How a sweet wrapper & cryptic song were crucial missed clues that could have saved tortured ‘Turpin 13’ kids earlier
The Turpin 13 were rescued six years ago - but questions still remain over how the abuse went unnoticed for so long
WHEN police entered David and Louise Turpin’s family home for the first time, absolutely nothing could have prepared them for the incomprehensible horrors they were about to encounter.
The couple had held their 13 children – aged between two and 29 – captive in abject squalor. They’d been starved, taunted with food, beaten, chained to their beds, and allowed to shower just once a year.
Their suffering was described as “severe, pervasive, prolonged”, and their tragic plight was only discovered after 17-year-old Jordan Turpin made a daring escape in January 2018 and called 911.
The adult children were so malnourished that shocked police thought they were minors, with Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin revealing at the time: “All the victims were and are severely malnourished.
“To give you an example, one of the children at aged 12 is the weight of an average seven year old. The 29 year old female victim weighs 92lb (6st 7lb).”
It was the result of over a decade of unthinkable abuse, and while David and Louise Turpin were sentenced to life in prison and the victims – who became known as the ‘Turpin 13‘ – have tried to rebuild their lives, pertinent questions still remain.
Could their suffering have been prevented, and could they have been rescued earlier, if more had been done?
Here, we take a closer look at the ‘missed’ crucial clues that could have alluded to the tortured kids’ life of misery long before it was uncovered…
The ‘most perfect family’
For a long time the callous couple – who wed in 1985, and had their first child in 1988 – were able to conceal their depraved home life from the outside world for many years.
And initially, to the outside world at least, appeared like the perfect family.
Louise’s sister Teresa Robinette told HayU documentary The Turpin 13: Family Secrets Exposed: “They were the most perfect family I’d ever seen.
“The house was always spotless, immaculate cars, homes and cars.
“I even said, Louise is the one that got the fairytale.”
David was a highly paid engineer and for a time the couple would even pay for Louise’s family to visit them for holidays every year – but from 1998 onwards that stopped, and things went rapidly downhill.
‘Hog-tied’ with chains and padlocks
Over time, David lost his job, and the couple continued having children while moving from home to home, isolating themselves from the outside world – enabling the abuse to spiral.
Revealing the extent of the abuse, Attorney Mike Hestrin said: “The victims report as a punishment starting many years ago they began to be tied up.
“At first with ropes, one victim at one point was hogtied… and they eventually began using chains and padlocks.
“The children, when they were not chained up, were locked in different rooms and fed very little on a schedule.
“They lacked a basic knowledge of life, and didn’t even know what a police officer was.”
Despite all this, police revealed at the time revealed they had no reports or investigations concerning the Turpin family.
Sweet wrapper clue
Before the brood were pulled out of mainstream school to be homeschooled, for a while the elder kids attended classes.
During this time, the eldest daughter Jennifer was bullied and teased, and even laughed at for using an old candy wrapper to tie back her hair.
According to the New York Post, a former classmate revealed she was known as the ‘cootie kid’, was called smelly and always wore the same purple outfit – but no concerns were raised to authorities.
They recalled: “She was a frail girl, had pin-straight hair with bangs, and often wore the same purple outfit.
“She was often made fun of by the other third graders because her clothes would sometimes look as though they had been dragged through mud, which she would also smell like on most days.”
Former neighbour Shelly Vinyard also recalled: “All the other kids would make fun of them because they said they smelled bad, they were dirty and had weird haircuts; they wore weird clothes.”
Wearing ‘white gloves’
The kids were forbidden from washing regularly – and it became so noticeable, a neighbour actually thought they were wearing white gloves as their hands were a different colour to their bodies.
Attorney Mike Hestrin said: “None of the victims were allowed to shower more than once a year.
“If the children were found to wash their hands above the wrist area, they were accused of playing in the water and they would be chained up.”
Recalling one of the first times she met one of the kids when they moved in next door, Shelly said: “I noticed how white her hands were.
“At first, I thought they were gloves. White gloves and I said, ‘I thought you had gloves on there for a minute!’”
“And she goes, ‘you wash to the wrist or else you’re wasting water’.”
Cryptic lyrics
While Jordan Turpin was able to escape and contact police to save her siblings eventually, it seems she’d been trying to cry out for help long before that day – but her cries had gone unheard.
