The man long believed to be the sole survivor of Fox Hollow Farm serial killer Herb Baumeister has made a bombshell confession that he lied about what really happened that night.
For three decades, Mark Goodyear has claimed he was attacked by the notorious Indiana serial killer and was the only known survivor who managed to escape with his life.
Ultimately, it was his tip that was credited with leading cops to Baumeister and his depraved killing field of thousands of human bones and remains.
But now, in the new four-part ABC News Studios docuseries ‘The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer,’ Goodyear has admitted he lied about that dark night in 1994 when he came face-to-face with one of America’s worst serial killers.
‘I told police that he attacked me,’ he said. ‘He didn’t attack me. Nothing like that.’
Among his new shocking claims, Goodyear told ABC News Studios he was ‘never attacked’ by Baumeister, that he had actually drugged the serial killer and that they met not just that one time – but countless times over the next two years right up until Baumeister’s suicide.
He claims Baumeister confessed to him that he had killed a staggering 56 victims in total and that he even showed him a burning pile of bodies in the backyard of his 18-acre estate.
In another extraordinary claim, Goodyear says he was actually with Baumeister on that very day in 1996 when authorities swooped on Fox Hollow Farm and discovered thousands of human remains. In fact, Baumeister was at Goodyear’s home in Indianapolis and they were together watching the TV news coverage of the search unfold before their eyes, he claims.
Mark Goodyear – the man who has long claimed to be the sole survivor of Herb Baumeister -admits in the new ABC News Studios series that he lied about his encounter with the serial killer
Herb Baumeister picked up victims from bars in downtown Indianapolis when his wife and kids were out of town and lured them to his family estate, where he murdered them
The shocking details – which fly in the face of the story Goodyear told investigators back in the 1990s – are revealed in what marks his first face-to-face, on-camera media interview about the case that has haunted the Indianapolis community for the last three decades.
While he admits lying about his relationship with the serial killer, Goodyear denies ever being involved in the murders, as several commentators in the show raise doubts about his credibility – and even question whether he could have been Baumeister’s accomplice.
‘He was trying to take me down with him,’ Goodyear said. ‘But guess what? He’s f***ing dead ain’t he.’
Goodyear told ABC News Studios he met Baumeister in The 501 Club in downtown Indianapolis one night in August 1994.
Baumeister was staring at the wall which was covered with missing person posters of the young men who he had lured to his estate and murdered.
‘I could tell that he was gratified to look into these posters. It was not a normal encounter,’ Goodyear said.
Goodyear claimed he approached Baumeister and spoke to him about the posters, telling him that he would ‘really like to know what happened’ to the young men.
They drove out to Fox Hollow Farm and, when they arrived, Goodyear said Baumeister began to make chilling comments.
‘He’d done a bunch of cocaine,’ he said. ‘That’s when he started talking about how silk was stronger than steel and [putting] a silk necktie round the throat.’
In a police interview on July 8 1996 – days after Baumeister’s body was found in Canada – Goodyear told investigators Baumeister gave him a drink that he believed had been drugged. Suspicious, he claimed he had gone to the bathroom and poured it away.
Then, when the two men went into the swimming pool room in the basement, Goodyear claimed Baumeister came up behind him, put a pool hose around his neck and tried to strangle him with it. He managed to break free and lived to tell the tale.
But, in the ABC News Studios series, Goodyear said he was ‘never attacked.’ Instead, Goodyear said Baumeister just ‘gently touched’ his throat with the vacuum hose. ‘And then he took it away,’ he said.
He also claimed that he actually drugged Baumeister at one point – rather than the other way round.
However, Goodyear did say that something terrifying happened that made him fear for his life.
‘We went out onto his back porch and I think he was going to kill me then,’ he said.
‘He pointed to a burn [pile] that was up high and there were embers glowing there from a fire and you could clearly see what looked like human forms.’
Serial killer Herb Baumeister’s Fox Hollow Farm property (pictured) where he lured his victims, killed them and scattered their remains around the estate
Investigators are seen searching Herb Baumeister’s sprawling $1 million estate for human remains back in 1996
Goodyear said he tried to ‘act like everything was normal.’
He went on to describe the ‘very frightening’ ‘little games’ Baumeister would like to play while they were surrounded by creepy mannequins.
‘He wanted you to repeat after him: “I really like to see the eyes bulging out. I like to see the tongue bulging out, the lips swelling and turning purple and then cracking.” You’d have to recite this to him word for word. I thought “oh s***, he’s strangling them. That’s what he sees when he’s strangling those people,”’ he said.
Following the encounter, Goodyear went to a police officer investigating the string of disappearances. He even drove around with the officer as they tried, unsuccessfully, to find the huge estate which might lead them to the killer.
In the summer of 1996, Goodyear then spotted the man again in a bar, his friend noted down his license plate and police were able to trace it back to Baumeister, according to the 1996 police interview.
That, Goodyear claimed at the time, was the first time he had seen Baumeister since that chilling night at Fox Hollow Farm.
But now, Goodyear has admitted he actually saw Baumeister countless times between that first night in 1994 and the summer of 1996.
While he said he doesn’t ‘want to describe that as a relationship,’ when pressed he refused to give a straight answer as to whether the two men were ‘romantic.’
Pictured Goodyear in the 1990s around the time of Herb Baumeister’s killing spree. Goodyear has now said that Herb Baumeister did not attack him
The pool room (seen inside the Fox Hollow Farm estate today in the ABC News Studios docuseries) where Herb Baumeister is long believed to have killed his victims
He claimed Baumeister ‘stalked him’ over the course of the two years – often just showing up at his home.
