Sylvia Likens murder case

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The murder of Sylvia Likens in the fall of 1965 caused a sensation beyond the borders of the United States . In a basement in Indianapolis she was tortured for weeks by her foster mother Gertrude Baniszewski, two of her step-siblings and two neighbors' boys and finally murdered.

prehistory

Gertrude Baniszewski

Gertrude Baniszewski after leaving the courthouse in 1986

Gertrude Nadine Baniszewski (born Gertrude Nadine van Fossan, September 19, 1929 in Indianapolis, Indiana, † June 16, 1990 in Iowa ) was the third of six children of Mollie Myrtle (née Oakley) and Hugh Marcus (both originally from Illinois , of Dutch ancestry). Her father, whom she had always liked more than her mother, died of a heart attack on October 5, 1939 , when Gertrude was eleven, and left her with trauma.

Gertrude dropped out of school at the age of 16 and married the police officer John Baniszewski (1926–2007, originally from Pennsylvania), who was two years her senior. When the couple had four children, they divorced. Gertrude Baniszewski married Edward Guthrie, but divorced again after only three months of marriage, as Guthrie did not want to take responsibility for strange children, and returned to her first husband. She had two more children from him. She was 34 when their marriage finally fell apart seven years later. She then had a 23-year-old lover (Dennis Lee Wright), with whom she lived out of wedlock for a while, but who abused and abandoned her when he had a miscarriage and then another child, her son Dennis Lee Wright Jr In order to cover up the fact that it was an illegitimate child, she now called herself "Mrs. Wright ”.

Sylvia and Jenny Likens joined this family in early July 1965. They lived at 3850 East New York Street in Indianapolis at the time.

Sylvia Likens

Sylvia Marie Likens was born on January 3, 1949 in Lebanon , Indiana. She was the third of five children of the showman couple Lester Cecil Likens (1926–2013) and Elizabeth Frances “Betty” (née Grimes, 1927–1998); her two older (Diana and Danny) and two younger (Jenny Fay and Benny) siblings were dizygoti twins.

She was later described by prosecutors as "full of hope and anticipation". John Dean described her in his book as a happy, normal teenager. She enjoyed going to church, roller skating, dancing, and singing, and got average school grades. Sylvia is said to have felt like an outsider in the family because she was born between two pairs of twins, but to have been close to her sister Jenny.

The parents 'marriage was unstable, the family moved frequently due to the parents' showmanship and had financial difficulties. Sylvia and Jenny were often imprisoned or forced to live with relatives. In the summer of 1965, Betty was arrested for shoplifting. When Sylvia and Jenny were strolling around in the street, they met Paula Baniszewski, went to her and stayed the night. Lester Likens looked for the girls with his 19-year-old son and finally found them. He and Baniszewski, whom he only called “Mrs. Wright “agreed that she would take in Sylvia, then 16, and her one year younger sister, Jenny, who suffered from polio , for $ 20 a week .

Sequence of events

Beginnings

Gertrude Baniszewski received $ 20 a week to look after the girls. When payment was late in the second week, around July, the malnourished woman, suffering from asthma , depression, and the stress of several failed marriages , hit the girls with a paddle. But she preferred to take out her anger on Sylvia and less on Jenny. Dishonesty, physical impurity and sexual promiscuity were the three repeated allegations. The parents visited the children several times, but they did not complain.

Corporal punishment later became the order of the day. Eventually, Baniszewski even allowed her children, Sylvia and Jenny to be mistreated. Sylvia was beaten more and more brutally after she was accused, without sufficient evidence, of stealing a gym kit from school, without which Sylvia would not have been able to attend physical education classes. After that, she was also banned from going to school. Paula Baniszewski, who was pregnant at the time, lied to her that Sylvia had called her a prostitute. From then on, neighborhood children were also involved in the torture. Baniszewski, increasingly losing touch with reality, saw every woman as a potential slut and repeatedly referred to Sylvia as a whore. She spread rumors and even claimed that Sylvia was pregnant because she admitted that she already had a boyfriend. A later medical examination revealed that Sylvia was not and could not have been pregnant, but everyone seemed to believe so.

torture

Sylvia was tortured and beaten over 100 times with burning cigarettes, had to undress and was forced to insert a bottle of Coke several times into her vagina in front of everyone. The injuries were so severe that Sylvia became incontinent and, because of it, wetting her bed, was banished to the basement for the rest of her life. There, with the help of the children and friends, she was scalded with hot water and tormented with salt in the burns. Her food and drink were kept to a minimum (her sister Jenny later speculated that Sylvia had no tears due to dehydration), and she was denied clothing. It was also used as a training dummy during judo sessions. Paula Baniszewski once hit her face so hard that she broke her wrist and had to wear a cast. Her sister Jenny was also later forced to hit Sylvia. The kids made a pastime by making the neighborhood kids pay 5 cents to see Sylvia's naked body.

She was forced to eat her own feces and drink her own urine and write a letter describing how she was run away from the Baniszewskis. Correctly suspecting that her death was being planned, Sylvia wanted to flee, but did not succeed. She also tried to ask the neighbors for help by screaming and hitting the walls of the basement with a spade, but to no avail. She also had no way of contacting family members.

death

On October 22nd, Baniszewski allowed her to sleep upstairs on the condition that she learn not to get wet.

