The Torture Mother: Gertrude Baniszewski and the Torture Killing of Sylvia Likens

The Sylvia Likens case isn't a new one, nor is it unknown to those that follow these types of crimes.

This one is, in particular, an interesting case, as it goes to show just how much influence an adult can have over a child or children, who otherwise, are well rounded kids from decent homes.

It goes to show what mob mentality and the perception of power can bring to the table.

It can bring quite a bit.

So let's get down to it...

Born in 1929 as Gertrude Von Fossen, she was the third of six children. Little is known about her early life, but it is known that it was her father with whom she had a close bond, while the relationship between she and her mother was tentative at best.

At around age ten or eleven years (depending on the month), she witnessed her father die of a sudden heart attack in the year 1940.

At the age of sixteen, she dropped out of school and married a man named John Baniszewski, who was himself only eighteen, and a deputy. With John she had four children. John Baniszewski was a violent man with a short fuse who would often beat his wife for "annoying him". Despite this, they were together for ten years before she finally got a divorce and custody of the children.

Within one year of divorcing John, she got married for a second time to a man named Edward Guthrie, who, after three months, became tired of the kids and divorced her.

Following this, she and John got back together and stayed together for another seven years, having two more children, before divorcing for a second and final time in 1963.

It was close to this time period where she, now aged 37, met and moved in with a 23 year-old named Dennis Lee Wright, who was, like John, abusive. By him she would become pregnant twice more, birthing one and miscarrying another (possibly because of the abuse by Dennis Sr. The one she delivered, a boy, Dennis Jr., would be her last child.

All together she birthed seven children and miscarried six.

Not long after little Dennis's birth, Dennis Sr., took off, abandoning the family and disappearing. This left Gertrude completely impoverished. As she was left to care for seven children on her own with only the occasional child support payment from John, she had to find odd jobs that included babysitting and doing other people's laundry.

This situation was only exacerbated when Gertrude discovered that her seventeen-year-old daughter was pregnant by a middle-aged married man.

To make matters worse, her health around this time began to decline with several unknown illnesses. She stopped eating, which caused her face to become sunken in and stopped practicing hygiene. She also began calling herself by the last name of Wright, claiming that she and Dennis had been married when he ran off, which left her with a modicum of respect.

In 1965, her daughter Paula was introduced to Sylvia Likens (16) and her little sister Jenny (15), who had just moved to the neighborhood, through a mutual friend Darlene McGuire. Jenny was required to walk with leg braces due to Polio.

Paula took the girls to 3850 East New York Street, where they listened to music and drank some sodas.

The Likens sisters were at this point left to their own devices, Sylvia taking care of her sister, as their mother was in the county jail for shoplifting. Betty, the girls' mother, had abandoned their father, essentially kidnapping the girls. When Paula heard about what was going on in their home life, offered to let the girls stay the night at her house.

Lester, the girls' father, tracked down his wife and daughters and ended up on Gertrude's doorstep. Lester and Gertrude spoke. Lester said that he and his wife were reconciled and that they had planned on joining a traveling carnival and offered to pay Gertrude $20 a week to take care of the girls for the summer while they traveled.

And while Jenny's disability perturbed Gertrude, she couldn't refuse the money.

This brought the total number of people in the house to ten.

Lester did not inspect the house before making this deal with Gertrude. If he had, perhaps he would have changed his mind.

The house had no stove or microwave, there were only enough beds for half the people in the house and only enough plates and silverware for three people.

By the end of the first week, when Lester's payment failed to arrive in the mail, Gertrude began mistreating the girls, screaming at them that she was "taking care of you two bitches for nothing", after which she made them lie across the bed with their skirts up and beat them badly.

Not long thereafter, Lester and Betty came and checked on the kids, but neither mentioned the beating.

The girls were also forced to go hungry. They were given a few slices of toast in the morning, nothing for lunch, and a small bowl of soup for dinner.

The girls began dumpster diving, looking for can to sell for money to buy candy. When they went back to the house with the candy, they were accused to lying about buying it as well as stealing it. Gertrude began beating Sylvia for the "stolen" candy until her hands got tired. Then she switched to a paddle.

