House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying (St. Martin's True Crime Library) (8 page)

Then there was the open sore Gertrude found in Sylvia’s scalp. Her treatment for that was holding the girl’s head under a faucet spouting scalding hot water.

Again, Paula had another method of dealing with the scalp problem. As Sylvia sat at the kitchen table
one day, Paula just picked up a pair of scissors and snipped off Sylvia’s prided long hair. “How do you like that?” Paula asked. Sylvia didn’t, but she tried to agree she needed a haircut, and she asked for a lock as a souvenir. She didn’t get it.

Paula had lost her job at the drug store. The management did not think she was “mature enough” to handle the job. But she was mature enough to assume a greater and greater degree of responsibility at home, as Gertrude was going farther and farther out of consciousness on her phenobarbital, antihistamine and Coricidin.

Paula also took over more and more of the discipline. She administered about 25 paddlings to Sylvia in her final two weeks, applying most of the blows to Sylvia’s posterior.

Meanwhile, Coy Hubbard was getting in more judo practice. He flipped Sylvia over his shoulders, hard onto the floor, two or three times per occasion. He administered judo chops to her face and body. When finished, he sent her flying down the stairs again, and when she was down there, he banged her head against the wall.

Johnny also rammed Sylvia against the wall, and he also administered some of the spankings at the request of his mother. But most of the time he used his fists. He kicked her in the leg, and, in the basement, he ground his shoe on Sylvia’s bare foot, giving her a blister.

As it became apparent to Gertrude and Paula that
any spread of information about Sylvia might prove embarrassing to them, they formulated instructions to the other children—especially Jenny—not to volunteer any conversation about Sylvia, and to explain to any inquisitive souls that Sylvia had been detained at the Juvenile Center. When Jenny forgot these instructions once and mentioned to church friends that her sister was at home, the younger girls tattled on her and she got the board.

Judy Duke was told “your ass is grass” if she revealed anything.

It was a week or a week and a half before Sylvia’s death that Jenny began to worry seriously about her sister. But she believed Gertrude would eventually get Sylvia some medical attention. This was their home, and Mrs. Wright was responsible for them. Jenny had been beaten enough herself to get in the habit of doing what Gertrude said. The thought of going to the police for help never occurred to the crippled, 15-year-old child.

The sickly, doped-up Gertrude still felt well enough in that last week to clobber Sylvia with a board about four times, burn her with cigarettes on the arms, back and legs in about fifteen places, and shove her down the basement stairs several times.

Johnny Baniszewski kept teasing Sylvia and tying and gagging her whenever necessary. Once she was tied in the basement, her hands bound to the stairway railing above her, her feet left barely touching the floor.

All the while, Sylvia slowly was starving. She
took one meal of donuts and water about October 19. A day or two later, she passed out on the living room floor. Stephanie applied a cold, wet rag to Sylvia’s forehead, but she was out for nearly 20 minutes. Stephanie and Johnny helped Sylvia to the mattress in the back bedroom upstairs.

Gertrude and Paula decided they ought to have some justification for Sylvia’s punishment if some snoopy nurse or other official pestered them again. They instructed Sylvia to write the letter to her parents on school paper, setting out her fifteen confessions of misconduct. Sylvia cooperated. She was too weak and hungry to resist.

It was not as though Sylvia had nothing at all to eat. In the basement, Mrs. Wright had told her son Johnny to “go get some shit.” The boy found one of baby Denny’s Pampers in a sack in the corner, and it was rubbed into her mouth. Then Sylvia was given a half-cup of water and told to make it last the rest of the day. A day or two later, the water was replaced with a cup of urine.

Sylvia was being punished for eating a sandwich in the park when the others had none. Marie had recalled that a month or two ago, she and Sylvia had met Sylvia’s sister Dianna in the park. Sylvia had mentioned that she was hungry, and Dianna had given her a sandwich. This was the first the others had heard about it. Paula, infuriated, clasped her hands about Sylvia’s throat and squeezed for half a minute.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Gertrude demanded of Sylvia.

“I was afraid you’d give me a whipping,” the poor girl responded when she was able to regain her breath.

She was right, but that would not have been half as bad as what she got when Gertrude now found out much later. Gertrude whacked her on the back and back of the head five or six times with the paddle. Sylvia screamed.

