An American Crime:  A True Life Drama About An Indiana Drama Queen

By Lynn A. Granata

It doesn't happen very often of what seems to be a fictionalized film about a true crime story that grabs the attention of the public better than what An American Crime has done.

Ellen Page (left) as Sylvia and Katherine Keener (right) as Gertrude

Released in 2007 at the Cannes Film Festival, it stars Katherine Keener as the portrayal of the true life Indiana drama queen Gertrude Baniszewski. If you go back to my first blog, you will see who she was. There I discussed the story in brief detail, but left out a lot of details about the movie itself that I am about to talk about in this essay.

Ellen Page, a sweet Canadian actress plays Sylvia Likens.  The movie opens with a court room scene that made celebrity status. There it shows as many images of the beautiful Sylvia flash on the screen.  However, these images are not what you would expect to see. Instead, you will see a tortured and mutilated young body with written and branded words on the abdomen, and various photos of her badly bruised and cigarette burned arms and legs.  In this movie, they only show her legs. Sylvia's father, Lester Likens is the first to be called as a witness to be cross-examined by the district attorney.

As the trial convenes, the movie illustrates the flash backs as each witness describes it. 

It is July, 1965.  Sylvia Likens and her sister Jenny Faye Likens are together at a carnival ground, as they happily traipse around the place, waving and smiling at the different people they encounter.  Sylvia and Jenny get to the Merry-go-Round and the movie then pans over to a street scene with a church in the background. Sylvia and Jenny wait outside as their parents arrive.  

Thinking that her mom and dad are coming inside to worship with them, Sylvia finds out that their plans change.  Dad and mom decide to go back to the carnival thinking that it may reconcile their straying marriage. Sylvia is told to take the church bus home with her sister, because mom has "to work some things out with their father." I also want to make note that this film has a nice soundtrack which features many great 1960's classic tunes.  In real life, Sylvia and Jenny were avid Beatles fans. 

While they are in church, the girls listen attentively to the pastor give his sermon.  The congregation gets briefly distracted by an infant crying and fussing in his mother's arms. The mother is none other than Gertrude Baniszewski. Gertrude walks out of the church to calm the baby down.  When the service is over, the girls board the old school bus sans church bus, once seated another congregant walks by Gertrude complimenting her on her ironing business which she ran out of her home to help support her 7 children living with her at the time. 

Once seated toward the back part of the bus, a small golden haired girl turns around to ask Jenny what happened to her leg.  Jenny answers her back, saying she has polio, since she wore a brace on her left leg. The hit song "Downtown" plays as the girls approach the Baniszewski house with their two new friends.

Since this is quite a lengthy story, I am going to briefly sum it up, but I am going to only include the facts that I find are most important to get to the heart of this compelling and heartbreaking story. 

Both girls meet the Baniszewski children, and then hang around with them throughout the summer, as they begin attending high school with the 2 older sisters, Stephanie and Paula. Paula gets pregnant by an older married man, then confides to Sylvia to keep it a secret.  Sylvia agrees and a pact is formed. 

On a weekend night, Sylvia goes out with Paula and Stephanie and their buddies. Paula sees her boyfriend, Bradley then goes over to him to talk.  Sylvia follows shortly thereafter. Paula and Bradley fight. Sylvia sees this as Brad begins to get physical with Paula as she screams in terror.  Sylvia approaches them, ordering Bradley to lay off of Paula. Sylvia innocently blurts out "she's pregnant." Paula then pushes Sylvia hard, slapping her on the hands, as she admonishes "You're going to pay for that."

Movie poster for An American Crime

Paula runs home to her mother and fabricates a good story to her about how "Sylvia told everybody that she's a slut."

Paula had numerous bouts with the law after she was
convicted as an accomplice in Sylvia's murder. Here
she is pictured in 1971 after she was captured because
she escaped from prison.

Battle lines are drawn between Sylvia, Gertrude, and her children. From then on Sylvia is beaten, ordered to insert coke bottles into herself, burned with cigarettes, thrown into the basement, starved, insulted, called a prostitute, and branded with the letters phrasing "I'm a prostitute and proud of it" into her abdomen. The true story was much worse than what the movie displays. In all likelihood, only because such horrific content would be too much to take for movie going audiences.  It turns out that An American Crime was banned from the theaters and instead featured on the USA cable channel network. Gertrude was the ring leader behind most if not all of the physical suffering she inflicted upon Sylvia Marie Likens. 

Gertrude was sentenced to 20 years-to life in prison without parole in 1966, after her trial ended.  Gertrude's case was evaluated every few years at the parole hearings.  Eventually, Gertrude's sentence was reduced to the 20 years times served.  She was paroled because of a special loophole in Indiana law to have time shaved off her original sentence because of good behavior as a model prisoner. Gertrude moves to Iowa, and changes her married name back to her maiden name, Van Fossen. Gertrude has stage 4 lung cancer from years of heavy and excessive smoking. She died in 1990.

Gertrude leaving the Indiana Women's
Penitentiary in December, 1985.