You Think You Know Me: The True Story of Herb Baumeister and the Horror at Fox Hollow Farm by Ryan Green

You Think You Know Me: The True Story of Herb Baumeister and the Horror at Fox Hollow Farm Reviews

• 
  Stacey

  I'm a fan of true crime and hadn't heard of Herb Baumeister. As far as serial killers go this guy the typical sociopath. You Think You Know Me could easily have been 100's of more pages but no need. It's all there in a tidy 158 pages.
  
  Herb is from a well to do family and could potentially have a successful future, but he is socially inept and let go or fired from jobs. He couldn't keep his dark and morbid commentary to himself on the job. He and his wife eventually do have a very successful chain of thrift stores. He's also a gay man living what appears to others as a straight life which brings on a lot of angst. He frequents gay bars and lures men into his car and drives them to his house. "He wasn't doing it because he liked it. He was doing it because it kept people safe. He was a hero really."
  
  Thanks to the persistant efforts of Private Detective Vergil Vandagriff and Detective Mary Wilson, Herb Baumeister was exposed. How many people died in the hands of Herb is unknown. He took the total number of his victims to his grave.
• 
  Miriam on hiatus

  5 stars audio
  3 sick psycho stars story
• 
  Fishface

  Interesting take on the Herb Baumeister story. The author paints Herb as a wealthier Jeff Dahmer with a mere whiff of Dennis Rader. The book needed a good scrub with the text-editing brush to make subject and verb agree and stop the verb tenses from changing in mid-paragraph or, often, in mid-sentence. The scenarios the author describes are all very plausible, but because all the parties involved are dead and crucial evidence destroyed, we can't really know.
• 
  Kayla Krantz

  It’s always the one you least suspect.
  
  As always, this was a chilling piece by Ryan Green. The prose made it easier to imagine why Herb did the things that he did. There is lots of gore and hard to digest scenes (that comes with a book about a prolific serial killer) but that allowed us readers to really get into the mind of this psychopath though the end of Herb’s story was definitely disappointing to me. (Not a fault of the author’s, just reality!)
  
  Narration was spot on!
  
  This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.
  
• 
  Osama

  قصة حقيقة مرعبة لشخص مولع باختطاف الشباب من الطرق السريعة.
• 
  Daniel Kupres

  ​
  Ryan brings to us the tale of Herb Baumeister, a serial killer from Indiana. Herb's killing spree spanned almost 20 years into the mid 90's. I searched his name and when I saw his picture after reading Ryan's book, I was very shocked that this was the face of a serial killer and the founder of Sav-A-Lot which is still in business today.
  I have read most of Ryan's work short a couple and over that time, his style has truly evolved. This one in particular reads more like a novel with a very quick ending but not so much do his style more so the choice on how Herb decides to end this story.
  What I really enjoy, is that Ryan picks stories that are not widely publicized, at least I have not seen much on this story but I do believe it stems from the fact that there are so many unknowns or loose ends that remain to be open. Truly how many victims did Herb have?
  What remains a constant with Ryan's work is that he brings to the reader the first person account of the killer, in this case Herb Baumeister. As with most crimes of this nature, especially with Herb's decision to destroy evidence and take the easy way out, we close this book with so many questions that will never be answered.
• 
  Katy Haas

  I feel torn about this book. Billing it as a "true story" rubs me the wrong way, when it seems like little of this book was based on fact, instead relying heavily on speculation. There are pages and pages of imagined actions and dialogue between two humans who died before they could tell anyone what actually happened, so...where is this information coming from? Maybe it can be/has been proved, but when everything else is loosey-goosey, I'm not sure what to believe as fact and what to dismiss as the author's imagination. Where does truth end and imagination begin? I'd feel a lot better if this said "Inspired by the true story of Herb Baumeister" because that's way more accurate.
  
  That being said, I enjoyed the book. It entertained me, and I liked the length for what it was, finishing the book in one sitting. It introduced me to a serial killer I'd only briefly heard of and I'm going to do some of my own research now after reading to fill in the gaps that Green's writing style left me with. I would recommend this to someone who maybe is just starting to get into true crime books and isn't ready for the dry, more detail-oriented titles.
• 
  Mckenzie Roberts

  I felt really conflicted about this book. Green is a wonderful story teller and writes beautifully- however, I hated the fact that he basically put words into the mouths of victims. There is no way to know what was actually said in the exchanges between Baumeister and the victims (aside from tony, the only survivor) so it felt wrong that Green basically made up interactions. Baumeister never even admitted to his crimes so we can’t even be sure of what his true perspective was! I think that Green would be a wonderful fiction author but he should maybe stay away from true crime writing if he wants to “imagine” what happened between victims and their attackers- it just feels disrespectful to assume what someone said or did in their final moments, especially when their final moments are as terrible as those that these victims had to endure.
• 
  ♥ Marlene♥

  To my surprise I had not heard anything about this killer. That being said I assume this is because there are not many facts or proof so it is more assuming. That was obvious while reading the killings and the author telling us what was said, what was not, what the victims thought. When the first man was killed and the author told us what the dialog was between the two I thought he must have escaped but that was not the case so it was more fiction being presented as non fiction and I have to remove a star for that.
  
