Sylvia - IX: The Saving Remnant

Life was not kind to Jenny Fay Likens.

Before she reached adulthood Jenny had been crippled by polio, had weathered numerous moves with her family, had endured the domestic turmoil of her parents’ periodic break-ups and reunions, and had watched helplessly as her sister was slowly tortured to death over a span of weeks.  The remainder of her short life would be lived in the shadow of Sylvia’s memory, sometimes publicly and always in the confines of her mind.

Jenny is an elusive figure.  Although she survived her sister by nearly forty years, we actually know less about Jenny than we do Sylvia.  There’s little to go on concerning her personality or character.  We have her trial testimony, a scattering of statements to news reporters, and not much else.  Half the time the reporters couldn’t even get her name right.  Most often the error was spelling her name with an "ie" instead of a "y."  Her obituary gives her name as “Jennifer.”  And it wasn’t just reporters—during the 1966 trial defense attorney George Rice inexplicably insisted on referring to her as “Virginia.”

We are offered two parallel views of Jenny Likens.  We have Mr. Dean’s portrayal, and we have Ms. Millett’s.  The Jenny depicted in John Dean’s House of Evil is a timorous, somewhat uncouth girl who was kicked around by life until Leroy New and his family rescued her by taking her in after the first trial.  As with his treatment of Sylvia, Dean’s tone toward Jenny is usually benevolent with the occasional offhanded cruelty thrown in.  For example, in one passage he writes of Jenny’s return to school after the trial, “dividing fractions and such, and getting half the problems right, too,” although he concedes she was “not dull.”  Notwithstanding these sporadic digs Dean gives Jenny a reasonably fair characterization.

Kate Millett by contrast is particularly unflattering in her depiction of Jenny.  She writes of Jenny’s “terrible, inarticulate savagery of manners and speech.”  She takes Jenny to task for not speaking up until after Sylvia was dead.  She questions the depth of Jenny’s fear of Gertrude and just how vulnerable Jenny’s handicap actually made her feel pointing out that Jenny had no problem running errands to the store or raking leaves for spending money. 

But it is her “unconsciousness” which Millett most excoriates; that is, Jenny’s supposed obliviousness and emotional detachment from Sylvia’s pain.  Millett insinuates that as Sylvia’s degradation went on Jenny began harboring feelings of contempt and disgust toward her sister and thus became an implicit accomplice of the Baniszewskis in the process.  By Kate Millett’s accounting Jenny Likens is a Betrayer of Women who in an ideal world would be stigmatized and shunned for her lapses.

But Millett goes beyond criticizing Jenny’s inaction; she sees fit to criticize Jenny’s life following the trial as well.  Noting (not quite correctly) that Jenny was chronically unemployed after returning to Indiana from a Job Corps training course in Maine she captiously describes Jenny’s subsequent marriage as a cop out, “the miraculous way out of all female predicament.” 

Here is where Millett tips her hand and betrays her prejudices.  Jenny married because that’s what young women in her socioeconomic stratum did in those days after leaving school.  It is much like when Millett takes swipes at Jenny’s poor grammar and uncultured demeanor, it is a cheap shot.  The Likens family did not possess what today we would call cultural capital, or any other kind of capital for that matter.  It’s easy to step back and slowly shake your head with opprobrium when you have had the advantages of Oxford and Columbia. 

And this is where I find a maddening dichotomy in Millett’s approach to the Likens family.  Sylvia is held apart from her parents and siblings.  Yes, Millett’s construction of Sylvia’s internal monologues is like that of the other semi-fictionalized characters in The Basement, replete with dropped g’s and double negatives and ain’ts, but it’s clear that for the author Sylvia is a rare specimen to behold.  However at one point not even Sylvia herself is spared Millett’s gimlet eye: She catches herself looking at the familiar portrait of Sylvia and for a fleeting moment sees not the innocent teenager but “a face from the poor” that is “sensual, ignorant, a touch vulgar.” 

While Millett states her regret for this display of classism, on the whole she keeps Sylvia on a solid pedestal while treating Sylvia’s kin with poorly concealed disdain.  Millett openly identifies with Sylvia—declares outright that she is Sylvia—but lacks the requisite subjective understanding of the environment that produced her.  Hence the cognitive dissonance she experiences when discussing the rest of the Likens: As with Jenny, Millett faults Dianna, Lester, and Betty as much on their style as their substance.  No, that’s not quite right—Millett conflates their style with their substance.  This approach is seriously flawed because you cannot have Sylvia without her family and social circumstances.  Context is important.

