Word: sylvia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...courtroom for five weeks. What attracted-and repelled-the spectators was the trial of Mrs. Gertrude Baniszewski, 37, two of her children, Paula, 18, and John, 13, and two neighbor youths, Coy Hubbard and Richard Hobbs, both 15. All were charged with the protracted death by torture of pretty Sylvia Marie Likens, 16, who with her younger sister Jenny had boarded in the Baniszewski home...
...That the Indianapolis torture-murder [May 6] was described in agonizing detail, and that I, and millions of others, ate up every gory word, attests to the latent sado-masochism in all of us: everyone is a latent Mrs. Baniszewski, who can experience pleasure in giving pain, or a Sylvia Likens, who can enjoy being burned, beaten and humiliated...
...Only Pretending." Carried upstairs to a bedroom, the girl was given a lukewarm bath, dressed in a pair of white Capri pants, and placed on a mattress on the floor. Mrs. Baniszewski struck Sylvia on each side of the head with a book and told her to get up, that she was only pretending to be sick. Mercifully, Sylvia died...
Called by her keeper, police found Sylvia's body with arms crossed over her breast. Even to hardened cops, the sight was stomach wrenching. Virtually no part of the girl's corpse was unmarked. Her fingernails had been broken upward; there were massive bruises on her temples; much of the skin on her face, chest, arms and legs had peeled from scalding water. Her lower lip had been bitten in two, presumably during her agony. The immediate cause of death was a blow on the skull. In all, Sylvia's body bore an estimated 150 burns, cuts...
...murder as adults: the electric chair.) As the trial got under way last week before a jury of eight men and four women, Mrs. Baniszewski, John Jr. and Hubbard pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity; Paula, Stephanie and Ricky pleaded simply not guilty. Upstairs in an anteroom sat Sylvia's parents, still not comprehending how and why it had happened. Sitting sunken-cheeked in court, her blue-veined legs crossed and swinging silver-stitched black slippers, Mrs. Baniszewski also looked puzzled by the whole affair. Shortly after her arrest, she had confided to police: "Sylvia wanted something...