Trials: Avenging Sylvia

“This,” said Prosecutor Leroy New, “has been the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana.” There could be little disagreement from the crowds who had jammed the Indianapolis courtroom for five weeks. What attracted—and repelled—the spectators was the trial of Mrs. Gertrude Baniszewski, 37, two of her children, Paula, 18, and John, 13, and two neighbor youths, Coy Hubbard and Richard Hobbs, both 15. All were charged with the protracted death by torture of pretty Sylvia Marie Likens, 16, who with her younger sister Jenny had boarded in the Baniszewski home.

The Last Day. Though Sylvia’s fate had already been limned in considerable detail (TIME, May 6), the trial shed light on several crucial questions raised by the case. Why, for example, did Sylvia not escape from the Baniszewski house, where police found her lacerated body last October? From the testimony, she emerged as a simple, stoic girl who resigned herself to her early mistreatment, only to become too numbed and weakened by its later savagery to resist. At first, when Sylvia was abused, her sister testified, she would “just grit her teeth and shake her head.” After young Hobbs, using a heated anchor bolt, branded Sylvia with the numeral 3, she said: “There’s nothing I can do. It’s on there now.”

As Sylvia’s inferno deepened, Jenny testified, she made one desperate, futile attempt to flee. She had got as far as the porch when Mrs. Baniszewski dragged her back in and beat her across the face with a curtain rod. Marie Baniszewski, 11, told of Sylvia’s last day of life: “She was still alive and breathing because I went over to say hi. She tried to say hi back, but she didn’t have the energy to. She waved her hand and moaned.” A few days earlier, Sylvia had told Jenny: “I know you don’t want me to die, but I’m going to die and I know it.”

Unworried Neighbors. Why had Jenny not sought help for her sister? Only 15 herself, and crippled from polio, she explained that she was “scared,” that Mrs. Baniszewski “kept beating me.” What about the neighbors? Incredibly enough, few if any of the adults in the blue-collar district knew or cared what was going on.

Judy Duke, 12, one of several neighborhood small fry who witnessed the early battering game, said that she told her mother, “They are beating Sylvia something awful,” adding: “My mother didn’t do anything because she thought Sylvia was being beaten for being bad.” Mrs. Phyllis Vermillion, who lived next door and once heard the dying Sylvia scraping a shovel on the basement floor to attract aid, testified that the girl “looked like she didn’t care whether she lived or died”—but said nothing about having helped her.

Blood Lust. Above all, what could have driven a mother and young children to kill? Though Gertrude Baniszewski, a divorcee, pleaded insanity, three court-appointed psychiatrists pronounced her sane. One conceded that she possessed “a capacity for violent action,” which may have been aroused by Sylvia’s calling her daughter Stephanie, 15, a whore. As for the child sadists, it seemed that Mrs. Baniszewski’s blood lust had infected them, and that Sylvia’s passivity only whetted their murderous zeal.

Last week, after more than eight hours’ deliberation, the jury of eight men and four women reached its ver dict. Gertrude Baniszewski was convicted of first-degree murder; although the prosecution demanded the death penalty, the jury showed mercy and she was given a life sentence. Paula was found guilty of second-degree murder, which in Indiana carries a mandatory life term. John Baniszewski, Hubbard and Hobbs were convicted of man slaughter, and will each serve from two to 21 years in prison. Still awaiting trial is Stephanie, who, alone of her cruel clan, told the prosecution all she knew about Sylvia’s slow death.