Sylvia - XIII: Coda

At a remove of fifty years, the story of Sylvia Likens is a commingling of fact and myth. 

It’s not likely we will ever have a complete picture of Sylvia and her life before Gertrude Baniszewski.  Only a few people who knew her well are still alive, and she lived in an era before people had the technology to overzealously document every other moment of their daily lives.  Even then first-hand accounts of the weeks the Likens sisters stayed with the Baniszewskis have a Rashōmon-like quality.  Nevertheless what we do know is sufficient to draw the appropriate conclusions, if not about Sylvia, then those concerning human nature and the state of society.   

It’s significant that the cinematic treatment of the Sylvia Likens case was titled An American Crime.  The inflicting of violence cloaked in angry self-righteousness upon people less able to fight back is quintessentially American though few of us will admit it.  It’s our seamy underbelly, the obverse of our Mom-and-apple-pie self-conception.  It’s difficult to think of a murder whose enactment was so protracted, so over the top in its cruelty occurring in another culture.  Recall that the chain of events leading to Sylvia’s death began as simple acts of bullying which subsequently escalated.  Violence and the threat of it is an institutionalized part of American life.  From the playground to the workplace to the street the whole calculus of American society is predicated upon exploitation of the weak and vulnerable by the strong and amoral. 

But before you have violence you must have cognition, a definition of the situation on both ends of the transaction.  The aggressor’s definition, of himself and his victim, is most often implicitly and mutually accepted.  The victim does not have a definition of his or her own because understanding is a function of naming.  Self-understanding itself is a matter of framing self-concepts.  We don’t understand what we can’t name.  Anything else is mere intuition, though intuition at its best can motivate discovery. Gertrude Baniszewski and the denizens of 3850 East New York Street defined Sylvia for themselves and used that definition to justify ending a young life. 

Why Sylvia was so passive in the face of the violence visited upon her will never be known though the theory she was protecting her sister Jenny is convincing.  I think Sylvia’s family was her whole world and she would have done anything for them.  If Sylvia sacrificed herself for her physically vulnerable sister it was from a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility.  Solidarity entails, no, demands sacrifice.  Sylvia would never have broken faith with her sister or any other family member, and I don’t think that under the circumstances any sacrifice would have been too great for her. 

Having turned the question of why over and over in my mind for many years, I am no closer to understanding the savagery of Gertrude Baniszewski and her confederates save to say that every walk of life contains a small percentage of what I will call “wreckers” for lack of a better word.  These are individuals with a nihilistic need to break things.  Or people.  In more affluent walks of life their destructive behavior may take the form of white collar crime, fraud, embezzlement, confidence games, and such.  Among the poor and ignorant it invariably takes the form of violence and physical destruction.   Society tolerates this behavior to a point.  Their misconduct serves a purpose for those living more gracious lives in that it permits them to indulge in self-congratulatory self-superiority.  And when their dissoluteness leads to murder?  We shake our heads, cluck disapprovingly, and more often than not do nothing further once the guilty parties are convicted and imprisoned.     

There will always be people who will question Sylvia and Jenny’s failure to report their own abuse.  This question is absurd on its face.  Even today, with mandated reporter laws and greater public awareness of child abuse and domestic violence, comparatively few victims come forward on their own.  Sometimes it’s from fear of retaliation.  Sometimes it’s dependency on the abuser when there is no place else to go.  Then as now it isn’t until the police are involved, most often when the worst has happened and someone is either badly injured or dead that abuse comes to light.  Together with the common acceptance of corporal punishment of children in 1965 the greater credibility of adults would have made an attempt to tell on Gertrude foolhardy and an invitation to even harsher treatment.  The sisters were in an untenable situation from the start.

We will never know for certain why Gertrude and Paula fixed their hatred upon Sylvia.  Gertrude claimed not to remember many of the events leading to Sylvia’s death, not that she was ever involved of course.  Paula has never offered an explanation following her statement to the police and she will undoubtedly carry her reasons to the grave.  I can only substitute my own explanation.  Sylvia was to the Baniszewskis what Noam Chomsky would call the threat of a good example.  She was proof that hard circumstances do not necessarily create hard, heartless people.  She saw the best in others and could not conceive that she would inspire the rage which was turned upon her.  Perhaps her manner was misread, though one has the impression Sylvia was as guileless as they come.  Even so, Marie Baniszewski testified Paula hated Sylvia because she believed Sylvia thought herself better than Paula.

I find it hard to believe Sylvia ever thought she was better than anyone else, even an execrable specimen of humanity such as Paula Baniszewski.  Sylvia Likens was one of nature’s aristocrats.  Despite her poverty, her rough surroundings, she possessed a certain innate grace which was anathema to her housemates.  Each of them, particularly Gertrude and Paula, was shamed by this.  They could not live up to her gentleness, her quintessential goodness, and so they had to destroy her.  Their crime against Sylvia was a morality play in which the moral exemplar wound up dead.  They killed Sylvia not only because they could, but because they needed to.   

This last point may explain their lack of remorse.  Sylvia’s murder is unforgiveable on this basis alone though it’s hard to imagine anyone directly affected by her death would be disposed to forgive.  The injured are under no obligation to forgive, and sincere expressions of remorse are rare anyway.  People generally apologize not because they are truly sorry but rather to avoid or mitigate consequences.  For the victim, forgiveness can be an invitation for further abuse.  Would Sylvia have forgiven her tormentors?  Only those who knew her well could say.  I can certainly understand why Jenny and other Likens family members were unforgiving.  Had I been in their place I would not forgive either. 

There was an abject failure of consequences in the Likens case.  I do not support the death penalty, but I do believe Gertrude Baniszewski should never have drawn another breath as a free woman once she was led out of 3850 East New York Street in handcuffs.  The others should have served their full sentences before being released rather than the minimum they actually spent behind bars. 

Perhaps the lesson of Sylvia Likens’ death is simply that it happened.  It was an illustration of both human indifference and the godawful baseness and brutality of human nature.  The village was not there for the child, and so she perished due to an absence of community accountability.   The inaction of moral simpletons like Phyllis Vermillion exemplify the inherent dangers of turning away and telling yourself it’s none of your business.   Sylvia and Jenny needed and deserved the love and protection of the people around them.  We did not care enough to save them from the tragedy which befell them.  We only cared about them after the fact, after the damage was done. 

The private nature of the family in our society is also to blame.  Our popular ideology extolls the family, and our laws safeguard its sanctity.  Combine that with our reflexive deference to authority and the relative absence of accountability of parents and caregivers and the nuclear family is rife with potential for physical and emotional abuse.  For every “normal,” nurturing family there must be several more where dysfunction reigns.  Absent greater transparency in the family child abuse and neglect will persist as one of our greatest social ills.

The passage of a half century has not lessened the emotional impact of Sylvia Likens’ death.  Much has been done since to increase awareness of child abuse but still not enough.  The ever-evolving concept of children’s rights has included protection from its beginning.  The legal dependency of children obliges not only their parents but their communities to ensure their physical and emotional wellbeing.  Every child has a basic human right to physical integrity which precludes the barbaric practice of corporal punishment.  Domestic corporal punishment has been banned outright by nearly fifty countries, and over the past twenty-five years strides have been made internationally to protect children.  The Convention on the Rights of the Child, though signed by the United States, does not carry the status of law as it remains unratified by the U. S. Senate.  Once Somalia completes the ratification process, the U.S. will be the only member of the United Nations which is not a party to the Convention.

