Nearly 30 years after thousands of human bones and bone fragments were unearthed at the sprawling estate of suspected serial killer Herb Baumeister, new questions are being raised about the mystery of what really happened at Fox Hollow Farm.
The coroner leading the renewed investigation claims a key figure in the case has not been fully forthcoming with investigators.
“I have had an opportunity to speak with Mark Goodyear a couple of times,” Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison told Fox News Digital.
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“The first question I would ask him is, ‘Are you ready to be honest with me?’ Because in the conversations we’ve had, he’s not been honest. I’ve asked him questions that I knew the answer to, and he didn’t pass that test. So for me to sit down with Mark Goodyear, he’s going to have to be willing to be honest in this conversation. I don’t have time to sit down with somebody that tells lies, untruths.”
Jellison appears in the ABC News Studios true crime documentary “Return to Fox Hollow: New Victims, Darker Secrets,” which explores new theories about potential accomplices, overlooked evidence and witness accounts in the case of Baumeister, a suspected serial killer believed to have murdered numerous men in Indiana. It’s a follow-up to the 2025 docuseries “The Fox Hollow Murders: Playground of a Serial Killer.”
Jellison said he wants to determine whether Goodyear knows something that could help investigators identify the remaining victims and determine how they died.
Goodyear has never been charged with any crime related to the case and has repeatedly denied any involvement in the disappearances.
“If we move forward in that conversation, certainly I want to know any information I can gather to help identify these remains,” said Jellison. “Were you familiar with anybody? Things that would focus more around identification and how these people died.”
“Mark Goodyear knows a lot about this case,” Jellison said.
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Jellison also shared that Goodyear knew many people through gay nightclubs and could help investigators identify some of the remains.
Goodyear, who participated in the first docuseries, has described himself as Baumeister’s only known survivor. The film detailed how investigators believed Baumeister may have filmed his victims with a secret camera hidden in an air vent in his basement. Goodyear said he was forced to watch some of the tapes in 1994. He said the video was so “bad” it made him scream.
“It was like having a camera right up against something,” Goodyear said. “You’re not going to be able to tell what’s going on, but the minute you got a flash of what was going on, it made you scream.”
The previous documentary examined how Goodyear’s account of his relationship and encounters with Baumeister has changed over the years. At the time, Jellison told Fox News Digital it was unlikely those tapes, if they exist, would ever be recovered.
Fox News Digital reached out to Goodyear for comment but did not receive a response.
Goodyear initially agreed to another interview for the follow-up documentary but did not appear for the scheduled interview, according to the film.
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About 10,000 burned and broken human bones and bone fragments were recovered from the 18-acre estate that once belonged to Baumeister. Before investigators could arrest him in 1996, Baumeister was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Ontario, Canada. He was 49.
Investigators believe Baumeister frequented gay bars in Indianapolis, lured men to his home while his family was away, killed them there and disposed of their remains on the property.
Baumeister’s son discovered a human skull in the woods at Fox Hollow Farm in 1994, but, according to reports, investigators did not search the property until June 1996.
Goodyear said he first encountered Baumeister at an Indianapolis gay bar in 1994, where Baumeister introduced himself as “Brian.” Goodyear later told investigators that he went home with Baumeister and described what he said was a disturbing sexual encounter.
Goodyear’s account eventually helped advance the investigation. After encountering Baumeister again the following year, Goodyear helped investigators obtain information that led them to identify Baumeister.
While Jellison has questioned Goodyear’s account, he also made clear in the documentary that Goodyear was not a suspect.
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“There are very strong indications there is another suspect, and it wasn’t Mark Goodyear,” Jellison said in the film.
Jellison said there are still more than 9,000 bones and bone fragments yet to be examined. Investigators believe at least 25 people fell victim to Baumeister, according to WRTV.
The scope and placement of the remains have also raised another question for Jellison: whether Baumeister could have carried out the crimes alone.
“I was always convinced that there was more than one,” Jellison said. “There were a lot of people that lost their lives in this incident, and just the placement of the evidence alone. How does one man pull this crime off? And how does one man get … deceased individuals from his residence to potentially 200 yards through very dense woods? I think it would’ve been a very difficult task.”
Jellison is determined to put names to the unidentified victims. He believes some families may still be unaware that a loved one vanished or that the person’s remains may have ended up at Fox Hollow Farm.
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Jellison compared the scale of the investigation to the recovery effort at the World Trade Center.
“Some of these folks did not have close family connections, and they were somewhat marginalized,” he explained. “So there may be families out there not even knowing that their loved one went missing, much less consider that person was a victim at Fox Hollow.”
“Thirty years have passed since these remains have been recovered,” he reflected. “So potentially, mom and dad could be deceased, and maybe they had no brother or sister. So we’re reaching out further down the lineage to cousins. And a cousin may not even know that they had a family member that even went missing.”
Jellison said identifying the Fox Hollow victims presents a unique challenge.
He contrasted the case with the World Trade Center investigation, where records and missing-person reports gave investigators a clearer idea of who they were looking for. At Fox Hollow, investigators started with remains but few clues about their identities.
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“I really believe that this investigation is more complicated in some ways than the World Trade Center,” he said. “With Fox Hollow, we’ve recovered these remains, but we have no idea who it is that we’re looking for.”
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Jellison is urging anyone who believes a missing loved one could be connected to the case to contact his office. After the original documentary aired, his office received approximately 500 emails, phone calls, text messages and social media messages, Jellison said.
“Come forward,” he said. “If you don’t know what to do or you don’t know who to call, call me. I’ll get you going in the right direction.”
