This book is a very dry and straight-forward telling of the horrific murder of Sylvia Likens, who was beaten and tortured to death by not only her foster mother, but her children and several of the neighborhood children. The case will turn your stomach like nothing else. The first half of the book is the details of the torture she went through and the second half is the trial.

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Interesting book , but very sad and disturbing. Its scarey to think how one crazy woman could get kids / teenagers ( some her own) to do what they did to one of their peers ,and not be bothered by what they were doing. That woman should have been kept in prison.

I was first made aware of this book when I read " The Girl next door" by Jack Ketchum ,a fiction book that was based on this story and Silvia Laken.

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I picked this one up on a whim and could't put it down once I started it. The author's writing is very straight forward and simple. He pretty much just stated the facts on this horrible story. Hard to believe this ever happened but then again when I look at the era it happened in, the 60's, well that explains it. I would hope and pray that this could never happen in this day and age but then again we know it does. Sylvia is an enigma,I will never know or understand why she didn't think she was important enough that someone would step in and help her if she had just told. So sad and my heart breaks over the terribly cruel way she died.

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This was a very disturbing book about a evil woman who ring leads a bunch of teenagers, even her own children, in unimaginable torture to the victim Sylvia.

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Not a book to be read by the weak of heart.
It is also a page turner.

If you want to watch a movie based on this story watch "An American Crime". Though the movie is intensifying enough, it lacks the whole gruesome truth.

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