Indianapolis, Indiana - Sylvia Likens parents, who operated a concession stand with a traveling carnival, left Sylvia and her sister Jenny in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski in exchange for twenty dollars a week.

Lester Likens said his girls needed some discipline and encouraged Baniszewski to “straighten them out.”

Baniszewski, described by The Indianapolis Star as a “haggard, underweight asthmatic” suffering from depression and the stress of several failed marriages. She already had seven children living in the house. The eldest, Paula, 17, was unmarried and pregnant. The youngest was an infant.

Baniszewski began taking her anger out on the Likens girls, beating them with paddles after payments from their parents failed to arrive on time. It wasn’t long before Gertrude’s resentment toward the girls began to focus on Sylvia alone. She was the outspoken one. Jenny was small and frail because of a childhood bout with polio. Sylvia was beaten for eating too much at a church dinner and kicked in the genitals after admitting she had a boyfriend in California.

Baniszewski accused Sylvia of stealing candy she had bought from a grocery store and exchanging soft drink bottles for change at a nearby grocery.

She kicked Likens in the genitals and accused her of being pregnant. Paula Baniszewski, who was in fact pregnant at the time, became enraged and knocked Likens onto the floor. Likens became convinced that she was pregnant, although a coroner’s examination proved that she was not and could not have been.

Likens was then falsely accused of spreading rumors at the high school she attended, Baniszewski claimed she had been telling other students that Stephanie and Paula were prostitutes. That supposedly prompted Stephanie’s boyfriend, Coy Hubbard, to physically attack Likens. continued below

The Baniszewski home has been described as being a “cesspool.” Mrs. Baniszewski encouraged Hubbard, and some of the neighborhood children who used the house as a hangout, to torment Likens. The abuse including, among other things, putting cigarettes out on her skin and forcing her to remove her clothes and insert a Coke bottle into her vagina.

Likens, after being beaten by Baniszewski, admitted she stole a gym suit, without which she was unable to attend gym class, Baniszewski pulled her out of school and did not allow her to leave the house.

Later, when Likens urinated in her bed, she was locked in the cellar and forbidden to use the toilet. At one point, Sylvia was forced to consume feces and urine.

Baniszewski began to carve the words “I’m a prostitute and proud of it!” into Sylvia’s stomach with a heated needle. Richard Hobbs, a neighbor boy, finished the carving when Baniszewski couldn’t.

Likens had attempted to escape, and as punishment, she was tied in the basement and given only crackers to eat.

The abuse continued until one day in October when, after multiple beatings, Sylvia Likens was noticed laying motionless on the filthy mattress where she slept.

As Stephanie Baniszewski and Richard Hobbs realized that Sylvia was not breathing, Stephanie attempted to give Sylvia mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before realizing it was a lost cause.

Sylvia Likens died Oct. 26, 1965. Cause of death was determined to be brain swelling, internal hemorrhaging of the brain and shock induced by Sylvia’s extensive skin damage. Sylvia also suffered from extreme malnutrition.

Baniszewski sent Richard Hobbs to call the police from a nearby payphone. When they arrived, she 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 sex with a group of boys in exchange for money, they dragged her away in their car, beat her up, burned her multiple times, and carved the inscription into her skin.

Before the police left, however, Jenny Likens approached them, saying: “Get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything.”

During a 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 eleven-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 carved Sylvia 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. continued below

On May 19, 1966, Gertrude Baniszewski was convicted of first-degree murder, but was spared the death penalty and sentenced to life in prison.

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. Richard Hobbs, Coy Hubbard, and John Baniszewski were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 2-to-21-year terms. 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.

Gertrude Baniszewski, 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.

Jenny Likens Wade died of a heart attack on June 23, 2004 at the age of 54. Richard Hobbs died of cancer, at age 21, four years after being released from prison. Sylvia’s parents, Lester and Betty Likens divorced and Betty died in 1998 at age 71.

The house at 3850 East New York Street that Sylvia Likens was tortured and murdered in stood vacant and run-down for many years after the murder, and was finally demolished on April 23, 2009.