Jenny Likens: Testimony, Life as Jenny Wade, and Reforms

Jenny Likens was the younger sister of Sylvia Likens, the Indianapolis teenager whose 1965 torture-murder became one of Indiana’s most notorious crimes. Jenny was 15 at the time, disabled by polio, and living in the same house on East New York Street where Sylvia was killed. She became the prosecution’s key witness, later married and took the surname Wade, and lived a reclusive life in the Indianapolis area until her death from a heart attack in 2004 at age 54.¹

How Jenny Ended Up in the Baniszewski House

Jenny Fay Likens and Sylvia Marie Likens were daughters of Lester and Betty Likens. Lester worked as a traveling carnival concessionaire, and the family’s life was unstable. Lester and Betty separated repeatedly, and the children were shuffled between relatives and short-term arrangements.²

In early July 1965, Lester came home to find the house empty. Betty had been jailed for shoplifting, and Sylvia and Jenny were staying at Gertrude Baniszewski’s home at 3850 East New York Street in Indianapolis. Baniszewski was a 37-year-old mother of seven. Lester agreed to pay her $20 a week to board the girls while he traveled for carnival season. He did not inspect the house before he left, though it was overcrowded, dirty, and short on food for the ten people already living there.²

What Jenny Witnessed

Over the following months, Gertrude Baniszewski supervised and took part in a campaign of escalating violence against Sylvia, drawing in her own children and neighborhood teenagers. Sylvia was beaten, burned with cigarettes, branded, and denied food and water. In her final weeks she was confined to the basement.³

Jenny was present throughout. Because polio made walking difficult, she was not subjected to the same level of violence as her sister.¹ She was beaten herself when Baniszewski suspected her of disloyalty, and she saw much of what happened to Sylvia. Asked later why she never called for help, Jenny said she was “scared” and feared that speaking up would make things worse.⁴

She did try once. During the ordeal Jenny got word to her older sister Dianna and asked for help, but the plea was initially ignored. When a social worker later came to check on the household, Gertrude threatened Jenny into telling the worker that Sylvia had run away. An attorney involved in the case later observed that both girls had grown up in circumstances where no adult had ever reliably come to their aid. They were not, he said, “conditioned to believe that anyone would help” them.¹

Sylvia died on October 26, 1965. The coroner would document more than 150 separate wounds and marks on her body.⁵

Her Statement to Police and Trial Testimony

The moment officers entered the house, Jenny approached them. “You get me out of here,” she told them, “and I’ll tell you everything.”¹ She agreed to provide a full statement on the condition that she be removed from the Baniszewski home immediately.³

At the trial in April 1966, Jenny gave detailed testimony about what happened inside the house. She described Sylvia as a “simple, stoic girl” who at first tried to endure the abuse silently, gritting her teeth and shaking her head. She testified about the night Richard Hobbs, one of the neighborhood teenagers, branded Sylvia’s abdomen with a heated anchor bolt, and about Sylvia’s resigned response: “There’s nothing I can do. It’s on there now.” She recounted a desperate attempt Sylvia made to flee to the porch, only to be dragged back inside and beaten with a curtain rod. And she recalled her sister’s words shortly before the end: “I know you don’t want me to die, but I’m going to die and I know it.”⁴

Jenny also explained why escape had not been possible. Sylvia, she said, had been so “numbed and weakened” by sustained cruelty that flight was no longer within her. Jenny herself, a polio-disabled 15-year-old under constant threat from Baniszewski, had been held in place by fear.⁴³⁶

Life as Jenny Wade

After the trial, Jenny married and became Jenny Wade. She settled in Beech Grove, a small city bordering Indianapolis, and largely withdrew from public life. Friends in her later years described her as a nervous recluse, still haunted by what had happened in the Baniszewski house.²

When Gertrude Baniszewski died in 1990, having been paroled in December 1985 after nearly 20 years in prison,⁷⁶ Jenny clipped the obituary, mailed it to her mother, and attached a note: “Some good news. Damn old Gertrude died. Ha ha ha! I am happy about that.”²

How Jenny Likens Died

Jenny died on June 23, 2004, at age 54. Friends attributed her fatal heart attack to the shock of a pizza deliveryman unexpectedly knocking on her door, a detail that speaks to the depth of anxiety she carried her whole life. She is buried in Section 9 of Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Greenwood, Indiana.²

The Reforms Her Testimony Helped Set in Motion

Sylvia’s murder, brought to public light in large part through Jenny’s account, is credited with prompting significant reforms in Indiana’s approach to child protection. The case led to the establishment of Indiana’s mandated reporter law, which requires all residents, regardless of profession, to report suspected child abuse to law enforcement. It also pushed police and prosecutors to improve their investigative practices around child abuse and neglect.⁸

In 2010, the Boone County Child Advocacy Center opened in Lebanon, Indiana, under the name Sylvia’s Child Advocacy Center. The nonprofit provides forensic interviews for child abuse victims in a trauma-informed setting and has served more than 2,000 children in Boone County since its founding.⁹¹⁰

1
Indianapolis Monthly. Likens: Looking Back at Indiana’s Infamous Crime 50 Years Later
2
Weekly View. The Sylvia Likens Family Saga, Part 1
3
The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. Sylvia Likens Murder Case
4
TIME. Trials: Avenging Sylvia
5
UPI. Parole Board Approves Baniszewski Release Again
6
The Indiana Lawyer. Lawyer’s Book Retraces Indy’s Infamous Sylvia Likens Murder Case
7
Chicago Tribune. Tearful Grandma Paroled
8
Sylvia’s Child Advocacy Center. Sylvia’s Story
9
Indiana Children’s Advocacy Centers. Sylvia’s CAC Commemorates 15 Years of Service
10
Indianapolis Gives. Boone County Child Advocacy Center