Hi guys. Hi guys, how are you today? My name is Bailey Sarian
and today is Monday, which means it's murder, mystery, and makeup Monday! (vocal instrument noises) Last Monday I told you guys that it was my birthday coming up, and I just want to say a big thank you to all you guys for the birthday wishes. For my birthday I got a cold sore. Just what I always wanted. Anyways, that's not the point. If you are new here, hi, how are you? My name is Bailey Sarian
and every Monday I sit down and you talk about a true crime story that's been heavy on my noggin. And I do my makeup at the same time. I just kind of get ready for my day. If you're interested in true crime and you like makeup, I would highly suggest you hit that subscribe button. I'm here for you every Monday, and Saturdays as well. Well, except for this last Saturday because the holidays and stuff, you know. Before we jump into today's story, today's video is sponsored
by Hunt A Killer, which is so exciting, I have
been loving Hunt A Killer. More than happy to have them in my videos. With the cold months approaching nothing sounds better than curling up next to a warm fire, sipping on a cup of hot cocoa, and trying to solve a murder mystery. I don't know, that's my perfect evening. Cue Hunt A Killer! It's the game that gets
you off of your phone and thrusts you and or
your friends slash family into an ongoing murder
mystery investigation. Hunt A Killer brings people together by challenging them to decode ciphers, examine clues and solve puzzles. It's like a Netflix true crime documentary and an escape room had a baby. It's that kind of fun. And naynay, naynay, I say. It's not just me who thinks this. Hunt A Killer has 2000 five star reviews on Trust Pilot, plus
part of their proceeds for every box goes to
the Cold Case Foundation, which is an organization that helps with real life cold cases. Hunt A Killer now has gift cards and a variety of
subscription packages so that you can give your loved
ones, the gift of murder, that's inappropriate. Gift of solving murder mystery games. I don't know. It's just fun. And just for
the holidays, Hunt A killer has teamed up with a Seattle bartender named Connor Donovan to
produce Killer Cocktails. Killer Cocktails, ahhh! So when you sign up
for a full subscription they'll throw in a copy for free. So the great thing about
Hunt A Killer is you can play with friends or family, or you can play solo, if you don't have friends or family around like
me, I just play solo. I look forward to my Hunt
A Killer box every month. And now with the Killer Cocktails book my detective skills are
definitely on the decline but it makes things a little bit more fun. So right now, just for
you guys, you can go to Hunt A Killer and use code Sarian for 20% off your first box. Again, make sure to use
discount code Sarian for 20% off your Hunt A Killer box. And also it helps show
your support towards murder, mystery and
makeup here on my channel. You won't regret it. Again, a big thank you to a Hunt A Killer for partnering with me on today's video. Okay, so disclaimer. Today's video is pretty heavy. There's some child abuse going on. Some, there's a lot of
child abuse going on. It's really, really sad
and it's pretty heavy. So if you want to skip today's episode I completely understand. This story has been recommended to me so many times, to
the point I was like, okay, you guys win. I didn't want to do it but you guys kept asking. I didn't know what to do, I caved. I gave in all right. Gertrude van Fossen,
have you heard of her? Gertrude, okay, she was
born September 19th, 1925. No, I'm sorry, 1929. And she was the third of six children. She was born in Indiana
and honestly not much is known about her childhood, except that her family was like working class. She loved her, her father
and it said that she was indifferent towards her mother. And then at age 11, she actually
witnessed her dad dying. He had a massive heart attack and died. This is a personal opinion, I believe that she had to have a fucked
up childhood, for the things that she does later
on in this story, there's no way that she had a quote, unquote like pretty normal childhood. No. There's no way. I, nope, just throwing that out there. So at age 16, Gertrude,
she dropped out of high school and she married a man, a man named John Baniszewski. So he was actually two years older than her and he was from Pennsylvania, and then he would become a, later on, a police officer and the two of them, John and Gertrude ended up having four children together, Paula, Stephanie, John and Marie. Sadly though, the home
was pretty damn toxic. John was pretty abusive towards Gertrude and he would like take
his anger out on her. He would beat her pretty often in front of the children. And then after 10 years of marriage, Gertrude finally took the kids and she was able to leave, to get out. And then Gertrude quickly got married again to another man,
and his name was Edward. Has anyone noticed there's always a lot of Edwards in these stories? Anyways, so she married this Edward guy. That marriage only lasted
