GREENFIELD, Ind., April 28 -- After an exhaustive investigation, sheriffs in Indiana and Ohio have linked the mysterious deaths of nine men to an Indianapolis thrift-store owner who committed suicide in 1996. The sheriffs say Herbert Baumeister preyed on men he met at a gay theater, apparently strangled at least nine victims between 1980 and '90, and dumped their partially nude bodies in shallow streams or culverts.
Baumeister also may have killed another seven, unidentified men whose bones were unearthed on his central Indiana hobby farm in 1996. The identified victims were between ages 15 and 29. Their bodies were found in three Indiana and two Ohio counties within 70 miles of Baumeister's farm north of Indianapolis. In Greenfield, Hancock County Sheriff's Deputy Fred Bixler says today common elements in nine cases led to the conclusion that Baumeister was the killer. Bixler says, 'There are enough similarities for investigators to think they're linked.' The connections began unfolding after the bones were found by a worker digging around a shallow stream on Baumeister's farm in mid-1996. A few days later Baumeister killed himself, triggering the regional probe. Sheriffs in Indiana's Hancock, Hamilton and Shelby counties and Ohio's Darke and Preble counties began comparing notes about bodies found over a 16-year span. Preble County had four cases, Hamilton two, and each of the other counties had one. Hancock County investigators say they broke the case two months ago when they showed photos of Baumeister to a friend of one victim, Michael Riley. The friend recognized Baumeister as the last man seen with Riley in 1983 outside the Vogue Theater, a gay movie house in Indianapolis. ---
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