Murder of Sylvia Likens
| Sylvia Likens | |
|---|---|
 Likens as she appeared prior to her stay at the Baniszewski residence | |
| Born |
Sylvia Marie Likens January 3, 1949 Lebanon, Indiana, U.S. |
| Died |
October 26, 1965 (aged 16) Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S. |
| Cause of death | |
| Resting place |
Oak Hill Cemetery Lebanon, Indiana, U.S. Coordinates: 40°02′50″N 86°27′16″W / 40.04722°N 86.45444°W |
| Relatives |
|
The murder of Sylvia Likens took place in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States in October 1965. The 16-year-old was held captive, abused and tortured to death over a period of three months by Gertrude Baniszewski, Baniszewski's children, and other neighborhood children. Likens' parents, who were carnival workers, had initially left her and her sister Jenny in the care of the Baniszewski family, paying Gertrude $20 a week to care for the sisters.
Baniszewski, her daughter Paula, her son John, and two neighborhood youths, Coy Hubbard and Richard Hobbs, were tried and convicted of torturing and murdering Likens. The case was described by the prosecutor in Baniszewski's trial as "the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana".[1]
Backgrounds
Gertrude Baniszewski
Gertrude Nadine Baniszewski (née Van Fossan; September 19, 1929 – June 16, 1990) was born in Indianapolis, Indiana to Mollie Myrtle (née Oakley) and Hugh Marcus Van Fossan Sr., both of whom were originally from Illinois and were of American and Dutch descent. Baniszewski was the third of six children. On October 5, 1939, Baniszewski witnessed her 50-year-old father's death from a sudden heart attack. Six years later, she dropped out of school to marry 18-year-old John Stephan Baniszewski (1926–2007), who was originally from Youngsville, Pennsylvania, with whom she had six children. Although John Baniszewski had a volatile temper, the two stayed together for ten more years before divorcing.
Baniszewski, then 34, moved in with 22-year-old Dennis Lee Wright, who abused her. She had one child with Dennis, Dennis Lee Wright Jr. (later given the name Denny Lee Wright by his adoptive mother), but after his birth, Wright abandoned Gertrude.[2]
Sylvia Likens
Sylvia Marie Likens (January 3, 1949 – October 26, 1965) was the third child of carnival workers Lester Cecil Likens (1926–2013) and his wife Elizabeth Frances "Betty" (née Grimes, 1927–1998). She was born between two sets of fraternal twins: Diana and Danny (two years older), and Jenny and Benny (one year younger, the former disabled by polio).[3]
Likens' parents' marriage was unstable. The family moved frequently, and the parents had financial difficulties. Likens and her sister Jenny were often boarded out or forced to live with relatives, such as their grandmother, so that their schoolwork would not suffer while their parents were on the road.[4] To earn money, Likens babysat and ironed, the same kind of work that was done by Gertrude Baniszewski. At the time of Likens' death, her favorite rock band was The Beatles.[5]
In July 1965, Sylvia and Jenny Likens were living with their mother, Betty, in Indianapolis. During that time, Betty was arrested and jailed for shoplifting. Lester Likens, who had recently separated from his wife, arranged for his daughters to board with Gertrude Baniszewski, the mother of the girls' new friend Paula Baniszewski (aged 17) and Paula's six siblings, Stephanie (15), John (12), Marie (11), Shirley (10), James (8), and few-months-old Dennis Lee Wright Jr. During her early time with the Baniszewski family, she would sing with Baniszewski's daughter, Stephanie.[6]
Although the Baniszewskis were poor, Lester "didn't pry" into the condition of the house (as he reported at the trial), and he encouraged Baniszewski to "straighten his daughters out."[7]
Abuse and death
Lester Likens agreed to pay Baniszewski $20 a week in exchange for her care of the Likens girls. Baniszewski, described by The Indianapolis Star as a "haggard, underweight asthmatic",[7] was suffering from depression and the stress of several failed marriages. When the weekly payment arrived late, Baniszewski beat the Likens girls on their bare buttocks with paddles.
