Calif. House of Horrors: 5 Unanswered Questions About the Shocking Abuse Case
January 25, 2018Police in Perris, California, were shocked earlier this month to discover the 13 children of David and Louise Turpin had apparently been living in a house of horrors: Allegedly kept malnourished from lack of food and regularly abused, most of the kids had also been imprisoned and tortured in the home, authorities believe.
The Turpin parents were soon arrested and remain in custody, having pleaded not guilty to the dozens of charges against them.
The children, ages 2 to 29, are recovering at local hospitals and reportedly providing information to investigators. Only the youngest child, it seems, was somewhat spared.
As the prosecution proceeds, several key questions remain unanswered. Below is context for some of the unknowns in a case that has made international headlines.
1. How Did the Family Keep Such Extreme Abuse Hidden?
Speaking to reporters last week, Riverside County, California, District Attorney Michael Hestrin said, “It appears no one noticed what was happening.” He detailed a few pieces of information from the investigation that apparently show how this could have been the case.
For example, Hestrin said, the Turpin family was regularly sleeping all day and up all night.
What’s more, the six minor children were officially being home-schooled so they rarely had to leave the house and were kept off the radar of outsiders such as teachers, coaches or counselors.
The family also had a history of relocating. Though David and Louise reportedly grew up in Princeton, West Virginia, they later moved to Texas where they lived for 17 years. In 2010, they moved from the greater Fort Worth area to Murrieta, California, and then from Murrieta to nearby Perris in 2014.
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The Turpin family
Courtesy Billy Lambert
As they relocated, the abuse of the children only intensified, Hestrin alleged at a news conference on Jan. 18.
He told PEOPLE, “Crimes that occur within a family like this are by their very nature difficult to uncover because they happen at night, under the cover of darkness, behind closed doors. They happen in secret, so there has got to be something that uncovers what happened in the dark and in the secret of this family.”
Neighbors have reported having limited contact with the Turpins, and Louise’s brother, Billy Lambert, told PEOPLE he was unable to speak with his nieces and nephews, despite repeated requests.
“They were a little odd, but I didn’t see anything to call authorities for,” neighbor Wendy Martinez told PEOPLE.
When another neighbor and her son saw three Turpin kids putting up Christmas decorations in 2015, she said they were taken aback by the interaction.
“We said, ‘Oh, the decorations look so nice,’ and they froze,” Kimberly Milligan recalled. “Like when young children want to divert a threat they think they can pretend to be invisible. … That was the last time the family put out Christmas lights.”
The Turpin home in Perris, California
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty
2. What May Have Motivated the Parents?
Much about the family’s behavior is still unclear, including why the suspected abuse allegedly escalated over time and how the parents were able to control their children so absolutely, especially when the oldest ones are in their 20s and at least one son was enrolled in college.
Hestrin was asked about a possible motive last week and said, “I don’t know that I can answer that completely. As a prosecutor, there are cases that stick with you, that haunt you … sometimes in this business we’re faced with looking at human depravity and that’s what we are looking at here.”
The son in community college was always chaperoned by his mother, Hestrin said.
As to the possibility of a cult or religious element in the family’s behavior, Hestrin said, “Not that I know, no.”
When asked if the children were brainwashed, he said he’d be “speculating.”
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PEOPLE previously confirmed that Louise and David’s marriage dates back to February 1985, when she was 16 and he was 23.
Lambert, her brother, said she and David had met in church and “ran away” to Texas to marry before being returned to West Virginia, where Louise’s father consented to the nuptials.
Louise had her first child at 20, Lambert said.
“She had mentioned the Kate Plus 8 show, that it was a cool reality show,” he said. “I think deep down that is what she wanted [a big family].”
The Turpin family
David-Louis Turpin/Facebook
3. The Teen Girl Who Escaped — Where Did She Get a Phone?
The conditions inside the Turpin home were only made public after one of their children, a 17-year-old girl, escaped the home before sunrise on Jan. 14 and then called 911. Authorities believe she likely slipped out of her bedroom window.
But how did one of the siblings, whose activities appear to have all been tightly controlled, get access to the phone that put her parents behind bars?
Authorities have not confirmed how the teen came to acquire the device, which was deactivated at the time she used it, meaning it allowed her only to place an emergency call.
“The girl, with several of her siblings, had been discussing some kind of escape plan,” Hestrin told PEOPLE. “For up to two years they at least thought about escape. As to why they chose that day or that time, I just don’t know. I think we will know more when we get this case ready for preliminary hearing.”
Louise and David Turpin (seated, first and third from left) in court in California following their arrests last week
FREDRICK J. BROWN/POOL/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock
4. Dad Is Accused of Sex Crime. Are There More Charges to Come?
In addition to the dozen charges each of torture and false imprisonment that David and Louise face, they are also accused of seven counts of abuse of a dependent adult and six count of child abuse.
But David faces an accusation that Louise does not: He is charged with one count of lewd act on a child under 14, though authorities have not elaborated further on their allegation he was sexually abusive.
“If our investigation uncovers more crime, we will file more charges,” Hestrin said last week.
“About the only thing the children were allowed to do while chained up or in their rooms was to
write in journals,” he told reporters. “We now have recovered those journals — hundreds of them — and we are combing through them for evidence.”
Attorneys for David and Louise, who are barred from contacting their children, have declined to comment on the case beyond broad reactions to the seriousness of the allegations.
The Turpin family
A Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas
5. One of the Kids Previously Tried to Escape in Texas, So Why Wasn’t the Family Discovered Then?
A former neighbor of the Turpins told PEOPLE earlier this week that one of the siblings tried to get free years ago when the family lived in Rio Vista, Texas.
“One of the girls escaped and I was always told that the police returned her,” said Rick Vinyard. “One of the girls did try to run away. It was probably three or four years after they moved in.”
Vinyard said that the Turpin family first lived in a brick house across the street from him. In time, he said, the family moved out of that home and into a double-wide trailer parked on the same lot.
“They moved out of the brick house because the family had trashed it so bad, it was unlivable,” Vinyard claimed. “They had left pets in there that starved to death. We found a dead dog and a dead cat in that house. The kitchen just looked horrible. There were dirty diapers piled waste-high.”
The Turpins moved to California after 10 years in the neighborhood, Vinyard said.
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How such conditions escaped notice in Texas is a question that echoes the later abuse that would escape notice in California. But it seems that just as in Riverside County, no red flags were raised until last week.
“We researched thoroughly and we didn’t have any reports,” a spokesman for Texas’ Department of Family and Protective Services told PEOPLE.
An official with the Hill County sheriff in Texas said that while authorities had some long-ago interactions with the Turpins, they were relatively minor.
In 2001, the family dog bit their 4-year-old daughter and the girl was hospitalized and the dog put down, Chief Deputy Rick White told PEOPLE. And in 2003, “Their pigs got out and ate the neighbor’s dog food. They replaced the dog food and the trash can that the pigs tore up.”
Speaking recently about the revealed allegations against David and Louise, Hestrin, the prosecutor, praised the teenager who exposed them.
“I think we are very happy and fortunate that the girl mustered the courage to do what she did when she did it,” he said. “It is an unbelievable story. It really is.”
• With reporting by ELAINE ARADILLAS, JASON DUAINE HAHN, CHRIS HARRIS and CHRISTINE PELISEK