Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Sylvia Likens

Episode Date: June 4, 2018

Sylvia was a happy, beautiful 16-year-old when her parents left her and her sister in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski while they went on the road for work. But, within a few short months, Sylvia was beaten, humiliated, and ultimately left to die from neglect and severe abuse, inflicted by not only Gertrude, but the Baniszewski children, and neighborhood kids as well. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-sylvia-likens/    

Hi Crime Junkies, welcome back to another episode. I'm Ashley Flowers and I'm Britt and today we have another really famous Indiana case for you that everyone has been requesting. But before we jump in, I want to ask you if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, please go leave us a five-star review. We are dangerously close to having two thousand five-star reviews, which is insane. So it's also like 70% of our listeners are on Apple Podcasts and the fact that we don't even have two thousand is crazy. So I'm looking at you guys, I know you're listening and I know you haven't left us a review. So if you like the show, we're

on what episode 28 now, 29? 29 I think. Yeah, so leave us a five-star review if you like what we're doing. It helps other people find the show, it really helps us out and it's totally free for you. So please go do that, show us some love. Britt, I am starting to wonder about our twisted listeners because this case that I'm about to cover today is probably the second most requested one and probably one of the most messed up ones in my opinion. Yeah, I've never really dived too deep into this case. So I'm excited to hear all the details because it's probably at least in the top five of Indiana's most notorious cases, right?

Right, and this is the case of Sylvia Likens. Sylvia was born to a very large, very poor family. They all lived in Boone County, which is basically northwest of Indianapolis where I am now. Sylvia's dad only had an eighth grade education, so by the time our story begins in 1965, he had held many jobs. He had a laundry route, he worked in factories, and for a while he even worked with traveling carnivals selling food from a concession cart. So in the summer of 1965, basically he and his wife decide that the carnival business was the best for them, it was kind of lucrative, and they want to get back into it. But the carnival life, the

traveling carnival life, is no life for five children, so they had to find someone to look after their kids. Their oldest daughter was grown and married, so they didn't have to worry about her, and their two boys were gonna go stay with their grandparents, so they really just needed a place for the two girls, Sylvia and Jenny. Now these two girls, to give you like a little bit about them, Jenny is shy, she's the younger one, she's somewhat insecure, she has this lingering limp from a bout of childhood polio, Sylvia on the other hand is a very confident 16-year-old girl, she's outgoing, she's beautiful, but she did have a

little insecurity about her smile, she would always keep her mouth closed when smiling, because she was actually missing one front tooth. So knowing the family was looking for someone to watch after their girls, a mutual friend introduced the like-ins to Gertrude Benichevsky. But at the time, for whatever reason, she was going by Gertrude Wright, which was the last name of her most recent baby daddy, who she said lived over in Germany. When you say most recent, how many baby daddies were there? She had seven kids and the six oldest all had Gertrude's last name, Benichevsky, but they, that's because they all had the same father,

who's Gertrude's ex-husband. The youngest though had the last name of Wright, because I assume that's the name of the boyfriend or fling or whatever this guy was, and she said that the dad wasn't with them because he was in Germany serving in the army. And these seven kids that she had ranged in ages from 18 months old to 17 years old. Whoa. I know, it's like a wide range, but to paint you a picture, she's 37 years old. She has a house full of kids, no income. She has some child support coming in from her ex-husband, but it's barely anything in those days. Not enough to actually keep a home with seven kids

running and no actual steady job. The only thing that was bringing in money for her is she was earning money ironing, which I would imagine doesn't actually pay a whole lot. They all lived in this very big rented house with enough room to take in two more people. So this connection is made between her and the Likens, and she probably needed the extra money. So she offered to take in the two girls for $20 a week. And also she's got all these kids already, and they all are constantly bringing their friends over and their friends, friends, and having sleepovers. So she's probably thinking in her mind like 20 bucks, I'll

