Fifty Years Since the True Torture Murder of Sylvia Likens
By Lynn A. Granata
Back in the summer of 1965, a pretty 16 year old girl and her 15 year old sister were invited to stay with Indiana's infamous Gertrude Baniszewski.
On approximately July 3, 1965, the two young ladies had just met two of Gertrude's small daughters. The girls were invited by Marie Baniszewski and Shirley Baniszewski to go to their house in Indianapolis and meet their older sister, Paula. Sylvia Likens and Jenny Likens originally met the Baniszewski's in church. And rode the church bus home on this particular day.
After they went to their house, the two girls then decided to stay because their carnie parents had no place to leave them for the summer, while they were touring with the carnival. Mr. Likens agreed to pay Gertrude $20 a week to board his two daughters at the Baniszewski's.
In the beginning of this arrangement, Paula Baniszewski was friendly with Sylvia and Jenny. A few week's later, Gertrude's check didn't arrive in the mail. When the 2 girls got home from school that day, Gertrude forced the two girls to go downstairs to the basement. The two girls were both whipped with a belt, Gertrude was angry because her $20 check was late.
As time went by, the scapegoated violence toward Sylvia escalated. Her sister Jenny was spared because she coercively agreed with the Baniszewski family to take part in Sylvia's abuse. Sylvia its been speculated took this abuse for both herself and her younger sister who was also afflicted with polio.
If you're wondering why this all happened in the first place, there's more than one answer. The answers of course are unjustified, but to the Baniszewski's however, they were. No matter how wrong it was.
Sylvia it's believed was spreading gossip around the high school that the children attended. It was speculated that she told everyone in her class that Paula and Stephanie Baniszewski were sluts.
Sylvia was beaten and battered with a vast array of housing items. She was constantly beaten with broom sticks and burned by cigarettes, branded with a hot poker, starved,and sexually molested with a coke bottle.
The suspects were Gertrude and her 7 children and their friends. Since this is such a long story, to make it short Sylvia was put in the basement, starved, was given scalding baths, she was forced to eat her own vomit.
She eventually succumbed to such brutal trauma that was inflicted on her and then died a painful death from her injuries in October 1965.
The Baniszewski family was charged with murder. The children plea bargained and most of them served out their time in juvenile detention centers or were placed into foster care.
Gertrude was sentenced to prison for life, but then because of good behavior her sentence was reduced to 20 years in prison. She was released from Indiana State Prison in 1985 and she served the rest of her time on parole. She moved to Iowa, changed her name, and she died in the summer of 1990 at the age of 62. She developed lung cancer from years of excessive chain smoking.
It was a cruel shocking crime, and it was true! To see the whole story, watch An American Crime. It stars Katherine Keener as Gertrude and Ellen Page as Sylvia.
