Gertrude Baniszewski (1929 – 1990), also known as Gertrude Wright or the Torture Mother, became famous for torturing and eventually killing Sylvia Likens, a girl she had taken into her home and was supposed to lovingly care for.
When she was convicted of first-degree murder in 1965, the case was called “the worst crime perpetrated against a single individual in the history of the state of Indiana.”
Gertrude Van Fossan was born in 1929 and was the third of six children.
At the age of 18, she married Giovanni Baniszewski, a gruff, often unstable and violent man, with whom she would have six children.
The marriage, not at all happy, comes to the inevitable divorce.
For a couple of years Gertrude took care of the children and work, but then in 1966, at the age of 37, she began dating a boy, a 23-year-old named Dennis Lee Wright, with whom she went to live.
From their relationship was born the woman’s seventh child, Dennis Jr., .
Unfortunately for Gertrude, Wright had no intention of having children, and shortly after the baby was born, he ran away and disappeared.
Baniszewski, with seven children to support, lost her job and found herself in a difficult period.
In July 1965, Lester and Betty Likens, carnies by profession, asked Gertrude to take their two daughters, Sylvia and Jenny, to babysit for them, in exchange for $20 a week.
When the first promised payment was slow in arriving, Gertrude began to beat, torture and humiliate the girls, especially Sylvia.
Thus began an inexplicable series of punishments and abuses on the two girls, with increasingly superficial and banal excuses, such as buying candy without her permission.
This behavior also convinced the woman’s children to mistreat, tease and make false accusations against the two girls.
One day Gertrude dragged Sylvia by her hair down the stairs, beat her with a stick and locked her in the closet for three days without food or water. The reason? She had talked to a boy without asking her permission.
After that senseless punishment, Gertrude called her children together and gave the eldest permission to “use” Sylvia as a diversion to vent their tension: she said they could beat her, push her down the stairs, wake her up at night with pranks like buckets of ice water, tear off her clothes and even force her to perform oral sex; anything, but not sexual violence or leave marks of abuse on her body.
The girl’s parents were not to suspect anything.
Baniszewski often witnessed her children’s abuse of Sylvia and, amused at seeing them get excited by the girl, began to call her a prostitute.
From then on, she treated her like a real prostitute.
To silence Sylvia and especially to prevent her from escaping, Gertrude told her that she would do to her sister Jenny whatever she refused to do with her children and threatened to kill her if she told anyone what was going on in the house.
In October 1965, the house across the street from the Baniszewskis was purchased by a middle-aged couple named Phyllis and Vermillion Raymond. The neighbors organized a barbecue in the garden a few days after their arrival to get to know the Baniszewski family. That day they noticed Sylvia with a black eye that she could barely open and Paula, one of Gertrude’s daughters, boasted to Phyllis that she had done it; then Gertrude went into the kitchen and, under the terrified eyes of the Raymonds, took a glass of boiling water and threw it in Sylvia’s face.
The Raymonds did not have the courage to report the incident to the authorities.
Sylvia, not even having the freedom to buy clothes to go to school, one day stole a tracksuit, but when she brought it home, Gertrude burned the tips of her fingers with a lit cigarette. Then she took her into the living room and forced Sylvia and Jenny to undress in front of the woman’s children: at that point she gave Sylvia a glass Coca Cola bottle telling her to masturbate until it bled and, when she refused, threatened to have her sister Jenny do it and to leave the children alone with her sister all night.
The consequences for Sylvia were abdominal pain and incontinence. Baniszewski, in order not to dirty the house, locked her in the basement where there was no toilet.
The need for money became more pressing and Gertrude decided to use Sylvia to make extra money: she made the neighborhood kids pay a nickel to see the girl naked; then she drew up a real price list to allow them to do whatever they wanted to the girl, who was tied to a wall with ropes and left at the mercy of the “curious” kids. Slaps, pushes, groping or worse: everything could be done, but it came at a price.
One day Jenny managed to send a letter to her older sister Diana describing the torture and abuse they were subjected to.
That letter made Diana suspicious and in mid-October she wanted to check on the situation at the Baniszewski house. Gertrude refused to let her enter the house saying that her father did not want her to hang out with her sisters.
Diana then hid near the house and waited to see Jenny. They managed to talk for a few seconds before Baniszewski noticed and took her back into the house. Diana then decided to call social services to check on them.
When the assistants arrived Sylvia was locked in the basement, while Baniszewski told Jenny that she would kill her sister if she did not confirm every word she said to the assistants. Baniszewski then told how she had caught Sylvia prostituting herself and kicked her out of the house. Jenny’s confirmations did not arouse the assistants’ suspicions and they decided to let it go. Although the check was successful for Gertrude, the danger of being discovered frightened her greatly and she decided it was time to close the matter.
On October 21, she told her children to take Sylvia to her room and tie her to a bed: the next day she wanted to give one last show for her children and the neighborhood kids, offering Sylvia’s body to their every perversion (in the secret hope that one of them, not the children obviously, would go too far and kill the girl). Once again Sylvia was forced to masturbate with a bottle of Coca Cola, then Gertrude had her gagged and gave the bottle to the boys telling them to have some fun. When they were all satisfied they finished the outrage by carving the sentence on the girl’s belly with a sewing needle:
“I am a prostitute and I am proud of it”.
The girl fainted and did not recover until the next day at noon.
Once Sylvia Likens regained consciousness, Gertrude took her to the bathroom and washed her, then forced her to write a letter to her parents in which she said she had run away from home and to never look for her again. After finishing the letter Gertrude called her sons and told them to take her to a nearby landfill and leave her there to die, but Sylvia heard these words and tried to escape. Gertrude realized that the girl still had enough strength to endanger her and her children, so she postponed the abandonment for a few days, the time necessary to render her near death. She had her taken back to the cold cellar and tied her up completely naked in the dark.
On October 24, Baniszewski entered the cellar with a knobby stick and attempted to hit Sylvia. As luck would have it, she missed and got a black eye. Even more furious, she grabbed a broom handle and broke it over the girl’s body, leaving her unconscious on the floor.
On October 26, Baniszewski told the boys to take her upstairs and give her a bath. Stephanie and her brother Ricky took her upstairs and put her in the tub, but they noticed she was no longer breathing.
Richard was scared to death and called the police. Upon their arrival, Baniszewski gave the police officers the letter she had written for Sylvia, but Jenny Likens managed to get close to one of the officers and whisper:
“Get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything.”
That phrase and the police discovery of Sylvia’s body led the officers to arrest Baniszewski and her 4 children for murder; in addition to them, other kids from the neighborhood were arrested, including Mike Monroe, Randy Lepper, Duca, and Siscoe.
Sylvia Likens’ autopsy revealed burns, bruises, muscle and nerve damage. Her vaginal cavity was severely damaged. The official cause of death was edema brain, internal bleeding in the brain, and shock.
Baniszewski was found guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. All of the children served two years in prison, and in 1971 Paula and Gertrude Baniszewski were granted another trial: Paula pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was released two years later; Gertrude was again charged with first-degree murder, but was released on good behavior in 1985. Despite a public outcry and petitions against her release, she was freed. Gertrude Baniszewski changed her name to Nadine van Fossan and moved to Iowa, where she died of lung cancer on June 16, 1990.
Film: An American Crime released in mid – 2007 directed by Tommy O’Haver faithfully reports the entire story of Sylvia Likens
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