10 Terrible Serial Killers From The State Of Indiana

Known for its rolling hills, farmland, Midwestern values, friendly people, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Indiana is rarely thought of as being home to some of the worst serial killers in America.

However, the Hoosier State has seen more than its fair share of depraved murderers and horrifying killings. Since it's was established in 1816, Indiana has been home to a slew of serial killers who range from demented killers who preyed on the vulnerable to those who wanted money and power. Don't let their Midwestern politeness fool you - these Hoosier state killers are brutal, horrifying, and twisted. These killers from the Midwest might make you rethink that trip to Indiana. 

Alton Coleman, 28, and his girlfriend Debra Brown crisscrossed the Midwest from May to July in 1984, leaving the bodies of eight dead victims in their wake. After committing their first murder in Illinois, the couple went to Gary, IN, on June 18, 1984, and sexually assaulted Annie Hillard, 9, and her niece, 7-year-old Tamika Turks. Annie was choked unconscious, but she survived the attack, while Tamika was strangled to death with a ligature and dumped in bushes where her lifeless body was eventually discovered.

On June 19, 1984, authorities believe the couple abducted, raped, and murdered 25-year-old Donna Williams in Gary and disposed of her body and vehicle in Detroit, MI. Coleman and Brown went on to kidnap, assault, and kill a number of additional victims in other Midwestern states, before returning to Indiana, stealing a car in Indianapolis, and murdering the vehicle's owner, 75-year-old Eugene Scott.

Soon after killing Scott, the couple was arrested on July 20, 1984, in Evanston, IL, and Coleman was convicted of multiple murders, sentenced death, and executed on April 26, 2002, at the age of 46. Brown was originally sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted, so she is now serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Born Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth in Norway, Belle Gunness moved to the United States in 1881 at the age of 22. She adopted an American name and found work as a servant. Gunness married her first husband shortly after moving to America, but he died in 1900 under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind a sizable life insurance policy. Following her husband's death, Gunness committed arson a number of times to collect insurance payouts, and she used her ill-gotten fortune to buy a farm near La Porte, IN.

Shortly after settling Indiana, Gunness married again, but her new husband didn't live very long after their wedding, nor did his daughter, his brother, or many of the other people who spent any time at the farm. Following the death of her second husband, Gunness began placing ads in local newspapers, advertising herself as a wealthy widow in search of a new beau. Many men came to visit Gunness, but very few of them ever left, until April 28, 1908, when a fire burnt her home to the ground, leaving behind the bodies of three children and a headless woman.

A further search of the farm found the remains of several men, presumably the suitors Gunness killed in order to steal their money. The authorities were never able to determine if the woman's body found in the burnt down house was actually Gunness, leaving many to suspect she murdered her children and faked her own death to start her life over again with a new identity.

When David Edward Maust was just nine years old, his mother sent him to a mental institution because she said he was violent towards his brother and small animals. According to Maust, while he was institutionalized, he was subjected to repeated sexual abuse and longed to be back with the family he felt had abandoned him.

Shortly after he turned 18, Maust joined the Army and was stationed in Germany. There he took the life of his first known victim, 13-year-old James McClister. Maust said the death was an accident. He was sentenced to four years in prison for killing the teenager, and upon his release returned to the US.

During the next few years, Maust was in and out of prison for attempted murder and assault, until 1982 when he was sentenced to 35 years for killing 15-year-old Donald Jones in Illinois. However, Maust was paroled in 1999 after just 17 years, despite writing a letter asking the authorities not to let him out of jail.

In 2003, Maust murdered three young men, hiding their bodies under freshly poured concrete in the basement of his apartment building in Hammond, IN. His crimes were eventually discovered, and he was given to three life sentences. A month after his sentencing he committed suicide in jail. He left a suicide note behind admitting to five killings and apologizing to the families of his victims. 

In June 1996, the skeletal remains of a number of young men from Indiana's gay community were found on the grounds of the 18-acre estate Herb Baumeister shared with his wife and children in the affluent Indianapolis suburb of Westfield. Shortly after this grisly discovery, Baumeister, 49, committed suicide in Canada. Baumeister was accused of murdering at least 19 young men whom he met while visiting gay clubs in Indianapolis. Because he killed himself, he was never formally charged. 

A man who met Baumeister at a bar said he and Baumeister engaged in erotic asphyxiation while in Baumeister's $1 million house's indoor pool. This led police to believe Baumeister may have intentionally or accidentally choked his victims to death.

After Baumeister's death, his wife denied knowing her husband frequented gay clubs or harmed any of his alleged victims, but police later learned one of the couple's children discovered a skeleton on the grounds of the property years before. When Mrs. Baumeister questioned her husband about this disturbing find, he told her it was an anatomical skeleton that belonged to his deceased father - a doctor - and she accepted that explanation.

From December 1954 to March 1955, Leslie Irvin went on a crime spree, committing several robberies and burglaries, and taking the lives of at least six people in the process. When Irvin was finally apprehended in April 1955, he stood trial in Indiana and was convicted and sentenced to death for his crimes. However, in 1961, Irvin, who had been given the nickname "Mad Dog" by the media, successfully appealed his conviction, with the Supreme Court finding the constant pretrial publicity his case received made it nearly impossible for him to get an impartial jury in the county where he was tried.

Irvin stood trial again the following year, and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. On November 9, 1983, the 59-year-old convicted murderer died of lung cancer at the Indiana State Prison.

When elderly patients at a Clinton, IN, hospital started dying at an alarming rate, authorities launched an investigation, and eventually zeroed in on Orville Lynn Majors, a nurse in the intensive care unit. Thirty-six-year-old Majors was arrested on December 19, 1997. Inside his house and car was a large number of epinephrine and potassium chloride - the same drugs used in the killing of Majors's patients.

During his trial, a witness testified Majors hated old people, which might explain the motivation for his crimes. In November 1999, Majors was convicted of murdering six victims, although investigators suspect he may have killed more than 100 people during his time at the hospital. He was sentenced to 360 years in prison.

From 1982 to 1984, Larry Eyler killed a number of boys and young men, dumping their bodies along Indiana's highways. Officials believe he killed at least 21 victims, largely based on information provided by his defense attorney after Eyler's death, but he was only convicted of one murder - the killing of 15-year-old Daniel Bridges.

In 1986, Eyler was sentenced to death for the teenager's murder, but he passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1994 at the age of 41. Before his death, Eyler claimed to have had multiple accomplices, including a middle-aged Indiana State University professor named Robert David Little. According to Eyler, while he tortured and dismembered his victims, Little would masturbate and take photos. Based on Eyler's allegations, the professor was arrested and charged, but Little was acquitted in 1991.

Sadly, many of the victims Eyler claimed responsibility for killing have never been identified, leading the police to conclude they were probably runaways or hitchhikers who may have been estranged from their families when they were murdered.

Following the death of his mother in 2012, William Clyde Gibson sexually assaulted and strangled Christine Whitis. The 75-year-old woman had come to his New Albany, IN, home to offer her condolences to the grieving 54-year-old man. After killing her, he mutilated Whitis's corpse; and the next day, his sister discovered the woman's remains in Gibson's garage and called the police.

After Gibson's arrest for murdering Whitis, authorities found the remains of 35-year-old Stephanie Kirk buried in his backyard. Confronted about Kirk's remains, Gibson admitted to sexually assaulting the woman and strangling her to death on March 27, 2012. Then, he shocked officials by confessing to the unsolved murder of Karen Hodella, a 44-year-old woman who was killed 10 years earlier. According to Gibson, he stabbed Hodella to death on October 10, 2002, and dumped her corpse near the Ohio River.

Gibson was convicted of killing all three woman, and he was given two death sentences and 65 years in prison for his crimes.

In April and May of 1992, a serial killer terrorized the states of Indiana, Kansas, and Missouri. He went to stores located in strip malls just off I-70 and shot and killed the people who were working in the shops. Some experts believe the man may have left the Midwest for Texas, because three women working in stores there were shot in 1993 and 1994, with one of these victims surviving her injuries.

The I-70 killer has never been identified, but at the time of the murders, the authorities released a sketch of the suspect. A witness described the killer as a white male between the ages of 25 and 35, and the police determined the man used a .22 caliber weapon to viciously murder his victims.

On October 17, 2014, the strangled body of 19-year-old sex worker Afrikka Hardy was discovered in the bathtub of a Hammond, IN, hotel room. A friend became concerned after she hadn't heard from the teenager when she went to meet a client. The authorities were able to use the young woman's phone records to track down the man who hired her via an escort website, and they arrested 43-year-old Darren Deon Vann. When he was apprehended, Vann - a convicted sex offender - still had a number of Hardy's possession, and he confessed to murdering the 19-year-old.

Vann admitted to killing a number of other young women, and he led investigators to the remains of six victims whom he had murdered and dumped in abandoned houses all over Gary, IN. Vann was charged with seven counts of murder. As of early 2017, he is still awaiting trial.