She went without supper that night. Jenny did not feel like eating, and she offered hers to Sylvia. Gertrude would not let her have it.

Later, Gertrude and Paula tied Sylvia’s hands behind her back and also bound her feet, then dumped her into the bathtub filled with scalding water. Sylvia fainted.

Sylvia got some supper that night, Friday, October 22—some soup in a small bowl. “Start eating,” John instructed, “with your fingers.” Sylvia tried, but she was not given enough time to finish.

It was decided that Sylvia should have another chance to show her manners in bed. At Gertrude’s instructions, Johnny, Coy and Stephanie tied Sylvia to the bed. “You can’t go to the bathroom,” Gertrude explained with unchallenged logic, “until you’ve learned not to wet the bed.” When the others had gone downstairs, Sylvia whispered to Jenny for a glass of water. She drank it and fell asleep. She wet the bed that night. The next morning, she faced the longest—and last—weekend of her short life.

SYLVIA’S DAY
began with another empty Pepsi bottle. Worse indignities followed.

She got a brief respite when Gertrude and Johnny took off in a Red Cab about 11 a.m. Gertrude had said she was going to the doctor’s office. Worried about the possibility of going to the hospital for her bronchitis and her nerves, and blaming it all on the presence of Jenny and Sylvia, she told Jenny before she left: “Jenny, if I have to go to the hospital, you’re going to be in as much trouble as Sylvia.”

Richard Hobbs stopped over about 1 p.m., shortly after Gertrude had returned home. Gertrude, the asthmatic bronchitis sufferer, was seated at the kitchen table smoking as Hobbs asked her how she felt. She replied she was not feeling well. “I’m having a hard time breathing.”

Jenny, Jimmy, Shirley and Marie also were in the room. Jenny and Marie were making plans to rake leaves that afternoon to earn some money. Hobbs was surprised to learn that Sylvia was in the basement;
Gertrude had told him she was at the Juvenile Center. She told him this time that Sylvia had returned home the week before. Ricky had not been in the house for several days.

Gertrude called Sylvia up from the basement. The girl trudged up the stairs. Wearing a tan pair of Bermuda shorts and a light blouse, she appeared listless, and she sported a number of bruises and patchy sores. Gertrude ordered her to stand in the corner, between the doors to the basement and to the dining room.

“Do you know how to put on a tattoo, Ricky?” the woman asked.

“Yes, I guess so,” the boy replied.

“Do you know what a tattoo is, Sylvia?” Gertrude asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well,” the woman snapped at Sylvia, “you have branded my daughters; now I am going to brand you.” And then, to the others: “She’s a prostitute, and she’s proud of it; so we’ll just put it on her stomach.”

Mrs. Wright instructed her younger daughters to bring her a sewing needle.

Stephanie, who had been out of school sick a couple of days, was asleep in the front room.

“Take your clothes off, Sylvia,” Gertrude ordered. The girl hesitated. Gertrude ripped Sylvia’s blouse and shorts off, and the girl stood naked in the corner.

Gertrude pulled up a chair and began to carve
with the sewing needle. She managed to carve a large block “I,” an apostrophe, and the first leg of the “M,” then turned away. “You take over, Ricky,” she said, handing him the needle. “I’m getting sick.”

She started for the front bedroom, where Stephanie was sleeping.

“Wait,” yelled Ricky. “How do you spell prostitute?”

Gertrude sat down and wrote out the entire message on a piece of paper: “i’m a prostitute and proud of it!” Then she sent Jenny to the grocery.

Before Hobbs resumed the tattoo, he asked Marie to strike a match. He held the needle in the flame to sterilize it.

Then he continued the tattoo, etching in steady, short strokes. Sylvia, past the point of crying, gritted her teeth and moaned. The Hobbs boy struck her with the back of his hand whenever she flinched. The etching brought blood to the surface of the skin.

Hobbs had just about finished when Jenny returned from the store. Soon, there was a knock on the door. The mischievous, cherubic face of Randy Lepper showed through the glass. Ricky, Jenny and Shirley hustled Sylvia to the basement; Gertrude said she did not want Randy to see Sylvia naked. After she was partially clothed again, Gertrude called them upstairs to show Randy the work of art.

Randy asked about the tattoo and the bruises. Gertrude said Sylvia had been to a sex party.

