One of the lasting memories from Eric Pranger’s childhood was playing in the parking lot of Herb Baumeister’s thrift store.
The wealthy man was well-known in the Indiana community of Westfield as a loving husband and father to three young children.
‘I grew up in a house just about six to eight houses down from the store so I was always there riding my bike or on my skateboard,’ Pranger, now 37, tells DailyMail.com.
‘It was like the biggest parking lot in the neighborhood so a lot of kids would ride their bikes and skateboards on that property.’
That all changed in 1996 when Eric was around nine years old.
Investigators swooped on Baumeister’s $1 million, 18-acre estate Fox Hollow Farm and made a discovery that haunts the small city to this day.
The beloved neighbor and business owner was living a twisted double life and harboring a vile secret.
On the sprawling grounds of the family property he kept a graveyard of charred and burned human bones belonging to his victims.
Eric Pranger’s cousin Allen Livingston (pictured) was a victim of notorious serial killer Herb Baumeister. Pranger’s cousin has a chilling theory the prolific murderer could have had an accomplice
Decades on, he is now known as one of America’s most notorious serial killers.
The true extent of his crimes is still unclear but it is estimated that he killed at least 25 victims, most of them young men he picked up at local gay bars.
The disturbing discovery sent shockwaves through Westfield, an exclusive enclave where parents had felt safe letting their children play in the streets.
‘My mom wouldn’t let me leave the house and go down to the parking lot anymore,’ Pranger says.
Pranger says it’s ‘crazy’ how often he must have come into contact with Baumeister, but he doesn’t remember him. He would even shop at the thrift store with his mom.
But the true scale of Pranger’s connection to the monster didn’t fully emerge for three decades.
Pranger would learn that his cousin Allen Livingston – who vanished without a trace in 1993 at the height of Baumeister’s killing spree – was one of his many victims.
And now, two years on from that chilling discovery, Pranger has a new, bombshell claim about the case.
The serial killer would pick up victims at local Indianapolis gay bars before killing them and leaving their remains scattered around his family’s Fox Hollow Farm estate (pictured)
Investigators swooped on Baumeister’s $1 million, 18-acre estate Fox Hollow Farm and made a discovery that haunts the small city to this day
Investigators are seen searching Herb Baumeister’s sprawling $1 million estate for human remains in 1996
‘I don’t think Baumeister did this alone. I think more people were involved,’ he says. ‘I believe it’s a whole group of men.’
His reasoning comes from personal experience.
Based on a surviving witness’s account, it is believed that Baumeister killed his victims in the pool room in the basement of his home.
The remains and bones were found beyond the house in the woods that surrounded the property, suggesting the victims’ bodies were then dragged there.
Pranger works at a funeral home, so he understands the physical toll lifting human bodies can take.
‘I pick up bodies for a living and there’s no way a man could handle all those bodies by himself,’ he says.
‘Both the physical [challenge] and Baumeister’s size – he didn’t look like a very strong man. I could see him managing a very small man by himself but not the size of some of the men who went missing.’
He adds: ‘Especially with the amount of men taken back to back.’
Pranger’s cousin Allen vanished on the same day in August 1993 as one of Baumeister’s other known victims, Manuel Resendez.
Pranger reveals he also has suspicions about the man who has long been believed to the sole survivor who lived to tell the tale from a night with Baumeister.
Mark Goodyear claimed he met Baumeister in a bar sometime in 1994 and they went back to Fox Hollow Farm.
In a police interview on July 8 1996, Goodyear told how he entered the home to find mannequins had been creepily staged to look like people.
He claimed that Baumeister had later tried to strangle him with a pool hose in the swimming pool room in the basement, but that he managed to stop him.
Following the alleged encounter, Goodyear went to the police – a tip that ultimately led cops to Fox Hollow Farm and its wealthy owner.
An emotional Eric Pranger holds the remains of his cousin Allen Livingston during a service held in Westfield in August 2024 for victims of serial killer Herb Baumeister
‘He’s a really sketchy guy. I think he knows more than what he told police back then.’
DailyMail.com has made attempts to contact Goodyear.
Goodyear denied any involvement in the murders in an interview in the new ABC News Studios docuseries ‘The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer.’
In an exclusive clip from the series, obtained by DailyMail.com, retired Boulder County Sheriff’s Office Detective and cold case investigator Steve Ainsworth also cast doubts on Goodyear, saying he knew too much.
‘He gives knowledge that he shouldn’t have had – unless he was there,’ Ainsworth says.
Ainsworth was never involved in the official investigation of the murders and is part of an ABC News Studio docmentary looking into the case.
Goodyear has never been charged or named as a suspect in connection to the case.
Pranger’s accomplice theory also comes from his doubts that Baumeister killed himself – as he claims he has heard there was no gun found by his body.