Baniszewski soon focused her abuse exclusively on Sylvia. She accused her of stealing candy that she had bought, and humiliated her when she admitted that she once had a boyfriend. Baniszewski's daughter, Paula, who was pregnant at the time, kicked Likens in the genitals and accused her of being pregnant. Later medical examination proved that Likens was not pregnant and could not have been.[8] Baniszewski began allowing her older children to beat Likens and repeatedly push her down stairs for entertainment. During a church function, Baniszewski force-fed Likens a hot dog overloaded with condiments. Likens vomited afterwards, which she was later forced to consume. Baniszewski also accused Likens of prostitution and delivered misogynistic sermons about the filthiness of prostitutes and women in general.
Likens was later accused of spreading rumors within Arsenal Technical High School that Paula and Stephanie Baniszewski were prostitutes. This supposedly provoked Stephanie's boyfriend, Coy Hubbard, to physically attack Likens. Hubbard and his classmates soon made frequent visits to the Baniszewski residence to torment Likens, often collaborating with Bansizewski's own children and Baniszewski herself. With Baniszewski's encouragement, they routinely beat her[9], forced her to eat feces and drink urine, used her as a practice dummy in violent judo sessions[10], lacerated her, burnt her body with lit cigarettes over 100 times[11] and severely injured her genitals[12]. To entertain Gertrude and her teenage accomplices, Likens was forced to strip naked in the living room and insert an empty Coca-Cola bottle into her own vagina.[7][13]
Paula Baniszewski once beat Likens in the face with such force that she broke her own wrist. She later had to wear a cast, which she used to further beat Likens.[14][15]
Gertrude Baniszewski later forced Jenny to hit her sister, beating her if she did not comply.[16]
Meanwhile, Raymond and Phyllis Vermillion, a middle-aged couple who moved next door, saw Gertrude to be an ideal caretaker for their two children. They visited the Baniszewski residence on two occasions, where they witnessed Paula, with Gertrude's approval, abusing Likens and boasting about it in front of them. The Vermillions refused to report the abuse to the authorities out of fear on both occasions. [17]
Baniszewski eventually forbade Likens from attending school after Likens confessed to having stolen a gym suit from the school when Baniszewski would not buy a gym suit for her. She brutally beat and whipped Sylvia and did the same for Jenny after remembering that she supposedly stole a tennis shoe. Baniszewski then switched the topic to the "evils" of premarital sex and brutally kicked Sylvia multiple times in her vagina. She also burned all of her fingers with matches and further whipped her.[18]
Likens eventually became incontinent due to the severity of the torture.[19] She was denied access to the bathroom and thus, was forced to urinate herself. As punishment for her incontinence, Baniszewski threw and locked her in the basement. Throughout her captivity, Baniszewski frequently, with the assistance of her children and their friends, restrained Likens in a bathtub filled with scalding water and rubbed salt onto her burns.[20] She was often kept naked and rarely fed. At times, Baniszewski and her twelve-year-old son John Jr. would make Likens eat her own feces, as well as urine and feces from the diaper of Gertrude Baniszewski's one-year-old son. She also made abusing Likens a pastime, charging the neighborhood children five cents to see the "display" of Likens' naked body and tie, beat, burn and mutilate her. Likens attempted to alert the neighbors for help by screaming and hitting the walls of the basement with a spade, ultimately to no avail.
The Likens sisters had no way to contact other family members to inform them of the abuse. Jenny, especially, struggled to do this since she was constantly threatened by Baniszewski that she would be abused and tortured next like her sister. She was also bullied by the neighborhood girls and beaten whenever she alluded to Sylvia's situation.[19] Nonetheless, they encountered Diana, their older and married sister, at the local park. Since Diana was forbidden by her parents to make contact with the sisters due to her estrangement, she initially assumed that the punishments Sylvia and Jenny were receiving were related to this. Neither party was aware that they lived less than a mile and a half apart. Diana eventually learned that Sylvia and Jenny were staying at a strangers' home and she attempted to visit them. Upon her visit, Bansizewski told Diana, unaware of who Baniszewski was, that the Likens sisters were not allowed to see her and ordered her off her property. At one point, Diana secretly gave a starving Sylvia a sandwich. Sylvia remained silent about the matter but after Marie Baniszewski revealed it, Paula and Gertrude choked and paddled Sylvia before subjecting her to another scalding bath.[18] Shortly thereafter, a neighbor made an anonymous report, which prompted an in-home visit by a public health nurse. The nurse entered the home and made inquiries, but had no choice but to leave without further investigation. She told Baniszewski the report was about Likens; Baniszewski replied she had kicked Likens out of her house, and that her whereabouts were unknown. The nurse had no way of knowing that the subject of her inquiry was right below her in the basement.
