Customer Reviews

House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I once owned the reprint of this book, but was so disturbed by what I read that I very scarcely read it and eventually gave it to someone who needed it for research this past spring. Last month I decided to give it another chance and bought this new paperback version. For those who have not heard this story, let me tell you something: This tale of the sadistic side of human nature is just as horrific the second or third or tenth time around as it is the first. To this day, my head spins and my stomach churns as I think of the unspeakable horror that sixteen-year-old Sylvia Likens endured at the hands of her monsterous caretaker, her equally heartless children, and their demented friends. This is a story that in four years time has NEVER left my memory and probably never will. If you do decide to read about this, prepare to be shocked as this story is told with a terrifying realism that should only exist in our nightmares.

As for the differences between this publication and the original, this book is in fact the same book, except that: 1. This book is a traditional paperback book as opposed to the copy with the original red vellum cover (hence, the steep price tag for the latter); 2. There is an added foreword as well as an updated afterword; and 3. The photos have been moved to the very middle of the book as opposed to the random placement in the original, including two or three never-before-seen pictures. There are also some very minor amendments such as the name of the song that Sylvia sang at night and the change in spelling of her older sister's name ('Dianna' as opposed to 'Diana'). Since this is more or less the same publication, and neither better nor worse than the first copy, I'll give it the same rating as I did originally: 4 stars.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It is undoubtedly interesting and well researched and explores, sometimes in horrifying detail, the lengthy torture and eventual death of 16 year old Sylvia Likens in 1965. However, as other reviews of this manuscript have commented, there is little psychological exploration of the motives of 37 year old Gertrude Banisweski to orchestrate and encourage the kind physical pain both she and her children inflicted upon Sylvia in the short months that Sylvia was a boarder at the Baniszewski home. Then again, I am not certain there could be or that certain forms of sociopathic behavior really need explaining.

During the time that Sylvia Likens and her sister, Jenny, lived with Gertrude Baniszewski, both were subjected to repeated verbal, emotional, and physical abuse. Soon, however, Gertrude focussed her rage upon Sylvia. What is most horrifying is that this wicked woman encouraged and incited additional violence using her own children and other children from the neighborhood as pawns in her vicious game. I must say, it is REALLY unclear as to why Gertrude did focus so much hatred and rage upon a child she hardly knew. The theory cited by the prosecuting attorneys is that Gertrude was jealous of Sylvia's beauty and the promise her life held. Perhaps this is true, but if one is hoping for a clear motive that meets the criteria for basic understanding (i.e. money, love, or revenge), there simply is not one.

While the court did find it necessary to evaluate Gertrude and her 17 year old daughter for legal sanity, Gertrude was never fully psychologically evaluated. Her 17 year old daughter, Paula, was. The psychologist noted that Paula's mental functioning, emotional immaturity, and violent behavior were consistent with that of children reared in homes where "emotional neglect" is the norm. It is known that Gertrude, as a single mother, could not afford to feed her 7 children. The children regularly fought over food and Sylvia was once severely beaten for eating a sandwich given to her by her oldest sister during a visit. It is also known that Gertrude was heavily addicted to prescription pain medication and regularly spent her days in bed. The children had little superivision and Paula was expected to perform many of the duties that Gertrude avoided.

When Gertrude turned her deadly rage upon Sylvia, I do not find it difficult to believe that several of her children also found Sylvia a convenient target for their own unexpressed rage born of a childhood rife with abuse and neglect. The most basic needs of the Baniszewski children were never met with any consistency and they, in turn, were angry and hurt. These feelings were unleashed upon the only person available to them to hurt in return. Still, it is shocking that children as young as 10 could gleefully watch and participate in the kind of extended torture to which young Sylvia was subjected.

There is some powerful evidence that Gertrude was also having a sexual relationship with a neighborhood boy, 14 year old Richard Hobbs. Though neither admitted they were sexually involved, Richard did state that he was a "good friend" of Gertrude's and regularly visited her home after school. He also told police investigators that Gertrude had once "danced" for him in the living room of her home. (To see photographs of Gertrude, who appeared at least 10 years older than her chronological age of 37, this image is both laughable and repulsive.) If Gertrude manipulated or exercised any psychological power over Richard, it was manifisted in his unflinching willingness to carve into the flesh of Sylvia's stomach, at Gertrude's direction, the words "I am a prostitute and proud of it." (There is horrifying photograph of Sylvia Likens battered body in which these words are clearly visible.)

In short, Gertrude and 3 of her children, along with Richard Hobbs and another neighborhood boy, were all conivicted of murder. Eventually paroled, Getrude changed her name and lived in solitude until her death in 1990 from lung cancer, the result of years of habitual chain-smoking. The parole of Gertrude leaves one cold and feeling as though justice was not served. Richard Hobbs, however, was not so fortunate. At trail, Richard admitted to the jury during questioning that he had "no feeling" at the time he carved words into Sylvia's flesh with a hot wire. While Richard attempted to later soften the blow of this admission by stating that he now felt remorse for his actions, I find this difficult to believe. He died at the age of 21 in prison from cancer. (I suppose Richard got what was coming to him from a higher court. Sometimes justice is swift and harsh.)

