Murder of Sylvia Likens

• 1. Introduction

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  Sylvia Likens was 16 years old when she died in Indianapolis, Indiana, on the 26th of October 1965. Days before, she had confided in her younger sister, Jenny: "Jenny, I know you don't want me to die, but I'm going to die. I can tell it." She was right. For three months she had been tormented, starved and beaten by the woman who had agreed to board her. Children from that woman's own family, and from the surrounding neighborhood, joined in. Jenny was made to watch and, at times, to take part. A senior Indianapolis police investigator, after 35 years on the force, called it the most sadistic case he had ever handled. A deputy prosecutor told the jury it was the most hideous thing Indiana had ever seen. How did a lively teenager who loved the Beatles end up in a basement on East New York Street? Why did so many people who saw or heard something look away? And what became of the people who were in that house?

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• 2. Sylvia and Jenny

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  Sylvia Marie Likens was born on the 3rd of January 1949, the third of five children of the carnival workers Lester and Elizabeth Likens. She arrived between two sets of fraternal twins. Daniel and Dianna were two years older, and Benny and Jenny were a year younger. Jenny had suffered polio as a child. One of her legs was weaker than the other, so she walked with a limp and wore a steel brace.

  Every summer, Lester and Elizabeth sold candy, beer and soda from carnival stands around Indiana. They moved often, money was a constant worry, and their marriage was unstable. The sons usually traveled along to help. The daughters were kept off the road out of concern for their safety and their schooling. Sylvia and Jenny stayed instead with relatives, most often their grandmother.

  As a teenager, Sylvia earned pocket money by babysitting, running errands and ironing for friends and neighbors. She often handed part of it to her mother. Her friends called her "Cookie." People described her as friendly, confident and lively, with long, wavy, light brown hair that hung below her shoulders. She loved music, and above all the Beatles.

  At a local skating rink, Sylvia looked after her sister. Jenny glided on her good foot while Sylvia held her hand. Jenny was far more timid and insecure than Sylvia, and Sylvia was fiercely protective of her.

  By June 1965, both girls were living with their parents in Indianapolis and studying at Arsenal Technical High School. There they had recently become acquainted with two sisters, Paula and Stephanie Baniszewski. That acquaintance was about to decide where the Likens girls would live.

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• 3. Gertrude's House

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  Gertrude Nadine Baniszewski was born in Indianapolis on the 19th of September 1928, the third of six children in a working-class family. On the 5th of October 1939, she watched her 50-year-old father die of a sudden heart attack. At 16 she left high school to marry 18-year-old John Stephan Baniszewski. They had four children. He had a volatile temper and sometimes beat her, yet they stayed together for ten years before their first divorce.

  A three-month marriage to a man named Edward Guthrie came next. Gertrude then remarried John, and the couple had two more children. They divorced again in 1963, her third divorce. Within weeks she began a relationship with Dennis Lee Wright, a 20-year-old welder who also hit her. Their son, Dennis Lee Wright Jr., was born in May 1964, and Wright soon abandoned them. She filed a paternity suit for support, but he rarely contributed.

  By 1965, Gertrude was 36 and lived at 3850 East New York Street with seven children. Paula was 17, Stephanie 15, John 12, Marie 11, Shirley 10, James 8, and little Dennis 1. The rent was $55 a month. She stood 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed about 100 pounds. One description called her a haggard, underweight asthmatic. She smoked heavily, suffered from clinical depression and had recently miscarried. Her income came mainly from irregular checks from her first husband, a former Indianapolis policeman, plus sewing and cleaning for neighbors.

  On the 3rd of July 1965, Elizabeth Likens was arrested for shoplifting and jailed. Soon afterward, Lester arranged for his daughters to board with Gertrude. She would receive $20 a week, and the Likenses would return from the East Coast with the carnival in November. Gertrude assured Lester she would care for the girls as if they were her own.

  The first weeks were quiet. Sylvia sang along to pop records with Stephanie and cheerfully helped with the housework. Both sisters attended Sunday school with the Baniszewski children, and the pastor praised Sylvia's piety. After about two weeks, the boarding payments stopped arriving on schedule, and the quiet ended.

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• 4. Escalation

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  The first blows fell because a $20 payment came a day or two late. Gertrude vented her frustration on both sisters, striking their bare buttocks with a paddle and complaining that she had looked after them for a week for nothing. By mid-August, her anger had narrowed to Sylvia alone. The likely motive was jealousy of the girl's youth, appearance, respectability and potential.

