hi guys how are you today my name is bailey
syrian and today is monday
which means it’s murder mystery and makeup monday
if you are new here hi how are you my name is bailey
syrian and every
monday i sit down and talk about 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
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this story has been
recommended to me so many times to the
point i was like okay you guys win
i didn’t wanna do it but you guys kept asking
i didn’t know what to do i caved i gave in
alright gertrude van
fawson 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’s said that she was indifferent towards her
mother and then at age age
eleven she actually witnessed
her dad dying
he had a massive heart attack and
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 named john banasuski
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
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 ten years of
marriage gertrude finally
took the kids
and she was able
to 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’s 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
help pay for this
child and you know that
never goes well
for some fucking 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 100 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
story but they’re
still involved her name is
sylvia lichens 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 lichens 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 brent brace and
sylvia was really overprotective of her younger
sister so as a
teenager sylvia
would also just kind of work odd jobs
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
sylvia’s mom was
arrested because she was caught shoplifting and they
ended up putting her in jail this
caused some stress to the
lichens family
it was just mainly
cause they couldn’t work like
they needed the money
why did she do that
when she went to prison it just put
their 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
could return to the carnival
circuit and continue making
money so the
oldest lichen
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
to 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 saved 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
because sylvia’s father
the twenty dollars a week remember
that they agreed on it just like wasn’t showing up the
twenty dollars and this was kind of pissing gertrude
off like hey i’m
watching your kids
you promised
twenty dollars a week
and it’s not happening
so this is just making gertrude more and more
angry because like
where’s her
twenty dollars
bitch she then
started to just take her
anger out on
the kids so in one of the first
disciplinary actions gertrude
beat the lichen
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 anchor 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
free 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
holla and stephanie at
school i don’t know but 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
uh huh like i just don’t
understand that the two kids were like oh yeah
sylvia’s talking
about how were
sluts and when gertrude finds this out she was livid
so stephanie
tells 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
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 the cast
what the hell
kind of sick this was just like a continuing
cycle like it just didn’t seem like it was gonna 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 some
sylvia’s claims
about the abuse
i’m not even sure anymore because then they
wouldn’t fight
classmates over
they would invite friends over and just
beat up or even sexually
abuse sylvia
they even said it was
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
didn’t think this was real
but it’s real
the kids would just invite
their friends over they
would practice karate
on sophia 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 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
tracksuit 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
gonna 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 lichens 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 me
cause i feel like you
would see the scars and what not 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 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 a
nurse that sylvia had run away for a week
and that the sores were 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 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
remembered 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 lichens 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
lichens 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
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 bathroom so
sylvia would just go
standing up
and when this happened it would
piss gertrude
off pretty much
everything sylvia did just piss gertrude
off when sophia would
like wet herself
standing up in the beach
gertrude would get
sylvia’s hands
and feet tie them together
and then she would
throw her into
super hot water
in like the bathtub 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’s 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 the
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 food
someone dead more than this
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 some more
awful shit like
one time they etched the words
quote i am a prostitute
and i am proud and
quote onto her
stomach okay
they edge that into
her stomach
and one of the fourteen
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 yep
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
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 front
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 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
then they beat me up and they
rape me left source on my face and all over my body
and they also put on my stomach i am a 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 blocked 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 have
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
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 base
gertrude hit
sylvia’s head really hard at this time
sylvia stopped breathing
in an effort to
clean her up one of the kids
tried to give her a warm
like soapy bath
and that’s when she realized that
sylvia was indeed dead
so she tried to give her
mouth to mouth
gertrude was certain that sophia
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 pay phone
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 anywho 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 think
god richard
coy and john
were all convicted
of manslaughter
gertrude and paula
they were giving life sentences
during a retrial
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
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 have
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 fawson 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 now 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 been handed a harder sentence
that’s what he said
of course he’s 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 mean they did the best that they
could at the time good for her
she’s able to like move forward i don’t know
trying to see
some kind of positive here okay so in two thousand one
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
research in 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 her name
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 fucking 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 i hope that you have a wonderful day
today you make good choices
please be safe out there
please please please be safe out there
and i’ll be seeing you guys later bye