May 2021 Bonus Review #1: An American Crime
2007's account of Sylvia Likens's murder can only glance at the heart of the story's darkness.
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
From the “Murder of Sylvia Likens” Wikipedia page, which I will link to in a moment, with the strongest possible content warning:
Sylvia Likens (January 3, 1949 – October 26, 1965) was an American teenager who was tortured and murdered by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, many of Baniszewski's children and several of their neighborhood friends. This abuse incrementally lasted for three months before Likens died from her extensive injuries and malnourishment on October 26 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The remainder of the account — and here’s that link — does not stint on the details of Likens’s prolonged and utterly wretched demise, so it is no surprise that
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