0:00 - True Crime and the Turpin Family
4:09 - The Dark History of Louise Turpin
9:21 - Childhood Trauma and Isolation
14:02 - The Influence of Grandfather
16:43 - The Struggle for Forgiveness
21:30 - Domestic Violence and Chaos
27:13 - The Cycle of Abuse
34:53 - The Complexity of Family Love
40:37 - Parenting and Discipline
42:57 - The Need for Societal Involvement
In this episode, I delve into the haunting and tragic story of the Turpin family, where the horrifying abuse suffered by 13 children at the hands of their parents has left an indelible mark on society. Although true crime is not usually my focus, the profound implications of this case, especially concerning childhood, parenting, and societal responsibilities, compelled me to explore the philosophical dimensions behind it. Elizabeth Flores, the younger sister of Louise Turpin, shares her harrowing insights in her book "Sisters of Secrets," which serves as a lens into the world that birthed this nightmare.
We begin by examining the tumultuous childhood of Louise Turpin, who not only faced unimaginable abuse herself but ultimately repeated the cycle of violence with her own children. Elizabeth's narrative vividly recounts early memories of severe familial dysfunction, including sexual abuse by their grandfather, the emotional toll of their mother’s chaotic relationships, and the isolation such trauma inflicted on them. The strength of their sisterly bond shone through as Louise took upon herself the burden of protection, foreshadowing the twisted trajectory that their lives would ultimately take.
With Elizabeth's poignant reflections, we explore the themes of neglect and abuse that permeated their upbringing. The battle to understand the horrific actions of parents often leads to a deeper examination of societal structures that fail to shield vulnerable children. Drawing from Elizabeth’s painful recollections, I highlight how societal failures manifest in the lives of children and how they are often met with indifference or misguided repercussions in educational institutions when they should be met with understanding and intervention.
As we dig deeper into Elizabeth’s account, we witness the cascading failures of family dynamics and societal negligence. Louise’s tragic trajectory from victim to abuser epitomizes the cyclical nature of trauma. Her eventual marriage to David, a man who joined her in the pattern of abuse, resulted in decades of torment for their children. This harrowing deterioration of familial bonds stands as a stark reminder of the imperative need for accountability, empathy, and active intervention in cases of domestic abuse.
The unflinching examination of these dark realities serves not only as a reflection of the specific case of the Turpins but as a broader commentary on the collective responsibility we share in safeguarding the welfare of children. The weight of Elizabeth's experience urges us to reflect on our roles within our communities. Are we doing enough to protect those innocent lives who are unable to advocate for themselves? We must confront the harsh truths of our own complicity in allowing such abuses to occur through inaction.
As we wrap up this first part of the discussion, it's essential to acknowledge the confronting nature of these topics. The narratives presented may evoke discomfort, yet they are indispensable for fostering awareness. I invite listeners to brace themselves, as the next episode will explore the unimaginable events within the Turpin household, further unraveling the darkness that enveloped these children for so long. Through these discussions, I hope to inspire reflection on how we can change the future for vulnerable children everywhere.
[0:00] Hey everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. So, I'm not often drawn into true crime stories, but this is one that has haunted me, just as I'm sure it has haunted millions of people around the world. The story of the Turpin family, where the mother and the father abused, starved, and chained their 13 children to their beds. And there is so much to talk about with regards to philosophy. With regards to all of this, and the information that is out there is kind of scattered, and I've really worked hard to pull it all together and to give you the philosophical realities behind this situation.
[0:46] So I'm going to start not with the crimes themselves, or at least not the Louise Turpin's crimes and her husband's crimes. We're going to get to that later. What I want to do is, there's a window into the world of the Turpins that has been written by Elizabeth Flores, who is the younger sister to Louise Turpin.