  Sylvia was beaten and starved, and she was forced to eat leftovers or spoiled food from the garbage. She was accused of stealing candy that she had actually bought. In late August, Paula claimed the sisters had eaten too much at a church supper, and each girl took about 15 strokes of the paddle across the back.

  A passing remark about a boyfriend in Long Beach, California, handed Gertrude a new weapon. Sylvia had met him in the spring of 1965, when her family lived in California. Gertrude twisted the story into an accusation that Sylvia was pregnant, and then kicked her violently. Paula, herself three months pregnant and jealous of Sylvia's looks, knocked her off her chair and shouted, "You ain't fit to sit in a chair!" At another supper, Gertrude, Paula and a neighborhood boy named Randy Lepper forced a hot dog loaded with condiments into Sylvia. She vomited and was made to eat what she had brought up.

  Sylvia is alleged to have made one act of retaliation. She spread a rumor at school that Stephanie and Paula were prostitutes, because the household kept making the same accusation about her. Stephanie punched her, then cried with her when Sylvia apologized in tears. Stephanie's 15-year-old boyfriend, Coy Hubbard, was not so forgiving. He slapped Sylvia, banged her head against a wall and flipped her onto the floor. Gertrude then beat her with the paddle.

  Paula once struck Sylvia's face so hard that she broke her own wrist. She later used the cast as another weapon. Gertrude forced Jenny to hit her own sister and beat Jenny if she refused.

  Coy Hubbard and his classmates became regular visitors. With Gertrude's encouragement, they beat Sylvia, used her as a practice dummy for judo and burned her with lit cigarettes more than 100 times. Gertrude also staged sexual humiliations for her audience, which this account will not detail.

  When Sylvia admitted taking a gym suit from school, because Gertrude would not buy one, Gertrude barred her from classes. She whipped Sylvia with a police belt 3 inches wide and burned her fingertips with matches. Days later, Jenny was whipped with the same belt for taking a single tennis shoe to wear on her strong foot.

  By the 6th of October, Sylvia had become incontinent, and she was forbidden to use the bathroom. Gertrude punished her by throwing her into the basement and tying her up. Sylvia was often kept naked, rarely fed and denied water. Sometimes she hung from the stair railing with her feet barely touching the ground.

  The household treated her suffering as entertainment. The torment paused when the family wanted to watch its favorite television shows. Neighborhood children paid five cents each to view the "display" of Sylvia's body, then humiliated and hurt her. Gertrude and the children scalded her in a bathtub and rubbed salt into her wounds. On the 22nd of October, John Jr. offered a starving Sylvia a bowl of soup, then snatched it away as she tried to eat.

  According to Richard Hobbs's testimony, on the 23rd of October, Gertrude called Sylvia to the kitchen and announced: "You have branded my daughters; now I am going to brand you." With a heated needle, she began carving the words "I'M A PROSTITUTE AND PROUD OF IT" into Sylvia's abdomen. When Gertrude could not finish, 14-year-old Hobbs completed the job while she took Jenny to a grocery store. Marie later admitted at trial that she had heated the needle. Hobbs and 10-year-old Shirley then used an anchor bolt to burn an "S" beneath Sylvia's breast. One section of the loop went on backwards, so the scar looked like the number 3.

  The next day, Gertrude dictated a letter for Sylvia to write, meant to convince her parents that she had run away. It blamed a group of anonymous local boys. Gertrude also settled on a plan. John Jr. and Jenny would blindfold Sylvia and abandon her in a wooded area called Jimmy's Forest. Sylvia overheard talk of that plan, and it set off her last attempt to escape.

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• 5. Silence on New York Street

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  Jenny Likens stayed silent because Gertrude had threatened her with the same treatment as her sister if she told anyone. Both girls also feared that speaking up would only make things worse. Neighborhood girls bullied Jenny, and she was ridiculed or beaten whenever she hinted at what was happening to Sylvia.

  Lester and Elizabeth visited Indianapolis in July and August whenever the carnival schedule allowed. On the 5th of October, they came for the last time. Gertrude and her children stayed in the room, and neither girl showed any sign of distress. The moment the parents left, Gertrude turned to Sylvia and said: "What are you going to do now, Sylvia? Now they're gone?"

  In September, the sisters met their older sister, Dianna Shoemaker, in a local park. They told her about the abuse, and said Sylvia was singled out, almost always for things she had neither said nor done. Neither gave the address, and Dianna suspected they were exaggerating. Weeks earlier, they had met Dianna in the same park with 11-year-old Marie Baniszewski. When Sylvia said she was hungry, Dianna gave her a sandwich.

