Evil Next Door: Siblings Allegedly Suffered Heinous Abuse — Until Teen’s Escape Put Parents in Jail

Early morning darkness still blanketed the streets of suburban Perris, Calif. on Sunday, Jan. 14, as a window began to creep open at the brown stucco and stone house. A 17-year-old girl slipped out into the yard, and then, at 5:53 a.m, using a deactivated cell phone, she dialed 911.

The call was the culmination of a desperate escape plan the teen had devised with her siblings for more than two years, and when she spoke to the dispatcher, she revealed a shocking truth: She and her 12 siblings were being held against their will by their parents, and some of them were chained.

Responding officers were shocked at the teen’s frail appearance, and at the unspeakable abuse they encountered inside the house: Three children were shackled to beds and furniture, while 10 other victims — ages 2 to 29 — were in cramped, foul-smelling rooms.

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“It was very dirty and the conditions were horrific,” Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Captain Greg Fellows said at a press conference. “If you can imagine being 17 years old and appearing to be a 10-year-old, being chained to a bed, being malnourished …. I would call that torture.”

Authorities arrested the siblings’ parents, David Turpin, 56, and his wife, Louise Turpin, 49, and charged them with 12 counts of torture, seven counts of abuse of a dependent adult, six counts of child abuse and 12 counts of false imprisonment. (Authorities say that the 2-year-old appears to have escaped abuse.) David was also charged with one count of a lewd act against a child.

Both have pleaded not guilty to all charges and are being held on $12 million bond each — $1 million for every victim.

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Authorities have released details of the alleged abuse, which included being deprived of food, left to lay in their own waste while shackled, and being strangled and beaten for concocted “infractions” like washing their hands above the wrists.

More details might be revealed in the hundreds of journals the children kept, and according to Riverside County District Attorney Mark Hestrin, additional charges against the Turpins could be forthcoming.

“The victimization of these children seemed to intensify over time,” Hestrin says.

Anyone with information about the Turpin family is urged to call the official tipline set up by the D.A. in Riverside, California: (888) 934-KIDS

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3 Alcatraz inmates survived 1962 escape, swim to land, letter suggests

Alcatraz inmates from left to right: Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin.

 (FBI)

A letter emerged Tuesday that claims to be written by a former inmate at Alcatraz who — along with two others — managed to escape the island prison only to vanish without a trace.

The running theory about their fate is that they died shortly after stepping foot into the cold waters that separated the prison and San Francisco. But their bodies were never found and their story remains a mystery.

Prison officials and federal agents insisted at the time of the escape that the inmates — brothers John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris — perished.

CBS San Francisco reported that it obtained a letter allegedly written by John Anglin. The letter admitted to the escape and explained their fate.

“My name is John Anglin,” the letter reads. “I escape (sic) from Alcatraz in June 1962 with my brother Clarence and Frank Morris. I’m 83 years old and in bad shape. I have cancer. Yes we all made it that night but barely.”

The letter continued, “If you announce on TV that I will be promised to first go to jail for no more than a year and get medical attention, I will write back to let you know exactly where I am. This is no joke.”

The FBI says the area at the lower right is believed to be the way the inmates went to launch their raft.

 (FBI)

The letter was sent to the San Francisco Police Department’s Richmond station in 2013, the report said. The station said it obtained it from an unnamed source.

The FBI tested the letter in 2013 for fingerprints but reportedly said results were inconclusive.

The three prisoners were serving sentences for bank robbery when they pulled off the escape with stolen spoons, dummy heads and a raincoat raft. Their exploits were turned into the 1979 movie “Escape from Alcatraz,” starring Clint Eastwood as Morris.

U.S. Marshal Michael Dyke, who inherited the unsolved case in 2003, told the Associated Press in 2012 that he didn’t know whether any of the trio was still alive. But he had seen enough evidence to make him wonder.

That evidence included credible reports that the Anglins’ mother, for several years, received flowers delivered without a card and that the brothers attended her 1973 funeral disguised in women’s clothes despite a heavy FBI presence.

The report pointed out that today Morris would be 90 and John and Clarence, the brothers, would be 86 and 87.

The federal government closed Alcatraz as a prison in 1963, just a year after the men’s escape.

John Cantwell, National Park Service ranger, told the station that the Federal Bureau of Prisons said they drowned “once they got off” the island and their bodies were swept out to the Pacific.

“End of story,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Edmund DeMarche is a news editor for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @EDeMarche.

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