Inside the depraved world of David and Louise Turpin | 60 Minutes Australia

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it's the picture of suburbia identical cookie-cutter homes sitting side-by-side a real-life Pleasantville where working-class mums and dads try to achieve the all-american dream or so you think under this roof in the middle of it all lived a secret depravity the worst of human behavior thinly disguised as one big happy family when you saw Louise's mugshot on TV did you recognize her as as your sister she looks so different you know you can look at someone in their eyes and you can kind of you know see a lot into them you know and with her you can it's just like she was dead inside and she was kind of had like a smirky grin that just that really made me mad on the 14th of January a 17 year old girl rang 911 to have escaped from this house in Paris California the 17 year old said she and her 12 siblings were held captive subjected to repeated abuse torture and starvation by the very people they should have trusted most their parents David and Louise Turpin they began to be tied up first with ropes and then using chains and padlocks what police found behind this closed door is beyond comprehension children chained to their beds others starve too near skin and bone a torture chamber covered in filth and the stench of rotting animals the abuse and severe neglect intensified over time and intensified as they moved to California but according to the person who knew Louise Turpin best her sister Teresa Robinette the horrific truth of this tragic situation can be traced back to a family secret that turned her once naive sibling into a cruel sadistic psychopath the circumstances of her child were pretty grim yeah how much of an impact do you think that's had on this outcome in my heart I feel like a big part of it you hear people say you know sometimes the abuse can't become the abuser but I just I'm so angry with her right now it's hard for me to give her any excuse you know when I think about my house I can still picture it the way it looked when she was alone Teresa and her brother Billy Lambert rarely come back here to their hometown of Princeton West Virginia despite its natural beauty it will always be the birthplace of the cycle of abuse that has forever tormented their family [Music] so this is where it all began for you yes where it all started and this is the house that you and Louise were brought up in yeah this looked like a happy home on the outside but inside it was miserable for you then being here now it's sad does it affect memories of love full anxiety hurt they must run very deep okay for Teresa the family home in Princeton is the original house of horrors if ever there was any defense of Louise Turpin's future abusive behavior toward her own children this is it as little girls she and Teresa were repeatedly sexually assaulted by their grandfather and worse still their own mother condoned and encouraged it Louise went through the same thing we went through with my grandfather which was probably the darkest hardest thing for any of us girls to deal with your grandfather abusing them oh yeah my mom would take us to him daily she was pretty much selling us for money to live on and that's how it is I mean I don't like saying it like that it breaks my heart but it is what it is you know I mean that's what it is he was taking it out on his granddaughter's that's almost unbelievable what people don't realize is you know like they did is house of horrors like that's where it all began the family were devout Pentecostal Christians and it was here at this church in the early 1980s that Louise met David Turpin she was barely a teen and he was in his 20s but the two fell in love and as soon as she turned 16 Louise seized an opportunity to escape her recurring nightmare at home by running away with David I used to pick on him all the time and joke with him because it was the deep the nerd the you know and I was like well Louise didn't marry handsome but she married rich she is anything she wants in the space of 15 years David and Louise had eight children raising them with military precision and routinely dressing them in uniform clothing from the outside the terpenes lived a life of wealth and success David was a highly paid engineer and they would fly the family including brother Billy to visit them every year you know we thought that she was she had the perfect life she had the perfect husband we thought that she was happy any time they wanted something they did it you know because we always saw pictures of them going to Disneyland or going to Las Vegas you kind of have to have money to keep going to Las Vegas face to face I thought they were just a normal happy family it's still unclear why but in 1998 something changed in the Turpin household Louise and David completely withdrew not only from their family but also from the outside world they were secretly bankrupt which meant an end to the yearly holidays and in the first of many strange signs they began to home-school all eight of their children Teresa also noticed that kids didn't look quite right there was Skype for a while and we would make comments I remember making the comment that they were all so little I remember Louise laughing it off and well they're just tall gonna be tall and lanky lanky like David you know but they didn't look so they looked healthy they just looked small I'm I think she clothes dim in a way that we couldn't see and I think when the question started she could on visual contact and just talk to us on the phone she was pretty cunning wasn't she yeah she went out of a way to keep it going yeah for a long time didn't you think it was strange and she was homeschooling all those kids yeah and you know her excuse to us was well the crime rates always bad or the kids are getting picked on too much and I don't like I'm feeling you know down on their selves she was committing the biggest crime he was doing the worst of it yeah what no one knew then but we all know now is this pretense of at home education was masking abuse behind closed doors I don't want to alarm people the people that are homeschooled but I mean maybe we could do a little bit more auditing for situations like that maybe we can learn that hey you know why is it that people are homeschooling their kids is it because it's best for the kids or is it because it's best to keep their secrets we've been sleeping in there okay why isn't normal ah can you move that out and open the door sadly in America what happened to the turpin 13 is not an isolated case Jaycee Dugard was 11 years old when in 1991 she was abducted by psychopath Phillip Garrido he repeatedly raped her and held her captive for 18 years the hidden backyard had sheds tents and outbuildings where Jesse and the girls spent most of their lives Alison Jacobs was the police officer who uncovered Garrido's sadistic crimes and says just like the terpenes he got away with the brutality for too long because his victim JC became conditioned to her reality and as frustrating as in law enforcement or anyone if the victims aren't asking for help because if they're not asking for help or giving any kind of clue there's something wrong how is anybody really to know with the turbines it's it's if the kids never said anything was wrong it may be they don't even think anything was how they were growing up that was their normal and they were perfectly fine with it but they conditioned are they from day one yes of course they're conditioned from day one they don't know anything different so why would they ask for help coming up a failed escape the kids horrible existence was almost uncovered when the oldest child plucked up the courage to run away suspicions raised evil is very deceptive it can look good from a surface if you don't get in there too deep but why didn't the neighbors act you two never thought for a moment to pick up the phone that's next on 60 minutes if ever there was a perfect place to hide a secret life from the world Rio Vista Texas is a standout choice rural properties separating neighbors by big yards this is another house of horrors in this sad sordid tale of the Turpin 13 by the year 2000 David Luiz and eight of their kids were living in this home isolated from family who they'd never see in person again behind closed doors their cruelty and severe neglect had well and truly begun to escalate what did you think Darla's couldn't be great our kids are finally gonna have some other kids to play with we're out the country where you know we we're by ourselves and lonely and you know we thought we were gonna have some nice neighbors Ricky and Shelly vineyard and their daughters Ashley and Barbara spent a decade living right across this gravel road from the terpenes in Rio Vista even with distance separating them it was clear there was something disturbing about their new neighbors Ashley would go over there and play them I think that she might have been the only friend that I ever had the other kids would make fun of them because they said they smelled bad they were dirty they had weird haircuts they wear wore weird clothes so at the staad