How Suburban Design Enabled the Turpins’ House of Horrors
In January 2018, the world responded with shock and horror when one of the worst cases of child abuse in America was exposed. Thanks to a brave young woman who managed to escape her home with a deactivated cell phone, she and her 12 siblings were freed from conditions so awful, their home was dubbed “the house of horrors.”
The girl, who was 17 at the time, jumped out of a window and ran away before calling 911. She told the operator a story so disturbing, it was almost unbelievable: a home so filthy she couldn’t breathe, that she and the other children weren’t allowed to bathe, and that their parents — David and Louise Turpin — kept them chained up in their rooms and beat them. When asked, the girl didn’t know her address because, as she said, she “didn’t get out much.”
Police who responded to the call arrived at what looked like a normal — if somewhat overgrown — suburban home. The terracotta-colored stucco and faux-Spanish roof tiles weren’t the only false facades, however. Inside, police found a house piled with clutter and filth; the odor of decay was overpowering.
Then, in rooms that looked like military barracks, they found the girl’s siblings, dirty and emaciated from hunger — and some of them were chained to their beds in their own waste. The children were so small that police at first assumed they were all underage, but later would find out that seven of them were over 18.
Once they were safely out, the siblings told of horrific physical abuse at the hands of their parents. They were kept imprisoned 20 hours a day and forbidden to bathe. They were beaten for such crimes as stealing food or “wasting water” if they washed their hands above the wrists.
Their parents would only feed them once a day, causing them to be so malnourished some of them would suffer permanent physical and cognitive delays. At the same time, their parents would leave pizzas and pies out on the counters to mold, forbidding the children to touch them and beating them if they disobeyed.
The abuse had apparently been going on for decades. While the Turpins portrayed themselves as having the “perfect family” to Louise’s family, and later, social media, there were clues that only now can be seen for the red flags they are.
In the 1980s, the Turpins lived in Ft. Worth, Texas. While they lived there, Louise’s younger sister, Elizabeth, stayed with them for a summer. She remembers that David and Louise’s then four children were usually in their bedrooms, and had to ask permission to do anything — including come out of their room or eat. She said that she was similarly subjected to their controlling rules: she wasn’t allowed to use the phone, have guests over, or go out except to go to work. And chillingly, her sister and brother-in-law wouldn’t allow her to lock the bathroom door while she was in the shower.
However, around 1998, despite David’s well-paying job, they were bankrupt. Now the Turpins really started isolating themselves. The school-age children were often bullied at school for being dirty and smelly, so they pulled them out to “homeschool” them. When Louise’s older sister, Teresa, commented in a Skype call that the children seemed “little,” Louise cut off further Skype calls — and, eventually, all phone calls.
Two years later, their home was foreclosed upon. Neighbors recall that the house they left behind was shockingly filthy — dirt and feces were in the carpets and even the walls. There were scratches on the walls and doors that they assumed came from animals. And nearly every door — including the cabinets and the refrigerator — had a lock on it.
From Ft. Worth, they moved to the small, rural community of Rio Vista, Texas, where neighbors are spread out and don’t often see each other. They did have neighbors, though, who would let their daughters play with the Turpin kids — until, as the neighbor put it, “things got weird.”
It was here that one of the children, the oldest girl, attempted to escape. She apparently flagged down a car, then asked the driver several strange questions, like how to get a job and rent an apartment. Because the girl couldn’t answer basic questions like when was her birthday or who was the president, and based on her gaunt appearance, the police assumed she was mentally disabled and returned her to her parents.
It wasn’t much later when this home was foreclosed upon as well. When they moved away, they left behind a familiar scene: piles of trash, broken furniture, animal feces, and dead cats in every room. The neighbors also recalled seeing bed frames with ropes tied to them.
The Turpins had been getting away with horrific neglect and abuse by keeping their children as isolated as possible. But in their new home in Perris, California, the Turpins found the perfect place to completely isolate themselves and their children: middle-class suburbia.
The Turpins’ new four-bedroom, three-bath house on Muir Woods Road was in a typical new subdivision, indistinguishable from pretty much any other in America. Each of the homes in the Turpins’ subdivision measures about 2,500 to 3,500 square feet — not quite large enough to qualify as McMansions, but still embodying the same cheap, faux-luxury “aesthetic.”
These overpriced monstrosities are squeezed into lots that are barely bigger than they are. Then, in order to combat the fact that these houses are packed so closely together, the tiny lots are enclosed behind high privacy fences. You would think that this density would make a neighborhood more walkable. You’d be wrong: like most similar subdivisions, this particular one has a zero walkability rating on Zillow — “car dependent.” It also has no nearby public transit access. This lack of yard space and walkability practically mandates spending more time indoors, which is not good for anyone’s mental health (or for the community safety of having “eyes on the street”).
Another important isolating feature of the Turpins’ house was that, like many new houses, the majority of its street frontage is devoted to the three-car garage. This means that there was only one window for them to look out on the street — or for passersby to see them.
The result of all these factors make subdivisions like the Turpins’ look more like a high-density collection of small fortresses than a neighborhood. Driving through one of them, one is struck by the quiet, almost deserted nature of the place — “There is no street life or visible human activity,” according to writer Alex Balashov. They are like ghost towns, without the ghosts. At least while they lived in rural Texas, the Turpin children were allowed to go outside and play with the neighbor kids. In Perris, there was no real “outside” to go to, and no kids there to play with if they did.
Bottom line: these suburban subdivisions are designed for isolation, which was exactly what the Turpins wanted.
After the Turpins’ house of horrors was exposed, and David and Louise arrested, the house was foreclosed on in November of 2018. It was then sold to an unidentified bidder at auction in January. However, the auction listing did not disclose the Turpins’ crimes (California real-estate law only requires notice only if there has been a death at a residence within the past three years, or exposure at any time to a controlled substance such as methamphetamine or fentanyl). Within 10 days, the property was up for for auction again — without any disclosure of the crimes committed there.
In February 2019, the Turpins pleaded guilty to one count of torture, four counts of false imprisonment, six counts of cruelty to an adult dependent, and three counts of willful child cruelty in Riverside County Superior Court. They were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
The “house of horrors” sold in March for $270,500 — about $100,000 less than its appraised value.
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