The Times - UK (2021-11-11)

46 2GM Thursday November 11 2021 | the times

Wo r l d

Three years after she escaped the
“house of horrors” where she and her
dozen siblings had for years been
shackled and abused by their parents,
one of the Turpin sisters has spoken out
about raising the alarm.
Jordan was 17 when she clambered
through a window and, with her whole
body shaking, called police to the non-
descript bungalow in Perris, California,
owned by her parents, David and
Louise Turpin. She was so emaciated
and small that police thought her no
older than ten.
“I think it was us coming so close to
death so many times,” she says in an

was, although they were described as

“very friendly and co-operative”.

Punishment for perceived misbehav-

iour, such as playing with water while

washing their hands, ranged from being

beaten and choked to being shackled to

The American teenager on trial for
shooting three people at a volatile racial
justice protest in the city of Kenosha,
Wisconsin, last year broke down as he
told the jury: “I did what I had to do”
after being ambushed.
Kyle Rittenhouse claimed he was try-
ing to help others by delivering first aid
and guarding local businesses during
the protests, and opened fire only in
self-defence.
Prosecutors have cast Rittenhouse as
a vigilante, who carried an assault-style
weapon into Kenosha and intended to
kill everyone he fired at.
Rittenhouse was 17 when he made
the short trip from his home in Antioch,
Illinois, to Kenosha and shot three men,
killing two and injuring one. The city
had been rocked for two nights by pro-

‘House of horrors’ sisters relive their hell

United States
Charlie Mitchell

interview on ABC with Diane Sawyer

of finding the courage to escape. “It was

literally a now or never. If something

happened to me, at least I died trying.”

Her sister, appearing in the emotion-

al interview with her, summed up their

ordeal: “The only word I know to call it

is hell.”

All the children’s names begin with

the letter J, according to court docu-

ments that did not provide their full

names. None has been identified pub-

licly until the interview is broadcast and

little is known about them.

When police entered the house 60

miles southeast of Los Angeles in

January 2018, they found children aged

from two to 29 being held in “dark and

foul-smelling surroundings”, investiga-

tors said. Some of the children were

bound to their beds and furniture by

chains and padlocks and many told

police they were “starving”, the River-

side Sheriff’s Department said. The 29-

year-old weighed less than six stone.

Mike Hestrin, the district attorney,

said the abuse took place during the 17

years the family lived in Fort Worth,

Texas, but intensified when they

moved to California in 2010.

According to prosecutors, the child-

ren were given one rationed meal a day,

had a nocturnal schedule and were per-

mitted to shower only once a year. They

had never been to a dentist and their

skin was paper-white, investigators

said. They knew little of the outside

world, including what a police officer

their beds without bathroom access for

months at a time.

David Turpin was accused of sexual-

ly abusing one girl. The parents also

taunted their children by baking pies

and not letting them eat them, or by

buying toys and refusing to let them

open them.

Athough the brood virtually never

left the house, the family would occa-

sionally take trips, including to Las

Vegas where an Elvis impersonator

performed a ceremony as the parents

renewed their marriage vows.

The parents were sentenced to life in

jail after pleading guilty to 14 charges

each of torture, dependent adult abuse,

child endangerment and false impris-

onment.

The full interview with Jordan, right,

and her sister will be shown next week

I did what I had to do, says weeping killer

described being “cornered” by several

men. “I did what I had to do to stop the

person who was attacking me.”

“By killing them?” Kenosha County’s

assistant district attorney asked.

“Two of them passed away but I

stopped the threat from attacking me,”

Rittenhouse replied.

He said that Rosenbaum,

who video evidence

showed was pursuing the

teenager when he

turned and shot him

four times, had twice

threatened to kill him

before the encounter.

He shot two more pro-

testers amid the result-

ing hysteria, he said,

after being struck with a

skateboard and kicked in

the face. The trial continues.

Charlie Mitchell

Peruvian family’s puppy

turns out to be Andean fox

had a strangely strong scent. Doubts as

to Run-Run’s true background grew as

he began going on the rampage in the

local community. “About a month ago,

a woman from around here said that it

ate three of her guinea pigs,” Maribel

Sotelo, the owner, told Reuters.

