Skip to main content

Thirteen siblings found chained in California home; parents charged

The home of David Allen and Louise Anna Turpin in Perris, California, U.S., on Monday.   | Photo Credit: Reuters

The children ranged in age from 2 to 29, police said.

A California couple has been charged with torture after police rescued their 13 malnourished children from a home where some of them had been chained to beds, and neighbours on Monday described the family as shut-ins who shunned social contact.
Police made the discovery after a 17-year-old girl escaped the house in Perris, about 70 miles (113 km) east of Los Angeles, and used a cellular phone she had found in the house to call them, the Riverside County Sheriff's Office said on Monday.
“Deputies located what they believed to be 12 children inside the house, but were shocked to discover that seven of them were actually adults,” police said in a statement. “The victims appeared to be malnourished and very dirty.”
The children ranged in age from 2 to 29, police said.
The girl, who officers had initially thought was about 10 years old, contacted police on Sunday after escaping the one-storey house.
The parents, David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, were arrested and each charged with nine counts of torture and 10 counts of child endangerment. They were ordered held on $9 million bail each.
Neighbours said the Turpins and their children rarely emerged from their unkempt home in the new built development of closely spaced single-family houses.
Wendy Martinez, a 41-year-old housewife, said her only contact with the Turpins came as she passed the house at night in October. Four children were installing sod in the yard while the mother watched from the door, and none responded when Ms. Martinez said hello.
“They were very, like, afraid,” she said of the children. “Like they had never seen people before.”
Police said six of the couple's children were minors, while the other seven were over 18.
The siblings told officers that they were starving and police did not give the parents' motive for holding the children captive.
A Facebook page that appeared to have been created by the parents showed the couple dressed in wedding clothes, surrounded by 10 girls in matching purple plaid dresses and three male children in suits.
California state records list Mr. David Turpin as the principal of the Sandcastle Day School, with its address at the Turpin house.
Records show the Turpins filed for bankruptcy in 2011. Nancy Trahan, who works in the Temecula, California, law office that handled the bankruptcy, said the couple were friendly and spoke highly of their children.
“They seemed like very nice people,” she said by telephone.
The Turpins are due in court on Thursday.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Meryl Streep wants to trademark her own name

Meryl Streep has won three Oscars, three Emmys and six Golden Globes during her 40-year long career on stage, screen and television. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP, File) Meryl Streep, the most celebrated actress of her generation, has filed an application to trademark her name. The application was filed with US Patent and Trademark Office on January 22, records show. It requests that the name Meryl Streep be trademarked for “entertainment services,” movie appearances, speaking engagements and autographs. Streep, 68, last week extended her record to 21 Academy Award nominations, this time for her role in “The Post.” She has won three Oscars, three Emmys and six Golden Globes during her 40-year long career on stage, screen and television. It is not clear why Streep would file a trademark application at this stage in her career and her attorney and publicist did not return a request for comment on Monday. Many celebrities trademark their names or catch phrases to pro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beijing’s struggle against pollution will be tough, take time: Mayor

Beijing’s battle against air pollution will take time and be very tough to win despite recent improvements, the acting mayor of China’s capital said on Wednesday. The city has been fighting to clean its notoriously smoggy air through steps such as pushing households and factories to switch away from coal to cleaner fuels like natural gas. “Further improvement in air quality (will be) extremely difficult,” acting mayor of Beijing, Chen Jining, said in a statement released during the city’s congress meeting. The central government’s intense focus on air quality means many local officials’ careers are linked to the success of efforts to tackle smog, making it unusual to speak candidly about the challenges of meeting tough targets. Beijing has chalked up a short-term success by cutting the annual average level of breathable particulate matter (PM 2.5) to 58 micrograms per cubic metre in 2017, beating a target set by the State Council in 2012. However, the city is still some way f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Under fire, Steve Bannon backs off explosive comments about Donald Trump’s son

Bannon, ousted from the White House in August, was quoted in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by journalist Michael Wolff, as saying a June 2016 meeting with a group of Russians attended by Donald Trump Jr. and his father’s top campaign officials was “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” (Photo: Reuters) President Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon on Sunday backed away from derogatory comments ascribed to him about Trump’s son in a new book that sparked White House outrage and could threaten Bannon’s influence as a would-be conservative power broker. Bannon, ousted from the White House in August, was quoted in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by journalist Michael Wolff, as saying a June 2016 meeting with a group of Russians attended by Donald Trump Jr. and his father’s top campaign officials was “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” The president responded by saying Bannon had lost his mind, and the White House suggested the hard-right news site...
Post a Comment
Read more