Behind Closed Doors Part 4

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast. Or I tell stories of real crimes with real victims whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning.

0:51 Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey all, kJ here back for other episode of Unspeakable. What's going on? I can tell you one thing that's going on. All my people on patron good Lord, have mercy. There are a bunch of people I have to give a shout out to today and let me just get going because there's a list. Now. What's cool about it is it's all girls and one boy. And I just have to say I'm a pretty big fan of the boy. The man that signed up because his last name is Jennings. My own husband signed up, and so Blake Jennings. This is your shout out. Yes he's here. You get a shout out from your wife. Thank you so much. For joining in, sir. It means so much that you support me, all right, But some other names, I got to give a shout out to Brittany Gosha, Christy Vogel, Sharon Dixon, Sarah Brown, and I also have to give a shout out to Cecilia. Now, Cecilia, girlfriend, I have butchered your last name. I've gotten it wrong about one hundred times, so I googled your last name check it out book suitin Book? Am I right this time? Cecilia suitin Book? Did I get you right this time?

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2:55 Thank you so much for joining. And then I've got Jennifer Bro, Hey, Jen, how are you? Jen? And I go way back? Jennifer bro Miss Leonor Cocher, Rebecca Klug or Clug. I'm gonna go with Klug Rebecca Clug. I hope I got that right, girl, Farris Sanchez and Jennifer Brown. Ladies, thank y'all so much for joining my Patreon. That support means everything. It gives me opportunities that I normally would not have. So I want to just tell y'all from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much. I appreciate you. And look, miss Amy Biddle, I know you reached out to me because you didn't get your shout out. Girl. I've searched for you everywhere I can't find you, but I'm giving you your shout out right now. Miss Amy, thank you so very much, and let's get started on this episode. Now. By the way, if you want to join patron, you can just go to Patreon dot com and search for Unspeakable, a true crime podcast by Kelly Jennings, and you can join in. I'm gonna be recording some bonus episodes really soon for y'all and uploading those and some extra tons of extras and member discounts on some merch that I throw out there. So if I haven't sent you an invoice yet for your discounted merch, also, stay tuned. That's come in probably this afternoon. Okay, this is kind of funny, but I wanted to tell you all this. So I was teaching last week and I messed up what I was trying to say, and just out of natural thing, because you know, you say boom whenever you mess up, said Jim when to fix it. I was speaking to my students and I said boom that, and they all looked at me. What And I was like, oh my god, it's tried to correct myself in the middle of class with a boom.

4:23 But Jimithy wasn't there to fix it, so I had to fix it myself. But I boomed live in a class. That's embarrassing, all right, So let's get started. This is going to be the final episode of the Sylvia Likens case y'all spoke and said, hey, girl, finish it up. So this is going to be I got a lot for you, so get ready and listen close. It's a lot of detail. So where we left off last time was with the etching and burning of the words I am a prostitute and proud of it into young Sylvia Likens stomach. And so how was this done? Because I think I just told y'all it was kind of burned into her stomach, but I wanted to let you know exactly what happened there to this young girl. So with a hot needle and jabbing it into her skin, that is how they put this into her body. A hot needle and jabbing it. So think about your stomach and how tender of a place that is. I mean, I'm diabetic, okay, and it's controlled, no worries, but I'm diabetic and putting the shot that I have to take into my stomach makes me freaking cringe just thinking about it. So I was out and I stick it in my leg because I just don't like the thought of putting it in my stomach. And it's a tiny needle, y'all, but you still feel it and this reminds me of what's happening to her. But more on the lines of the stick and poke method of tattooing, which if you don't know what that is, I thought i'd tell you real quick because it really adds to what the child went through. And I don't know if you've ever heard of that, But if it's done properly, okay, these are the steps that you would take it was properly done.

5:49 First of all, they would wash their hands and you would wash your body with soap and water. But Sylvia didn't get that luxury. And then you cover any other wound that you may have with some plastic and you're supposed to use medical gloves. Why because this can get easily infected. But no, Sylvia didn't get that luxury either. And first, you know, you're supposed to make sure that the surface that you're working is clean. She didn't get that. She was actually drug upstairs and slammed down on a kitchen table. And then the website that I went to to kind of explain how stick and pok works says that they use a household bleach solution one part household bleach to nine parts water as a disinfectant, and then they lay out paper towels or a medical tray to cover the rest of you know, your materials, and then they have gloves nearby and they change them constantly to make sure that there's no infection and no cross contamination. But this child did not get that this was torture. So where was it located? On her stomach? So it was across her lower abdomen. And I'm actually looking at a picture of it while I'm describing it to you, and this is what I see. So I want you to imagine her belly button. Okay, this is a sixteen girl. I want you to imagine your belly button. And then it's below the belly button, and it's offset to her left a little bit, and it's all capital letters and it says I'm a prostitute, and then another line underneath it and I'm proud of it. And then there's like an extra oh

