The Family Next Door

by John Glatt

  Jordan told the investigator that she had been outside on only a handful of occasions, including Halloween, Las Vegas, and a trip to Disneyland when she was eleven years old.

  Toward the end of the interview, the investigator asked if she had ever been sexually abused. Jordan told him about the incident in Murrieta when she was twelve, when her father had pulled her pants down and put her on his lap. She said they were interrupted by Mother’s return before he could do anything further, but Father later told her not to tell anyone.

  Campos asked Jordan what she thought her father had been trying to do.

  “I have no idea of what he was trying to do,” she replied.

  She told the detective that from then on, Father would try and force kisses on her mouth almost a dozen times over the next four years.

  In another interview room, Detective Thomas Salisbury interviewed Jolinda Turpin for more than an hour. A Child Protective Services worker stayed with her in the room.

  Jolinda said that before moving to California in June 2000, Mother had homeschooled her, and she had worked her way up to the letter I in the alphabet. There had been no further lessons in Murrieta, but in Perris, Mother had helped her progress to the letter T.

  “She believed she was ready to accelerate past kindergarten,” the investigator later testified. “She wanted to accelerate to the first grade because she was tired of doing kindergarten work.”

  Jolinda told him how angry Mother became if she made the slightest mistake in class, pulling her hair and literally throwing her across the room. At the age of thirteen, Jolinda was virtually illiterate.

  “She told me she could recognize some words,” said Salisbury. “Any reading that she was able to do was self-taught and with the assistance of her brothers and her sisters.”

  Jolinda also did not know the difference between a state and a country, and she thought Texas was a country.

  She told the investigator how Mother and Father had appointed four of the older siblings as hall monitors to spy on the younger ones and stop them stealing food and sneaking into Mother’s room. In return, they were given extra privileges.

  “It was Mother’s idea,” said Salisbury. “To stop the kids from getting candy, things out of Mother’s room, and … food out of the kitchen area.”

  Jolinda said she had been born in Texas and was cared for by Joshua after Mother and Father moved out of the trailer. She recalled that it was “filthy, dirty, and smelled bad.” She revealed that she’d last had a bath on Mother’s Day 2017.

  The investigator was sickened to hear Jolinda’s descriptions of Mother’s violent temper.

  “She had been pinched by her mother,” said Salisbury, “choked by her mother, and hit by her mother.”

  Salisbury then interviewed twenty-two-year-old Jonathan. He revealed that Julissa and Joanna had also been chained up when police had entered the house. Mother had accused them all of being “suspects” for stealing food and chained them to their beds.

  He told the investigator that he had been restrained in various ways for the last six and a half years. It had started with ropes at the Murrieta house before progressing to bigger and heavier chains when Jonathan was able to escape using his teeth.

  Jonathan said Father had chained him up at first, and then Mother had taken over. During his punishments, which could last up to two months, he would be chained up all day and only unchained to relieve himself, eat, and brush his teeth. Often he would be unable to get to the bathroom in time. His wrists and feet had been chained to a safety rail on either side of his top bunk bed so tightly that they were bruised.

  Jonathan said that he had completed third grade and was “done with school,” and he did not expect to receive any further homeschooling. When asked how many grade levels there were, he guessed ten.

  * * *

  In a third interview room, investigator Brett Rooker interviewed Joanna, fourteen, Jessica, twenty-four, and Joy, twenty. Joanna said that Mother had a terrible temper. She described the incident in the Murrieta house when Louise had thrown her down the stairs after catching Joanna in her bedroom, leaving her dizzy and crying in pain.

  Joanna said she had been chained up because she would take things, leaving “dark places” on her arms.

  “I asked her to show me her arms,” said Rooker. “I saw dirt caked [on] both her right and left arms. There were clean spots on her wrists from where the chains had been.”

  Her last bath had been on Mother’s Day 2017, and she had been chained up since last October. Joanna told the investigator that she had received no homeschooling since the move to Perris almost four years earlier.

  “She said they had not completed the first book of phonics,” Rooker recalled. “She told me that her, nor her siblings, had completed one full lesson for any of their grades. Mother stopped [and] just gave up.”

  Joanna said she was “terrified” of Mother, whose hall monitors patrolled the hallway around the clock to stop anyone stealing food or entering her room.

  “She said that Mother knocks her on her head,” said the investigator, “throws her around the room, pulls her hair.”

  In another interview room, Riverside County Sheriff’s Department deputy Daniel Brown interviewed twenty-five-year-old Joshua, eleven-year-old Julissa, and eighteen-year-old Jeanetta.

  During their two-hour interview, Julissa told him that she was always hungry.

  Though they usually had jalapeño baloney or peanut butter sandwiches and what she called “freezer food,” she said that sometimes they only received bread, and water from the faucet. She would see her parents wolfing down a hearty meal but was too afraid to ever ask for any, because she would be yelled at.

  The emaciated little girl said she adored apple juice, but although Mother always had some in the fridge, she was never given any. She described how Mother would buy pies but not allow the kids to eat them, letting them mold and eventually throwing them away.