  Marie told her family about the sandwich in late September. Gertrude accused Sylvia of gluttony, and she and Paula choked and bludgeoned her. They then put her in a scalding bath, saying it would cleanse her of sin. Whenever Sylvia fainted, Gertrude banged her head against the tub to revive her.

  Soon after, the father of a neighborhood boy named Michael John Monroe phoned Arsenal Technical High School and anonymously reported a girl with open sores across her body living at the Baniszewski house. Sylvia had missed several days of class, so a school nurse went to East New York Street. Gertrude told the nurse that Sylvia had run away the week before, was out of control and had sores because she refused to keep clean. The school investigated no further.

  The next-door neighbors, Raymond and Phyllis Vermillion, had first seen Gertrude as an ideal guardian. On two visits, they watched Paula abuse Sylvia, who each time had a black eye. Paula openly boasted about it. By the second visit, Sylvia seemed so meek that the couple thought her "zombified." The Vermillions never told the authorities.

  On or about the 1st of October, Dianna learned where her sisters lived and went to the house. Gertrude refused her entry, claiming she had permission from the girls' parents to keep Dianna away. About two weeks later, Dianna met Jenny by chance near the house and asked about Sylvia. Jenny answered: "I can't tell you or I'll get into trouble."

  A Baptist minister named Roy Julian later admitted at trial that he knew a teenage girl was being abused in the house. Gertrude had told him that Sylvia "made advances to men for money," and he assumed she was being punished for soliciting. He reported nothing.

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• 6. Death and Discovery

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  On the 25th of October, Sylvia ran for the front door. Gertrude caught her before she could leave the property, since her injuries had left her too weak to get far. Gertrude forced crackers into her mouth, then struck her face with a curtain rod until sections of it bent into right angles. Coy Hubbard took the rod and hit her once more, knocking her unconscious. Gertrude dragged her back to the basement.

  That evening, Sylvia screamed for help and pounded on the basement walls with a spade. A neighbor later told police she had traced the noise to the basement of 3850 East New York Street. It stopped at about 3:00 a.m., and she decided not to call the police.

  By the morning of the 26th of October, Sylvia could no longer speak clearly or coordinate her limbs. Gertrude propped her against a kitchen wall and tried to feed her a doughnut and milk, then threw her to the floor when she could not lift the glass. When Paula asked her to recite the alphabet, Sylvia managed only the first four letters. That afternoon, she jerked her arm toward the faces she recognized in the basement. "You're... Ricky," she said, and then, "You're Gertie." Gertrude shouted: "Shut up! You know who I am!"

  Sylvia tried to bite a rotten pear and said her teeth felt loose. Jenny reminded her that her front tooth had been knocked out when she was seven, in a childhood game of roughhousing with a brother. Jenny then left to do gardening chores for neighbors, hoping to earn some spending money. John Jr. sprayed Sylvia with a garden hose that Randy Lepper had brought at Gertrude's request. Sylvia tried once more to leave the basement and collapsed before she reached the stairs. Gertrude stamped on her head and stood staring at her.

  Shortly after 5:30 p.m., Richard Hobbs returned to the house and slipped on the wet basement stairs. He found Stephanie crying as she held Sylvia's emaciated body, which her mother had ordered her to clean. Stephanie and Hobbs gave Sylvia a warm, soapy bath, dressed her in new clothes and laid her on a mattress in a bedroom. Sylvia murmured that she wished her "daddy was here" and that Stephanie would take her home. Stephanie told her sister Shirley, "Oh! She'll be alright!" Moments later she realized that Sylvia was not breathing and tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, while Gertrude shouted that Sylvia was faking.

  Gertrude beat the body with a book and screamed "Faker! Faker!" Then she panicked and told Hobbs to phone the police from a nearby payphone. Officers arrived at about 6:30 p.m. Gertrude led them to the body and handed over the dictated letter. She claimed she had been "doctoring" Sylvia with rubbing alcohol, and that Sylvia had run off with teenage boys and come back clutching the note. Paula, holding a Bible, declared that Sylvia's death was "meant to happen." She told Jenny: "If you want to live with us, Jenny, we'll treat you like our own sister."

  Jenny recited the story Gertrude had rehearsed with her. Then she whispered to the officers: "You get me out of here and I'll tell you everything." Her formal statement led to the arrest of Gertrude, Paula, Stephanie and John Jr. within hours. Coy Hubbard and Richard Hobbs were arrested the same day.