7:20 after it. So I don't know if that was supposed to be and I'm proud of it too, or what they were going for, but it's very just jagged. And then as you look at the rest of her little body, you start to notice there's more than just this etching in her skin. It's kind of the culmination of the things that I've been telling you to this point. There's also bruising from left to right in a row across the near entirety of her stomach. I mean, it's like bruising all the way across her body. And below the bruising, like I just mentioned it, are the capital letters I'm a prostitute in one line, and the below it I'm proud of it. And that last line of I am proud of it ends right above where her pubic hair would start. So so extremely tender of an area, and to be held down and forced to have that just etched into your skin with a hot knife, just such a private and tender area of your body. And she's alive and awake during this entire process. And so I kind of took a moment to review the photo. And I also noticed that if you look at her little arms in the picture, they're kind of drawn up, almost like if you were defending yourself from a punch, almost fist closed, and her arms are kind of up near her breast area, and you can just see all the burns from cigarettes being put out in her skin, and the bruising and the discoloration and all of the trauma that her

8:50 body has been through to this point, and to just be held against her will and to be mutilated, and according to her own abuser's words, Hobb stated that she was crying and moaning through clenched teeth the entire time. Now, when questioned later on, he would say, yeah, I did that, but it was just and this is a quote short light etchings. Okay, well, I don't care what adjectives or time frame you apply to this. You mutilated and forcefully branded a human being for the fun of it. Short light, long, deep. It doesn't make any difference to me.

9:33 You're an asshole, kid. You know you're an asshole, and you have a power complex, pain inflicting piece of shit asshole. That is the type of person that would do this to someone else if I wasn't clear enough, you know. And the fact that he even tries to justify it or minimize it tells me everything I need to know about what happened to this girl. We have the luxury in the year of twenty twenty three, knowing that she wouldn't have to carry this branding forever, but at that time, she didn't, and they didn't either in the time that they were doing it to Sylvia, which means it was one hundred percent intended to humiliate and mutilate her forever.

10:18 And please don't let his words discount that this is permanence, as if having the words I am a prostitute and proud of it isn't enough to make you just like boil in anger. The abuse to her stomach and body wasn't done. Sylvia would then be forced to get up and both Hobbs and ten year old Shirley Benichetski would lead her down to the basement, and once there, the two teens would begin to treat Sylvia like a head of cattle and brand her skin. They have already etched this and burned this with a needle into her skin, which I don't even have this written down, but I just recall this from my research. But gert was there. Gertrude actually wrote it on a piece of paper and then went and started etching it. And she got so far as I'm a and then she got tired and told Hobbes here, you finish it. So why do I say, though like cattle?

11:20 Like they led her like cattle well, both physically and symbolically. I feel like what they did had more meaning to it than just what was face value. In the photo that I'm looking at on my sheet of paper while describing this to you, there's another very obvious scarring to her body. It's above her navel and under Sylvia's left breast, and it looks to be like the number three burned into her skin. And it's roughly five to six inches in length. It's not small, it's big, and compared to the I'm a prostitute words below it, it looks to be done in a perfect type set, almost like from a computer. So I'm like, how is this so? How is it so trashly etched below? But then this three on her stomach is so perfect like a typeset, you know, why is it so different from the other markings that look so uneven and off centered. Well, this is explained easily because much of the method you would think about when you're branding cattle. They sear it into her flesh. But instead of using a branding iron, which is perfect is designed for cattle to be quick, they used a metal anchor bolt. Now I don't claim to be some kind of you know, bolt guru and know everything about you know, building materials and all this kind of crap, so I'm not gonna lie to you.

12:48 I looked it up because I wanted to be clear of what they meant by an anchor bolt. So they come in a variety of sizes, but I want you to imagine a long bolt, and it's it's a couple of inches long, right, and it's straight for a few inches, but on the end of it it's curved like the top half of an S. So it's a long straight line and then the top half of what would look like an S. So the top half looks like half of an S, which means she got two separate searing burns into her skin because they wanted to try to make it look like an S for Sylvia, Right, Sylvia, I am a prostitute and I am proud of it. But the dumbasses when they went to see her the second half of that S into her skin. The application they did was backwards, so instead she had a huge three under her breast rather than an S. Not that either one would be wanted, but they couldn't even brand her properly, so I'd mentioned, you know, branding like cattle, and I wanted to add something here. I also don't claim to be an all knowing cattle rancher, okay, but I have a brain, and if anything I do know about people who do raise cattle is that they care for their animals. These animals are their livelihood, and their care results in their income, so they take steps to ensure that the cattle's discomfort and the branding procedure is minimum. The like in sisters were Gert's income source.

14:24 If you think about that, remember how excited she was that their daddy was going to be paying them to stay in the house. I feel like knowledge is power, So I did a little research on branding, and I hope if I have any cattle ranchers listing that they'll be proud of my findings. But again, I don't claim to be an expert, but I do have the power to sert research. And I went to agrobeef dot com and this is their exact statement on branding and its purpose. And this is a quote. The procedure lasts a split second, and the handlers are all well trained to keep the calf's discomfort to a minimum. A split second, y'all, and it's over. This was not a split second what this child went through.

15:13 This was slow and torturous of an experience for this child. The cattle I mentioned also the cattle site that I went to also made a point to say that right after that branding, they released those those calves immediately to their mothers to limit the distress. Not Sylvia, no, she would get more torture right. She's not released to her mother for comfort. She was held down and had a burning needle scratched into her stomach, then drugged downstairs and branded like an animal, but not even given the decency that an animal receives.

