True Crime All The Time - Gertrude Baniszewski

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

In 1965, Gertrude Baniszewski was a 37 year old divorced mother of seven children. Lester and Betty Likens were a couple who worked the carnival circuit and they needed someone to watch their 15 and 16 year old daughters. In a chance meeting they would meet Gertrude and make the decision to allow her to watch their girls in exchange for $20 a week. What would ensue over the next several months to Jenny and Sylvia Likens would be considered as one of the most terrible crimes in Indiana history.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss this case that involves the torture of both girls and the eventual death of 16 year old Sylvia Likens. The details of her death are horrible, but what would come out after the fact about who was involved in the torture and death of Sylvia would shock the nation. Gertrude was the ringleader, but it would turn out that her children and various neighborhood kids were involved as well.You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit our website at truecrimeallthetime.com for paypal donation, contact, and merchandise informationSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

everyone and welcome to episode 70 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson. Gibby, what is going on? What's happening, man? Can you believe we're doing episode 70? 70. Wow, man. Huh. I thought my contract only called for 50. Well, it did. And then you signed on for a little bit longer. Oh, was I aware of this? No, I didn't tell you. Oh, okay. Just forged my name. This popular demand. Yeah. Just forced you to keep going. I know it. 70, man.

That's awesome. So how you been? I'm good, man. I'm always good. You are always good. I'm just good. Cold? Yeah, man.

In the 20s. I can't freaking believe. March Madness is here. It's almost upon us. Yeah. And it's like 26 degrees. I'm gonna fly to my little island, man. Get warm.

Do I win one of those power balls or that mega million? Yeah. To combine, they're like 700 and some million bucks. Oh, what if I want them? Both. Sweet. You probably hire me as your gardener or something. No, we'll buy an island. We'll have all the T-Cat fans come. Oh, that's cool. It'd just be one big party. Yeah. It'd be awesome. That would be awesome. All right, Gibbs, you want to do some Patreon shoutouts? Let's do it. We had Janine Mulvaney. Okay. Kelly. Just Kelly? Just Kelly. No last name.

Okay. Cool. Could be Kelly Ripper. Kelly. Kelly. It could be a male Kelly. That's true. I got to be careful with how I do. Yeah, you've messed a few up. I mean, you got Carter wrong. I did. I messed Carter's up big time. How you didn't know that was a female?

I don't know. Yeah, because you were all over. I know it. We had Aaron Johnson, Melissa Lovell. Yeah, astronaut. Maybe. Julie Moore, Melissa Bonfardine. I'm sorry.

It sounds, it's a great name. It just makes me giggle for some reason. Could be Bonfardine. Bonfardine. Could be Bonfardine. Yeah. Could be Bonferdine. Oh.

It's about four different ways. You said it every different way, so that would make her happen. I'm trying to cover it. Yeah. Debbie Self. Cool. Michelle Thompson. Poppy Woodhouse.

Give me a little woodhouse, Poppy. Yep. A little 30-year-old aged. Let me mean with wine. Poppy Woodhouse. No, I was thinking like bourbon. Really? Yeah.

Poppy Woodhouse. Maybe because I was thinking like Pappy. Maybe that's a special type of weed from in Colorado. It could be. I don't. Give me some, uh, give me a bag of Poppy Woodhouse. It could be. You never know. Or if it's not, it might be now. Yeah. Hey, that's a good name. Let's call it Poppy Woodhouse. It's Stephanie Hill. Cool. I lean Villanueva. Newlo, I can't even say it. It's a good try though. Yeah. We were very, very close. Very close. Robert Baker. Yeah. Kevin Triplett. Cool. Brian Eichelberger. Yeah. Sounds like a internet superstar.

Does it? Yeah. I was thinking he sound like a football player. Really? Yeah. I'm going to go with like, what they call that, California. You know where they invent all the internet stuff? Where they invent the internet stuff. No, you know all the apps. Like a startup tech guy? Yeah, yeah, what they call that. Like Silicon Valley?

That's it right there. Okay. I think he works there. You know where they invent that internet stuff. That stuff that makes my phone go, Z, z, z. Usually during the podcast, as we're recording. And you give me that look.

We had Kelly Holiday. So she's off. She's off on. holiday. Yeah. So a lot of great support, new support on Patreon. We appreciate that. And then if we go back into the vault, this week we selected Donna Almeida. Huge shout out to Donna. Oh, awesome, awesome. Been a supporter for a long time. Very, very much appreciated. And Gibbs, I want to give a special shout out to Jenny Lynn Storms. She is our first ever monthly Patreon winner. That's awesome, Ginny. So for February, we just started it. And Ginny got to go out to

the website and pick whatever she wanted. And I'm sure she picked something really nice. I think, yeah, she did actually. Good. It was a cool, uh, cool fleece jacket, I think. Awesome. If I remember. That's awesome, Jenny. So big shout out to her. And then on PayPal, we had Eric Meade supported this. Really? Yep. Thanks, Eric. Got to love that. All right. So at the same time, this episode's dropping, we have a new episode of True Crime All the Time Unsolved Out. We do. It's on Judge Joseph Force Crater. Yeah. This might be one. one of the oldest cases we've ever done, Gibbs. Yeah, to date, I think it is. We're going back to the 30s. Yeah, roaring 30s. I think it was the roaring 20s. 30s was the Depression. Yeah,

I'm just trying to keep you on top of everything, man. You would have been like one of the, what are they call them, flappers? I don't, yeah. Dancing. I don't think, I'm not a no flapper, man. I think you are. Don't you be putting me in that box. Don't you put that on me. Yeah, that's right. But it's an interesting case of, you know, a man that goes missing. Yes. Then we get into the wormholes and the theories and the suspects like we always do. Chasing those rabbit holes. Yeah, always chasing rabbit holes. So make sure you check that out.

And check out criminology. Yeah, I heard it's pretty good. People really, really like it. This Golden State killer, man, East Area rapist. Terrible person. Horrible. Yeah. Nightmarish.

All right, Gibbs, you ready to get into this episode? Nope, don't want to do it. I want to talk about CrimeCon real fast. Oh, okay. Don't make sure people are signing up, using our. Special code. What is our special code? T-Cat with double T.

Double T at the end. Yeah. Yeah, if you're going to CrimeCon, if you're signing up, definitely use that. Get you 10% off of your standard badge price. Yeah. And let us know if you're going. Because I'm sure, you know, we want to do a meetup. Yeah, we do.

You know, so we need to know who's going to be there. And we can try to organize something so we all can be together and, you know, chat a little bit, hang out. Yeah. See Mike do some funny stuff. What am I going to do? I don't know. You just do some funny stuff.

Give you a couple beers. Next thing you know, you think you're Frank the Tank. I am Frank the Tank when I get a little tipsy because I don't drink a whole lot. Yeah, it doesn't take much lightweight. All right, Gibbs. So let's get into this episode. I wanted to do something different. And I was out searching for cases.

And I came across this case of Gertrude Banishefsky, nicknamed the torture mother. And it grabbed me because I'd never heard of it. That's really what I was looking for. case I'd never even heard of, didn't know anything about. And once I got into it, man, I was just hooked. I couldn't stop researching this case. So on October 26, 1965, so we're going back away, 50 plus years, police are called to a house at 3850 East New York Street in Indianapolis, Indiana, where they made a gruesome discovery. And they find the body of 16-year-old Sylvia Lytica. She was extremely emaciated and covered with more than 150 wounds. And a lot of these were burns,

cuts, all kinds of different wounds, but a lot of burns. They found her body on a filthy mattress inside the home. And this home belonged to 37-year-old Gertrude Banishefsky. She was a divorcee. She had seven children. Now, this case has been called, one of the most terrible crimes ever committed against an individual in the history of Indiana. And like we said, it's been over 50 years since this thing happened. And many people still think it holds that title. Now, Gibbs, we know there's been a lot of murders in Indiana over that long stretch of time. Oh, yeah, just off top of my head, you know, Herb Baumaster.