she was allowed to play with him yes until it got weird and then I had to I had to pull her back I had come across two kids out there with Ashley one of the younger girls looked at the older girl and then I know just how wide her hands were at first I was thought they were gloves and I said oh I thought you had gloves on there for a minute and she goes you you wash to the wrist or else you're wasting water and the way she spoke was really you know strange like she might be a little slow she was telling you that she'd been told not to wash past her wrist above the wrist or you were wasting water when the terpenes came here to rural Texas I had eight children by the time they left 10 years later that added another four it was also here that the kids horrible existence was almost uncovered when the eldest child plucked up the courage to run away she was picked up a little way down this road by a neighbor but sadly due to the extreme malnourishment and her lack of education everyone simply thought she was mentally challenged and she was returned to her parents after that happened you started seeing the kids outside again during the daylight and in the evenings and then they'd pull them back in and then after a couple of weeks they withdrew them again you two never thought for a moment to pick up the phone and absolutely bring some thought about it but then again you're out in the country and you mind your own business and you figure they want their business kept to themselves also and you don't realize what you're seeing you know I mean evil is very deceptive I mean it can look good from a surface if you don't get in there too deep by 2010 as David and Louise terpenes secret perversions were beginning to become more obvious in Texas they moved across country to California what they left behind is something Ricky vineyard will never be able to erase from his memory we walked off into the house desks were lined up where they had a little home school they had a giant whiteboard but it the house smelled of funk the all of the the closets had padlocks the refrigerators had padlocks all the cabinets had padlocks everything in the house was locked down they had brand new bikes sitting on the carport and they just sat there and rotted never got played with yeah it was like like mental torture where you put the put the toy in front of a child but you can't play with it where babe it's yeah there were beds they were bunk beds but there there were ropes on the boat bunk beds some of them didn't even have mattresses anymore just looked like the mattresses had rotted there were dead cats while we were waiting through this mess there were rats jumping up I'd like to think I'm fairly clean but man I that right there was disgusting it was the house horror a true house of horrors you know it it was right up under our nose that we did we didn't see it in hindsight then you now think you definitely should have told someone absolutely oh yeah if we if we thought again we'd recognize it for what it is what that is per police officer Alison Jacobs is a missed opportunity to alert authorities to children in danger she should heal she should move on having saved kidnapping victim Jaycee Dugard back in 2009 she believes part of the responsibility lies with neighbors like the vineyards to raise the alarm if there's any fears or doubts it's a fine line and it's a very difficult gray area but it all comes back to not ignoring your gut humans have Graydon's instincts and intuition and we choose to ignore it and I don't know why do you feel a bit guilty now absolutely oh yes absolutely people are so afraid to be wrong if you call on your neighbor because you think something's a little suspicious and if someone follows up nothing's wrong well at least you tried you did your part that's all you can do is your part coming up searching for reasons why you reckon they've found some cult what else would make you do something like that that's just pure evil but a frantic phone call waits to help at last when you go through all the pion and all the rest to have 13 children and then treat them like that that's next on 60 minutes after settling in California in 2010 Louise Turpin now 47 years old gave birth to her and husband David's 13th child the domestic torture chamber was in full flight and even though several of the children were adults all 13 were really allowed out they were often chained to their beds fed once a day bathed once a year and had no communication with the outside world at the same time Teresa Robinette says her sister and David had been pulled into a vortex of new temptations including partying and sexual exploits louisa called me she just told me that her and david had walked away from the church they had been looking into other religions but then eventually they did dabble into witchcraft and i know that for a fact she even talked to me about it cuz i told her that you know that was a scary thing you reckon they found some cult that is something evil it had to be I mean you know because that where else you know what else would make you do something like that that's just pure evil how do you still might the leap from maybe being completely stupid in your private life to torturing and abusing your children see that's what I don't get I knew they were making some wrong choices but I never in a million years would have thought that it had anything to do with danger to the kids in the very early hours of January 14 this year David and Louise terpenes 17 year old daughter finally made a run for it it was an escape she'd been planning for more than two years she called 911 ected phone with the extraordinary story that she and all her siblings had been held captive by her parents she'd never seen a police officer didn't know what a hospital or medication was but her brave act meant finally the 13 prisoners were free neighbors say they are simply in shock seeing that the mother was perplexed as to why we were at that residence how literally lake was froze to my couch I could not believe what I was hearing that's crazy it was like a whole new family like it wasn't even the pit like it was a whole new that everything was a lie like that's the Mel was my first thought you know like everything everything was a lot but all the stories and the conversations and the hours of it was all it was all a lie all 13 victims were severely malnourished and mentally underdeveloped the terpenes 29 year old weighed just thirty seven kilos the 17 year old had the IQ of a first grader I thought they were isolated no friends came over no family came over I just can't understand that it went for so long without being recognized it's almost hard to believe but neighbors living just meters away denied any knowledge of the unfathomable conditions those children were living in for Louise's brother Billy that's something too difficult to accept I'm disappointed at the neighbors one had which said that they were marching in a circle at nighttime upstairs and they saw them in the window to me that seems a little strange right there I mean I would at least go knock on the door and be like is everything okay there was another neighbor that came forward that said two of the older boys were digging in the trash cans at night so to me how is that not a red flag all your nieces and nephews appeared to have been starved psychologically abused most certainly held captive in a various ways do you think your sister Louise is capable that sort of stuff she shocked us that's for sure if found guilty Louise and David Turpin faced 94 years in prison for their sick crimes their 13 children who are currently in the care of the state have already been dealt live sentences dealing with the psychological and emotional damage created by their wicked parents Teresa Robinette and Billy Lambert have only this voicemail from the waves left just two days before her arrest as the final memory of a sister they now say is dead to them when you go through all the pain and all the rest to have 13 children and then treat him like that I have said the same thing and what makes me so mad is you know we would ask her are you gonna have any more kids are you done and she would literally tell us like she wants 20 she don't care if she has 25 she's gonna keep having him till God won't give her anymore and so we can only be eternally grateful that she didn't have 20 oh yeah or 14 your sister has repeated the cycle of abuse hasn't she yes all the abuse together that she went through I think made her mind whatever her mind was um I think it destroyed her self-worth and made her think that that was okay maybe what does justice look like for your sister in my head there is no justice for what she's done to those babies so I really hope they're getting what they deserve in prison and that's just the way I look at it I have no I have absolutely no pity you happy to throw away the key yeah absolutely let them deal with her in there and David hello I'm Liam Bartlett thanks for watching so keep up with the latest from 60 minutes Australia make sure you subscribe to our Channel you can also download the 9 now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Info

