Worst lady in mankind's history.
Gertrude Van Fossen was born on September 19th, 1929 in Indiana. No one knows much about her childhood but at the age of 11 she witnessed her fathers death.
At the age of 16, she dropped out of high school and married a man by the name of John Banizsewski who was a former police officer. They had 4 children, Stephanie, John, Paula and Marie. But the home was very abusive. John would beat her very often in front of the children. So finally, after 10 years of marriage she left with her children.
Soon after she married another man named, Edward. That marriage only lasted 3 months. Afterwards she went back to her first husband and remarried him. They had 2 more children, Shirley and James. But they did get divorce again.
Gertrude then dated a boy named Denis Lee who was only 22. She ends up having another child so Dennis left her. Now she was a single mother to 7 children.
Gertrude's daughter Stephanie had a friend at school, Sylvia Liken. Sylvia's father was searching for a place for her to stay since the family was going to a carnival circuit to make a living. Gertrude offered Sylvia and her sister Jenny a place to stay.
At first things were going great. They were treated fairly in the household. But when the Likens sisters' father stopped sending Gertrude money, things started going downhill.
At first, Gertrude beat the sisters with a paddle and also verbally abused them. They were even beaten 15 times with a paddle for eating too much at a church dinner.
Gertrude was mostly abusive towards Sylvia. Her oldest, Paula, was jealous of Sylvia because of her appearance. She would constantly pick on her.
Gertrude didn't give Sylvia food and would tell her to eat from garbage the can. Once they forcefully fed her a molded hot dog, when she threw up, she was forced to eat that too. They would also accuse her of spreading rumors about Paula and Stephanie. They would even take turns beating Sylvia. Stephanie once told her boyfriend that Sylvia was spreading rumors about her, so he went ahead and beat her up.
The kids would even invite their friends over, and just beat Sylvia up. They would make Sylvia strip down in front of everyone and would sexually abuse her. Her skin was covered in cigarette burns, because they would put out cigarettes on her skin. Gertrude at one point forbade Sylvia from going to school. Sylvia would faint sometimes from the pain, so Gertrude would hit her head against the wall to wake her up.
So many horrible things happened to the Likens sisters but they told no one. Because Gertrude told them that if they did, she would kill them. The family visited the sisters once in a while but still they didn't notice that anything was wrong and the sisters didn't say anything either. Once they ran into their oldest sister Diana, they told her about the abuse, but she just didn't believe them.
Gertrude would constantly tie Sylvia up in the basement. She would leave her naked, dehydrated. She would even charge the neighborhood kids 5 cents to abuse Sylvia. The whole family and their boyfriends constantly took their turns to abuse the poor girl.
Gertrude made Sylvia write a letter to her parents stating that, she was running away with a group of boys. Originally she was going to leave Sylvia in the woods to starve to death. Sylvia attempted to run away when she found out, but was caught. So they beat her up again and locked her in the basement. At one point Sylvia tried to crawl back up but Gertrude hit her on the head again to put her back down. Now at this point, she had passed away. One of her last sentences was "I wish my daddy was here."
Gertrude told Stephanie's boyfriend to call the police. When the police got there, she told them that Sylvia had run away and that she came back like that and she tried her best to help her. But Sylvia's sister Jenny told them everything.
The police arrested Gertrude Baniszewski, 3 of her kids(Paula, John and Stephanie) and 2 of their boyfriends(Richard Hobbs and Coy Hubbard) They also arrested 5 neighborhood kids but they were released to their parents.
According to the autopsy report, Sylvia had over 150 wounds on her body. The official cause of her death was blood force trauma to the head. Gertrude refused the charges and said she only tied her up in the basement sometimes. Later she said, it was the kids fault and she was too 'depressed' to take care of the household.
AFTERMATH:
Finally, after a 17 day trial Gertrude was charged with first degree murder. Gertrude and her daughter Paula, were given life sentences. But Stephanie's charges were dropped due to lack of evidence, though she did testify against her family. Richard, Coy and John were convicted of manslaughter.
In 1985, Gertrude received parole and moved to Iowa. She changed her name to Nadine Van Fossen. She died 5 years later of lung cancer in 1990.
Now, Sylvia's sister, Jenny wasn't nearly as abused as her. But she was so traumatized and haunted by the memories that, she turned into a nervous recluse. She tried to live a normal life. At the age of 54 she died from a heart attack.
No comments:
Post a Comment