Yep, Balmeister. We did an episode on him. We've done a couple of different folks in Indiana. but those were people that killed many people, right? Those are serial killers. Most of the ones that we've profiled. You think of people like that as evil, cold-hearted. You just naturally assume that's what they are.

Exactly. To be able to kill that many people. But there's very few crimes in even counting in some of these horrific serial killers in the state of Indiana that have stayed with people like the murder of 16-year-old Sylvia Likins. And I think this is due in large part to the fact that the murder is spearheaded by this 37-year-old mom, Gertrude Banishefsky. But there was a whole bunch of other people involved. Some of them included her own children. Some as young as 10 years old that participated in this that we're going to talk about.

And on top of that, there was a whole bunch of other kids just from the neighborhood that were involved. I mean, it's really crazy. It just blew me away when I started to dig into this case. But I want to start out talking about Sylvia Likens, the victim in this case. She was born on January 3rd, 1948 in Lebanon, Indiana. Her mother's name was Betty Crimes Likens, and her father was Lester Cecil Likens. Now, she had two brothers, Danny and Benny, and she had two sisters as well, Diana and Jenny. And Sylvia was known as outgol.

and people referred to her by a nickname. And that was cookie. Now, her sister Jenny was a year younger than Sylvia. And Jenny was kind of the opposite. She was shy, introverted, and she had a noticeable limp because she suffered from polio. Their father, Lester, had an eighth grade education. So he beat you Gibbs by one year. Oh, man. Not just kidding. Why is so rough on me? No, you got him by at least two or three years. I'm a scholar. But like you, he had many jobs over the years, right? You've talked about it a number of times, how many different jobs you've had.

Oh, yeah, plenty. And he had a lot of them over the years to make ends meet. The couple had five kids. But some of the jobs that he had were maybe a little bit different Gibbs than the ones that that you had as you were maturing into adulthood. He drove trucks. He was a factory worker. It was pretty normal, right? A lot of us have had those jobs. But one thing that he ended up doing was traveling from carnival to carnival working concession stands. So again, we're talking about carnies here. I don't know how many episodes we end up talking about carnies. And Lester and Betty were unhappily married. They would split up. They would reconcile. They did this a couple of times. They had just reconciled. in 1965 when they made the decision that they were going to head out again together to work the carnivals. And because of this decision, they had to find someone to watch the kids. Now,

their oldest daughter was Diana. She was an adult. She was married. So they didn't need anybody to watch her. Grandparents were set to watch the two boys, Danny and Benny. But that left Sylvia and Jenny. And it's in July of 1965 that less than that less than that. and Betty would make the faithful decision of leaving their two daughters with Gertrude Banishefsky. And the Likens strike up a deal with Gertrude to board their two daughters in exchange for $20 a week while they're out traveling around working these concession stands on the carnival circuit. So now I want to talk a little bit about Gertrude. She was born Gertrude Nadine Van Fawson.

Ooh, that is a mouthful. Van Fawson. Ben Fawson. Like Ben Flossin? Have you been flossing? I floss all the time. Do you? It's good for you.

I'm a flosser. You should be. She was born September 19th, 1929 in Indianapolis to Molly Mertle. It's a hell of a name. Sounds like somebody character named Harry Potter. Molly Mirdle? Yeah. There was a Mertel something.

Yeah, I think so. You know way too much about Harry Potter. HP, man. All the way. And her dad's name was Hugh Marcus Van Fossin Sr. That's something else. All of these names are something. Her parents were originally from Illinois and were of Polish and Dutch descent.

And this was a pretty big family. Gertrude was the third of six children. She had a very strong bond with her father but was distant and a lot of times at odds with her mother. And it's at the age of 11 that Gertrude witnesses her 50 year old father have a sudden heart attack in front of her and he dies. Wow. So probably pretty traumatic.

I would think so. I don't know why I said probably. That would be traumatic. Yeah. And it deeply traumatized her. She would end up dropping out of school at the age of 16 and marrying an 18-year-old policeman by the name of John Stephen Banishefsky. He was originally from Pennsylvania. And John had a very violent temper.

He was physically abusive, often beat Gertrude because he was just annoyed with her. Just because he could. Just because, yeah. Yeah. But they stayed together for 10 years and had four children together during this 10-year stretch. Then they got a divorce. And after the divorce from John, Gertrude married a man named Edward Guthrie. But this one's not going to be meant to be at all.

This man, Guthrie divorces her after only three months. Three months, Gibbs. That's fast. Something is seriously wrong if you know after three months. You got out get out. you got to get to, you know what, out. That's right. I'm out of here.

But I don't know how much of this was Gertrude. There was a lot in the research that talked about the fact that he had a hard time with her kids, putting up with her kids. Although I don't think she was any piece of cake either. Yeah, I was going to say probably went further than that. Based on the facts that are going to come out. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say that. But it's not long after this divorce, second divorce,

she gets back and reconciles with her first husband, John. They're married for another seven years. Wow. Have two more children together and would eventually divorce for the final time in 1963. So she's thrice divorced, living in a van down by the river. Oh, that's... No, she's not. But she has been divorced three times. When she meets a 23-year-old man, you know, she's about 35 years old at this point. So she likes them young? Yep. Yeah. She goes after a young guy by the name of Dennis Lee Wright, but he was also abusive. So like I think I've said this before, she's not a good picker. She's picking men that, you know, are very abusive to her. And with Dennis, she would have another child. This would be number seven and her last child. But right after the boy is

born, this 23 year old guy abandons her. And it's just two years later in 65 when the Likens were introduced to Gertrude. At the time, she was using the last name Wright, as if she had actually married this boy, man boy, manchild, Dennis Wright. And there's some speculation that she did this to keep up appearances. Because remember, she's got a newborn, or, you know, a pretty young two-year-old named Dennis Wright, Jr. So she kind of is changing her name to write, not legally, but that's what she's telling people. All right, Gibbs.

So we set this up. know the Likens have struck a deal with Gertrude. Sylvia and Jenny go to her house to live there. Lester's going to pay Gertrude $20 a week. Okay. Which? You're going to convert that for us or 1965? Good money, man. Beepo, beep, be like a hundred bucks today. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. It don't seem like that much when you're buying food. I think it'd be more than that today. Let's go with 128. 128 on the nose.

Exactly. But you got to figure. That's going to Kroger's. You're buying food for two extra kids. So 20 bucks a week and 65. And right from the start, Sylvia, who's 16 years old at this point. Yeah. Jenny is 15th.

But Sylvia and Gertrude's 17-year-old daughter, Paula, they've got issues. They got beef right from the beginning. Against each other? Against each other. Yeah. No, with two separate people. And that's why I brought it up. Yeah.

Okay. It's so germane to the story, but... Yeah, yeah. I'm just messing with you. I know. But it's these issues, Gibbs, between the two, Sylvia and Paula, that really lay the framework for what's to come over the next several months. And like I said, this is a very different episode.

You know, we're not talking about a serial killer that was committing crimes over seven, 10, 12 years, like a lot of the times we do. This whole thing essentially takes place over, what is about a three month period. The first week that they're at the house, things go okay. You know, the girls are attending high school with the Banishefsky children. They're going to social functions. They also went to church with them. But it's just one week into it that Lester's payment is late.

