CENTRAL INDIANA – On Thursday, a coroner announced that remains discovered from the estate of alleged serial killer Herbert Baumeister in Indiana have been identified as those of a man reported missing since 1993. The remains, found in 1996 at Baumeister’s Fox Hollow Farm estate, were identified as belonging to 34-year-old Manuel Resendez, according to Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison.
Jellison mentioned that DNA from a familial reference sample provided in early 2023 helped confirm Resendez’s identity. Jellison expressed his thanks to all law enforcement teams and forensic specialists for their contributions to the case.
The Fox Hollow Farm estate, an 18-acre tract located 16 miles north of Indianapolis in Westfield, is assumed to be Baumeister’s dumping ground where he disposed of his victims. Investigators discovered around 10,000 burnt bone fragments and bones at the site, as indicated by Jellison.
Father of three and married, Baumeister frequented gay bars and allegedly enticed men to his residence where he killed them. In his 49th year, he committed suicide in Canada in July 1996 when officials were about to question him about the remains unearthed at his farm.
The authorities, by 1999, had connected Baumeister to at least 16 disappearances dating back to 1980, with some bodies discovered in shallow streams in rural central Indiana and western Ohio.
In 2022, Jellison initiated a new effort to identify the charred remains by asking relatives of men who vanished between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s to provide DNA samples. It is estimated that the fragments and bones could represent the remains of around 25 individuals.
Last October, Allen Livingston, an Indianapolis man who disappeared in 1993, was identified as Baumeister’s ninth likely victim. As per the Doe Network, Livingston went missing on the same day as Resendez.
Operating under the assumption that there might be more victims, Jellison requested any relatives of missing individuals who might be linked to the case to contact the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office.