There was considerable discussion among the public about why Sylvia and her sister never ran away from the Baniszewski home. Effectively abandoned by their own parents who were, by all accounts, poverty stricken and shiftless, where exactly were the girls supposed to run? While their parents worked for a travelng carnival, the girls were left in the care of a woman their father hardly knew and never felt it necessary to know better. There was nowhere to go and no one to run to.

In short, I do recomend HOUSE OF EVIL to those who appreciate True Crime. But there are many questions that will never be answered.

I bought the book after seeing the movie based on it--An American Crime--because what it showed was next to impossible and I wanted to read the full account. The crime, crimes actually because allowing such cruelty to happen was almost as bad, were much worse than the movie dared to show. Reading this well written, absorbing report and seeing the photos of the body, the house, and the persons involved is hard and revolting. However, it will make us really aware that such things do happen, that evil persons live right in our neighborhood and not appear different from us, that government and church may fail to protect, that parents can be bad, and that we can help if we denounce anything suspicious.

John Dean's HOUSE OF EVIL is the story of the 1965 torture/murder of Sylvia Likens in Indianapolis by a pack of wild children, ages 10 to 17. The director of this almost incomprehensible cruelty was Gertrude Baniszewski who was the mother of some of the torturers and a highly active participant herself. This story of pure evil carried out against the background of financial and emotional poverty of the Baniszewski family clearly cried out for an in depth, well written, and compelling telling. And today, after the original publication of HOUSE OF EVIL in 1966 and its reissue in 2008, the cry of "Please tell my story competently" is still eminently appropriate.

Dean's writing is just purely bad. It is choppy and confused, with sentences that lead nowhere, references never followed up on, and confusing chronology. It is just a poorly written jumble with absolutely no narrative flow. The only positive in the writing - and it is really more just the absence of a negative - is that Dean, with one glaring exception ("The Rev. Roy Julian...spoke with a clipped, precise voice that resounded with Godliness") - eschews the tortured similes and melodrama so prevalent in bad true crime writing.

Far more disappointing is the fact that there appears to have been no research whatsoever attempted in the writing of HOUSE OF EVIL. Dean was a newspaperman who reported this story as it was unfolding, and what he appears to have done here is to simply rework his articles into a book format. This provides the reader with the day to day occurrences of the arrests and trials with which Dean would have been familiar. And he obviously also had as much access as he needed to trial transcripts and arrest records.
But the best true crime includes substantial background material on the principals. What Dean has done here might be moderately acceptable if it were well written, but in order to be more than a glorified rush-to-print newspaper article, we need to know what made Gertrude Baniszewski the way she was. We need research into the dynamics of her marriage. We need extensive history on the Likens family. But in order to provide this kind of information Dean would have had to do a lot of groundwork; conduct interviews; search old school, social service, medical and police records.

In his preface, Dean attempts to explain away this lack of depth by saying that although he has received criticism for not explaining the motives of the people involved in the case, he is not a psychologist and was not asked by his publisher to be one. This is to say the least disingenuous. I certainly am not interested in Dean's conclusions about the players' motives. What I do want is extensive and professionally reported background information so I can try to understand those motives on my own. What Dean's statement means to me is that from the beginning, HOUSE OF EVIL was not intended as an in depth work, but the fact that Dean has reached this goal - that he has succeeded in writing a superficial book - does not seem worthy of praise.

The only reason I am not rating this book one star is that - except for the Reverend's voice resounding with Godliness fiasco - Dean's writing is not actively irritating. I have read worse over the past few years.

John Dean, House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying (St. Martin's, 2008)

I've spent a few years trying to track down the original Beeline Press release of John Dean's The Indiana Torture Slaying, so I was thrilled when I heard St. Martin's was going to re-release the book in 2008 thanks to the interested generated by the films An American Crime and The Girl Next Door. The Indiana Torture Slaying, now retitled House of Evil, has long been touted as the definitive book on the Likens case; not having read it gave me the idea I was missing a great deal. Turns out I was right.

Dean, a newspaper reporter at the time of the crime, covered the court case from right there in the courtroom. As to be expected from true crime books these days, only the first half of the book is actually dedicated to the crime itself; the last half deals with the trial. (Old hat now, but pretty newfangled back then. Dean mentions in his preface that his Beeline editor took one look at his first draft and told him to rewrite the whole thing after reading In Cold Blood. He did.) Details that got left out of other reports, or were deliberately occluded (or excluded) from adaptations, are here in all their glory, and the end result is that the Likens case is a lot muddier in real life than it is in fictional adaptations. Why, exactly, this surprises me I have no idea, but it does.

In case you've been living in a cave for the last forty years, House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying tells the story of, arguably, the single most horrific crime ever committed on American soil: the slow death of Sylvia Likens at the hands of almost a dozen torturers--only one of whom was over the age of eighteen. Thirty-seven-year-old Gertrude Baniszewski (Ban-i-SHEFF-sky--everyone has trouble with it), the mother of half the kids involved, was basically the ringleader, but things got out of hand pretty quick. What makes the crime so shocking is not that a mother got her kids involved in crime; as distressing as that thought is, it does happen on a fairly regular basis--but that neighbor kids got involved, too. Richard Hobbs, often considered the most intriguing character in the case (he was the loose base for the lead character in Ketchum's The Girl Next Door) claimed for the rest of his life that he tortured Sylvia Likens simply because Gertrude Baniszewski told him to. The question is not what happened to Sylvia Likens in that house. We know that. The question is what happened to all the other kids involved. That's a question no one has ever satisfactorily answered, though a number of people have tried.

