The Girl Next Door - a descent into Hell

I got really into true crime novels many years ago when I read Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me, her true story of her friendship with Ted Bundy. I've read books about Bundy, The Boston Strangler, the Black Dahlia, Ed Gein, Albert Fish (who is the freakiest, most f-ed up person you will ever read about), and Dr. H. H. Holmes. Their crimes are unbelievable, horrific, and disgusting. However, the only true crime story that has truly haunted me since I read it was the slow torture-murder of Sylvia Likens by her boarder, Gertrude Baniszewski, Gertrude's children, and some neighbor children. 

The details of this crime are best described in the only book about the case, House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying, written by a newspaper reporter covering the story shortly after the crime and subsequent trials of the offenders. Almost all comments I've read about this book and about the case in general say something along the lines of the fact that this is the most horrible crime of which they've every heard. 

A more in-depth and mostly accurate description of the crime can be found on Wikipedia here (although I'm not sure it's the best source - some facts are contradictory to what is written in House of Evil), but I'll give a short summary of events here.

In Indianapolis, 1965, Sylvia Likens and her sister Jenny (16 and 15 years old, respectively) came to live with a woman from their neighborhood, Gertrude Baniszewski (bani-SHEF-ski), while their parents held jobs traveling with a carnival. Lester and Betty Likens agreed to pay Gertrude $20 a week to board their two daughters, without ever really examining the house where they would be living. Gertrude was a sickly woman who already had seven children. She was depressed and stressed from having lived such a hard life. She began taking her frustrations out on the Likens girls, and eventually Sylvia was the main target. 

The story can get a little complicated with all the people involved. Gertrude started the abuse with punishments by paddling with a fraternity-type paddle or a belt. Gertrude soon encouraged her children and other kids from the neighborhood who often visited the Baniszewski house to also abuse Sylvia under the guise of "punishment" for various acts. The abuse escalated. Cigarettes were put out on Sylvia's body (she had over 100 burns on her when she died); Gertrude twice roughly kicked Sylvia in the genitals; she was denied food; had the baby's dirty diaper shoved in her mouth; was kicked and/or thrown down the basement stairs several times; was given baths in scalding hot water; had salt rubbed into her open sores; and was twice forced to stand naked in front of Gertrude and other children and shove a Coke bottle into her vagina. The words "I'm a prostitute and proud of it!" were carved into her stomach with a needle and a crude "3" was burned above this with a hot branding iron. Sylvia never received real medical treatment for her numerous burns and sores, and accompanied with the malnourishment, shock, and repeated blows to the head causing subdural hematoma (brain bleeding or hemorrhaging), Sylvia finally succumbed to her injuries and died on October 26, 1965, only 4 months after arriving at the Baniszewski house. 

I cried while reading the book about Sylvia and what she went through. But as horrible as this crime is, and not to diminish Sylvia's death, I had to ask myself: Why does the murder of this one girl affect me so much more than reading about the 53 murders committed by Andrei Chikatilo? Or all the young women that Ted Bundy raped and murdered? What is it about Sylvia Likens' case that gets to me? I believe it is several factors. The fact that an adult gave children permission to beat this girl; that some of her abusers were barely teenagers; that no one ever did anything to stop the abuse; that one girl could be the target of so much hostility and rage; and also that Sylvia herself apparently lost her will to live after suffering so much torture and was not able to save herself. It absolutely blows my mind that something like this could have happened. Many, many children out there are victims of abuse, I know, but this was no behind-closed-doors abuse case. Kids in the neighborhood went over to the Baniszewski house just to abuse Sylvia - it became a game to them. And not one of them had the heart to see the evil that was going on and tell somebody about it?

Author Jack Ketchum (discussed in the previous blog) was also haunted by this case and he used it to inspire his novel The Girl Next Door. His story is fairly similar to the real-life case - Meg and Susan Loughlin come to live with their aunt Ruth Chandler and her three sons after their parents die in a car accident. Ruth starts to show some resentment toward the girls (and goes a little mad) and starts to abuse them, trying to teach her boys a lesson in the process. Meg is eventually tied up in the basement, where Ruth and her sons, and other boys and girls from the neighborhood, beat and torture her. 

Spoilers ahead.

The torture is a little more extreme than what happened with Sylvia - an incident of sexual assault and a hot tire iron to the clitoris are the penultimate events in the story - but that is really immaterial. This book spoke to me because it is written from the point of view of David, the Chandlers' next-door neighbor and long-time friend of the Chandler boys. He meets Meg before most of the other kids do and falls for her. He witnesses her torture and abuse and though he feels horror at what he sees (he never commits any of the acts himself), he also feels what the other kids feel.

The reader will often find themselves hating David more than Ruth or any of the others that torture Meg simply because of his selfish inaction. I remember one part of the book where David talks himself out of telling somebody about the abuse. He says something about how he'd be an accessory to the crime and get in trouble himself. I hated David after that - who cares what happens to you, you little shit! Save this girl's life! But by giving us insight into the mind of someone witnessing the abuse, Ketchum seems to be trying to explain to the reader how a crime like this, and in essence the crime against Sylvia, can occur. It's the repressed society that encourages keeping secrets; mob psychology; the fear that children have of disobeying or otherwise going up against adults; and the responsibility of adults. David and the other kids are fascinated by the things they can get away with, with the all-powerful credo of "We have permission!" ringing in their ears. They have permission from an adult, so that makes it okay. Kids are powerless compared to adults, and to be given permission to exert the highest form of power, the power over another person's life, must have been a high for those kids. I understand that now - even though the whole concept is sick and twisted and totally wrong. But I do understand it, and this is another theory on how such young children could have tortured Sylvia and not feel guilty about it.