That's not good. No, the $20 is late. And this is the first weekend. And this really set Gertrude Bannischief. off. She started lashing out at the girls and she's slapping them saying, you know, I took care of you bitches for a week for nothing. I mean, we're a week into this thing. Yeah. And the irony of the whole thing is the money order comes the very next day. So it was a day late. But she's starting to flip out already. And from that point, that one, that money order being one day late seems to

set everything in motion. That would be the start. of a downward spiral. Because after this, Gertrude would start regularly abusing both girls, but pretty quickly into it, almost all of the abuse is directed towards Sylvia. By August, Gertrude is abusing Sylvia both verbally and physically on a daily basis. And Gertrude's only 37 years old, but it was said that she was very frail, very weak. but she had a paddle and she had a thick belt that had been left by her husband John and she used both of these to devastating effect against Sylvia. But here's where things really start to get twisted

because at the times when Gertrude was feeling too weak to do the paddling or use the belt herself, she enlisted her 17 year old daughter, Paula, to dole out to punishment. So she's basically handing over the paddle and or the belt to her daughter and saying, well, you do it. And Paula did. Now, Gertrude also would burn Sylvia with lit matches and cigarettes. This is what I was talking about when they find her body. There's so many burn marks on her. Burn marks. There's going to be a lot of cigarette marks. And then she started allowing her children to beat Sylvia to throw her down the stairs. I mean, this story is, is twisted as hell. Gertrude started accusing Sylvia of all kinds of things.

And these would escalate from, you know, they started off as like stealing candy to being pregnant. She accused her of being pregnant. And then she stepped up to accusing her of being a prostitute. Oh, man. And it was after this accusation that Sylvia was a prostitute, Gertrude started delivering like sermons about the evilness of prostitutes and other types of loose women. And after these beatings and the sermons, Sylvia would be placed into a scalding hot bath

because Gertrude thought that that would cleanse her of her sins. And as we go on, Gibbs, I mean, everybody is going to feel for this poor girl. I mean, they abuse her. And that's why I said in the beginning, there are a lot of people that think this is one of the most heinous crimes ever committed in the state of Indiana. But one of the really strange things about this case is that at this point in time, both Sylvia and Jenny are leaving the house. You know, they're going to school as these beatings and this torture type behavior is

starting, is happening. And it's at school at the high school that Gertrude gets it into her head that Sylvia was spreading rumors about her two kids, Paula and Stephanie, that they were prostitutes. That's not the kind of rumor you want out there. No. And it's after this point of her thinking that Sylvia is talking bad about her daughters, things escalate very quickly. I mean, she brings in Stephanie's boyfriend, a boy by the name of Coy Hubbard, and other classmates. So we're talking about a bunch of other teenage boys into the home to, beat up Sylvia. Just take turns beating her up. Man, what is wrong with them? These are children.

I mean, I know. And this lady is saying, hey, come on in and take turns beating up this 16 year old girl. Some of the kids would kick her. They would beat her. Others would put out their cigarettes on her skin. Gertrude even forced Jenny to do some of this stuff, to hit her sister, to sit on her. At one point, Sylvia was forced to undress in the living room in front of this entire group. So you've got all the kids that live there. Right. You've got a bunch of other kids from the neighborhood. She's forced to get naked.

And then she's made to insert a Coke bottle into her vagina in front of these kids. What is? I told you this one's twisted. But I want to go back to this important fact. And it's that both Sylvia and Jenny are leaving that. house during this period of time. They're going to school. They had opportunities to alert someone to tell them, hey, bad things are happening. But they didn't. And Jenny would later state that they were just too afraid. And the other thing that she would say is that they didn't believe that anyone in power

would actually be able to do anything about the horrors that were going on in that house. Just think about that. I mean, you're sitting in like a classroom. knowing that when school's out, you're going home to this house of horrors, but yet you're too scared to tell anybody. Yeah, I can't even imagine it. It breaks your heart. Yeah, absolutely does. But this freedom that Sylvia and Jenny had, the little bit of freedom they had where they

were able to leave the house, it's about to end because the beatings become worse. And at a certain point, Sylvia becomes incontinent. She can't control her bladder. Not surprised. And she starts wetting herself. Yeah, that would seem typical for what she's been through. Well, you've got to figure, right, the trauma, but also probably from some of these brutal beatings that she was being subjected to.

And it's after she starts wetting herself that Gertrude starts locking her in the basement. So that's the end of her leaving the house from that point forward. Gertrude would start a bathing routine that involved dousing Sylvia with scalding hot water and then she would take salt Gibbs and rub it into the burns that that this scalding water made. I mean, this is a sick woman. Most of the time Sylvia was kept naked. They hardly ever fed her. And oftentimes when they did feed her, it wasn't food. Gertrude and her 12 year old son, John Jr. And we're going to talk more about these kids individually as we go. The two of them. And this is a 12-year-old would make Sylvia eat her own feces.

It's disgusting. So she's essentially being starved. She's dehydrated. They're not giving her really much to eat or drink. Her sister, Jenny, would later say that Sylvia was so dehydrated. She couldn't even cry. She didn't have enough liquid in her body to produce tears. In the midst of this whole thing, Jenny is at one point able to,

to get a hold of their older sister, Diana. This was the one that's an adult. She's married. She's not that much older. I think she's like 18 years old. Okay. And she tries to tell Diana how bad it is at this house. But Diana dismissed what she was being told because she thought they just didn't want to be there.

Like they were making things up or just complaining. Trying to get them to come get them. Yes. But her suspicions are raised a little bit. So she goes to the house. and then her suspicions are raised even more when Gertrude doesn't let her in to visit her sisters. But she spots Jenny and tries to talk to her, but Jenny said she's not allowed to talk to her and runs away. So you know Gibbs is something's up.

Something is not right. Diana contacted social services. But when a worker showed up at the house, Jenny told her that Sylvia had run away. And this would later come out to be a threat from Gertrude that if Jenny didn't say this, she was going to get the same treatment as Sylvia. Because we haven't really talked about Jenny that much. No. Almost all of this torture and the beatings and everything was directed at Sylvia.

You know, Jenny was just a year younger, but she had polio. She had a problem with her leg. And I don't know if that was the reason, but she was spared a lot of the, abuse. But it's intimidating for sure. Oh, if somebody, anybody around that situation. If you've been watching your sister and what's been happening to her and someone says, if you don't do what I tell you to do, that's going to happen to you, that would be pretty persuasive. Absolutely. But what happens is the social worker goes back to her office, files her report, and basically it's that there's no follow-up needed at this house because the girl's not there.

So we're up to October 21st. And like I said, Gibbs, all of this happens very quickly because we know Sylvia Likens dies in October. On October 21st, Gertrude has John Jr., her son, Coy Hubbard, who is the boyfriend of Stephanie, and Stephanie, the three of them, brings Sylvia up from the basement. And she ties her to a bed. And the next morning, when Gertrude goes to check on Sylvia, she's wet the bed. And this sends Gertrude into a rage. I don't know what she was doing. She was testing to see whether or not she would wet the bed, maybe hoping she would wet the bed so she could unleash her anger.