probably have the same amount of people I always have in my house. I mean she already had seven, it's like as standard. So at that point what's two more? I always hear people say after three kids it's pretty much all the same. And I call BS because I mean I get after three you're running a zone defense, but my wallet and my body would for sure know the difference between three and seven and anyone who says differently is lying to us and lying to themselves. So the girls go to live with Gertrude and her kids, and their parents leave with a plan to basically send money every month for the girls room and board. Almost

from the start there's conflict between Sylvia and Gertrude's 17-year-old daughter Paula. Nothing severe, like they just didn't get along, they're constantly bickering. I mean the two were almost the same age, so I can see just getting shoved into another girl's house your same age. You can probably step on each other's toes. So this made Gertrude like Sylvia less than Jenny. She already didn't love them both, like the way she loved her kids. They were very much like had this Cinderella evil stepmother vibe where she treated her kids one way and then she treated Sylvia and Jenny another way. But because of

this rift between Paula and Sylvia, this for sure made Gertrude like Sylvia even less. This general dislike for Sylvia builds and builds over a couple of months until October of 1965, when one of the Likens payments doesn't arrive on the expected date. And when she doesn't get her money, Gertrude takes the girls upstairs, slaps them, and basically says, and this is a quote from the trial transcripts, is I've been taking care of you two b---- for a week for nothing. The money actually ended up arriving the next day, literally just one day late. But something had shifted. She started using this fraternity style paddle on the

girls for even the smallest offenses like exchanging soft drink bottles for change at the grocery store. I don't get it. Why would exchanging drink bottles at the store be bad? Yeah, I don't either. I fully support recycling, but they would get spanked for it. So she would literally just find any reason, anything that she could point to and be like, I hate that you did that. And she would take a paddle to these girls. And one time, this is when it starts to really escalate, Gertrude suspected Sylvia of stealing. So she used matches to burn the tips of her fingers. And when Gertrude's asthma would act up, instead of

just, you know, like maybe not torturing the girls that day, she would have her 17 year old Paula start to punish them instead. And I don't know when the transition fully happened. Like for this abuse to start, I guess she didn't get her money. But her kids were never abused. And she really didn't abuse Jenny as much. I again, I like to me, she doesn't have this history of it. Something snapped in her against something made her take it out on Sylvia. So now she's passed the baton to Paula. And I don't know if Paula was bragging about this to her, like neighborhood kids and her friends at school, or they just had so

many friends over that these friends kind of saw what was going on. But neighborhood kids started coming around to watch Paula, like punish and torment these girls specifically Sylvia. And then eventually would participate in this. And some would practice their judo on her, literally throwing her against the wall, kicking her, beating her. Some would put cigarettes out on her skin. It wasn't even physical, though. They also all got off on a humiliating her. One time she had to stand in front of a group of these teenagers, boys and girls alike. And Gertrude made her completely undress and then put a coke

bottle into her vagina just for their viewing pleasure. This is so messed up. Who requested this again? Probably people like me who only knew like the surface of this story and not the actual awful details. Because I had known that this stuff was happening. Like there I knew there was this girl who had been tormented and she ended up dying. But like I did not know the gruesome details of this story until I started diving in. Well after Sylvia was beaten and tortured, she was often forced to get into scolding hot baths to quote, be cleansed of her sins. Yeah, totally feels like her sins are the problem here. Nice

one, Gertrude. I know, I know. So because of this trauma, physically and mentally, Sylvia starts wetting the bed and it seems kind of a plausible reaction to this. Like she's going through a lot of physical stress. But now because she's wetting the bed, of course, Gertrude flips out and her reaction is to burn her pretty badly. And at this point she decides that Sylvia isn't even worth being in the same area as her and her kids. You know, she's basically an animal. She's just wetting the bed. She has no control over herself. So she moves her to the cellar. When she's put in the cellar, Gertrude also decides, you know,

