After three months of beating and starving 16-year-old Sylvia Likens — and getting her children and neighborhood kids to help — Gertrude Baniszewski viciously murdered her on October 26, 1965.
Wikimedia CommonsGertrude Baniszewski’s murder of Sylvia Likens is still remembered by many as “Indiana’s most terrible crime.”
On the surface, Gertrude Baniszewski appeared resilient. The Indianapolis woman had seven children and raised them on her own with a limited income. Her true nature, one of cruelty and violence, was only exposed too late — after she murdered 16-year-old Sylvia Likens.
Increasingly unstable and depressed, Baniszewski nonetheless offered caretaking services for other struggling parents she knew. Traveling carnival workers Lester and Betty Likens thought her a perfect fit while they were away in 1965, leaving their two young daughters in seemingly safe hands.
Tragically, they couldn’t have been more wrong.
Baniszewski soon began to physically abuse young Sylvia in increasingly gruesome ways. Baniszewski didn’t act alone, however, and had convinced local neighborhood kids and her own children to participate. The torture lasted about three months until Baniszewski brutally murdered Sylvia.
The Quiet Desperation Of Gertrude Baniszewski
Gertrude Baniszewski was born on Sept. 19, 1928 in Indianapolis, Indiana to Hugh Marcus Van Fossan Sr. and Molly Myrtle Oakley Van Fossan. She was the third of six kids, and her father died of a heart attack when she was 11.
She ultimately dropped out of school at the age of 16 to marry John Baniszewski, an 18-year-old local who became a deputy.
While they had four children together — Paula, Stephanie, John, and Marie — the couple’s 10-year marriage was tumultuous and Gertrude Baniszewski endured abuse at John’s hands until the pair divorced. She later married Edward Guthrie, but they divorced after just a few months, and she soon remarried her first husband and had two more children, Shirley and James.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesMany were shocked when Baniszewski was arrested for the murder of Sylvia Likens in 1965.
After their second divorce, Gertrude Baniszewski began a relationship with a younger man named Dennis Lee Wright. He also physically abused Baniszewski, and he abandoned her after she gave birth to his child, also named Dennis. Meanwhile, the child support payments she had coming in from her exes were unreliable and barely enough to support her family.
Baniszewski was living alone with her seven children at 3850 East New York Street when, in July 1965, two parents needed a caretaker for their daughters while they were away. It would only later become clear that Baniszewski was not only clinically depressed and unstable, but brutally violent.
Sylvia Likens Enters A House Of Horrors
Sylvia Likens was born on Jan, 3, 1949, as the third of five children. Her parents traveled frequently for work and often left Sylvia and her sister Jenny, who had suffered from polio, with relatives. Sylvia was a happy teen who loved The Beatles, hanging out with friends, and babysitting.
As her father prepared to rejoin his job at a carnival — and his wife was jailed for shoplifting — he decided to leave 16-year-old Sylvia and 15-year-old Jenny with Baniszewski, who was a family friend.
Baniszewski was satisfied with a weekly $20 boarding fee for the two girls, and the home seemed relatively peaceful at first. The tone changed drastically when their father’s payments started to come in late, however.
Furious at the extra housework and insufficient income for the two additional children, Baniszewski began beating the Likens girls with a heavy paddle and a thick belt, and said, “I took care of you two b*tches for two weeks for nothing!” When Baniszewski became too tired to hit the girls, she’d have her eldest child, 17-year-old Paula, step in to help with the beatings.
Wikimedia CommonsSylvia Likens was just 16 years old when she was murdered.
Frightened, the two girls never sought help from others in the neighborhood, perhaps assuming that no one would come to their aid. Before long, Gertrude Baniszewski began to focus the physical abuse solely on Sylvia. Horrifically, she forced Jenny to join in, threatening her that she could easily take her sister’s place as the abuse victim if she refused.
It wasn’t long before locals began to notice that Sylvia, beaten and starved, was in poor condition. After a church function, where people remarked that Sylvia looked frail, Baniszewski force-fed her hot dogs until she threw up — and then made Sylvia eat her own vomit. Things only got worse from there.
The Unspeakable Torture Of Sylvia Likens
Some speculate that Gertrude Baniszewski abused Sylvia Likens out of envy for her youth, beauty, and potential. She told her children that Sylvia was a prostitute, and soon spread that rumor to others in her neighborhood.
Of all of Baniszewski’s children, Paula was perhaps the most eager to join in on the emotional and physical abuse. At one point, Paula hit Sylvia in the face so hard that she broke her own wrist — and later continued the brutal beating despite the fact that part of her arm was in a cast.
Gertrude Baniszewski’s methods soon escalated to putting cigarettes out on Sylvia — and encouraging her children to do so as well — and mutilating her genitals. She forced the girl to strip down and penetrate herself with an empty Coca-Cola bottle in front of the Baniszewski children, and had Paula stomp on Sylvia’s genitals while she gave lectures about sexual immorality.
Wikimedia CommonsSylvia Likens was tortured for about three months before her vicious murder.
