“Get in your room.” Is probably a phrase a lot of us heard in our childhood and maybe today if we’re lucky. But to 13 children in California, it wasn’t so much a phrase, it was a way of life or sort of no life at all. The family we’re going to be talking about today, the Turpin family—who I keep accidentally calling the turnip family, probably because they kept their kids in the dark and fed them—were absolutely horrifying and it was only through the brave actions of one of the children that any of this came to light at all.
“Hi Jordan.” “Hi, what’s going on?” “I just ran away from home.” “Okay.” “I live in a family of 15.” “Okay.”
While we will go through it all and it is pretty dark, there is thankfully a light at the end of the tunnel. Now, you and I, let’s give it a go. To Perris, California and the Turpin family home we go. The little former railway city of Perris lies in Riverside County, a smidge over 70 miles from LA and the same smidge over 80 north of San Diego, part of the Inland Empire. And up until January 2018, Virginia Tech alum and former computer engineer David Turpin and his wife Louise, they were by most accounts, you know, on the outside, a pretty successful couple.
In addition to attending a prestigious school, David had worked for both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, two huge companies with national defense and infrastructure contracts. A god-fearing man with a dedicated wife and a fruitful life. But little did anybody know, if they just like scratch the surface like even just a tiny bit, they would have found a whole heap of evil. Like just evil below. Though, that haircut should have been a dead giveaway.
It was on January 14th, 2018 that 17-year-old Jordan Turpin was able to escape their house of horrors.
“I’m here to report a missing person. But the reason I called and the reason I managed to get out here this is one of the most scary things I’ve ever done. I’m terrified. But I called because my two little sisters, they’re chained up right now.”
“Do you have pictures of that?”
“Yes, I can show you.”
It had taken 2 years of preparation and a lot of bravery to leave that house. And she managed to dial 911 on an old cell phone. Police arrived and well, it all started to unravel from there on. The unraveling part, boy, that’s a doozy. But let’s get to, you know, what brought the story here.
“David, you may now kiss your beautiful wife.”
“Won’t you wear my ring around your neck to tell the world I’m yours by heck. Let them know he loves you so. And let them know by the ring around your neck.”
The parents at the center of this show, David and Louise, met way back when they were both students at Princeton High School in Princeton, West Virginia. Although they were far from classmates. In fact, they had an age gap of 7 years. David was born in 1961, making him 23 years of age when they got married. Louise was born in ’68, making her 16.
David and Louise had both been brought up in fairly strict and religious households. In fact, Louise’s sister would later reveal that Louise came from her own family situation was no good. There had been a lot of abuse in the house Louise grew up in, which was likely, you know, one of the reasons why she was so eager to escape and marry, just get away when she did, when she was only 16 years of age.
“She had this dream. She came from an abusive household. Didn’t she just want one of those abusive households of her own?”
David, bit of a nerdy fellow, was quite into Star Trek and he did well in school, but was sort of like completely unremarkable in every way. By the end of this story, he will be shittingly remarkable. Dave, you suck. His family were fairly well connected, as were Louise’s. Louise’s mother allowed the couple to date, all the while her father, Wayne, a preacher, knew nothing of their relationship.
Shortly after graduating Virginia Tech in 1984 with a bachelor’s in electrical and computer engineering, David would go to Princeton High, where Louise was attending school, and he would sign her out of school. She was in 10th grade. They then absconded all the way to Texas. That was until authorities caught up with this runaway couple.
“Come home, Louise. Come home.”
“Nope. She made her bed, she can go and live in that bed.”
Wayne even agreed to let Louise and David marry. They did so in a small, family-only ceremony in February 1985 in Pearisburg, Virginia. Again, he was 23 years old, herself 16. The couple claimed to be Pentecostal Christians, at first anyway. They did seem to bounce around and experimented with a few different lifestyles. The couple, nor their children, actually attended church. Didn’t even live near one.
The couple’s religious beliefs and standing was one of the main reasons they would go on and later have 13 kids together. David and his father both believed that God had called on them to have as many children as possible, and that each child was a blessing, which, okay, fair enough. And Dave also just loved whipping out the old hog arino any chance he could get. David and Louise’s oldest child, born in 1988, the youngest 2015, which is 3 years before this all unraveled.