  I don't think the book is badly written but for one. The Dialogs!! Terrible.
  That being said it is not bad if you do not mind a little bit of fiction.
• 
  Kayla

  Although this book was well written, and the story was interesting to follow, it is very difficult to rate. Herb Baumeister committed suicide before he was ever able to confess, or be tried for his crimes, and therefore very little is known about Herb and what actually happened to his victims. So much of this book has to be based on absolute conjecture because there were no witnesses other than the victims and Herb himself, yet Ryan Green goes into extreme detail during the interactions between Herb and his victims. There are direct quotes and a very specific story line that is just impossible to believe to be true. It was so fictional, that I truly believe this book cannot be considered true crime. As other readers have mentioned, it seems almost unfair to speak for the victims and speculate this much when it comes to the last moments of their lives. The subject matter was interesting, but the delivery felt all wrong. What happened to these men was bad enough, Mr. Green did not need to exaggerate the dialogue in order to get readers to see Herb as the monster he truly was.
• 
  Bettye McKee

  Sex, drugs and murder
  
  This book comes with its own warning label.
  
  Herb Baumeister developed his morbid activities and fantasies as a child. Although he was diagnosed with schizophrenia (the catch-all diagnosis of the time), he never received treatment. Families did not admit to mental illness in those days.
  
  It's hardly surprising then that Baumeister became a serial killer of gay men. Homosexuality was even more taboo than mental illness. It can never be known the number of his victims. Some were reported missing, but the police made no effort to investigate the disappearance of gay men, and many were never reported as missing.
  
  11
• 
  Amber

  Zero stars. This is not true crime, it's a novelized version of true events. Too bad b/c the authors writing style is page-turning (was ready to give it 5 stars until I realized it was fiction more than facts). If he had stuck to the case it could have been good, as few people have even heard of this serial killer, and somebody needs to write the definitive work on the case, and nail down if he really is the I70 killer as well as his known murders.
• 
  Emily Ross

  I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
  
  I think what Green did really well with this novel was portray how normal serial killers could be. Baumeister could have continued killing for years more if he'd been able to maintain his mask of normalcy. What I found quite interesting in this book was the author's idea that Baumeister was able to separate his personality so he had light and dark which is how he managed to maintain his normalcy for such a long period.
• 
  Ronnie Cramer

  I've read several books by this author; he's clearly a gifted writer, but I think true crime is the wrong genre for him. It's pretty obvious that he's taking kernels of fact and embellishing them with imagined dialogue, speculated actions, assumed thoughts, etc.
• 
  Megan Burge

  This was not what I was expecting; unfortunately, I don’t mean this in a good way. The author’s subject, Herb Baumeister, has the potential to inspire a horrifying true crime book. However, the author glosses over Herb’s past and instead focuses on his atrocities, graphically describing the sexually motivated murders with imagined dialogue. It felt icky to me, and too speculative to call itself true crime. Not a fan.
• 
  Tom Schulte

  Green's dialed in style is to present a killer's thoughts and dialogue with victims to a degree of detail not really possible. This makes basically a novelization of the crimes described. That makes for engaging reading while not typically my style of true crime. I appreciate Green here mostly for making me aware of the serial killer career of
  Herb Baumeister and its possible scope, probably impossible to know of for certain.
• 
  Suzanne Lopes

  By far one of the worst books I have read. I felt that the author skipped a lot of what this true crime was about.
• 
  Jessie Drew

  Gross AF
  
  I would not recommend this book because of the colorful details of each murder. It’s just too disgusting. It is well written and compelling enough to keep you reading to find out how it all ends.
• 
  Amy

  A truly scary look at a little known serial killer. Herb Baumeister could have gone undiscovered for years more than he did if he had been just a little more careful. Great job of portraying exactly how normal some of these monsters can seem.
• 
  Rachel

  This was a terrific accounting of the sordid and, frankly bizarre, series of murders by Herb Baumeister in the Indianapolis area in the 1980s & 90s. Ryan Green, the author, takes reasonable license in imagining the various interactions Herb has in his encounters and describes in excellent detail the increasingly bizarre and manic behavior described by those who knew Herb in his personal and professional lives. It's also intriguing how Green connects Baumeister to several other series of crimes, including the I-70 Strangler and possibly murders of women by gun. It's so unusual for one serial killer to have such different MOs, and Green lets it unfold as naturally as possible. I also enjoyed the narration by Steve White.
  