I don't know what this woman was thinking. Oh, either, man. She's nuts. But she once again takes a Coke bottle and inserts it into this poor girl's vagina. And then she has her daughters, Marie and Shirley. All these kids, Gibbs, they are getting. into this. She has them heat up a sewing needle with a lighter until it's glowing. And Gertrude would say to her daughters that Sylvia was a prostitute and she was proud of it, meaning Sylvia

was proud of being a prostitute. Okay. So we'll just put it on her stomach. This is what she tells her kids. Then she turns to Sylvia and says, you branded my daughters, so I'm going to brand you. Wow. So this all goes back to this, what I don't even think was real, but Gertrude thinking that Sylvia somehow spread this rumor at the school that her daughters were prostitutes. And this is her revenge for that. For that. Yeah. So Gertrude takes the sewing needle and she starts to carve the words, I'm a prostitute and proud of it into Sylvia's abdomen. That's a lot of carving. Well, she's not going to do at all. She starts it. Yeah. And then her youngest daughter, Shirley, carves the number three onto Sylvia's well. And it's thought that it wasn't supposed to be a three. It was supposed to be an S for slut or slave or

something like that. Yeah. And this young girl got it backwards. Just wasn't very smart. I don't know if she was very smart, but she's, she's the youngest girl. But it just shows you how involved all of these kids are. And I, say all, not all, because one of the, the babies, like two years old. Obviously, he's not involved. Right. There's another kid that we're going to talk about that's pretty young as well. He's, he's not involved. But I said Gertrude started it, but she wouldn't finish.

She brings in another kid, just a neighborhood boy, just brings him in by the name of Richard Hobbs. You know, he, he was a kid that abused Sylvia on a regular basis. Yeah. And Gertrude tells him to finish what she started. All I did was right out that thing in her stomach, and I hit her about 10 or 15 times. But how come? Well, most because the Gertie told me to.

She refused food. We try to get her soup every once in a while, and stuff like that she wouldn't take it. Well, how about these scratch marks on her stomach? Who put them on it? I did. Why? Well, Gertie just thought of it. She says, since you branded us, we're going to brand you, so she etched dinner with a pen and I went over.

She showed me how to do it, and then I went over it. I did it. Did you ever use any hot irons on it? No. Yeah, I, that three in her stomach, I did half of that. Shirley Ann did the other half. Where'd the ass come from? What do you mean?

There's a big ass branded on her stomach, that's one of her breasts. That's what you're talking about. That's what you're talking about. How about the inscription on there? I'm a prostitute and proud of it. Who put that on it? I did.

Did you scratch it on there, paint it on there? How did you do it? Well, like I said before, Gertie, wrote it down there with a pen, and I did arrest. She showed me how to do it, And then had Gertie abused this girl. Yeah.

So that's Richard Hobbs talking about what he had done, Gibbs. But in the beginning there, he acted like, all I did was. Like, I just did this. Like, what's the big deal? And then I hit her 15 times. That's all I did. Yeah, I just hit her 15 times, really? And then goes into the branding her and all of that.

He sounded like there was nothing wrong with what he did. Just what I did because Gertie told me to. Grudy said. We're going to talk about this. we go on, you know, obviously she had the major influence. But how could these kids go along? I mean, not only her own kids, just neighborhood kids. At one point, don't you check yourself? I mean, really, you can't check yourself and say, before you wreck yourself? Yeah, before you wreck yourself, you know, because you're saying something's not right here. It's not right. What I'm doing is not right.

Why am I coming back here and doing this and why I'm not going somewhere and telling somebody about this? And I think this is what got to me so much. This wasn't just one kid or two. We're talking about a large number of kids, all essentially agreeing, signing on to be torturers. Yeah, a little gang of tortures with, and you can hear it. No remorse after the fact. Now, just before her death, a day or two, Gertrude woke Sylvia up and demanded that she write a letter to her parents, indicating that she had run away. Because I think at this point,

Gertrude was starting to panic. Sylvia was on the verge of death. She was afraid she was going to die. She needed something to cover up what had been going on. And Gertrude would dictate to Sylvia exactly what to write. And the letter starts out, Dear Mr. and Mrs. Likens, which I thought was very odd. That is odd. What kind of kid writes a letter to their parents and says Mr. and Mrs. Likens. Okay, that I would know. But it goes on, say, I went with a gang of boys in the middle of the night, and they said they would pay me if I would give them something.

So I got in the car and they all got what they wanted. And when they got finished, they beat me up and left sores on my face and all over my body. They also put on my stomach. I am a prostitute and proud of it. I have done just about everything that I could, just to make Gertie mad. cause Gertie more money than she's got. I've tore up a new mattress and peed on it. I have also cost Gertie doctor bills that she really can't pay and made Gertie a nervous wreck and all of her

kid. This is what she makes this girl right, trying to cover up what she's done, what her kids have done, what the neighborhood kids have done? But just like I talked about Gibbs, what kid would open up with that, you know, greeting, what kid is going to write a letter basically admitting to doing a whole bunch of bad things? There's no kid that's going to write a letter calling their parents, Mr. and Mrs. and then talk about having sex and doing the, yeah, they're just not going to do it. I mean, that's, it's crazy. Not willingly at least. Yeah. And obviously, we know she didn't do these things. Right. But even if she had, no, she's not going to write a letter to her parents saying this. When Sylvia finally finished the letter, Gertrude began formulating a plan.

And she was going to have John Jr. and Coy Hubbard take Sylvia to a nearby garbage dump and leave her there to die. That was her plan. But Sylvia overheard her talking about it with, you know, some of the kids and other people. And she tries to escape. She tries to run out of the front door. But Gertie's able to stop her. And you have to imagine the shape that this. girl is in at this point.

No track star. She doesn't have the strength to get away from anyone. And the fact that she was even able to attempt it is probably amazing. Gertie grabs her, throws her back down into the basement, basically throws her down the steps and locks the door. There was an incident that occurred where Gertrude was attempting to hit Sylvia with the paddle in the basement. But apparently she made a very strange swing and it missed, came back, hit her.

right in the eye. It's not justice, but got something out of it. Got something. But what this did is it caused Coy Hubbard to step in and he beat Sylvia unconscious with a broomstick. So remember, Coy Hubbard is the boyfriend of Stephanie, one of the daughters. So on October 26, 1965, Gertrude told the children that she was going to give Sylvia a bath. She had Stephanie and Richard Hobbs bring her up from the basement and put her in the bathtub fully clothed. But when they get her upstairs, they noticed that she's pale white and she's not breathing. And it was actually Stephanie, Gertrude's daughter, that attempted to resuscitate her, gave her mouth to mouth. But then pretty quickly, she tells Richard Hobbs to go and call the

police, Hobbs went to a nearby telephone and called the police. And he gives them the address 3850 East New York Street. And then he hangs up. And when police get to the Banashefsky house, Gertrude immediately hands them the letter. This letter that she had forced Sylvia to write a few days earlier. And this is when Jenny Lykins, seeing that the police are there, suddenly comes forward and says, get me out of here. And I'll tell you. you everything. Well, she, uh, I'll come in about, she come up from the basement and we noticed she's cold and everything, so we carried her upstairs, give her a warm bath and artificial respiration when, when she stopped breathing, see where she gave her a warm bath and then she stopped

breathing. So I gave her artificial restoration for about 10 minutes. And then, uh, where I went and called the police. So that's our buddy Richard Hobbs again. Now, in there, he says that he gave her mouth to mouth for 10 minutes. He's trying to be the good guy now, huh? Yeah. And most of the research that I, that I read Gibbs, it was, it was the daughter that attempted the mouth to mouth. But maybe he did as well. I don't know. But again, listen to this guy talk. He was part of this. He contributed to what happened to Sylvia Likens. And he's just talking like you and I sit around shooting the shit. Yeah. It amazes me. I went up and made myself a peanut butter scene. And then she wasn't, we noticed she wasn't breathing.