[1:11] And I'm going to go through her life, because of course I've talked at length, at great length, about how we really need to fix childhood before we can fix anything else. We need to fix parenting, we need to fix childhood, and then, and only then, can we really work to fix the world. So, this woman, Louise Turpin, and her husband, of course, did, David, did absolutely terrible things to their children. Kept them chained and tortured and brutalized for decades, really. Their oldest, quote, child was in her late, his or her late 20s, when they were finally rescued, which we'll get to that. It was also quite a powerful and amazing story. But I want to start with the history of Louise Turpin as told by her sister Elizabeth. Now, of course, the usual caveats apply. I don't know how much of this stuff that's being talked about has been adjudicated in the court of law. These are all, some of these are allegations, some of these may or may not be true. I'm simply reporting on what Elizabeth Flores has said, and of course, I can make no outside or objective claim as to whether these things are true or false. I'm simply reporting on what she said. I just want to put that up front.
[2:28] So, Elizabeth Flores wrote a book called Sisters of Secrets, the story of sisters leading up to the Turpin case arrest. And it's well worth reading. It's a grim read, of course, right? It's a grim read. but it is really important to know just how bad some people's childhoods are and how much needs to change in this world for children and the world and safety and security to be protected and achieved.
[2:57] So, Elizabeth's book starts with this. Come on in here and give me a tight hug, said my pawpaw, that's grandfather. She says, I would come to know his silky persuasive voice as a sign of what was to come later in my years. But my sister knew what this dark-haired man standing tall, with authority beside us, wanted. She got between my four-year-old body frame and his six-foot physique. A man who we were told to always trust.
[3:31] Turning to me, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, I'll go. And the grandfather's rampant, horrendous, appalling, brutal sexual abuse that Louise Turpin took this bullet for her sister, Elizabeth. Elizabeth, and this is moving, of course, beyond words that an older sister would decide to surrender to the molestations of the grandfather to protect her four-year-old sister, is very powerful, very deep.
[4:10] And to go from protection to destruction, protection of sister to destruction of your own children is really, really something. And we will get into some of the history of this. Believe it or not, it gets a whole lot darker than this. So, you know, it's a trigger warning, right? There's nasty stuff in here. But I do think that we need to unflinchingly and unblinkingly look at these sort of hearts of darkness so that we know what we're dealing with in the world. And this is not about, of course, just this family or these families. This is about society as a whole, because, as I'm going to make the case as we go along, this occurs, this horrendous behavior, this torture and abuse of children occurs within a society. Within a society.
[5:01] So, of course, this girl, Elizabeth, reports saying, no one likes me. She sat on the bed crying, talking to her older sister. What are they doing to you, she asked. They're teasing me and they're calling me names. They won't even let me. They won't even play with me, Louise. So, of course, she wanted to have friends as a little kid. And nobody really wanted to spend time with her. Because, again, she was in a situation of rampant domestic sexual abuse and chaos and other evils which stagger the imagination even beyond just the sexual abuse which we'll get to. And it isolates you, right? If you've ever been tortured or significantly seriously abused as a child, it silences you and it tortures you and it puts a fiery mode of isolation around you. And that is very tough.
[5:52] So, she says, by the third grade, this is Elizabeth, by the third grade, I grew more insecure and withdrawn, she writes. Other kids quit talking to me, and now my big sister had left me all alone. She had run away to Texas to get married. I didn't know what to do. So by the third grade, her sister in her teens had gone to get married to this guy, David, with whom she ended up torturing and abusing these children for close to 30 years, their children. And Elizabeth says, the rough times continued in the fourth and fifth grade. I had no friends at all. Time at school was difficult and uncomfortable. My grades dropped. It was a hard time hearing and remembering anything the teacher taught. It was crazy. So she says, it got so bad, I refused to do my homework so that my name would be written on the blackboard and I would not be allowed to go to recess. I didn't want to be alone at recess. I felt ugly, insecure, scared, embarrassed, and sad.