The Baniszewski children were encouraged to practice karate on Sylvia, throw her down the stairs, and literally rub salt into her wounds. Baniszewski’s son John Jr., who was 12, sometimes forced Sylvia to lick his youngest sibling’s soiled diapers. After these beatings, Baniszewski would often order Sylvia to take a scalding hot bath to torture her even further.
Baniszewski eventually started denying Sylvia bathroom access and forced her to live in the basement, where she frequently soiled herself. By October, she was deprived of water and rarely fed — and subjected to even more torture by local neighborhood kids, many of whom joined in after hearing Baniszewski’s rumors of Sylvia’s supposed promiscuity.
Many of these kids paid five cents each to see or beat Sylvia — or watch even more sickening abuse take place. Perhaps most horrific, Gertrude Baniszewski began carving the words “I’m a prostitute and proud of it” into Sylvia’s abdomen with a heated needle, and when Baniszewski struggled to finish the etching, she had a neighborhood boy, Richard Hobbs, complete it.
Sylvia soon confided in her sister Jenny, “I’m going to die. I can tell.” Apparently, Gertrude Baniszewski knew the end was near too, as she soon forced Sylvia to write a letter to her parents claiming that she had run away and offered sexual favors to a group of boys, who fatally injured her.
The Shocking Arrest Of Gertrude Baniszewski
Sylvia Likens tried to escape after overhearing Gertrude Baniszewski’s plot to leave her in a forest to die, but only made it past the front door when Baniszewski caught up with her. Assisted by a neighborhood boy named Coy Hubbard, Baniszewski hit Sylvia with a curtain rod until she fell into unconsciousness. Then, Baniszewski stomped on her head, sealing her fate.
On Oct. 26, 1965, Sylvia died from a brain hemorrhage, shock, and malnutrition. It was clear from her injuries that her murder was torturous.
Wikimedia CommonsJenny and Sylvia Likens, pictured with their friends on Easter Sunday in 1965, just months before Sylvia’s murder.
Baniszewski ordered Richard Hobbs to call the police in an extreme panic, hoping to convince them — by providing police with the letter Sylvia wrote under duress — that Baniszewski wasn’t to blame for her death. It might have worked, were it not for Jenny bravely whispering to the cops.
“Get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything,” she said.
Soon, Baniszewski and her children Paula, Stephanie, and John were arrested on suspicion of Sylvia’s murder. Hobbs and Hubbard were soon arrested as well. Some other neighborhood children were also arrested on suspicion of causing some of Sylvia’s injuries, but not necessarily killing her.
Baniszewski brazenly denied any wrongdoing, and at one point, she claimed that Paula and Hubbard did “most of the damage,” and that she’d only forced Sylvia to sleep in the basement a few times for wetting the bed.
An autopsy revealed that Sylvia Likens’ official cause of death was a subdural hematoma from a blow to the temple, with shock and extensive injuries being contributing factors to her painful demise. Shockingly, there were more than 150 separate wounds across her body, including burns, broken fingernails, and a swollen vaginal cavity. Reportedly, despite the extensive damage to Sylvia’s genitals, her hymen was still intact, casting immense doubt on Baniszewski’s claims that the girl had been a prostitute.
The Trial And Death Of Gertrude Baniszewski
Wikimedia CommonsGertrude Baniszewski in court in 1965.
At her trial, Gertrude Baniszewski pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. But on May 19, 1966, she was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison, despite calls from many to give her the death penalty. Even her own lawyer thought she deserved the electric chair.
Paula Baniszewski was convicted of second-degree murder and also sentenced to life imprisonment. Richard Hobbs, Coy Hubbard, and John Baniszewski Jr. were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 2 to 21 years, due to the fact that they were all minors at the time of the murder. All three boys would be paroled after just two years behind bars. (Many other participants in the torture faced no charges because they were so young. Others got off because they decided to testify against Gertrude Baniszewski.)
As for Paula, her conviction was overturned in 1971 due to a technicality, but she decided to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter instead of facing another trial. That time around, she got a sentence of 2 to 21 years. She was ultimately paroled in 1972 and released completely in 1974, meaning she served about seven years total of her prison sentence.
Find a GraveGertrude Baniszewski died at age 60 from lung cancer.
Though Gertrude Baniszewski was eventually given a second trial, since the Indiana Supreme Court said jurors had been prejudiced by publicity during the first trial, she was convicted of first-degree murder again. Despite this, she was paroled in 1985, much to the dismay of Sylvia Likens’ loved ones.
After 20 years behind bars, Baniszewski was controversially released, despite protests from Jenny and others. Baniszewski changed her name to Nadine Van Fossan and moved to Iowa. The one piece of good news that Sylvia’s family had was that Baniszewski wouldn’t enjoy her freedom for long.
Baniszewski died of lung cancer in Iowa on June 16, 1990 at age 60.
After learning about Gertrude Baniszewski, read about Suzanne Capper, the British teen who was tortured to death by her “friends.” Then, go inside the heartbreaking murder of eight-year-old Gabriel Fernandez.