Actually, context is all we really have.  Once more we are brought around to the question of just how much we can ever understand of what I call the Jenny Problem.   Kate Millett refers to Jenny as “an enigma.”  The Sylvia message boards reflect divided opinions concerning Jenny’s inaction.  Many are critical and argue Jenny could have saved her sister by speaking up earlier.  I can understand the frustration.  There is this feeling among those of us who have studied the Likens case that if we could just somehow get into Jenny’s head and figure out what made her tick we can at last arrive at a definitive answer to why Sylvia had to die.

                                                        

Jenny’s witness testimony is interesting reading.  The responsibility of testifying against her sister’s persecutors was a heavy burden to place upon the frail shoulders of a traumatized sixteen year old girl.  It is difficult at times to capture the emotional tenor of her words, though as always Dean’s account lends depth to understanding.  One barrier is that the court reporter cleaned up the language somewhat, breaking contractions into their component words for example, so that the words of the child witnesses in particular seem stilted and false.  Nevertheless, Jenny’s own voice comes through as Marjorie Wessner coaxes her through Sylvia’s and her stay with the Baniszewskis.  The line of questioning, as with the other child witnesses, tended to meander without respect to the actual chronology of events.  And as with some of the other witnesses Jenny’s use of double negatives when one would have sufficed sometimes adds ambiguity to her answers.  Jenny may not have had a way with words, but her roughspun responses are by turns matter of fact and poignant. 

Sometimes Jenny’s answers to counsel reflect a sort of disbelief at what for her were silly questions.  When Miss Wessner asked what Sylvia liked to do, Jenny’s words hint she was almost annoyed by the question: “She liked to dance and skate…I don’t know, just have fun, I guess.”

In a few places Jenny’s replies to questions about some of the worst abuses seem strangely detached as transcribed suggesting a harder edge to her personality than usually described.  When pressed for details about the Pepsi bottle incidents she blandly answered, “It is hard to describe, really,” before Judge Rabb mercifully broke in telling Miss Wessner to move on to the next question.  In another exchange Jenny describes Paula beating up Sylvia.  What happened next, Jenny?  “We just ate supper,” was the nonchalant reply.

Other passages belie the image of timid, mouse-like Jenny.  Forrest Bowman portrays Jenny’s demeanor toward the defense attorneys as occasionally peevish.  (Can’t say that I blame her.)  And while it was widely reported at the time that Jenny had snapped, “I sure do!” at defense attorney William Erbecker when he asked if she hated Gertrude the transcript fleshes out the exchange.   The question had been objected to by Leroy New and sustained by Judge Rabb, but Jenny answered anyway.  A similar exchange occurs a few questions later, when she was asked if she wanted Gertrude punished; even after New’s objection was sustained Jenny interjected, “I think she needs something.”  Reading this I found myself silently cheering her on.  Jenny was brave, Jenny was defiant.  Jenny had the last word—twice.   

As often as not Jenny held her own with the defense lawyers.  There’s her exchange with Ricky Hobbs’ attorney James Nedeff when he opened his cross-examination with a patronizing, “Jenny, would you rather I call you Jenny or Miss Likens?”  At this moment I like to imagine Jenny fixing him in a deadpan stare for just the briefest instant before replying with a laconic, “You can call me Jenny if you want,” throwing her answer at him like a rock. 

But it is her emotionally wrought answers, her on-stand breakdowns reliving Sylvia’s and her ordeal which punctuate the record of Jenny’s testimony.  Jenny sobbing while telling the jury how Sylvia said through torn lips that she knew she was going to die.  Jenny recounting the callousness of Gertrude, et al.: “They said she [Sylvia] didn’t have no feelings but I know better.”  Jenny pleading in exasperation and grief when asked yet again by a defense attorney as to why she did not get help for her sister: “I told you why I didn’t tell!”

On that note, there is one bit of Jenny’s testimony which has been misunderstood courtesy of John Dean and oft-repeated since.  During her browbeating by the defense as to why she didn’t report the abuse Jenny was quoted by Dean as wailing, “That don’t mean I wanted to die!”  Dean included this quote in the Star article he filed on that day’s testimony, and it is in his book as well.  The transcript, on the other hand, records the response as, “That did not mean I did want her [Sylvia] to die, though.”  This is corroborated by other news reports.  Just thought I’d set that straight.  The first account implies cowardice; the second is a denial of indifference toward Sylvia’s fate.