Old standards die hard.  Ratification of the Convention in this country has been stalled by opposition from the Religious Right which opposes family transparency and whose policy preferences are to scale back or eliminate many of the social services which protect children.  Religious conservatism does not cause child abuse and neglect but the social climate it fosters makes it easier to conceal.  And to justify: The Baniszewskis loudly proclaimed their faith and virtue even as they tortured and killed Sylvia Likens and long after their convictions for the crime. 

Awareness is the first step on a long journey.  So much more must be done.  Will we have to wait another fifty years before we have measures in place that can decisively avert the death of another Sylvia Likens?

© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar

Sylvia - XII: Sense from Senselessness

We pay considerably more attention to the problem of child abuse and neglect today than when Sylvia Likens died in 1965. 

The crimes against Sylvia occurred in a time long before AMBER alerts, Megan’s Law, the awareness of stranger danger, and so forth.  Police and social services investigations of abuse in that era were hit or miss as we have seen when school nurse Barbara Sanders failed to follow up on allegations of Sylvia’s mistreatment.  Data collection and interagency information sharing were difficult before the advent of automation.  Young people disappeared and stayed missing with alarming frequency.  The Charley Project, a website devoted to unsolved missing persons cases, too often describes those before the 1980s with the ominous words, “Few details are available in his/her case.”  Technological advances and stronger legislation have helped us make enormous strides in identifying and intervening in instances of suspected child abuse and exploitation.  But better awareness notwithstanding, we too often learn of it after the fact when the damage is already done.   

Occasionally the abuse, or more accurately the neglect, is at the hands of well-meaning caregivers.  Anti-vaxxers are the most visible and vocal example of these, despite the junk science behind their cause.  In a similar, though more sensitive vein are parents who won’t seek medical treatment for their kids on the basis of their religious beliefs.  I’m reminded of the parents of a boy whose cancer came out of remission, refused to subject him to another round of chemo partly as a result of their religious conversion, and fled to Mexico with him to dodge a court order directing their son’s treatment. 

Curiously a figure in the Sylvia Likens case emerged years later to defend these very practices. After Marjorie Wessner left the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office she became counsel for the Christian Science church in Boston.  A child abuse prevention nonprofit’s newsletter from 1986 criticizes a speech by Wessner in which she claimed faith had cured several gravely ill children after doctors had predicted they would die and declared immunization a dangerous and ineffective practice.  But since these beliefs are a suburban, middle class soccer mom fad there are few if any sanctions against any damage they may lead to such as this year’s measles outbreak in Southern California.  By contrast efforts to prevent or mitigate familial abuse often focus disproportionately on the poor.

Child abuse and mental illness now have a higher profile partly thanks to mandated reporter laws which either didn’t exist or weren’t enforced in the 1960s.  The summer before Sylvia died the Indiana legislature enacted the state’s first mandated reporter law.  The law was sporadically enforced until it was revised in 1971 to give it more teeth.  I don’t recall much public discussion about child welfare until the middle of the 1980s.  When I was in elementary and high school there was not the bevy of social workers, counselors, learning disability specialists, child psychologists, and other student support services available to public school students today. 

When I was a social services case manager during a brief detour from academia I was struck by how much things had changed since I was a kid.  I worked in a very small town with fewer than a thousand residents.  Fourteen individuals under the age of eighteen lived on my block.  At one point nine of them were in the system for various reasons, including abuse, parents who were substance abusers, emotional or social adjustment problems at school, run-ins with the law, and so on. 

It seemed to me as if the town’s kids believed it usual to be troubled.  One morning I visited the elementary school to speak with a counselor about a client.  Taking a shortcut through the gym, a little girl who was maybe eight or nine years old noticed my county ID badge hanging from a lanyard around my neck.  She skipped up to me with a bright, expectant smile and asked sweetly, “Are you my social worker?”

I wasn’t, but the encounter made me think.  Morbidity is the new normal.  The nuclear family is the incubator; there is just a little more transparency now than in 1965.  The tendency even today is to preserve the family unless there is a clear danger to the child.  Mom smacked the kid in the grocery store parking lot?  A month of parenting classes will help her cope, at least until the next time she lashes out.  Dad’s meth head buddy who’s been crashing on the living room sofa has been taking liberties with the five year old daughter?  Send the child to counseling, that’ll patch things over.  Just don’t break up the family unit, no matter what.

Before industrialization increased individual mobility, both physical and social, extended families under one roof were the norm.  For although physical punishment of children was common, the presence of grandparents, aunts, and uncles in the household reduced stress on parents by sharing childcare responsibilities as well as discouraging more egregious forms of abuse with the presence of multiple pairs of eyes and ears in the household.  Such checks and balances made severe child abuse and domestic violence much more difficult to get away with.  Place the extended family in a community where neighbors are well acquainted with each other and you can reduce the incidence of child abuse and domestic violence even further. 

Greater accountability would have averted the Sylvia Likens tragedy.  Gertrude Baniszewski should never have been trusted with a houseplant, let alone a houseful of children.  This seemed to occur to no one.  It’s dumbfounding when you remind yourself yet again that so many people encountered the Likens sisters in the fall of 1965 and suspected nothing, nothing amiss.  There was so much at stake and seemingly no one saw.  No accountability, no consequences.  Once Sylvia was dead, the question of preventing that death was moot.  Moot, that is, except for her surviving family.

Consider the aftermath of Sylvia Likens’ death among her sisters and brothers.  Mental health problems seem to have dogged that generation of the Likens family.  Had Sylvia lived would she have dodged that bullet, particularly if she hadn’t crossed Gertrude’s path?  Her passivity in the face of Gertrude’s physical and emotional abuse is alarming.  Would she have stood up to or left an abusive boyfriend or husband?  Such stresses would adversely affect the health of an average individual let alone one who may have had a somatic propensity toward mental health disorders.

There is nothing to suggest that Lester ever experienced mental health problems, though Betty told a reporter in 1985 that since Sylvia’s death she had had difficulty holding down a job.  Sylvia’s elder brother Danny, who is believed to still be alive, is reported to have been chronically homeless throughout much of his life which is often correlated with mental illness and substance abuse.  No one, not even his relatives, seems to know his whereabouts.

Younger brother Benny is said to have been schizophrenic.  According to his grave marker Benny served in Vietnam though in what capacity we don’t know.  If he had been drafted rather than volunteered it might have been as part of Project 100,000, the Pentagon’s initiative to fill the ranks during the war under the guise of helping the underprivileged.  If he had experienced combat it could have aggravated whatever somatic propensity toward mental disorder he might have had.  Like Danny he was periodically homeless and was out of touch with his family when he passed away in 1999.  His father learned of Benny’s death when the post office returned a letter to him marked “deceased.”

I’ve written elsewhere of Jenny’s suffering though I believe it would have been much less severe or possibly nonexistent had she and Sylvia not been left with the Baniszewskis.  Among the siblings only Dianna seems to have been unscathed, in spite of having endured more tragedy in one lifetime than any individual should be expected to bear.  I think she is a remarkable lady.