15:58 And she's not even allowed to be released to her mother or her father for comfort afterwards. Even more telling was this statement that I read on why farmers brand their cattle? Why do they do it? So? Tell me if this hits you some type of way, because it hit me some type of way quote unquote. Branding is a method of permanent identification and proof of ownership. And that hit me hard when I read it, because y'all, they felt like they owned her a piece of property rather than a human being equal. Once Gert saw what had been done to Silvia, she then decided that emotional trauma would be a great next step to add to this physical trauma.

16:41 And so she would start taunting Sylvia in the days to come and mock her for this branding that she got and didn't even want. And she would say things to her like, you'll never get married. Now, what are you going to do now that you're branded? No man's gonna want you prostitute, And reportedly Sylvia would say with sorrow, only one thing to her and would say, well, I guess there's nothing I can do. I guess I'm stuck with it. You know. I had major surgery when I was twenty seven, twenty seven years old, because I had the beginning stages of colon cancer. And at twenty seven years old, it rocked my world.

17:26 Okay, I had major surgery to remove eighteen inches of my colon and still to this day, a married, thirty nine year old woman with children, I still am self conscious about the scar on my abdomen and the way that it kind of indents in. And part of being a good human being is the ability to empathize with others and what they're going through. And I'm imagining this sixteen year old girl in the shape of the girls that I teach, because I teach sixteen year old girls, seventeen year old girls, And how would they react to their body being damaged in such a way. You know, they would be horrified, y'all. Things that seem so trivial and the big picture of life are huge to them at that age. It's just where they are in life, and that's okay. They don't have the advantage of experience under their belts. And the emotional state of Sylvia at this point had to be one of resignation, and she knew she wasn't going to win in this Young Silvia, y'all, was just a teenager, and she now is mutilated, and her body is not as it should be, and she's going through more than most of us will experience in our lives, both physically and emotionally. And it breaks my heart how alone she must have felt. And even worse is that Gert forced Sylvia to then show these carvings to the neighborhood kids and teens that would show up. She would force her to raise her

18:59 shoe up and expose herself as well as this mutilation to all the kids in the neighborhood for fun, right, So they could gauk at her, and then Gertrude would also add to these claims that Sylvia got the tattooing at a sex party. She had attended, right and sneer and point and laugh, look at the prostitute, Look what happened to her at her sex parties. So weak and wounded, Sylvia would then have to lay on the mattress in the basement. And it was at this point that Sylvia believed, look, I'm actively dying, and how helpless must Gennya felt too in that time, a young girl who can't do much about the control that they're under. And it's at this point that the abuse had gotten so bad and Sylvia's condition started deteriorating to a point that gert actually started getting kind of nervous, right, And so she apparently realized, damn, this may not be able to go on forever. And whether she was afraid that the authorities may find out, you know, of Sylvia's condition, or whether Sylvia may die, either way, to save her own ass, she would start forcing Sylvia to write a letter that would justify and explain all that had happened to her and to her body. So she thrusts a piece of paper and a pen at her and says, you're going to write this letter, and she tells her what she has to say. So she would make Sylvia write that she had run away from the Banichetsky home. And I guess in her mind this would obviously be

20:32 to throw off the parents when they came to look for her. But I mean, I guess in her mind she just thought the parents wouldn't look for her after that, like, oh, she ran away, I guess that's it. But she then needed a way to explain all of the damage that had been done to Sylvia's body and her goal and what she came up with was that she was going to try to frame some local boys for everything that had happened to Sylvia. The kick though, was why they mean the teen boys supposedly had hurt her. The letter says it was because she agreed to have sex with all of them and then they abused and hurt her afterwards.

21:12 Because that makes total sense, right, This young girl says, oh, yeah, let me have sex with all these teen boys and then does I guess, and then they abuse and torture her? What? Okay? But this is so incredibly calculating by an evil mind, and in a move that screams too little, too late, Sylvia would be offered some crackers as she was tied to a stair rail to try to I guess improve her condition that she was in. Shoving crackers down her throat was going to help, but reportedly Sylvia refused that food, and so Gert got mad and then went up and crammed the food into her mouth after she had just written this letter that wasn't true, And then she and John Benichetski had a few rounds of beating Sylvia all about her stomach at the end of that day. And I know this to be a founded claim because, like I just mentioned to you, the photos of Sylvia's stomach with the etching also shows that bruising across her mid section, and it validates what is argued to have happened there. So, after the letter was completed, Gert began making plans to get rid of Sylvia.

