VAMPIRE CHILDREN
Ten girls. Three boys. Living in a quiet suburban road. Now, after US police found them shackled and starving, neighbours admit they only saw them at night looking pale and thin — and even scavenging for food in bins...
even know there were children inside the house. Others, who did see them, dubbed them ‘vampire children’ as they only emerged at night and always looked drawn and deathly pale. Some say they saw them scavenging in bins, probably looking for food.
Until now, neither police nor social services had ever needed to visit the home.
The Turpins bought their fourbedroom home in 2014 for $351,000 (£254,000) having spent most of their 30 years of marriage in Texas. Perris is some 70 miles south-east of Los Angeles and is just recovering from the wave of bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures that swept through it during the economic crisis a decade ago.
The Turpins had been struggling themselves financially as they raised their huge family. They had filed twice for bankruptcy, most recently in 2011, stating in court papers they were up to $500,000 (£362,000) in debt. At the time, David Turpin, 57, had a $140,000 (£101,000) job as an engineer at the defence industry giant Northrop Grumman.
Ivan Trahan, a bankruptcy lawyer who acted for the Turpins, described them as ‘very nice people who spoke highly of their children’. He said the couple, who in 2011 had been spending $1,000 more a month than Mr Turpin earned, had never seemed particularly upset about going into bankruptcy. Mrs Turpin didn’t bother trying to get a job and remained at home with the children.
Neither of the parents has a documented criminal record. Police cannot say yet whether their treatment of their children was related to their religious views.
David Turpin’s parents, James and Betty Turpin, insisted yesterday they were ‘ surprised and shocked’ at the allegations.
Not that they seemed to know much about their son’s family other than what he told them. His parents, who live in West Virginia, said they had not visited the family for four or five years but had spoken to their son and daughter-inlaw – but never their grandchildren – on the phone.
They insisted they were a happy family and went on regular holidays together, holding passes to California’s Disneyland theme park. Betty Turpin admitted, however, that the last time they saw the children, they looked thin.
They described their son and his wife as very religious. David had told them he had so many children because ‘God called on them to’, they said.
The grandparents said the children were given a very strict schooling at home, and had to memorise long Bible passages.
According to Betty, the children’s parents made them dress alike for safety reasons. She describes how the children would line up according to age, and one parent would walk at the front of the line, with another at the back. ‘It was easier to keep up with the kids that way,’ she said.
Safety concerns wouldn’t explain, however, why the children were given identical haircuts, the girls all wearing long hair parted in the middle and the boys saddled with
They were given identical haircuts
the same comical mop top sported by their father. They also all appear to have been given names beginning with a J, perhaps a tribute to Jesus or maybe even to the Old Testament’s Joseph, who is believed to have had 12 siblings.
‘They were very protective of the kids. This is a highly respectable family,’ said Betty Turpin.
However, Louise Turpin’s sister was not nearly so positive. Elizabeth Jane Flores said she hadn’t seen her sister for 19 years.
While they talked on the phone, the Turpins did not let their relatives Mrs after ‘ about Something Turpin’s visit they her parenting them, flew parents didn’t out not to their but seem even see I address giving would them. right never like have this,’ expected said Ms it to Flores, be anything a mother of seven and Christian motivational speaker. ‘We have been so worried about them because it’s been so strange but there was nothing we could do. My sister never let us talk to her kids. She wouldn’t even accept my Facebook request. We all wondered what was going on. My parents booked them but several when flights they got to go there see they wouldn’t tell them where to go and my parents left crying every time. They died before they got to see them again. It’s just heartbreaking.’ Possibly in an attempt to avoid official scrutiny of their education arrangements, the Turpins started their own private school – the Sand Castle Day School – at their home. David Turpin was the principal but neighbours say they never saw any other children coming to the Turpin home. Locals considered the Turpin family anything but normal – but not so abnormal as to warrant alerting the authorities.
The middle-class neighbourhood is made up of modern houses sitting behind well-kept front lawns, and the Turpins’ home, which had a people carrier and three fairly new VWs in the drive when police arrived, didn’t scream poverty.
However, neighbours say they barely saw the children. Andria Valdez said the youngsters reminded her of the vampire family in the Twilight films and books. ‘They only came out at night. They were really, really pale,’ she said.
Kimberly Milligan, who lives opposite, wondered why – if there were so many children in the house – they never came out to play. The parents, she said, were ‘standoffish’.
Two years ago, she went outside to find some of the Turpin children putting up Christmas lights. She said hello to them and ‘they looked at us like a child who wants to make themselves invisible’, she said. ‘They were terrified.’ She said she had seen so little of the children that she ‘wouldn’t be able to pick them out of a line-up’.
Wendy Martinez, another neighbour, recalled seeing four of the children outside late one night last October, on their hands and knees working on the lawn. She saw Mrs Turpin and said ‘Hi’ to the family.
She said: ‘There was like no movement, not even to look over to see who’s saying “Hi”,’ she recalled. It appears the children were not complete prisoners in their home. Mrs Martinez said she saw one of the older girls driving down the road a month ago in a VW Jetta.
‘They’re mobile. I don’t understand why they would wait so long to say something,’ she said.
For all their alleged horrific treat- ment of their children, the Turpins outwardly portrayed themselves as a loving, caring family. On their Facebook page are pictures of several family trips to Disneyland.
The children appear thin in the photos but not alarmingly so, although they certainly don’t look remotely as old as they really are.
A series of videos posted on social media show the couple renewing their marriage vows at the Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas. They did it not once but three times, in 2011, 2013 and 2015.
These supremely tacky affairs were presided over by an Elvis impersonator who peppers the ceremonies with references to Elvis songs, and frequent musical breaks.
The children joined them in the two most recent ceremonies, the girls both times clad in identical pink and purple plaid dresses, while the three boys wore black dinner jackets and magenta ties. Mrs Turpin wears a white wedding dress and her husband, in black dinner jacket, cannot contain his emotion, frequently dabbing his eyes.
The children all manage to smile and applaud their parents’ gooey embraces but they look ill at ease when the Elvis impersonator tries to get them to dance along. In an apparent illustration of their social isolation, none of them appear to know even how to click their fingers. The impersonator, Kent Ripley, said yesterday that ‘nothing seemed unusual’ about the family ‘apart from the fact there was a lot of them’.
On their last visit, he crooned the Elvis hit Memories and told the children: ‘ Thank you for making me a very special part of your memories.’
As Americans try to understand how such appalling abuse appears to have happened for years under the noses of family, neighbours and the authorities, perhaps another Elvis classic – Suspicious Minds – would have been more appropriate.
‘Several trips to Disneyland’