Likens was often deprived of water. Jenny later speculated, during her court testimony, that Likens was unable to produce tears due to dehydration.[21]
On October 22, Likens was forced by John to eat a bowl of soup with her fingers. John quickly took away the bowl when Likens attempted to eat it. Baniszewski eventually allowed her to sleep upstairs, under the condition that she learned not to wet herself. That night, Likens whispered to Jenny to give her a glass of water before falling asleep. [22]On October 23, Baniszewski discovered that Likens had urinated herself. As punishment, Likens was forced to masturbate with an empty glass Coca-Cola bottle in front of Baniszewski's children. After that, she stripped Likens naked and carved the words "I'M A PROSTITUTE AND PROUD OF IT" onto Likens' abdomen with a heated needle.[23][24] When Baniszewski was unable to finish the branding, she had Richard Hobbs finish. Hobbs continued to brand Likens as Baniszewski calmly took Jenny to the groceries. [25]Hobbs and 10-year-old Shirley Baniszewski then used an iron poker in an attempt to burn the letter "S" into Likens' chest; the burn scar ended up looking like the number "3."[21] Baniszewski later taunted Likens about how she would never be able to marry a man due to the words carved onto her stomach. Likens was taken back to the basement, where Coy Hubbard arrived to tie her up and slam her body against the walls six to seven times. That night, Likens confided to her sister, "I'm going to die. I can tell". [26]The next day, Baniszewski woke Likens, then dictated a letter to her, intending to mislead her parents into believing that she had run away. The letter also tried to frame a group of anonymous boys for abusing and mutilating Likens after she supposedly agreed to have sexual relations with them. After Likens finished the letter, Baniszewski formulated a plan to have John Jr. and Jenny take Sylvia to a nearby forested area and leave her there to die.
On October 25, Likens tried to escape after overhearing Baniszewski's plan to blindfold her[21] and dump her body in Jimmy's Forest, a wooded area nearby. Likens fled to the front door but due to her extensive injuries, Baniszewski caught her in time. Likens was provided with toast but was unable to eat it due to her severe dehydration. Baniszewski shoved the toast into her mouth and struck her face several times with a curtain rod. She violently threw Likens into the basement and with the assistance of Hubbard, she tied and bludgeoned her until she was unconscious. Likens managed to recover but was unable to speak intelligibly and move her limbs properly. Likens tried to exit the basement but collapsed before she could make it to the stairs. Baniszewski crushed her head with her feet and stood there for several moments. [27]
On October 26, after multiple beatings, burnings, and scalding baths, Likens died of a brain hemorrhage, shock, and malnutrition.[7] She was 16 years old.
When Stephanie Baniszewski and Richard Hobbs realized that Likens was not breathing, Stephanie tried to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Banzisewski, however, shouted at them that Likens was "faking it".[28]
When Baniszewski finally realized that Likens was dead, she sent Hobbs to call the police from a nearby payphone. When police arrived, Gertrude Baniszewski handed them the letter she had forced Likens to write a few days previously. Before the police officers left the house, however, Jenny Likens approached them and said, "Get me out of here and I'll tell you everything."[29] Her statement, combined with the discovery of Likens' body, prompted the officers to arrest Gertrude, Paula, Stephanie and John Baniszewski, Richard Hobbs, and Coy Hubbard for murder. Other neighborhood children present at the time—Mike Monroe, Randy Lepper, Darlene McGuire, Judy Duke, and Anna Siscoe—were arrested for "injury to person".
Trial
Baniszewski, her children, Hobbs, and Hubbard were held without bail pending their trials.