meh, you know what, she actually doesn't even need to leave the house ever again. So she locks her in there and just every once in a while throws down some crackers and water. And at this point, she's not even allowed to leave the cellar to go to the bathroom anymore. She's literally defecating on the floors. She's going to the bathroom in corners, not even being treated like a human. It's at some point when she's down here. And again, Gertrude is putting all this violence on her. Gertrude has her kids, not just Paula helping, but her son as well. The neighborhood kids are helping. And it's almost like it's feeding her

need for this instead of like feeling like she's getting her aggression out and maybe like backing up a little bit. It's almost the more she does, the more she ends up hating Sylvia. Yeah, it's snowballing. Terribly. And she announces to all of the neighborhood kids that Sylvia is a prostitute and apparently proud of it. So to show that, she starts to etch that very saying into Sylvia's stomach. It said, I am a prostitute and proud of it. About halfway through though, she gets tired. So one of the neighbor boys like steps in to finish the job. I'm sorry, where the F is this neighborhood of monsters? Did you know any kids in

middle school who'd be like, yeah, totally. Let's carve up this girl being held prisoner in a basement. I have no idea. I have to assume it's some kind of mob mentality. I don't know much about like any of these kids that were there and their friends and their home lives. But I just can't figure out like how somebody sees that. And not only do you not go home and be like, Hey, by the way, our neighbor's keeping a girl. Maybe it's not cool. Should we tell somebody? But for you to actively participate in it just because your friends are or your friends mom is incredible. Honestly, I can't think of a different word that this would

just kind of consume every one all these kids in the neighborhood and completely blind them to how wrong it was. Yeah. So I don't know if like if they're all had like a very rough upbringing, which would have contributed to it. And then you have like a mob mentality. Then you have the fact that they're all very young and impressionable. I don't know. Or it could have literally just been the perfect storm of everything. And they were all a bunch of little monsters. And this is what happened when they all somehow got together. Well, it wasn't long after she was moved into the cellar that it became clear to Gertrude

that Sylvia was dying. So instead of like getting her help, like any help at all, or even just like taking her out of the cellar and maybe feeding her a meal and letting her take a shower and go to the bathroom in a toilet, she forces Sylvia to write a note basically saying that, hey, I'm dying because a gang of boys beat me. I'm sorry. What gang of boys? A gang of boys that broke into the house and beat the crap out of her every day, every other day, for like months? So that's the thing. Clearly Gertrude wasn't super smart because the plan that she had was to blindfold Sylvia and then dump her in the woods with this

note next to her. That plan makes even less sense. The note, okay, sure, maybe, but she did that instead of getting herself help. I don't get it. I don't know where this is going. No, like I don't even get the note part because even if like, like say a gang of boys did beat you up in the woods, like you're gonna write a note about it instead of taking five seconds to like go get yourself help or I don't even know why you write a note like, oh sorry mom and dad, a gang of boys beat me up by? It just doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense, but clearly she was panicking because this girl is dying in her basement and she

was trying to deflect suspicion. Well, while Gertrude is coming up with her flawless plan, Sylvia tries to escape, which enrages Gertrude and her and one of the neighbor boys actually end up beating the crap out of her. And not long after this, she passes away right there in the cellar and they have to end up calling police. So Sylvia Likens official day of death was on October 26th, 1965 and the cause of death was determined to be brain swelling from blunt force trauma, from being kicked and beat over and over. And when they found her body, they said it was completely mutilated. I mean she had been beaten, she

had cigarettes put out on her skin, she had scratch marks, she had cut marks and then again, not to mention, scratched in her stomach, I am a prostitute and proud of it. None of this says accident at all. And I guess one of the kids I had heard is actually the reason why they found out it was the mom. I mean obviously they knew someone in the house had to do with it, but one of the kids was like, listen, I'll tell you what happened, but you have to promise to get me out of this house. So despite her super sneaky attempt at throwing the police off of her trail, they end up finding out almost immediately that Gertrude and some of her