[6:42] And the fact that children get punished for the brutality of their environment is one of the most sickening and repulsive and evil things that society does. The other kids tease you, the teachers scorn you, and so you are rejected. And we can understand the kids, it's not their job to fix all of this. But teachers see abuse victims all the time. And what do they do? They punish them. So she said home life wasn't much better i found negativity everywhere i turned my parents got divorced mommy was in and out of abusive relationships and other awful things my pawpaw was molesting me i was physically mentally and emotionally abused by two other people as well and she became very religious and of course we can understand this she quotes the the book of Deuteronomy, quote, The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you. He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.
[7:47] So, she recognizes, of course, that the kids could sense that, her unworthiness, her low self-esteem, and so on. And she was, of course, being sexually, physically, mentally, and emotionally abused. She got a friend or two out of this, but the isolation and the abuse continued in a society that claims to massively want to protect children and to care for children, everything for the children, and so on. It was very sad. So her sister basically runs off, Louise, her older sister runs off, and... Goes to get married. About the age of 15, Louise dated a guy from church, and they got serious.
[8:36] And what happened was, she left from school, and what happened was, the school explained that a tall man wearing a hat, who had facial hair, which we discovered was fake, had come in and claimed to be her dad. He had checked her out of school. So this is her boyfriend. My parents were frantic and went to the police. I think it was three days later they found her with her boyfriend David in Fort Worth, Texas, which was about a 17-hour drive from where we lived. David was six and a half years older than her, so that legally constituted kidnapping. He was almost 23 and she was just 16. But because we all went to church together for years and his parents were friends with my parents, they decided not to press charges.
[9:22] So then her older sister, Louise, ended up getting married. And she says, when she got married, this is Elizabeth, she says, when my sister got married and I realized she was moving so far away, I was scared, sad, and angry. I felt betrayed. I was scared because she was always there for me. She had protected me a lot. When mommy and daddy would fight, she would hide my face in her chest and hold my ears. She would take my place when my pawpaw, who sexually abused me, would come after me. Oh, it's absolutely tragic.
[9:55] And she says, I had mommy and daddy, but they fought all the time. My parents separated and divorced just months after my sister left home, and I still believe her leaving contributed to that situation. They argued over my dad signing for her to get married a lot. And the divorce was, of course, ugly and unpleasant. So she also feels guilt about her actions that possibly led up to her parents' divorce. horse. So she writes, the screaming and yelling were the worst I'd ever heard. Shrinking down in the other room with little Teresa hugging me tight, I heard, who are you talking to? Daddy said to Mommy. She lied and didn't tell them the truth. I think she told them she was just talking to Pawpaw, but he already knew that wasn't true. Just moments before, I had gone into their bedroom where Daddy was already asleep for the night, because he had to get up early for work the next day. I overheard Mommy having this phone conversation that didn't seem right. Feeling something off, I had gone into the bedroom and said, Daddy, I think Mommy is on the phone with somebody. I think something is funny. He picked up the receiver and listened to the conversation. I knew Mommy was seeing someone else and I couldn't take it anymore. I was hurt that Daddy worked so hard all the time and Mommy didn't have to work. He was good to us and I couldn't understand how Mommy could treat him so bad and be so mean by being with someone else.
[11:12] So it was wretched and the father left after a fight and she said the only two adults left in the house were mommy and papa. My papa, who touched me and made me feel so dirty and bad all the time. So, absolutely wretched. And of course, she feels guilt about all of this as well. She said, standing by a living room lamp and looking out through the window the next day, reality hit me. I had such a sadness because I knew daddy was gone. All I could do was cry. As the days followed, daddy would come by after work, but mommy wouldn't let him in the house. We had to go out to the driveway and visit with him. He would ask if he could take us for ice cream or do something special. Most times she said no. But the times when she let us go with him, we were so happy, I could hardly stand being away from him. So she feels that it was her fault that she told her father to pick up the phone and listen in to his mother, and he never revealed that he took that secret to his grave. And of course that would give a lot of guilt for the chaos and tragedy that went on after that. And the time is a little all over the place in the book.