So I put my peanut butter sandwich down, went over and kind of pushed on a little bit to see if she was okay. I just, I don't get it. So the police get a statement from Jenny Likens and you know that had to blow them away. So they have the statement combined with this gruesome discovery of Sylvia's body. And they really didn't need much more evidence than that. They arrested Gertrude, her daughter's Paula and Stephanie, her son, John Jr. they also arrested Richard Hobbs, who was just a neighborhood kid, and Coy Hubbard, who was not part of the family, but was Stephanie's boyfriend, all for murder in the first degree. But that's not the only people they

arrested. They arrested a bunch of neighborhood children and charged them with injury to person, right? These were all the neighborhood kids that had come to the house. And it was not just boys. It was boys and girls, had come to the house, participated in the torture, beaten, kicked, burned Sylvia Likens. At one point, Gibbs, it talked about the fact that some of the neighborhood boys were practicing their judo moves on this poor 16-year-old girl. That's just crazy, man. While the others and family members sat around and watched. Oh, yeah.

Good, good throw there. Good punch there. Yeah, it boggles, right? So Gertrude, her kids, Hobbs, and Hubbard, they're all held without bail, awaiting their trials. When they did the full examination of Sylvia's body, it revealed over 100 cigarette burns to her body. A hundred. A hundred, man. That poor girl.

She suffered tremendously. They found, you know, lots of bruising. She had muscle and nerve damage. Because don't forget, she had been thrown down the stairs. a number of times. And she had bitten through her lips. You know hard that would be to the bite through your lips? Yeah, to the point where she,

they were nearly severed, both lips. So between the tumbles down the stairs and the punches and all of that, the examination revealed that her vaginal cavity was swollen shut. Which just kills me, man, because they did to her. But yet she was through the autopsy that she was still overtly. virgin. Yeah, her hymen was still intact. Yeah. So she never was, she never was a prostitute. She was never pregnant. Like this. Say it. Say it. I'm not going to be it. Yeah. But you're right. I mean, that finding completely ruled out all of the accusations that Gertrude had made against Sylvia.

Not that it would have mattered. No. If she was. You just don't treat somebody. Yeah, right. I mean, even if, even if she had done some of these things, she didn't deserve. any of what she got, but the fact is they know she didn't do any of these things. This was just a 16-year-old girl whose parents trusted the wrong person. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. Sylvia's official cause of death was determined to be brain swelling, internal hemorrhaging of the brain, and shock that came from the extensive skin damage that she suffered. I mean, imagine having a hundred plus cigarettes put out on you and what that would do to you. And again, we talked about how they didn't feed her. She was emaciated, extremely malnourished. It's just sad.

Sylvia was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Lebanon, where she was born. And then we get to the trial the next year of Gertrude Banishefsky. She denied any knowledge of the torture. She claimed that her children must have done it. This is a woman that masterminded this whole thing, and when the shit hits the fan... She's ready to throw her family underneath the bus. Yeah, she blames it on her kids. I did never beat that girl.

Never. She was beat up on by other girls. In fact, my own daughter softening the jaw, broke her wrist. And so, I mean, there you go. And girls around the neighborhood beat her up, bloodied her nose. One girl broke her nose, in fact, I think. Were you ever in contact with the...

police on anything to care? Well, in the last two weeks, in fact, I think if you'd talk to my daughters, I'd ask him that the children's father and I are divorced, and he's the place in the New Yorkover was. And I've asked the girls for a plea that they call their dad and ask them what to do. And in fact, I asked Jenny, I said, Jenny, and I told Sylvia, I said, Sylvia, I'm going to have to call the police or somebody because I can't have any responsibility. So that's Gertrude. Yeah.

And that clip steams my Brussels sprouts, man. Oh, yeah. I'm telling you. She is basically saying, I told my kids to call their dad. Who was a police officer to find out what they need to do instead of just picking the phone up and calling the police. Right. Okay. Not to mention the fact that she's the one beating the shit out of this girl.

Right. Yeah. She's trying to say, I told Jenny. I told Sylvia, I'm going to have to call the police. They were probably like, please call the police. Please do. Yeah, she's a nutcase, man. Something, I don't know, just listening to her is infuriating.

Yeah, because she's deflecting everything off of her to everybody else. She's not taking any responsibility. None, zip, nada. I don't like her, Gibbs. I don't like her either. All righty then. Okay. We're in agreement on that.

Finally. So she entered pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. So I don't know if she's insane, but she's an incredible piece of shit. I'll go that far. That she is. Gertrude's attorney attempted to shift the blame away from her saying that, you know, this is just a chronically ill woman, weak. There's no way that she could have inflicted this terrible abuse on Sylvia. But then you had a bunch of different attorneys that were representing the kids and the neighbors.

And they put the blame entirely on Gertrude. So you basically have attorneys coming from both sides, right? One saying she didn't do it. It was the kids that did it. The kids are saying the mom did it. But during her trial specifically, she was her own worst enemy. Because apparently Gibbs, she got on the stand and gave a bunch of rambling testimony, putting Sylvia down, denigrating her, calling her a prostitute, said that she had multiple affairs

with married men. So she's trying to damage the character, but she didn't even read the medical report to know that she couldn't have affairs. Yeah, I guess it really damaged her this testimony that she gave, but that's not the big thing. The big thing is her daughter Marie. You know, initially on the stand, she backed up her mother. But at one point in the trial, she finally broke down and she started crying and admitted that she was lying.

And I think she might have been the only one of the kids that showed any emotion about what they did. About what they did. And Marie would go on to recount in very graphic detail how her family and the other kids in the neighborhood had tortured and basically ultimately caused the death of Sylvia Lichen. So on May 19th, 1966, a jury found Gertrude Banishefsky guilty of first degree murder. Paula Bannyshefs was found guilty of second degree murder. Our buddy Hobbs that we heard in the clip in the first two clips, along with John Jr., John Bannyshefsky Jr. and Coy Hubbard, they were all convicted of manslaughter.

Gertrude was sentenced to 20 to life at the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis. So it seems like a fitting sentence, but you're going to be piss, Gibbs. Oh, great. I know you are. So we'll talk about Gertrude first. She's in prison. And over the next 14 years, apparently she became a model prisoner. She was working in the sewing shop.

It was said that she was like a mother to some of the younger female inmates, which I find that very hard to believe. Right. She wasn't a mother to her own kids. She sure as hell wasn't a motherly figure to Sylvia and Jenny Likens. But in prison, she earned the nickname Mom. That's what the other women prisoners called her. And then Gertrude comes up for parole in 1985.

And this caused a firestorm in the state of Indiana. People couldn't believe that they were thinking about paroling this woman after everything that she had done. You had Jenny Likens and her family appearing on television. You had a lot of people speaking out against Gertrude. There was all kinds of groups. There was a Protect the Innocent, Society's League Against Molestation. They traveled in from other states to Indiana to speak. speak out against this woman being paroled.

There were people picketing the sidewalks. And apparently Gibbs, they were able to get 40,000 signatures from citizens of Indiana. Wow. Demanding that the governor step in and do something to keep this woman in prison. But it didn't work. She was granted parole. The parole board voted in favor of her release, three to two. So I guess there's only five people on the board.

But three people thought she had done her time, paid for this crime. And during one of the hearings, Banashefsky herself would say, I'm not sure what role I had in it because I was on drugs. And she said she never even really knew Sylvia Likens. But somehow she took full responsibility for what happened to her and said, I wish I could undo it, but I can't. And I'm sorry. I'm just asking for mercy and nothing else. And after the parole board made their decision, one of the members came out and said, the bottom line is you cannot bring somebody who is dead and gone back to life. And I wouldn't be a member of the board if I didn't believe people can change.

So how many episodes gives we talk about rehabilitation? Oh, I know. Lately, a lot. Now, this is not a woman that killed 25 people. It's the way that she did this. It's the torture. It is. Involving her children. Yeah. Getting other people into it and influencing them to do your dirty work.