“My two little sisters, they’re chained up right now.”
But a pretty big age gap. So, with his high level of education in computer electrical engineering, Dave had some great prospects, despite the haircut. While he and Louise were living together in Southern California in 1988, they had their first child, Jennifer. David had already found work with General Dynamics. It was a really well-paying job, especially for the time. In 1990, General Dynamics was bought out and incorporated into the giant defense contractor Lockheed Martin. As part of the subsequent restructuring, David was transferred to their Fort Worth facility.
In the decade after the Turpins moved to Texas, they would go on to have another five children. Joshua in ’92, Jessica in ’93, Jonathan in ’95, Joy in ’97, and Julian in ’98. Poor old Louise. Did not get a break there.
Now, during sort of all of this time, David was doing well in work. He was earning the big bucks. You know, having quite a lot of children, those dollars don’t stretch and they were never really living terribly comfortably. So, anytime there was discomfort approaching, kids will take care of that. Sure, they only lived a great life.
The thing with David is though, he couldn’t holster his dingaling. He also couldn’t holster his wallet. Despite their self-professed love of God, they each had their own dirty little vices and number one of which was compulsive gambling. These self-inflicted banking issues led to the couple filing a chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1992.
Now, in the summer of 1995, before child number four, Jonathan, was born, Louise’s sister, Elizabeth, she came and lived with the Turpins for a little bit of time. Elizabeth would later say, after spending this time with her sister and her brother-in-law and their growing family, she would later be like, “Wow. How many red flags did I miss?”
One of those red flags, by the way, was David watching her, his wife’s sister, in the shower. That’s not a red flag, that’s a skull and crossbones. Elizabeth was like really taken aback by how strict Louise and David were with their children at this time, to the point where the kids would, you know, if they had a plate of food in front of them, they couldn’t eat until the parents said it’s okay, like you would with a dog. None of them were allowed to speak unless spoken to first.
Again, at that point, Elizabeth would say, you know, when she was living with her sister, she’d only just graduated high school, she was pretty young and naive herself. So, the abuse, it didn’t seem as obvious as it would, you know, in hindsight, years down the road. It was also briefly during the couple’s time in Fort Worth that, like, only one of the kids briefly attended school. That was Jennifer. She didn’t attend for very, very long, and she was even bullied when she did attend school. First off, she was a couple of years older than the other kids in first grade because she’d never gone to school before, her hygiene was terrible. She was just bullied by all of the other kids who would say she smelled like pee-pee. She was sent to school in dirty clothes, she wouldn’t be allowed bathed for weeks.
Not a great time, and so none of the other kids would ever be sent to school. And it was in 1999 that the Turpins’ time in Fort Worth came to an end. It became worthless. See, in late 1998, the Turpins had received a notice from the bank of their intention to foreclose on their property. Because, remember, the Turpins, they were flashing the cash, but they were writing checks their ass couldn’t cash. And so, the family, now made up of David, Louise, and their six children—seven more to go—they up sticks and they moved 40 miles south to Rio Vista.
When the former Turpin home in Fort Worth was eventually sold, the new owners were shocked to find out just how bad the conditions of the property were. Not only was there an overwhelming stench seemingly coming from the rotten floors that were covered in dirt and stains, nearly all of the internal walls bore marks that appeared to be caused by feces.
Over the next few years, the treatment of the children in Rio Vista um, it didn’t get better. Can I shock you? It did not improve. It got worse and worse and worse, basically getting into like outright violence and truly evil sick territory. By 2004, the Turpin home now in Rio Vista was practically unlivable. I mean, literally unlivable. The smell of rot and just dirt and human waste in the house, it made it hard to breathe. Yet, David and Louise they were living their best life. They continued to collect children by banging. As disgusting as that is to think about these two doing anything like that.
They added Jeanetta in 1999, Jordan in 2000, James in ’01, Joanna in ’02, bringing now the running total to 10. Before their time at the Rio Vista property came to an end, David and Louise would add another two children to their ever-growing list, Jolinda in 2004 and Julissa in ’06.
Around the same time Julissa was born in ’06, David and Louise moved the 10 eldest of their now 12 children into a trailer deep on their Rio Vista property. Like literally what were they doing? They take 10 oldest of their 12 and moved them into a property in the middle of nowhere. Like Jennifer, she would later describe being told to live in this trailer with her nine siblings while she watched her parents just drive off abandoning them in this trailer in Texas.
