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

quickly extinguished.
    The children soon picked up the smoker’s habit, and Sylvia’s body began to show the little round sores that Dr. Kebel found so many of when he examined her body.
    There were also some big round sores, more the size of a baseball, and caused by something besides cigarettes. These larger sores received medical treatment. For instance, Gertrude applied rubbing alcohol to Sylvia’s arms and legs. Jenny hoped this indicated the woman had some concern for her sister, after all.
    Paula applied her own brand of first aid to the large raw spot on Sylvia’s knee. Gertrude supplied the salt as Coy Hubbard held the patient. Paula rubbed a little in slowly. Hubbard said, “That ain’t the way to do it,” and they rubbed more in, hard. It just increased the bleeding and Sylvia screamed more.
    Then there was the open sore Gertrude found in Sylvia’s scalp. Her treatment for that was holding the girl’s head under a faucet spouting scalding hot water.
    Again, Paula had another method of dealing with the scalp problem. As Sylvia sat at the kitchen tableone day, Paula just picked up a pair of scissors and snipped off Sylvia’s prided long hair. “How do you like that?” Paula asked. Sylvia didn’t, but she tried to agree she needed a haircut, and she asked for a lock as a souvenir. She didn’t get it.
    Paula had lost her job at the drug store. The management did not think she was “mature enough” to handle the job. But she was mature enough to assume a greater and greater degree of responsibility at home, as Gertrude was going farther and farther out of consciousness on her phenobarbital, antihistamine and Coricidin.
    Paula also took over more and more of the discipline. She administered about 25 paddlings to Sylvia in her final two weeks, applying most of the blows to Sylvia’s posterior.
    Meanwhile, Coy Hubbard was getting in more judo practice. He flipped Sylvia over his shoulders, hard onto the floor, two or three times per occasion. He administered judo chops to her face and body. When finished, he sent her flying down the stairs again, and when she was down there, he banged her head against the wall.
    Johnny also rammed Sylvia against the wall, and he also administered some of the spankings at the request of his mother. But most of the time he used his fists. He kicked her in the leg, and, in the basement, he ground his shoe on Sylvia’s bare foot, giving her a blister.
    As it became apparent to Gertrude and Paula thatany spread of information about Sylvia might prove embarrassing to them, they formulated instructions to the other children—especially Jenny—not to volunteer any conversation about Sylvia, and to explain to any inquisitive souls that Sylvia had been detained at the Juvenile Center. When Jenny forgot these instructions once and mentioned to church friends that her sister was at home, the younger girls tattled on her and she got the board.
    Judy Duke was told “your ass is grass” if she revealed anything.
    It was a week or a week and a half before Sylvia’s death that Jenny began to worry seriously about her sister. But she believed Gertrude would eventually get Sylvia some medical attention. This was their home, and Mrs. Wright was responsible for them. Jenny had been beaten enough herself to get in the habit of doing what Gertrude said. The thought of going to the police for help never occurred to the crippled, 15-year-old child.
    The sickly, doped-up Gertrude still felt well enough in that last week to clobber Sylvia with a board about four times, burn her with cigarettes on the arms, back and legs in about fifteen places, and shove her down the basement stairs several times.
    Johnny Baniszewski kept teasing Sylvia and tying and gagging her whenever necessary. Once she was tied in the basement, her hands bound to the stairway railing above her, her feet left barely touching the floor.
    All the while, Sylvia slowly was starving. Shetook one meal of donuts and water about