The murder of Sylvia Likens (sad story) (1 Viewer)

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John Lennon

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Background
Sylvia Likens was the third child of carnival workers Betty and Lester Likens. She was born between two sets of fraternal twins, Diana and Danny (two years older), and Jenny and Benny (one year younger). The Likens' marriage was unstable and the family moved many times. Sylvia was often boarded out or forced to live with relatives while her parents were working.[2]
Sylvia baby-sat and did ironing; these were, coincidentally, the same jobs Gertrude Baniszewski held. Sylvia's favorite rock group was The Beatles. During her early time with the Baniszewski family, she would sing back and forth with Stephanie Baniszewski, one of Gertrude's daughters.[3]
Sylvia and Jenny had known no fewer than 14 addresses because the family moved so frequently. In the past, they had been left at a grandmother's house or boarded out when their parents were traveling with a carnival, in hopes that the girls' education would not suffer.
In 1965, Sylvia and her sister Jenny, who was disabled from polio,[4] were living with their mother in Indianapolis when Betty was arrested and jailed for shoplifting. Lester Likens, who had recently separated from his wife, arranged for his daughters to board with Gertrude Baniszewski, the mother of Paula, a girl with whom the Likens girls had recently become acquainted. Although Gertrude and her seven children were poor, Lester, as he reported at the trial, "didn't pry" into the condition of the house, and encouraged Baniszewski to "straighten his daughters out".[5] He agreed to pay her twenty dollars a week.
[edit] Abuse and death

Baniszewski, described by The Indianapolis Star as a "haggard, underweight asthmatic"[5] suffering from depression and the stress of several failed marriages, began taking her anger out on the Likens girls, beating them with paddles, after payments from their parents failed to arrive on time.
Soon, Baniszewski focused her abuse on Sylvia, accusing her of stealing candy that she had bought from a grocery store, and humiliating her when she admitted that she had once had a boyfriend. She kicked Likens in the genitals and accused her of being pregnant. Paula Baniszewski, who actually was pregnant at the time, became enraged and knocked Likens onto the floor, although medical examination proved that Sylvia was not and could not have been.[6]
Likens was then accused of spreading rumors through Arsenal Technical High School that Stephanie and Paula were prostitutes. That supposedly provoked Stephanie's boyfriend, Coy Hubbard, to physically attack Likens. Mrs. Baniszewski encouraged Hubbard and other neighborhood children to torment Likens, including, among other things, putting cigarettes out on her skin and forcing her to remove her clothes and insert a glass Coca-Cola bottle into her vagina on at least two occasions.[5]
After beating Sylvia to force her to confess to stealing a gym suit from school which Baniszewski would not buy for her (and without which she was unable to attend gym class) Baniszewski kept her out of school and did not allow her to leave the house. When Likens urinated in her bed, she was locked in the cellar and forbidden to use the toilet. Later, she was forced to consume feces and urine. Shortly before Sylvia died, Baniszewski began to carve the words "I'm a prostitute and proud of it!" into Sylvia's stomach with a heated needle, although Richard Hobbs finished the carving when Baniszewski was unable to do so. Hobbs, with the help of 10-year old Shirley Baniszewski, also used a heated eye bolt to burn the number "3" into Sylvia's chest.[5]
Likens attempted to escape a few days before her death after overhearing Baniszewski's plan to have her dumped in a wooded area nearby, but was caught by Baniszewski as she reached the front door. As punishment, she was tied in the basement and given only crackers to eat. On October 26, 1965, after multiple beatings, burnings, and scalding baths, she died of a brain hemorrhage, shock and malnutrition.[5]
When Stephanie Baniszewski and Richard Hobbs realized that Sylvia was not breathing, Stephanie attempted to give Sylvia mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before realizing that it was hopeless and that Sylvia was dead.[7]
[edit] Trial

Stephanie Baniszewski sent Hobbs to call the police from a nearby payphone. When they arrived, Gertrude handed them a letter she had forced Sylvia to write a few days previously, addressed to her parents. This letter stated that she had agreed to have sexual relations with a group of boys in exchange for money, they had dragged her away in their car, beaten her up, burned her multiple times, and carved the inscription into her skin.[5] Before the police left, however, Jenny Likens approached them, saying: "Get me out of here and I'll tell you everything".[7]
During the highly publicized trial, Baniszewski denied responsibility for the death, pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. She claimed that she was too distracted by her ill health and depression to control her children. Attorneys for the young people on trial (Paula and John Baniszewski, Richard Hobbs and Coy Hubbard) claimed that they had been pressured by Baniszewski. When Marie Baniszewski, Gertrude's 11-year-old daughter, was called to the stand as a witness for the defense, she broke down and admitted that she had been forced to heat the needle with which Hobbs had carved Likens' skin, and that she had seen her mother beating and forcing Sylvia into the basement. In his closing statement, Baniszewski's lawyer said: "I condemn her for being a murderess... but I say she's not responsible because she's not all here!" and tapped his head.[8]
On May 19, 1966, Gertrude Baniszewski was convicted of first-degree murder, but was spared the death penalty and sentenced to life imprisonment due to her gender. Her daughter Paula, who had given birth to a daughter named Gertrude during the trial, was convicted of second-degree murder and also given a life term. Hobbs, Hubbard and John Baniszewski were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 2-to-21-year terms.[