An examination and autopsy of Likens' body revealed numerous burns, bruising, muscle and nerve damage. All of her fingernails were also broken backwards and most of the skin's outer layer peeled off. Her severely mutilated body led authorities to initially believe that it was the work of an "anonymous madman".[30] In her death throes, Likens bit through her lips, partially severing each of them. Her vaginal cavity was nearly swollen shut, although an examination of the canal determined that her hymen was still intact, which meant it was possible she was still a virgin, discrediting Baniszewski's assertions that Likens was a prostitute and her insistence that she was pregnant. The official cause of death was brain swelling, internal hemorrhaging of the brain, and shock from severe and prolonged damage to her skin.
During the highly publicized trial, Gertrude Baniszewski denied being responsible for Likens' death. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. She claimed that she was too distracted by her ill health and depression to control her children.
Four minors who took part in the abuse of Likens were also put on trial. They were:
- Paula Baniszewski, aged 17
- John Baniszewski, aged 13
- Richard Hobbs, aged 15
- Coy Hubbard, aged 15
The attorneys for the minors claimed that they had been pressured by Baniszewski.
When Gertrude's 11-year-old daughter, Marie Baniszewski, was called to the stand as a witness for the defense, she broke down and admitted that she had been forced to heat the needle with which Hobbs had carved Likens' skin. She also testified that she had seen her mother beating Likens and forcing her into the basement.
In his closing statement, Baniszewski's lawyer said: "I condemn her for being a murderess ... but I say she's not responsible because she's not all here!" He tapped his head to make his point about her state of mind.[31]
On May 19, 1966, Gertrude Baniszewski was convicted of first-degree murder. She was spared the death penalty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Paula Baniszewski, who had given birth to a daughter during the trial, was convicted of second-degree murder. She was also sentenced to life imprisonment.
Richard Hobbs, Coy Hubbard, and John Baniszewski Jr. were all convicted of manslaughter and given two 2-to-21-year prison sentences.
Aftermath
Hobbs, Hubbard, and John Baniszewski Jr. each served two years in a reformatory before being paroled in 1968.[32][33]
In 1971, Gertrude and Paula Baniszewski were granted another trial by the Indiana Supreme Court, largely for reasons of a prejudicial atmosphere due to heavy news media publicity before and during the trial.[34] Paula Baniszewski pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was released from prison one year later.[7] Gertrude Baniszewski, however, was again convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.[35] Over the course of the next 14 years, Baniszewski became a model prisoner at the Indiana Women's Prison, working in the sewing shop and becoming a "den mother" to younger female inmates. By the time she came up for parole in 1985, she was known by the prison nickname "Mom".
The news of Baniszewski's parole hearing sent shockwaves through the Indiana community. Jenny Likens and her family appeared on television to speak out against Baniszewski; the members of two anti-crime groups, Protect the Innocent and Society's League Against Molestation, travelled to Indiana to oppose her parole and support the Likens family, beginning a sidewalk picket campaign. Over the course of two months, the groups collected over 40,000 signatures from the citizens of Indiana, including those who were too young to remember the case, demanding that Baniszewski be kept behind bars.[36][37] Despite the efforts, Baniszewski was granted parole. During the hearing, she stated: "I'm not sure what role I had in it ... because I was on drugs. I never really knew her ... I take full responsibility for whatever happened to Sylvia." The parole board, taking her good behavior in prison into account, voted in favor of granting Baniszewski's freedom 3–2, and she was released.
Baniszewski was released from prison on December 4, 1985, and traveled to Iowa, where she called herself Nadine Van Fossan, using her middle name and maiden name. She lived in obscurity until her death in Laurel, Iowa, from lung cancer, on June 16, 1990, aged 60.[33]
When Jenny Likens, who was then married and living in Beech Grove, Indiana, saw Gertrude Baniszewski's obituary in a newspaper, she clipped it and mailed it to her mother with the note: "Some good news. Damn old Gertrude died. Ha ha ha! I am happy about that."[38] Jenny Likens Wade died of a heart attack on June 23, 2004, at the age of 54.
Richard Hobbs died of cancer on January 2, 1972, at the age of 21, four years after being released from the reformatory.[39]
After the Westside Middle School massacre, John Baniszewski Jr., by then calling himself John Blake, made a statement claiming that young criminals are not beyond help and describing how he had turned his life around.[40] He died of diabetes at General Hospital in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on May 19, 2005, at the age of 52.
