During his investigation, he was contacted by the mother of Alan Broussard, 28, and the mother of Robert Goodlet, 32, to investigate their disappearances. Vergil Vandagriff began investigating the disappearances of gay men occuring in the area in the 1990s, along with active investigator Mary Wilson. They were able to buy their dream home, an 18-acre horse ranch called Fox Hollow Farm, in 1991 (Blanco Montaldo). Within three years, the family had become rich. In 1988, Baumeister borrowed $4,000 from his mother and started a thrift store, Sav-a-Lot, which quickly led to a second store. During this time, he was charged twice, once with a hit-and-run while driving drunk and once for stealing a friend’s car, but beat the charges both times. Unfortunately, the stay-at-home father lifestyle was not enough for Baumeister, who was reportedly a loving and caring father, and he began to drink and spend time at local gay bars without his wife’s knowledge. Before losing his BMV job, Juliana had quit her job to be a stay-at-home mother. His first child with wife, Juliana, was born in 1979, Marie Baumeister, followed in 1981 by her brother, Ethic, and in 1984 by her sister, Emily. Despite this, after 10 years there he was promoted to program director, only to be terminated in 1985 for urinating on a letter addressed to the Governor of Indiana at the time, Robert Orr (Montaldo Redd). He was bossy and lashed out at his coworkers. He soon left for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV), where he attempted to imitate the behavior he believed to be good supervisory behavior. Baumeister was able to pull some strings and get his son a job with the Indianapolis Star as a copy boy, where he eagerly, and annoyingly to his superiors, strived for positive feedback. Six months into their marriage, his father had him committed to a mental institution for two months for unknown reasons this did not damage their marriage (Blanco Montaldo).ĭr. The two hit it off and were married in 1971. While at the university he met Juliana Saiter, a high school journalism teacher and part-time student. In 1967, after his father pressured him, he returned for another semester and studied anatomy.
While he continued public high school post-diagnoses and maintained good grades, he suffered socially (Blanco Montaldo Redd).īaumeister attended Indiana University in 1965 for one semester before dropping out, his unusual behavior marking him an outcast again. He was found to have schizophrenia, and in some reports multiple personality disorder, but it appears no further help was sought for him after diagnosis. His parents had also noted these changes and sought out a medical evaluation for him.
Baumeister appeared to lose the ability to judge if something was right or wrong and became disruptive and volatile in class. Rumors circulated at school that he had urinated on a teacher’s desk, and he left a dead crow he had found on one as well. He developed an obsession with dark, vile things, and developed a sense of humor described as macabre. Baumeister had a reportedly normal childhood until he reached adolescence, when his behavior became unusual and erratic. Herbert Baumeister and Elizabeth Baumeister of Indianapolis, Indiana on April 7, 1947, the oldest of their four children. What followed would result in the finding of 11 bodies at a horse ranch, where Herbert Baumeister lived with his wife and children (Blanco Montaldo). Something about the way the man looked at the poster made Tony think he knew something, so Tony had begun a conversation. Tony had seen a man apparently obsessively admiring the missing person poster that Vandagriff had passed out after Goodlet’s mother had contacted him. Robert Goodlet, 32, had been reported missing by his mother when he hadn’t returned home after a night out at a downtown gay bar.
The caller, referred to as Tony, was a friend of a missing person Vandagriff was looking for. His downfall began with a phone call to retired officer and private investigator Vergil Vandagriff.