  Gertrude first denied everything. By the 27th of October, she admitted she had known "the kids" were abusing Sylvia, saying "Paula did most of the damage" and "Coy Hubbard did a lot of the beating." Paula signed a statement admitting repeated beatings with her mother's police belt. John Jr. said that most of the time he had used his fists. By the 29th of October, five more neighborhood youths had been arrested: Michael Monroe, Randy Lepper, Darlene McGuire, Judy Duke and Anna Siscoe. They were charged with injury to person, then released to their parents so they could appear as witnesses.

  Coroner Dr. Arthur Kebel counted more than 150 wounds on Sylvia's body. They included burns, severe bruising and extensive muscle and nerve damage. He listed the cause of death as a subdural hematoma from a severe blow to her right temple. Shock from the damage to her skin and tissues, and severe malnutrition, contributed.

  The funeral took place on the afternoon of the 29th of October at the Russell & Hitch Funeral Home in Lebanon, Indiana. More than 100 mourners attended. The gray casket stayed open, with a portrait of Sylvia from before July 1965 resting on it. Reverend Louis Gibson officiated and said, "She has gone to eternity." A procession of 14 vehicles drove to Oak Hill Cemetery. Her headstone carries an abbreviated form of the words "Our Darling Daughter."

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• 7. The Trials

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  On the 30th of December 1965, a Marion County grand jury returned first-degree murder indictments against Gertrude, Paula, John Jr., Richard Hobbs and Coy Hubbard. Three weeks earlier, Stephanie had been released on a writ of habeas corpus bond, after her lawyer argued the state lacked evidence against her. She waived her immunity and agreed to testify against the others. On the 16th of March 1966, psychiatrists told Judge Saul Isaac Rabb that three of the defendants were mentally competent for trial.

  The trial opened on the 18th of April 1966 at the City-County Building in Indianapolis. Prosecutors Leroy K. New and Marjorie Wessner had announced they would seek the death penalty for all five defendants. They persuaded the judge to try everyone together, arguing that jurors needed to see the "total picture" of what the defendants had done in concert. Prospective jurors were asked whether they backed capital punishment and whether a mother was responsible for the "deportment of her children."

  William Erbecker defended Gertrude, George Rice defended Paula, and James G. Nedder defended Hobbs. Forrest Bowman defended both John Jr. and Hubbard. Their lawyers argued that Gertrude had pressured the young defendants into joining the abuse. Gertrude pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

  Deputy coroner Charles Ellis testified on the 29th of April that Sylvia's fingernails were broken backwards and that her lips were "essentially in shreds" from biting them. He said she had been in acute shock for two or three days before she died. On the 2nd and the 3rd of May, Jenny testified against all five defendants. She said Sylvia had provoked nothing, and she wept as she recalled her sister's prediction that she would die. Randy Lepper corroborated parts of her account. He smirked as he admitted hitting Sylvia between 10 and 40 times.

  On the 10th of May, 13-year-old Judy Duke described watching salt rubbed into the sores on Sylvia's legs. She also recalled Hobbs's casual remark: "Everybody's having fun with Sylvia." The next day, Gertrude took the stand. She blamed her children and the neighborhood children, calling her house "such a madhouse." She said she had only "started to spank" Sylvia once and could not finish.

  Two days later, Hobbs testified that he had been sure Sylvia would be gone by the 26th of October, because Gertrude had said she intended to "get rid of" her. After Sylvia's death, he said, he went home to watch "the rest of The Lloyd Thaxton Show." Marie Baniszewski then broke down on the stand. She admitted she had heated the branding needle, and she described her mother crocheting calmly while a neighborhood girl, Anna Siscoe, attacked Sylvia. Grace Sargent said she had heard Paula boast on a church bus about breaking her own wrist on Sylvia's face. Paula had ended with the words "I tried to kill her!"

  On the 16th of May, court-appointed Dr. Dwight Schuster testified that Gertrude was sane in October 1965 and remained sane. Erbecker cross-examined him for more than two hours, and Schuster never wavered.

  In closing, Wessner compared Sylvia's treatment to that of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. Holding up a portrait of Sylvia taken before July 1965, she said: "I wish she were here today, with eyes as in this picture, full of hope and anticipation." Erbecker tapped his head and said of his client, "she's not all here!" Bowman stressed his clients' ages and argued that 16-year-olds and 13-year-olds should not face execution. Rice protested that Paula had been tried jointly. Nedder portrayed Hobbs as a follower and suggested Jenny could have asked for help. New promised to "speak through the mangled and shredded lips of Sylvia Likens." He warned that sparing the defendants would "lower the value of human life by that much for each defendant."

