House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying (St. Martin's True Crime Library) (6 page)

Before long, the mob psychology had turned it into a game. Paula would club Sylvia in the head with whatever she could find—hair-spray cans, dishes, bottles; as soon as Stephanie would grab one weapon away, Paula would grab another one. One evening at dinner, Paula tossed a soft drink bottle across the table, striking Sylvia in the hand.

Gertrude’s aim was more accurate. Upstairs, she plunked Sylvia in the head with a bottle. Although Gertrude’s special talent was in egging children into bullying Sylvia, she was not above grappling with the girl herself. She doubled her fists like a boxer, and punched the girl repeatedly. Sylvia dared not fight back.

One of Gertrude’s complaints against Sylvia was $35 in medical bills. It was the “problems with Sylvia” that were causing her asthma and nervous anxiety,
and some hyperventilation blackouts that Stephanie was suffering at the time, she reasoned.

Since what the neighborhood children believed was generally what Gertrude had told them (she was their friend, just one of the girls), and Sylvia never asserted herself enough to tell her own side of the story, the children generally sided with Gertrude against Sylvia. A game developed in which, at one time, more than ten children participated in beating, kicking and flipping Sylvia and burning her with matches or cigarettes. Johnny Baniszewski and Randy Lepper took turns punching her in the face. Even Jenny was forced into the act. “Get over and slap your sister,” Gertrude ordered. Jenny hesitated; so Gertrude slapped
her
on the face. Jenny slapped Sylvia’s cheek, using her left hand in an effort not to hurt her.

Once when Judy Duke slapped Sylvia, having been informed that Sylvia had called her a bitch, Shirley Baniszewski ripped open Sylvia’s blouse. Richard Hobbs wandered into the kitchen, remarking, “Everybody’s having fun with Sylvia.” That was when Anna Siscoe “had fun” stomping and clawing Sylvia, kicking her in the stomach. When Sylvia cried, “Oh, my baby!” it was more than Judy could take. She went home sick.

Mrs. Wright was not sick, but she did call a living room conference of the children on October 1 to announce, “We’re all going to have to learn to get along better.” Sylvia and her friend Darlene McGuire were there. “My girls and I have plans, Sylvia,” Gertrude
explained, “and we don’t want you to interrupt them.”

Paula had her own solution. The middle of September, she had taken Sylvia to the back door, saying, “Get away and stay away. Get out for your own safety.” Sylvia did not know where to go; this was the only home she knew at the time. She stayed.

A few days after Gertrude’s living room conference, Sylvia and Jenny’s parents came to visit them before leaving with the carnival for Florida. Mr. Likens gave Mrs. Wright another $20, and he gave Sylvia some money for shoes. He and his wife had brought both Jenny and Sylvia some school clothes.

The girls mentioned that they were hungry. Reports had been circulating the neighborhood that Sylvia had been seen eating out of garbage cans. The girls’ parents took them out for a Coke.

Likens told Mrs. Wright he was due back in three weeks; it was then October 5, 1965. The next day would be Sylvia’s last at Tech High School. Two and a half weeks later, Mrs. Wright would receive the last concerned notice from the school administrators, asking whether there was anything they could do to help. Three weeks to the day after the Likenses’ last visit—on October 26—their daughter would die.

NO MORE
than four feet from the Baniszewskis’ back door stood another frame house, owned by the same real estate company and rented at the same price, $55 a month. All the rentals along New York
Street were packed closely together. The inhabitants were a restless lot, moving in and out frequently. The houses were run-down, dirty, and in need of paint. It could not be classified a slum area, but it did not make the grade of “middle class” either. No one was particularly happy to be living there.

Into the house next door, at 3848 East New York, moved Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Vermillion and their two children around the end of August. A couple approaching middle age, Vermillion and his wife, Phyllis, had hoped for something more middle class. But it was a home.

Mrs. Vermillion, a rather attractive woman in earlier years, worked on the night shift at the huge Radio Corporation of America plant on Sherman Drive, not far away. One of her first chores in the new location was to find someone to care for her children. Shortly after breakfast the first day she was settled, she called on her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Gertrude Wright.

Gertrude was in no mood for company but wanted to be neighborly. When she heard the rap on the door, she asked her new neighbor to come in.

