INDIANAPOLIS — Thirty years after his disappearance, the Hamilton County Coroner's Office announced the identity of a previously unknown person whose remains were among those recovered from the Westfield home of suspected serial killer Herb Baumeister.
Allen Livingston was just shy of turning 28 when he vanished in the summer of 1993. On Tuesday, investigators confirmed human remains recovered from Fox Hollow Farm matched a family reference sample that was submitted in late 2022.
"We identified a man that was reported missing 30 years ago whose remains were part of 10,000 remains that were burnt and crushed, and we identified that person," Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison said. "Honestly, yeah, there were some high fives, but it very quickly turned to the stark reality, we had another murder victim, and then, there were some tears."
The human remains police were able to trace back to Livingston was a human bone, one of some 10,000 remains still buried on the property that was once the 18-acre property of Herb Baumeister, who police believe preyed on young queer men in Indianapolis throughout the mid-1980s and early 1990s.
Jellison said Eric Pranger, Allen Livingston's cousin and a former employee with the Marion County Coroner's Office, sparked the investigation into identifying the remains.
"I've always wished we could find him, and last year, I started doing mortuary transport services, and I just kept thinking about Allen a lot on several runs and decided to do something about it," Pranger said.
"Eric called me almost a year-and-a-half ago and said, 'Our family would like to have some help,'" Jellison said. "It was because of that phone call we were able to get the ball rolling that identified his cousin and will identify many people in the future. I'm sure of it."
Now Pranger and Allen's mother, Sharon Livingston, have the answer to their long-lasting question.
"I'm happy and sad at the same time," Pranger said. "Happy because Sharon got some closure, and I'm sad because we got confirmation that it's Allen. We were all just hoping that Allen was out there alive somewhere, but he's not."
Jellison is proud of the work he and his team have accomplished over the past year but knows there's more work to be done — putting a name to the 10,000 unidentified human remains that were found at Fox Hollow Farm.
"Just because we got one, yeah, we're thankful and we celebrated, but it's no more or no less important than number two, number three, number 10, and we've got to continue to put our nose back to that grindstone, get back to work," Jellison said.
Baumeister is suspected of ending the lives of at least 25 young men, and investigators believe he could be behind the disappearance of many more.
As police honed in on Baumeister the summer of 1996 following his own son's discovery of a skull in the family's backyard, the once-prominent businessman fled across the Canadian border and ended his own life.
With his death, Baumeister ensured the families of his many suspected victims never got closure on how their loved one's lives ended. That included the family of Allen Livingston, whose mother believed strongly in the years after her son's disappearance that Allen's remains were among those at Fox Hollow.
"I know he's there," Sharon told 13News last year. "I know he's there. I know that man got him. I just know it. I feel that. I know.”
Even three decades after her son's disappearance, Sharon held onto the wired telephone line she had in her west Indianapolis home for close to 40 years.
"When Allen disappeared, there was only a landline. That's the only number he knew because there was no cellphone,” Sharon said.
She also held onto the card with Allen's case number that police gave his family when they filed the report.
"Time's running out, so I need closure, absolutely. I'm 76 years old. Even without cancer, I'm not going to live forever,” Sharon said.
It was a push from Allen's family in 2022 that eventually motivated Hamilton County investigators to reinvestigate the many remains out at Fox Hollow in the first place. Sharon was the one who submitted the sample who eventually made the match back to her son.
"What got this investigation started was it was the family of Allen Livingston calling me saying that Allen's mother had terminal cancer. And that they believed Allen was a victim of Fox Hollow, and they wanted to be able to provide her with some closure," Jellison said.
While police had unearthed the charred and decomposing remains of 12 men on the Fox Hollow property in 1996, DNA experts with the Indiana State Police are still working to match the thousands of remains left back to potential victims.
Jellison said he was notified on Monday by Indiana State Police forensic experts who had been working to make identifications out of thousands of remains still at Fox Hollow.
"So now, a years later, out of 10,000 remains — the first person identified is Allen Livingston? Where does that come from?" Jellison said.
For Jellison, that this first identification is of a man whose family had pushed for a reinvestigation of the property in the first place was a moment of clarity in what's so far been a heartbreaking investigation.
There are more victims who need to be identified, and investigators will continue to need the public's help to do so.
"I need the public to come forward. If there's someone missing in your family potentially from the 90s, I need those family reference samples," Jellison said.
Four DNA profiles still have unmatched victims, according to the Hamilton County Coroner's Office.