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Last updated on Wednesday, October 24, 2012
(DES MOINES, Iowa) - A central Iowa teacher’s aide has been suspended after officials learned she was part of an Indianapolis family who tortured and killed a girl in 1965.
RTV6 reports, Paula Pace has worked for the BCLUW school district based in Conrad since 1998. She is a teacher's aide at the district's high school.
But Grundy County Sheriff Rick Penning told The Associated Press on Tuesday that an anonymous caller told him last week that Pace was Paula Baniszewski, formerly of Indianapolis, and a member of a family that tortured and murdered 16-year-old Sylvia Likens in 1965.
Baniszewski eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the case.
District officials said Pace has been suspended from her job for undisclosed reasons. In a meeting Tuesday, the school board recommended that Pace be terminated on the grounds of providing false information on her job application.
The Likens case is widely considered one of the state's most horrific crimes.
Likens was staying with Gertrude Baniszewski and her children in the fall of 1965 when she was beaten, burned, humiliated, locked in a cellar and eventually starved to death at the hands of her caregiver and area teens.
Gertrude Baniszewski, two of her children - Paula and John Baniszewski - and two neighbors -- Coy Hubbard and Richard Hobbs - were convicted in connection with Likens' death.
The home where the girl died was demolished in 2009.
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