DES MOINES (AP) — An Iowa teacher’s aide was fired Tuesday after school officials recently learned she was the member of an Indianapolis family who tortured and killed a girl in the basement of their home in 1965.
Paula Pace had worked for the BCLUW consolidated school district based in the central Iowa town of Conrad since 1998. She was a teacher’s aide at the district’s high school.
Superintendent Ben Petty said the school board fired Pace for providing false information on her application. Petty said he could not comment further about the case. The board made the decision after meeting in special session to discuss the matter.
The district was notified by Grundy County Sheriff Rick Penning, who said his office received an anonymous telephone call last Wednesday informing him that Pace was Paula Baniszewski, formerly of Indianapolis, who had been convicted of manslaughter for participating in the torture and murder of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens in 1965.
The case has been referred to as one of the most notorious crimes in Indianapolis. The case begins when Sylvia Likens and her sister, Jenny, were left by their parents with Gertrude Baniszewski and her seven children in the summer of 1965. In the following months, Sylvia was beaten, burned with cigarettes, branded with a hot needle, and suffered other abuse. Her malnourished body was found in the basement of the home Baniszewski rented on Oct. 26, 1965. The cause of death was brain swelling and internal bleeding of the brain.
A trial later revealed the torture came at the hands of Gertrude Baniszewski; her daughter Paula, who was 17 at the time; her son Johnny, then 13; and other neighbor children who would watch and at times participate.