‘I believe he was running away from someone and was murdered,’ he says.
He also questions why no or very few skulls were ever found at Fox Hollow Farm, suggesting a mystery accomplice may have kept them as trophies.
Pranger admits his theory about Baumeister having an accomplice is just ‘speculation’ that’s been shaped by him researching the case online, through documentaries and forums.
‘I’m not saying it definitely happened like that. He very well could have done it all himself – but I don’t think he did,’ he says.
‘It would be weird if he did this by himself unless he had the proper tools. In my job, I have stretchers to move bodies. He didn’t have things like that.’
Pranger (seen holding the urn containing Livingston’s ashes) believes Baumeister might not have acted alone
A Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson told Dailymail.com they were not ‘aware of’ investigators ever exploring the possibility there may have been more than one killer and that Baumeister may not have acted alone.
Ted Fleischaker, who was a member of the Indianapolis LGBT community targeted by Baumeister, isn’t convinced by Pranger’s theory that Baumeister had an accomplice.
In the early 1990s, Fleischaker was the founder, owner and publisher of The Word, an Indianapolis newspaper for the LGBT community.
His articles often covered the sudden disappearances rocking the area. He firmly believes Baumeister was solely responsible for the murders.
‘He was the only one ever seen taking these guys home. In some cases, friends saw them leave with him,’ he tells DailyMail.com.
That said, Fleischaker does believe Baumeister isn’t behind some of the other murders he’s been tied to.
Between 1980 and 1991, a serial killer had murdered nine young men and boys – many of whom had been spotted in Indianapolis’s gay bars. The victims were all strangled and their bodies dumped along Interstate 70 between Indiana and Ohio.
In 1998 – two years after Baumeister’s crimes came to light and he killed himself in a park in Canada, taking his secrets to the grave – investigators from several local counties held a press conference announcing that Baumeister was also most likely responsible for those murders, dubbed the work of the I-70 Strangler.
The bodies had stopped appearing along the interstate around the time Baumeister bought Fox Hollow Farm in 1991, presumably finding a new dumping ground.
And, after Baumeister’s secret double life was discovered in 1996, an eyewitness identified him as the man he saw leaving an Indianapolis nightclub with victim Michael Riley.
Riley’s body was found in a ditch days later.
But there remains no concrete evidence tying Baumeister to the I-70 killings.
And another notorious serial killer, ‘Highway Killer’ Larry Eyler, was also long-eyed as the I-70 Strangler.
Eyler was convicted of kidnapping and murdering a 16-year-old boy and sentenced to death. He died on death row in 1994 from AIDS-related complications while awaiting the lethal injection.
He has been linked to the murder of at least 21 boys and young men.
‘I’m still convinced that those along the I-70 weren’t connected at all to Baumeister,’ Fleischaker says, pointing to the fact that Eyler and other serial killers targeting the gay community were also active at that time.
Fleischaker believes authorities at the time just wanted to be able to shut down both cases.
‘What I always got from the county sheriff’s offices was that they wanted to close the cases and that it was a nuisance to them to have a bunch of gay guys missing and it was a nuisance to them to have a bunch of unsolved murders of gay guys,’ he says.
According to investigators, Herb Baumeister (pictured) lived a double life: He masqueraded as a wealthy businessman and family man while hunting for victims at local gay bars when his wife and kids were out of town
An air vent where it was alleged Baumeister, kept a hide camera above a couch in the basement
‘Some [of the murders] happened at too much the same time and, no matter how miraculous you are, you can’t be in two places at once. You can’t be at Fox Hollow Farm and also Dayton, Ohio, at the same time.
‘And the MO was very different: Baumeister was known to be very careful and had it all situated at Fox Hollow Farm whereas the I-70 murderer was throwing bodies out along the highway.’
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office told DailyMail.com that authorities have not definitively concluded Baumeister was the I-70 Strangler. However, neither Hamilton County nor any of the other jurisdictions where the I-70 Strangler struck are actively investigating the case.
Pranger was just six years old when his 27-year-old cousin disappeared. He had only met him a handful of times.
But his family has told him all about the ‘life of the party’ that was his older cousin. ‘He was very adventurous. He was full of energy,’ he says. ‘He was always there to help his mom. He’d come by every week to mow his mom’s lawn for her.’
Allen, who was bisexual, was last seen alive on August 6 1993 getting into a mystery individual’s vehicle in Indianapolis.
Before his disappearance, he was known to visit the gay bars in the downtown area where Baumeister picked up his victims.
He was reported missing at the time, but for three years no clues emerged as to his whereabouts.