‘He was stalking me. I turned around and started stalking him,’ he said.
Goodyear claimed he started following Baumeister around the downtown Indianapolis bars and warned people against leaving with him.
‘I’d stand up on the furniture, scream out to the crowd: “Don’t nobody leave with this man. He is the killer,”’ he said.
Goodyear claimed he would also call the police Baumeister sometimes ‘six to seven times a day’ – even when Baumeister was with him at his home.
But Baumeister was unphased, he said, and would tell him: ‘They’re never going to believe you
They think you’re crazy.’
At one point, Goodyear claimed police officers turned up at his home and told him to leave Baumeister alone, insisting the serial killer was a ‘family man.’
Law enforcement on the scene of Herb Baumeister’s property during the 1996 search
‘Two years of that. Him stalking me and telling me and tormenting me and teasing me constantly and knowing that nobody is coming to help and he’d tell me that everytime. He’d tell me that nobody is coming to help you and he was right.’
When police finally descended on Fox Hollow Farm in June 1996 and discovered human bones and remains on the property, Goodyear claimed Baumeister was at his home watching the news coverage with him.
He said Baumeister was armed with a gun. ‘I figured he was going to kill me,’ he said.
Days later, on July 4 1996, Baumeister was found dead in a park in Canada. He had shot himself.
In total, nine victims were identified among the 10,000 human remains found at Fox Hollow Farm before the investigation was effectively shuttered. A new investigation was launched in 2022 by the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office to identify the remaining victims.
A ninth victim has since been named and Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison told DailyMail.com in January that the team is now very close to identifying two more victims. It is estimated that around 25 victims could have been killed and their remains burned and scattered around Fox Hollow Farm.
Goodyear does not explain why he has lied for years about his relationship with the notorious serial killer.
The only known survivor and his changing story has long been shrouded in doubt.
In 1997, a man named LeRoy Bray came forward to police to claim that he was once at Fox Hollow Farm with Goodyear, Baumeister and some other men.
Bray told police he witnessed Baumeister shooting a man dead while Goodyear held the man.
When confronted with the accusation in the ABC series, Goodyear denied it, claiming he had ‘certainly never witnessed anything like that’ and saying that Bray – who is now dead – was ‘attention seeking’ and struggled with ‘mental capacity.’
Meanwhile, Baumeister’s lawyer told investigators days after his suicide that the father-of-three had confided in him about a year earlier that he had got involved with a ‘really bad dude’ called Mark Goodyear.
It is claimed in the show that Goodyear was, at one point, a suspect in the murders.
However this has not been publicly confirmed and Goodyear has never been charged with any crime connected to the Baumeister case.
DailyMail.com has contacted Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office for comment about this, Bray’s claims and Goodyear’s claims about his interactions with law enforcement.
Cary Milligan, a retired detective for Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office who worked on the case, told ABC News Studios that he is not sure if Goodyear was ever ruled out.
Eric Pranger (seen in the ABC docuseries) told DailyMail.com he believes Baumeister must have had an accomplice, in part due to the sheer physical toll it would have taken to drag dozens of bodies from the home all the way into the surrounding woods
Pranger’s cousin Allen Livingston (pictured) was identified in 2023 as the ninth Fox Hollow Farm victim
‘When you’re investigating a case like this and you have someone like Goodyear pop up you try to do your best to either eliminate them or incorporate them,’ he said.
‘And I don’t know if he was ever eliminated.’
Retired Boulder County Sheriff’s Office Detective and cold case investigator Steve Ainsworth also cast doubts on the man who has long been the ‘hero’ of the story, saying in the show that he thinks Goodyear knows too much.
‘He gives knowledge that he shouldn’t have had – unless he was there,’ says Ainsworth, who did not work on the Fox Hollow Farm investigation.
Eric Pranger, the cousin of Baumeister victim Allen Livingston, previously told DailyMail.com he thinks Goodyear is ‘a really sketchy guy.’
‘I think he knows more than what he told police back then,’ he said.
Pranger said he believes Baumeister must have had an accomplice to his heinous crimes, in part due to the sheer physical toll it would have taken to drag dozens of bodies from the home all the way into the surrounding woods.
‘I don’t think Baumeister did this alone. I think more people were involved,’ he said. ‘I believe it’s a whole group of men.’
Mark Goodyear (seen in the ABC News Studios docuseries) denies he was ever involved in Baumeister’s crimes
DailyMail.com previously asked the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office whether authorities ever looked into the possibility that there was more than one killer.
‘Not that I am aware of,’ a spokesperson said.
Goodyear denied to ABC News Studios that he was ever involved in or ever witnessed Baumeister’s crimes.
‘I never set anybody up. I certainly hope and pray that during his stalking of me – like if I was sharing company with somebody or maybe dancing with somebody or something like that I wouldn’t have noticed if that person disappeared or not,’ he said.
‘I often prayed that I hadn’t made him jealous that he would go after the person I was showing attention to.’
The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer’ is produced by One Traveler, an All3Media Company for ABC News Studios. Alex Jablonski is director. Jen Casey, Nick Gilhool, Alex Walton and Jacob-Cohen Holmes are executive producers for One Traveler and All3 Media. Alex Jablonski serves as executive producer, with Angela Borg and Sophie Kruz as co-executive producers. Victoria Thompson serves as executive producer, and David Sloan serves as senior executive producer for ABC News Studios.
‘The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer’ premieres on Hulu on February 18.
