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Summary
Summary
From New York Times bestselling true crime author John Glatt comes the devastating story of the Turpins: a seemingly normal family whose dark secrets would shock and captivate the world.
On January 14, 2018, a seventeen-year-old girl climbed out of the window of her Perris, California home and dialed 911 on a borrowed cell phone. Struggling to stay calm, she told the operator that she and her 12 siblings--ranging in age from 2 to 29--were being abused by their parents. When the dispatcher asked for her address, the girl hesitated. "I've never been out," she stammered.
To their family, neighbors, and online friends, Louise and David Turpin presented a picture of domestic bliss: dressing their thirteen children in matching outfits and buying them expensive gifts. But what police discovered when they entered the Turpin family home would eclipse the most shocking child abuse cases in history. For years, David and Louise had kept their children in increasing isolation, trapping them in a sinister world of torture, fear, and near starvation.
In the first major account of the case, investigative journalist John Glatt delves into the disturbing details and recounts the bravery of the thirteen siblings in the face of unimaginable horror.
Author Notes
English-born JOHN GLATT is the author of more than twenty-five books including The Lost Girls and My Sweet Angel , and has over thirty years of experience as an investigative journalist in England and America. He has appeared on television and radio programs all over the world, including Dateline NBC, Fox News, A Current Affair, BBC World News, and A&E Biography.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
On a January day in 2018, an emaciated teenage girl in Perris, Calif., escaped from the home where she and her 12 siblings were cruelly and systematically abused. Writing in a candid, unemotional prose style, bestseller Glatt (The Lost Girls) tells the devastating story of Louise and David Turpin, who, following their daughter's 911 call, were charged with numerous counts of torture, imprisonment, and "willful child cruelty" inflicted against their children, who ranged in age from two to 29. Glatt unflinchingly details the victims' home circumstances, including being chained to their beds, beaten, starved, and deprived of contact with the outside world. Unsettlingly, the Turpins behaved in a normal, at times lighthearted way in front of outsiders; the children's experiences beyond the confines of home were restricted to bizarre family trips to Disneyland and to Las Vegas, where the couple routinely renewed their wedding vows. Whatever initial empathy one may feel for Louise-victimized herself as a child-dissipates as the narrative becomes less a depiction of traumatic reenactment and more an exploration of senseless depravity. This chilling portrayal of abuse and secrecy may leave readers looking differently at their neighbors. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Horrific account of a headline-making case of criminal abuse that shook a California community.The clich screams out at the beginning: They seemed to be such normal people, and, as a neighbor said, "nobody here knew they had twelve kids.I thought there was just one or two." The 13 children in the Turpin household in an otherwise ordinary Southern California suburb, though, were anything but normal. They were held captive in their home for years, beaten, chained to furniture, sexually abused, forbidden to wash, fed a diet of frozen burritos and peanut butter or bologna sandwiches meal after meal. Infractions that merited corporal punishment included playing with toys or looking out the window. The children had never been to a dentist. The parents/perpetrators had themselves experienced abuse and trauma, a family history that Glatt (The Lost Girls: The True Story of the Cleveland Abductions and the Incredible Rescue of Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus, 2015, etc.) traces over generations. There were exceedingly odd twists. The parents bought their children 10 brand-new, expensive bicycles and then "lined them up under the carport with the price tags on the handlebars and stickers on the wheels for all the neighbors to see"but forbade the children from leaving the house to play with them. The story is creepy, with a few twistse.g., after they were freed, it developed that the children were musically adept, singing being one of the few things they could do in captivity. Train-wreck attention-getter that it is, the book is longer than the story warrants, and it calls out for comparative treatmentfor case studies of similar crimes, that is, and any conclusions that can be drawn about the perpetrators other than that they're monstrous, which seems abundantly clear from the first page.It's hard to imagine wanting to read such a story, but devotees of true crime will be drawn to this narrative. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Veteran true-crime writer Glatt (The Lost Girls, 2015) spares no gruesome detail in this nightmare-inducing account of the 13 siblings, aged 2 to 29, held captive by their parents. Louise and David Turpin chained some of their offspring to beds or locked them in cages. They homeschooled them, allowed showers just once a year, and fed them just one lousy meal a day. Strangely, they took the children, whose names all started with the letter J, to Disneyland and to Las Vegas, where they renewed their vows in the Elvis chapel. They also photographed them wearing Dr. Seuss Thing 1 through Thing 13 T-shirts. After Louise turned 40, the once-religious couple stopped attending church and started drinking, gambling, having affairs, and escalating their brutality towards their children. Finally, in January 2018, 17-year-old Jordan climbed out a window of the family's southern California home and called 911. Glatt's thoroughly researched and thoroughly disturbing book ends without an epilogue. The parents pled guilty to 14 felony counts, including cruelty, torture, and false imprisonment, and were sentenced to 25 years-to-life.--Karen Springen Copyright 2019 Booklist
Library Journal Review
In January 2018, a 911 call led to the discovery of the Turpin siblings, 13 children and adults between the ages of two and 29, who were being held and tortured by their parents inside a suburban family home in California. The story was horrifying, even more so because the physical, verbal, and psychological abuse had continued for so long without anyone suspecting. The children lived in filth--they were fed once a day, denied schooling and proper hygiene, and chained to their beds for weeks or months. The parents, Louise and David Turpin, bought the children expensive gifts they couldn't play with and tortured them with pies that grew moldy on the counter while the children were forbidden to touch them. Most distressingly, Louise and David didn't seem to understand what they were doing was wrong; in fact, they dreamed of starring in their own reality TV series. Glatt (The Lost Girls; My Sweet Angel) compellingly delves into the history of the sexual abuse Louise suffered as a child and discusses the psychology of abuse survivors. VERDICT The Turpins' recent guilty plea to 14 counts of torture and child abuse makes this a timely account for true crime fans.--Deirdre Bray Root, formerly with MidPointe Lib. Syst., OH
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. vii |
| Prologue | p. 1 |
| Part 1 The Seeds of Evil | |
| Chapter 1 King Turpin | p. 11 |
| Chapter 2 "He's So Creepy" | p. 18 |
| Chapter 3 The Honor Student | p. 24 |
| Chapter 4 The Runaways | p. 36 |
| Part 2 The Family | |
| Chapter 5 "I Thought Their Life Was Perfect" | p. 47 |
| Chapter 6 Meadowcreek Elementary School | p. 52 |
| Chapter 7 Rio Vista | p. 67 |
| Chapter 8 DL4EVER | p. 78 |
| Chapter 9 Lord of the Flies | p. 86 |
| Chapter 10 "Sow Those Wild Oats" | p. 91 |
| Chapter 11 Murrieta | p. 100 |
| Chapter 12 "So Many Little Bright-Eyed Dreamers" | p. 109 |
| Chapter 13 "Louise Turpin Is a Super Mom" | p. 115 |
| Chapter 14 Viva Las Vegas | p. 122 |
| Chapter 15 Perris | p. 129 |
| Chapter 16 "May You Be Blessed with More Children" | p. 141 |
| Chapter 17 Things 1 to 13 | p. 149 |
| Chapter 18 "Where Is the Key?" | p. 156 |
| Part 3 The Magnificent Thirteen | |
| Chapter 19 Rescue | p. 165 |
| Chapter 20 God Called on Them to Have So Many Children | p. 177 |
| Chapter 21 "I Would Call That Torture" | p. 188 |
| Chapter 22 "This Is Depraved Conduct" | p. 201 |
| Chapter 23 "We Stand United with the Turpin Children" | p. 209 |
| Chapter 24 Family Secrets | p. 218 |
| Chapter 25 Learning to Fly | p. 224 |
| Chapter 26 "She's Living in a Fantasy World" | p. 235 |
| Chapter 27 A New Life | p. 241 |
| Chapter 28 "My Two Little Sisters Are Chained Up!" | p. 258 |
| Chapter 29 "She Was Terrified of Her Mother" | p. 275 |
| Chapter 30 "Cruel and Unusual Punishment and Extreme Pain" | p. 291 |
| Chapter 31 "There's a Plethora of Evidence" | p. 301 |
| Epilogue | p. 308 |
