian Smart,” who attempted to strangle him with a pool hose during sex. Harris later spotted “Brian Smart” again, followed him, and recorded his license plate, which identified Herb Baumeister.

Detectives repeatedly asked to search the property, but Baumeister refused. In June 1996, his wife Julie, frightened by his deteriorating behavior and filing for divorce, consented to a search while Herb was away. Investigators discovered thousands of charred bone fragments belonging to at least 11 men buried in the wooded areas behind the house.

By that time, Baumeister had fled to Ontario, Canada. On July 3, 1996, he died by suicide at Pinery Provincial Park, shooting himself in the head with a .357 Magnum. He left a rambling three-page note blaming financial failure and marital breakdown but never acknowledged or confessed to any murders.

Since Baumeister’s death, he has been officially named the prime suspect in the I-70 Strangler cases. In 1999, police publicly connected him to those murders, which appeared to stop around the time he acquired Fox Hollow Farm.

Identification efforts have continued into the 2020s, with renewed searches and forensic testing of over 10,000 bone fragments. In late 2023 and early 2024, new victims were identified, including Allen Livingston and Manuel Resendez.

Baumeister is now suspected of murdering as many as 23 young men over a span of 15 years, making him one of Indiana’s most prolific serial killers.