Greater awareness has not precluded the possibility of more Sylvias.  Nearly two decades after the Likens case a California woman named Theresa Knorr tortured and killed two of her own teenaged daughters in 1984 and 1985.  Her first victim was elder daughter Suesan, whom she shot in a fit of anger and then kept tied up in the bathtub until she recovered.  Another argument led to Suesan being stabbed with a pair of scissors.  As with the gunshot Suesan was not afforded medical attention.  Fed up with the abuse Suesan told her mother she wanted to leave home.  Theresa agreed but only after the bullet lodged in Suesan was removed.  Suesan agreed but contracted blood poisoning following Theresa’s removal of the bullet with a hobby knife.  After her condition became worse Suesan was taken by her mother and brother to a remote mountain location about 100 miles from home, and left by the roadside after being set afire while still alive.   Law enforcement was initially unable to identify the body.

Suesan & Sheila

Less than a year later Theresa murdered her younger daughter, Sheila Sanders, after she became convinced Sheila, who had been forced into prostitution by Theresa, was pregnant and had contracted an STD which Theresa claimed she had gotten from a shared toilet seat.  Sheila died of dehydration after being tied up and confined to a closet until she confessed to what Theresa had accused her of.  Even after Sheila “confessed,” she was kept locked up a few more days until her mother finally discovered her dead.  When the odor of decomposition became noticeable, Sheila’s body was placed in a cardboard box, driven to a location near where her sister had been dumped, and set on fire.  As with Suesan, law enforcement was not at first able to make an identification.

Theresa, fearing detection, took her remaining children and went on the run after attempting to burn down their apartment to destroy any physical evidence.  Terry, the youngest of Theresa’s daughters, fearing with good reason she would be the next to die, ran away from home using Sheila’s ID to pass as an adult.  Terry attempted to report the murders to police in Salt Lake City after several years had passed but was not believed.  A therapist Terry was seeing also thought she was making it up.  (Strangely, Theresa lived nearby at the time though neither mother nor daughter was aware of this.)  Frustrated with the official inaction at home Terry contacted the authorities where her sisters were dumped.  Her story’s details matched those of their Jane Does. 

Theresa was charged with and convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.  For their involvement, one of her sons was sentenced to probation and counseling while the other received three years imprisonment.  The question of why hangs in the air, as it always does in such cases.  Terry believed her mother saw her adolescent daughters as sexual competition, an eerie parallel with the Likens murder.  Psychologists and criminal profilers familiar with Theresa Knorr tend to offer this explanation as well.

 

Theresa Knorr

Terry Knorr Walker remained in Utah for a time, later residing in Missouri until her death in 2011 at the age of 41.  Her mother is still alive and well.

The murder of the Knorr girls resonates with me for different reasons than Sylvia’s.   It is a matter of proximity both in time and in place.  The case occurred in a city near where I grew up.  Suesan and Sheila were both left a few minutes’ drive from my present home.  More importantly, Suesan and I were the same age.  This was a girl I could have gone to high school with.  Likewise with Sheila.  Terry was a few years younger than I, but she was close enough in age to where I could still relate to her personally.  (My thoughts on Terry are much like mine on Jenny Likens.  I see them both as hapless figures whom the world should have treated more compassionately.)  Much like Gertrude Baniszewski, Theresa Knorr is to me a somewhat more malevolent version of my own mother whom I believe would have been capable of the same animalistic behavior under the right circumstances.   I cannot dwell much on the Knorr murders.  Too close to home in so many ways.

I try to reassure myself that improvements in awareness and detection have greatly lessened the possibility of another Sylvia Likens tragedy.  Child Protective Services may be overloaded with cases and follow through may suffer at times, but they nevertheless represent a line of defense.  But I also know that kids fall through the net sometimes, as in the 2009 death of sixteen year old Jeannette Marie Maples in Oregon.  Jeanette had spent much of her early childhood in the foster care system due to her mother’s drug use before being returned to her mother at age seven. 

Jeannette Maples

Jeannette was a good student but found it hard to fit in because her mother would send her to school in worn and dirty clothing.  Jeannette’s teachers had noticed she had lost a considerable amount of weight a year earlier and made a report to CPS.  The girl’s mother, Angela McAnulty, assured the investigators everything was fine and accused her daughter of lying about being starved.  Angela thereafter opted to “homeschool” her daughter.  Subsequent calls to CPS by Jeannette’s grandmother were not looked into.  

Angela and her husband, Richard, ramped up their campaign of abuse until Jeannette could bear no more.  Paramedics found her lying in the living room, topless and with wet hair.  Resuscitated, she later died at the hospital.  The coroner noted Jeannette was badly bruised and her body was covered with scars and open sores.  One wound had exposed her femur.  Her front teeth were broken out.  She was also severely dehydrated.  Angela claimed Jeannette had fallen earlier but had seemed fine at first until she suddenly stopped breathing.  Officials said the girl had died from intentional malnutrition and torture. 

Police investigation of the house turned up blood spatter in Jeannette’s bedroom.  Family members admitted Angela tried to clean the mess before calling for help.  Caught in a chain of lies Angela finally admitted to detectives she abused her daughter, remarking that she should have taken up smoking instead of taking her frustrations out on Jeannette.  At trial witness testimony revealed Jeannette would drink from the toilet or the dog’s water bowl to cope with her thirst, that she was forced to sleep on the floor on a sheet of cardboard so her blood would not stain the carpet, that she was often tied up at night, that Angela and Richard would beat her face with shoes, and that the family would feed Jeannette dog feces.  Richard McAnulty received a life sentence without the possibility of parole.  Angela McAnulty was sentenced to death.  She is currently the only woman on Oregon’s death row and only the second in the state’s history to draw a death sentence.

Angela McAnulty

In another egregious case of protracted abuse leading to death, an Australian girl named Louise O’Brien died in October 2008 under circumstances unnervingly similar to those of Sylvia Likens.  Louise was fifteen when her mother Kathy McDonald sent her to stay with Patricia Goddard, a family friend, in 2005.  Kathy planned to move to the same town as Goddard and wanting to avoid having Louise change schools midyear sent her on ahead.  Kathy made routine payments to Goddard for Louise’s maintenance.

Louise O'Brien

Kathy made frequent visits to Goddard and Louise, as had Lester and Betty Likens with their daughters during their stay at the Baniszewskis.   Nothing struck Kathy amiss during any of these visits.  They continued until one day when a strangely hostile Patricia Goddard told Kathy that Louise no longer wanted to see her mother.  Louise appeared suddenly, however, sporting a black eye.  Goddard angrily shooed Louise away and shut the door in Kathy’s face.  Kathy never saw her daughter alive again.

Kathy complained to the authorities, who told her there was nothing to be done since Louise was old enough to make her own decisions.  Kathy’s pleas to Goddard were ignored.  Finally, she was told Louise had run off to Melbourne with a boyfriend.   Louise’s whereabouts were unknown until March 2011when police found her remains in a wheelie bin buried in Goddard’s backyard.

During the investigation police learned that Louise had been a virtual slave in the Goddard household, cooking for Goddard and her daughter and keeping house.  Louise was subjected to frequent beatings to keep her in line.  Like Sylvia, Louise’s food intake was severely restricted.  Like Sylvia, Louise was sometimes forced to eat disgusting things such as the scabs from her wounds.  On one occasion reminiscent of the hot dog episode at the Baniszewski’s house Goddard put so much hot sauce on Louise’s food it made her vomit.  Goddard would also burn Louise as punishment.  On her infrequent sorties into the neighborhood people noticed the sores and bruises visible on Louise.  Sometimes she would go from house to house begging for food.  No one is known to have contacted the police or social services about her, though.

