A Southern California house where police say a couple tortured or abused most of their 13 children by feeding them moldy pie, whipping them with a belt, and choking them for watching a Justin Bieber video, is for sale.
The house in Perris, located about 70 miles east of Los Angeles, where authorities say David and Louise Turpin shackled their children to furniture, went on the market Saturday, The Press-Enterprise reported.
The auction for the four-bedroom house with an appraised value of more than $350,000 ends on Wednesday.
The house in Perris, located about 70 miles east of Los Angeles, where authorities say David and Louise Turpin shackled their children to furniture, went on the market Saturday
The house is located on 160 Muir Woods Road in Perris, California
The home, which foreclosed in November, has been appraised as having a value that exceeds $350,000
So far, the bidding has reached in excess of $198,000 as of late Saturday. It must reach an undisclosed minimum for the seller to agree to sell
In January, police arrested David and Louise Turpin after one of their 13 children escaped from the family’s home and called 911
It is being conducted on behalf of an unnamed lender through the web site Hudson and Marshall.
According to the site, the property measures 2,386 square feet. It has four bedrooms and three bathrooms.
The property is listed in fair condition, but there is no mention of what allegedly took place inside the home.
Everything inside the property was working and there is no other unusual sign – even though at the time of the couple’s arrest, detectives described a home that was filthy and smelly.
Hudson and Marshall said it plans to add details in the description so that the buyer knows what is alleged to have happened inside.
While California law does require real estate agents reveal any deaths that took place within three years of the home being listed, there is no such requirement for lesser crimes.
Scott Beloian, a local realtor, nonetheless believes that agents have an ethical obligation to disclose such information to prospective buyers.
‘We’ve always been, if you have to ask the question, should I disclose, you should err on the side of probably so,’ Beloian said.
Beloian said that real estate agents could be sued if a home buyer later discovers that something untoward took place inside a recently purchased property.
The Turpin couple has pleaded not guilty to torture, child abuse, and perjury charges that could carry a life sentence
‘I would like to think that the seller is going to disclose to the buyer what happened in the [Turpin] house,’ he said.
As of late Saturday, the bidding has reached more than $198,000.
If the bidding does not reach an undisclosed reserve price – the minimum that a seller would accept – it won’t be sold.
The house has been appraised as having a value of $353,138.
The Turpin couple has pleaded not guilty to torture, child abuse, and perjury charges that could carry a life sentence.
They were arrested in January when a daughter escaped from the family’s home and called 911.
The couple remains in custody, and the house was foreclosed in November.
Investigators say some of the children had stunted growth and wasted muscles and described being beaten, starved and put in cages.
In June, those present inside a Riverside, California courtroom gasped when prosecutors showed photos of two of Louise and David Turpin’s daughters that their 17-year-old sister had snapped with an old cellphone before fleeing in January.
Investigators say some of the children had stunted growth and wasted muscles and described being beaten, starved and put in cages
The images featured two pale, malnourished girls, ages 11 and 14, shackled to bunk beds inside their family’s filthy home.
Each is being held on $12million bail and could face up to life in prison if convicted.
The couple was arrested in January after their 17-year-old daughter, who had spent two years planning an escape, climbed out a window and then called 911 to report abuse.
By the time police arrived at the house, the two shackled sisters had been hastily released from their chains when police showed up, but a 22-year-old son remained restrained.
The young man said he and his siblings had been suspected of stealing food and being disrespectful, Riverside County sheriff’s Det. Thomas Salisbury said during a court hearing in June.
The man said he had been tied up with ropes at first but later, after learning to wriggle free, restrained with increasingly larger chains on and off over six years.
Sheriff’s deputy Daniel Brown said one daughter told him that she knew her sister had contacted police when she heard a knock at the door and saw flashing lights outside the window.
The Turpin couple has pleaded not guilty to torture, child abuse, and perjury charges that could carry a life sentence
‘She said she was finally going to become free,’ Brown said.
Senior investigators with the county district attorney’s office testified that doctors and medical records showed some of the children were severely malnourished and had muscle wasting, with some adult children being 32lbs underweight.
The 11-year-old girl who had been shackled to her bed had stunted growth from malnourishment and her arms were the size of an infant’s, investigator Patrick Morris said.
In her 20-minute 911 call, the 17-year-old who escaped told the dispatcher: ‘We don’t really do school. I haven’t finished first grade.’
The girl told sheriff’s Deputy Manuel Campos that she hadn’t bathed in a year and that she didn’t know the date or the month, he testified.
About two years ago, the mother found out the girl had been watching a Justin Bieber video on a cellphone borrowed from her sister, and started choking her and asked, ‘do you want to die?’ Campos said.
The girl said she didn’t want to die, but she feared she was about to as the choking continued.
‘Yes you do, yes you do, you do, you want to die,’ the mother said, according to Campos. ‘You want to die and go to hell.’
There was no breakfast, and recently lunch and dinner had been combined into one meal that included peanut butter and bologna sandwiches, a frozen burrito and chips.
The girl said she recently had started refusing the peanut butter sandwiches ‘because she starts to gag and starts to throw up,’ Campos testified.
The teen, who said she hadn’t finished first grade, had difficulty pronouncing some words and spoke like a much younger child.
The girl planned her escape for two years and was terrified as she climbed out a window to freedom, according to Campos’ testimony.
‘She couldn’t even dial 911 because she was so scared that she was shaking,’ he said.
The couple has been accused of administering beatings and neglecting their children, who had at most just a few years of schooling. David and Louise Turpin are seen above in a California courtroom in June
She didn’t know the neighborhood and had to read her address to the dispatcher off a piece of paper. The kids were rarely allowed outside, though they went out on Halloween and traveled as a family to Disneyland and Las Vegas, they said.
‘Sometimes I wake up and I can’t breathe because of how dirty the house is,’ the girl told the woman dispatcher.
She said she hadn’t bathed in a year and Campos observed dirt caked on her skin and a stink from being unbathed.
The girl referred to her parents as ‘mother’ and ‘father’ because she said it was ‘more like the Bible days,’ he said.
She reported that her father pulled down her pants and put her on his clothed lap in a recliner chair in the TV room when she was 12. She said she didn’t like it and pulled up her pants, and that he told her not tell anyone, Campos said.
The children spent most of their time locked in their rooms except for limited meals or using the bathroom.
If they didn’t obey strict rules, they were slapped in the face or had their hair pulled, the girl told Campos
The eldest son in the family told authorities discipline in the home included beatings with the leather or buckle end of a belt, said Wade Walsvick, senior investigator for the Riverside County district attorney’s office.
Years earlier, when the family lived in Texas, he said the beatings involved ‘a switch, the paddle and the oar’ and the siblings were sometimes placed in cages.