Transcript
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I like to think I have a lot to offer. Most of it may be bad or disappointing, but still a lot.
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Kind of like Herbert Ballmeister, except his contributions to society were more illegal.
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Mine art for the record. On paper, he was a successful businessman, devoted husband,
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and the kind of guy who probably had very strong opinions on proper handshake technique
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or lawn edging. Off paper, he had a habit of inviting men over. None of them ever walked back out.
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For years, men were disappearing around Indianapolis, and police weren't exactly racing to solve
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the mystery until Tony Harris showed up with a near-death experience and a license plate number
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that changed everything. With the investigators didn't realize they were about to uncover something
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far worse than they ever expected, and that's really saying something considering this as Indiana.
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Before we dive in, if you like your true crime brief and bingeable, you're in the right place.
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Hit follow now for at least two new episodes per week. This is 10-minute murder. Let's get into it.
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There's a certain kind of house that just looks like it's hiding something. You know the type.
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Overgrown weeds, windows dark like empty eye sockets. The kind of place that makes you lock your
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car doors even though you're driving by and not even stopping. Fox Hollow Farm is one of those places.
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And if you've ever passed an abandoned property and thought, yeah, I bet some weird stuff went down
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there. Congratulations. You might have investigative instincts or at the very least an understandable
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distrust of men with unfinished basements. Now let's hop in our little time machine and rewind to the 1990s.
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A time when grunge music was in. The internet wasn't. And police departments, specifically the ones in
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Indianapolis, were really good at not looking too hard into missing gay men. Not because the
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disappearances weren't piling up, but because frankly, no one empowered care enough to connect the dots.
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But the dots were there. Young men, similar height, weight, and age. All last seen in the same part of
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town. And then nothing. No bodies, no leads. Just an ever growing list of faces on missing posters.
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For literal years, law enforcement quietly acknowledged the likelihood that a predator was hunting in
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Indianapolis. The pattern was too strong to ignore. Even if the response was underwhelming.
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But without a suspect, the case remained nothing more than a whisper between detectives and a growing
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fear within the LGBTQ+ community. The police had a problem. It just didn't have a name, not yet.
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For years, men had been disappearing from Indianapolis, and no one seemed to have answers.
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Until one man decided he wasn't going to let his friends' disappearance become just another cold case.
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His name was Tony Harris. And in the summer of 1992, his friend Roger Goodlett vanished.
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Just gone. No explanation, no sign of struggle. Another face added to the growing stack of missing
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person's cases. But Tony wasn't buying it. He knew something was up. Something was really wrong.
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Determined to find out what happened, Tony started paying attention, especially to the bars where
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Roger had been last seen. That's when he noticed a man who stood out. Not just because he was there
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frequently, but because he was interested in Roger's disappearance. Too interested.
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Asking questions. Watching people's reactions. The man introduced himself as Brian Smart.
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A well-dressed, charismatic guy who seemed to know just the right amount to make Tony uneasy.
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And then one night, Brian invited Tony back to the house for a few drinks.
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What happened next? It's the kind of thing that feels ripped out of a horror movie. Except no one yelled cut.
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Brian led Tony to a massive home in the suburbs, where the vibe shifted from friendly
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to something else entirely. Drinks were poured. Conversations turned strange. And at some point,
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Brian produced a pool hose. Not for the pool, but for asphyxiation play.
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Tony went along at first until he realized something terrifying. Brian wasn't stopping.
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Panic surged. Tony fought back. And somehow, miraculously, he got away.
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Tony sprinted to the police with his story. He told him about Roger's disappearance. He told
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them about Brian Smart. He told them about the pool hose and how he'd almost been killed.
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And for the first time, police had a lead. But there was just one problem. Brian Smart didn't exist.
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Three years passed. No new leads. No arrests. No answers. It was as if Brian Smart had disappeared
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just as easily as the man he prayed on. Then one night, Tony saw him again. Same face, same
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smug confidence. But this time, Tony was ready. He followed him out of the bar, kept his distance.
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And when the man got into his car, Tony wrote down the license plate number. He went straight back
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to the police. And this time, they had something to work with. The plate was registered to a man named
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Herbert Ballmeister. So who was Herbert? On paper, he was everything you wouldn't expect from a
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serial killer, a well-off businessman, a husband, a father, a guy who owned a successful thrift store
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chain and lived in an upscale house with his wife and kids. But there was obviously another side to
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Herbert. One his family did not see. A history of bizarre, anti-social behavior stretching all the way
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back to his childhood. A deep fascination with death. A growing list of men who had gone missing
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after crossing his path. And a home where some of those men had gone, never to be seen again.
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There is no official record of childhood trauma in Herbert Ballmeister's life. No major event
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that would explain why he grew into the kind of man who kept human remains on his property like they
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were landscaping choices. But what he did have was a collection of behaviors that should have sent
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up every red flag imaginable. For starters, he had an obsession with urine. And not like,
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"Haha, kids do weird stuff kind of way," he was fascinated by it, talked about it, and at one point,
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he even wondered out loud what it would be like to drink it. If that's not unsettling enough,
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he also developed a habit of urinating on his teacher's desks, which is less of a prank and more
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of a "we should call someone" situation. Then there was his fixation on death and decay. Other kids
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played with action figures. Herbert preferred dead animals. At some points, his father, who happened
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to be a well-respected anesthesiologist, realized that his son's behavior wasn't just quirky. Herbert
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was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and anti-social personality disorder. And then nothing.