[12:20] And one of the things she says later on in the book, she says, this is Elizabeth, the earliest memory I have is at about four years old. I remember being told by Papa, you better keep this quiet. If you tell your daddy, you know how mad he'll get, and he might hurt me. You know, if he does that, he will go to jail. And that was appalling, right? This is the molestation. It got much worse. Like a nightmare, she says. One day Mommy said she would take us over to Papa's because he would give her some money.
[12:51] And she writes, when we got there, Pawpaw greeted us with his same sweet voice he always had and said, Come on, girls, let me show you my basement I'm building. He led little Teresa and me down the stairs. There was one big room that had dirt for walls and there was no light. It was scary down there. It kind of felt like a grave or something. There was one chair. He sat down on the chair and put me up on his lap. Poor little Teresa was forced to watch. She was about four years old because by this time I was about nine. I can remember her crying in the dark room while Popo did stuff to me because she had no choice but to watch. She knew what was coming next. Once he was done with me, he would remind me again of all the reasons not to tell, and then he would pick up little Teresa and do the same thing. The first time it happened, she says, I let out a scream and tried to run from him, but he grabbed my arm from behind. He put his hand over my mouth to shush me. I knew Mommy was letting it happen because we were told that we had to go.
[13:52] So, when the mother takes her little girls to the grandfather's, she says, now y'all girls, go play with Papa a while.
[14:02] And sometimes she says they had to go over there more than once a week. Every single time the same thing happened. She got her money from Papa and then took her girls back home. So she, according to her daughter, delivered her little girls to the pedophile for money. For money. It's absolutely beyond staggering. Absolutely appalling.
[14:32] So the mama, which is, I guess, Papa's wife, the mama at one point, I think Elizabeth was about 10, yes, about 10 years old, and the mama says, has your papa ever hurt you? I was quiet for a minute, and then she continued, if he has, I'll kill him. When mama said that, I said, no. I took it literal, that mama would kill him. I didn't want mama to go to jail for doing that. Papa had already warned me that daddy would get in trouble if I told. Are you sure? Says mama, you'd tell me, right? I nodded, but couldn't look at her because I was ashamed for telling Mama that lie. Your Pawpaw is not a good man. I know he has been bad to some other girls, she said. She told me that one day she had walked in on Pawpaw raping Louise. As a child, of course, Louise is there. Louise Turpin is the woman who ended up torturing her own children for decades. So the grandfather raped Louise, and that's why she ended up divorcing him shortly after that.
[15:24] And of course as we know, from, I know from my work on peaceful parenting, pedophiles have hundreds of victims, and the papa had molested other cousins in the family and we won't get into all of those details and it kind of goes all over the place and, there is a girl Tricia, who's a cousin Tricia told me she had told her parents and my maman, but the only advice they had given was to stay away from him. Tricia later confided me that her sister's husband had French kissed her in the basement of her sister's home one summer when she was just nine years old. And it's just terrible. She sees the pawpaw living in his 90s. She lost her mom at 66, and three months later lost her dad to a long illness at 67, and that is...
[16:19] Pauline. And she writes this. It's very powerful to me. There may be people in your life you need to forgive. I want you to know that God will help take the bitterness and hatred out of your heart. Just know that God can and will. Perhaps you need to pray for someone who has hurt you. Start by praying for forgiveness and asking him to remove the hatred and lack of forgiveness in your heart. Pray that he would help you forgive and see the person through the eyes of Jesus.
[16:44] Pray for that person and salvation. God will start the process. It will make you feel a lot better too holding on to unforgiveness hurts you more than the person you have chosen not to forgive and i'm again i'm going to get to sort of my analysis of this i really want to sort of get the facts down as a whole so this is elizabeth again she says when i was 10 years old mommy he dated a guy named Bill.