If you're interested in the Likens case, House of Evil is about as close to primary source as you're going to get without going into newspaper morgues. If you're just interested in true crime in general, it's still worth reading; few books released recently in the genre are as well-written and readable as this one. Definitely recommended. ****

in response to the above query, this book is indeed a reissue of the original book. While it is not bad, there is a rather serious defect- any lack of serious psychological anyalsis. To be fair to the author criminal psychology was not far advanced in the 1960's, so there were not criminal profiling studies the author could have relied upon. what this volume essentally presents is a bare bones account of the trial and coviction of the defendents. Those who seek to understand the whys and werefores of how such a terrible crime could have been commited will have to look elsewhere.

This book is well written. You can vividly imagine things that happened. He explains it very well. It is very sad. The one thing that stuck out to me is the update in the book. Almost everyone involved died young. Makes you think justice was truely served for this young girl from someone other than the judicial system.

To me this is a must read for any fan of true crime. As an Indiana native I was glued to this horrific story. The details of the gruesome murder will not only make you cringe, they will keep the pages turning swiftly!
An incredibly easy read (apart from some stomach turning tidbits of torture) and surprisingly well written for a local newspaper reporter. A job that gave John Dean the perfect line of sight to get the best scoop and write the definitive Sylvia Likens story.

If you live in Indiana you need to know this story.

I was very excited to read this and downloaded the sample for my Kindle first. The sample contained NONE of the actual book, just the forward, intro., etc. So I just went ahead and ordered the whole book.

I know this is a horrible tragedy and tore at my heart. This book is just so disjointed and oddly written, jumping from place to place and back and forth between time, that if I hadn't seen An American Crime before I'd read it, I don't think I would have understood. It's a pity it wasn't written in a more organized manner.

This is a straightforward account of a twisted crime. Written in plain police blotter style, it details the torturous killing of a girl who'd been left, along with her sister, in the temporary care of an Indiana woman with a handful of her own children to tend to.

The sisters' stay in Gertrude Baniszewski's house started out, not auspiciously, but not exactly ominously. There were certain signs that the sisters' real parents had chosen a poor place to deposit them, but nothing that could have predicted the horrific outcome of this arrangement. It's immediately obvious that there'll be no real caring on the part of this caretaker mom. She soon reveals a very cold and mercenary nature. She was given to fits of swearing when she thought the girls' parents might be late paying her for this extra babysitting task she'd assumed. It was obvious she considered these additional children put in her care a burden rather than a joy. But she desperately needed the money.

Then there was never enough food in the house, nor any facilities for cooking decent meals. All the kids - Gertrude's own, plus the two foster girls - subsisted on pieces of bread and watered-down bowls of soup. Despite the bleakness of these arrangements, the household was a hang-out for a steady stream of neighbor youngsters. Everyone could find at least one age-mate to play with in this haphazard household.

That's how a malicious brood was formed. The torture crime that resulted would have been almost incomprehensible to me if I hadn't seen certain baby chicks fall prey to the same sort of treatment. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, one chick out of a whole clutch of fledglings will become the target of abuse. Its brothers and sisters will peck, peck, peck it to death. That's what happened here, only with the added twist of having the pack pecking instigated, encouraged, and spearheaded by Mrs. Baniszewski herself.

I suggest you watch the movie "An American Crime" based on this book, in order to get more of the emotional impact of the crime. This book's report of the escalating sequence of assaults is written in such a matter-of-fact style, it's difficult to fully feel what must have been Sylvia Likens' anguish. But the excellent portrayal of the crime in the movie brings home the gathering evil of the deed.

However, this book is worth reading because it goes farther than the movie. It goes on to give a detailed account of the trial of Mrs. Baniszewski and several of her children and their neighborhood pals. The chronicle of the trial and the endless, repetitious maneuverings of the various lawyers involved in the joint prosecution can be tedious to read sometimes, but it's worth wading through, because it stands as such a rich example of how difficult it often is to convict even the most palpably guilty.

Reading about the wrangling that the trial devolved into, you will probably conclude that no one individual was to blame for all the delay and misdirection. But overall, the system failed to allow for a full, coherent presentation of the evidence. In the end, no one really knew what happened or why. The sum total of all the disputation was a mishmash and a minimization of what the victim really suffered.

So this book will first give you one of the best available accounts of the accumulation of assaults committed against Sylvia Likens - and then it will challenge you to consider how our legal system might be improved in a hundred little ways in order to see that justice is better served.

For an account of another deadly pecking order, you can read "Cruel Sacrifice," by Aphrodite Jones. This tells about the more recent murder of Shandra Sharer in Indiana as the result of the bizarre development of a vicious brood mentality.