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Gertrude Baniszewski

Also known as the Torture Mother, Gertrude Baniszewski was an Indiana divorcee who oversaw and facilitated a prolonged torture, mutilation, and eventual murder of a teenage girl, Sylvia Likens. 

It was later discovered that the death and majority of the torture was actually carried out under Baniszewski’s instruction by her teenage children and other kids from the neighborhood. 

When the woman was convicted of first degree murder in 1965, the case was called, “the single worst crime perpetuated against an individual in Indiana’s history.”