Aftermath
The boys would spend two years in prison. In 1971, Paula and Gertrude Baniszewski were granted another trial. Paula pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was released two years later.[5] Gertrude, however, was again convicted of first-degree murder. She came up for parole in 1985, and despite a public outcry and petitions against her release, the parole board took her good behavior in prison into account, and she was set free.
Gertrude Baniszewski changed her name to Nadine van Fossan and moved to Iowa, where she died of lung cancer on June 16, 1990. When Jenny Likens, who was then married and living in Beech Grove, Indiana, saw her obituary in the newspaper, she clipped it out and mailed it to her mother with the note: "Some good news. Damn old Gertrude died. Ha ha ha! I am happy about that."[9] Jenny Likens Wade died of a heart attack on June 23, 2004, at the age of 54. The house at 3850 East New York Street in which Sylvia Likens was tortured and murdered stood vacant and run-down for much of the 44 years since the murder, and was finally demolished on April 23, 2009.[10] The property will become a church parking lot.[9]
Richard Hobbs died of lung cancer at the age of 21, four years after being released from the reformatory.[11]
After the Westside Middle School massacre, John Baniszewski, by then calling himself John Blake, made a statement claiming that young criminals are not beyond help and describing how he had turned his life around.[12] He died at the General Hospital in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, following a lengthy illness with diabetes on May 19, 2005, at the age of 52. He had a wife and three children[13]
Coy Hubbard, Stephanie Baniszewski’s boyfriend who beat Sylvia and practiced his judo flips on her, had been in and out of prison since his release and was later charged and acquitted of the murder of two men. He died of a heart attack on June 23, 2007, at the age of 56 in Shelbyville, Indiana. He had a wife and five children, seventeen grandchildren and one great-grandchild
Paula Baniszewski, at seventeen the oldest of the Baniszewski children, received a sentence of twenty years to life for her part in Sylvia’s death. While incarcerated, she bore a baby girl (initially named Gertrude) who was later adopted. She unsuccessfully attempted to escape twice from prison in 1971.[15] In 1972, she was paroled and assumed a new identity. She eventually married and has two children; reportedly she lives on a small farm in Iowa today.
The murder charge against Gertrude’s second-oldest daughter, Stephanie Baniszewski, was dropped after she turned State's evidence against the others. She became a school teacher and assumed a new name. She also married and had several children.
The injury to person charges against the younger juveniles Anna Ruth Siscoe, Judy Darlene Duke, Michael John (Mike) Monroe, and Randy Gordon Lepper were dropped as well. Randy Lepper died November 14, 2010 in Indianapolis at the age of 56.

sylvia marie likens.jpg


sylvia marie likens.jpg
 

NightMare

My gift to you, a Nightmare of terror
I have heard this story many times and it effects me the same way each time. I really is a sad sad story. I always thought that she should have come back as a very pissed off ghost and haunted the shit out of those assholes! May that poor little spirit rest in peace.
 
If you saw the episode of Deadly Women", it didn't tell half of the story of what that poor girl endured! Very sad! Her abusers should all rot in Hell right alongside Casey Anthony and the father of Lisa Erwin, and Michael Jackson's, "doctor"! There are also two movies and two books.
 

Eat Shit And Die

★Filthy European★
If you saw the episode of Deadly Women", it didn't tell half of the story of what that poor girl endured! Very sad! Her abusers should all rot in Hell right alongside Casey Anthony and the father of Lisa Erwin, and Michael Jackson's, "doctor"! There are also two movies and two books.

How can you leave Joseph Fritzl off that list, thats a par.
 

KingFate

Légion Blanche
If you saw the episode of Deadly Women", it didn't tell half of the story of what that poor girl endured! Very sad! Her abusers should all rot in Hell right alongside Casey Anthony and the father of Lisa Erwin, and Michael Jackson's, "doctor"! There are also two movies and two books.

Did you SERIOUSLY compare Michael Jackson to innocent children? I'm more disgusted at that concept than this story.
 
It's pretty hearbreaking that this poor girl had to endure that torture. I've read about her and and recently saw a movie about what happened. Incredibly sad.
 
Did you SERIOUSLY compare Michael Jackson to innocent children? I'm more disgusted at that concept than this story.
Michael Jackson was murdered, in my opinion. I don't believe he was ever found to have molested a child, which would be heinous. I am not for any crimes against children. I think Sylvia's story is one of the worst I evey heard.
 

Zinkoxid

Embrace the pain!
Unfortunately you don't know what set of cards you're born with...but probably for the better!
 

blueyedevil

Lurker
Ok first off i couldnt even get through that artice as it was too hard to read with all those fucking blue hyperlinks that blend into the black background....Christ doesn't anyone pay attention to fucking detail anymore...CHANGE the damn link colors in your style sheet dude. UGH this is why I absolutely hate people, ....useless.
 
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