kids had something to do with this. So they put Gertrude on trial and this monster gets up there and basically is like, listen, I have no idea what happened, I had no knowledge of it, you know, what probably happened is my kids probably did this and I just was totally oblivious to it. I feel like that's all we need to know about Gertrude as a mother. She just threw her own kids under the bus. Yes, which don't get me wrong, like yes, they partook in it because their mother like started it and was doing it and kind of lured them into it. So they are definitely culpable, but this was not their plan. So really, you're

gonna try and get up there pointing your finger at them. Like, are you kidding me? So no one on the jury in 1966 fell for this because they found her guilty of first-degree murder. They also found Paula was guilty of second-degree murder and they find that two neighborhood boys and one of her sons are also guilty of manslaughter. Gertrude and her daughter got life sentences and all of the boys got two 21-year life terms. But in 1971, Gertrude and Paula both got new trials because the Indiana Supreme Court found that they were convicted in quote, a prejudicial atmosphere. And, Brett, you want to kind of explain what

that means? Yeah, sure. In the US, everyone has a right to a trial by an unbiased jury of their peers. The fact that the trial was held in the same area where the Benachevskis lived meant that everyone knew what was going on and everyone already had an idea of who did what and who was guilty. Right, and again, this was 1965. That's not that long ago. Everything was probably pretty heavily publicized in newspapers and there were like news reports. So for something this insane to happen in a middle-of-nowhere Indiana town, like, that's crazy. So I have to imagine kind of like we talked about the Scott Peterson

case and how the media took over. I'm sure the media reports were just like non-stop here in Indianapolis. Yeah, and you'd have to think that Sylvia and Paula and probably some of the other kids involved are all minors. Their names wouldn't have even been released nowadays. Right. So her basically their convictions get overturned. They get a new trial. But when they go back, Gertrude got life again. And this time Paula didn't risk it. She pled guilty to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter and served. Are you ready for it? Probably not. She served just two years in prison and then was released. I'm sorry. Two years.

What? Two years is insane for what she did. At least Gertrude and the boys were sentenced longer. Well, hold your applause for the legal system because the boys were released on parole for good behavior. After only serving, you do want to guess? Please be longer than two years. Oh weird. Exactly two years. So they got out in 1968 before Gertrude and Paula were even granted their new trial. What? Yes. I get that they were only charged with manslaughter. Quotes around only by the way. But that's ridiculous. They tortured this girl for months. And I know that like people get out on good behavior and I know you can get paroled

early and time-served and sometimes they'll count like every one year as two years. But they all got two 21-year sentences. I don't understand how on earth that equates to two years. I'm not good at math but I don't think it does. Yeah, no. And oh and even Gertrude got out on parole in 1985. I'm sorry. I didn't know they parole you after you torture a child to death. I didn't either and it's not even like they let her out when she was on her deathbed. Like that's less than 20 years. You can pretty much go on to live a life and she did. She changed her name to Nadine Vanfrossen I think is how you pronounce it and moved to Iowa

and lived out like an existence kind of an obscurity away from everything else and she eventually died from lung cancer because being a monster will catch up with you I have to believe and her daughter actually ended up Paula the one that like hated Sylvia and would help torture her ended up getting married and moving to Iowa. I don't know if to be with her mother or if everyone bad moves to Iowa. I think it's a no-case-date. So you know how I am. I can't not Google something and while you've been talking I decided to look up Paula and I found an article from 2012 that it talks about this girl who was involved with a

grizzly murder from 1965 and it turns out Paula was a teacher's aide in Iowa. Are you serious? I am. She was a teacher's aide in Iowa so she had been going by the name Paula Pace. I don't know if that's a married name or a name that she just came up with and she worked for a school district in Iowa since 1998. She had done some custodial work but she was mostly working as a teacher's aide for special needs students. So do they do you know like from the article did they know she had a criminal record but they just didn't look into what it was and she was just got promoted because I get why they fired her. That's not quite the