three months, so, okay. So when she got a divorce
from this Edward guy, Gertrude actually goes back to her first husband, John and she remarries him. When they got remarried,
Gertrude and John had two more children together,
Shirley and James, and then they got divorced
for the second time. Not long after, Gertrude started dating another man, and his name
was Dennis Lee, right? And Dennis was 22 years old. Gertrude was like, yeah, getting it. And then unfortunately
Gertrude got pregnant by this 22 year old,
and shortly after that not shortly nine months,
nine months after that she gave birth to the child. And as soon as she gave birth Dennis, he was like, "peace out, bye". So then she filed a
paternity suit and requested that Dennis helped pay for this child. And you know, that never goes well for some fuckin reason. The court sided with Gertrude but Dennis never paid anything, nothing changed. So by the age of 37 Gertrude was a single mother of seven children. She had been divorced three times. Yeah, so it's just, she's
not feeling too good I guess about herself and
where she's at in life. Gertrude was five foot six and she only weighed about a hundred pounds. And she smoked constantly and she had really bad asthma, and she heavily relied on child support from John to pay her bills and take care of her children. So now we move on to somebody else who is, like a different person's story, but they're still involved. Her name is Sylvia Likens and she was born January 3rd, 1949. Her parents, they worked
in a carnival actually. They were considered
more like lower class, they were kind of struggling to pay the bills and whatnot. The Likens family had five children. So they had Daniel, Diana,
they were fraternal twins, Sylvia and Jenny, and then Benny. So Jenny and Benny, fraternal twins. And then Sylvia was like the only one who wasn't a twin. Jenny, who is Sylvia's younger sister, she had polio, she had gotten polio as a child and she suffered a limp. So she had to wear like, a leg brace. And Sylvia was really like over-protective of her younger sister. So as a teenager Sylvia
would also just kind of work odd jobs, like, I mean, ones that you can as a
teenager, like babysitting. And then she would give that money to her parents just to
kind of help them out. So on July 3rd, Silvia's mom was arrested because she was caught shoplifting, and they ended up putting her in jail. This caused some stress
to the Likens family. It was just mainly because
they couldn't work, like they couldn't, they needed the money. Why'd she do that? When she went to prison
it just put their dad in like a really hard, agh! Just put her dad in a really hard spot. He couldn't really take
care of all the kids. So their father tried to find boarding for the two girls so that
they can return to the carnival circuit and
continue making money. So the oldest Liken daughter was married. So she wasn't able to go on the carnival circuit with them and help out. She just was living her own life. And then they had two boys who would also join them, or their dad, to make extra money on the carnival circuit. Dad didn't think that the
carnival would be safe for the youngest daughters
and he wanted them to stay in Indiana and not go with them. So that's why he was looking for somewhere for them to stay. Okay, so while in school, Sylvia meets Gertrude's daughter,
Stephanie, and they meet in high school and they kind of become just friends. She invited Sylvia over
for like a sleepover. When Sylvia's dad would
go to pick up Sylvia from the house he began to speak with Stephanie's mom, Gertrude. He was talking to her about, you know they're trying to find somewhere that Sylvia can go, just
like venting to her, I guess. Gertrude was like, Hey, why doesn't Sylvia just stay here and just pay me $20 a week. And honestly it sounded
great for Sylvia's dad, I mean, Sylvia, wouldn't
have to change schools. And she would be with people that she's familiar with. So it just sounded like
a really good idea. And also it seemed like,
Gertrude had a little bit of a crush on
Sylvia's dad and was just kind of saying that to
please him or something. That's just an observation,
I have no idea. So both Sylvia and her sister Jenny would be staying with Gertrude and her tribe of children. At first, everything was going great. I mean, Sylvia and Jenny helped with the house hold chores and they were treated fairly in the house. They would even attend
Sunday school service but as time went on,
things just kind of started going South because Sylvia's father, the $20 a week, remember,
that they agreed on. It just like wasn't showing up, the $20, and this was kind of pissing Gertrude off. Like, "Hey, I'm watching your kids, you promise $20 a week
and it's not happening." So this is just making
Gertrude more and more angry because like, where's her $20 bitch. She then started to just take her anger out on the kids. So in one of the first
disciplinary actions Gertrude beat the Liken
sisters with a quarter inch paddle saying,