  I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review
• 
  Dani Bonam

  I am absolutely fascinated by Ryan Green's True Crime style. Although I'm sure his use of personal experience and narration cannot be substantiated by fact, it sure made for a great read. As an Indiana girl that was growing up literally 15 miles from this serial killer, I was thrilled to come across this tale I'd never heard of. I was only in the single digits during Herb's abysmal crimes, but know exactly of the repercussions that came from this killer; such as the mall that never recovered from its stigma of random women being shot. Since Herb Baumeister was never tried, I've been shocking friends and family with this story as well.
  
  Herb Baumeister is a weird kid, fascinated by the corpses of road kill and revenge urinating on the desks of teachers; but he has one saving grace, being from a wealthy affluent family. After many difficult years, Herb seems to have it together; a successful businessman and family. However things aren't what they appear to be. Herb is a homosexual and obsessed with combining this hidden part of himself with the still present attachment to corpses. Herb finds time to indulge in these fantasies, first as a truck driver and then as a business man when is wife is out of town. The situation gets out of control and despite his best efforts Herb hide his activities, they finally come to light. Tipped off, Herb flees and kills himself, never to be brought to trial and answer for his disgusting deeds.
  
  Although Herb never faces trial, his guilt seems undeniable. Green examines Herb's story from the insight of those close to him, his victims and himself. Green places himself inside their heads and gives the reader an interesting perspective that is also extremely dark. I would recommend to anyone who loves true crime and anyone from the northern suburbs of Indianapolis.
• 
  Lisa Noelle Jackson

  This is one of the most despicable men summed up in a concise 158 pages.
  
  This guy is one of the worst there is. And whilst Green could have easily done an Ann Rule and filled another 500 pages on this guy, it’s not needed.
  
  He perfectly gets across the depravity of this man without going into the finer detail - quite possibly because there is no one to confirm it. Which I think is a credit to the author. Whilst as humans we’re always intrigued by the extremes some individuals can go to, ultimately the ones being described were innocents just like me and you and deserve the respect.
  
  The author is very good at writing in the victims voices, getting across what their thought process probably was when first crossing the path of Baumeister. This part is speculation however, given the victims and Baumeister could never confirm exact conversations.
  
  Whilst we’ll never know exactly what the victims found at Fox Hollow Farm went through, it’s probably not impossible to determine from the various bodies found along the I-70 and this evidence probably assists the author here.
  
  My one issue is that earlier on in the book the author states how things would have been worse for Baumeister had he faced the treatments for mental health/psychiatric issues in play in the 50s. And whilst I appreciate what he was getting at (shock treatment etc) I think based on what Baumeister went on to do, the wording could have been a little more appropriate.
  
  Disclaimer: if you have listened to podcasts on this story then you will possibly note irregularities between what you’ve heard before and this book. So if you’re a stickler for exact details it might be worth digging a little deeper but would hope the author did that for us.
  
  Overall I really enjoyed Greens writing and have picked up another of his books in his true crime collection.
• 
  Jessica Cann

  Warning contains spoilers!!! Initially I gave this book 5 stars, but as I've thought more about it, it just wasn't the best read. Nothing against the author at all because I feel sure some will really enjoy this book. I decided on 4 stars simply because I had a hard time keeping my mind from wandering while reading. Also because the whole book is mainly just speculation (not saying he didn't kill people). I went into this story not knowing much at all about Herb Baumeister. After reading I still don't know much about him. And again this is no fault of the authors because I'm sure there isn't much information on this man. I guess I just don't care much for true crimes where the killer is actually never captured, or never confesses. This is a very disturbing read and there are some very descriptive scenarios in some places. Like I said earlier though most is just speculation Herb never confessed to anything and there wasn't anyway of knowing how he killed the men that they were able to find bones of at his home. And there is no evidence at all really that he committed the other murders. I guess in all honesty there just isn't much closure because you're just not sure as to what all happened. I pray that the families of the men that were murdered were able to find closure, but I highly doubt some were. There's definitely still a lot of unanswered questions, but I guess that's no fault of the detectives. Herb was obviously very smart and knew how to get rid of evidence very well. I think this story will disturb me for a while!
• 
  Michelle Boyer

  Herb Baumeister is a true monster. For years, he preyed on homosexual men by picking them up in his van, pretended to give them a ride, but would then murder them and defile their bodies. He soon began picking men up at bars, bringing them back to Fox Hollow Farm to do the same thing. Unfortunately, these crimes happened in a time when the police didn't seem to care that gay men were being preyed upon. In fact, it seems like the police (for the most part) were perfectly fine with killers taking out gay men because both groups seemed to bring more work to the police department and if they were missing a few gay men, well, no harm. Luckily, at one point there were some officers and detectives that cared gay men were being murdered because....they're still human and shouldn't be getting murdered!
  
  Herb Baumeister is seriously disgusting in the way he kills, but very much more so when it comes to what he does to the bodies after death. Gag. If you haven't read about these cases, Ryan Green writes in a way that makes you want to vomit but also keep reading. I highly recommend this book to true crime readers.