person you want around a bunch of kids when you are responsible for them. Be like oh don't worry parents leave your kids with us we're just gonna have this child abuser take care of them real quick. So I'm going through the article and it doesn't really say what happened only that Pace's true identity started getting circulated around Facebook and an anonymous tipster called the police and told them to look into her background. As soon as the police found who she really was they notified the school and everyone started doing background checks. It doesn't say that they hadn't done background checks before but if this was

an assumed name not a legal name it wouldn't have shown up anyway. That is crazy so she's working with kids. Oh are you ready to explode because I need you to take a deep breath. I have something that might be worse than being a teacher. I'm already like boiling over her teaching in Iowa. Okay one of Gertrude's sons the one of the older ones that actually would help torture became a minister in Texas. Yes and focus a lot of his time on counseling children of divorce like a minister. That's taking it like ten steps further than teacher in my opinion. Yeah I mean you want to talk I guess like those two years in prison

must have been really reformative and one of the neighbor boys actually that got convicted as well he ends up dying really young at like 21 of cancer. Again karma to the rescue. Yeah I again I feel like there is a lot to be said for karma coming back when maybe we can't get the justice we feel we need in the legal system. So this is where Sylvia's story ends but in kind of a random twist Sylvia's older sister was in the news recently. The one who was married and lived with her husband at the time all this went down. Yeah in 2015 her older sister and her husband went missing in California for like two weeks

and I remember following this story because of course every news article about them linked like linked back to her sister and they always mentioned it so it became a big story here in Indiana even though they went missing in Southern California. Well one Sunday they went to a casino in California where they were seen leaving around 2 p.m. then they were expected at their son's house for a Mother's Day celebration but never showed up. So we're getting all these articles no one can find them. Of course there's always this crazy speculation and somehow they're trying to like track it back to their sister but

of course it has nothing to do with Sylvia's story but after the two weeks that they reported missing their car was found in a remote area of San Diego County and Diana that's Sylvia's sister's name was in the passenger seat and her husband was slumped over in the driver's seat. Both were unconscious and they found out he had actually passed away of what they later found to be a heart attack but Diana was alive and just barely and I think even Diana thought that she was going to die in that passenger seat because they found a note of the couple describing what had happened after they left the casino on

May 10th and it was on this clipboard inside their car and their car was like off of the road like three-quarters of a mile down this steep rugged dirt road and they basically had this whole note kind of explaining they had gotten lost they were trying a new route and they were on this dirt road that really you couldn't even fit two cars down so they realized they're going the wrong way and they try and turn around and their car got stuck on a rock and they just stayed there and died. Oh my god. I know so I have no idea like why you wouldn't get out of the car and go walk or whatever but so she she ended up being fine her

husband did pass away from this but it was something really strange that brought Sylvia's case back up just in 2015 and there's still like all this speculation about what caused Gertrude to do this and some of like the psychology behind it I really recommend people look into there's a little bit out there about Gertrude I don't know how much they actually got to talk to her and delve into her psyche there was one guy who had her do this self-portrait of herself and when she drew herself she had these like giant hands with long fingers and at the end of the fingers they looks like little claws and

apparently this guy says it's suggestive of some kind of sadism and wanting to hurt people so she clearly had some kind of mental instability at trial she claimed that she was insane I don't think we can buy that she was insane because all of her acts were very deliberate and again what about Sylvia made her want to do this because she was around kids gosh almost her whole life and something in Sylvia brought it out in her but if people want to all draw their own self-portraits and send them to us I would kind of be into it I'm terrified of that we'll find a murderer in our fans goals so if you want to go

to our Facebook discussion group and share your self-portrait you can search that at crime junkie podcast discussion group on Facebook and I guess you can tweet them at us at crime junkie pod or post them on Instagram crime junkie podcast make sure you tag us and we will be back next week with another story this episode of crime junkie was written and hosted by me edited by David flowers mixed and mastered by Brit pray what and all of our music including our theme comes from Justin Daniel crime junkie is an audio Chuck production so what do you think Chuck do you approve