The beatings across her bottom were so severe that she would have scars.

Jenny, with her disability, could only watch as these things happened to her sister. And because of her disability, she was spared much of the abuse.

After a church function, some of Gertrude's children told her that they were appalled by how much food they'd seen Sylvia eating while there. As a result, Gertrude became enraged, telling Sylvia that she couldn't believe that she would do something to "ruin" her figure. As a punishment, Sylvia was forced to eat a hotdog that was loaded with toppings.

When the girl vomited, she was forced to eat that as well.

It wasn't long after this that Lester and Betty came to town to check on the girls, as part of the agreement Lester made with Gertrude. Neither of the girls mentioned how they were being treated.

Here is where is goes from bad to worse...

In August of 1965, and this is also a point when Gertrude's mental health was in steep decline, overheard Sylvia telling one say that she had, at one point, let a boy touch her. Upon hearing this, Gertrude went absolutely bat shit mad.

Screaming that Sylvia was a prostitute and that she was pregnant because she let a member of the opposite sex touch her vagina.

Gertrude then began to repeatedly kick Sylvia in the vagina and when she went to sit down afterward, Paula pulled the chair out from under her. When Sylvia hit the ground Paula said to her, "You ain't fit to sit in chairs."

It was about here that Gertrude began involving other people in the abusive torture and eventual murder of Sylvia Likens.

These other people included her own children as well as children from the neighborhood.

After this point, Sylvia was only allowed to sit in a chair if she had permission. Once this began, Sylvia became a human punching bag for Gertrude kids. Gertrude encouraged them to beat the girl. Paula, the girl who originally brought the girls to the house and invited them to stay the night, once broke her hand while beating Sylvia.

Once the hand was cast, she proceeded to beat Sylvia over the head with it.

Gertrude encouraged her kids to put cigarettes out on Sylvia's skin, beat the girl, and even push her down the stairs.

That last one Gertrude enjoyed immensely, and so the Baniszewski children did this multiple times.

The day after Gertrude kicked Sylvia in the vagina, in accordance with what Jenny said later, the two of them spread a rumor that they had seen Paula and her sister, the second oldest daughter Stephanie, exchanging money for sex as an act of vengeance.

Which, if you want my oh so humble opinion, they probably shouldn't have done, as it just added fuel to the fire...

When Coy Hubbard, Stephanie's 15 year-old boy friend heard about these rumors, went to the house and beat Sylvia. From that moment until the time of her death, Hubbard, goaded on by Gertrude, appeared on a daily basis to beat on Sylvia and to "practice his Judo on her".

Around this same time, Gertrude was able to convince Sylvia's best friend, a 13 year-old named Anna Sisco, that Sylvia had been spreading rumors that the Sisco's mother was a whore. She became so enraged that, when instructed to go beat on Sylvia for spreading these rumors, she did so with enthusiasm.

Soon after, Gertrude told one of Paula's friends, Judy Duke, that Sylvia had been spreading rumors about her mother, and had the girls fist-fight. It was during this fight that Gertrude told Jenny to beat on her sister.

When the girl refused, Gertrude beat on her until she finally agreed to take part in the violence against her sister.

The violence perpetuated against Sylvia went beyond physical abuse and graduated to sexual abuse.

At one point when she came back from selling can, Gertrude accused her of prostituting herself. It was then that Gertrude forced the girl into the living room and made her strip in front of the boys.

After she was undressed, she was handed a coke bottle by Gertrude and the girl was forced to masterbate with it while the boys watched.

After this Sylvia became uncontrollable and because of this, Gertrude deemed her no longer "fit to live with humans" and locked the girl in the basement.

Given that there was no toilet in the basement, Sylvia was forced to defecate and urinate on the floor of the basement. When Gertrude discovered this, she began a "regime" of cleaning and bathing to "cleanse" Sylvia of being a "dirty girl". Something that she often called Sylvia.

The way that she would "cleanse" Sylvia was to fill up her bathtub with scalding water, binding Sylvia's hands and legs, and then forcing her down into the water.