Eric Pranger and his cousin Shannon Doughty hug during an August 2024 service for the victims
Eric Pranger (with relative Matthew Pranger and Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison) says his aunt always had a ‘gut feeling’ her son must be among the notorious serial killer’s victims
When Baumeister’s killing field was finally uncovered in the summer of 1996, Livingston’s mom Sharon Livingston instantly had a ‘gut feeling’ her son must be among his victims.
The timeline, his profile, and the nature of his disappearance all fit those of the identified victims.
For 30 years, Sharon sat by the phone hoping and waiting for her son to call.
‘When I met with Allen’s mother, I noticed she still had a landline phone on her table next to her couch,’ Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison tells DailyMail.com.
Jellison found it strange she still had one in 2022 – when most others didn’t – so he asked her why. ‘And she said to me: “That’s the only number that Allen knows to call me on.”
‘For 30 years, she had sat just waiting for that phone to ring.’ It never did.
Over the years, Sharon had repeatedly contacted authorities for any update about her son but was constantly stonewalled, Pranger says.
Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison kickstarted a new investigation to identify all of the roughly 10,0000 still-unidentified remains on Fox Hollow Farm
‘She always got the runaround. People would say they’d call her back and of course nobody ever would,’ he says. ‘So she gave up.’
After spending years waiting for answers Sharon was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
It became her dying wish to finally learn the truth about what had happened to her son.
So Pranger reached out to Jellison in 2022 in a move that kickstarted a new investigation to identify all of the roughly 10,0000 still-unidentified human bones and bone fragments on Fox Hollow Farm.
Around one year later, the coroner’s office confirmed that Livingston’s remains had been identified. He was indeed a victim of the notorious serial killer.
‘She always knew – call it motherly instinct,’ says Pranger. ‘But to have confirmation was closure. That was all she had wanted.’
Pranger says he personally took his older cousin’s remains to the funeral home where he worked and cremated them himself, before taking them home to Sharon.
‘I remember the day I brought him home to Sharon. It was the day she got bad news that she had a mass on her brain. So she was having a really bad day and then I brought her son home and it brightened her day,’ he says.
‘It meant the world to her. She was extremely happy to have some closure and have her son home. 30 years is a really long time to not have her kid home and for her to always wonder if he was still alive or was somewhere else. She no longer had to wonder about that anymore.’
Pranger says it had been his ‘goal’ to ‘bring him home before she passed away.’
Sharon died around a year later in November 2024.
A lab technician with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department examines human bones in the woods around Fox Hallow Farm during the original 1996 investigation
But, while Sharon did get answers before her death, Pranger is angry that his family was robbed of knowing the truth for 30 years.
The initial investigators closed the case without trying to identify all of the victims back in the 90s.
He has his suspicions as to why law enforcement gave up on the case back then.
‘Because Allen was bisexual, I think detectives didn’t care back in the 90s,’ Pranger says. ‘That county [Hamilton County] is a hot hood of rich people so I think they didn’t want it going on in their county.’
Jellison agrees: ‘In the original investigation, they had identified eight men. They knew all eight of these men were gay.
‘They were from Indianapolis and this is Hamilton County, it is a very conservative county. So basically the suspect was dead, they had eight gay men from Indianapolis, they weren’t going to look for more.’
The families of the eight identified victims weren’t treated much better back then, according to Jellison.
‘Each family member tells the story that they were called into a meeting and were simply handed a paper sack with the raw remains of their loved one inside of it,’ he says. ‘That gives you a picture of the lack of compassion those on the case back then had.’
Pranger says: ‘I’m angry with the sheriff’s office or whoever was in charge of the case.
‘And I’m angry with judges who wouldn’t give a warrant to search the property earlier.’
Pranger also resents Baumeister’s wife of 25 years, Julie.
While he doesn’t think she had anything to do with his crimes, he does question why she didn’t contact police years earlier when their 13-year-old son first made a chilling discovery.
The 1996 search of Herb Baumeister’s home. Pranger is angry that his family was robbed of knowing the truth that his cousin was also among the Fox Hollow Farm victims for 30 years
According to Julie, in both police interviews and media interviews from the 1990s, the couple’s son Erich came across a human skull on the family estate in the winter of 1994.
When Julie went to look at what he had found, she uncovered an almost complete human skeleton.
But when she asked her husband about it, she said he brushed it off, claiming it was a medical school skeleton that had belonged to his anesthesiologist father.
She told cops she threw the bones in the trash and forgot about it for the next two years, until police approached her with their suspicions about her husband.
He adds: ‘His excuse to her should have raised red flags.’
Despite this, Pranger says he would be open to speaking with the Baumeister family, in particular with Julie and Herb’s three children, who were all just a few years older than him when their father’s depraved killing spree came to light.
‘I’d like to give my condolences to the children for having to go through all that,’ he says.
‘I’d want to know how they’re doing in life. Do they think about it all the time?’
