This column first appeared in November of 2009. The story contains graphic descriptions of child abuse. Reader discretion is advised.
I hesitated revisiting this saddest of all chapters from 1965 Indianapolis crime. I grew up in Indianapolis in the 1960s not far from the site of the torture-murder of an innocent 16-year-old girl. The home in which she died was located at 3850 E. New York St.. My home was located across from the old RCA plant around 10th and Sherman, just a couple blocks away; literally a short bike ride with two turns. I knew dozens of people that played with kids involved, including the victim herself, and I remember we just looked at it as the most horrible tragedy we’d ever heard of — not as the national spectacle it’s now become. Over the past two decades the story has become a lasting metaphor, symbolizing the abuse of women and children.
Sylvia Marie Likens was born on January 3, 1949, to unlucky parents, Lester and Betty Likens, whom history describes as clueless carnival workers. In July 1965, Sylvia and her 15-year-old sister Jenny, who was disabled from polio, were living with their mother in Indianapolis, when their mother was arrested and jailed for shoplifting. Lester Likens, recently separated from his wife, arranged for his daughters to board with Gertrude Baniszewski, a neighbor and the mother of Paula, a new friend of the Likens girls. Likens was aware that the Baniszewski family was poor, with seven dirty, malnourished-looking children. In fact, the Baniszewskis were so poor that they had only a single spoon in the house to eat with and they had to take turns using it. But Likens didn’t pry into the condition of the house, encouraged Baniszewski to “straighten his daughters out,” and he promised to pay her $20 a week.
Baniszewski herself was a grizzled looking, underweight asthmatic, suffering from depression and the stress of three failed, violently abusive marriages (one common law) that produced seven kids (13 pregnancies and six miscarriages) in her 37 years. Gertrude began taking her anger out on the Likens girls, and within two weeks of the girls’ arrival, she began beating them.
When the weekly payments began to arrive late, or sometimes not at all, Gertrude spanked both the Likens’ girls’ bare bottoms. In particular, the pretty, perky Sylvia became a target of the abuse. Sylvia naturally tried to shield her disabled sister, thus evoking the full wrath of Baniszewski’s anger, as she would accuse Sylvia of simply misbehaving or worse, with imagined crimes varying from shoplifting to prostitution.
The girls were beaten for stupid reasons like turning in pop bottles for change and buying candy with the proceeds at a nearby grocery, or for eating too much at a church dinner. The filthy conditions in the house also led to poor hygiene for Sylvia and her sister, which Gertrude used as yet another reason to beat them. These abuses escalated from paddling to beatings with belts, chairs, broomsticks, fists and kicks. Gertrude would also force Sylvia to eat her own vomit, throw scalding hot water on her, beat her in her private area, and eventually even burned and branded her flesh.
During this torture, Sylvia admitted that she had once had a boyfriend. Sylvia was forced into a scalding hot bath so she would be “cleansed of her sins.” Gertrude took the innocent revelation as direct evidence of the girl’s sexual promiscuity and, accusing the virginal Sylvia of being pregnant, kicked her several times in the crotch and focused her attacks on the groin area. Neighbors witnessed some of the abuse but didn’t report it to the police. Instead, some would even eventually join in with “Gerty” on the abuse.
In fact, it was Gertrude’s daughter Paula, 17, who was pregnant with an illegitimate child from a married man at the time — Sylvia’s “friend” Paula — who beat the hardest. Paula would take enjoyment from beating Sylvia in the head, even punching Sylvia so hard that she broke bones in her own hand. After having her hand put into a plaster cast, she used the heavy cast to beat Sylvia even harder.
The Baniszewskis accused Sylvia of spreading rumors at Arsenal Technical High School that Paula and her 15-year-old sister, Stephanie, were prostitutes. The charge was false but it prompted Stephanie’s boyfriend, Coy Hubbard, to physically attack Likens. Mrs. Baniszewski, Coy and his friends, tortured Likens by snuffing out their cigarettes on her skin and worse. Coy was a large brutal teenager who liked to practice judo kicks and flips on the diminutive Sylvia. Other neighborhood children involved in the beatings were Anna Siscoe, Randy Lepper, Judy Duke and Mike Monroe.
Eventually, Baniszewski pulled Sylvia out of school and did not allow her to leave the house. When, as a result of the abuse, the girl urinated in her bed, she was locked in the cellar and denied the use of the toilet. The girl was released only when Gertrude or the sadistic neighbor kids wanted to beat her. The young savages enjoyed throwing her around the concrete floors and repeatedly forcing her to climb the stairs — only to hurl her down the steps again. Later, she was forced to remain naked for days at a time and was made to consume feces and urine. Gertrude began to carve the words “I’m a prostitute and proud of it!” into Sylvia’s stomach with a heated needle, like some crude tattoo. Gertrude goaded neighbor Richard Hobbs into finishing the carving. Richard attempted to burn the letter “S” into the girl, but made the number “3” instead.
Bravely, Sylvia attempted to escape a few days before her death but was quickly caught and returned to her dungeon. As punishment, she was tied up under the stairs of the home’s basement and given only a few crackers to eat. The neighbors often heard Sylvia hitting the walls of the cursed basement with a shovel. Some thought about complaining to the police, not about suspected abuse, but about all the sleep they’d lost due to the racket. But nobody actually did complain.
Five days before Halloween of 1965, Sylvia did not respond to the kicks and pokes designed to arouse her for more beatings. (In court they claimed they were trying to give Sylvia a bath when they discovered she was not responding.) As Stephanie Baniszewski and Richard Hobbs realized that she wasn’t breathing, Stephanie made a crude attempt at mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before realizing that Sylvia was dead. On October 26, 1965, Sylvia died on a filthy mildewed mattress.
Stephanie sent Hobbs to call the police from a nearby pay phone. When investigating officer Melvin Dixon arrived at the home, described later in court as being a “cesspool,” the stunned man was handed a dirty, wrinkled piece of paper by Stephanie. It was a letter addressed to the Likens parents that she had forced Sylvia to write a few days before. This letter stated that she had agreed to have sex with a group of boys in exchange for money; they dragged her away in their car, beat her up, burned her multiple times, and carved the inscription into her skin.
The letter went on to say how she’d caused financial and emotional stress to Gertrude. The original plan was to blindfold Sylvia and dump her in nearby woods with the note. Before the police left, however, Jenny Likens approached them, saying, “Get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything.”
The cause of death was determined to be massive swelling of the brain, internal hemorrhaging, and shock induced by the extensive skin damage, compounded by extreme malnutrition.
(Story continued next week.)
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
