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produced money order receipts to prove $220 was paid to Mrs. Wright over thethree months his daughters stayed with her, and he testified he paid her at least $80 more in cash.
    That the Baniszewski home was a neighborhood mecca is no wonder. A house full of girls is enough attraction for neighborhood boys. These included Richard Hobbs, Randy Lepper, Mike Monroe, Stephanie’s boyfriend, Coy Hubbard, and others. Couple this attraction with Gertrude’s fondness for boys, and the picture becomes clearer. Gertrude’s paramour, Dennis Wright, was not yet of voting age when he fathered the 37-year-old woman’s youngest child. Gertrude was still a woman, and she appreciated the boys’ presence as much as Paula and Stephanie did. The boys liked her, too.
    To show her appreciation, she danced for Richard Hobbs to phonograph music in the front room. To an adult male who had been to a night club even once in his life, the unsightly, scrawny woman’s dancing might have been ludicrous. To a 14-year-old boy, it was at least a new experience, especially when her shoulder strap slipped off. If a 37-year-old woman is drawn to teenage boys, it follows that teenage girls are her rivals.
    Mrs. Wright and the Likens girls began talking about sex the latter part of August. Sylvia was reminiscing on her happy days in Long Beach, and she longed for her California boyfriend. Mrs. Wright began asking questions.
    “Have you ever done anything with a boy, Sylvia?” she got around to asking.
    “I guess so,” Sylvia said, not sure just what Mrs. Wright meant. She talked about the times she went skating with the boys and she and Jenny went with boys to a park on the beach.
    Jenny and Stephanie joined the conversation. The talk drifted to a party the Likens children gave for their friends the time their parents took a two-day trip to Las Vegas. Sylvia admitted that she had crawled under the covers with her boyfriend.
    “Why did you do that, Sylvia?” Mrs. Wright asked.
    “I don’t know,” the girl said, shrugging.
    Several days later, Mrs. Wright reminded the girl of her indiscretion. “You’re certainly getting big in the stomach, Sylvia,” she said. “It looks like you’re going to have a baby.”
    Sylvia thought she was being kidded. “Yeah, it sure is getting big,” she agreed. “I’m just going to have to go on a diet.”
    But Mrs. Wright was not kidding. She assured Sylvia and her own girls that any time they “did something” with a boy, they were sure to have a baby. And she kicked Sylvia between the legs to emphasize her point.
    Paula was scandalized by Sylvia’s admission of indiscretion. Knocking Sylvia from her chair to the kitchen floor, she scolded, “You ain’t fit to sit in a chair.” Had that fat, rejected girl forgotten her own indiscretion with her Kentucky lover? Events proved, at any rate, that Paula was pregnant, and Sylvia was not.
    Gertrude returned often to the sex theme. Was she madly jealous of Sylvia’s sex appeal? Was
she
responsible for the vicious mauling of the girl’s pubic region that showed up in the autopsy?

4
SCHOOL DAYS
     
    THE ROLLING campus of Arsenal Technical High School is nearly a half-mile long and a quarter-mile deep. Situated on an old military campsite, Tech occupies many buildings and boasts more than 4,000 pupils. It is the largest preparatory school in the state of Indiana. It annually graduates more pupils from its night division than most high schools graduate in total. Within the iron rail fences enclosing the green grounds are a gymnasium and football stadium, academic buildings, an industrial shop and other facilities.
    The size of the place, the iron fence and the austere brick buildings cause many a passerby to confuse Tech with the Indiana Women’s Prison. Tech is further west, in a slightly nicer neighborhood, but many of the inmates are just as tough. In the fall of 1965 they included Paula Baniszewski, Stephanie Baniszewski, and—Sylvia Marie Likens.
    Tech is