Kate Millett is predictably critical of Jenny’s performance on the stand, while John Dean emphasizes the dramatic highlights.  I think she did well given what she had experienced and that she was in an intimidating, unfamiliar setting.  What Millett derides as digressions and non sequiturs in Jenny’s testimony I read as “kidsplaining.”  On the whole it appears the prosecution’s own questions digressed and jumped around a lot temporally which confuses our understanding of the actual sequence of events.  The trouble with Jenny as a witness, which the defense worked assiduously to exploit, is that Jenny did not directly witness all of Sylvia’s abuse.  Judge Rabb showed remarkable forbearance when it came to hearsay testimony. 

The transcripts from Gertrude’s 1971 retrial have been lost.  We know from news articles that Jenny (or according to the convention of the time, Mrs. Robert Ford, 21) was the last prosecution witness.  It was reported Jenny was “foggy” on some details after five years.  Quotations and news photos suggest she was as emotional the second time around as the first.  Again, the question as to why Jenny didn’t tell anyone Sylvia was being abused.  And again, a characteristically heartbreaking answer: “I’m sorry.  I was scared.  I think I was under a spell.” 

Over the ensuing years Jenny would reappear momentarily in the public eye as interest in Sylvia caught its attention for a while, then she would recede into the shadows as it waned.  What happened with her in between is not well known but it’s not hard to guess at either.  Details can be gleaned here and there from news accounts of the second trial and Gertrude’s 1985 parole hearings. 

But it’s the photographs which tell the story most effectively.  Of the dozen or so available photos of Jenny, four of them stand out.  They all appear to have been taken in the months following the 1966 trial, and they are the only photos I’ve seen which suggest Jenny may have had enjoyed something approaching a normal existence. 

The most singular of these is a candid shot by an Indianapolis Star newsman.  Jenny is pretty, her blonde hair falling softly about her shoulders, her chin resting lightly on her fingers.  She is relaxed and smiling naturally, gazing at the camera with an almost flirtatious sidelong glance.  (Perhaps she fancied the photographer.)  There is a color studio portrait, possibly arranged by the News for Lester and Betty, and a school yearbook picture in which Jenny is again relaxed and smiling.  Finally, there is Jenny waving cheerfully as Leroy New helps her board a plane. 

That’s it.  Even in those few other pictures where Jenny smiles, such as the Easter photo from before Sylvia’s and her ordeal, there is a strained quality to it, a grimace that is more a ritual baring of teeth for the camera than it is an expression of happiness or pleasure.  The rest of the images are connected to the trials, Gertrude’s parole, or memorial gatherings for Sylvia, each a reopening of wounds.  Before and during the 1966 trial, Jenny is either shown weeping or wearing an expression I can only describe as stricken.  A couple of shots, taken at a distance, depict Jenny sitting forlornly and looking a bit threadbare with her hands folded in her lap, clutching a handkerchief or tissue, the clumsy leg brace visible below her skirt hem.  There is Jenny again five years later on the witness stand, her head bowed, hand to face brushing away the tears.  Then there is Jenny at Gertrude’s parole hearing.  Even with Dianna there for moral support, Jenny’s face is a mask of anxiety. 

Once Jenny returned to Indianapolis from the Job Corps in 1967 she worked with computers for a time at the American Fletcher National Bank.  (Jenny may have worked in banking for several years; an acquaintance recalls her cashing a check for him at a bank in the Indianapolis suburb of Beech Grove in the early 1970s.)  She married sometime toward the end of the 1960s, having lived with Betty for a while following Betty’s divorce from Lester.  How long the marriage lasted isn’t known but it seems to have ended by the late 1970s.  The union produced a son and daughter.  There could have been any number of reasons for its failure.  Maybe it was just the garden variety “irreconcilable differences.” 

But I wonder.  Was Jenny overwhelmed by the duties of marriage and motherhood as her mental condition deteriorated?  Perhaps her husband was not equal to caring for Jenny.  Whatever happened, it is known that the children were raised by their father and his family in an era when the mother received custody practically by default.  Jenny was reportedly estranged from them at the time of her death.  (Obituaries mention a “grandchild” without reference to gender leaving the reader to wonder whether Jenny herself even knew though she surely must have.)

