Sylvia Likens Crime Scene Photos

Sylvia Marie Likens was an American teenager who was tortured and murdered by her caretaker, Gertrude Baniszewski, numerous of Baniszewski’s kids, as well as some of their neighborhood acquaintances (January 3, 1949 – October 26, 1965).

• This abuse incrementally lasted for three months before Likens died.
• Likens died from her extensive injuries and malnourishment on October 26, 1965, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Likens suffered significant trauma and malnutrition over the course of a period of three months until her death on the 26th of October, 1965 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

As a victim, her tormentors exposed her to a growing amount of ridicule, neglect, and sexual humiliation. They also whipped her as well as lacerations, starvation, and dehydration.

The body of the victim had 150 injuries in all, with multiple burns, scald wounds, and degraded skin as per an autopsy. She was the younger of her sister, Jenny, who was periodically pressured to participate in her abuse using threats of violence.

Paula her oldest daughter Gertrude Baniszewski, her son John, Coy Hubbard, and Richard Hobbs, two neighborhood children, were all charged to be found guilty on May 1966 of abusing, neglecting, and murdering Likens.

Sylvia Likens Crime Scene Photos

Gertrude’s lawyer, William C. Erbecker who testified at trial, said that Likens was subjected to the kind of “degradation which you would never do to the dog” in the days before she died.

Deputy prosecutor Leroy New called the case “the most gruesome case that has ever appeared before jurors or a judge” in the trial of the defendants.