David and Louise went to live in this rented apartment with their two youngest. For the kids, not at all. See, David and Louise, they thought they had all this figured out and once a week they would go to that trailer in the middle of nowhere and drop off groceries for the 10 kids for the week. It was never enough groceries. Despite the 10 kids’ best efforts to stretch it out, it was one meal a day and the already dire situation turned into a fight for survival when David and Louise, top-shelf, you know, five-star parents that they were, they would sometimes forget, you know, to drop off groceries to their kids.
And so, the kids were like, “Great.” Jordan, who was around 6 years old at the time, described a lack of food not being an occasional thing, but the standard for the majority of the children. When David and Louise missed a food drop, she and her siblings were forced to scavenge for whatever they could just to survive. That meant relying on packets of ketchup or mustard, even taking ice from the freezer just to stave off hunger pains.
Now, it was around that time that Jennifer, 17, the oldest, she managed to try and like make a break, you know, for freedom. A bid for freedom. She managed to get away. She even managed to hitch a ride from her neighbor, you know, into town. The neighbor—Everybody’s missing like red flags in this—also missed so many red flags despite seeing the appearance Jennifer was in. She was asking like, “Where can I get a job? Where can I get an apartment?” The neighbor was like, “Huh, I’ll tell you.”
Jennifer was eventually dropped off in town and she sort of just wandered around asking how to live a life, asking for help. She had no resources. She had no street smarts. She had never really been around other people and she eventually had to call her parents to take her home. Of course, she was punished when she got home.
And folks, in a heartwarming story that’s about to get that a little more heartwarming, you know, without any kids, David and Louise they didn’t have any kids from 2006 to 2015. So, they were thinking to themselves, “What could we do now to make ourselves the center of attention?” Renewing their vows. Three times.
“David, you may now kiss your beautiful wife.” “Love me tender. Love me sweet. Never let me go. You have made my life complete and I love you so.”
Once in 2011, once in 2013, and once in 2015. David and Louise would make the most of these trips and take a bunch of propaganda style photos that North Korea would be jealous of. With the kids in brand new clothes. Clothing that would be immediately taken away from them once they were back behind closed doors.
The couple also had this strange obsession with Disney and would take trips to Disneyland to indulge themselves, all the while taking plenty of pictures of the kids looking happy for the gram. Some of those pictures posted to social media really do look like the kids are being held hostage, which they ostensibly were.
Upon the Turpins suddenly leaving the Rio Vista property, their former neighbors were drawn to the location by the yelps and barks of the Turpins’ two dogs, two Chihuahuas. Now, at this point, no one knew that the Turpins had upped and left permanently. All they knew was that the dogs had been left to their own devices, abandoned, and there was no way they would survive on their own. Expecting to feed the dogs, maybe, you know, while the Turpins are away, and then leave, the neighbors were met with a much more interesting sight than that, which was dead animals all over the place, rotting food, rotting everything. The dogs were alive, barely. They’d only survived by like eating scraps and eating like used diapers the Turpins were just thrown around the place. The remains of several dead cats also decorated the property. But maybe the most concerning thing that the neighbors found on the Turpin property were the bunk beds, which had ropes and restraints attached to them. It was disgusting and foul a scene as anybody could imagine.
The Turpins moved to Murrieta, California in 2010 when David decided to retire after busting his balls his entire life. And by this point, right, you’re going to like this, Louise had become obsessed with reality TV to the point where she wanted, boom, her own show. It was partly her desire to be famous that moved the family back to California. Like Louise wanted to live near Hollywood. Wow, maybe she can be famous, too. Maybe by some kind of osmosis, by just being in the area, it’ll happen to her, too. I mean, if you look at her, she definitely has a chance to play in a movie or in a TV show a serial killer or a child molester, because she’s got them Manson lamps for days.
And despite the move, the children’s conditions never improved. In fact, they probably only continued to deteriorate. The excuse about the Turpins’ finances possibly being one of the reasons they deprived their children of food, clothing, and toys, really went right out the window when authorities, much later, discovered brand new toys and other luxury items, including bikes, still packaged and unused.