That's why I said there's just something about this murder, this crime that, you know, even 50 plus years later, especially in the state of Indiana, it sticks with people. Yeah, I can't imagine there's ever disappearing in people's mind. So Gertrude Baneshefsky walked out of prison on December 4th, 1985. She traveled to Iowa, changed her name to Nadine Van Fawson. More than 20 years after she entered the Indiana Women's Prison, convicted murderous Gertrude Banishevsky walked out as Nadine von Fawson. She had her name changed legally even before the first parole granted her by the Indiana Parole Board and ruled invalid by Superior Court Judge Michael Dugan. Before leaving, Ms. von Fossin made a final plea.

I just wish, you know, people would please forgive it. You know, I can't undo anything. I know that the Lord has forgiven me. I have my peace inside, but I still have to live with this every day, and it's terrible. You just don't know what it does. Many people in the community have not forgiven Gertrude Banishefsky. While she visited with reporters before driving away,

a car drove by on the street outside the street. prison and the passenger yelled, shoot that bitch. Her eyes darted toward the sound of the look of pain or fear easily read in them. Shoot that bitch. I love that part. I'm there with you. I love those like old newscaster voices. Mm-hmm. There's just something about him. Kind of like my voice. Yeah. In today's news. Two cousins. Two cousins went on a rampage. In Illinois. In Illinois. Now, the one thing that you heard him talk about that I didn't mention was there was a parole hearing initially where they said that she could get out. But it was done behind closed doors and it was invalidated. Apparently, it was against the law because it wasn't open to the public. I didn't really talk about it.

But since he brought it up, I figured I better do a little clarification there. Yeah, I think that's good. But it doesn't, you know, it didn't really matter because she got let out, I guess, was was my thinking. but Gertrude died in Iowa from lung cancer on June 16th, 1990. She was 60 years old. Oh, how about that? So she wasn't out all that long before she died. But I go back to that clip of her talking, Gibbs, and she says, you know, I have to live with this.

You can't imagine how hard it is. You know, cry me a freaking river. Yeah. Really? Think about Jenny. And Sylvia. live through that. Right.

Sylvia does not here, but had to live through the torture and, and her family. And her through. Yeah, I just, oh, man, there's something about this thing. It just, it really gets to me. So next I want to talk about Paula. She sent to prison and actually gives birth to a daughter in prison. Okay. And what does she name this daughter?

Of course. Gertrude, names it after her mom because she's a peach. The only bright spot here, I guess. Gibbs is that the baby was put up for adoption and hopefully went to a good home and far, far away from anybody with the last name, Banisheshefsky. And hopefully they changed her name. From Gertrude. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully. Nothing against Gertrudes. Just something against this one in particular. So she goes into prison, you know, 65, 66 time frame. In 1971, she makes two different attempts to escape. But despite that, she's paroled the next year in March of 72. So she does probably

what, six years maybe? Yeah. And then she's released completely by 74. So she's paroled and then completely released by 74. Now she changes her name as well to Paula Pace and manages to stay out of the spotlight pretty much unknown all the way up. up until 2012. When she's discovered to be living in a small Iowa town called Marshalltown, and she's working for the school system in a neighboring town called Conrad. She had two grown sons. Now, she wasn't charged with anything because she hadn't done anything. Apparently, she had lived a pretty clean life, I guess, after getting out, but she was fired from her job for putting false information on her application. She didn't disclose. She didn't disclose.

you know, this information that would have caused a school system not to hire her. But since that point, she's basically slipped off the radar again and kind of went back into hiding. And then we get to Stephanie Banishefsky. She was the second oldest. She was 15 at the time that the crime occurred. And although she admitted to participating in some of the abuse, she was 15. So she got a special trial. Eventually, all the charges were driving.

against her because I think she did give some evidence to authorities about her family being involved. So she helped out the officials. Yeah. Yeah. And again, she was 15 years old. So she changed her name, like seemingly everyone else. She got married. She had children, became a teacher, and apparently she lives in Florida. But she has to live with that every day, if she's still alive. Yeah. Which I assume she is, but yeah who knows i don't know if that would be an easy thing to live with i think it'd be very difficult i believe it would be especially the older you get right at 15 you might make some bad decisions you might be coerced by your mother whatever the situation is you get to be 40 years old and start looking back on some of the things that you might have done yeah that might be

pretty tough on the old uh psyche yeah on the conscious there yeah then we talk about john Baneshsevsky Jr. He was only 12 years old. But like we talked about, he was a pretty active participant in what happened to Sylvia Lichen. He was convicted of manslaughter. And he became the Indiana State Reformatory's youngest inmate. He served two years in total at the reformatory, got out, changed his name, apparently

drifted around. And then all of a sudden found religion that he would later say, helped him see how bad the things that he had done were. Now, he is one of the only members of the Banisheschi clan to come out publicly and really show remorse for what he did. That's good. No, it is good. He really hasn't made much of an attempt to hide it. Although he did change his name, but he's openly talked about it publicly. I mean, at 12, you should know right from wrong. I agree with that. But you do have the... influence of your mother, you know, and siblings pressing down on you. So it's a really tough case to

judge. I agree with you. I think all of these people involved, whether they were 12, 15, whatever, I think they had to have known what they were doing was wrong. But you do have to factor in probably what was an immense amount of pressure coming from older siblings, the mother, all that. But I guess this, you know, John would eventually become a minister. He was a real estate agent, married three children. He died of cancer in 2005. He was only 52 years old. So a lot of the people in this family died very young.

What happens when you mess around with something you shouldn't be messing around with? Well, technically, I guess you could call it karma. I think it is. And then you had Marie. She was only 11 years old at the time that this happened. And she was the one that we talked about, cried on the stand, testified against her family, no charges brought against her. And I think she still lives in Indiana. Yeah, I'm guessing like 64-ish years old, maybe, 63 years old. Yeah, some early to

mid-60s probably. Yeah. And then you had Shirley, Shirley was the youngest of the family to participate in the torture. 10 years old at the time that this happened. Now, I don't know how much she participated, but she was never charged as a 10 year old for anything. You have two more kids that we have to talk about. James, he was only 8 years old. He wasn't arrested.

He wasn't called to testify. But there are allegations that he possibly could have played a role in some of the things that took place. as an eight-year-old. But there's not a lot out there about him at all. And then, of course, the youngest was Dennis and what he was like a couple of years old. But after what happened, he was placed in foster care, later adopted by a family. They changed his name.

But he died as well. He died in 2012 in California. So again, Gibbs, I don't know if it's bad genes or what, but I think Benashevsky's. They died. I think somebody's trying to even things out. a little bit. I'm pretty sure they died of natural causes, but... Did they?

Now I've got to talk about Coy Hubbard, neighborhood kid. We talked about him being Stephanie's boyfriend. He was a very active participant in the torture of Sylvia Likens. He's one of the people that used her as a practice dummy for the lack of a better term for, you know, this judo that everybody was apparently doing. So we're talking about, you know, kicks, puns. punches, judo flips. If you've ever seen somebody do judo, Gibbs, I know you're an expert practitioner. Part of my MMA. Of the martial arts. You got to know that stuff when you do the M.MA.