  Julissa, too, had received her last bath on Mother’s Day and was covered in dirt. She said that just before Christmas 2016, she and three siblings had been caught stealing food out of the pantry because they were so hungry.

  “[They] were not allowed to celebrate with the rest of the family, but [they] had to watch,” said Brown. “They lost their Christmas.”

  She also told the deputy how Mother often punched her with a closed fist, slapped her in the face, or lifted her up off the ground by her hair. She had learned never to cry out in pain, as Mother “gets real mad … and the punishment would intensify.” She called it “spankings on the face.”

  Julissa said Mother had started chaining her to the bedpost for up to four months at a time when she turned eleven. The chains would be wrapped around each of her wrists like bracelets and then around the bedpost. Initially, she was able to stand up in the chains, but when Mother found out, she shortened the chains.

  When the officers had arrived, Julissa had been chained up for fifteen days. She said the chains were tight and bruised her, referring to the black-and-blue marks as “indentations.”

  Deputy Brown asked to see them. He noticed white spots on her arms where the chains had rubbed the dirt away.

  At the end of the interview, Deputy Brown asked Julissa who was the big boss in charge. She answered, “Mother.”

  * * *

  After the interviews, each sibling showered and was given a change of clothes. Their putrid old ones were collected as evidence. Investigators laid each of the thirteen siblings’ clothing and underwear on butcher paper, labeling each one before photographing them. The girls’ underwear appeared to be covered in dried blood. All the clothing was “very heavy and soiled” with an extremely foul odor, as they had not been changed in seven months.

  Then the Turpin siblings were split up—the six minors were admitted to Riverside University Hospital System, and the remaining seven were sent to the Corona Regional Medical Center. Later that day, investigator Brett Rooker photographed the adults for injuries a
nd other evidentiary purposes. When they arrived at the medical center, he placed a 5150 hold on them so they could be held for up to seventy-two hours as dependent adults.

  “They were all gravely disabled,” Rooker later testified. “We asked them what they would do if they went home without their parents, and none of them could answer the question. I didn’t feel they were able to care for themselves.”

  * * *

  After giving statements at the Perris Police Department and having their fingerprints and mugshots taken, David and Louise Turpin were transported twenty miles north to the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside, California. They were each booked on nine counts of torture and ten counts of child endangerment. Bail was set at $9 million each.

  The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department executed a search warrant for the house on Muir Woods Road, and scores of crime scene investigators arrived to scour every inch, taking photographs and gathering evidence. The whole house stunk, and there was human waste and dirt everywhere.

  Officers photographed every room, carefully noting all the chains and padlocks still dangling from many of the bunk bed guardrails. They also found several moldy pumpkin pies on the kitchen counter.

  The whole area around the house became a crime scene and was sealed off with police tape. Then officers started canvassing neighbors for any available CCTV footage.

  “They wanted to look at our camera because we’ve got it rolling twenty-four hours,” said Ricardo Ross. “You can see the Turpins’ backyard from our house.”

  Another neighbor, Andria Valdez, watched various police officers going in and out of the Turpin house all day. One deputy stayed until 10:00 p.m., and a police truck remained outside all night.

  * * *

  When the seven older Turpin siblings were admitted to Corona Regional Medical Center, they had absolutely nothing. Hospital staff went out to buy their new patients clothes, paying out of their own pockets. All the adults were so underweight that they needed children’s sizes.

  Hospital CEO Mark Uffer appealed to the Corona Chamber of Commerce for help.

  “So we went into action,” said Corona chamber president Bobby Spiegel. “We found out that the kids were taken there with limited to no clothing. They needed pajamas that night, and I told my staff, ‘You know, it would be nice if we could collect a couple of thousand dollars to go buy them stuff.’”

  Within hours, the chamber had dropped off bags of clothing, shoes, toiletries, and games for the kids. From then on, there was a constant stream of care packages for the new patients arriving by the hour.

  The seven siblings were placed in their own wing in the hospital, with an around-the-clock guard. They had to be taught basic skills like cleaning their teeth and washing and brushing their hair. They had never seen fresh fruit or vegetables and had to be coaxed into tasting blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries. When they first saw a tomato, they were scared. It was only after a nurse ate one to prove it was safe that they gingerly took a bite and loved it.

  20

  GOD CALLED ON THEM TO HAVE SO MANY CHILDREN

  Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday. It was supposed to be a slow news day, but at 12:30 a.m., the Riverside County Sheriff, Stanley Sniff, posted a dramatic press release online, announcing that David and Louise Turpin had been arrested for the suspected torture and endangerment of their thirteen children. Accompanying the release were the couple’s mugshots. This would set in motion global coverage of one of the biggest news stories in years.

  Early Sunday morning on January 14, 2018, a 17-year-old juvenile escaped from her residence situated in the 100 Block of Muir Woods Road, Perris and managed to call 911 from a cellular device she found inside the house. The teenager claimed her 12 brothers and sisters were being held captive inside the residence by her parents and further claimed some of her siblings were bound with chains and padlocks.

  When Police Officers from the Perris Police Department and Deputies from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department met with the juvenile, she appeared to be only 10 years old and slightly emaciated. After a brief interview with the female, they contacted 57-year old David Allen Turpin and 49-year old Louise Anna Turpin at the residence where the teenager escaped.

