A memorial for victims of Fox Hollow Farm will be unveiled this month in Westfield.
Herb Baumeister — who died by suicide in 1996 after human remains were discovered at his estate on 156th Street — is believed to be responsible for the murders of at least 12 men in the mid-1990s. More than 10,000 charred remains and bone fragments were discovered at Fox Hollow. Those remains were housed at the University of Indianapolis in 1996, where they went untested until the investigation into identifying the victims was restarted by Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison Jellison’s office in 2022.
To date, DNA profiles of four victims have yet to be identified.
Jellison and He Knows Your Name ministry founder Linda Znachko partnered with Flanner Buchanan-Hamilton Memorial Park cemetery in Westfield to memorialize those victims who are not yet identified and those who have been identified but whose families are unable to claim them.
Znachko’s ministry, founded in 2009, has claimed and provided burial for hundreds of unclaimed adults and abandoned infants in Indiana.
Znachko said the memorial is not simply symbolic. The effort is to help the public remember the humanity of those who went missing three decades ago.
“It is time for us to help bring closure; to humbly say the names of each and every one of the identified victims,” Znachko said. “Every one of their lives mattered. (This) is a tribute to the innocent souls lost, but also to bless the families who have heroically lived on with the trauma as they honor their deceased. So, together, Jeff Jellison and I will do just that, because that is his vision — to identify every man by name and to bring every young man home who went missing.”
Jellison said the total number of Fox Hollow victims remains unknown.
“These are someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s cousin,” Jellison said. “People who have a name. These people were placed on a shelf 26 years ago and were forgotten. This investigation is most likely the second-largest investigation of unidentified human remains in our nation, second only to the World Trade Center (after Sept. 11, 2001).”
The investigation identifying the Fox Hollow victims is ongoing. Remains are tested in batches for DNA extraction by the Indiana State Police Laboratory and Dr. Krista Latham of the Biology & Anthropology Department at the University of Indianapolis. Jellison said additional forensic genetic genealogists have been added to that team, and additional DNA tracking is being conducted by private labs.
Jellison said there are several reasons why the investigation stalled for nearly three decades, including staffing and changes in technology.
“This is a huge investigation,” he said. “It takes a lot of people to get to where we’re at today, and I honestly feel that maybe the coroner’s office didn’t have the staffing at that time. Fortunately, today we have a larger staff at the coroner’s office to be able to provide that service. We are fortunate today to be able to do what we could not do in the ‘90s, and I hope we will be fortunate tomorrow to do what we can’t do today.”
Jellison said the most efficient way to identify remains that produce a new DNA profile is through family reference samples.
“We are still pleading to anyone who has a missing person in their family to contact us,” he said.
The memorial will be dedicated at 10 a.m. Aug. 29 at Flanner Buchanan Hamilton Memorial Park cemetery/Prairie Waters Event Center in Westfield. The remains of Jeff Jones, the most recently identified victim of Fox Hollow, will be interred in the ossuary at the memorial garden. The public is invited to attend.
