How to Watch An American Crime and What Actually Happened to Sylvia Likens
The 2024 limited series An American Crime is based on events from 1965 in Gary, Indiana, where 16-year-old Sylvia Likens died at the hands of her stepmother Gertrude Baniszewski and several neighborhood kids. The show stars Anne Hathaway as Gertrude, while Jessie Buckley plays Leona Hobson, Sylvia's mother. It runs for five episodes on Netflix and takes roughly four hours to watch end to end. Sylvia's story predates the show by over half a century. She was sent to live with the Baniszewski family after her mother Leona struggled with poverty and alcoholism. Gertrude kept Sylvia locked in the basement of their row house and subjected her to sustained physical abuse, starvation, and torture that lasted nearly three weeks before Sylvia's death on October 29, 1965. What makes this case particularly ugly is that multiple children participated. Randy Hobson, a neighbor boy Gertrude hired as a babysitter, helped beat Sylvia and wrote threats in her blood on the basement wall. Other neighborhood kids were drawn into it, some out of fear, some out of cruelty, some because Gertrure manipulated them into believing they were helping discipline a "witch."
Gertrude was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to life in prison. She was paroled in 1985. Several of the kids involved received juvenile sentences or probation. The trial itself revealed how ordinary suburban environments could mask prolonged abuse happening inside a closed-off basement. When I first looked into this case years ago, I went down a rabbit hole of trial transcripts and news coverage from the 1960s. The primary source material is thin compared to more famous cases because Gary, Indiana did not have extensive digitized records back then. I found the best full-text coverage in the Indiana Harbor Star archives and some court documents through the Purdue University library system. If you want to go beyond the Netflix dramatization, those are your starting points.
Where to Watch and Where the Show Deviates from Reality
An American Crime is available exclusively on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA for strong violent content, disturbing imagery, and language. The show is not graphic in a splatter-porn sense, but it does show enough to make most viewers uncomfortable within the first two episodes. The series takes some dramatic license. Gertrude's appearance was altered somewhat for television. The timeline was compressed. Some characters were combined or invented for narrative flow. The most significant change involves Sylvia's relationship with her mother, which the show simplifies considerably. In reality, Sylvia and Leona had a complex bond that included moments of affection and neglect, and Leona's eventual decision to remove Sylvia from the house was not as clean or heroic as portrayed. If you watch the show and want to check what is accurate, the book The Burning of Bridget Cleary by Dave Cullen covers some of the same ground, though it focuses more broadly on how society handles child abuse cases. The original New York Times coverage from November 1965 is also surprisingly detailed and can be accessed through the newspaper's archive subscription, which runs about $30 per month. Not cheap, but worth it if you are researching the actual trial.
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Why This Case Still Matters Today
The Sylvia Likens case changed Indiana child protection laws. Before 1965, there was no mandatory reporting requirement for professionals who suspected child abuse. After Gertrude's conviction, Indiana passed the Child Services Act, which required teachers, doctors, and social workers to report suspected abuse. Other states followed. This is not a minor detail. It is the reason we have the systems we do now, however flawed those systems remain. The show does not dwell on this legislative angle, which is fine because it is a drama, not a documentary. But if you are watching An American Crime and wondering why this story gets retold every few years, that legal impact is part of the answer. Another part is that nobody did anything to stop it while Sylvia was alive. Neighbors heard screams. Teachers noticed bruises. The police received complaints. None of it stopped the abuse. I have seen a lot of true crime content over the years, and most of it gets recycled endlessly because it sells. This one is different. The events are real enough that dramatizing them feels like a betrayal, but leaving them unexamined feels worse. The show exists in that tension, and it does not resolve it cleanly. That is probably the most honest thing about it.
If you want further reading, the Indiana State Archives holds the original case files, though access requires a formal request and processing can take three to four weeks. For most people, the Netflix series paired with the trial transcripts available through Google Scholar is a workable combination. Just do not expect comfort from either.
