Murder
On October 21, Baniszewski instructed John Jr., Coy, and Stephanie Baniszewski to bring Likens up from the basement and tie her to a bed. The next morning, Baniszewski, enraged that Sylvia had wet the bed, again forced her to insert a Coke bottle into her vagina, before beginning to carve the phrase "I'm a prostitute and proud of it" into her abdomen with a hot sewing needle. When Baniszewski was unable to finish the branding, she enlisted Ricky Hobbs to finish. The next day, Baniszewski woke Likens, and then dictated a letter to her, intended to look like a runaway letter to her parents.
After Likens finished the letter, Baniszewski began formulating a plan to have John Jr. and Jenny Likens take Sylvia to a nearby garbage dump and leave her there to die. When Sylvia overheard this, she ran down the stairs attempting to escape, but was stopped by Baniszewski as Likens stepped out the front door and onto the porch. Baniszewski then pulled Sylvia back inside the house and again threw her down the basement steps and kept her there.
On October 24, Baniszewski came down to the basement and attempted to bludgeon Likens with a wooden paddle, but missed her and accidentally struck herself. Coy Hubbard stepped in and viciously beat Likens on the head repeatedly with a broomstick and left her unconscious on the basement floor. In the early evening of Tuesday October 26, Baniszewski told the children she would give Likens a bath, in lukewarm water this time. Stephanie Baniszewski and Richard Hobbs brought Likens upstairs and placed her in the bathtub fully clothed; as they took her out shortly thereafter and laid her on a bare mattress on the floor, they realized she was not breathing. Stephanie Baniszewski frantically attempted to resuscitate her, but by then, Likens was already dead.
Stephanie Baniszewski, panic-stricken, told Hobbs to call the police. When they arrived, Gertrude Baniszewski gave them the letter she'd made Likens write. In the midst of the commotion, Jenny Likens whispered to one of the policemen, "Get me out of here and I'll tell you everything". Her statement, combined with the discovery of Sylvia Likens's body, prompted the officers to arrest Gertrude, Paula, Stephanie and John Baniszewski, Richard Hobbs, and Coy Hubbard for murder. Other neighborhood children present at the time — Mike Monroe, Randy Lepper, Judy Duke, and Anna Siscoe — were arrested for "injury to person".
Read more about this topic: Gertrude Baniszewski, Sylvia Likens
Famous quotes containing the word murder:
“Your kind doesn’t just kill men. You murder their spirits, you strangle their last breath of hope and freedom, so that you, the chosen few, can rule your slaves in ease and luxury. You’re a sadist just like the others, Heiser, with no resource but violence and no feeling but fear, the kind you’re feeling now. You’re drowning, Heiser, drowning in the ocean of blood around this barren little island you call the New Order.”
—Curtis Siodmak (1902–1988)
“Curiosity, easily frightened, takes refuge in puzzles, murder mysteries, and spectator sports.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“You who led me by the nose,
I saw you as you were.
Then I thought of your body
as one thinks of murder . . .”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)