When the children were much later asked by the authorities about all these expensive luxury items that they would find in the house, the children would say, “Oh, yeah, David and Louise, our parents, they would just check it out. Look at this new bike. You’re not allowed to have it. In fact, you’re not allowed to touch it.”
David and Louise would even do that to their 13 children with food. They would “Oh, pie. Ooh, ooh, look at this. Ooh, doesn’t it smell amazing? You’re not allowed to eat it, and if you touch it, we will beat you.”
This is just pure sadism, torture for torture’s sake at this point. Totally outrageous like cruelty and psychological torture. It would later be revealed that after shortly after, around the time of the California move from Texas to California, David attempted to sexually assault one of his own daughters, only being stopped when Louise walked in.
Punishments in the house went far further than being taunted with food and toys. The children had, at all times, been subjected to physical violence that included being hit and struck with various household items. A belt. When the belt strap wasn’t enough, David and Louise would use the buckle. They were hog-tied. They were choked. David and Louise would tie the children to the beds, first with ropes, and eventually, chains. Actual chains. The children would later report having been chained to their beds for days, weeks, even months on end. There was 13 of the kids. They weren’t even allowed to be free to use the toilet, being forced to like wet themselves.
In 2014, the family finally landed in Riverside County, Perris, California, which would be the final home the family would share before being broken up. Shortly after the move to California, David applied to have the family home registered as a private school, so he and Louise could home school the kids. David registered the Turpin residence as the Sandcastle Day School with a student body of six in 2016-2017. All of those six kids were of course who else? Him and Louise’s. The Turpin’s neighbors would say they rarely, if ever, saw the kids, never saw many of them like at the same time.
And that brings us to January 14th, 2018, when 17-year-old Jordan Turpin escaped from the family home. It’s hard to put into words how brave her actions were, to be able to take action despite years and years of conditioning. It was all she knew. And then there was a possibility of torture as a punishment if she was caught. By the time Jordan escaped, an escape plan had been sort of percolating for about 2 years by this point. And as Jordan, she would later tell the authorities, David and Louise were very, very careful to restrict children’s access to outside information, to the internet. So, the children didn’t even realize like oh, there’s an outside world where you can go and you hopefully hopefully won’t be tortured.
Jordan was spurred into action after hearing about her parents. They were like debating the possibility of moving to Oklahoma. And Jordan said, “Over my dead body.” But it was also a move that would just have isolated her and the whole family even further from any possible escape attempt. Also, Louise had recently threatened to kill Jordan, so that was kind of probably not a good idea to hang around. I mean, Jordan didn’t know if she would follow through on that threat, but she didn’t want to, you know, tempt fate and said, “I’m out of here.”
17-year-old Jordan initially fled beside her younger sister Jessica, who was 13 years old at the time, but after escaping Jessica went back to the house. She was too scared. She was too conditioned. So, Jordan fled by herself. Alone, Jordan committed to reaching out. The idea of being freed, however tiny the chance might be, was too good to turn away from. The moment of her bid for freedom was caught on CCTV cameras near the home.
In the run-up to her escape, Jordan had been gifted an old cell phone, like previously owned by one of her older brothers. As far as she knew at the time, the device was absolutely useless for calling numbers, but it did have Wi-Fi capability. And so, this whole a whole new world That was all there for Jordan. She finally had access to the real world. But, of course, her parents had only let her access that under their careful supervision. But, she was able to figure out a way to access the internet without them using a fake name.
She created a YouTube channel under the name Lacy Swan. She uploaded videos of herself singing.
“Hello, it’s me, Lacy Swan. This is a song I wrote. It’s over. I was wrong. It was never meant to be. We seemed so close, but we were so far. We didn’t even know.”
And through some social media accounts, she managed to connect with people all over the world, finally learning that the way she was being treated her whole life was abuse. She posted these videos to YouTube. She’d posted about eight before she escaped. The last one just a few days before she fled the home. Jordan had been fantasizing about being free. Then, after a little chat with an online friend in India, Jordan discovered what a police officer was. She had never heard of the thing. And then she realized and was informed that though her phone couldn’t like make calls, cell phones, it could still call police, which is a legal obligation all phones have to be able to dial 911 no matter if they’re connected or no. And that’s exactly what she did when she fled.
