Turpins break silence on ‘House of Horrors’

Jordan Turpin, then 17, made the 911 call to police in January 2018 that helped free her 12 other siblings.

She escaped their California home via a window and told police that her siblings were being abused.

Jordan told reporter Diane Sawyer that she was walking on the road after escaping as she “didn’t know about the sidewalks”, The Sun reports.

“You’re supposed to be on the sidewalk but I’d never been out there,” she said.

Jordan revealed that she couldn’t really dial 911 because her body was shaking.

She said: “I think it was us coming close to death so many times. It was literally a now or never. If something happened to me, at least I died trying.”

Jordan told the dispatcher on the harrowing call: “Um hello? I just ran away from home because I live in a family of 15. OK? Can you hear me? And we have abusing parents. Did you hear that?

In the audio, she says parents yanked out their kids’ hair, adding they “like to throw us across the room”.

A dispatcher got on the line and asked Jordan for her address — an unusually difficult question for the teenager who’d rarely left her house.

“OK, you’ve got to give me a minute. It’s going to take a while,” she says in the clip. “I’ve never been out. I don’t go out much, so I don’t know anything about the streets or anything.”

Police were able to track her location via GPS as she remained on the phone for nearly 22 minutes.

Less than two hours after Jordan placed the call, David and Louise Turpin were in handcuffs.

Jordan and her elder sister Jennifer are the first of the Turpin children to speak out about their harrowing ordeal.

Jennifer said the “only word” she could use to call their circumstances is “hell.”

“My parents took my whole life from me, but now I am taking my life back,” she said.

Jennifer doesn’t doesn’t want her siblings to be remembered as victims, but instead as fighters.

“I want the Turpin name [to be] “Wow, they’re strong. They’re not broken. They’ve got this,’” she said.

The kids lived off bologna and peanut butter sandwiches while their wicked parents David and Louise were allowed to eat takeaway.

They weren’t allowed to exercise and were also banned from socialising with each other.

The twisted parents tormented the kids by leaving out apple and pumpkin pies.

They bought their children toys but refused to let them open them, NBC reports.

Police revealed in court that the kids were only allowed to shower once a year.

Police bodycam footage has since emerged showing the moment where police enter the California property before they rescued the kids.

David and Louise were asked how many kids they have when quizzed by police. They both say 13.

Officers discover two of the kids in chains shackled to the bed and found a chain dangling from what appears to be a bunk bed.

David, then 57, and Louise, 50, were sentenced to 25 years behind bars for the hideous abuse and imprisonment of their kids.

The pair was nabbed in January 2018 and later pleaded guilty to abusing and imprisoning their children in their home.

They pleaded guilty to 14 counts including cruelty to an adult-dependent, child cruelty, torture, and false imprisonment.

In 2020, Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Kevin Beecham revealed that the siblings are “moving on with their lives”.

He told People: “Some of them are living independently, living in their apartment and have jobs and are going to school. Some volunteer in the community. They go to church.”

The lawyer said the younger siblings are able to “rebound better” as they “didn’t have as many years of abuse and neglect”.

He revealed that some of the siblings had changed their names but said they still meet with each other.

This article originally appeared in The Sun and is republished here with permission

Originally published as Turpin siblings Jordan and Jennifer say that House of Horrors was ‘like hell’