Louise died in a similar manner as Sylvia.  Louise had aroused Goddard’s anger in some way.  Depending on which theory you prefer Goddard either threw a claw hammer at Louise accidentally striking her in the head or she deliberately bludgeoned Louise to death with it.  Either way Louise O’Brien died from the same cause as Sylvia Likens, a subdural hematoma.  Sylvia died slowly in a basement.  Louise died slowly, shut up in a trailer behind the Goddard house.

Unlike Gertrude Baniszewski, Patricia Goddard did not panic at the death of her charge.  Consulting her daughter Tracey, who was travelling with a carnival, Goddard decided to stuff Louise’s body in a plastic trash bin and bury it in the back yard.  Enlisting the help of an 18-year-old neighbor boy, she was able to conceal the evidence without anyone the wiser until the police were finally tipped three years later.

Patricia Goddard got off even more lightly than Gertrude, at least legally, though being much older than Gertrude at the time of her conviction she never drew a free breath again.  Goddard pled guilty to manslaughter and died behind bars a year or so later.

Patricia Goddard

There were many similarities between Sylvia and Louise.  Both were sweet natured and unassertive in the face of adult authority.  People in the neighborhood suspected abuse in each case but did nothing.  Both Gertrude and Patricia Goddard were able to cover up the seeming absence of their young housemates with stories no one bothered to verify.  The ensuing trials of both women were media circuses.  And once justice, so called, was done little more was.  Public attention moved on to the next spectacle.

Something dark lurks in the depths of the human soul.   Pushed in the right (wrong?) direction any of us are capable of anything.  We all have destructive impulses.  We’re left to ponder why relatively few of us act upon them and are shocked when we recognize those who do.  We can rarely discern what compels them.  Gertrude Baniszewski’s actions beggar comprehension.  It is all anyone can do to find even a scintilla of sense in them. 

© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar

Sylvia - XI: A Way to Tell a Story

What seems madness to a detached observer can have a strange banality to those living within it. 

Consider the subjective experiences of those residing at 3850 East New York Street in the autumn of 1965.  Homework, afterschool jobs, and the casual, almost offhanded tormenting of a housemate.  Everyone sitting down for supper after getting their licks in on Sylvia.  The neighborhood kids casually hanging around the living room after school while Sylvia is bullied into stripping in front of them and violating herself with an empty soda bottle.  Mrs. Lepper dropping by to visit Gertrude accompanied by Randy, who is “dressed as a girl,” commiserating with Gertie over the bad rash covering her face.  Gertie’s arrest for defrauding a paper boy.  The supposed burglary attempt by the neighbor man in the other unit of the Baniszewski double.  Marie and Jenny raking leaves to earn pocket money while Sylvia slowly expires in the basement.  The unadorned transcripts of the witnesses’ testimony leaves the first time reader a trifle disoriented, as if we have pitched forward and fallen through the looking glass into a world of nonchalant horror.  How could any of this have seemed normal to anyone of sound mind?

There are two morals to be learned from Sylvia Likens’ death.  One is that the nuclear family, so valorized in our culture, can be a cloak for exploitation, abuse, and neglect.  Another is that an absence of a strong community can put individual members at risk of being victimized.

The mob which tortured and killed Sylvia exemplify an extreme twist on in-group morality.  Social cohesion depends upon distinguishing insiders from outsiders and who is allowed in the group.  There is a survival imperative in this dynamic dating back to pre-civilization.  But it also gives a psychological boost to those doing the excluding.  You see, it’s fun to exclude others.  It heightens your own sense of superiority.  When Sylvia arrived in Gertrude Baniszewski’s home she presented a dual threat to Gertrude.  First, she was an extra mouth to feed in an already crowded house.  Secondly, her youth and attractiveness made her implicit competition for an aging woman who liked to flirt with the neighborhood boys.  Gertrude would neutralize Sylvia’s perceived threat by universalizing it to include her family, followed by giving license to her children and the other kids hanging about the house to mistreat Sylvia.  

Prosecutor Leroy New told the jury in his summation that the first obligation of the defendants had been to leave Sylvia Likens alone.  Such a simple charge, to refrain from doing something.   And yet they could not.  The Baniszewskis had a poor sense of boundaries.  Because Gertrude and her children did not respect themselves, they could not respect others.  Destroying Sylvia was an expression of their nihilistic worldview.  Her prettiness and sweet disposition were at odds with the ugliness of their daily reality and they resented her for it.  Despite their shared indigence, her life held promise while theirs did not. 

Culpability lies with each of the Baniszewski children, except for baby Denny and perhaps little Jimmy. Paula and Johnny were responsible for the worst of the punishment.  Stephanie’s involvement was minimized at trial so her testimony would win convictions; she was probably as responsible for Sylvia’s death as the other two siblings.  The younger ones played their own part in their mother’s plan.  Marie brought the urine for Sylvia to drink.  Shirley heated the sewing needle Ricky Hobbs used to tattoo Sylvia. 

Perhaps Stephanie was right when she told reporters if her mother and siblings hadn’t killed Sylvia they would have eventually turned on her instead.  I can see this.  Stephanie and I each occupied similar positions in our respective families.  (Note well: This is the only time I will ever compare myself to any Baniszewski.)  Like Stephanie, I was the smart kid in a socially marginal family.  My functionally illiterate and emotionally unstable mother was, needless to say, unsympathetic to my scholastic aspirations.  I was also frequently scapegoated by her for things I either did not do or which were beyond my control.  I got out as soon as I could and got myself as far away from her as I could.

I think the “crab mentality” was as prevalent in the Baniszewski family as it was in mine.  Any attempt to climb out of the bucket would be met by being seized and dragged back down by the other crabs.  I don’t admire Stephanie’s selling out her mother, sister, and brother to escape, particularly since she was undoubtedly as guilty as they, but I understand it. 

In the half century since Sylvia’s murder the Baniszewskis perfected the art of hiding in plain sight.  John, Sr., his name tarnished by the actions of his ex-wife and children, changed it to Blake.  His younger children also adopted the new name. 

Once released from prison, Paula left Indiana for Iowa after marrying.  Gertrude joined her there after she was paroled.  Paula managed to keep a low profile until 2012 when her identity and role in the Likens murder was discovered.  Someone who knew of the crime stumbled across Paula’s Facebook page.  She was fired from her position as a high school classroom aide in the wake of public outrage. 

Gertrude never did fully admit to her role in Sylvia’s death and persisted with her claim she was unaware of her children’s actions.  At her 1985 parole hearing she gave that peculiar expression of regret so common in our culture, the non-apology apology.  Gertrude admitted responsibility for the death of “that girl,” mostly avoiding mention of Sylvia’s name.  Apparently that was sufficient for the parole board, which voted 3-2 to let her go.

Johnny was the only participant in Sylvia’s murder who ever expressed any remorse after being “born again,” though his sincerity is questionable given how the Baniszewskis wore their religion on their sleeve.  (In a 1998 interview Johnny remarked that Sylvia died because “she was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” as if Sylvia was the victim of some random act of God.)  After attending Baptist Bible College in Missouri, Jerry Falwell’s alma mater, Johnny worked as a lay minister and sold real estate.  He died in 2005. 

