“I’ve got permission not to let you see her.”
She said she saw Jenny on the street about two weeks later and stopped to talk, but Jenny said, “I can’t talk to you or I’ll get in trouble.”
After a brief hearing, Judge Harry F. Zaklan orderedthat Mrs. Baniszewski, Paula, Stephanie and Johnny Baniszewski and Richard Hobbs be held without bond on murder charges for grand jury investigation. Coy Hubbard’s case was continued until November 24. Anna Siscoe, Judy Duke, Randy Lepper and Mike Monroe were to be kept in the Juvenile Center on delinquency charges.
Hobbs was kept in the hospital detention ward. The others were sent to the Marion County Jail.
Mr. and Mrs. Lester Likens were sleeping comfortably in their hotel room in Jacksonville, Florida, the night of October 26, 1965. They had been doing well with their lunch stand in the Florida carnival, and in a week they would be back home in Indiana. It was the last fair of the season. They had saved enough money on the northern tour to buy their own stand by the time they headed for Florida.
The telephone rudely interrupted their slumber. The caller was D. L. Burton, a former neighbor in Indianapolis. The news was bad. Likens could not believe it.
In semi-shock, he and his wife, Betty, climbed into their clothes and caught a taxi back to the fairgrounds, from where a friend gave them a lift to the airport. They arrived in Indianapolis to claim their daughter’s mangled body about midday on Wednesday, October 27.
In police headquarters, Likens asked to see the signed statement of his other daughter, Jenny. He began reading it but could not finish. Tears welled in his eyes, then poured forth.
Late-afternoon shadows shaded the Russell & Hitch Funeral Home in Lebanon, Indiana. The lilt of children’s laughter could be heard faintly outside, from the direction of the school. Inside, children and adults wept. It was Friday, October 29. The Rev. Louis Gibson was assuring his listeners that the soul of Sylvia Likens was in heaven.
“We all have our time,” the preacher reminded, “but we won’t suffer like our little sister suffered during the last days of her life.” He strode toward the gray open casket, whispering, “She has gone to eternity.” A portrait of Sylvia taken before her stay at 3850 East New York Street adorned the casket.
A fourteen-car procession followed the hearse to Oak Hill Cemetery on the outskirts of East Lebanon. Mr. and Mrs. Lester Likens and their surviving children rode with Likens’ brother Leroy, member of the Rev. Mr. Gibson’s congregation at Charity Tabernacle in Indianapolis.
A few more words, a hymn, a tree swaying in the breeze, a few falling leaves—and it was over.
The Likens family returned to the home of Lester’s mother, Mrs. Ernest Martin.
Had Sylvia been tortured to death in Lebanon, rather than in Indianapolis, an immediate session of the Boone County grand jury would have been called to investigate the case. But in Marion County, where Indianapolis is the county seat, each case must wait its turn before a hard-working, nearly full-time grand jury.
The six members of the grand jury in the latter half of 1965 were particularly busy. By the time they got around to the Likens case on December 4, they had questioned more than a hundred witnesses in an investigation of the county jail set off by the state’s largest daily newspaper, the
Indianapolis Star.
The
Star’s
first story of its series on the jail appeared October 27, the same day Sylvia’s murder was reported, and stole the headlines from the murder—which, under almost any other circumstances, would have been the main story. Later, the jail probe fizzled when the sworn statement of a prisoner was discredited.
The grand jurors also had spent several weeks on an investigation of the state’s securities market and the secretary of state’s office. The securities business had been muddied by a $2 million stock fraud and by a federal court injunction
She said she saw Jenny on the street about two weeks later and stopped to talk, but Jenny said, “I can’t talk to you or I’ll get in trouble.”
After a brief hearing, Judge Harry F. Zaklan orderedthat Mrs. Baniszewski, Paula, Stephanie and Johnny Baniszewski and Richard Hobbs be held without bond on murder charges for grand jury investigation. Coy Hubbard’s case was continued until November 24. Anna Siscoe, Judy Duke, Randy Lepper and Mike Monroe were to be kept in the Juvenile Center on delinquency charges.
Hobbs was kept in the hospital detention ward. The others were sent to the Marion County Jail.
Mr. and Mrs. Lester Likens were sleeping comfortably in their hotel room in Jacksonville, Florida, the night of October 26, 1965. They had been doing well with their lunch stand in the Florida carnival, and in a week they would be back home in Indiana. It was the last fair of the season. They had saved enough money on the northern tour to buy their own stand by the time they headed for Florida.
The telephone rudely interrupted their slumber. The caller was D. L. Burton, a former neighbor in Indianapolis. The news was bad. Likens could not believe it.
In semi-shock, he and his wife, Betty, climbed into their clothes and caught a taxi back to the fairgrounds, from where a friend gave them a lift to the airport. They arrived in Indianapolis to claim their daughter’s mangled body about midday on Wednesday, October 27.
In police headquarters, Likens asked to see the signed statement of his other daughter, Jenny. He began reading it but could not finish. Tears welled in his eyes, then poured forth.
Late-afternoon shadows shaded the Russell & Hitch Funeral Home in Lebanon, Indiana. The lilt of children’s laughter could be heard faintly outside, from the direction of the school. Inside, children and adults wept. It was Friday, October 29. The Rev. Louis Gibson was assuring his listeners that the soul of Sylvia Likens was in heaven.
“We all have our time,” the preacher reminded, “but we won’t suffer like our little sister suffered during the last days of her life.” He strode toward the gray open casket, whispering, “She has gone to eternity.” A portrait of Sylvia taken before her stay at 3850 East New York Street adorned the casket.
A fourteen-car procession followed the hearse to Oak Hill Cemetery on the outskirts of East Lebanon. Mr. and Mrs. Lester Likens and their surviving children rode with Likens’ brother Leroy, member of the Rev. Mr. Gibson’s congregation at Charity Tabernacle in Indianapolis.
A few more words, a hymn, a tree swaying in the breeze, a few falling leaves—and it was over.
The Likens family returned to the home of Lester’s mother, Mrs. Ernest Martin.
Had Sylvia been tortured to death in Lebanon, rather than in Indianapolis, an immediate session of the Boone County grand jury would have been called to investigate the case. But in Marion County, where Indianapolis is the county seat, each case must wait its turn before a hard-working, nearly full-time grand jury.
The six members of the grand jury in the latter half of 1965 were particularly busy. By the time they got around to the Likens case on December 4, they had questioned more than a hundred witnesses in an investigation of the county jail set off by the state’s largest daily newspaper, the
Indianapolis Star.
The
Star’s
first story of its series on the jail appeared October 27, the same day Sylvia’s murder was reported, and stole the headlines from the murder—which, under almost any other circumstances, would have been the main story. Later, the jail probe fizzled when the sworn statement of a prisoner was discredited.
The grand jurors also had spent several weeks on an investigation of the state’s securities market and the secretary of state’s office. The securities business had been muddied by a $2 million stock fraud and by a federal court injunction
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