Sylvia

A little over sixteen years ago, about the span of time Sylvia Marie Likens graced this world, I suddenly found myself with a lot of time on my hands.

I was in the hospital having survived a near-fatal accident which left me permanently disabled and irrevocably altered my life’s trajectory.  About midway through a two month stay, I was moved from the ICU to a room on the surgical ward.  The days dragged by.  One can only sleep so long or watch so much TV, so I went looking for reading material besides the newspaper and months-old magazines.  Fortunately, this hospital had a small branch of the local public library on the grounds.  As soon as I was able to get around on my own I paid a visit, wheeling myself over to the true crime shelf.

Browsing the stacks I came across a book titled The Basement.  Its subject was the 1965 torture murder of Sylvia Likens, a crime I had never heard of.  At first glance it looked like a mildly interesting damsel-in-distress story about an obscure murder from years ago.  What caught my attention was that the book’s author was Kate Millett.  I knew of Millett mostly from excerpts of Sexual Politics assigned in a college sociology class.  A look at the jacket blurb confirmed it was indeed the same Ms. Millett.  Curious as to why a feminist theorist would write a crime book and finding it marginally more interesting than the other titles on offer I checked it out with lukewarm enthusiasm and took it back to my room.

I got through The Basement in a couple of days.  I was not prepared for what I read.  The book intersperses the factual narrative of the Sylvia Likens murder with the fictionalized internal monologues of both victim and victimizers.  I returned the book to the library as soon as I finished.  I did not want it near me, and I would not read The Basement again until this past summer.  It left me deeply unsettled and in a low mood, a feeling which stayed with me for days.  I had a room to myself and at night I would stare at the ceiling in the dark unable to get the mental images to go away.  It came to the point where I would call the duty nurse claiming I was experiencing breakthrough pain when in fact I wanted the mental respite morphine would afford me.

The bad thoughts eventually subsided, replaced by more mundane concerns among the tedium of clinic appointments and occupational therapy sessions.  But for years, often apropos of nothing I can figure, persistent thoughts of Sylvia have recurred from time to time.  It becomes a preoccupation where for weeks or sometimes even months I feel driven to refresh my knowledge of the case and to add to it whenever possible.    

I can’t really explain my emotional investment in the Likens case, or why it resonates with me.  I’m not overly fond of kids, least of all the adolescent subspecies.  Nor am I particularly sensitive.  And yet, sometimes when I revisit the story after a long time the sadness it inspires can bring me to the edge of tears. 

Perhaps a brief introduction is in order, if you are unfamiliar with the facts.  Sylvia Likens was a sixteen year old girl living in Indianapolis in the summer of 1965.  Sylvia’s parents, who worked as concessionaires with a traveling carnival, needed to board their children while on the summer fair circuit.  Sylvia and her fifteen year old sister Jenny were left in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski, a gaunt, asthmatic woman who lived with her seven children, the youngest only a year old, in a ramshackle Eastside house.  Mrs. Baniszewski agreed to provide room and board for the girls for $20 a week. 

Over the ensuing sixteen weeks what began as an uneventful sojourn in the Baniszewski home became a waking nightmare.  Meals were skimpy.  Beds were shared.  Gertrude was a harsh disciplinarian who would lash out with little warning.  Two weeks into the sisters' stay she slapped Jenny, a polio victim who wore a leg brace, because the first $20 weekly payment hadn’t arrived from their parents on time.  (It came a day or two later.  Subsequent payments arrived as scheduled.) 

Gertrude’s ire soon focused on Sylvia.  The physical and emotional abuse intensified over the ensuing weeks.  The Baniszewski kids, along with a few from the neighborhood who hung around the Baniszewski home, joined in as a sort of pastime.  After Sylvia died on October 26^th, the 113^th day of her stay with the Baniszewski family, the coroner found a malnourished body, badly bruised, covered in an estimated 150 cigarette burns, with scalded and scraped patches of skin and a suppurating sore on her head.  Much of her hair had been roughly cut away.  Her genitals were bruised and swollen (from repeated kicks to the groin administered by Gertrude as it turned out).

