House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

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Sylvia's Last Weekend". TruTV. Archived from the original on October 21, 2012 . Retrieved June 16, 2019. Obituary for Marie S. (Blake) Shelton". jessenfuneralhome.com. June 18, 2017 . Retrieved December 28, 2019. Gabriel Tarde, another French scholar of the period, was interested in how thoughts and feelings spread in populations. “What is society?” he wrote. “I have answered. Society is imitation.” Imitation, Tarde believed, usually worked by underlings imitating leaders, not the other way around. It can move beyond an immediate group and be caught by others. Bandits, for example, “an antisocial confraternity,” reinforce one another’s “toughness” within the group, but those mores “radiate” beyond the circle too, working their way into those vulnerable to its seduction. (Gabriel Tarde, The Laws of Imitation and Invention, trans. E. C. Parsons, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1903.)

He is a former newspaperman, having worked for the Terre Haute Star, the Associated Press, the Indianapolis Star, the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Francisco Examiner, the Detroit Free Press, and the Detroit News. He has worked also for Western Union in San Francisco, the Golden Horse Shoe tavern in Oakland, Calif., and Musical Isle Record Corp. in Chicago. He wrote this book while a reporter for the Indianapolis Star, where he worked from 1963 to 1967. In what was Likens's only act of retaliation, she is alleged to have spread a rumor at Arsenal Technical High School that Stephanie and Paula Baniszewski were prostitutes because she was upset with the household singling her out for similar accusations. [n 5] Gertrude was not the only Baniszewski to be charged with homicide. Every one of Officer and Mrs. B.’s children hurt Sylvia Likens but only two of them were tried for murder: Paula and John. Paula, the oldest, pregnant after a misadventure with a married man, assaulted Sylvia with such ferocity on one occasion that Paula broke her hand. While on trial for her life, Paula pushed a new life into the world, a girl she belligerently named Gertrude. John Jr., twelve years old when Sylvia died, and two neighbor boys, Richard Hobbs and Coy Hubbard, were also tried for Sylvia’s murder. The three Baniszewskis, Hobbs, and Hubbard were all convicted, but none of them was executed. Gertrude served the longest sentence, twenty years. She became a model prisoner and was known to her fellow inmates as “Mom.” After the three Baniszewskis were released from prison, they all changed their names, as did Officer Baniszewski, who had not taken part in any of the household torture.George Rice began his closing argument by decrying the fact Paula and the other defendants had been tried jointly. Sidestepping the multiple instances of testimony delivered at trial describing Paula and her mother as by far the most enthusiastic participants in Likens's physical abuse, Rice claimed the evidence presented against his client did not equate to her actual guilt of murder. He then ended his closing argument with a plea for the jury to return a verdict of not guilty on a girl who had "gone through the indignity of being tried in an open court". [36] The Investigation Discovery channel commissioned a documentary focusing upon the abuse and murder of Sylvia Likens as part of its true-life crime documentary series Deadly Women. This 45-minute documentary, titled "Born Bad", was first broadcast on November 30, 2009. Initial jury selection began on this date and continued for several days. The prosecution consisted of Leroy K. New and Marjorie Wessner, who announced their intention to seek the death penalty for all five defendants on April 16. They also successfully argued before Judge Rabb that all the defendants should be tried together as they were ultimately charged with acting "in concert" [113] in their collective crimes against Likens and that as such, if each were tried separately, neither judge nor jury could hear testimony relating to a "total picture" of the accumulation of offenses committed. [112] [114] [n 10]

Higgins, Will (October 23, 2015). "Retro Indy: The Murder of Sylvia Likens, as told 50 years ago". The Indianapolis Star . Retrieved March 31, 2017. Marc Hoover: Interview with Dianna Bedwell". The Clermont Sun. February 25, 2021 . Retrieved March 4, 2021.Well thanks for your input Diane your right that house is touched by evil by some dark sinnister fear and that fear seems to have been neatly wrapped up inside Mermel, Marcy: "Mrs. Baniszewski Portrayed as a New Woman", The Indianapolis News, December 3, 1985. The scholarly third person frequently serves as a hideout from horror. “All in all, intensive research on violence can be straining when one is emotionally involved, and detachment remains important.” This sentence appears in a paper called “Studying Mass Violence: Pitfalls, Problems, and Promises” in the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention by Uğur Ümit Üngör. Exactly how detached should one be? Reiterating the details of the torture and murder of just one person, Sylvia Likens, is more than “straining,” even though a woman and a gang of kids do not qualify as a mass. There is a leering fascination attached to the Sylvia Likens case, a queasy merger of moral outrage and titillation. To write about it is to become a vicarious participant in the girl’s victimization and humiliation. I am doing it now, writing about it, and to what purpose? The story has the tawdry outline of a horror film, and the crimes against Likens, although not all explicitly sexual, reek of shameful urges, veiled excitement, and sadistic sport of an erotic kind. Prurient voyeurism still clings to the case like cheap cologne to a crowd of people in an elevator. And the stink does not go away. Following her 1985 release from prison, Gertrude Baniszewski relocated to Iowa. [164] She never accepted full responsibility for Likens's prolonged torment and death, insisting she was unable to precisely recall any of her actions in the months of Likens's prolonged and increasing abuse and torment within her home. [165] She primarily blamed her actions upon the medication she had been prescribed to treat her asthma. [8] [166] Gertrude Baniszewski lived in relative obscurity in Laurel, Iowa, until her death due to lung cancer on June 16, 1990, at the age of 61. [164] [1]

Referring to the sentimental closing arguments made by various defense counsels regarding reasoning and motivation for their clients' actions, their attempts to divert responsibility to other defendants or participants, and their clients' collective failure to either help Likens or to notify authorities, New added: "All we hear is whining appeal, anything but blame where the blame belongs." He then speculated as to the reason Likens did not try to escape from the Baniszewski household prior to the abuse increasingly escalating in the final weeks of her life, stating: "I think she trusted in man ... I think she did not believe these people would do this and continue to do it." [146]A mother of seven children and a 15-year-old boy were arrested on preliminary charges of murder last night after they were implicated in the death of a sixteen-year-old girl who had been tortured and murdered. Investigators said a sister of the victim told them at least three of the woman’s children took part in some of the beatings while the victim, Sylvia Marie Likens, was bound and gagged. Noe, Denise. "No Rescue In Sight". TruTV Crime Library. Archived from the original on October 21, 2012 . Retrieved June 18, 2019. I'll edit this part then but like Isay really you know more about these people someone like you I dont mind editing my post we