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Brutally tortured for weeks by somebody who was supposed to be taking care of her, and by her children and the neighborhood children. Sylvia Marie Likens died 50 years ago today.
"The abuse was carried out not just by the caregiver — the notorious Gertrude Baniszewski — but also by her own children, some as young as 10, and by other children in the neighborhood. For weeks, even months, the torture of Sylvia Likens was casual entertainment, something to do in the afternoon before dinner and favorite TV shows. At least a dozen children participated or at least watched, and none felt sufficiently disturbed to tell their own parents.
* Other adults occasionally came to the Baniszewski house for various reasons and saw Sylvia's battered appearance. None pushed to be sure she was safe.
* Sylvia herself and her younger sister Jenny had opportunities to tell adults at school or church — they even had adult relatives living nearby. Neither said a word because, as Jenny would later explain, they thought it would only make things worse. Neither could conceive of the possibility that authorities would move to protect them, remove them from the house or arrest their tormentors." RetroIndy: The 1965 murder of Sylvia Likens
Gertrude Baniszewski (1929–1990), also known as Gertrude Wright and The Torture Mother, was an Indiana divorcee who oversaw and facilitated the prolonged torture, mutilation, and eventual murder of Sylvia Likens, a teenage girl she had taken into her home.
The case is unique in that, while Baniszewski did play an active role in Likens' death, the majority of the torture that eventually brought about Likens' demise was carried out by Baniszewski's teenage children and other neighborhood children.
Although Baniszewski did instruct the children on several occasions, it was later discovered that they took a large degree of Likens' torture into their own hands, in what would later be called a Lord of the Flies scenario come to life. When she was convicted of first degree murder in 1965, the case was called "the single worst crime perpetuated against an individual in Indiana's history". Gertrude Baniszewski | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers
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