quote, "Well, I took care of you two little bitches for a week for nothing", end quote. And then there was another occasion where the two sisters got beat, or at least hit, 15 times
it said, by the paddle, for eating too much at church dinner. So this Gertrude lady's a real bitch. For some strange reason most of the anger, kind of, or the abuse, centered on Sylvia. Paula, the oldest of Gertrude's children, was jealous of Sylvia's appearance. She thought Sylvia was really good-looking and really pretty, and
like, why wasn't she pretty? So she would also pick on Sylvia as well. So not only is Sylvia getting beat by this awful Gertrude lady, kids are also being really mean to her as well. So one day Sylvia had come home from school and she was
talking to her sister about how she had a
boyfriend at school and this made the oldest child annoyed or angry. So she decided to kick
her in the lower region and accused her of being pregnant. And on another occasion
Gertrude would beat Sylvia for stealing candy, when in reality she purchased it. But most of all, Gertrude
would deny Sylvia food. Sylvia would be left to, like, eat out of the garbage cans. So Sylvia decided to
collect the recycling items inside the house, but also just like out in different garbage can areas, so that she can turn it in
and get money for it. Of course, Gertrude caught her doing that and then punished her
pretty heavily for that. On another occasion,
Sylvia was forced fed a hot dog covered with like
a bunch of condiments. And when she threw the hot dog back up she was made to then eat it again. Sylvia was falsely accused of spreading rumors about the two oldest kids, Paula and Stephanie, at school. I don't know, like,
why this was happening. I guess, like, Stephanie
or even Paula would like, come home and then tell Gertrude, "Oh yeah this is what Sylvia did today." Like I just don't understand that the two kids were like "Oh yeah, Sylvia is talking about how we're sluts." And when Gertrude finds
this out, she was livid. So Stephanie tells her, her boyfriend, his name is Coy. And she tells him like,
"Oh yeah, so Sylvia called me a prostitute." So then her boyfriend,
Stephanie's boyfriend Coy, then went and beat up Sylvia. More people are in on this. Stephanie and Paula, the oldest kids, they would actually take turns with Gertrude attacking Sylvia. Like it just absolutely makes no sense what kind of fucked up shit, sorry. So like one time Paula beat Sylvia to the point that she broke her own wrist. And then once Paula got her cast on from breaking her wrist,
she then used that cast to beat the shit out of Sylvia some more, but this time with a cast. Like what the hell kind of sick. This was just like a continuing cycle, like, it just didn't seem like it was going to stop anytime soon. The older sisters, as
well as their friends, would tell their classmates that Sylvia was spreading nasty rumors about them and their families, and, I think in order to deflect any of Sylvia's claims about the abuse. I'm not even sure anymore, because then they would
invite classmates over. They would invite friends
over and just beat up or even sexually abused Sylvia. They even set up Sylvia's best friend, her name was Anna, at school. They told Anna that
Sylvia had been talking crap behind her back. So then they invited Anna to come over to the house and beat up Sylvia while the family watched. When I was reading this,
I seriously thought, didn't think this was real, but it's real. The kids would just
invite their friends over, they would practice karate on Sylvia. They would kick her, they would beat her. Poor Sylvia, her skin was covered in cigarette burns, because they would put cigarettes out on her, her skin. Yeah. Sylvia was made to strip down in front of the family and the neighborhood kids. And they inserted things
into her lower area, just sexually abusing
her, and it's so awful. Eventually, Gertrude forbid Sylvia from going to school after Sylvia admitted that she stole a track suit from school, and she stole it because she needed it for school and Gertrude refused to buy it for her. So she ended up stealing
it, Gertrude found it, and then just beat the crap out of her. Like this girl, this poor girl. So Sylvia and Jenny were terrified to tell anybody about what was
going on at the house. They thought that it would only make the abuse worse. And Gertrude told them, "If you tell anybody I'm going to kill you." They believed this, so they didn't want to say anything. So the kids ended up telling nobody what was going on, which, I know as people you and I sitting here listening to this, it's like, it's so hard to believe that they didn't tell anybody. Like, why wouldn't you tell anybody? But we also don't know
their thought process. We weren't experiencing what they were experiencing. So the Likens family, they would come back and they would visit from time to time. They didn't notice anything
weird about the kids, which is so strange to
me, but they didn't. During the time of them visiting, nothing would happen. The girls wouldn't tell