The next day she discovered that Sylvia had made herself wet again. As a punishment, she was forced to masturbate with a Coke bottle in front of the children. Then they undressed her, and at the suggestion of Ricky Hobbs, Baniszewski scratched her stomach with a glowing needle “I'm”. The rest “… a prostitute and proud of it!” (German: “I'm a prostitute and proud of it!”) Hobbs took over. The children decided to add another "S" to their breasts, which means Sylvia or slave. Baniszewski scoffed that because of the sentence Sylvia could never marry a man. Sylvia should have replied that it was now on. Then they were brought back to the basement.

On October 24, 1965, Gertrude and a boy from the neighborhood attacked Sylvia with a chair and a broomstick and beat her unconscious. Sylvia succumbed to the serious injuries two days later. In addition to brain swelling and internal bleeding, acute malnutrition was posthumously diagnosed. During her last days Sylvia got nothing but cookies to eat; she was refused to use the toilet.

The bogus letter, which was supposed to explain a runaway, was sufficient for a time not to carry out a house search when searching for Sylvia. He also got a group of boys to abuse and mutilate them. Only after her sister Jenny was able to get in touch with a police officer by speaking to one of them and saying: "Get me out of here and I'll tell you everything." (German: "Get me out of here and I'll tell you everything"), concrete investigations were started against Gertrude Baniszewski.

Sylvia Likens was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Lebanon, Indiana.

judgment

Despite pleading insanity , Gertrude Baniszewski was sentenced to life imprisonment in a high-profile trial. A later reopening of the process after a revocation confirmed the guilty verdict, but limited the sentence insofar as Baniszewski should be able to get released after 18 years if he was well managed. She then became a model prisoner who was so popular in her prison that she was called "Mom" by fellow inmates.

When she was about to be released after her 18 years, this caused a public protest. Sylvias Liken's sister Jenny gave a televised address with her family, and various groups organized signature collections with over 40,000 signatures against Baniszewski's release.

However, Baniszewski was paroled on December 4, 1985, reverted to her maiden name with a slight change, and spent the rest of her life in Iowa , where she died of lung cancer on June 16, 1990 at the age of 60 .

In addition, Paula, Stephanie and John Baniszewski, Richard Hobbs and Coy Hubbard were also arrested for murder. Paula, who gave birth to a daughter during the trial, was sentenced to life imprisonment (later converted to 20-year-old), the other boys to 2 to 21 years imprisonment. Stephanie was acquitted.

Processing in the media

Novels

  • Kate Millett , The Basement (German title: In the Basement. Meditations on a human sacrifice )
  • Jack Ketchum , Evil (fictional processing of the case)
  • John Dean , The Indiana Torture Slaying: Sylvia Likens Torture and Death (later known as House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying , no German edition)

Movies

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Denise Noe: The Torturing Death of Sylvia Marie Likens. Baniszewski's Background. (No longer available online.) In: truTV. Court TV, archived from the original on May 25, 2008 ; accessed on May 13, 2018 (English).
  2. ^ A b c Denise Noe: The Torturing Death of Sylvia Marie Likens. A Young, Tortured Girl is Dead. (No longer available online.) In: truTV. Court TV, archived from the original on May 25, 2008 ; accessed on February 11, 2019 .
  3. ^ Denise Noe: The Torturing Death of Sylvia Marie Likens. Who Was Sylvia Likens? (No longer available online.) In: truTV. Court TV, archived from the original ; accessed on December 11, 2018 .
  4. ^ Denise Noe: The Torturing Death of Sylvia Marie Likens. Foster Care. (No longer available online.) In: truTV. Court TV, archived from the original on May 25, 2008 ; accessed on December 11, 2018 .
  5. ^ A b Denise Noe: The Torturing Death of Sylvia Marie Likens. The Slow Descent into Horror. (No longer available online.) In: truTV. Court TV, archived from the original on May 25, 2008 ; accessed on February 11, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b Sam Stall: The Murder of Sylvia Likens 50 Years Later. In: Indianapolis Monthly. October 21, 2015, accessed May 13, 2018 .
  7. ^ Denise Noe: The Torturing Death of Sylvia Marie Likens. A dubious start. (No longer available online.) In: truTV. Court TV, archived from the original on May 25, 2008 ; accessed on December 11, 2018 .
  8. ^ Denise Noe: The Torturing Death of Sylvia Marie Likens. The Sexless Sex Crime. (No longer available online.) In: truTV. Court TV, archived from the original on May 25, 2008 ; accessed on February 11, 2019 .
  9. ^ Denise Noe: The Torturing Death of Sylvia Marie Likens. The Brutality Escalates. (No longer available online.) In: truTV. Court TV, archived from the original on May 25, 2008 ; accessed on February 11, 2019 .
  10. ^ Denise Noe: The Torturing Death of Sylvia Marie Likens. Sylvia's Last Weekend. (No longer available online.) In: truTV. Court TV, archived from the original on May 26, 2008 ; accessed on February 11, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Mara Bovsun: Monster mom Gertrude Baniszewski and teen cohorts torture Sylvia Likens to death in Indiana boarding house of horror. In: New York Daily News. April 6, 2013, accessed May 13, 2018 .
  12. ^ House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying. In: Barnes & Nobles. Retrieved May 13, 2018 .