Little is publicly known of Marie, Shirley, and Jimmy after the trial.

Dennis Wright, Jr., an infant at the time of the murder, was placed in foster care and eventually adopted.  While his adoptive family was harsh towards him growing up, Denny by all accounts did his very best to live a good life.  He died in 2012 leaving behind a wife and children. 

Stephanie, in contrast with her other siblings, has been quite visible particularly on social media.  Unlike for Paula this hasn’t had any meaningful repercussions for her.  Several years ago Stephanie, reportedly a retired schoolteacher living in Florida, posted a story about Sylvia to her MySpace page titled “Silly and Me.”  The story has made the rounds of the Sylvia tribute sites to predictable outrage.

Although she did not testify to this at trial Stephanie claimed she actually first met Sylvia when they attended kindergarten together in the 1950s.  They became fast friends even though Sylvia was a year and a half older than Stephanie.  The two became so close they had pet names for each other; Sylvia was “Silly” and Stephanie was “Stessy” (because little Sylvia said her name with a lisp).  They would play house together after school with a couple of neighborhood boys.  Sylvia would hold and comfort Stephanie after her epileptic fits even though the other kids made fun of Stephanie over them.  They remained close until Sylvia moved away at the end of the year.

Let’s pause for a moment before I go on.  I don’t know if Stephanie appreciates the irony of a story in which she, one of the gang that bullied and tortured Sylvia Likens to death, claims Sylvia comforted her after she was bullied when they were little girls. 

Of course, Stephanie would say that this is her point: “I loved Sylvia.  I couldn’t possibly have hurt her.”  (Which creepily sounds an awful lot like the alibis offered up by men who kill their wives and girlfriends.)   The Silly n’ Stessy story is offensive because it is a brazen attempt at whitewashing Stephanie’s own culpability by diverting attention from it.  Stephanie admitted to participating in the abuse on the stand, although what she admitted to in exchange for going free had to have been a watered-down version of what she actually did.   

So, why didn’t she mention their childhood friendship earlier?  Stephanie explained that trial evidence is not intended to elicit irrelevant information, which is true enough.  Perhaps Leroy New was aware of the alleged prior relationship and opted to leave it out.  If it was omitted it wouldn’t be subject to cross-examination by the defense and so it did not come out at the time.  But why are we learning about this nearly fifty years after the trial?  Stephanie claims she had never followed the coverage of the Likens case after the first trial ended until just a few years ago.  She said she was shocked by how she was depicted in the various news articles and books about the murder and simply wanted to defend herself. 

Apparently there are folks who question or downplay the Baniszewskis’ guilt, and Stephanie has a coterie of online supporters.  Stephanie has also had exchanges with those who feel she should have been tried and convicted with the rest of the defendants.  Replying to the moderator of a Sylvia memorial website who challenged her story, Stephanie asserted that she had been “exonerated” back in 1966 and had nothing to explain or justify.  Of course having the charges against you dropped in exchange for your testimony is hardly exoneration.  It is because so much of the prosecution’s case against Gertrude and the others depended on Jenny Likens’ testimony and another material witness was needed from the Baniszewski household that Stephanie got the deal she did.  No matter the official denials a deal by any other name is still a deal.

But wait, there’s more.  In the aforementioned exchange between Stephanie and the moderator, Stephanie accused her of distracting attention from present day social problems.  Stephanie wrote that if people really wanted to honor Sylvia’s memory they should help vulnerable youth such as teenage prostitutes.  That got a reaction.  Most of the online commentary over that remark found it disturbingly redolent of the “I’m a prostitute and proud of it!” tattoo Sylvia’s murderers burned into her belly.  It would be much more appropriate to urge people to work on behalf of abused children and domestic violence victims, would it not?  But Stephanie simply stuck by her words and did not take them back.

Who knows whether the Silly n’ Stessy story is true.  Its credibility is in the eye of the beholder but please consider the source.  I find Stephanie the scariest of the Baniszewskis.  The others were as dumb as dirt and meaner than pit bulls.  Easy enough to recognize.  Stephanie is positively reptilian.  She combines the rotten moral core of the rest of her family with an articulate sociopathic charm.  But she’s a great storyteller, I’ll give her that. 

Stephanie also has a well-honed sense of drama noticeable during the Likens girls’ stay and beyond, as well as sharing Gertrude’s hypochondria.   Stephanie was frequently home sick from school during the sisters’ stay (and yet now claims ignorance of what was happening with Sylvia).  There are Stephanie’s supposed epileptic fits…or fainting spells, take your pick.   They always seemed to occur during the most tension laden moments in the Baniszewski house.   Gertrude wasn’t above leveraging her daughter’s health woes for attention’s sake, telling Rev. Roy Julian during one visit that she feared Stephanie had a brain tumor.  Asked about her state of health during the trial Stephanie complained of high blood pressure.  A brain tumor and high blood pressure?   Makes you wonder how she lived as long as she has.

There’s something else you should know about Stephanie—she’s sensitive.  John Dean notes several episodes in House of Evil in which Stephanie breaks down in tears over all the family discord.  Stephanie socked Sylvia in the jaw for spreading rumors, but she cried afterward.  She slapped Sylvia after the first Pepsi bottle incident, but she cried afterward.  She cried when she discovered Sylvia was dead, never mind her role in bringing about that death.  At every other critical juncture in the story we have Stephanie turning on the waterworks.  Almost at will…

I suppose what I (and quite a few other people) find most offensive is Stephanie’s repeated proclamations of faith and how she was “saved” and is therefore forgiven.  I won’t delve into the theology of fundamentalist Protestantism, but I find it difficult to understand how so many of its followers can use it to justify judging others while claiming to have their worst deeds washed clean because of it.  Some of the angriest, most vindictive people I have ever known were "saved," "born again" Christians.

But this can't be true in every case.  I am an atheist but I believe if your religious faith helps you become a better person then it is a good thing.  Sylvia was raised with similar beliefs and they surely helped shape her into the fine young person she was and would have been.  It’s when the same religion is used to justify hatred, bigotry, and abuse, or when people hide behind it to cover their misdeeds that I take exception.  Stephanie is not remorseful.  Accordingly, she should not be forgiven.  Not by God, not by man. 

Stephanie’s public profile has had me musing over the legal consequences she escaped in 1966.  The state had initially sought a first-degree murder conviction and the death penalty for all the principal defendants including Stephanie.  But consider: The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office and Stephanie both denied that the charges against her were to be dropped in exchange for her testimony.  It would follow, then, that there is no enforceable written agreement binding on the state.  There is no statute of limitations on first-degree murder, but being that only Gertrude was convicted of this charge it would make the possibility of a new indictment on this charge remote.  (Also, if indicted for first-degree murder Stephanie would not be eligible for the death penalty since she was a juvenile at the time of the crime per the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Roper v. Simmons.) 

That leaves the possibility of a new indictment on charges of voluntary manslaughter, assuming that the fact a jury was empaneled before her severance from the other defendants in 1966 doesn’t invoke double jeopardy.  But let’s say double jeopardy doesn’t apply.  There is another matter to consider.  Normally Indiana’s statute of limitations for this offense is five years, which means under ordinary circumstances Stephanie would have been out of the woods by 1970. 