the family and they didn't suspect that anything was happening as well, which is strange
to me because I feel like you would see the scars and whatnot, but they didn't. So Sylvia and Jenny would go to, like, a local park. And it was at this
local park that they ran into their oldest sister
and her name was Diana. And she was there, and
Sylvia told her sister that she was hungry and
Diana was like, "Oh here have like this sandwich." Gives her a sandwich, and then one of the other children from
Gertrude's family saw her, told Gertrude, and of course, poor Sylvia was punished. So they choked her, they beat her, they threw her into scalding hot water to cleanse her of her sins. So Sylvia for on occasion would like, pass out or faint from
the pain, and Gertrude, this would make Gertrude
mad, so then she would end up just like bashing her head against the wall to wake her up. You guys, what the fuck? When they ran into Diana, again, weeks later, they told her about the abuse that was happening,
but their sister Diana, she didn't believe it. And she didn't say anything. I don't know what the Sam hell is going on over there. I don't know why she didn't believe her, but she didn't. So a local father had
phoned the high school to tell them that there was this girl with sores all over her body
at Gertrude's household. So a nurse was sent to investigate to see if there's any child abuse going on. Hallelujah, somebody said
something, Thank God. Well, Gertrude told the
nurse that Sylvia had run away for a week and that the sores are from her poor personal hygiene skills. Gertrude would then go on to say that Sylvia was just a rotten child. She was a terrible influence on the other children in the household, so she would get punished,
punished on occasion but it was nothing major. And they left. So they made no other attempts to contact or investigate more. They just didn't feel like they needed to, which is like, so unbelievable. In October, Diana,
remember the older sister? She went to go visit her sisters at Gertrude's house. And then when she got there, she knocked on the door and Gertrude answered, and she refused to let
her in to see the girls, because the Likens family, the mom and the dad told Gertrude,
well, this is what Gertrude said, so I don't
even know if this is true or not, but it
was because the Likens' parents told Gertrude to not let Jenny or Sylvia see their older sister, Diana. Due to the abuse and the repeated kicks to Sylvia's lower region,
she began to wet the bed. As punishment, she would be thrown into the basement, "Stay there." And that's where Gertrude
would keep her tied up. Gertrude would just leave her down there, naked, starving and dehydrated. Occasionally she would be
tied up to the banister of the basement stairs
down in the basement area. There was no bathrooms,
so Sylvia would just go standing up. And when this happened, it would piss Gertrude off. Pretty much everything Sylvia did just pissed Gertrude off. When Sylvia would, like
wet herself, standing up in the basement, Gertrude would get Sylvia's hands and
feet, tie them together, and then she would throw
her into super hot water in, like, the bath tub,
and give her a bath that way just to get her clean again. So this sometimes would happen numerous times a day because she would pee herself a couple of times a day. I mean, where else was she posed, she supposed to go Gertrude? So Gertrude would just keep Sylvia locked up down in the basement. And honestly this abuse
would just continue over and over and over again,
there was no end to it. Then there's more, of course. So Gertrude would have
the neighborhood kids come over and she would charge them five cents for them to come over and abuse Sylvia. Five cents to come into
the home and abuse her. This story is awful. I'm not even sure why none of these kids coming into the home said anything, ever. How long has this been going on and nobody said anything? I mean, that's like a little, come on. Nobody said a word? It's just kind of unbelievable to me, they should all be held accountable. So at this point Sylvia was extremely malnourished and the other
children from Gertrude would torture her by offering her food, and then they would
quickly just take it away. Never in my life have I ever wanted someone dead more than
this like whole family. Sorry. You're supposed to forgive people, but sometimes the Lord
really makes it hard to forgive, really challenging you. So Gertrude and her kids,
plus their boyfriends, just did more awful shit. Like one time they
etched the words, quote, "I am a prostitute and
I am proud", end quote, onto her stomach, okay. They etched that into her stomach. And one of the 14 year
old neighborhood boys, his name was like,
Richard, fuck you Richard, just took turns etching
this into her stomach. Gertrude's kids thought it'd be a great idea to brand Sylvia with an S, but instead they made it into a three. Are they stupid? Yes, yup. And then Gertrude would
