The Serial Killer Files (15 page)

His name was Herb Baumeister. Like John Wayne Gacy—another gay Midwestern sex-killer who maintained a facade of suburban propriety—Baumeister was regarded as a pillar of the community, a successful, self-made businessman who generously gave to charities and was well liked by his neighbors. What the world didn’t know was that—again, like Gacy—Baumeister led a depraved double life. He made secret forays into the gay hangouts of Indianapolis, where he would pick up young men who would never again be seen alive.

His victims—at least eleven, though possibly many more—would be lured back to his sprawling Tudor-style home. There, they would be strangled during sex, their corpses disposed of in the woods behind the house.

What made these crimes seem even more shocking was that, for at least three years, Baumeister had committed them not merely within the tranquil confines of Westfield but right under the noses of his own family. How, people wondered, could someone with a wife and three children get away with such atrocities?

Psychopathic cunning had something to do with it. So did denial, especially on the part of Herb’s wife, Julie. In 1994, when she confronted her husband about a half-buried human skeleton that their son had stumbled upon in the wooded backyard, Herb gave her a cock-and-bull story: the skeleton, he claimed, was just an old anatomical specimen he had inherited from his physician father and had decided to discard. Julie chose to believe him. Eventually, however, even she was forced to face up to the dreadful truth.

Born in 1947, Baumeister showed no signs of mental disturbance until high school. Then his increasingly erratic behavior caused his father to take him for mental evaluations. Though diagnosed as a schizophrenic, there is no record that he received any treatment. After flunking out of college, he drifted from job to job, though his bizarre outbursts—which included urinating on his boss’s desk—made it impossible for him to remain gainfully employed.

After marrying in 1971, he and his wife opened a string of flourishing thrift shops in Indianapolis.

Eventually, they were able to afford an estate in Westfield: a four-bedroom house with an indoor pool and riding stable on eighteen acres of wooded property. To all outward appearances, they were living the American Dream. The reality, of course, was a nightmare that no one knew a thing about—apart, that is, from Herb and the young men who fell into his clutches.

During the frequent overnight trips taken by Julie and the kids—often to visit Herb’s widowed mother at her lakeside condominium—Baumeister traveled to the gay bars of the city, trolling for victims. When young men began disappearing in early 1993, the gay community was quick to take note. Articles appeared in a local gay newspaper. The police were notified. But—as is often the case when gay victims are involved—authorities were slow to take action.

It was not until November 1995 that—thanks to the efforts of a private investigator, hired by the mother of one of the missing men—Baumeister was identified as a suspect. Another eight months would pass before members of the sheriff’s department searched his property. By then, Baumeister’s life had unraveled: his business had foundered, his long-suffering wife had filed for divorce, and he himself had absconded in his 1989 Buick. Searching the wooded property behind the house, investigators eventually turned up thousands of human bone fragments: jawbones, thighbones, fingers, ribs, vertebrae, all stripped clean by animals and the elements, some partly burned. Experts estimated that, altogether, the skeletal fragments constituted the remains of eleven young men.

By the time the digging was over, Baumeister himself was dead. Fleeing to Canada, he committed suicide in an Ontario park on the evening of July 3, 1996, shooting himself in the head with a .357

Magnum after eating a peanut butter sandwich. The note he left made no mention of his atrocities, attributing his act to personal and family matters: his failed business and broken marriage.

Recommended Reading:

James Alan Fox and James Levin. Overkill: Mass Murder and Serial Killing Exposed (1996) Eric W. Hickey, Serial Murderers and Their Victims (1991) David Lester, Serial Killers: The Insatiable Passion (1995) Michael Newton, Serial Slaughter (1992)

Joel Norris, Serial Killers (1988)

One of the most famous of all fairy tales, “Bluebeard” was originally recorded by the French writer Charles Perrault in his classic collection, Contes du temps passé ( Tales of Past Times), more commonly known in English as Mother Goose’s Tales. The story concerns a fabulously rich gentleman. Despite the creepy coloration of his facial hair—which causes young women to flee at the sight of him—he woos and wins a beautiful maiden and brings her home to one of his country estates. Called away on an extended business trip, he gives his new bride the keys to the castle, telling her that she is free to open any door except the small one at the end of the ground-floor gallery.

