A disturbing picture from the former house of the so-called “Horror House” family shows a rope tied to the bed, apparently used to tie children to.
The picture from the Texas home that the Turpin family moved to in the 1990s has emerged amid a spate of new revelations surrounding Louise and David Turpin and their 13 children.
The Turpins were arrested on Jan. 14 in Perris, California, after one of their kids escaped imprisonment and called 911. When officers arrived at the “Horror House” they found squalid conditions and some of the children chained to beds or other large objects.
Now evidence of the parents torturing their progeny back in Texas has been brought forward, including the shocking picture.
Billy Baldwin and his mother went to the Fort Worth home where the Turpins lived from 1990 to 1999 about a year after the Turpins moved to another house in Texas.
Baldwin said that when he and his mother went to the house to walk through, they found the interior completely trashed.
They also found a handful of Polaroids taken immediately after the family had departed—including one showing a bed with a metal rail that had a rope tied to it, Baldwin told the Los Angeles Times.
The photo has not been shown publicly.
Another man, Ricky Vinyard, walked through a trailer the family owned on the same property and found it filthy.
“It was waist-deep in filth. There were dead dogs and cats in there,” he said, noting the smell was “rancid.”
Vinyard then moved to the house and noticed something odd. “Everything had locks on it: The closet had locks, the toy chest, the refrigerator,” he said.
“There were no beds, just mattresses,” he said, adding, There wasn’t a place in that house that wasn’t filthy.”
Riverside District Attorney Mike Hestrin told CBS last week that California authorities have confirmed that the siblings were restrained with ropes and chains, and suffered beatings, torture, and other abuse.
“These defendants eventually began using chains and padlocks to chain up the victims to their bed,” he said. “These punishments would last months at a time.”
Ashley Vinyard, Ricky’s daughter, previously told the Daily Mail that she and her family were friends with the Turpins initially but the Turpins broke off their friendship suddenly.
Ashley Vinyard said that after the Turpins moved they found a kitten the family left behind.
“They had a huge garbage dumpster at their house and we heard a baby kitten crying. We pulled a baby kitty from the dumpster and kept it. There were other whimpering sounds coming from their property, but we could never find where they came from,” she said. “The dumpster smelled of death, who knows what was buried in it.”
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