just sexually abuse Sylvia, tease her about not being able to get married now that she's branded, and her body is garbage at this point, this is what Gertrude's saying. This is why it's so hard
for me to believe that Gertrude had a normal upbringing. Now, there isn't much
info about how Gertrude was raised but she had to learn this abuse somewhere. You're not just born with this abuse, you learn it from people. I mean, this is all an
opinion, I'm not a doctor. It just is so strange to me that someone this extreme is trying to say that like her childhood was whatever. And you're probably
wondering why I even care about how Gertrude was raised. It just gives you a better understanding of why they are the way they are. And that's what really kind of gets my mind going is like trying to find out why someone is the way they are. So that's why I normally like to give a background story on people because it does play a big role. So Gertrude made Sylvia write a letter to her parents. And this letter would be her saying that she's running away with
a local group of boys. Also Gertrude just wanted
to cover her own ass because in this letter she made Sylvia write that she was raped and her body was mutilated by these boys that she went she ran away with. Gertrude's plan was to
hand this letter to her parents when they came by the house to see Sylvia and Jenny. What Gertrude was really going to do was take Sylvia to the forest area nearby and leave her there to starve to death. She was sick of Sylvia and just wanted to get rid of her. So she made her write this letter, so the parents would be
like, "Oh, she ran away." Stupid ass, I'm so mad. Anyway, so the letter pretty much just said like, "Hey I went with a gang of boys in the middle of the night. Then they beat me up and they raped me and left sores on my face
and all over my body. And they also put on my stomach I am prostitute and proud of it." So then on October 25th, Sylvia tried to escape when she heard
Gertrude's plan to drop her off at the forest and leave her there. She heard Gertrude saying this so she's trying to make
an escape, but sadly she was caught before she
made it off the property. So they just punished
her again pretty hard, and they beat her until she blacked out. Later that evening Sylvia banged on the walls of the basement and screamed as loud as she could, in hopes that like, the neighbors would hear her or something. And a neighbor would later testify that she heard these noises
of like, screaming and someone yelling for help,
but that they stopped. So she decided not to
call the police because she assumed like, "Oh,
they must've just been playing or it was handled or something." So the abuse continued, but Sylvia was very weak at this point. She had tried to crawl
up the stairs to get out, but couldn't make it. Instead, Gertrude was at
the top of the staircase and pretty much beat her back down to the basement. Gertrude hit Sylvia's head really hard. I'm sorry. I'm having a hard time talking. At this time, Sylvia stopped breathing. In an effort to clean her up, one of the kids tried to give her a warm, soapy bath. And that's when she realized that Sylvia was indeed dead, so she tried to give her mouth to mouth. And Gertrude was certain that Sylvia was just faking it and she just told her to like, just let her go, like she's just faking it. And then she realized that Sylvia was indeed dead. Gertrude told, like, Stephanie's boyfriend he needed to go call the police but from like a local payphone. So he leaves the house and he goes and calls the police. So police do arrive, and
Gertrude told them that Sylvia ran away and this
is how she returned, and that when she found her, she was tending to her all day trying to clean her up and get her better. Jenny, who is Sylvia's sister, now mind you, this is a side note. Jenny really wasn't even
getting abused at all. It was just towards Sylvia. Any who, but Jenny was able to talk to one of the police
officers on the scene. And she said, or she'd
like whispered into one of the police officer's
ears, get me out of here and I'll tell you everything. Police were able to get Jenny out of there and talk to her. And she explained everything that had been going on inside that house. And based on Jenny's
testimony police then were able to arrest Gertrude,
three of her kids, plus two of the boyfriends. Additionally, five neighborhood children were arrested and charged
with causing injury to a person. They were released to their parents but all had to appear in court and give a statement, which is
horseshit if you ask me. So Gertrude initially
refused any involvement. She only admitted that
she had made Sylvia sleep in the basement when
she was wetting the bed because she just didn't want to ruin her mattress. Gertrude would become
like really agitated when police officers would question her further asking more questions as to what happened. They pretty much were telling Gertrude that Sylvia's body and
like her internal damage, it just doesn't line up with her story. So the autopsy revealed that Sylvia had over 150 wounds on her body. She was incredibly thin and malnourished. There were burns, cuts, bruises and severe muscle damage. All of her fingernails