In the end, David tries to help Meg escape. But you know what? I don't even care that he tried to help her, and I don't believe he redeemed himself when he killed Ruth by pushing her down the stairs. To me, it was too little too late. He never hurt Meg himself, but he never helped her either. He had the conscience to do the right thing but never followed through. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," right? Ketchum says that Meg is the hero of the piece and I couldn't agree more. She tries to keep her dignity during all the atrocities committed against her and when she has the chance to escape, she ruins it for herself because she refuses to leave without taking her sister with her. Perhaps this was part of Sylvia's psyche, as well. Her younger sister Jenny was crippled from polio and would have been the next likely target for Gertrude's abuse if Sylvia was gone. 

Even with the books and the two movies made about the case (An American Crime, with Ellen Page of Juno fame playing Sylvia, and an adaptation of The Girl Next Door) there is still no definitive answer how this crime could have happened. Gertrude Baniszewski was found by many to be sane at the time of the crime, but there is no psychological evaluation out there to read that says, "This is why I hurt Sylvia." And with the major perpetrators of the crime long dead, this question will never be answered. We can speculate all we want and we can blame it on the family's poverty and anger at their life situation, but that's just not good enough for me. Sylvia deserves more than that.

My aunt lives in Indianapolis. If we ever make a family trip there again, I will make it a point to visit Sylvia's memorial and leave her the most beautiful bouquet of flowers I can find. 

Rest in peace, Sylvia Likens. Rest in peace.

Jack Ketchum - the horror author that Stephen King loves

Enough about movies, let's talk about books. I have recently discovered an amazing, if not somewhat neurotic, horror author by the name of Jack Ketchum (a pseudonym - his real name is Dallas Mayr, which doesn't sound as horror-y). He is successful in his genre but not so crazy famous that he's completely inaccessible to fans. He has an official website where you can leave comments or questions for him, and get this - he actually responds to them. Within a couple of days. It's amazing. I told him how one of his novels seriously affected me and he actually took the time to show his appreciation for my comments. How cool is that?

Anyway, maybe you're wondering why I say he's somewhat neurotic. I call him that because most authors have a style of writing or general theme in their writing that transcends all their books. Pick any three Jack Ketchum novels to read, and you would swear that they were all written by different people. There is some element of the horrific in them all, sometimes though, it is not what most would consider horror.

Ketchum first made an impression on readers with his very first published novel, Off Season. In this gruesome novel, a group of friends staying at a coastal house in Maine are attacked by a feral family living in the caves on the coast and feeding on human flesh. Reminiscent of The Hills Have Eyes, both stories are based on the legend of the Sawney Bean family (an interesting read - check out the story here).

Off Season can be described as a gore-fest. It's a fairly quick read, but there is so much blood and guts and incestuous cave-people sex packed into this tiny novel that it is not something you'll forget soon. We even get a recipe on how to cook human flesh. Nice. But it's totally awesome. Gorehounds like me love this shit - if it makes you do that dramatic thing of putting her hand to your mouth in shock, then I'd say the story is a success. Well done, Jack. (There's also an equally disgusting sequel to Off Season that is worth a read, Offspring.)

Okay, so we have a gore-fest like Off Season, and then the next Ketchum book I read is Old Flames. Whuh? This is by the same guy? Old Flames is this incredibly simple story of a woman meeting up with an "old flame" (oooh, clever title, eh?) and she either still loves the guy or is just a wacko because she becomes friends with his wife just to kill her. It's not that Old Flames is badly written or a bore or anything, it's just so weird that this is the same guy that wrote a scene in Off Season where the cannibal girl stabs her brother in the ass, then takes the blood from the wound, rubs it on his penis and then has sex with him. So I don't know if this difference in the general theme of the writing is really neurotic as I said earlier, or some kind of proof of a mad genius.

Also, in the copy of Old Flames that I read there was another novella in there called Right to Life. Holy crap. Just look at the picture over there. This was about a couple who kidnap a pregnant woman on her way to an abortion clinic. They want the baby so they decide to hold her hostage in their basement until she gives birth - there's some sadomasochistic torture and other fun stuff here, but again, it's another example of this writer seemingly not knowing in what genre he wants to be. It's good that he's got such range, but you probably wouldn't think much of this author until you read The Girl Next Door.

It is one of my new favorite novels. You wanna talk real horror? This novel GOES THERE. I mean, it goes to places that are so dark they can't possibly be something that could ever really happen. But The Girl Next Door is based on a crime that occurred in the 60s in Indianapolis. I'm eerily obsessed with this story - the true crime, the book, and the movies - and have much too much to say about them. Will leave for the next blog.

Another Ketchum novel I recommend is probably The Lost. Great story with some unforgettable characters. Ray Pye is this nihilistic, egotistic, evil person who shoots two girls he sees in the woods because he thinks they are lesbians. He drags his two "friends" into the act as well, and manages to not get caught for the attack, even though one local cop is sure that he committed the crime. The novel is a rather slow burn as the reader gets to know Ray and the other characters around him. The big question throughout the novel though is, Where is this going? How is it going to end? Is Ray just going to get caught? Will there be a big shoot-out or something? These characters have gotten themselves into some serious stuff and with Ketchum, you're not really sure what to expect.

Everyone seems to love Red as well, but it didn't really affect me as much as it did others. Perhaps I have no heart. I'm very curious about several other Ketchum novels, but I find he's a little hard to come by at chain bookstores. Go for Amazon.com or a used bookstore to find some of his more obscure novels.