This wasn't something that happened on any kind of schedule. Sometimes this happened once a day. Sometimes it happened many times a day. Sometimes it didn't happen at all.

But when it did happen, and when the bath was over, Gertrude would then run salt over Sylvia's nude body.

It was around this time that Gertrude recruited Ricky Hobbs to be her "personal assistant" when it came to dealing with Sylvia. Ricky Hobbs was a 14 year-old boy who was a straight A student at the time and had had no run-in's with the police.

Hobbs was a neighbor and alleged lover of Gertrude. Once he began participating in Sylvia's torture, his personality did a complete turn around, and he became completely under Gertrude's control.

They forced her to eat the feces off the basement floor, "allowing" her to do so. They also charged a nickle for the neighborhood kids to come and look at Sylvia, who at this point, was not allowed to wear clothes, and rarely fed. The neighborhood kids also took delight in pushing Sylvia down the stairs.

On October 21st 1965, Sylvia was brought up from the basement by several of Gertrude's children and tied to a bed. Gertrude told her that if she could hold her bladder through the night, she could sleep in a bed again.

There's no telling how long it had been since she had emptied her bladder, but regardless, she could not hold her bladder, and ended up wetting the bed.

When Gertrude discovered this the next morning, forced Sylvia to strip in front of her sons and the neighborhood boys and once again masterbate with a Coke bottle.

Afterward, she was allowed to dress, but not for long. Soon was was forced to strip once more and was bound to the bed. Gertrude told her "You branded my daughter, I'm going to brand you."

Only I guess that she couldn't stomach what she wanted to do, because she ended up forcing Ricky Hobbs to do it instead.

Gertrude's children took a sewing needle and put it over a flame until it was red hot. Taking the needle, Gertrude burned/carved "I" and part of an "M" into her stomach before instructing Hobbs to finish.

During all of this the beatings never stopped. Hubbard still used her as a practice dummy for his Judo.

One night, Jenny was able to sneak down to the basement to see her sister, where upon Sylvia told her that she knew she was going to die.

Not long after this visit, Gertrude, for some reason, went and got her and allowed her to sleep in one of the beds and later a bath.

After the bath, she was forced to write a letter to her parents, insisting that she open the letter with "Mr. and Mrs. Lester Likens", the letter went:

"I went with a gang of boys in the middle of the night. And they said that they would pay me if I would give them something so I got in the car and they all got what they wanted... and when they got finished they beat me up and left sores on my face and all over my body.

And they also put on my stomach, I am a prostitute and proud of it.

I have done just about everything that I could do just to make Gertie mad and cause [sic] Gertie more money than she's got. I've tore up a new mattress and peaed [sic] on it. I have also cost Gertie doctor bills that she really can't pay and made Gertie a nervous wreck and all her kids."

She also refused to allow Sylvia to sign the letter.

Once written, Gertrude instructed her boys to take Sylvia to a dumpster and leave her there to die. Overhearing this, Sylvia tried to escape, but in her weakened and starved state, couldn't, and the boys were able to drag her back into the house. She made it as far as the front door.

Over the next several days they all beat her mercilessly. They beat her with chairs and broom handles, their fists. Whatever they could use, they used to beat her until finally she fell unconscious.

On October 26th, Gertrude instructed Sylvia be brought upstairs for a warm bath, and it was discovered that the girl had died. Stephanie had tried to give her CPR, but it was far too late.

When the police arrived, Gertrude gave the police the letter she forced Sylvia to write, however, Jenny was able to talk to an officer stating, "Get me out of here and I will tell you everything."

So much happened to this girl and so many people had the opportunity to step in and chose not to. As this was already going to be rather long, I didn't write those details into this story.

This girl didn't have to die like this. She shouldn't have.

There are some things, readers, that shouldn't be ignored. People outside those who were in on the abuse witnessed something and did nothing.

If you see a child or anyone who you can plainly see is being abused...do something...call the police...call social services...

But that one phone call could save a life.

Any one of at least five people could have done something to save this girl's life. And no one did a thing.

What if it were your kid? What if it were you?