[17:08] And he ends up crashing in a terrible car crash. And she only read in the paper about the obituary with the name. She says, we were told he had a brain tumor and it busted on the way home from work. The car went over the mountain right across from the kitchen window of the new house. He was found by the neighbor at the bottom of the mountain. He broke his neck and died. So then it gets, hard to say whether it gets worse. So we've got the molestation, we've got the mother delivering the children to the pedophile for money and then after Bill died, mommy couldn't handle the sadness and she was drowning financially. She slept with guys for money. She put herself in dangerous places. She left us at home by ourselves a lot of times and all night. Louise was married and so far away. I was I was 11 and my little sister was 6. And Billy was just a little bitty baby. Billy is... So Bill was the guy she was dating and then he dies from the brain tumor of the car crash. And then her mother had a daughter... Sorry, had a son named after Bill. So we assume this is Bill's kid.
[18:21] So, Elizabeth says, I was terrified of the dark. I would lock us all up in the bathroom and we would stay up all night. Sometimes she would take us with her. And she says, I was also tired in school. My grades were suffering. I didn't know if mommy would come home safe. I cried myself to sleep many times. She was once a good Christian woman. She knew right from wrong. I always longed for the day she would turn back to God. She would get with some mean and scary men. She would say, but it makes money. And she goes into some details about how terrifying some of her mother's johns were, and it's just awful and she said even though i was just a little girl i always worried about mommy like i was her mother i remember her i remember always trying to go with her because i felt i needed to protect her when i take you with me he's nicer she explained they behave, and i sure could use you please don't go over to your father's this weekend she begged the beatings are worse when you don't go oh it's terrible, she said but to me after seeing her all those years prostituting and taking money to let Pawpaw do what he did to us I knew it was just prostitution she made it look like they were just boyfriends, and that's again this is life it's not as rare as you can as we would all want we would want this to never happen but it's not as rare as we would think, and she ends up dating this fellow.
[19:51] And it is really hysterical. It is really hysterical. So this is a guy, he was a black fellow, he worked as a bus driver and janitor at our school and after that day they dated but it wasn't normal dating. He cleaned the schools at night, mommy would put us in the car and we would go over to the school. We would keep him company while he cleaned. He told us that his wife had died and he was a widower. He seemed okay at first, but there was something about him that made me feel uncomfortable.
[20:18] So a few months into the relationship, her mother became obsessed with this man. One time after school, mommy saw him talking with another school teacher. She screamed at him, are you seeing her? He yelled back, woman, you're crazy. She wanted to know where he was. At all times, she would check and make sure he wasn't lying. She started accusing him of cheating. When he would watch television, she would accuse him of looking at women on TV. He lost it. He He started screaming at her a lot, which led to shoving. The shoving led to hitting. Eventually, Mommy was taking beatings constantly. She was a human punching bag, getting beat on about three to four times a day.
[20:53] Mother or mommy, why do you stay with him? Because, baby, I love him. But when they would fight, she would say, I hate his guts. That confused me even more. Just appalling. One day she, this is Elizabeth's writing, one day she got it into her mind that he had another woman over at his house. You've got a woman over there, don't you? You're hiding it. I'm coming over. And then this beating was so bad that she ended up in the emergency room and in hospital for about a week. She refused to press charges. One night, he ran her car off the road in the middle of nowhere, dragged her out of the car and beat her right in front of us again.
[21:31] And then the boyfriend, this boyfriend, she says, Elizabeth writes, One night I overheard an argument. Mommy was screaming and fighting back at him. I went to the kitchen to check on her. I saw he was raping her. Mommy kept telling me to go to the other room. Despite all the abuse, the obsession for him was controlling her she went back for more and this is what is going on she says while all this was going on she had also gotten herself pregnant by him twice so she.
[22:01] Pretended that she had a tumor that was making her gain weight and it's truly astonishing the way that this plays on. Of course, this level of chaos and fertility, she says when she got pregnant with the last one, she didn't want anyone to know. Three months into the pregnancy, she started showing and decided to hide. So she gets her kids into a car, and they live in a car until the baby is born. And she says, we ate bread with ketchup on it, and I've been there. She would buy bread in a store, then she made me and my sister Teresa to go to McDonald's and grab ketchup packets. It was so embarrassing. And they get no sleep. They've got mommy and four kids in a little Chevy Chevette trying to sleep. We didn't sleep much. When she had the baby, we went back home. She tried to hide the baby too, but that didn't last long. The only part that wasn't terrible was because mommy hid from Pawpaw too. I didn't have to go and see him not one time. So her mother ends up with six kids, five living at home because Louise was in Texas, married.