22:27 So she then though, was like, what am I going to do with her? I've got this body, right, I've got this girl. She's still alive. And then comes the problem, what about Jenny, Like her sister's gonna believe for one second that her deathly ill sister, you know, was wounded and then would be able to leave on her own and then wouldn't take her sister with her. It's just crazy, and that's what's crazy about liars. Okay. They think that obvious flaws in their plan will just go away and that people will buy nine. You see this over and over and over again when people start lying about what's happened. Her grand scheme she came up with was she was going to have John Junior and Jenny blindfold Sylvia and then go dump her somewhere in the woods alive, and then allow her to basically die alone in her weakened and tortured state in the woods. Sylvia would try and make an attempt to save herself after she realizes what the plan was, and she was going to try to get out of the basement, which she did, and she would make it out of the basement and then make a run for the front door, but she was simply just too weak and tired to get too far. Her body was giving out and Gert would catch her before she could even get off the front lawn. She was so dehydrated and weak that Gert would then force Crackers again into her mouth and then grab a curtain rod, a thick metal curtain rod, and start beating Sylvia

23:59 across the head and the face with it. Coy Hubbard, the neighbor, would confirm that happened and even said that she was hit so hard with the curtain rod that it made ninety degree angles like it bent over Sylvia's head. She was struck so hard with the curtain rod. And then Coy Hubbard would take his turn and start striking Sylvia, and he hit her so hard in his final strike that he actually rendered her completely unconscious and she collapsed on the floor. And y'all, you gotta think about the brain. It's very fragile. You know, it's like made of entirely blood vessels and nerves. And you're talking about this soft, mushy, massive tissue in this gelatine that controls all neural high function and commands to a person. But despite how incredible your brain is, there's a few shortcomings. But the brain is act. She really remarkable and resilient at receiving trauma, and so sometimes people will black out, but she was knocked out. You know what I'm saying. A blackout in this respect would have helped because it's kind of like a defense mechanism.

25:14 It stops the brain from processing what's happening. But she is knocked smooth out unconscious, and once unconscious, Gert would then drag Sylvia to the basement. And I don't want to just summarize it as drag her to the basement. It doesn't say she carried her. She drug her. And I envisioned that bony, sick bitch grabbing her by the ankles, dragging her to the stairs, and then boom boom boom boom boom, dragging her unconscious body down the stairs, and then she dumps her there until the evening, and Sylvia would later come too, but she knew her time was running out, and she knew I've got to do something, a last ditch effort to try to save myself. But how how can I do it? I'm down here, I'm desperately sick. So what she does is she tries to scream for a neighbor's attention from the basement, and I can only imagine that those screams were more like higher pitched talking, you know what I mean, from her weekend state.

26:15 And she also would hit and bang on the walls to the best of her abilities, but to no avail because nobody would come. And later on I did read that a neighbor recounted hearing it but didn't know where it was coming from or what it was, and she kind of dismissed it. And no one would ever be coming to Sylvia's rescue. She was basically trapped in a cell known as a basement, with no one even reaching out to help. Interestingly enough, though I wanted to tell you all this, the date of this episode's release that you're listening to this is very close to the actual date of the next section that I'm about to describe to you, So we're really in the timeframe. If you're feeling the coolness of the weather outside and you're seeing the leaves, that's the tone the temperament of what Sylvia was in.

27:04 It's October twenty sixth, nineteen sixty five. And at this point in the case, Lichens is now Sylvia is in an official death spiral, and according to documents and testimony, Sylvia went into a condition where she wasn't even able to speak, and she lacked all normal coordination, She couldn't walk properly. She couldn't talk properly, and her limbs were uncoordinated, and gert would respond to seeing this by dragging her out of the basement and up into the kitchen and as if food would somehow magically improve the situation, and after weeks of starving Sylvia, she'd now proper up against a wall and force feed her a doughnut and a glass of milk. The problem, though, was that Sylvia was no longer to able help herself at all, and she couldn't even hold the milk or the donut, which enraged Gertrude. How dare this child not be able to help herselfs as she's in the active throes of dying, and so in frustration that her basic attempt at quote unquote helping Sylvia wasn't working, she responded by throwing Sylvia to the ground, a sprawled mess of a child that couldn't even fight back at this point if she even wanted to.

28:23 It's like kicking a puppy. Man. I just I can't even, I just can't. So her actions were so irregular that her communication was now limited to groans and mumbling, and it was pretty much incoherent, according to reports and realizing that things were becoming pretty serious. Even Paula Benichetski that hoe there was yelling at her and said, you better recite the alphabet, because that was what a basic thing anyone should be able to do, especially if you're sixteen years old. But you know, Sylvia wasn't even able to get herself up off the ground, much less say the alphabet. She could only spew like three letters out of her mouth. And Paula became enraged at this and started yelling at her and said, if you don't recite the alphabet, then I'm gonna run and stomp you. And she said, like a long jump attempt, Like a long jump attempt at a track meet. You ever watched that when peple run and then they jump in the air and see how far they can jump before they slam down into the sand. Except she was gonna be slamming down into Sylvia. Later that day, the Banichetskis would all go down in the basement where Sylvia was now, and they were just kind of gulking at her condition, and they thoughtfully brought her a rotten pair for her to eat, but she couldn't. And some things that I read said that she was complaining about her teeth hurting too bad, her mouth hurt too bad to eat. So Sylvia at this point is covered in feces and urine and

29:55 she's laying on a soaked mattress. When John Banichetski thought he he would do something that he thought was hilarious, and he drug a garden hose down to the basement and began spraying her like a dog, just spraying her. And Sylvia at that point would attempt to get up and try to leave, but she couldn't even get to the stairs at this point, and Gert was so angered by her attempt to leave this time that she ran over to her and started stamping her in the head, stamping a child directly in the head, curb stomping her until she lay motionless. Around five thirty pm, Richard hobbs at neighbor. He came to the Banichetski home and he headed down to the basement. But while he was going down, he would fall. He slipped and he fell down the stairs. So as he was gathering himself and he kind of went to get up, he looks up and he sees Stephanie Banichetski, who is down in the bottom of the basement, and when he sees her, she's crying and she's cuddling Sylvia's emaciated and destroyed. So Stephanie was down there because Gert told her get down there, and I want you to go clean her up. And when Stephanie got down there, the sight of Sylvia scared her, and even she seemed to realize that this was beyond bad.

