Sylvia Likens - Background

Background

Sylvia Likens was the third child of carnival workers Lester Cecil Likens (1926-2013) and his wife, the former Elizabeth Frances "Betty" Grimes (1927-1998). She was born between two sets of fraternal twins, Diana and Danny (two years older), and Jenny (who was disabled by polio) and Benny (one year younger). The Likens' marriage was unstable and the family moved many times. Sylvia was often boarded out or forced to live with relatives while her parents were working.

Sylvia baby-sat and did ironing; these were, coincidentally, the same jobs Gertrude Baniszewski held. Sylvia's favorite rock group was The Beatles. During her early time with the Baniszewski family, she would sing back and forth with Stephanie Baniszewski, one of Gertrude's daughters.

Sylvia and Jenny lived at 14 different addresses because the family moved frequently. In the past, they had been left at a grandmother's house or boarded out when their parents were traveling with a carnival, in hopes that the girls' education would not suffer.

In 1965, Sylvia and her sister Jenny were living with their mother in Indianapolis, Indiana when Betty was arrested and jailed for shoplifting. Lester Likens, who had recently separated from his wife, arranged for his daughters to board with Gertrude Baniszewski, the mother of Paula, a girl with whom the Likens girls had recently become acquainted. Although Gertrude and her seven children were poor, Lester, as he reported at the trial, "didn't pry" into the condition of the house, and encouraged Baniszewski to "straighten his daughters out". He agreed to pay her twenty dollars a week.