Most of the children were home. The clamor Mrs. Vermillion encountered soon convinced her that this was no place to leave her children, aged 6 and 1½ The older children in the Baniszewski house were shouting at each other and banging around. The baby, Dennis, screamed and jumped at each sound.

But the woman found that she liked Mrs. Wright and felt a great deal of empathy for her too. Mrs.
Vermillion knew it could be trying just to take care of two children, and she felt for any woman saddled with the responsibility of nine. She and Mrs. Wright were not far apart in age, but Gertrude looked old enough to be Mrs. Vermillion’s mother.

“Yes,” Gertrude told her, “these children get on my nerves at times. I had to run the neighbor kids out of the house this morning.” But she said she believed she could take on two more for $10 a week. “Just as long as I only keep them while you work; that shouldn’t be too much trouble,” Gertrude said.

Mrs. Vermillion was not sure she wanted to leave her children here at this time, and she wanted to get better acquainted. So when Gertrude offered her a cup of coffee, she accepted. Mrs. Wright sighed and instructed Paula to bring Mrs. Vermillion a cup of coffee.

Glancing toward the kitchen, the neighbor woman took note of some of the children. Besides Paula, she saw two boys, whom she later learned were Paula’s and Stephanie’s boyfriends. Then her sharp eyes were drawn to a slender young girl sitting at the dining room table.

“Why, child,” she asked, “how did you get the black eye?”

Sylvia turned her head away without speaking.

“Get out of my sight,” Gertrude shouted. “Get into the kitchen, Sylvia. I don’t want nothing to do with you. Go on. I hate you.”

Mrs. Wright heaved another sigh and regained her composure. “That’s Sylvia,” she said. “Her parents
are with some carnival. She’s three months pregnant. I just don’t know what I am going to do with her.”

Paula knew what to do with her as soon as Sylvia got into the kitchen. She filled a tumbler at the hot water spigot and tossed the contents into the girl’s face. Sylvia shrieked in pain. Paula then applied some margarine to the scalded area. Mrs. Vermillion tried not to watch the proceedings, but it was difficult.

As Paula brought the coffee she boasted nonchalantly, “
I
gave her the black eye.”

“Get on up to your room, Sylvia!” Mrs. Wright ordered. As the girl reached the top of the stairs, the woman added, “If you’re pregnant, I’m going to kill you!”

Gertrude shook her head. “She hasn’t had a period in three months,” she told her new neighbor.

Mrs. Vermillion made other arrangements for her children, but she maintained a social acquaintance with Gertrude. She stopped over again in October for a cup of coffee after breakfast. The Baniszewski children were just finishing a breakfast of toast and jelly.

Sylvia came into the room, and Mrs. Vermillion noticed that she had another black eye, and that her mouth was swollen.

“I beat her up again,” Paula volunteered. “She’s nothing but trouble.”

Mrs. Vermillion fidgeted. She knew Paula was attending night school, but she wondered what Sylvia was doing home.

“I had to make her quit school,” Gertrude explained. “She stole a gym suit there. Then she stole a watch from down the street. Can you imagine? I don’t know how I’m going to pay those people back. I guess I’ll just have to take some out of Sylvia’s ironing money.”

Sylvia seemed to be in a daze. Frightened and nervous the first time Mrs. Vermillion saw her, she now looked as though she didn’t care about anything. Soon, Paula began shouting something at her; Mrs. Vermillion could not make out all the words. But she saw Paula pick up a thick black belt and crack it on Sylvia’s flesh.

“MOMMY,” THE
high-voiced girl was telling her mother, “they were over there beating and fighting with her. They were beating and kicking Sylvia something terrible.”

Mrs. Duke, a pretty brunette, was busy washing the dishes. “Oh, well, Judy,” she sighed. “They’re just punishing her, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” the girl said. She hesitated. “I guess.”

Mrs. Duke had not met Mrs. Wright, but she had heard nothing really derogatory about her. She knew Judy got things mixed up once in a while, and she knew every child’s capacity for exaggeration. Besides, a woman might be expected to fly off the handle at a child’s misbehavior if she had nine children to look after.

Other neighbors had been inside the Baniszewski home, and they reported nothing abnormal, except
for the wild carryings on that would be expected in a household with nine children. The lady from the other half of the double once complained of the constant noise. Neighbors as far as four doors away were to tell police later that they heard screams coming from somewhere but did not think much about it.