31:18 This was beyond cleaning her up was not going to help. And she cried as she kind of cradled Sylvia. And while I find out to be one second of humanity, that that doesn't replace what's happened to her. And after a little talking Stephanie and Richard Hobbs, they decide we need to go bathe Sylvia, and so we should clean her up and then we should put her in new clothes. Now, when they did bathe, Hobbs would say in a recording that she was cold when she was downstairs. So they brought her upstairs and put her a warm bath to try to, I guess, make everything better. And then they put her in these clean clothes. And then they took her and they put her on a mattress in another bedroom.

32:04 They didn't take her back downstairs to that mattress they put on another bedroom, And that's a nonverbal point to me that they realized this is so bad, we can't fix it. So we're going to do the decent thing and put her on a clean mattress. But it's just so indecent. It doesn't matter at this point, and in a moment of lucidness, Sylvia would come too, and this is so heartbreaking, but she started to cry and the last words that Sylvia would ever speak were, I wish my daddy was here. A bit later, Stephanie Vanichetski would realize that Sylvia was no longer breathing, and she would attempt to give mouth to mouth resuscitation, but to no avail.

32:52 Even Hobbes would claim that he gave mouth to mouth resuscitation, but it didn't work. And all Gert would do is yell at the other children. That you know, she was pretty hysterical, and she was just yelling at the other kids. Oh, she's faking her death. She's faking her death. Well maybe Gert was hoping that's the case, but it wasn't. Sixteen year old Sylvia Likns would succumb to her injuries, surrounded by no one that loved her or cared for her, but rather the tormentors who caused her death. And even in death, Gert Benichetski claimed she was doing something she wasn't. And once the realization was made that this was final and that Sylvia was dead, cold and not faking it, Gert would then complete the final steps of her evil plan that she had set out to do, and that would include trying to save her own skin. Remember, Gert had forced Sylvia to write that letter about that gang of boys and all that they had sune to her. So she would call the police and summon them to her home, and once they got there, the police would find Sylvia Lichen's body clothed, lying on an upstairs mattress. Of course, it wasn't the one that she had just spent weeks lying on in her own excrement. It was a clean one and police would almost immediately be really suspicious of these circumstances surrounding her death,

34:28 and they couldn't overlook the fact that her body was covered in cuts and severe bruises and a variety of open sores, and as they looked further at her body, they were horrified to start saying, wait a minute, there's hundreds of cigarette burns, there's peeling, scald marks on her skin, there's missing skin from her face. She had two black eyes. Her lips were literally shredded from her like chewing and gnawing on them. Her fingernails were broken backwards. And they were looking closer at this, and they raised her shirt and they found the evidence of severe malnutrition. The three that was branded on her chest under her breast and the words I'm a prostitute and proud of it etched into her stomach. Now they're taken aback by this, and like trying to process, wait, how did this happen to this girl? And Gert, again trying to save her own skin, would run and retrieve that letter that Sylvia had written. It's in her own handwriting, claiming that a gang of boys had done this to her. But the various stages of healing of those wounds and the fact that malnutrition doesn't happen in just a few days was more than enough to keep the police asking questions of Gert Manichetski, and much to her dislike, they weren't buying what she was trying to sell. This didn't happen in one instance by a group of boys. And at that time,

36:01 while they're in the house and the police are looking, Jenny Likens went up to the police officers and said, I will make a statement, but you have to promise that you're going to take me out of this house if I do it. Well, that's what we and the BIZ call a clue. What is she afraid of? Why does she want to be removed from the home? And it was just all too much for the police to process and believe that this was an acute case of abuse at the hands of a gang of boys, as Gert was claiming. So over the next couple of days, police would begin to question everyone in the Banichetski home as well as neighborhood kids about what had been going on in that home for the last few weeks and months, And after the stories and the lies began mounting, the police took action and they started making arrests in the death of sixteen year old Sylvia Lichens. When questioned, here is Gert Benichetski, in her own words and in her own voice, explaining what she says happened. I had never beat that girl. Never she was beat up on by other girls. In fact, my own daughter, saftening the job, broke her rest and so I mean, there you go and girls around the neighborhood beat her rest, blood, eat her nose. I have one girl broker nose. In fact, I think, were you ever in contact with the police on any of these occasis? Well in the last two weeks. In fact, I think if you talked to my daughters. I asked him, the children's father and

37:36 I are divorced, and he's a police in Mietkoger was, and I've asked the girls repeatedly called their dad and asked him what to do. And in fact I asked Danny, I say, Jenny, and I told Silvia, I said, Jill, Hey, I'm gonna have to call the police or somebody because I can't have any responsibility. So how do you like that? Total denial? And I find it interesting that a grown woman was so alarmed by the condition of Sylvia Lichens and how she was looking and acting, that she had her children supposedly bear the responsibility of calling their father to ask what to do. How ridiculous is this to put this off on kids. Oh, I'm so alarmed that I kept telling the kids, call your dad, Call your dad, give me a break. What do you mean, call your dad? Call the police? Why would you call the man you divorced over a child that's not even his concern. That doesn't even make sense.