[23:07] And then she does get away from her violent gender boyfriend. She goes to shelters and it goes from there. And she ends up in a partying lifestyle. She tries to, she says, she went to church and lived well for a while. Then she slipped back into her old ways. She started to hang around with a few men and things went back to what I had become accustomed to. And then she finally got a job Elizabeth finally was able to get a job and she says at least the guys my mother was partying with weren't abusive they were drinkers and crazy but not abusive at least from what I saw absolutely terrible.
[23:47] She has a worship for her father, which I can't judge because the father married the mother and had kids with her. So I can judge this, of course, to some degree as negative, but she has a complete worship on. She calls herself a daddy's girl, a complete worship for her father. And that is something that is hard for me to picture, hard for me to imagine, hard for me to understand. So she ends up going to a college and then my sister louise and her husband david came to visit with their four children so at this time they'd had four children while on an outing one day i said can i stay with you for the summer and they said sure and the one of the problems was that louise and david so this is her older sister and her husband at the people who are pretty much in jail for life for torturing and abusing their children, stopped in Louisiana at a casino to gamble. I was not aware that they took part in gambling. We were all raised up in a strict Christian home and taught that gambling was a sin. I was in shock.
[24:50] And so, well, what can I tell you? So the David, the husband, says he would tease me about my high school boyfriend, Brandon, saying things like, Brandon wanted to go swimming with you just to get you in a two-piece to see your body and get excited and that is obviously kind of disturbing and things got stranger she says one day they were trying to come in on me while i was in the shower and she her sister picked the lock with a coat hanger she and david made me let them watch me shower sorry she and david made me let them watch me shower and even got out and got dressed in front of them got dressed and while they laughed and made fun of me and talked about how beautiful i was us so that's pretty unpleasant things that she noticed in the home she was very strict her sister was very strict with the kids louise would set the table for a meal and call them down one at a time they would wait for permission to sit down after they sat down they did not touch a bite to eat until louise told them it was okay and they really control her as well too she said i was given rules just like the kids i wasn't allowed to have friends give anyone her address or phone number i I could only go to work and back home and be transported by Louise. I was told if I broke the rules, I would be kicked out. I found out I had met a friend at work and be going out with him on lunch breaks. So then she got kicked out of the house.
[26:14] And she was at work. So Louise, her older sister, calls Elizabeth at work and says, you can't come home. And her boss offered to take her home with him and his wife. But she said no, because of all the abuse, she trusted no one. She goes to Walmart and just sleeps on a bench there. And she slept on that bench for three days.
[26:33] And she would walk to work in the same outfit she had on every day the manager would let her sleep in the office until it was time to clock in and this is the kind of life that people are living it's you know you can stay with your sister she finds out you're having lunch with a guy she kicks you out and you have to sleep on a bench in a warm-up parking lot for days, and she goes into stories of course she says for a couple of months after she gets married and has As kids, for a couple of months after one of her kids had issues, she battles fear, depression, and of course, of course. And the depression isn't, of course, just what happened when she was a child.
[27:13] The depression is how much it goes into society, how much society overlooks and ignores this and punishes you. Right if your sister kicks you out and you're you know obviously a young person and you end up sleeping on a park bench then society of course says you're the problem in school you're the problem you're not doing your homework you're not paying attention so much you're hungry try studying when you've had very little sleep and you're starving it's kind of tough so she gets gets married she says the first few years of marriage were awesome and then arguments.
[27:52] Began eight months into the marriage they lost a child which was tough she says she's been taking some weight loss pills that jonathan didn't want me to take while i didn't know i was pregnant, when we would argue he would tell me that's why we lost her i would tell him that i lost her because of all the arguing and that he would stress me out and that's rough right when you You lose a child and you're blaming each other. That's terrible. So the husband ends up leaving. I think there's a woman involved.