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 906,071

Rating: 4.709609 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Tom Steinfort, Ellen Fanning, Peter Overton, Karl Stefanovic, Ray Martin, Peter Stefanovic, Jana Wendt, Jeff McMullen, Jennifer Byrne, Mike Munro, Richard Carleton, Tracey Curro, Paul Barry, Peter Harvey, Michael Usher, Ross Coulthart, George Negus, Ian Leslie, Gerald Stone, Sarah Abo, David and Louise Turpin, turpin thirteen, house of horror, california

Id: _lcPhyMb5cc

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 23min 15sec (1395 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2019

Reddit Comments

I have it on good authority that people with absurd hairstyles are not insane and it's nothing to be concerned about.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/CouchToad 📅︎︎ Apr 26 2019 🗫︎ replies

Not a single neighbor who is all out there on tv or talking to journalists about the neglect and abuse they saw has ever picked up the phone to call police or child protection.

👍︎︎ 5 👤︎︎ u/INFPgirl 📅︎︎ Apr 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

That poor sister! She seems so nice and kind. All the more commendable by the fact that she also suffered abuse, and it's not easy to overcome that.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/BaileysBaileys 📅︎︎ Apr 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

13 children who could have led normal lives, ruined.

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/Gem420 📅︎︎ Apr 27 2019 🗫︎ replies

This had me so shook.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/cletustcrickenberger 📅︎︎ Apr 26 2019 🗫︎ replies

It's hard to understand why this was not discovered. Don't American children have compulsory health check ups? And why is nobody checking up on home-schooled children?

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/HelenEk7 📅︎︎ Jun 05 2019 🗫︎ replies