True Crime Database

Sylvia Likens

This case covers yet another tragic death of a child, a young, sweet 16 year old girl, who will only be remembered for her untimely murder. Her name was Sylvia Likens and she lived the last few months of her life in misery, so much so that this inspired the film 'An American Crime', starring Ellen Page and Catherine Keener, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. While heavily criticised on numerous points by attendees, it can be noted for it's sheer amount of disturbance in terms of portraying the events that led to this heinous crime.

Sylvia Likens was the middle child of Lester and Betty Likens, two carnival workers, on January 3rd 1949. She was born between two sets of fraternal twins, Diana and Danny being born in 1947 and Jenny and Benny in 1950. The family had a very unstable life and, to keep up with moving around the carnival for their parents jobs, were never able to properly settle down anywhere. On top of that, Lester and Betty started having financial and marital problems, causing them to separate for a time.

For a short time in the summer of 1965, Betty lived with Sylvia and Jenny, who was disabled due to catching polio as a young child, in Indianapolis, Indiana, away from the carnival environment. Shortly after, however, Lester got in contact with his estranged wife with the promise of potentially patching up their relationship. Needing some alone time, they got in contact with a local woman, Gertude Baniszewski, the mother of a friend Sylvia had recently made.

It was thought that the reason Lester asked her to take care of them was because he felt pity towards her. Gertrude had dropped out of school at the age of 16 to marry a man with a volatile temper, with who she had 6 children with: Paula, Stephanie, John, Marie, Shirley and James. They were married for 10 years before divorcing and Gertrude got involved with a younger man, 22 year old Dennis Lee Wright. Although he fathered her youngest and seventh child, named Dennis Lee Wright Jr. He was abusive towards her and they eventually separated also. Forced to raise all her children as a single mother, she would babysit and iron in order to raise some money, though this was never enough to feed her family. So when Lester Likens offered the opportunity to earn $20 a week by taking in Sylvia and Jenny, she was quick to accept.

For the first week of Sylvia and Jenny's stay, everything seemed to be normal. The conditions were cramped and food wasn't of the greatest quality, but that week essentially remained incident free. Paula was 17 and became a very close friend of Sylvia, Stephanie was 15 and her and Sylvia often sang together throughout that first week, John was 12, Marie 11, Shirley 10, James 8 and Dennis a few months old. However, the $20 that was promised to Gertrude came late. Unbeknownst to any of the Likens upon initially meeting her, Gertrude was struggling with depression and severe stress, as well as receiving treatment for asthma. So when the money arrived late, Gertrude felt cheated and she took her anger out on the girls, beating both of them with a paddle while screaming at them. A cheque had arrived the next day from Lester, but this didn't stop Gertrude's resent towards the girls as a result. In fact, nothing truly would.

Throughout the coming weeks, the relationship between Sylvia and Paula started to become strained. Paula had been seeing a married man and had realised that she was pregnant with his baby. Paula was too scared to tell her mother, despite the fact that she was her favourite child, but trusted Sylvia enough to let her know. During an altercation with this married man, Sylvia let slip that Paula was pregnant and others at their school overheard. This led to their peers spreading rumours around the school about Paula and soon about Paula and Stephanie both being prostitutes. These rumours eventually made their way back to Gertrude and accused Sylvia of spreading them.

Sylvia soon became the sole target of the abuse. She was humiliated for even the simplest things, including once having had a boyfriend and accusing her of things that she did not do. If Sylvia was even seen talking to a boy on any given occasion, she would be labelled as a whore or a prostitute, which only worsened the abuse. Gertrude would encourage her own children to hurt Sylvia, including burning their cigarettes on her arm, punching her, kicking her, pushing her down the stairs and was even forced to insert a coke bottle into her vagina.