No sooner is he out the door, of course, than—overcome with curiosity—his young bride heads for the forbidden room. Opening the door with trembling hands, she steps inside. At first, she can see nothing clearly because the window curtains are drawn. As her eyes become adjusted to the dimness, she is greeted by a fearful sight:

“The floor was all covered over with clotted blood, on which lay the bodies of several dead women ranged against the walls,” Perrault writes. “These were all the wives whom Bluebeard had married and murdered, one after another.”

When her husband returns home and discovers his new bride’s disobedience, he pulls out his cutlass and gets ready to add her to the collection of butchered ex-wives in his storage room. At the last minute, however, she is rescued by the timely arrival of her brothers.

In criminology, the name of this legendary lady killer is applied to a specific type of psychopath: the man who marries and knocks off a succession of women. (In this sense, the Bluebeard killer is the male counterpart of the female “Black Widow.”)

Two things distinguish the Bluebeard type from other kinds of serial killers who prey on female victims.

First, while psychos of the Ted Bundy/Edmund Kemper/Hillside Strangler variety target random strangers, the Bluebeard’s victims are his own wives or girlfriends. Second, while most serial killers are driven primarily by sexual sadism, the Bluebeard—though clearly deriving satisfaction from his atrocities—is also motivated by profit.

Here are some examples of infamous twentieth-century “Bluebeards”: Henri Landru

His spiky beard wasn’t blue, but in many other respects Henri Landru bore a striking similarity to his fairy-tale prototype. Though distinctly unattractive, the bald, bushy-browed, middle-aged Frenchman had no trouble attracting the opposite sex. Of course, his victims were especially vulnerable: women who had been widowed in the devastation of World War I and were desperate for male companionship.

Landru was a practiced con artist who had already served seven prison sentences for fraud before he turned his hand to serial murder.

He made the lethal transition when he was in his forties. His usual MO was to place a matrimonial ad in the newspaper, describing himself as a well-off widower with two children and a warm, affectionate nature. When a sufficiently wealthy prospect nibbled at this bait, the charming Landru would sweep her off her feet and whisk her away to a rented villa outside Paris. After she had signed over all her worldly possessions to him, the woman would never be seen or heard from again.

Exactly how Landru killed his victims has never been determined, though their remains were evidently disposed of in a large stove purchased for that specific purpose. Ten women died at his hands. All were middle-aged widows, except one. This was a poor nineteen-year-old servant girl Landru picked up at a train station. That she met the same fate as his other victims reinforces the belief that—like all Bluebeard killers—Landru was not motivated solely by greed but also by sadism.

He was finally caught after one of his victims—a rich widow named Madame Buisson—vanished. Her relatives immediately grew suspicious, though they were unable to track Landru down since he was using a pseudonym. On April 11, 1919, Buisson’s sister happened to spot Landru escorting an attractive young woman into a Paris china shop. She alerted the police, who confronted him the next day. In his pocket, they found a little black book, containing notes on all his victims. In November 1921, two and a half years after his arrest, he was convicted, despite steadfast proclamations of innocence. On February 23, 1922, the “French Bluebeard” was guillotined.

George Joseph Smith

Born in 1872, this British Bluebeard became infamous as the “Brides in the Bath Murderer” for his sinister MO. A small-time crook and charming con artist, Smith initially limited himself to scamming gullible spinsters out of their life savings by luring them into bigamous marriages. (He was legally wed throughout his adult life to his first wife, who left him without ever obtaining a divorce.) The moment Smith had his hands on his new bride’s money, he would disappear. Usually telling her that he was going out on an errand—to pick up a newspaper or buy a pack of cigarettes—he would never return. On one occasion, he brought his newlywed wife to the National Gallery of Art and, after viewing some paintings, excused himself to go to the bathroom. She never saw him—or her life savings—again.

Smith progressed from swindle to murder in 1912. After getting his fourth “wife,” Bessie Mundy, to make out a will leaving him property worth £2,500, he rented a house and had a new zinc-and-enamel bath installed. Shortly afterward, Bessie was found drowned in the tub.