However Indiana law apparently allows certain situations where the circumstances of the case merit no time limit on prosecution.  A particularly grotesque torture-murder of a child would certainly qualify, no?  Even if Stephanie was only sentenced to time served for her stint in jail before and during the ’66 trial at least she would be assessed her share of responsibility in Sylvia Likens’ death.  (A conviction would result in Stephanie losing her teaching credential, though since she is retired it probably would be a moot consequence.  But since she resides in Florida, a felony record would also lead to her losing certain civil rights such as the right to vote.  Icing on the cake.)

Ah, but the trial’s the thing.  Absent a guilty plea we would need a trial.  The Sixth Amendment affords the accused the right to confront her accusers.  The principal material witness, Jenny Likens, passed away years ago.  Johnny Blake, Coy Hubbard, and Ricky Hobbs are no longer alive.  The detectives who investigated the crime are long since deceased.  The coroners Drs. Kebel and Ellis have both shuffled off this mortal coil.  So many other witnesses, among them Lester and Betty Likens, Randy Lepper, Anna Siscoe, Mike Monroe, Darlene McGuire, and the Rev. Roy Julian are no longer here to speak.  Just as importantly it is probable that save for the crime scene and autopsy photos any evidence collected was destroyed or lost long ago.  So, we are left with a tantalizing possibility forever beyond our reach.  Stephanie will go to her grave having gotten away with it.

I’m not sure which is worse, denial of responsibility or a blatant lack of remorse.  When asked about his relationship with Sylvia, Ricky Hobbs shrugged and said he didn’t know her very well.  Hobbs showed the same nonchalance when he testified at Gertrude’s 1971 retrial a few years after he had finished his own prison sentence.  Terminally ill with cancer and recovering from surgery, Ricky was a trifle irritable on the stand.  Questioned about his responsibility for the “I’m a prostitute” tattoo Ricky answered, “What difference does it make now?”  Quite a lot, actually.

Coy Hubbard, who probably struck the head blow that led to Sylvia’s death, remained in Indianapolis after he was released from prison.  Went back inside for a while for armed robbery.  Accused of the murder of two men in the late 1970s but never convicted.  Didn’t even change his name like the Baniszewskis.  Had the unmitigated gall to name his son after himself.  Complained bitterly when he was let go from his mechanic’s job after An American Crime came out.  Died at age 57.  No loss to the world.

Some of the surviving supporting players in Sylvia’s murder resurface periodically, bearing tales.  After Jenny died an article ostensibly about her appeared in The Weekly View, an Indianapolis community paper.  The article was actually about Judy Duke, one of the neighborhood kid-mob who tormented Sylvia. 

The article claimed Judy’s only involvement with the case was her friendship with Jenny, a relationship no one had heard of until then.  Judy said she protected the disabled Jenny from bullies at school.  The first time she noticed Sylvia at the Baniszewski home was at a birthday party.  Sylvia was supposedly confined to the basement by this point.  In Judy’s telling, Sylvia (or, “the naked girl” as Judy insisted on referring to her) came upstairs to the kitchen and grabbed a slice of cake from Judy’s plate and stuffed it in her mouth.  In retaliation Gertrude pushed Sylvia back down the basement stairs.  Judy saw “the naked girl” two more times and said she was disturbed by the abuse.

How strange.  It’s like listening to Germans who lived through the 1930s and 40s.  None of them supported the Nazis or bore any ill will against Jews.  Not a one.  Judy’s self-serving denial of her role in Sylvia’s death makes my skin crawl, as does her repeated failure to refer to Sylvia by name.  Unsurprisingly, Judy described herself as a born-again Christian.  The weeks she spent in jail after Sylvia’s death were in Judy’s memory an effort on the prosecution’s part to protect a witness.  (Judy was initially charged with injury to person.  That’s why she was in jail.  This reporter was awfully credulous.  He amusingly described Judy as a “precocious 12 year old” in 1965.  John Dean, on the other hand, described her as having a “lagging IQ.”) 

Toward the article end Judy was asked about the fate of her good friend Jenny Likens.  Judy didn’t know.  She thought Jenny had been adopted by one of the trial attorneys or something like that. 

Or something like that.  For each of the participants in Sylvia’s murder Sylvia and Jenny seem little more than furniture in their self-interested accounts.  I don’t understand why Judy agreed to an interview.  Most of the others, save for Johnny, never spoke publicly of what happened in the Baniszewski home in the fall of 1965.  Perhaps the only positive thing I can say about Paula is that at least at some point her dim intellect grasped she had actually done something wrong and thereafter opted to keep her damn piehole shut.  

It is very difficult to think of the Baniszewskis as being any kind of family in the proper sense.  I think back to the anonymous doctor’s disdainful comment to John Dean that the Likens were “trash.”  No, they were just poor.  Lester and Betty worked hard to keep the family afloat.  They were generally law abiding people who loved their children.  They did not flout community mores. 

By contrast the Baniszewskis conducted themselves like animals.  John, Sr. was a thug with a lawman’s badge and a deadbeat dad to boot.  Gertrude was a wheezing hag with an unsavory taste for young boys.  Paula was a tramp and a bully.  It wasn’t poverty that made the Baniszewskis trash; it was their lack of character and their foul behavior.  The poverty defense, as Leroy New aptly stated, does not wash.  As with us all there were choices for them to make and it is self-evident the Baniszewskis chose poorly every time. 

In the end the Baniszewski children and their friends were Gertrude’s willing accomplices.  And in the end Sylvia’s torture and murder laid bare a singular irony:  Gertrude failed at the very thing she relied upon as the bedrock of her identity, motherhood.   

© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar

Sylvia - X: The Prosecutor (Or, The Importance of Being Leroy New)

Of all the people concerned in the aftermath of the Sylvia Likens murder, the one I most would have liked to have met is Leroy K. New. 

I think it’s because as a quiet person I’m fascinated by people with big personalities.  Researching New’s life and career, my opinion of the man wavers between bemusement and unabashed admiration.  I’m not sure how he would take someone like me.  Although I hope we would find common ground on certain issues, Leroy New espoused a much different worldview from my own.  He was a staunch Nixon Republican and an eager combatant in the early battles of the culture wars, so there would probably have been a few topics of conversation to avoid.  However, the people who knew him best remembered him as an upright, loyal, and generous man who strove to better the lives of those around him.

New was involved with a number of organizations and causes including his church, the Boy Scouts, the Carmel-Clay (Indiana) Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club, and the Masons.  He was active with the local musicians union throughout his life and was a founding director of the Indianapolis Municipal Orchestra as well as a supporter of the Carmel Symphony Orchestra.  He also possessed an entrepreneurial spirit.  During and after his tenure with the Prosecutor’s Office New engaged in a side career as a real estate developer in Florida, even founding and serving as president of the utility company that supplied the development’s water.  Public records also indicate that for a time New owned a private investigations agency in Carmel.  In addition to all this, during his time as a prosecutor New maintained a side practice specializing in probate law. 

By accounts New enjoyed horseback riding and fishing in his free time and he owned a small stable of BMW motorcycles over the years.  True to form as a skilled courtroom litigator, he was something of a raconteur.  New’s 2005 obituary is a litany of accomplishments by a man who devoted himself to family and community. 

