A Californian couple were on Friday jailed for at least 25 years after admitting to imprisoning and torturing 12 of their 13 children in a grisly “House of Horrors” case that shocked the world.
David Allen Turpin, 57, and his wife, Louise Anna Turpin, 50, had pleaded guilty to 14 felony counts — including cruelty, false imprisonment, child abuse and torture of their children aged three to 30.
In an emotionally wrenching hearing, several of the children professed continued love for their parents.
Photo: AFP
“I never intended for any harm to come to my children,” David Turpin told the court in Riverside.
The case came to light last year when one of the children escaped through a window from the couple’s home and called emergency services.
Excerpts of the call released during court proceedings showed that she told the dispatcher that two of her siblings were chained to their beds so tightly that their skin was bruised and that she struggled to tell the operator the home address.
“I’ve never been out. I don’t go out much,” the teenager said in the call.
She told responding officers that the house was so dirty that she was unable to breathe, and that she and her siblings never took baths.
“They chain us up if we do things we’re not supposed to,” she said. “Sometimes, my sisters wake up and start crying [because of the pain].”
An officer who interviewed the teenager after her escape said that she was so emaciated that he thought at first that she was a child.
He said that the girl described a routine in which the children were forced to sleep 20 hours a day and in the middle of the night ate a combination of lunch and dinner that most often consisted of peanut butter sandwiches, chips and microwaved food.
One of the older children also told investigators that the couple would lock him and his siblings in cages as punishment and beat them with paddles.
Since their rescue, the children have been in the care of child and adult protective services.
Investigators said it is unclear what prompted the abuse.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion