Known by the flamboyant nickname "Big Spender," he operated across Hong Kong and mainland China during the 1990s, orchestrating a series of high-profile kidnappings that targeted some of Hong Kong's wealthiest families — including the son of billionaire Li Ka-shing. The audacity and scale of his operations, combined with his ability to evade authorities across jurisdictions for years, made him one of the most consequential organized crime figures of the era.

His nickname connects him to one of the Soviet Union's most infamous killers, a comparison earned through a two-and-a-half-year campaign of murders across Krasnoyarsk that claimed fourteen lives. The crimes spanned both sexes and included sexual violence against minors, with investigators noting personal hostility as a consistent motive rather than predatory opportunism alone.

His case is remembered not only for the murders themselves but for what happened between them — a presidential amnesty cut short a sentence for killing a young woman, and within eighteen months of release, at least four more were dead. The killings spanned more than a decade across two countries, targeting young women, and the resumption of violence after his early release made his story central to debates about that amnesty's consequences. He remains one of only two people in modern Slovak history convicted of serial murder outside any organized crime context.

Baumeister operated largely in plain sight — a married businessman with a suburban estate — while investigators struggled for years to connect the disappearances of men from Indianapolis's gay bar scene to a single perpetrator. The eventual search of his Fox Hollow Farm property produced skeletal remains belonging to at least eleven victims, making it one of the more significant serial homicide discoveries in Indiana history. He died by suicide in 1996 before charges could be filed, leaving a number of cases formally unresolved.