But Koi was also one of the individuals that routinely pushed her down the basement stairs. He was convicted of manslaughter, but only served two years before being released. But what's strange about Koi Hubbard is he never changed his name, unlike a lot of the other people involved. in this case, he didn't feel like he needed to. And it was said that he stayed, after he was released, stayed in the Indianapolis area for most of his adult life. So he didn't change his name, stayed in the same area, but he would be tried for murder in 1982 for two men, but would end up being acquitted. And he died of a heart attack in June of 2007 in Indiana. Hmm. Karma. More karma. Yeah. But 2007, we'll talk about in a minute, a little bit. A little bit.

bit more maybe, but that was the year that a movie came out called an American crime. And it was a movie about this Sylvia Likin's case. And it's just very odd to me that the year that this movie comes out, this man dies of a heart attack. Yeah. Was that coincidence? I think not. Or was that stress? Was that guilt? I don't know. It could be guilt fear. And then you have Richard Hobbs. We heard from Richard a couple times. Sure as hell didn't sound like he was too sorry for what he had done, at least on the interviews that we heard, that we played, just a neighborhood kid who was very involved in torturing Sylvia. He is the boy that, you know, carved the words into her stomach with the needle. He was convicted of manslaughter only served two years in the

Indiana State Reformatory. And I guess Gibbs, I mean, these, these were kids still. These were not 18-year-olds. Yeah, that mean, I understand. So there was a lot of. I understand. So there was only so much probably that they could get. I don't agree with some of it, but. But he actually died from cancer at the age of 21. You mess with somebody's angel, man. So he commits the crime at 15. He's released at 17.

Four years later, he's dead at the age of 21. And then I think Gibbs, and we've got to talk a little bit about the Likens family. Absolutely. Because Lester Likens, he didn't commit a crime. crime. But what he failed to do was really look into Gertrude Banishefsky before essentially dropping his daughters off in her care. At trial, he said, Gertrude and I got to talking. She said she would take care of the children and treat them like her own. I'm not sure that she treated her own that well. Not like that. But the problem that I have with this is that he actually visited the

Baneshyski House on at least two occasions. And the last time he was there was reportedly October 5th, which is just a few weeks before Sylvia would die. So, I mean, I have a problem with that. I do too. You know, I mean, that's just, uh, that's not right, man. You did you check your daughter? You don't see. You don't pull her aside, you know, grab your two daughters and have private conversation with him. I don't even think you would have had, he would have had to have done that, Gibbs. she would, at this point by October, she was being tortured regularly. I don't see how he could have visited and even taken one look at her and not known something was very, very wrong. I just don't understand that.

Yeah, I mean, most people can tell, I mean, I could look at my kids and I know if they're not feeling good, right? Let alone look at my kids and see, you know, the not eating, the weight loss, the look that you have when you're dehydrated. What about the bruising? The bruises, the burns. But apparently the problem was he never really made it past the living room. So I don't know if Gertrude was able to corral him there and keep him away from the other parts of the house. Because it's one thing we haven't, we talked about it a little bit, but this house was filthy.

I mean, it was a mess. Well, I mean, he was a traveling Carney. So what are you saying? What's a mess to some people might not have been a mess to him? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm not saying that. You're saying Carnies have different standards than the rest of the kids? What are you saying? What I'm saying is when you're on the road and that lifestyle, you know, you live a little bit different than you do when you have a house.

So, you know, maybe a little mess here and there, boxes all over the place. We're going to lose our whole Carney audience. Well, you're right. Probably will. Sorry about that, Carnie. No, I just like saying the word Carney. Get that one person Gibbs, that one Carney. Damn it, Gibby.

They're not going to listen anymore. I can't believe you just did that. I'm not going to ever listen. I'm Team Furgy now. Now, it's probably not a big surprise that Lester and Betty Likens would divorce. And Lester would die in 2013. He lived a pretty long life. He was 86 years old and he died in California. You had to think about that all his life. But he did. I guarantee it. He would have such remorse, not just over losing his daughter, but the fact of thinking back about could he have done something about it? Should he have done something about it? Yeah, I think every day you'd wake up thinking to the time you went to bed again. I'm surprised he lived to be 86. You'd think

something like that would just eat you up inside. And I say he lived to be 86. It might not have been a great 86. You know what I'm saying? Racked with that kind of guilt. He might not, he probably didn't have a good life. She could have been a tormented soul, man. That's what I'm saying. Now, when you talk about Betty Likens, of course she was devastated. She did take the stand. at trial gave very short responses. After she divorced Lester, she would remarry, but Betty died as well, but earlier. She was 71 years old. She died in 1998. When she died at the time, she's married to this this other guy and he's going through her things. And he finds a bright pink suitcase in one of the closets. And when he opens it up, it's filled with new.

newspaper clippings, unpaid bills, and baby pictures. But he didn't want anything to do with it. And he actually gave it to some friends. And these friends went through the suitcase and they found inside a whole bunch of letters from people all over. You know, these were letters of sympathy, urging Betty to be strong and to overcome her troubles. But she never did. And we know this.

She never. And you wouldn't. She never got over this. Leaving her daughter with this woman, knowing what ultimately happened to her, she never got over. I don't think you could ever, ever. And the last person Gibbs to talk about is Jenny. Again, she was afflicted by polio. And so, you know, she didn't suffer nearly, not even close, the amount of abuse that Sylvia did.

But I go back to the fact of, you know, she had opportunities. Actually, they both did to tell neighbors, to tell teachers, but they were just so scared. And Jenny would actually come out later and say that, you know, she thought that if she told anyone, it would actually make the situation worse. Yeah. Inside that house. Sure. And it was actually an attorney for one of the, the neighborhood kids would come out and say that he speculated that there was never a person in either. of these girls' lives, so probably referring to their parents, that made them believe that someone would

come to their eight. And that's pretty damn sad. It is sad. Very sad. That's speculation on the attorney's part. But if that's true, that is genuinely sad that your parents never showed you that they would be there for you no matter what. Jenny died of a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 54. So again, she was very young too. A lot of people in this case died very young. Yes, they did. And we can't leave out Diana. Diana was the older sister of Sylvia and Jenny.

And she would go on with her life. But later in life, she would actually make headlines because she and her husband, Cecil Knootson, they were both diabetic. And they got lost in the middle of the woods in California. And we're apparently stranded in their. car for two weeks. And all they had was rainwater, a pie, and some oranges. Her husband Cecil didn't make it out. He died of a heart attack after the first week, but Diana did. She was rescued by some people riding like ATVs or something like that. But it was said that she was near death

by the time that they found her. So I briefly mentioned Gibbs, that movie American Crime, came out in 2007. It had a couple of big actors in it. Catherine Keener, she was the woman that played the love interest in 40-year-old Virgin. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. That's Catherine Keener. Not Keener? No, it's Keener. Okay. She played Gertrude. Really? Yeah. I haven't seen it. And then Ellen Page, who's been in a lot of movies. Yeah, she was in Juneau. Yeah, she was in Juno, I think she was in some of the X-Men. She was, and she was also in that movie with Leo, when he like gets some people's dreams and they build layers.

Yeah. Yeah. She was the dream builder. It's good, but it's a weird movie. It is weird. But it's good. I mean, it keeps your attention. So anyway, if anybody wants to, you know, check that movie out if you haven't already seen it.

But there was another movie to come out in 2007 as well. It was based on this. It wasn't really what you'd call. Factual? Yeah, it was more fictitious. Yeah. Some of these events are true, kind of a movie. You don't know what events are actually true, but that's what they say at the beginning.

Yeah, and I don't know any of the people that were in that. But it was called The Girl Next Door. I haven't seen either one. Oh, The Girl Next Door. What's your name in it? Do you got her name? Yeah, it was Blanche Baker and Blythe Offarth. Oh, yeah, big time.

You don't know what in the hell you're talking about. Oh, Blythe is all over the place, man. So that house located at 3850 East New York Street was. torn down, but not till 2009. That's a long time. That seems like a long time. Yeah. And it's an empty space. Right now, I think they're using it as some type of church parking lot. But before we go, Gibbs, I just want to talk about some other people involved in this case that had nothing to do with the torture or murder of Sylvia Likens. Okay. But these were people that could have possibly acted on things that they saw and maybe stop this tragedy from happening.

