“The I-70 Strangler” It has become a ghost story, referring to a faceless bad man who preyed on boys and men in the 1980s and 1990s.
at least 12 dead bodies They were found partially nude and strangled and dumped in rivers, streams and ditches along Interstate Highway 70 in Indiana and Ohio.
For years, investigators looked at two notorious serial killers — Larry William Eyler and Herb Baumeister — as the “I-70 Strangler,” but those theories never translated into conclusive evidence.
Baumeister, whose property was littered with 10,000 “charred and crushed” skeletons of his victims, is commonly associated with this mysterious monster of the Midwest because a local retired, highly respected sheriff who later became a private investigator linked him to the murders.
Nearly 10,000 remains of Herb Baumeister’s victims were excavated from his 18-acre property in Indiana. (Google Street View/Indianapolis Police Department)
After Virgil Vandagriff retired as sheriff Marion County, Indiana In the mid-1990s he received two calls from families concerned about the suspicious disappearances of their loved ones.
seem isolated missing person These cases turn into a search for a serial killer.
Both missing men were gay, with similar height, weight and appearance. They disappeared while going to a bar, where he would hand out leaflets.
During his investigation, the publisher of a magazine focused on issues relating to the gay population alerted Vandagriff to a large number of missing men in the Indianapolis area who matched the same profile.
“It became apparent there was a serial killer out there,” Vandagriff said. told WTHR “It was just a matter of figuring out who would finish it, where and how,” he said in a December 2022 interview.
The “Interstate 70 Strangler,” whose identity remains unknown, killed at least 12 boys and young men and dumped their bodies along the interstate in Indiana and Ohio. (Google Map)
Interstate Highway 70 from Indiana to Ohio has several different terrain features, including water, streams and wooded areas, where bodies were dumped in the 1980s and early 1990s. (Google Street View)
Vandagriff brought his findings to the police, but gay victims were given a low priority. Law enforcement those days.
“It was shocking to me how many gay people were missing that no one paid attention to,” Vandagriff told WTHR during a 2022 interview.
Rather than wait, the investigator Case He took the murder plot into his own hands and prepared the profile of the killer.
During the investigation, an informant, who used a fake name, said he had met a man named “Brian Smart,” an alias used by Baumeister when he frequented local restaurant chains.
Interstate Highway 70 from Indiana to Ohio features a variety of terrain, including water, streams and wooded areas, where bodies were dumped in the 1980s and early 1990s. (Google Street View)
The informant survived the confrontation with Baumeister and saw him again at a bar and reportedly yelled, “This guy is a serial killer. Somebody should get his license plate number,” Vandagriff told WTHR.
Not surprisingly, that license plate traced back to Baumeister, leading police to his secluded 18-acre property at Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield, Indiana.
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Law enforcement agencies eventually excavated the remains of 10,000 “charred and crushed” skeletons from around Baumeister’s home in the 1990s, including the remains of two missing persons from Vandagriff.
Investigators believe Baumeister dumped his victims along I-70 before buying the sprawling property in 1991, but when his life fell apart he fled to Canada and committed suicide.
His marriage broke up, his business went bankrupt, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
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Approximately 10,000 remains of Indiana serial killer Herb Baumeister were found on an 18-acre property in Westfield, Indiana. (Google Street View)
In July 1996 he shot himself and took all his secrets to the grave.
The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office teamed up with Othram, one of the nation’s leading forensic genetic genealogy laboratories, to identify Baumeister’s victims more than three decades after his death.
So far, the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office has identified eight victims, and investigators have DNA profiles for four more that have not yet been identified, bringing the death toll to 12, according to Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison.
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Jeffrey A. Jones, who went missing from Fillmore, Indiana, in 1993, has been identified as the latest victim of serial killer Herb Baumeister. (Hamilton County Coroner’s Office)
Manuel Resendez, who was 34 at the time of his disappearance in 1996, was identified in January 2024 as one of Herb Baumeister’s victims. (Hamilton County Coroner’s Office)
Investigators have linked Baumeister to at least 25 victims, but he has never been definitively named as the “I-70 Strangler,” nor has the other prime suspect, Eyler, who is believed to have killed at least 21 victims around the same time.
His victims were mostly boys and young men from the area’s gay community. Eyler was sentenced to death by lethal injection.
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The “I-70 Strangler” and the “I-70 Killer” are two separate – but still unidentified – serial killers who murdered their victims in the same area.
But the “Strangler” murders appeared to be sexually motivated, and the victims were men, whereas the “I-70 Killer’s” victims did not have evidence of sexual assault and were generally young women.