As Run-Run grew older, his thin legs,

bushy tail, pointed head and prominent

ears clearly identified him as a fox. He

eventually escaped and showed no in-

terest in returning home. On Tuesday

Peruvian wildlife services captured the

fox and it has since been transferred to

the Parque de la Leyendas zoo in Lima.

“They said it’s a wolf-dog, but we

didn’t know it was a fox. It ate normally,

like any dog, but as it was growing it was

clear that it wasn’t a dog,” Sotelo said.

A family in Peru had to give up what

they thought was a pedigree husky

puppy after discovering it was in fact a

Andean fox.

The deception began when a young

boy, who had been pestering his mother

to buy a dog, saw what appeared to be a

Siberian husky at a street market in the

capital, Lima. The puppy was bought

for the equivalent of less than £10.

The family took their new pet home

and the boy presciently named it Run-

Run. After a few weeks they found it

was impossible to train the animal. The

father also noticed its urine and faeces

Peru

Stephen Gibbs

Latin America Correspondent

J

eff Bezos has

spent a reported

$78 million on a

remote island

mansion in

Hawaii, expanding still

further his portfolio of

luxury property (Hugh

Tomlinson writes).

The 57-year-old

founder of Amazon,

whose fortune as the

world’s second richest

man now totals nearly

$200 billion, has bought

the oceanfront estate

on La Perouse Bay on

Maui as a tropical

getaway with

his girlfriend

Lauren

Sánchez.

Sitting on

a marine

fishing

reserve and

flanked by

state

parkland

and lava

fields from

the dormant

Haleakala

volcano, the

property

previously

was owned by

Doug Schatz, a

Colorado-based

energy mogul who

bought it for

$4.2 million in 1996.

The 14-acre estate

lies 12 miles from the

nearest city, Kihei, in

a sparsely populated

area. The 4,500 sq ft

main house has an

outdoor kitchen, a

swimming pool and

manicured lawns

leading down to the

Pacific Ocean. Towering

behind it is Haleakala,

which last erupted in

1790 and is not expected

to erupt again for 500

years.

It is unclear when

Bezos bought the

property, but he made a

donation to the Hawaii

Land Trust, a

conservation group in

Maui, in mid-September.

Since launching

Amazon as an online

bookstore in 1994 and

building it into a

multitrillion-dollar

corporate powerhouse,

Bezos has amassed a

vast personal fortune,

with a real estate

portfolio to match. He

paid $165 million to buy

the Jack Warner estate

in Beverly Hills, Los

Angeles, from David

Geffen, the film

magnate, last year. In

2016 he bought a

$23 million mansion in

Kalorama, an upmarket

Washington DC

neighbourhood, where

he counts Barack and

Michelle Obama and

Ivanka Trump and Jared

Kushner among his

neighbours. He is said to

own five floors of an

apartment building on

New York’s Fifth

Avenue, plus a ranch in

Texas.

Even the world’s most

costly divorce, when he

gave $36 billion of

Amazon stock to

MacKenzie Scott, his

former wife, in 2019,

barely put a dent in his

fortune. Among other

investments, Rivian, the

electric vehicle maker

that is backed by Bezos,

began life on the public

market in New York

yesterday, targeting a

value of $65 billion in

one of the biggest stock

market flotations on

record.

Life’s a

beach for

Bezos on

Hawaii isle

Jeff Bezos has bought this

luxury seafront estate in

Hawaii with his girlfriend

Lauren Sánchez, below

ETHAN KWON/THE MEGA AGENCY; STEVE GRANITZ/GETTY IMAGES

tests over the police shooting of a black

man, Jacob Blake. The teenager said he

had volunteered to help guard a used-

car dealer along with other armed men.

He faces charges of homicide over

the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36,

and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as at-

tempted homicide in wounding

Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, and

one misdemeanour count

of possession of a dan-

gerous weapon by a

minor. Rittenhouse,

now 18, has pleaded

not guilty on the

grounds he acted in

self-defence. He broke

down in tears on the

stand yesterday as he

He sai

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Kyle Rittenhouse broke

down giving testimony