Mike Monroe’s mother had visited the house. So had Randy Lepper’s mother. Darlene McGuire’s father had come over to the house once in the summer, but he did not go inside. Most of them felt sorry for Mrs. Wright, a poor, sick, hard-working mother with all those kids to take care of.

THE REV.
Roy Julian visited Mrs. Wright in September to talk over her problems with her. Julian was fairly young, and decidedly handsome, and he spoke with a clipped, precise voice that resounded with Godliness.

The dynamic preacher made it a point to visit all the members of his congregation regularly, to talk with them, to try to bring them closer to the Lord, if possible. He was particularly concerned about Mrs. Wright, who seldom attended church, although he knew she must be tired on Sunday mornings, as well as all the other times. But the Rev. Mr. Julian was also concerned because of some of the things Paula had said; surely a girl in a Christian home could not break her wrist on another girl’s jaw and feel good about it.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Wright,” said the sandy-haired
minister as she let him in the door. “How are you today?” He managed to smile cheerfully.

Gertrude grasped at the offer of sympathy. “Oh, I don’t feel so good,” she said. “Sometimes I can hardly catch my breath.” She coughed. “I’ve been taking this medicine the doctor gave me,” she sighed, “but it seems to affect me about as bad as the bronchitis in a different way. It really dopes me up. I have to spend half my time in bed. And the kids!—they’re just running wild.

“I’m not able to stay up a full day, but I try to take in some ironing. My husband don’t pay the support like he should. I’m trying to keep the family going with the ironing, but the customers are getting pretty impatient.”

The minister sympathized, but had no concrete advice to offer her. They prayed as they sat together on the couch.

“The children—mostly Sylvia—are causing me quite a few problems,” Mrs. Wright continued. “They’re giving me quite a case of nerves. I take medicine for that too. Dr. Lindenborg gave me some phenobarbital.

“I started to correct the children. I tried to spank Sylvia once, but I couldn’t because of my asthma. Paula had to help me.

“Sylvia has been skipping school,” she told the preacher, “and making advances on some older men, for money. I had to lock her in her room upstairs because she would slip out at night.”

Julian prayed with her again, and he wanted also
to have a talk with Sylvia. But Jenny had been sitting through their conference, and Gertrude said, “Here’s her sister; you can ask her.”

“What about your sister, child?” Julian asked.

“She tells lies,” Jenny responded quietly. “And at night, after all of us go to bed, she slips down and raids the icebox.”

“She took the baby’s milk once,” Gertrude said.

Julian left the home with a heavy heart. He came back a few weeks later, after Paula told him the family was worried about Stephanie, who had been suffering blackouts again. The doctor had not been able to explain it, and there had been some worry about a brain tumor.

But Mrs. Wright was still dwelling on her problems with Sylvia. The minister wrung his hands in despair, and they prayed again.

“Sylvia said at school,” Mrs. Wright said, “that Paula was going to have a baby. But I know my daughter, and I know Sylvia. Paula’s not going to have a baby; it’s Sylvia.”

“Paula told me,” the minister said, “that there was some hatred in her heart for Sylvia.” Mrs. Wright assured him that Paula was just trying to help her manage the house, that Sylvia was the only one who was hateful.

The Rev. Mr. Julian left the house for the last time; he was never again to see Sylvia, his eager Sunday school pupil. The next time he was to face Mrs. Wright was in court, from the witness stand.

Mrs. Wright had another visitor, the 15th day of
October, 1965, and she handled her with the calmness of a cunning criminal.

The young, white-uniformed woman rapped on the door in the middle of the afternoon. “Come in,” bade Mrs. Wright, puzzled.

“Mrs. Wright?” the woman said in a pleasant, professional tone. “I’m Mrs. Sanders, a public health nurse. How are you?” She glanced about the room; Jenny sat in a corner. The nurse recognized her from seeing her at Public School 78. They nodded greetings at one another.

“I’ve come to talk to you about your children,” the nurse explained, trying to make it appear to be a routine visit. Mrs. Wright held the baby, Dennis; Paula also was in the room.

The conversation ranged from general hygiene to diet. Then the pretty nurse asked, “Are any of your children ill, Mrs. Wright?”