Indianapolis Murders

While looking for a story idea, I ran across these items. As a run-up to Halloween, I thought they might be fun to share.

The first one is a story that I heard when I was young. Quite the scandal it was; then it was another scandal when it was thought solved about 30 years ago. 

 The LaSalle Street Murders Solved? A Case for the Case (November 30, 2021)

These are ones I knew of, I saw Kiritsis on TV, I came home from work, turned on the TV, and there he was looking crazy and the guy with the shotgun taped to his neck looked scared. I had forgotten Marjorie Jackson's name.

Indy's 10 Most Notorious Crimes of All Time (2013)

2. Angry Landowner Holds Mortgage Broker Hostage

Small-time businessman Tony Kiritsis convinced himself that Richard O. Hall, an executive at Indianapolis-based Meridian Mortgage Company, had cheated him in a land deal. So on February 8, 1977, he burst into Meridian’s downtown offices, wired a shotgun to Hall’s neck, and staged a 63-hour hostage standoff, much of it broadcast on live TV. He gave up after being told that he’d get an apology, immunity from prosecution, and a large sum of money. (He only received the apology.) Kiritsis was acquitted by reason of insanity, spent a decade in a mental institution, and was back on the street in 1998. He died a free man in 2005. [See “The End of the Line” for a full account of Kiritsis’s crime.]

 3. Bodies Unearthed on Property of Westfield Businessman

It seemed Herb Baumeister was a respectable citizen and family man. But it was a cover for his other identity: serial killer. The Sav-A-Lot owner liked to cruise gay bars, take men back to his palatial Hamilton County home, murder them, and then hide the corpses on the property’s 18 wooded acres. Acting on a tip from a man claiming to have escaped Baumeister’s home unscathed, police searched the grounds in 1996 and discovered the skeletal remains of 11 males. Only four of the men have ever been identified. Baumeister drove to Canada and shot himself before the authorities could prosecute him.

 4. Heavyweight Champ Convicted of Raping Beauty-Pageant Contestant

Fearsome boxer Mike Tyson got coldcocked by justice after he was accused, in 1991, of raping a Miss Black America hopeful in his downtown Canterbury Hotel suite. The highly publicized trial resulted in a sentence of six years for three counts: one for rape and two for criminal deviant conduct. A model prisoner, Tyson served only three years total (in accommodations far more spartan than the Canterbury).

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5. Powerful Klan Leader Outed as Sex Offender

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7. Millionairess Robbed and Killed in Northside Home

Eccentric northside widow Marjorie Jackson, whose late husband had been heir to the former Standard Grocery chain, stashed a considerable fortune around her house on Spring Mill Road. When word of the pile got out, a cast of unsavory characters lined up to make some unauthorized withdrawals. The first heist nabbed close to $2 million, and then, on May 7, 1977, bandits took Jackson’s life as well as her loot, shooting her dead in the kitchen and running off with approximately $3 million more. The killer, Howard “Billy Joe” Willard, and his accomplice, Manuel Lee Robinson, were quickly apprehended by the authorities. But it is thought that several million dollars of Jackson’s riches remain unaccounted for to this day.

 8. Four Dead in Burger Chef Murders

On November 18, 1978, the four-person night staff at a Burger Chef in Speedway simply vanished. Days later, their bodies turned up in Johnson County. Two had been shot, one stabbed, and the other beaten until he choked on his own blood. More than three decades have passed, yet the perpetrators are still unknown. The restaurant was relieved of a paltry $581, but some theorize the motive was more than robbery. Only the killers know. And they aren’t talking.

I did not know of this case until I was almost 50:

1. 16-Year-Old Sylvia Likens Tortured, Killed by Caregiver

In 1965, Gertrude Baniszewski was hired to look after sisters Sylvia and Jenny Likens, ages 16 and 15. Baniszewski and her daughter Paula (right), along with some neighborhood kids, took a pathological dislike to Sylvia, harassing and locking her in the basement of their eastside home, where they tortured her until she died on October 26, 1965. The condition of the girl’s frail body—“I’m a prostitute” was etched into her stomach—and horrific courtroom testimony might have won the Baniszewskis a trip to death row. Instead, they got “life.” Gertrude left prison in 1985. Paula wound up in Iowa with a new name, working as a teacher’s aide.

 This is how I found out about the case: The Girl Next Door

Yeah, this one is mentioned above. My first jobs were in restaurants, and I was working in one in 1978. I do not know how it could not make an impact on me. Solving it seems unlikely, so it will stay in the collective mind of Indy until several generations go by.

New documentary explores 1978 Burger Chef murders ( Mar 04, 2024)

A new true crime documentary exploring the 45-year-old unsolved Burger Chef murders will be released later this year, distribution company Altitude Film Entertainment announced.

The true crime documentary titled "The Speedway Murders" tells the story of four young Burger Chef employees who were kidnapped from a restaurant on Crawfordsville Road on Nov. 17, 1978.

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