Yeah. There was a couple that lived next door to the Banishefsky house. They allegedly visited the house on multiple occasions. And it was reported that they actually witnessed firsthand Paula, the 17-year-old daughter of Gertrude, physically abusing Sylvia Likens while Gertrude sat there egging her on. And apparently they even boasted about all the things that they had been doing to this young girl. This couple, if this is true, they never reported anything to the authorities. Now, it was said that there's a possibility they were scared, that they didn't report it because they were scared.

But I have a hard time with that. There were other neighbors that reported hearing some banging type noises coming from the house just a day or two before the murder. And it turned out that this was most likely Sylvia in the basement banging a shovel off of the concrete floor. And the neighbors said they thought about calling it in, but then they decided against it. Oh, man. Now, it's a little hard to blame them. I hear stuff all the time. I do too.

I don't immediately think I need to call the police. It's just one of those things that, you know, what if they had decided to? Right. What would have happened? Yeah. And then there was another neighbor that made a report anonymously. And it actually prompted someone to come out. But when they came to the house, Gertrude told this person that she had kicked Sylvia

out of the house because she was a prostitute. And there was no follow up. Nothing else came out of it. So I thought Gibbs just a few interesting things from neighbors that, where you just play that what if game. What could have happened? But that's it. I mean, that's, that's the case of Gertrude Banishefsky, the Bannashefsky, the murder of Sylvia

Lykins. And I guess Gibbs to me, what I was not able to piece together. And I don't know that really anybody has been able to, to this day, 50 some years after the fact. Right. Is the why. Why? Why? What prompted Gertrude to do the things that she did?

Right. She got angered by the money order being late. It came the day after. Yeah. I don't think that could have been the main reason. And then it just, it just, this whole thing about Sylvia telling people at school, bad things about her kids. Yeah. I just don't, nobody's ever really that I couldn't figure out, dissect it, and put together exactly the reason why all this happened. Maybe she just saw something in Sylvia that reminded her. of something else and it just made her go crazy. Well, there have been people that have thought that Gertrude Banishefsky was envious of Sylvia,

saw her as an outgoing person. She had a lot of spunk, a lot of personality, and was envious of her, and it turned to hatred. Yeah, just a hater. Because she wasn't, right? She saw something maybe in Sylvia that she wanted to be but wasn't. Wasn't able to. So that's been, you know, some. one theory out there.

And then another thing that you see is that this torture escalated because it became a form of entertainment for Gertrude. And she was egging it on. She was having her kids participate. She was having these other neighborhood kids participate. She was divorced. It was said that she was most likely very depressed. It was also alleged that she was into drugs.

And you even heard her say that she was doing drugs. Right. Or that's a statement that she made. Yeah. It's not an excuse, but okay. No, not excuse at all. But in the end, to me, the fact that it happened at all is mind blowing. But the fact that she involved her children and other kids, it's just, it's astonishing.

Basically, they all had a hand in it. But the question I have to ask you is, would they have? Would any of these kids, whether they were. part of the Banishefsky family or the other neighborhood kids, Hobbes and Hubbard and whoever, would they have done any of this had it not been for Gertrude? And I'm thinking no. No, I think she had a big influence on people. And I don't know what her, I don't know what's the word I want to use, not charisma,

but her, she had something somehow that she was able to win these kids over and get them to do anything she asked. But also is it that you have. have an adult figure essentially saying it's okay. It's okay to do these terrible things. A certain age, you know what's right and wrong without even needing to be told, right? You can feel if something is not right to do. And if you don't act on that, then, you know, I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, I definitely get what you're saying. But there is a part of me that wonders, would any of these kids have done any part of this? Maybe not all of them, but I think there might be one or two that would

I think there were a couple that were just bad apples anyway. Yeah. That's a rough case, no matter how you look at it. It is. So let's go to something cheery. You want to do voicemails? Yeah, they're cheery. They might be.

Hello, guys. It's Karan from Orlando, Florida. Call again letting you know that I love your show. And there are two cases that I don't know if you did or what, but one is about a man named Arthur Sharcross. He killed 12 women in 1988 and 1988. 1989, mainly prostitutes, 12 women, two children. And the second one, I don't know, again, I don't know if you did, but his name was Tommy

Lynn Sells, convicted of murdering 13 and claims he committed over 70s. All right, bye. Oh, and stay safe and keep your own time ticket. All right, bye. Man Gibbs, Quran is in such luck. I know. Because we did both of those. Just slide on back a few episodes.

Yep. You're fine. Arthur was two episodes long. Horrible. Horrible. And Tommy Lynn Sells was a bad one too. When you listen to Arthur, make sure you get yourself a big old sandwich and eat that while you're listening because you're going to be hungry. I think back on those two, man.

They were rough. Yeah, they really were. They were two of the roughest, I think, that we've done. Definitely messed up. But check them out. Yep, definitely. Hi, Mike and Gibby. This is Rachel calling from Albu.

to Canada. Just wanted to say I've been a listener for a long time and I love your podcast. I listen to it every week. I look forward to new episodes every week. Something that really made me laugh a few weeks ago is the episode when I can't remember which one, but you're talking about a woman with the last name Dick and Mike you were talking about you used to know someone named I need a or I need a dick. And that reminds me of my French class in elementary school. Our French teacher was named. We called her madame but her last name was dick. So my damn dick. Anyways, um, love the show, guys. Keep it up. Stay safe and keep your own time chicken. Bye. My damn dick. That wouldn't crack me up, Gibbs. I don't know how you and I would just

be sitting in class going the whole time going, my damn dick. My damn dick. I need you. I need you here. Thanks, Rachel. Hello, my name is Lori. I'm calling from Abilene, Texas. I was hearing your podcast of the one that happened in South Padre, Ivan. I just want to tell you, I was part of that when growing up, and I lived in that area, and y'all got your information right down to the... I do appreciate it. Y'all do a great job, so keep the podcast going, and I do thank you for all y'all's hard work, and have a great day. All right, love that. Yeah, great.

Thanks, Lori. She's going back a little bit. Yeah. That's the Adolfo Castanzo and Sarah Aldredi case. Yeah, yep. I remember that. South Padre. going over into Mexico.

Yeah. Now, she said she was a part of it. I'm hoping... Part of the scene. I'm hoping what she meant is she lived down there at the time. Yeah. I know Lori's not saying she was a part of the actual case. Right.

Or the actual goings on. Yeah. The happenings. The happenings. Hi, Mike and Gibby. It's Samantha. I know how people are always offering you guys suggestions for new episodes. What's actually kind of how I started talking to you in the first place?

So instead of me giving you guys a great idea for a true crime all the time, definitely won't be an unsolved one, I'm not going to give you the idea, A, because I'm going to do it myself, and B, it has absolutely nothing to do with true crime. It does, however, have something to do with you and Gibby, and it's going to be awesome. Now, I'm not suggesting you have to play this as an episode. this, consider it a gift from me to you, because it's going to take me a little bit of time, but it's so going to be worth it. Okay, just want to just say hi and keep up the good work, and keep your own time thinking. I don't know about you, Gibbs, but I am very intrigued by what this will be. Is it going to be a love story between me and you? Yeah, I don't think so.

We'll say no on that. No on that. But some other type of story? Is it going to be like, a what happened to those podcasters. They were found on the side of the road. She said it wouldn't be true crime related. That's true. Huh. Maybe it's our very own like hunt a killer type. Maybe.

Maybe I'll just sit back and relax and let it happen. Yeah. You better be careful about that. But that's true. Yep. It's intriguing. It's intriguing. All right.

Well, that is it for another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gibby. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking. You know, Thank you.