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

October 19. A day or two later, she passed out on the living room floor. Stephanie applied a cold, wet rag to Sylvia’s forehead, but she was out for nearly 20 minutes. Stephanie and Johnny helped Sylvia to the mattress in the back bedroom upstairs.
    Gertrude and Paula decided they ought to have some justification for Sylvia’s punishment if some snoopy nurse or other official pestered them again. They instructed Sylvia to write the letter to her parents on school paper, setting out her fifteen confessions of misconduct. Sylvia cooperated. She was too weak and hungry to resist.
    It was not as though Sylvia had nothing at all to eat. In the basement, Mrs. Wright had told her son Johnny to “go get some shit.” The boy found one of baby Denny’s Pampers in a sack in the corner, and it was rubbed into her mouth. Then Sylvia was given a half-cup of water and told to make it last the rest of the day. A day or two later, the water was replaced with a cup of urine.
    Sylvia was being punished for eating a sandwich in the park when the others had none. Marie had recalled that a month or two ago, she and Sylvia had met Sylvia’s sister Dianna in the park. Sylvia had mentioned that she was hungry, and Dianna had given her a sandwich. This was the first the others had heard about it. Paula, infuriated, clasped her hands about Sylvia’s throat and squeezed for half a minute.
    “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Gertrude demanded of Sylvia.
    “I was afraid you’d give me a whipping,” the poor girl responded when she was able to regain her breath.
    She was right, but that would not have been half as bad as what she got when Gertrude now found out much later. Gertrude whacked her on the back and back of the head five or six times with the paddle. Sylvia screamed.
    She went without supper that night. Jenny did not feel like eating, and she offered hers to Sylvia. Gertrude would not let her have it.
    Later, Gertrude and Paula tied Sylvia’s hands behind her back and also bound her feet, then dumped her into the bathtub filled with scalding water. Sylvia fainted.
    Sylvia got some supper that night, Friday, October 22—some soup in a small bowl. “Start eating,” John instructed, “with your fingers.” Sylvia tried, but she was not given enough time to finish.
    It was decided that Sylvia should have another chance to show her manners in bed. At Gertrude’s instructions, Johnny, Coy and Stephanie tied Sylvia to the bed. “You can’t go to the bathroom,” Gertrude explained with unchallenged logic, “until you’ve learned not to wet the bed.” When the others had gone downstairs, Sylvia whispered to Jenny for a glass of water. She drank it and fell asleep. She wet the bed that night. The next morning, she faced the longest—and last—weekend of her short life.

8
THE LONGEST WEEKEND
     
    SYLVIA’S DAY began with another empty Pepsi bottle. Worse indignities followed.
    She got a brief respite when Gertrude and Johnny took off in a Red Cab about 11 a.m. Gertrude had said she was going to the doctor’s office. Worried about the possibility of going to the hospital for her bronchitis and her nerves, and blaming it all on the presence of Jenny and Sylvia, she told Jenny before she left: “Jenny, if I have to go to the hospital, you’re going to be in as much trouble as Sylvia.”
    Richard Hobbs stopped over about 1 p.m., shortly after Gertrude had returned home. Gertrude, the asthmatic bronchitis sufferer, was seated at the kitchen table smoking as Hobbs asked her how she felt. She replied she was not feeling well. “I’m having a hard time breathing.”
    Jenny, Jimmy, Shirley and Marie also were in the room. Jenny and Marie were making plans to rake leaves that afternoon to earn some money. Hobbs was surprised to learn that Sylvia was in the basement;Gertrude had told him she was at the Juvenile Center. She told him this time that Sylvia had returned home the week before. Ricky had not been in the house for