Coy Hubbard, Stephanie Baniszewski's boyfriend (who had beaten Likens) was in and out of prison after his release. He was later charged with the murder of two men but was acquitted. He died of a heart attack on June 23, 2007, at the age of 56 in Shelbyville, Indiana.
Paula Baniszewski, the eldest of Gertrude's seven children, received a prison sentence of twenty years to life for her part in Likens' death. Her baby daughter, Gertrude, whom she gave birth to while incarcerated, was later adopted. In 1971, she twice tried unsuccessfully to escape from prison.[41] In 1972, she was paroled and assumed a new identity. She eventually married, has two children, and reportedly lives in a small town in Iowa today.[42] She worked as an aide to a school counselor for 14 years at the Beaman-Conrad-Liscomb-Union-Whitten (BCLUW) school district in Iowa, having changed her name to Paula Pace and lied to the school district when applying for the job. She was fired in 2012 when the school discovered her deception.[43]
The murder charge against Gertrude Baniszewski's second-eldest daughter, Stephanie (aged 15), was dropped after she turned state's evidence against the other defendants. She assumed a new name and became a school teacher. She married and has several children.[44]
The injury-to-person charges against the younger juveniles, Anna Ruth Siscoe, Judy Darlene Duke, Michael John (Mike) Monroe, Darlene McGuire, and Randy Gordon Lepper, were dropped. Siscoe married and had children and grandchildren; she died on October 23, 1996 at the age of 44. Lepper died on November 14, 2010 in Indianapolis at the age of 56.[45]
On May 10, 2015, Likens' sister Diana (who was using the name Dianna Bedwell) and her husband, Cecil Knutson, were reported missing by their son, Robert Acosta. Dianna and Cecil had been gambling at the Valley View Casino in Valley Center, California. Surveillance video recorded the couple leaving the casino at about 2 p.m. by car, but they did not show up at their son's house in La Quinta. Acosta contacted the police and appeared on television, asking the public's help in finding his parents.[46] On May 25, 2015, the couple was found in a mountainous area of an Indian reservation by members of a volunteer Jeep patrol. Cecil was dead and Dianna was severely dehydrated after surviving on just rainwater and some food. Dianna was airlifted to a hospital in serious condition. She told investigators they were looking for a shortcut when they got lost and became stuck on a rugged road.[47]
The house at 3850 East New York Street in which Likens was tortured and murdered stood vacant and rundown for many years after the murder. Although there was some discussion of purchasing it for renovation and using it as a women's shelter, the necessary funds were never raised. The house was demolished on April 23, 2009. The property is now a church parking lot.
A six-foot-tall (1.8 m) block of granite was dedicated in June 2001 as a memorial to Likens in Willard Park, 1700 E. Washington Street. The dedication was attended by several hundred people.[48]
Depictions
The case has since been the subject of numerous fictional and non-fictional accounts.
Nonfiction
Books
Television
- The case was documented on the "Born Bad" episode of Deadly Women on the Investigation Discovery channel.
Fiction
Novels
- Patte Wheat's By Sanction of the Victim is a fictional account, set in the 1970s.[51]
- The artist and feminist author Kate Millett dealt with the subject in a number of works. She wrote a semi-fictional book relating to the incident, The Basement: Meditations on a Human Sacrifice.[50]
- Mendal Johnson's only novel, Let's Go Play at the Adams', in which a 20-year-old babysitter is kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by a handful of teens whom she had been assigned to sit, was influenced by this case.[52]
- Jack Ketchum's novel The Girl Next Door is loosely based on the murder, set in the 1950s.
- Author Craig Silvey describes the case in the novel Jasper Jones.[53]
Films
- A film of the same name as Ketchum's book was released in 2007, with Blythe Auffarth in the main role.[50]
- The film An American Crime, starring Catherine Keener as Gertrude Baniszewski, Ellen Page as Likens, Jeremy Sumpter as Coy Hubbard, and Evan Peters as Richard Hobbs, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.[50]
Other
- A play called Hey, Rube written by Janet McReynolds, was produced but never published.[54]
- Kate Millett's 1967 installation art Trap, in a New York loft basement, was influenced by Likens' murder.[55] Millett created another art installation in 1978, The Trial of Sylvia Likens, that depicts a courtroom scene with the five defendants.[56]
See also
References
External links
|