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No real treatment, no long-term psychiatric care, just a kid with unchecked mental illness and a
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growing list of reasons to be avoided. In 1971, Herbert, Pisspants, Ballmeister, married Juliana.
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And for anyone looking in from the outside, it seemed like he had pulled off the classic American dream.
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A wife, three kids, a successful business, and a big house in the suburbs. But beneath that white
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picket fence image, things were far from normal. Just six months into their marriage, Herbert was
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committed to a mental hospital. Not for a quick checkup. Not for a weekend stay. He was there for
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an extended period, which in any healthy relationship would be a pretty serious red flag.
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Then there was the matter of their sex life, specifically the almost total lack of one.
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Juliana later revealed that in 25 years of marriage they had sex less than 10 times. That's not a
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dry spell. That's a quarter century of avoidance. Herbert's behavior wasn't just distant. It was
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strange. He would go through bursts of energy and obsession with work, followed by long periods of
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being completely withdrawn. He had a way of making people uncomfortable, even when he was trying not to.
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Juliana always chalked it up to stress, eccentricity, and maybe even past trauma she didn't know
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anything about. But the reality was something much darker. While she was busy raising their kids and
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keeping up appearances, her husband was leading a very different life, one that would eventually
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unravel in the most horrifying way possible. For years, her managed to keep a secret buried,
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literally. But by the mid 1990s, the cracks in his carefully constructed double life were beginning
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to show. Police wanted to search Fox Hollow Farm, the sprawling 18 acre property where Herbert and
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his wife and kids lived. They had enough suspicions to know something was off, but suspicions don't get
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you a search warrant. Herbert didn't hesitate. Absolutely not, he told them. And incredibly,
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Juliana backed him up. No warrant, no search, no search, no evidence. For a while, that was the end
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of it. But Herbert wasn't exactly a man who handled pressure very well. He became more erratic,
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more unpredictable. Juliana had spent years excusing his behavior, but now, now she had enough. She wanted
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out. She wanted a divorce. And most importantly, she wanted him out of her life. And just like that,
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she did what she should have done years earlier. She let the police in. The moment the investigator
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stepped onto the property, they knew they were no longer just chasing a hunch. 11 sets of human
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remains were uncovered across the property. Bones scattered and burned. Some were so decomposed,
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they couldn't even be identified. Then came a disturbing revelation. One of those bodies,
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it had already been discovered years earlier by Herbert's own son. Sometime in 1994, his teenage
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son had stumbled upon a human skull in the backyard. Most parents were panic, maybe called the police.
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Herbert's, he just shrugged it off, told his kid it was a medical skeleton his father,
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and anesthesiologist had given him. Then he reburied it. And somehow that explanation worked.
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But now, there was no more hiding. The bones told the truth Herbert never would. A warrant was
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issued for his arrest, but Herbert, knowing he was caught, wasn't about to stick around in face justice.
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Instead, he fled to Canada, checked into a park near Lake Huron and put a bullet in his own head.
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He left behind a three-page suicide note, a final message to the world. And in all those pages,
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not a single mention of the 11 bodies found on his land, not a word about his victims,
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their families, or the lives he stole. Instead, he rambled about his failing business and his
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collapsing marriage as if those were the real tragedies of his life. Now that police knew Herbert
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was capable of murder, another question surfaced. Was this really his first time? The timeline was
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suspicious. Throughout the 80s and early 90s, bodies had been turning up along Interstate 70,
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young men and teenage boys strangled to death and dumped in dishes. Then in 1991, the killing stopped.
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That also happened to be the exact year Herbert bought Fox Hollow Farm. Instead of leaving bodies
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in public, where they might be found, he now had his own private 18-acre burial ground. At least
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11 victims from the I-70 murders matched his own MO. If Herbert was also the I-70 strangler,
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his true victim count could be much, much higher than anyone realizes. Now you would think after
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discovering 11 victims, Fox Hollow Farm would have been fully excavated every inch of it searched.
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Nope. In 2022, investigators returned to the property and found even more human remains.
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At least 20 other locations on the property could still hold bodies. Which raises the real question?
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How many victims did Herbert Balmyster leave behind? He died without ever admitting to a single murder.
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His victims' families never got closure. And somewhere beneath the soil at Fox Hollow Farm,
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there may still be more untold stories.
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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder. If you liked this episode, hit subscribe and leave a
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review. It helps more true crime fans find the show. And if you're into stories with a little less
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murder and a little more mystery, check out my other podcast, 10 Minute Mystery. Same brief and
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bingeable format as this one, just fewer body backs. You can find everything at 10minutemurder.com.
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I'm Joe, the host, and I'll see you next time.