[28:21] And once he got to Texas, I called his cell phone to tell him. And his reply was, what do you want me to do about it? So Elizabeth says, you know, we had no food, no electricity, no car. And I was being evicted from a home within a couple of weeks of him leaving. He took all the money and didn't pay any of the bills. We had six children. I was eight and a half months pregnant with our seventh.
[28:40] That is the life. She was hospitalized for stress, depression, and panic attacks. And with regards to her sister, Louise, she said we would talk many times and often in a run for several days, and then she would suddenly quit calling. She would stop returning my phone calls sometimes for six months or even a year at a time. And that is something that happens tragically quite a lot with this sort of come and go family relations, right? So he ends up getting back together with her husband, and they've been married now, and by the time she writes the book, they've been married for over 20 years, and she says that God restored our marriage, and with regards to her husband, his parents divorced when he was four, he grew up seeing fighting between his parents, and when his stepdad came into the picture, there were lots and lots of fighting and abuse, and it was rough for everyone, one and with all of this comes like really really difficult difficult difficult health issues you know the amount of stress and wear and tear on the body from all of this abuse is really tough a lot of a lot of issues a lot of health issues and i won't go into those in detail again it's worth reading the book it's called sisters of secrets by elizabeth flores f-l-o-r-e-s.
[30:00] And that's rough as well so she elizabeth hears about louise talking about how many fights she had with her husband over gambling. And again, that's trying to get any kind of dopamine because of the fundamental misery of this kind of brutality that occurs as children. And then they have, of course, financial issues because of gambling and other things. And so then Louise and her husband David file for bankruptcy. And Louise says...
[30:39] Car and house, but not the stuff you buy on your credit card. You see, we file where we get to keep our house and car as long as the payments are caught up. Everything gets written off and we don't have to pay for it. And Elizabeth writes, after I began to understand what she was telling me, I responded, that kind of sounds like stealing to me. Well, it's not because my kids need it and I do whatever I need to do for my kids, she said. We buy everything we want on purpose because that's a way of getting things. We are filing bankruptcy anyway, so we might as well get as much possible before we file. But that just doesn't seem honest to me, right? And of course, this idea that you don't have to have morality with other kinds of things, like, oh, well, they can just write it off. There's a famous Seinfeld thing. They just write it off. He's like, you don't even know what that means. And so, Elizabeth at one point has cancer. And again, whether that's stress-related or childhood-related, there seems to be some evidence, but of course, nobody can draw direct.
[31:30] Causality and it was really tough and so she says with regards to her sister along with the gambling i could see from the outside looking in the drinking and sexual addictions were taking root, and that is very very rough as well and then there is a kind of open marriage polyamory thing that goes on with her sister and her husband. And her sister calls her and says, from a bar, and says, I'm getting so drunk, I'm having so much fun. And then she called back. Guess what? She said, we've met a man and he wants to have sex with me. Does David know this? Yes. David's right here beside me. He wants me to. And so they're doing that.
[32:15] And that's really rough. I won't get into the details because, you know, there's only a certain amount of ugliness that we can stomach in one particular show. But it is just monstrous. And then one weekend, her sister wants to say, ask her, have you ever heard of the Ouija board? And she's like, nope, nope, nope. They can bring out evil. And she goes like that. And she says, no, I think you're playing. I think playing with that could be demonic. And I don't want you asking anything about me. Anyway, you shouldn't be playing with that. I mean, that might not be safe around your kids. And the ridicule began. She says, you just love your Jesus, says her sister. I think it's cool. I've been doing some research, too. I have some books on witchcraft and card reading. I've even looked into the satanic religion and these rituals. What? She said, I was just curious. Lighten up. And I think that there is dark stuff around Ouija boards. I'm not saying it's metaphysical, but it does open up a portal to a very negative part of the personality.
