House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying (St. Martin's True Crime Library) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Baniszewski children. They all attended the Memorial Baptist Church, a fundamentalist institution on Alabama Street near a bawdy movie house. When the movie house burned down later, the church’s pastor, the Rev. Roy Julian, praised the fire as an “act of God” and “the answer to our prayers.”
    The Rev. Mr. Julian was pleased at the Likens girls’ regular attendance at his church, and he was particularly proud of them on Sunday, August 22. That day, accompanied by the Baniszewski girls, Jenny and Sylvia “came forward” before the congregation and publicly confessed their faith.
    But although Paula came forward too, her spirit seemed less than Christian. On the first of August she had broken her wrist slugging Sylvia on the jaw and then bragged about it at church. It was common knowledge in the congregation. Paula even told one church matron, “I tried to kill her.”
    The woman passed it off as so much childish talk.
    Paula gave that impression—childishness, immaturity. She had managed to get through nine and a half years of school and was not stupid, but shemade no strong effort to understand. She preferred to explain all happenings as acts of God.
    Perhaps she was saddled with too much responsibility at too early an age. Playing second-in-command to an emotionally unstable adult was hardly good on-the-job training for adulthood. But Paula’s physical appearance, with 160 pounds hanging on a 5-foot-4½-inch frame, did little to evoke any sympathy for her. And something had instilled a streak of meanness in her.
    The fracture of her wrist did not stop her; the cast she wore for six weeks was just another weapon. She slammed Sylvia in the mouth with it, and blood spurted. Sylvia cried.
    Paula was satisfied in her own mind that Sylvia had called Mrs. Wright an unspeakable name. “If you say anything else,” she told Sylvia, “I’m going to break the cast on you.” Paula had merely taken her mother’s word for it that Sylvia had made the foul utterance; she had not heard any name-calling herself.
    How many false charges were levied against Sylvia? No one will ever know. But she was “spanked” the day Mrs. Wright missed $10 from her purse, and Mrs. Wright told Sylvia she knew she was stealing from the neighborhood drug store, too.
    If Sylvia ever had $10 during her stay with Mrs. Wright, no one saw her spend it. Had she any money, she surely would have spent it on food. She was always hungry. She was a growing girl, and she neededsomething to eat. But when she managed to find some nourishment the other children missed out on, she was punished.
    The home’s food supply was especially low the third week in August, a couple of days before Gertrude’s child support check was due. The only milk in the house was reserved for the baby, Dennis Wright Jr. The rest of the family were down to soup and crackers, then only toast and margarine. The children had to eat their soup in shifts, because there were only three spoons in the house. Later, two of them were lost.
    Envy reigned. If someone got something to eat, the others knew, and they were not happy about it. One Sunday, in the evening, the children received a rare treat: They attended a church supper. Sylvia had the first opportunity in weeks to eat something she liked. She would be sorry. When the children got home, Paula tattled on both Sylvia and Jenny for “eating too much.” They were stripped, and they “got the board.”
    Sylvia was clubbed 15 times on the back.
    One day the girls met their older sister, Dianna—a divorcee at 18—in the park. She bought Sylvia a sandwich. Sylvia thought she would get away with that one, but Marie Baniszewski remembered it two months later, and the punishment was worse than 15 blows on the back.
    One time, Sylvia’s “gluttony” was dealt with at a kitchen table session involving an adulterated hotdog. Gertrude’s, Paula’s and Randy Lepper’s hot dogs were just like ball-park frankfurters, but Sylvia’s had