Leroy Kenneth New was a Leap Year baby.  He was born in Alexandria, Virginia, on February 29, 1920, as his father, Edward Funston New, Sr., completed his legal studies at American University.  After graduation the family moved to Indiana.  Something of a prodigy, Leroy and his brother Edward, Jr. (a future judge) were regular performers on a local radio show as small children.  A gifted musician who played the saxophone and piano,[1] he was part of the opening band in the movie The Wizard of Oz and toured for a while with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.  He entered Butler University at age sixteen, transferring to Stetson University in Florida after three years.  At Stetson, he pledged Sigma Nu and played baseball and tennis.  While at university, Leroy met his future wife Joyce whom he won over by serenading her with the song “For You” outside her dormitory window.

New went on to earn his law degree from Indiana University.  He joined the U.S. Coast Guard during the Second World War after he and his brother resigned from the Navy V-7 commissioning program.  New served at the Coast Guard Academy and overseas in Italy and was discharged in 1945 as a Musician First Class. 

Returning home, New entered the practice of law.  With his wife and two daughters they built a life for themselves in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel.  In 1957 New became Chief Trial Deputy under Marion County Prosecutor Noble Pearcy.  He would work in this capacity for the next 18 years.  State Senator Lawrence Borst described Pearcy and New’s working relationship in his autobiography.  According to Borst, New handled the day-to-day running of the Prosecutor’s Office while Pearcy schmoozed with Marion County’s Republican luminaries hosting weekday afternoon cocktail parties at his home.  (Pearcy’s relationship with the GOP’s Indianapolis nabobs wasn’t always a perfect one; the easygoing Pearcy did not get on well with the ambitious County Republican Central Committee chair L. Keith Bulen.  Pearcy had not supported Bulen’s previous candidacies before Bulen was finally elected in 1966.)

It’s interesting to look at New’s career in the context of Indianapolis politics.  In the state where I live local political offices such as district attorney are nonpartisan.  A mayor or county supervisor may be a Democrat or Republican but they cannot campaign or hold office as such.  In Indiana this is not the case.  Leroy New was a member in good standing of the Indianapolis Republican establishment.  He was an ally of an up-and-coming politician named Richard Lugar, who would fill two terms as Mayor of Indianapolis and later serve Indiana in the U.S. Senate for 36 years.  There is a fair amount of correspondence in the Lugar archive at the University of Indianapolis either with New or in which New is mentioned.   

Here is where I should offer a caveat considering our perspective on Leroy New.  Considering the totality of his life and career I believe it important to parse his public career and private life.  New the family man and community leader presents a rather different picture from that of his career as an attorney and prosecutor.  For although he was widely respected in law enforcement circles not everyone was an admirer.  A man in Leroy New’s position is bound to acquire enemies along the way.  Gertrude Baniszewski’s lawyer William Erbecker is said to have roundly disliked New and may have harbored a grudge over cases he had lost to him.[2]  (Erbecker’s ill feelings probably weren’t assuaged when at one point in the trial New called Erbecker’s courtroom antics “buffoonery.”)  Johnny and Coy’s attorney Forrest Bowman was and is a pointed critic.

In his memoir of the first Likens trial, Forrest Bowman is forthright in his assessment of both New the man and New the lawyer.  Bowman describes New as “vain to the point of haughtiness.”   As Chief Trial Deputy Counsel, New could pick and choose which cases he tried personally.  Bowman accuses New of taking on only high profile cases, particularly where there was a “sexual element.”  He is also critical of what he considered New’s indifference to the finer points of criminal procedure: Bowman had lost two trials to New before the Likens case but both clients’ convictions were reversed on appeal.  Bowman notes sourly that this did not concern New much because it is trials rather than appellate court decisions which get publicity.

After Bowman’s book came out the Sylvia message boards lambasted his treatment of New, partly because of New having put Gertrude and Paula Baniszewski behind bars and partly because his family had cared for Jenny Likens after the trial.  Notwithstanding this Bowman raises valid points about New’s lawyering skills.  New was a successful trial attorney due to his rhetorical talents and ability to sway juries.  Looking over opinions of some of the criminal appeals New handled in private practice he seems to have been less effective persuading appellate court judges.  Out of the ten or so cases I researched online, New got his client’s conviction reversed in only one.  Common complaints in the holdings included New’s offering up irrelevant arguments and making assertions without supporting evidence. 

New was sometimes lax when it came to performing due diligence.  On one occasion this literally cost him.  He had been assigned as administrator of a decedent’s estate in the early 1960s.  New distributed the estate’s proceeds to its beneficiaries satisfied he had investigated the man’s financial liabilities.  In fact, the decedent had neglected to pay his Federal income taxes for several years.  New was found personally liable by the U.S. Tax Court in 1967 for the man’s back taxes, which amounted to approximately $5,000 (equivalent to about $36,000 today). 

The judge who wrote the opinion noted that New had relied on “several peripheral arguments, none of which are meritorious” to avoid liability.  He also observed that it would have been little trouble for New to research the decedent’s taxes since the Indianapolis IRS office was only two blocks from New’s office in the City-County Building.  New v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, which held that an estate administrator who makes a unilateral investigation into a decedent’s tax liability does so at his own risk, achieved minor notoriety having been addressed in at least a couple of law review articles.

But this contretemps with the IRS wasn’t what kept Leroy New in the public spotlight.  Even when there wasn’t a high profile case, New wasn’t shy about weighing in on matters great and small for the Indianapolis press.  When the Kingsmen’s hit single “Louie, Louie” was being challenged on obscenity grounds across America, New naturally had his investigators subject the record to rigorous listening.  He couldn’t find anything morally objectionable in the garbled lyrics but the former professional musician did have something to say about the song’s artistic merit.  New commented that “the record is an abomination of out-of-tune guitars, an overbearing jungle rhythm, and clanging cymbals.  In fact the record is an indictment of the taste of the American public.”  Music critic Dave Marsh remarked that New didn't think the words were obscene, but the law "just didn't reckon with dirty sounds." 

New did have a tendency to moralize.  The cultural and generational divide of the 1960s forced people to take sides.  Leroy New was part of the Greatest Generation and his politics were decidedly conservative.  There is a handwritten note in the University of Indianapolis archives from New to the wife of then mayor Dick Lugar.  It asked her to tell Lugar, who was traveling to Washington to meet with President Nixon, to tell the President that he, Leroy New, fully supported Nixon’s law and order policies. 

New figured prominently in anti-obscenity prosecutions in Marion County.   The Lugar Mayoral Archive at U Indy contains numerous references to New’s crusade to clean up the city.  At times it appeared as if New was waging a one-man War on Smut.  He also found himself caught in the police vendetta against nightclub owner Jacque W. Durham.  Durham, himself a former Indianapolis police officer, owned the legendary after-hours jazz venue the Missile Room.  (Among other noteworthy contributions to jazz, the Missile Room was where Cannonball Adderley discovered guitarist Wes Montgomery.) 

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Durham was frequently cited and occasionally jailed for violations of state liquor laws.  Durham claimed this was because he would not pay protection money to the police.  No matter, in 1963 Durham, who was black, was indicted for the statutory rape and sodomy of two white teenagers.  New assigned himself to try the case.  John Dean notes convictions against “vice kings who kept teenage prostitutes in slavery” among New’s record of trial victories; perhaps Durham was one of them.  There are few, if any, references to Durham in the Indianapolis press after 1964.