In addition to her other injuries Sylvia had been branded on the abdomen with the words, “I’m a prostitute and proud of it!”  Above the tattoo was a burn mark in a figure 3.  To cope with the pain, Sylvia had chewed her lips raw and broken back her fingernails on the concrete floor of the basement where she had been confined for the previous two weeks.  (Sylvia had become incontinent from the constant abuse and was no longer allowed to live upstairs with the rest of the household.)  The coup de grace, however, came from repeated blows to the head which caused the brain hemorrhage that ultimately killed her. 

Gertrude told police Sylvia had disappeared for several days, returning the previous night half naked, branded, and clutching a handwritten note.  The note said she had gone off with a group of boys who then abused and abandoned her.  Gertrude said she and her family had ministered to Sylvia the best they could, but it wasn’t enough.  Daughter Stephanie said she had tried to resuscitate Sylvia while sending neighbor boy Ricky Hobbs to phone for help but Sylvia died before it could arrive. 

Jenny at first stuck to the story offered up by Gertrude, then told a police officer she would tell them everything if he would get her away from the Baniszewskis.  By the end of the evening Indianapolis police had arrested Gertrude and Ricky Hobbs on a preliminary charge of first-degree murder, formalized a few weeks later by a grand jury.  The three eldest Baniszewski children—Paula, Stephanie, and Johnny, as well as Stephanie’s boyfriend Coy Hubbard—were held initially on delinquency charges until indicted by a grand jury for first-degree murder.  Several other neighbor children who were hangers on at the Baniszewski house were also arrested and subsequently charged with injury to person.

Eventually, Gertrude, Paula, Johnny, Coy, and Ricky were tried together.  The prosecution delayed Stephanie’s trial presumably in exchange for her testimony; the charges against her were ultimately dropped as were the charges against the other children initially taken into custody. 

The trial itself was a lurid affair, with spectators vying for courtroom seats and the newspapers providing detailed daily coverage.  The fact the defendants were being tried together made the testimony confusing at times.  Gertrude blamed the kids for Sylvia’s death.  The kids blamed Gertrude.  Jenny Likens’ testimony, among the lengthier in the trial record if not the lengthiest, provided the most reliable details of her sister’s ordeal the previous autumn.  In addition to her visible wounds, Sylvia was systematically dehumanized by Gertrude and company.  The humiliations included Gertrude forcing Sylvia to undress and penetrate herself with an empty Pepsi bottle in front of the rest of the household on two occasions and making Sylvia drink urine and eat feces.  The handwritten note Sylvia supposedly carried with her when she returned after her purported absence from the Baniszewski home, along  with a second note handed by Gertrude to police were actually dictated to Sylvia by Gertrude as part of an abandoned plan to dump Sylvia in the woods.

And so forth.  Gertrude pled temporary insanity to no avail.  She was convicted of first degree murder.  Although the prosecution sought the death penalty, she was sentenced to life in prison.  Paula was convicted of second-degree murder and also drew a life sentence.  Johnny, Coy, and Ricky each was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to up to 21 years in prison.  Each served two years and was released on parole.  Ricky died of cancer in 1972 at age 21.

Citing undue publicity in the run up to the 1966 trial, the Indiana Supreme Court overturned Gertrude and Paula’s convictions.   Granted a change of venue, Gertrude was retried in 1971, convicted, and sentenced again to life imprisonment.  Paula pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter rather than go to trial and was paroled in 1973.

Gertrude was by all accounts a model prisoner and a mother figure to the younger inmates.  She was paroled in 1985 amidst public outrage.  She changed her name, moved to Iowa, and died of lung cancer in 1990.

It took me nearly 1,000 words to describe the essential facts of the Likens murder, and that was a basic summary.  I’ve read about it countless times, and I’m still dumbfounded by the vicious pack mentality which drove Sylvia’s tormentors.  Equally baffling was the apathy of the many adult bystanders who, while they might not have known everything that was going on, surely knew enough and could have stepped in to stop the abuse or at least gotten in touch with the authorities.

