FOX HOLLOW FARM

Katherine Fallon


In the 80s and 90s, Herb Baumeister killed between 11 and 21 gay men in or around Indianapolis, depositing their bodies on his 18-acre property, Fox Hollow Farm, or off the side of I-70. Those buried on his property were strangled with a garden hose in his pool house, lined with mannequins. Upon being discovered, Baumeister fled and committed suicide, but never admitted to the murders. He was unhappily married with three children during the span of the killings; many reporting on the case have questioned his wife's involvement and/or ignorance.


Julie, they question how 
you didn’t know your husband 

was strangling gay men 
with a garden hose 

while you were at the lake 
with his children. Eleven

found, four identified, a possible 
death count of twenty-one 

before he disappeared 
and put a bullet through his brain,

and most days, you looked right 
at him, worked beside him, 

and saw nothing out of sorts. 
Did you know he kept a cake 

in a desk drawer, opening it 
not for hunger but to watch 

rot creep across it? Did you 
know about the early piss on his 

teacher’s desk, the dead crow 
he left there, too? What about 

your pool, lined with plastic 
party-goers, mannequins 

dressed for celebration, 
all facing the water as spectators

to whatever deep dive whoever 
would end up taking? He told 

the one who got away: they keep me 
company, alone in the mansion, 

which, full to the brim, apparently 
held no trace of you, Julie. Did he 

choke you, too, then, teach you 
of the pleasure of thresholds, the rabid 

wish to cross them? All told, 
5,500 teeth and bone fragments

were found on your property, 
alone, never mind the weed-thick 

ditches of I-70. You were the one
that proved his route matched 

the trail of bodies, and still, it was 
easier to blame you for missing it 

than to blame him, in his sickness, 
for bringing it all to bear. 

 
 
 

about the writer

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Katherine Fallon’s poems have appeared in Meridian, Empty Mirror, Permafrost, Colorado Review, and Foundry, and others. Her chapbook, The Toothmakers' Daughters, is available through Finishing Line Press, and her full-length collection, Gold Star, is forthcoming through Eyewear Publishing. She assists in editing Terrible Orange Review, teaches in the Department of Writing & Linguistics at Georgia Southern University, and shares domestic square footage with two cats and her favorite human, who helps her zip her dresses. Find her online at katherinefallon.com or on Instagram @ghostelephants.