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Brands & Salt. Around mid-October, after Sylvia had wet her bed, Mrs. B. ordered her to sleep thereafter in the basement on a pile of filthy rags, along with the family's two dogs. Later, according to Hobbs, Mrs. B. told Sylvia, "Now I'm going to brand you." A three-inch sewing needle was heated with matches and, Hobbs said, "Gertie started putting words on her, but she got sick and told me to finish it." Etched in two tiers of inch-high block letters across Sylvia's lower abdomen, the words said: "I'm a prostitute and proud of it." Two days later, Hobbs added, he used the hooked end of a 2-ft.-long anchor bolt that had been heated with burning newspapers to brand the numeral 3 on Sylvia's chest.
About 2:30 the next morning, Sylvia, by then in what officials described as a state of "profound apathy," made what was apparently her only effort to get help. Using a coal shovel, she scraped on the basement floor for almost two hours. A woman next door was awakened and on the verge of calling police when the scraping stopped. That afternoon, as Sylvia lay moaning and mumbling incoherently on her pile of rags, Mrs. Baniszewski, Ricky, John B. Jr. and Paula sprinkled a box of soap powder on her, then added hot water. Afterward, John Jr. sprayed her with cold water from a garden hose.
"Only Pretending." Carried upstairs to a bedroom, the girl was given a lukewarm bath, dressed in a pair of white Capri pants, and placed on a mattress on the floor. Mrs. Baniszewski struck Sylvia on each side of the head with a book and told her to get up, that she was only pretending to be sick. Mercifully, Sylvia died.
Called by her keeper, police found Sylvia's body with arms crossed over her breast. Even to hardened cops, the sight was stomach wrenching. Virtually no part of the girl's corpse was unmarked. Her fingernails had been broken upward; there were massive bruises on her temples; much of the skin on her face, chest, arms and legs had peeled from scalding water. Her lower lip had been bitten in two, presumably during her agony. The immediate cause of death was a blow on the skull. In all, Sylvia's body bore an estimated 150 burns, cuts, bruises and other lesions. Said one veteran of more than 35 years on the force: "In all my years of experience, this is the most sadistic act I ever came across."
In December, a grand jury indicted Gertrude Baniszewski, Paula, Stephanie and John Jr., along with Hubbard and Hobbs, on charges of first-degree murder. (Under Indiana law, minors face the same maximum penalty for murder as adults: the electric chair.) As the trial got under way last week before a jury of eight men and four women, Mrs. Baniszewski, John Jr. and Hubbard pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity; Paula, Stephanie and Ricky pleaded simply not guilty. Upstairs in an anteroom sat Sylvia's parents, still not comprehending how and why it had happened. Sitting sunken-cheeked in court, her blue-veined legs crossed and swinging silver-stitched black slippers, Mrs. Baniszewski also looked puzzled by the whole affair. Shortly after her arrest, she had confided to police: "Sylvia wanted something in life. But I couldn't figure out what it was."