Sylvia Likens crime scene photos USE CAUTION

In August of 1965, the vacant house next door to the Baniszewski residence was purchased by a middle-aged couple named Phyllis and Raymond Vermillion. Phyllis, seeing the number of children Baniszewski cared for, believed that Baniszewski would make a good babysitter for her two young children, and that she would also be helping Baniszewski out by paying her for her services.

The Vermillions arranged a backyard barbecue so that the two families could get to know one another. During the course of the barbecue, Phyllis noticed Sylvia wandering around the yard with a pronounced black eye; Paula proudly announced to Phyllis that she was the one who had given it to her. Then, under Baniszewski's supervision, Paula approached Sylvia with a glass of steaming water and threw it in Sylvia's face. Neither of the Vermillions reported this incident to the authorities.

Two months later, Phyllis went to the Baniszewski home to borrow something. Over the course of the few minutes she was there, she noticed Sylvia wandering around as in a daze with swollen lips and a black eye that had swollen shut. To demonstrate how this had happened, Paula took her belt off and began to beat Sylvia with it in front of Phyllis. Phyllis again neglected to report anything to the authorities.

Escalation

Around the time that Phyllis Vermillion witnessed Paula beat Sylvia, Sylvia came home from school and told Baniszewski that she needed a sweat suit for gym class. When Baniszewski told Sylvia that they could not afford one, Sylvia stole one from the school. Baniszewski questioned Sylvia about her new gym outfit, eventually coercing Sylvia into confession.

Baniszewski inexplicably segued from the topic of Sylvia stealing into the topic of Sylvia being a prostitute, and threw Sylvia onto the ground, where she repeatedly kicked her in the crotch before once more returning to the topic of theft; to "cure" Sylvia of her "sticky fingers," Baniszewski burned the tips of each of Sylvia's fingers with a lit cigarette.

Afterwards, she made Sylvia bend over while she whipped her with a belt. After this incident, the smokers in the Baniszewski home began arbitrarily putting their cigarettes out on Sylvia's body as a reminder for her not to steal.

Sometime later, Likens went out again to sell old soda bottles for money. When she returned home, Baniszewski accused her of prostitution. Baniszewski took her into the living room of her home and forced Sylvia to strip naked in front of her sons and several neighborhood boys, on the threat of beating Jenny. Once Sylvia was fully naked, Baniszewski handed her a glass Coca Cola bottle, and forced Sylvia to masturbate with it for the boys.

The Basement

Following the Coke bottle incident, Sylvia became incontinent; as a result, Baniszewski decided that she was no longer fit to live with humans, and locked her in the basement. The lack of a toilet in the basement forced Sylvia to defecate and urinate on the floor. When Baniszewski saw this, she began a "bathing regime" to "cleanse" Sylvia, whom she began calling "dirty girl."

The "regime" consisted of filling Gertrude's claw-footed bathtub with scalding water, binding Sylvia's wrists and ankles, and then dunking Sylvia into it. The regime was administered arbitrarily, sometimes once or many times a day, somedays not at all. Following the baths, Paula Baniszewski would rub handfuls of salt over Sylvia's nude body.

During this period Baniszewski took on 14 year old Ricky Hobbs, a neighborhood boy, as her "personal assistant" when dealing with Sylvia. Hobbs, an honor student from a middle class family with no previous legal trouble, experienced a sudden shift in personality upon becoming Baniszewski's assistant, blindly following whatever orders she gave him; crime reporters have since speculated that Hobbs was Baniszewski's lover, and that she had seduced the boy into becoming her henchman.

Baniszewski's children turned Sylvia into a money-making opportunity, charging neighborhood children a nickel to gawk at the nude Sylvia or to push her down the stairs to the basement, where she was now kept when not being bathed or put on display. She was kept constantly naked and rarely fed; when she was allowed to eat, it was in some bizarre fashion (such as the instance in which Baniszewski insisted that she eat soup with her fingers).

Often, Baniszewski and her twelve-year-old son John Jr. would make Sylvia "clean" the basement by "allowing" her to eat her own feces, and gave Sylvia a container in which she could collect her urine, which she was then made to drink.