About 15 minutes later, Ricky and Shirley got
around to branding her. They had taken Sylvia back to the basement. “Look for something we can print an ‘;S’ with, Shirley,” Ricky instructed.

Shirley hunted around through the basement rubble and brought Ricky a three-foot crowbar and a smaller anchor bolt. Hobbs selected the anchor bolt. By applying half of the circular hook-end twice, he reasoned, they could print the “S.”

The matches Shirley held were heating her fingers faster than they heated the anchor bolt; so Ricky set fire to some newspapers in the large sink and heated the hook end to a glowing red. Sylvia, who had begged him to quit during the tattooing, squirmed. Hobbs struck her on the chest with the back of his hand several times and told her to lie still. She obeyed, gritting her teeth. Hobbs applied the first loop. Shirley applied the second.

Either Hobbs applied his half backward, or Shirley misunderstood that she was to apply the lower loop instead of the upper. In any event, both loops pointed the same direction, and Sylvia wound up with a freshly burned-in “3” on her chest, just above the “prostitute” message. Ricky had at first handed Jenny the bolt, asking her to do the other loop. She had handed it back, saying, “No, I ain’t going to burn her.” Shirley and Ricky took Sylvia upstairs to show Gertrude their work.

“Sylvia, what are you going to do now?” the woman chided. “You can’t get married now. What are you going to do?”

Sylvia did not answer.

“You’re proud of it, aren’t you, Sylvia?” the woman continued.

It was after 4 p.m. Richard Hobbs, tired from a hard day’s work, decided to get on home.

Coy Hubbard was there later and tied Sylvia up in the basement. Then he banged her against the wall six or seven times. Sylvia’s day was not over yet.

Mrs. Lepper came over to bring Randy home. A later visitor that night was John Baniszewski Sr., who brought his children a police dog to protect them. Baniszewski did not go inside the house. It was about 9 p.m.

Sylvia was still in the basement, confiding to her sister.

“Jenny, I know you don’t want me to die.” Her voice was faint; the words came slow. “But I’m going to die. I can tell.”

“Well, don’t die, Sylvia,” her sister pleaded. Jenny felt helpless. But she knew Gertrude would not let Sylvia die—she thought.

Stephanie, still in bed in the front room, spoke briefly to Sylvia about a half-hour later as Sylvia ascended the stairs to the bathroom. There was not much to say. The atmosphere in the house was ominous; a tenseness filled every corner.

The temperature outside was 32 degrees when the sun cracked the darkness Sunday morning. Sylvia had been allowed to sleep upstairs that night; she lay in pain on the mattress on the floor of the bedroom.

In the afternoon, Gertrude and Stephanie bathed Sylvia. It was a warm bath, not a scalding one.

Then Gertrude and Paula dictated to Sylvia the note in which she was to explain that a gang of boys had “got what they wanted” from her and left her in her battered and bruised condition. Sylvia began, “Dear Mom and Dad…”

“No,” Gertrude intervened inexplicably. “To Mr. and Mrs. Likens.”

Gertrude talked of getting rid of Sylvia, of dumping her someplace.

Meanwhile, Johnny had some more fun. He tied Sylvia up in the basement, torture rack fashion, again. As she was suspended, Gertrude offered her some crackers and water. Sylvia turned them down. “Give it to the dog,” she said. “I don’t want it.”

She had lost her will to live. Gertrude would not have it. She smashed her fist into Sylvia’s stomach. The crackers were forced into the girl’s swollen mouth. Then Johnny got in a few licks. Their fun would not last much longer.

IT WAS
early Sunday morning—9:30 a.m.—when Mrs. Juanita Hobbs was wheeled into Community Hospital for the last time. Her family at 310 North Denny Street knew she was dying; she had at that time only two weeks to live. She had been beset with cancer about a year, but her family clung desperately to hope.

Woodrow Hobbs grimly faced the task of bringing up their nine children alone. He and Mrs. Hobbs had always tried to give the five boys and four girls correct moral training, and it made no difference that the children felt their parents were strict at times.

None of the children had been in serious trouble.

Fourteen-year-old Ricky, the seventh born, showed particular promise. He was bright and about to make the honor roll at Howe High School. He was especially skilled at drawing and had ideas of becoming an electronics technician. He had attended the Grace Methodist Church Sunday school since
childhood and had begun participating in the Methodist Youth Fellowship that year.