“I’m here to report a missing person.” “I want to know where you are right now.” “Um I just ran away from home because I live in a family of 15. And two of my little sisters right now… and I just ran away from home.” “Okay, do you know where you are?” “Um, I’m actually in California, Perris.” “Do you know what street you’re on?” “Um, no, but—” “Do you see any signs or anything like any street signs?” “No, I don’t.” “What’s your name?” “Jordan Turpin.” “Do you need my address?” “Yeah, what’s your address?” “Okay, you got… give me a minute. This is going to take a while. Sometimes we live in filth and sometimes I wake up and I can’t breathe because of dirty the house is. We never take baths. I don’t know if we need to go to the doctor, but sometimes we think stuff might be wrong with us and we tell mother and she just says, ‘Go on.'” “When was the last time you had a bath?” “Uh… I don’t know, almost a year ago.” “Hi Jordan.” “Hi, what’s going on?” “Okay. I just ran away from home.” “Okay.” “And I live in a family of 15.” “Okay.” “There’s a mother, father and then there’s 13 kids.” “How old are the kids?” “Okay, some of them are like… Okay, my oldest sister is 29, the youngest is two.” “And they all live in the house?” “Yes. Even your 29-year-old sister?” “Oh, yeah. They’re kind of scared to ask to move out because of their mother. Some of them have asked for a job before, and she acts like that’s crazy, that it would never happen. But, um our parents are abusive. They abuse us. But the reason I called, and the reason I managed to get out here this is one of the most scariest things I’ve ever done. I’m terrified. But I called because my two little sisters, they’re chained up right now, and they—” “Do you have pictures of that?” “Yes, I can show you. I actually didn’t have them, and then one of my sisters told me I need to get pictures.” “You have pictures of your sisters chained up?” “Yes, but they’re… I don’t have proof of everything, but I have proof that my sisters are chained up. So, see, you can look at them. See, those are the places that make them look like this. See how dirty she is? We are so filthy. We don’t take baths. We don’t…” “How did your sisters get like this?” “Oh, she… Your parents chained them up?” “Yes, because they stole food.” “Okay.” “But they stole it cuz they were hungry. I’m sorry if I talked too much.” “Okay.” “I’ve never talked to anybody out there, so this is very hard for me to talk.” “Okay. Do your parents know you left your house?” “No, they don’t. I’m sick.” “Do you take any medication?” “What’s medication?” “Medication? Yeah, what’s medication? Do you take pills?”
With Jordan safe in the cruiser, the deputy called for his colleagues to meet him at the Turpin property. It took several minutes for David and Louise to respond. They spent unchaining their daughters from their beds just in case. They didn’t have time to unchain the third child who had been shackled though.
“We got a call that there was a young female walking around saying that she came from a house over here. We were able to find out that this was a house we wanted to check and make sure everybody was okay. That’s what she said.” “I think so.” “Otherwise we wouldn’t be knocking on your door on Sunday. I don’t know what she said her name is. I don’t know them but we just need to check and make sure everybody is okay.” “How many kids do you have?” “13.” “13? Total?” “Yeah.” “You guys are busy.”
The officers were careful not to implicate Jordan as being the one who escaped and had called them about this. Despite Louise continually asking who had called them to their home. As the officers entered, David meekly piped up asking about a warrant to which the deputy informed him they did not need one. That is until they found the child David and Louise hadn’t managed to unchain in time.
“All right. Let’s just go ahead and detain the parents. Ma’am, why don’t you step over here for a minute? Mhm. All right. Okay. With you. And sir, step over here for a second. Yes. Just step over with my partner here for a second. Do you have any weapons on you?” “No.” “Turn around real quick. I’m going to check you out.”
The two were placed in cuffs, the children were rounded up, and the immediate investigation began. The state of the children was as shocking as the conditions they’d been living in. All of them were drastically underweight and physically underdeveloped. 29-year-old Jennifer weighed just over 80 lb. The 12-year-old child’s arm measured what would be expected of a 4-month-old. Like Jordan had displayed in her contact with deputies, all the other children had serious issues with communication due to their lack of education and interactions with the outside world. All of them had a limited vocabulary, making gathering evidence and witness statements very difficult.
On January 18th, the Riverside County DA announced a huge slew of charges against the Turpin parents. The list was long and only expected to grow, beginning with 12 counts of torture and 12 counts of false imprisonment relating to each of the couple’s children, excluding only the youngest infant who was 3 years of age.
As part of a plea deal with prosecutors that aimed to avoid having to call on the Turpin children to testify in front of their parents, on February 22nd, 2018, both David and Louise retracted their original not guilty pleas and instead agreed to plead guilty to one count of torture, three of willful child abuse, four of false imprisonment, and six counts of cruelty to a dependent adult. In response to the guilty pleas, albeit to a reduced range of charges, the court imposed a sentence of 25 years to a life on each of the convicted Turpins.
And despite everything, the couple did have its defenders. Shockingly, there were people who argued the sentence was too harsh, including some of their own children. I mean, their parents were all they knew. Statements read out in court from several of the children gave updates on their lives since the escape. Mainly, how successful each had been in the short space of time they’d been living apart from their parents.
“I don’t want any sentence to be or depressed because I love all did. I want them to know that mom and dad are going to be okay. I also want them to know I believe God has a special plan for each of them. I really look forward to the day I can feed them breakfast and tell them I’m sorry.”
In the immediate aftermath of the rescue, the children were kept in hospital for almost 2 months where they had a variety of health issues. Namely, malnutrition.
“I think the favorite new experience for them is moving into new bedrooms where they have been able to pick out their own bedding, have closets with their clothes in them, be able to have a bathroom right handy that they can use, and probably most of all just to go outside.”
Following the stay in hospital, the younger Turpins were divided between a couple of foster homes. But the medical treatments went on. Due to the poverty of conditions they’d been held in, the children were not only underdeveloped to look at, they were equally so internally. Some even had heart issues caused from starvation.
And just when you think things are okay, one of the most depressing parts of the story is that when five of the youngest Turpins were placed into a variety of foster homes, some of the foster homes they were sent to were no better than their parents. There would be cases of abuse against these vulnerable kids who had escaped out of the frying pan into the fire. These foster parents would abuse some of the Turpins. It was horrifying stuff. After everything they’d been through, they then get placed by the state into these psychopaths and predators.
The foster parents convicted of abusing multiple children in their care, including several of the Turpin children, were sentenced today. Rosa and Lennys Olguin got probation. Marcelino Olguin, who was also convicted of sexual assault, was sentenced to prison. A victim impact statement written by one of the victims, identified only by the initials JT, was read out loud in the courtroom.
“I always felt that I was nothing but a problem to the family because of the amount of times it was told to me and how I was treated.”
And the Turpin children’s fight still hadn’t ended. In the wake of their plight becoming public, significant funds had been donated to help them move on with their lives. But, it was later revealed in 2021, almost 3 years after being freed, that those funds still remained unavailable to them despite the children having made attempts to request help. Joshua Turpin just asked for enough money to buy himself a bike to be able to get around, but the request was denied. And the funds that the public had raised for the Turpin kids, it was like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then three years later, they can’t even get the money.
Well, eventually there was a lawsuit in 2022. The Turpins, their supporters, even the DA was on the Turpin kids’ side to get the money that had been raised for them that they needed because these are kids who have nothing.
As of 2026, both parents remain incarcerated. And given the brutality of what they did, I think it’s highly unlikely that they will ever be free. Which is great. Honestly, I hope they are having a stellar time in prison. And what’s so scary about this case is like if Jordan hadn’t escaped, if the Turpins hadn’t moved all the way to Oklahoma, we would likely never be hearing about this. Like they could still be in that prison in that somewhere in the middle of nowhere, still in prison.
And then you think like, is this happening to other families? Are there other situations of this? Yes, probably are. I mean, what I’m thinking about is about a year ago, I covered the Ruiner Walt case. Um I had a situation very, very similar to this happened in the Netherlands. You know, again, psycho family, psycho dad had this whole family he kept hidden. Both cases are messed up. Uh no way, no. But thankfully, things seem to be getting better for the Turpins, but it took long enough. I hope they’re doing good. Brave of me to say, I know. And folks, that’s where we will leave it with this old one. Thank you so much for watching. Means the world to me that you are here. I’ll see you in the next one whenever it’s up. Um But until then, you know, just take care of each other and yourselves, as always. That’s all I ask cuz I love you. Like you.