38:36 And it didn't work right because they obviously didn't call if that was the truth, which it's not. And in total, the police would take the entire Benichetski family and eight additional neighborhood children into custody from that neighborhood. Anna Cisco who was thirteen, Michael Monroe who was eleven, Randy Lepper who was also eleven, and Judy Duke who was twelve were charged with injury to a person. However, all of them would be released under a subpoena where they would turn as state witness. That's probably a good thing in this situation. Even though they hurt her, hurt Sylvia, their testimony is going to sink the major perpetrators of the crime. Gert Benichetski's youngest children, Marie who was eleven, Shirley who was ten, James who was eight, and Dennis Wright Junior, who was one, would all be taken from Gert and placed into separate foster homes. They get better treatment than Sylvia got. Not that you know their kids, not that don't want aything to happen to kids, but in that ironic and in December of nineteen sixty five, a grand jury would indicte Gertrude Benichetski, her daughter Paula who was seventeen, and her daughter Stephanie who was fifteen, and her son John Junior, who was twelve, on the first degree murder of Sylvia Likens. They would also indict neighbors Cooy Hubbard and

40:07 Richard Hobbes, who were both fifteen years old, on charges of first degree murder. That trial would take place soon afterwards, and as you can imagine, was a complete media circus. And I have cutouts and articles on a post online and on Patreon, some special stuff there, and people were really horrified by the details that would emerge through radio and through the newspaper. So I have some excerpts from the actual trial transcript and I thought i'd read them to you just you could kind of see how it was going. So this was going to be Jenny Likens, right, Sylvia's sister asked, being asked questions and answering She was asked, did Sylvia eat at the table with you while you had meals? And she said not all the time. She was asked when you first went there, did she? She answered yes? In what way? Genny answered, I don't know. They kept saying she was not clean and they did not want her to eat at the table. She was asked what did you see and when and what was said? Genny responded, Gertrude said, come on, Sylvia, try to fight me. When did this happen? Jenny in September, When did or where did it happen?

41:16 Jenny says in the dining room. She's asked what did you see and what was said? And Genny says, well, Gertrude just doubled up her fist and kept hitting her, and Sylvia would not fight back. Marie Banichetski, who was eleven, testified in court as well about Sylvia. She was asked tell the jury what happened. Marie says, Mom had scalding hot water running, and she told Sylvia to come up from the basement, and Mom put her head under the hot water. How did she hold her head, Marie answers, by the neck, They clarified, by the neck. She says, yes, sir. Was there any soap on her head at the time, No, sir. How long did she hold her under the fawcet?

42:01 Marie answers, Mom did not get to hold her head under there very long because Sylvia was hysterical and trying to get away. There was further testimony from Marie. What kind of girl was she before she was beaten up? Marie says, a real nice girl. Was she nice to you, yes, sir. Was she nice to the other children in your family? Yes, sir. Was she nice to your mother, yes, sir. Did she work or help around the house. She always got home before us kids and would straighten up our bedrooms and the downstairs. I mean, are you really getting a gist of how sweet little Sylvia was and that what she endured was in no way fitting no way. Jenny Likins testified further, and it's almost like they were accusing Jenny, you know, but they said you were perfectly free to go and tell anybody you saw, weren't you. Yes, you could have. I've told the neighbors about this if you wanted to, couldn't you? I could have. That don't mean I wanted to die though, when Sylvia's dead and the police officers arrive at the house. What did ginny whisper Get me out of here, and I'll tell you everything. During the trial, Gertrude was asked about the child traffic, like all the kids coming in and out of her home by her defense lawyer, and she's asked, did you ever tell them to stay away? And Gertrude answers, yes, I did. Many times. I would try and lock the doors and

43:35 Paula, would you know, chase them out or chase them away, because I mean, I was to the point where I could not stand noise or anything anymore. It was I just could not take it anymore. I had everybody's children. Okay, well, you can try and feel sorry for gert if you want to. But Sylvia was the only child forced to deal with the family's demons, so she's trying to make herself out to be the victim here. She tried to lock the door, y'all. I'm a grown ass woman. I'm a whole thirty nine years old. If I don't want kids in my house, they're getting the hell out my house. What do you mean you tried get out of my house? Ridiculous? Absolutely ridiculous. During the trial, the deputy coroner of Indianapolis, his name was doctor Arthur Keble.

44:21 He was the one who had examined Sylvia's corpse at the house. He testified in court that when he had first seen her body, he had guessed the damage was the work of and this is a direct quote a madman. After pursuing the photographs of the dead girl in court, he said, if I had nothing to see except these pictures, I would say only a person completely out of contact with reality would be capable of inflicting this type of agony on another human being. Like even the coroner was shocked. And that's what he does for a living, is a look at dead people, and even he was horrified. Now upon further testimony, it was also very clear made that Sylvia had not been officially or technically raped in the sense of someone comes in and attacks and holds you down and forcefully penetrate to you. According to the coroner, her labia and her vagina were swollen from external assaults, but her hymen was intact. Now, since she wasn't technically raped, this was not a charge the family would face. But I'm gonna tell you something in today's times, that was gonna that would go differently. It's funny to me that the girl who was branded a prostitute and a whore by the family supposed you know, supposedly caring for her, had an absolute virgin on their hands.

45:42 The only sexual inclination that that child had was when they forced her to behave in a sexual manner and parade her in front of other children with a coke bottle or other horrid sexually driven actions. She never did any herself. She was a virgin, y'all. They wouldn't be able to say that for Paula Bannichetski though, the oldest daughter of Gert, who, if you remember, was pregnant after her adventures with a married man. You remember her because while on trial, Paula gave birth to a baby girl. And guess what she named her. You're gonna love this, Gertrude. Wow. Gert would take to court and she would claim that she had taken so many pills on the day Sylvia died that this is her quote. I couldn't remember what happened in Sylvia slaying. She said the drugs included feno, barbaital and other medication.

46:45 Well guess what, by chance, y'all, my little weenie dog, my heart and soul. I need to post him because I've just spoken about him, and y'all can all just tell me how great he is with his underbite. But my dog Toby bones, he takes peno barbital. He has a seizure disorder, and even when he takes his medicine, which he takes every day, twice a day, he still remembers just fine. Even his arch nemesis, the squirrels in my trees that run around, not my beloved Joe Burrow squirrel, my pet, but the ones that run amongst the trees. He doesn't forget to harass them. He knows exactly where he hides his bone every time, he knows where his water bowl is, and he knows where to go lay down. So it's funny to me that Gert just can't remember anything. But my dog, who's on high doses of this, does just fine throughout the day. He doesn't bump into walls or forget. So let's talk about Gert's lawyer for a little while. And y'all, there's so much to this case. I could even do another episode on it. I'm not I may do one may for my Patreon members if y'all want me to, and we could kind of discuss or maybe have a live and talk about the trial and some of the other things, if y'all are interested. But the attorney here, his name is William Erbecker. That's her defense attorney.

47:55 This is the quote that he said in court. No sane person could do such a thing. He said, she's not responsible because she's not all there, and then he like tapped the side of his forehead with his index finger, kind of like emphasizing the problem was in her head. You know, she's not all there. He then, inappropriately, in my opinion, put the guilt mindset on the jurors of that case, because then he said another direct quote, you'll have to live with your conscience for the rest of your life if you send an insane woman to the electric chair, right, because I don't know if even said this, I should have, but she was claiming insanity, all right, bull shit, this woman's not insane. So in my opinion, it seems like if you're thinking about the lone gunman who quote unquote snaps and begins firing his weapon in a church or a school or the sadistic psychopath who secretly like stalks his prey. You know those people, it's easier for me to look at them and distance myself from them, say they are suffering from some frickin mental illness. Then a woman who sat there turned on a teenager and encouraged her own children to help abuse her over a long period of time. If you snap, you snap right then, and you act right then. This was chronic. This was not acute what happened to this girl. So I can't buy. I just can't buy whatever they're

49:29 trying to claim, and then to put it off on the jury like it's their fault. If this woman gets the electric chair, she deserved the electric chair, she also deserves a swept kick in the ass and a paunch in the face prior to the electric chair. Other than my opinion of Gert, though, science has even jumped in in further studies and tried to offer their explanation of her actions and her children's actions. And this is something that I took from a scientific website. I'm gonna be honest. I forgot to I forgot to give them their dues here I can post it, though, butentists have weighed in on this case in more recent years, and their explanation was actually pretty thought provoking for me. Okay, when the scientists lay out their facts, it all comes down to the fact they say that human beings imitate.

50:12 When it's all said and done, we imitate and they converge emotionally, so they called it traveling emotion or information transit. They said, violence is not like a disease. It is a disease. The biological mechanism, the brain machinery underneath it all, may be a kind of neuron, but it can't be at work between violent attacker and a victim because if the victim is like me, if the victim feels like me and I can put myself in their shoes, right, how can I torture and murder her? Therefore, the victim has to be outside of that imitation loop. So basically, what science was arguing is that the children mirrored girl but not Sylvia by what they called a biological mirror mechanism called an unconscious contagion. I hope that makes sense to you, but I kind of get it. They have to make Silvia a thing, not a person, because if they start to empathize with her.

51:15 Then it won't work, and so they attach themselves to their mother and they imitate what their mother does and carry it forward. That's science, that's their argument. But regardless of the why, the saddest thing to me is that even after torture that leads to the death of this young girl, Sylvia still doesn't win the war. I got to tell you the outcome of the trial. Stephanie Banichetski, who voluntarily testified for the state. She was not forced, and she was not given a deal or anything. The one who had cradled Sylvia, she testified for the state, and they gave her a separate trial. She was found not guilty, and she was ultimately released.