  The trial lasted 17 days. On the 19th of May 1966, after eight hours of deliberation, a jury of eight men and four women found Gertrude guilty of first-degree murder. It recommended life imprisonment. Paula was convicted of second-degree murder, and Hobbs, Hubbard and John Jr. of manslaughter. Gertrude wept and cried, "John! John! My baby!" as Hobbs and Hubbard stayed impassive. On the 25th of May, Gertrude and Paula received life sentences. The three boys each received 2 to 21 years in the Indiana Reformatory.

  In September 1970, the Indiana Supreme Court reversed the convictions of Gertrude and Paula. Judge Rabb had refused repeated defense motions for a change of venue and for separate trials. The court also found that heavy news coverage had created a prejudicial atmosphere. At the 1971 retrials, Paula pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and received two to twenty years. She tried and failed to escape from prison twice that year. The baby daughter she had borne while awaiting trial in 1966, named after Gertrude, was later adopted. Paula was freed in December 1972. Gertrude faced a second jury, was again convicted of first-degree murder and again sentenced to life.

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• 8. Parole and Afterlives

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  Over the next 14 years, Gertrude Baniszewski became a model prisoner at the Indiana Women's Prison. She worked in the sewing shop and acted as a "den mother" to younger inmates, who sometimes called her "Mom." By 1985 she had renamed herself Nadine Van Fossan, combining her middle name with her maiden name, and she called herself a devout Christian.

  News of her parole hearing caused an uproar in Indiana. Jenny and other relatives of Sylvia protested her release. Members of two anti-crime groups traveled to Indiana and picketed on sidewalks for two months. They gathered more than 40,000 signatures, including those of people too young to remember the case and of former inmates who called Gertrude a cynical con artist without remorse. At the hearing she said she wished Sylvia's death could "be undone," but she blamed drugs and said she had never really known the girl. The parole board narrowly voted to release her. She walked out on the 4th of December 1985.

  Gertrude moved to Laurel, Iowa, and lived in relative obscurity. She never accepted full responsibility and blamed the medication she took for asthma. She died of lung cancer on the 16th of June 1990, aged 61. John Dean, a former Indianapolis Star reporter who covered the case, said in 2015: "I never thought she was insane. I thought she was a downtrodden, mean woman." He compared the case to William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies (1954), but added that these were not "children going wild," but "children doing what they were told." Forrest Bowman said in 2014 that Gertrude had a miserable life and that the crime was ultimately about jealousy.

  Fourteen years earlier, Jenny had clipped Gertrude's obituary from a newspaper and mailed it to her mother. The note read: "Some good news. Damn old Gertrude died. Ha ha ha! I am happy about that." Jenny later married Leonard Rece Wade, and they had two children. The abuse she had been forced to witness never left her, and she depended on anxiety medication for the rest of her life. She died of a heart attack in Beech Grove, Indiana, on the 23rd of June 2004, aged 54. She had always insisted that her parents deserved no blame, because they had simply trusted Gertrude's promise. Elizabeth died in 1998 and Lester in 2013.

  Paula took the name Paula Pace and spent 14 years as an aide to a school counselor in Conrad, Iowa, concealing her criminal history. The school fired her in 2012 when it discovered her identity. Stephanie, whose murder charge had been dropped after she turned state's evidence, became a teacher and was last known to live in Florida. Marie, Shirley and James were placed in separate foster homes. After their father regained custody, their surname became Blake. Marie died on the 8th of June 2017, aged 62. Dennis Lee Wright Jr. was adopted, renamed Denny Lee White, and died on the 5th of February 2012, aged 47.

  Hobbs, Hubbard and John Jr. were paroled on the 27th of February 1968, after less than two years. Hobbs died of lung cancer on the 2nd of January 1972, aged 21, after at least one nervous breakdown. Hubbard stayed in Indiana under his own name and was repeatedly imprisoned. He was acquitted of two 1977 murders, largely because the chief witness was a convicted acquaintance. Shortly after the film An American Crime premiered in January 2007, he lost his job. He died of a heart attack on the 23rd of June 2007, aged 56. John Jr. lived as John Blake and became a lay minister who counseled the children of divorced parents. He later said he and his co-defendants should have received harsher sentences. He also admitted he had enjoyed the attention the murder brought him, and claimed to have hit Sylvia only once. He died of diabetes on the 19th of May 2005, aged 52.

  The charges against the other youths were later dropped. Anna Siscoe died on the 23rd of October 1996, aged 44. Randy Lepper died on the 14th of November 2010, aged 56. Michael Monroe died on the 16th of February 2023, aged 68.

  The house at 3850 East New York Street stood empty for years and slowly fell into disrepair. Talk of turning it into a women's shelter went nowhere, because the money was never raised. It was demolished on the 23rd of April 2009. The site is now used for church parking.

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