News reports from 1985 describe Jenny as a housewife.  Extrapolating from that it seems her second marriage was successful and long-lived considering she was still married when she died nearly twenty years later.  Jenny and her second husband lived in various places for some years before returning to Indiana to settle in Beech Grove. 

News coverage from the time offered a little insight into Jenny’s condition when Gertrude was released from prison.  While we don’t know how or if she reacted when the other defendants were released, Jenny had an almost palpable fear of Gertrude.  A brief soundbite from a news broadcast shows Jenny reading a statement to the Indiana Parole Board.  She is hunched over, her words spilling out in a husky, rushed monotone.  She speaks with an accent which owes as much to Appalachia as to Indiana.  If Gertrude went free, said Jenny, “You might as well put me in prison because I would be in prison in my own home.  I would be afraid to go anywhere alone again.”

At face value this statement greatly exaggerates the threat posed to Jenny by Gertrude, if there was a threat at all.  (If I was to be afraid of any of the defendants once they got out, it would have been Coy.  Or Paula.)  But clearly Jenny was frightened of something, and we cannot discount that.  She withheld her married name from the media to make it difficult to be found.  There are reports of Jenny going into hiding or spending each night in a different place for a time.  We are told she slept with the light on.  It is said the very mention of Gertrude’s name made her distraught.

Jenny and her supporters were frank about her poor psychological state.  She had suffered two (or three, depending on the source) breakdowns and was being treated for paranoia.  It’s no stretch to surmise she had PTSD and experienced depression as well.  A fund was set up to offset Jenny’s mounting medical bills though what became of it isn’t known; Dianna reportedly learned about it only years later and said Jenny never saw a dime.  We do not know if Jenny’s health improved.  Hints about her behavior in the ensuing years indicate she remained easily frightened to the point where even a sharp knock at the door could send her into a panic.   Jenny died of a heart attack at 54.  If she was treated with antipsychotics, long term use can have cardiovascular side effects.  Trading one evil for another, I suppose.  Then again, it is hardly unusual for women in their fifties to pass away in this manner.

Looking over the fragmented accounts of Jenny’s life, one gets the impression of a profoundly isolated individual.  This may not have been solely from the trauma of witnessing her sister’s death.  A poster on a Sylvia message board mentions meeting a woman who attended elementary school with Jenny for a brief period.  The acquaintance related how Jenny was bullied because of her handicap and her poverty.  Running into Jenny a year or two before her passing, Jenny remembered her classmate after all those years as one of the few kids who were nice to her.  If true, this story further underscores the fundamental pathos of Jenny’s existence.

I’m sure Jenny had her share of good days and happy memories.  But thoughts of Sylvia could never have been far away.  How could they not?  Toward the end of her life Jenny appears to have become reclusive.  She shunned people who sought to dredge up that which she would have preferred to forget.  When contacted by people wanting to discuss her sister’s murder Jenny would cut them off and refer them to Dianna.  An exception was Star reporter Linda Graham Caleca, who periodically wrote stories related to the Likens case from the mid-1980s until the early 2000s.  Many of the pieces, which ran the gamut from a story about the so-called “Suitcase of Sorrow” found among Betty’s possessions to one about an ultimately abortive attempt by a nonprofit to convert 3850 East New York Street into a battered women’s shelter, included comments from Jenny.  For whatever reason, Ms. Caleca had earned the confidence of a deeply mistrustful woman.

Jenny’s sporadic statements to reporters reveal a rich vein of bitterness over Gertrude having gotten off so lightly.  She insisted to the end of her life that Gertrude should have “gotten the electric chair or 99 years.”  After Gertrude died Jenny sent a clipping of the obituary to Betty with a note: “Some good news.  Damn old Gertrude died.  Ha-ha-ha.  I am happy about that.”  I imagine some of her anger and resentment was turned inward in the form of guilt.  I cannot conceive of what her interior life must have been like in her later years.  Some things are simply best left alone.

Jenny Likens Wade died on June 23, 2004, after what must have been an unusually painful life. 

Gertrude Baniszewski killed Jenny just as surely as she killed Sylvia.  It just took Jenny longer to die.

©2015 The Unassuming Scholar