  Further investigation revealed several children shackled to their beds with chains and padlocks in dark and foul-smelling surroundings, but the parents were unable to immediately provide a logical reason why their children were restrained in that manner. Deputies located what they believed to be 12 children inside the house, but were shocked to discover that 7 of them were actually adults, ranging in age from 18 to 29. The victims appeared to be malnourished and very dirty.

  All 13 victims, ranging from the age of 2 to 29, were transported to the Perris Station and interviewed. Both parents were detained and transported to the station for further investigation. Child Protective Services (CPS) and Adult Protective Services (APS) arrived to assist in the investigation. The victims were provided with food and beverages after they claimed to be starving.

  The six children were eventually transported to the Riverside University Hospital System (RUHS) for medical examinations and were admitted for treatment. The seven adult children were transported to the Corona Regional Medical Center for an examination and admitted for medical treatment.

  Both parents were interviewed in this matter and subsequently transported to the Robert Presley Detention Center (RPDC). They were booked for violations of California Penal Code Section 206-Torture and Section 273a(A)-Child Endangerment. Bail was set at $9,000,000.00 each.

  Anyone with additional information regarding this investigation is encouraged to contact Master Investigator Tom Salisbury at the Perris Station.

  When reporter Brian Rokos of The Press-Enterprise, which covers Riverside County, first saw the press release, he almost put it to the side.

  “We get a lot of those,” explained Rokos, “and usually we’ll take a quick look at them and say, ‘Well, we’ll get to it at some point.’ But in this case we knew that this was going to be a big story, and we needed to get somebody to the house right away.”

  Within minutes of the release being posted online, Los Angeles–based NBC4 assigned reporter Tony Shin to the story.

  “I got a call from my assignment desk,” he said, “and they said, ‘You’ve got to go now.’”

  When he arrived at 160 Muir Woods Road, things were quiet. Police were still searching the Turpin house, refusing any comment.

  “I was one of the first reporters there,” said Shin, “and then after about thirty to forty minutes, neighbors started coming out. More media started showing up, and then it became a madhouse.”

  * * *

  That Monday, all thirteen Turpin siblings were medically screened to assess what physical and mental damage they had sustained from their years of captivity. Because the doctors and nurses at both hospitals would be the first people the siblings had ever interacted with outside the house on an ongoing basis, a team of positive, upbeat physicians was handpicked to treat them. Dr. Fari Kamalpour, the director of hospitalist program for the Corona Regional Medical Center, was appointed the attending physician for all seven Turpin adults. The center’s lead dietary manager, Jenyl Garay, was put in charge of their individual dietary requirements.

  But even the well-trained medical professionals were shocked when they first saw the terrible state of their emaciated, stunted patients. All the siblings, except for two-year-old Janna, had suffered severe malnourishment, nerve damage, and mental and cognitive impairment. Many of the adult siblings had muscle loss due to bad diet and lack of exercise. Nearly all of them were between twenty and fifty pounds underweight.

  When twenty-nine-year-old Jennifer Turpin was admitted to the hospital, she was five foot three and weighed just eighty pounds. Dr. Kamalpour diagnosed her as suffering from “low cognition, ability to perform mental tasks.” She also had severe protein caloric malnutrition and an acute B12 deficiency, causing perip
heral neuropathy, which resulted in tingling, numbness, and weakness in her hands and feet.

  She was also suffering from cachexia, or a wasting away of her muscles, due to long-term extreme weight loss and loss of muscle tone, as were the rest of her adult siblings. Dr. Kamalpour found that Jennifer and her twenty-four-year-old sister, Jessica, would probably never be able to have children.

  Joshua was five foot eight and weighed just 115 pounds. He was diagnosed with severe iron and vitamin D deficiency, as were all but one of his adult siblings.

  Jessica, Joy, and Julianne were all severely underweight and suffered from malnutrition, cachexia, and vitamin deficiency.

  Twenty-two-year-old Jonathan also suffered from these ailments, as well as “skeletal abnormalities,” caused by all the years of being restrained by ropes or chains. He was five foot seven and only weighed one hundred pounds, forty-seven pounds below what he should have.

  The only adult who was not underweight was Jeanetta, although she too was diagnosed with slow cognition, neuropathy, severe protein caloric malnutrition, and severe iron and vitamin D deficiency.

  Dr. Mark Massi, a pediatrician at the Riverside University Health System, treated Jordan, James, and Julissa, who was in the worst condition of all the younger siblings. Eleven-year-old Julissa had a body weight percentile of just 0.01—compared to a healthy weight percentile between 5 and 85—and a body height percentile of 0.79, well below the normal range of 5 to 95.

  Dr. Massi also performed a mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC) test on her, finding that her mid-upper arms were the same size as a four-month-old baby’s.

  Julissa was more than fifteen pounds underweight, anemic, and had severe muscle wastage. She had such low potassium and glucose levels her heart was damaged, and extreme malnutrition had caused liver damage. She also suffered from psychosocial dwarfism, or stunted growth, as the result of living in such an abusive and neglectful environment.