On another front of that era’s social conflicts, New was accused by supporters of the local chapter of the Black Panther Party of the improper prosecution of its leaders for allegedly conspiring to rob an armory.  One of them, Omar Shabazz, was later tried and acquitted of conspiring to murder Indianapolis police chief Winston L. Churchill.  The 1960s were clearly a busy time for both Indianapolis and Leroy New.  New undoubtedly enjoyed every moment in the arena.

New courted publicity even while the ship was going down.  After his patron Noble Pearcy was defeated for reelection in the Democratic sweep of 1974 New refused to drop charges against Mary Martin, a madam at the heart of the police corruption scandal which had contributed to Pearcy’s loss.  As the Indianapolis Star noted at the time, “Chief Trial Deputy Prosecutor Leroy K. New, known as a flamboyant courtroom performer, announced he would 'pull out all the stops' in the trial as a grand finale to his 14-year [sic] prosecutorial career.”  The Star went on to note wryly, “Prosecutor-elect James F. Kelley is not expected to retain New after the first of the year.”

Around the same period, New publicly implicated a man named Andrew Foster as a heroin kingpin.  New failed to win an indictment against Foster from the grand jury and Foster sued Pearcy for libel alleging Pearcy had been negligent in hiring and supervising New.  It would be nearly five years before the Indiana Supreme Court resolved the case in Pearcy’s favor citing the prosecutorial immunity of both Pearcy and New.[3]

The Foster kerfuffle did not end with this victory however.  New had also made statements to the press alleging Foster was a drug trafficker after he had left the Prosecutor’s Office, and so Foster sued New for libel.  After two unsuccessful appeals by New to get the lawsuit dismissed the case was remanded for trial.  (Foster’s attorney?  Forrest Bowman.)  I was unable to uncover the outcome of the trial, assuming there wasn’t a settlement or that the suit wasn’t withdrawn.  In any case New failed to recognize that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

History has not treated Pearcy’s tenure as County Prosecutor favorably.  The adjective “corrupt” is frequently applied by the journalists, politicians, and lawyers who observed the Prosecutor’s Office during the Pearcy era.  This does not bode well for Leroy New’s legacy as Pearcy’s lieutenant since Pearcy’s critics tend to mention both men in the same sentence.  The Tinder Committee, chaired by Pearcy’s predecessor John Tinder, investigated the Prosecutor’s Office’s practices after Pearcy’s departure.  Tinder commented to the Star that he was “alarmed at some practices used” and urged the Indianapolis Police Department and Prosecutor’s Office to adopt his recommended reforms. 

Pearcy and New’s perceived mishandling of the police corruption investigation created a deep rift among Indianapolis Republicans in the run-up to the 1974 election.  One Charles O’Brien wrote an angry letter to Dick Lugar, who was making his first run for U.S. Senate.  O’Brien declared he would not vote for Lugar if he continued to support Pearcy and New, “even if they are Republicans,” following the bribery indictment of two Indianapolis Star reporters.  The reporters, legendary Indianapolis newsmen Dick Cady and Bill Anderson, had gotten an informant to offer a bribe to a police lieutenant as part of their investigation. 

The scandal stirred up a storm of recriminations.   The Marion County Sheriff accused New of “brainwashing” the grand jury into not returning indictments against two police officers accused of the armed robbery of an illegal poker game.  For his part New blamed the Star for undermining public confidence in law enforcement, complaining that “Every hoodlum who’s been indicted says he’s being picked on.  It’s the stock response.” 

This last statement was a bit of hyperbole, even for New.  The Star was then owned by the archconservative Pulliam family and would not have picked a fight with prominent Republicans such as Pearcy and New without good reason.  I’m told Cady discusses the police scandal in his memoir Deadline: Indianapolis, but I have yet to read it.  Cady, Anderson, and Harley Bierce received the Pulitzer Prize for their reporting.  The bribery charges against Cady and Anderson were dropped after Pearcy’s successor James Kelley took office.

I do not believe either Pearcy or New was literally corrupt.  However, their law and order agenda undoubtedly blinded them to corrupt practices within the Indianapolis P.D. and there was more than a hint of cronyism between the county’s top two prosecutors and the police department leadership.  For New’s part, his refusal to back down in the public arena even when he was clearly in the wrong lent additional credence to his and Pearcy’s enemies’ claims.

We all have our foibles, I guess.  Perhaps New was vain, as Bowman accuses.  He also comes across as a take-no-prisoners political infighter with turf to protect.  His ego occasionally led him into cringe inducing acts and statements.  But it’s clear to me that he was a man of probity in his personal life.  He believed in the value of good works and he lived that belief.  New demonstrated true generosity of heart when he and his family fostered Jenny Likens in the months following the trial.  A lesser man would have savored his victory for a moment then moved on to the next challenge satisfied he had done all he could do.  New sought to do more.  Not wanting to see Jenny subjected to another round of being boarded out to strangers while Lester and Betty returned to the fair circuit, New and his wife instead provided her with a home as well as a sense of stability and safety in the wake of chaos and fear. 

Remarkably for a man who missed few opportunities for self-promotion, I could not uncover any evidence New ever exploited his benevolence to the Likens family.  In fact there really aren’t that many references to it in any account of the Sylvia Likens case.  John Dean devotes a few paragraphs to Jenny’s stay with the News in House of Evil; Kate Millett mentions it only in passing in The Basement.  Other references to it, such as in news media retrospectives on the case are either incidental or absent.  I can only conclude that his help to Jenny, which included procuring a new leg brace for her, was simply an act of caritas or charitable love.  I think that alone outweighs a multitude of venial sins.  Leroy New may have had a high opinion of himself, but we should keep in mind that one must love oneself before one can love others.

I think his assisting Jenny was characteristic of his overall approach to the people in his personal life.  A post by a relative to New’s online obituary mentioned that New had once said that he had lived a charmed life and this obligated him to help people whenever he could.  This sentiment was undoubtedly behind his community activism and charitable work.  Despite his controversial public profile Leroy New was remembered by those closest to him as warm and kind and supportive of his friends.  I suspect that once he had left the Prosecutor’s Office and the temptations of the public stage it afforded him New pursued a more grounded existence.

 

Upon leaving public service New went into private practice with Pearcy.  By 1990 he was operating a solo practice from his home in Carmel as well as from his second home in Florida.  Sylvia Likens remained in his thoughts as the years passed.  For New, Sylvia’s tragedy was a morality tale that we forget at our peril.  He frequently revisited the case in his writings and public statements.  Although he did not get the full measure of justice he sought for Sylvia Likens and her family, Leroy New spent the balance of his life making sure the world never forgot her. 

That by itself is quite a legacy.

© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar

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[1] Interestingly, New’s co-counsel in the Likens trial, Marjorie Wessner, had studied the string bass and piano at Jordan Conservatory before entering law school.

[2] Erbecker had a checkered legal career, due in part to his periodic nervous collapses and alcoholism.  Prior to the Likens trial he had been indicted for suborning perjury the charge was later dropped.  During the 1970s and 1980s he was the subject of several disciplinary actions.  Erbecker drew a year’s suspension from the bar by the state supreme at one point for missing court appearances and appearing in court while intoxicated.  In another incident he was reprimanded for plagiarizing part of a legal brief.

[3] The U.S. Supreme Court limited prosecutorial immunity in 1993 with its holding in Buckley v. Fitzsimmons.