Smith made it appear that, at the time of this tragic “accident,” he had gone out to buy fish for their dinner. In reality, of course, he had not sneaked outside until the dreadful deed was done. Crime writer John Brophy vividly describes the method Smith employed:

With honeymoon playfulness he would enter the room where his bride was already in the bath, admire her naked beauty, bend over her fondly, and, still murmuring endearments, hold her feet. Suddenly, he would tug her feet upwards, thus jerking her head at the end of the bath, below the water, so that in a few moments she would be drowned with no bruises on the body or other signs of assault and resistance.

The next woman to die in this fashion was a nurse named Alice Burnham. After marrying her in November 1913, Smith insured her life for £500. She drowned in the bathtub shortly thereafter, while Smith was ostensibly out of the house buying eggs.

Smith’s final murder victim was Margaret Lofty. After marrying her in December 1914, he got her to make out a new will, naming him as beneficiary. Shortly thereafter, the honeymoon pair moved into rented rooms in Highgate. The very next day, while Smith was supposedly out purchasing tomatoes, his new bride drowned in the tub.

The end came for Smith when the father of his second victim, Alice Burnham, read a newspaper account of Margaret Lofty’s death. That two of Smith’s brides had died in identical “accidents” within days of their weddings struck Mr. Burnham as highly suspicious. He quickly shared his suspicions with the police, who launched an investigation. Eventually, Smith was arrested and put on trial. Despite protestations of his innocence, the jury needed only twenty-three minutes to convict him. He was executed on August 13, 1915.

Johann Hoch

A native of Germany, Johann Schmidt came to America in 1887 at the age of twenty-five, abandoning a wife and three children. In 1895, under the name Huff, he bigamously married a well-off widow named Martha Steinbucher. Four months later, she fell ill with a devastating intestinal ailment. As she writhed in agony, she told her physician that she had been poisoned, but—attributing the remark to delirium—he paid her no heed. She died the next day. Immediately afterward, her husband sold her property for $4,000 and disappeared.

Huff’s second murder victim was Caroline Hoch of Wheeling, West Virginia, who was hit with a violent illness shortly after their wedding. On a visit to the stricken woman, her minister surprised Huff in the act of giving his wife some white powder—presumably medicine. The next day, Caroline was dead.

Huff immediately sold the house, claimed his wife’s insurance policy, then faked his own suicide and disappeared.

Now calling himself Hoch, the killer made his way to Chicago. Along the way he preyed on an indeterminate number of women, murdering some, merely fleecing and abandoning others. For a while he worked in the Chicago stockyards, an occupation that would ultimately earn him his homicidal nickname: the “Stockyard Bluebeard.”

In December 1904, Hoch placed a matrimonial ad in a German newspaper and, soon afterward, received a reply from forty-six-year-old widow Marie Walcker, who owned a small candy store. They were married a short time later. A week after the wedding, Marie was stricken with excruciating abdominal pains, a violent thirst, and a tingling in her extremities that felt, she said, like ants crawling over her flesh

—all classic symptoms of arsenic poisoning. Her physician, however, diagnosed the problem as nephritis. She died two weeks later. No sooner had Marie exhaled her last, agonized breath than Hoch proposed to her sister, Julia, who had come to tend her dying sibling. Three days later, Hoch and Julia were married. Hoch soon disappeared with all of Julia’s money.

Notifying the police, Julia learned that Hoch was already under suspicion for swindle and murder.

Caroline Hoch’s body had previously been exhumed, but examiners were unable to determine if there was poison in her stomach because Hoch had taken the precaution of eviscerating the corpse and dumping the organs in the river. Authorities had better luck with the body of Marie Walcker. A postmortem examination turned up lethal traces of arsenic in her viscera.

Police immediately distributed the fugitive’s photograph. Hoch—who had fled to New York City—was arrested when his landlady recognized his picture in the papers. When police searched him, they found a fountain pen on his possession. Instead of ink, the reservoir contained 58 grains of a powdered substance that turned out to be arsenic. He was convicted of the murder of Marie Walcker and hanged on February 23, 1906. The number of his victims is unknown; estimates range from six to twenty-four.