Sylvia and Jenny were in contact with a number of adults during the period in question.  Their parents visited the Baniszewski home several times and didn’t notice anything amiss.  Sylvia attended school from September until the first week of October.  A neighbor woman dropped by on two occasions and noticed Sylvia’s injuries and actually witnessed Paula assaulting Sylvia during her first visit.  She did and said nothing.  The family’s pastor and a public health nurse visited at various times and were told by Gertrude that Sylvia had become unmanageable.  The pastor did not insist on seeing Sylvia, and the nurse was told she was in juvenile detention.  Each accepted Gertrude’s stories and neither thought nothing more of it until after Sylvia was dead and beyond help.  Perhaps most vexingly of all, Jenny never spoke to anyone about her sister’s mistreatment until after it was too late.

That’s it, as succinct as I can make it within the confines of a blog post.  As I wrote earlier I’ve been at a loss to explain my preoccupation with a person whose existence ended before mine began, someone I could never have known, so I will give it a try.  I believe it is because when I first read of Sylvia I was very sick as well as physically and emotionally isolated.  I needed to feel sympathy for another human being.  I needed a break from feeling sorry for myself.  How could I feel bitter over my condition when I had already lived twice as long as Sylvia by that point and had experienced so much of life that she never had a chance to live?  Sylvia’s story resonated with me because I have an affinity for people who have endured great adversity, particularly those who have lived through serious illnesses or traumas.  I believe Sylvia possessed an uncommon inner strength which sustained her until her body finally gave out, a strength which is truly worthy of admiration.

If I had to choose another reason why I’ve remained partial to Sylvia it would be that my late mother was a Gertrude, a toxic, manipulative, and destructive person.  She differed from Gertrude only in the magnitude of her sins.  I also grew up in a similar milieu as the Likens, Baniszewskis, and the other kids involved (though I don’t remember anyone ever using the word “milieu” outside of school…or at school for that matter).  My family was always financially strapped due to my mother’s instability and irresponsible behavior.  For a time we even lived in a house without a stove, just like the Baniszewskis.  Like them we heated our meals on a hotplate.  And as far as discipline was concerned: I came of age in the early 1980s, when child abuse was only beginning to become a public issue.   Parents still pretty much had carte blanche when it came to how they corrected their kids.

But there’s even more to it for me.  Beyond identifying on a personal level, I find the setting of the Likens murder at odds with how we portray the Midwest in popular culture.  You know the stereotype: Norman Rockwell country, populated by hardworking, salt of the earth folks.  You expect strange stuff to go on in New York City and Los Angeles, not in places like Indianapolis.   Indiana in 1965 must have seemed like a fine, safe place to raise your kids.  (Then again, maybe I’ve read too many Jean Shepherd stories.)

The truth is that Indiana, and the Midwest itself, has its own dark side.  Indiana was a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.  (The state Grand Dragon, D. C. Stephenson, was convicted of kidnapping and raping an object of his affections who then took her own life.)  The Rev. Jim Jones founded the first incarnation of Peoples Temple in Indianapolis before decamping first to California and subsequently to Guyana.  In the years following Sylvia Likens’ death Indiana has seen its share of brutality, including the 1971 LaSalle Street massacre, the unsolved serial murders of gay men in late 1970s Indianapolis, and the 1992 killing of Shanda Sharer in Madison.  The juxtaposition of innocence and evil is hard for me to pass up.

Apparently I’m not alone.  In the years since I first read The Basement there has been a resurgence of interest in Sylvia Likens.  Indianapolis Star reporter John Dean’s account of the murder and first trial, House of Evil, out of print for decades, was reissued several years ago.  The case has also inspired two movies, The Girl Next Door (a treatment of a novel based on Sylvia’s murder) and An American Crime (about the case itself).  What surprised me most is how people have used cyberspace to contribute to public knowledge concerning the murder and its aftermath.  A website dedicated to Sylvia, www.sylvialikens.com, has been up for several years.  The site is exceptionally well curated and contains such treasures as transcripts from the first trial, rare photographs and news clippings, and a message board where Sylvia’s devotees can congregate.  It is clearly a labor of love. 

So, there it is.  I will follow up with a few posts with my thoughts on the Likens case in the hope that doing so will get Sylvia out of my system for a little while, though I know she will be back soon enough.

© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar