The Family Next Door: The Heartbreaking Imprisonment of the Thirteen Turpin Siblings and Their Extraordinary Rescue

by John Glatt

Overview

Thirteen siblings were held captive in their own home—and lived to tell their story.

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 twelve siblings—ranging in age from two to twenty-nine—were being abused by their parents. When the dispatcher asked for her address, the girl hesitated. “I’ve never been out,” she stammered. She wasn’t even sure how to spell her own last name.

Louise and David Turpin presented themselves as loving, faithful parents. On social media they shared snapshots of family outings and vacations, often with their children in matching outfits. But what police discovered when they entered the Turpin home would eclipse the most shocking child abuse cases in history. For years, Louise and David had kept their children in increasing isolation, trapping them in a sinister world of torture, fear, and near starvation.

New York Times bestselling author John Glatt's The Family Next Door is the definitive, devastating, and unforgettable account of the Turpins: a family whose dark secrets would shock and captivate the world.

“Thoroughly researched and thoroughly disturbing.” —Booklist

“Unflinching...this chilling portrayal of abuse and secrecy may leave readers looking differently at their neighbors.”—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250312303
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/28/2020
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	53,611
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Prologue 1

Part 1 The Seeds of Evil

Chapter 1 King Turpin 11

Chapter 2 "He's So Creepy" 18

Chapter 3 The Honor Student 24

Chapter 4 The Runaways 36

Part 2 The Family

Chapter 5 "I Thought Their Life Was Perfect" 47

Chapter 6 Meadowcreek Elementary School 52

Chapter 7 Rio Vista 67

Chapter 8 DL4EVER 78

Chapter 9 Lord of the Flies 86

Chapter 10 "Sow Those Wild Oats" 91

Chapter 11 Murrieta 100

Chapter 12 "So Many Little Bright-Eyed Dreamers" 109

Chapter 13 "Louise Turpin Is a Super Mom" 115

Chapter 14 Viva Las Vegas 122

Chapter 15 Perris 129

Chapter 16 "May You Be Blessed with More Children" 141

Chapter 17 Things 1 to 13 149

Chapter 18 "Where Is the Key?" 156

Part 3 The Magnificent Thirteen

Chapter 19 Rescue 165

Chapter 20 God Called on Them to Have So Many Children 177

Chapter 21 "I Would Call That Torture" 188

Chapter 22 "This Is Depraved Conduct" 201

Chapter 23 "We Stand United with the Turpin Children" 209

Chapter 24 Family Secrets 218

Chapter 25 Learning to Fly 224

Chapter 26 "She's Living in a Fantasy World" 235

Chapter 27 A New Life 241

Chapter 28 "My Two Little Sisters Are Chained Up!" 258

Chapter 29 "She Was Terrified of Her Mother" 275

Chapter 30 "Cruel and Unusual Punishment and Extreme Pain" 291

Chapter 31 "There's a Plethora of Evidence" 301

Epilogue 308

Editorial Reviews

Thoroughly researched and thoroughly disturbing.” —Booklist

“Glatt (The Lost Girls; My Sweet Angel) compellingly delves into the history…a timely account for true crime fans.” —Library Journal

"Glatt unflinchingly details the victims’ home circumstances...This chilling portrayal of abuse and secrecy may leave readers looking differently at their neighbors." —Publishers Weekly

"[The] horrific account of a headline-making case of criminal abuse that shook a California community...devotees of true crime will be drawn to this narrative." —Kirkus Reviews

"John Glatt takes the lid off the whole sensational story ... there are moments of this book that will astound you for their strength and grip you in total astonishment. “The Family Next Door” will have you in its clutches until its back cover is closed." —Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Marco Eagle

Praise for John Glatt:

"Chilling." —People Magazine for My Sweet Angel

"The murder case John Glatt recounts in lurid detail...is too bizarre for a work of fiction." —New York Times Book Review for The Prince of Paradise

“A gripping, read-it-all-in-one-sitting kind of book.” —Kirkus Reviews for The Lost Girls

“Veteran crime scribe Glatt gives us all the atmosphere, characters and facts to make an engrossing thriller.” —New York Post for The Prince of Paradise

From the Publisher

2019-05-26
Horrific account of a headline-making case of criminal abuse that shook a California community.

The cliché 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 twists—e.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 treatment—for 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.

Kirkus Reviews