51:57 Gertrude Banichetski pleaded not guilty by reasons of insanity. I personally don't find evil and insane to be the same thing, but they allowed it. I also, I'm going to say that I'm pretty sure she had the benefit of the times, if that makes sense, because people weren't quite aware of the realities that some people are actually just evil and mean. Right, We're in the sixties here, and she went to trial. She was found guilty of first degree murder, and she was sentenced to life in prison. Now did that make you smile a little bit? Well, I'm about to ruin that for you, because the judgment was later reversed on an appeal that Gert filed in nineteen seventy and she was granted a brand new trial, and they gave her a change of venue, right, so she's not in the same area where everyone's been dealing with the case. In that nineteen seventy one re trial, again they found her guilty of first degree murder, which is great and all, but then she was granted parole in nineteen eighty five. She literally got like twenty years and was let go. In my humble opinion, this should have resulted in an execution, but that didn't happen, and I'm not in charge of anything. So they also reported in the media. You may want to know this, but it was reported that while she was incarcerated, she was called a model prisoner and she was even called mom by her fellow inmates.

53:24 Freaking disgusting. Sylvia is going to be dead forever and she basically gets nothing in comparison to what she did to this girl. Awesome way to go justice system on that one. Now, Paula Banichetski, who was also found guilty, but of second degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Another smile comes across your pa, your face, good lock that bitch up right. But she too was granted a new trial on an appeal in nineteen seventy and she pled guilty. And I want you to sit on this for one second. We pled guilty too, in voluntary manslaughter. Involuntary what that's voluntary, that's murder what she did and was a part of. But they allowed her to plead to involuntary manslaughter. That is such a miscarriage of justice because she was That happened in the nineteen seventy one retrial. And you know what, her new sentencing was two to twenty one years, two to twenty one years. And she learned so much during her incarceration of her supposed two to twenty one years that she even twice escaped from prison. She got out, and the cherry on top, the absolute cherry on top, she too was granted parole after just two years. That's sick. Coy Hubbard, Richard

55:04 Hobbes, and John Benichetski Junior were all convicted of manslaughter and They were all sentenced to two to twenty one years as well, but they all served eighteen months and then were released on parole in nineteen sixty seven. Basically, they got away with it. In my opinion, they did all of this to this young girl. They enjoyed every minute of it. They lied through their teeth and got a slap on the wrist. And Sylvia is still dead. So what happened after all of their release? I thought I'd go even a bit further on this and let you know what happened after they were released.

55:50 After the three Benichetski's were released from prison, they all were afforded new names. They all changed their names. Fun fact, so did their father, Officer Banichetski, because he was He didn't take part in me of the torture, but his name was drug into it, and so everybody hated him because of his name too. So they all changed their names because they couldn't. They couldn't live up to everything they had done, so they just had to change their name. Cooy Hubbard died in June of two thousand and seven from a heart attack, and I'm not mad about it. Richard Hobbes. He died of lung cancer on January second, nineteen seventy two, at the age of twenty one, and it's good for him. He didn't make it past twenty one. Well, Sylvia didn't make it past sixteen, so again I ain't mad about it, unlike Sylvia who never aged past sixteen years old.

56:37 John Benichetski Junior lived in relative obscurity under an alias name and he went by John Blake. And guess what he became later in life, a minister. He became a minister and he was frequently hosting counseling sessions for children of divorced parents, and he died of diabetes in two thousand and five. He lived to be aged fifty two. Paula Banichetski was released from prison December sixth, nineteen seventy two, and she quickly changed her name to Paula Pace and she too drifted off into obscurity as well. But that was until October of twenty twelve, when a school district in Conrad, Iowa, received a tip, an anonymous tip that they may want to look into one of their teacher's aides, a fourteen year veteran of the school district who was described as a quiet and friendly woman who often helped her students was identified as being the Paula Benichetski working in a school system with children, so the Consolidated School District's board unanimously voted to fire her she was sixty four years old, for falsifying information on her job application. Gertrude changed her name to Nadine van Fawsen, and she too moved to Iowa, where she died of lung cancer in nineteen ninety.

58:06 Jennykeens and Sylvia's older sister remember her. She tried to find them and save them. Her name was Diana. She would just continue on with her life and have to live with the tragic loss of her sister, and she would actually make news later on. I found because she was on a drive with her husband his name was Cecil, when they got lost in a remote area of California, and she was lost for two weeks until she was finally found. She ended up being hospitalized, but her husband wasn't so lucky. He died of a heart attack while they were awaiting their rescue. Jenny Likens would grow up and eventually marry her husband. His name would be Leonard Wade, and together they would have two children. They named them Tammy and Bob, and she died of cardiovascular failure on June twenty third, two thousand and four, at fifty four years old. And sweet Sylvia, right, the main purpose of this store will be forever sixteen. She was never afforded a life, or to marry or to have kids, and she was robbed of any semblance of normalcy and decency. In her final months of life. She was degraded and dehumanized and humiliated and murdered by a group of evil, jealous assholes.

59:25 But hey, in the end, I love this. It's kind of poetic. But Sylvia's honor has been vindicated, and the world knows the truth about a sweet young girl who no matter the torture she endured, no matter the branding applied to her body, she still left this earth a virgin with a kind heart. So basically, the Banichetskis thought that they would win by throwing dirt on her name, but instead flowers grew. I'd be mad too, bitches,