Authorities describe filth, depravity inside California home

PERRIS, Calif. — From the outside, the brown-and-beige four-bedroom home looked fairly orderly. The couple who owned it had purchased the house new in 2014 and soon arrived in this Los Angeles suburb with their 12 children.

They lived there quietly for at least three years and had another baby. Then on Sunday, one of the children, a 17-year-old girl, jumped out of a window and dialed 911 on a deactivated cellphone — per federal law, cellphones, even those that are no longer functional, must be able to call emergency services, said Capt. Greg Fellows with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Deputies met the girl nearby — she was so tiny that deputies initially mistook her for a 10-year-old — and she led authorities to what they described as a torture chamber.

Inside the home, sheriff’s deputies said they found 13 children ranging from 2 to 29 years old, some of them chained to furniture, all of them thin and malnourished. In fact, they told authorities they were starving.

When authorities confronted the girl’s mother, Louise Anna Turpin, sheriff’s Capt. Greg Fellows said she appeared “perplexed” about why officers had come to the home.

Turpin, 49, and her husband, David Allen Turpin, 57, were jailed on $9 million bail. They were scheduled for an initial court appearance on Thursday. Authorities said the pair could face charges of torture and child endangerment.

“If you can imagine being 17 years old and appearing to be a 10-year-old, being chained to a bed, being malnourished and injuries associated with that, I would call that torture,” Fallows said, explaining the possible charge.

He said there was no indication any of the children were sexually abused, although that was still being investigated.

Neither sheriff’s deputies nor child-welfare officials received a single call over the years about the Turpin home, he said.

The investigation, still in its early stages, has already begun to unravel a bizarre tale of a couple married 32 years who dressed their children alike, kept them away from outsiders and cut most of the boys’ hair in a Prince Valiantstyle resembling that of their graying father.

Videos posted on YouTube show the couple renewed their vows at the Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas at least three times in recent years, most recently on Halloween 2015. An Elvis impersonator performed the ceremony between songs. Most of the children, dressed in matching outfits, took part.

Numerous photos on the couple’s Facebook page show the children dancing at the ceremony, visiting an amusement park that appears to be Disneyland and going on other outings, looking thin but often smiling.

Although their home appeared nondescript from the outside, it was a stinking mess inside, Fellows said.

Deputies reported that the home was very dirty and reeked — a condition that Fallows called “horrific.”

State Department of Education records show the home’s address is the same as the Sandcastle Day School, where David Turpin is listed as principal. In the 2016-17 school year it had an enrollment of six with one student each in the fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, 10th and 12th grades.

Fellows told reporters there is no indication any student other than the couple’s children were enrolled there. He said six of those children are under 18.

No state agency regulates or oversees private schools in California, and they are not licensed by the state Education Department. Private-school operators are