had been bent backwards and she was missing the top layer of skin on her face,
neck, chest, and knee. The official cause of death, blunt force trauma to the head. So Gertrude, Paula, which was Gertrude's daughter, and then John, the son, they were going to be tried
for first degree murder. And one of the kids,
her name was Stephanie. Do you remember Stephanie? Her charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence but she did agree to testify against her family at trial. Richard Hobbs and Coy Hubbard they were charged with premeditated malice. They were like the boyfriend
slash neighbor kid. Gertrude's defense was that she was not responsible for the kids because the other children were responsible for the children because she was too
depressed to be able to take control of the household. So the kids were to blame, not her, she was just depressed. Fuck off! The trial and decision of the jury lasted 17 days and Gertrude was convicted of first degree murder, thank God! Richard, Coy and John were all convicted of manslaughter. Gertrude and Paula, they were given life sentences. During a retrial, Paula, hers was changed to voluntary manslaughter and her sentence was
reduced to two to 21 years. She would only serve three years in prison, and then she was let out. Coy and John, they were sentenced to 18 months at a juvenile
detention facility. Richard would have a mental break once the weight of the crimes hit him. And then he began smoking really heavily and he died of lung cancer at 21. I'm laughing because he must've been smoking a lot to die of lung cancer at 21. Good, bye. I know you're supposed to forgive but they're making it really difficult. Anyways, so Coy was in and out of prison all of his life. He died at 56 years of
age of a heart attack. And during the retrial for Gertrude she was still convicted
of first degree murder but her sentence was changed to 18 to life in prison. She was a model prisoner. She worked in the sewing room and the other inmates called her mom. And then, guess what? Her parole came up in 1985 and she changed her name to Nadine van Fossen. This upset a lot of people. They made a petition to keep her in prison and it had
about 4,500 signatures. But guess what? She was still granted parole. She moved to goddamn Iowa, where she lived for five years until she died of lung cancer in 1990. Paula, she also moved to
Iowa after her release and like, back close to her mom. She changed her name and get this, she became a teacher. Here's an idea, idea alert! People who have done terrible things, I don't think you should be allowed to change your name, right? Anyways, Paula was a teacher for a minute. Then the school district,
they did discover her past and how she was
arrested and all that. And they did fire her. But the fact that she got through and was even a teacher for a small amount of time is not okay. So John, he changed
his name to John Blake. He worked several jobs and get this, he became a minister. He said that he took full responsibility for what he did and he should have, he should have been
handed a harder sentence. That's what he said. Of course he saying that because he's out of prison. If he were in prison, he'd be asking for forgiveness. But now that he's out, he's like, yeah I should have gotten a harder sentence, I learned my lesson. Jenny, she went on to marry a man and have some children. And Jenny is Sylvia's sister, remember? So Jenny never blamed her parents for the abuse that her
and her sister endured. She said that they were just trying to make ends meet and they did the best that they could at the time. Good for her, she's able
to like move forward. I don't know, I'm trying to see some kind of positive here, okay. So in 2001, a Memorial for Sylvia was erected in Indianapolis. And there was actually a movie made, it was called An American Crime and it was about the whole story. I tried to watch it last night. It had a lot of well-known
actors in it and stuff but I just couldn't do it. It was too much. Researching this story was just not okay. So that is the awful story about this Gertrude devil woman. I shouldn't hate anybody,
but Lord do I hate this woman and her whole family? I'm sorry, but they
should all be in prison, none of them should have been able to change their name. Agh! The story was just really upsetting. I'm sure it's upsetting to you as well. There's a lot more details about the abuse that poor Sylvia had endured. It's just like, it's a fuckin lot. Thank you so much for
hanging out with me today. I'm sorry if I seem a
little down, but this story is definitely a downer and rest in peace to poor Sylvia, who had to go through all that for no damn reason. Let me know your thoughts down below. I hope that you have
a wonderful day today, you make good choices. A big thank you to Hunt A Killer for partnering with me on today's video. Please be safe out there. Please, please, please be safe out there. And I'll be seeing you guys later. Bye!