Secret YouTube videos later surfaced of the 17-year-old Turpin daughter, who had somehow found a way to post her own singing videos under an alias, Lacey Swan.
Among the tracks she shared were ‘Where is the key’, ‘You blame me’, and ‘So weak’ – clearly revealing the teen’s torment long before it came to an end.
She made at least eight videos, with one posted just days before she escaped.
THE TURPIN 13: A TIMELINE OF EVENTS
1985: David and Louise Turpin marry, after meeting at their local church when David was in his early twenties and Louise was a young teen.
1988: The couple welcome their first child.
1992: They set up home in Fort Worth, Texas, where their son is born. David earns six figures working as an Engineer.
1998: Louise and her seven children disappear out of view, and she cuts ties with her worried family.
June 2001 & February 2003: Texas authorities interact with the family only on these two occasions – first time after a child is bitten by a dog, and the second time after their pig escaped and ate 55lb of the neighbour’s dog food.
October 2011: David and Louise Turpin renew their wedding vows at a Las Vegas chapel. They are accompanied by all of their children.
2014: The family move to Muir Woods Road, Paris, California – which will later be dubbed the ‘house of horrors’.
January 14, 2018: Jordan Turpin, then 17, escapes the home and calls 911 for help, which is when police enter the property. David and Louise Turpin are arrested on suspicion of child abuse and torture and later charged with 12 counts of torture, seven counts of abuse of a dependent, six counts of child abuse, and 12 counts of false imprisonment.
February 2019: David and Louise Turpin plead guilty to one count of torture, four counts of false imprisonment, six counts of cruelty to a dependent adult and three counts of wilful child cruelty.
April 2019: The couple are sentenced to life in prison, with the chance of parole after 25 years.
2021: Jennifer and Jordan Turpin speak out about their horrific experiences in an interview with Diane Sawyer.
2022: The Turpin siblings claim they were abused in a foster home after their rescue, and file two separate lawsuits.
‘Trained’ to keep secrets
From a young age, mum Louise was taught to keep secrets – and was abused herself, according to her sisters Teresa Robinette and Elizabeth Flores.
They were repeatedly sexually assaulted by their grandfather, something they say their mother knew about but she forced them go to because he would give her money to feed them.
Teresa recalls: “When we were younger we were very close… She was shy, quiet.
“We were trained to keep secrets and be quiet – we were taught to do that.”
Bedroom ‘like a barracks’
When the family upped and left, they often did so in a hurry.
When they sold their four-bed house in Fort Worth, Texas, the kids rooms were left filthy and ‘like barracks’ with ropes attached to the beds.
Neighbour Shelly and her daughter Ashley got their first glimpse in the house after the family moved out – and were shocked by what they saw.
Ashley said: “It was just filth and trash. The carpet had been ripped up, and plywood had been laid down.
“Even the plywood was stained and gross.
“The bedrooms where the kids had been living was set up like bunks – just like a barrack.
“How can it go unnoticed when you foreclose on a property?
“In my head, I’m thinking the police are going to get involved now.
“They will see this mess… They will do an investigation and finally find out what’s happening with these kids.”
Believing the authorities would step in, the Vineyards didn’t report what they saw.
David and Louise Turpin were then free to go on to not only have another child, but continue to escalate their abuse in their final home in Perris, South California.
‘How is that not a red flag?’
While the children were rarely seen out and about, when they were it was often at night doing household chores.
On another occasion they were spotted searching through the bins.
Louise’s half-brother Billy Lambert says: “There was another neighbour that came forward that said that two of the older boys were digging in the trashcans at night.
“To me, how is that not a red flag?”
Cell phone concern
Another telling clue there was something awry was the fact the older kids didn’t have mobile phones, and were uncontactable by concerned relatives.
When Louise’s sister Teresa became suspicious she was fobbed off, saying: “We started asking questions.
“Why do the older kids not have cell phones, why can’t we talk to them? Where are they?
“[Louise] told us the children were not interested in talking to the family.”
With the luxury of hindsight, all these signs clearly pointed towards a family in need of help long before the abuse was uncovered.
But clearly the couple were able to cover their tracks and without being able to join all the dots together, no one could have ever known the full extent of the horrors.
Which is sadly how they got away with it for so long.