[33:14] They start having snake statues in attack mode by the door, and things just get, you know, darker and darker and darker. And then she, this is Elizabeth, says, between the years of 2001 and 2006, I lost my children a couple of times to Child Protective Services. And there's, you know, really powerful and fascinating stories about all of that. And then her mother, she has a long section on losing her mother. Mother and says my relationship with my mom has been hard for others to understand, and her mother would insult her in public but then praise her in private but she says, when she's regarding her mother when she was so desperate for money it's hard to say the truth of how she was prostituting her own kids out to my pawpaw her dad she didn't know that i noticed, what she was doing because i was so young and then and there were these those times that she She would lock us in the car, in her car by herself in the middle of nowhere in the dark. She would go and do whatever she needed to do and then come back. Now, of course, given that her father was molesting his grandkids, it seems to me almost certain that he would have molested his own daughter as well. And of course, her mother, who prostituted herself and prostituted her children to a pedophile, when her daughter, Elizabeth, would wear shorts and so on, and she would sort of scream, you're acting like a slut, you're stupid, and I didn't raise you to be like that, which is, of course, quite confusing.
[34:44] And Elizabeth says, it was a very desperate, oh, sorry, it was a very destructive relationship, but I love my mom so much, and I can't explain it. And that's wild, right?
[34:53] And there's a lot of this kind of stuff in these kinds of abusive relationships, that infection of supposed love is one of the ways in which this abuse tends to replicate.
[35:03] And she says i would go home to visit my mother on weekends and she would start fighting with me out of nowhere i remember one time going home and a friend going with me to visit and mommy got so mad about something that she put her fist through the window so also quite terrifying and then there would be times when they would talk to she would talk to her mother on the phone every day sometimes even twice a day they would talk for hours and then one of the problems is that she was elizabeth was hurt to find out that her mother was telling everything that Elizabeth would tell her to others in the family. And she would lie about me and exaggerate everything or make everything look bad even if it was good. And that, you know, confide in me and then betrayal is just terrible.
[35:49] There's a long series here about the death. Oh, and sorry, this is a note that I had.
[35:55] She says, no matter what mommy did to me, I loved her so much. I always felt that her actions were due to all of the abuse she experienced as a child. And she never got help to cope with it. I know that Pawpaw molested her over and over. So, okay, sorry about that. I thought it was for certain. And there it is confirmed. And then she says, this is very important. She writes, mommy feared hell. I have peace that mommy gave her heart to the Lord. If this chapter speaks to you, just remember you have only one mother. Try to make things right and do what's right. Pray for them instead of hating them for what they put you through. The Bible says to honor your mother and father. It doesn't say to only honor them if they do you right. One thing I can say is I honored my mother and father until death. That's powerful. She also says to her husband that Louise, her sister, was full of the devil. And that doesn't. vote well of course for the future of the relationship and so on right and her father has a a tough time with dementia which is of course a very brutal thing for people to go through and she writes when i got married daddy cried he loved jonathan though he told me one time that jonathan was the only son-in-law that he liked he said that something was weird about david because louise didn't talk or see the family anymore and he said any 23 year old 23 year old that would run off with a 16-year-old isn't any good anyway, which is, of course, quite true.
[37:21] And then Elizabeth writes that when her father's dementia started to get worse, and she went to take care of him for quite some time, Louise began to accuse me of stealing his money and this, oh gosh, I talked about this in the show some months ago, the appalling stuff that happens when there is inheritance. It's just, just terrible. And so she took care of her father. He got to where he wore diapers and had to be fed, couldn't do anything for himself. And Elizabeth writes, you know, I never got any sleep. It was so rewarding, though, to be able to be the one taking care of him and knowing he was well taken care of. And then eventually he just needed hospice as a whole. And when her father was on his death bed, he asked several times to talk to Louise and she wouldn't answer. And her father would cry, I was saying, I guess she doesn't want to talk to me. And she didn't reply even to Elizabeth's requests to talk. And they'd had conflicts about inheritance and stuff like that. And so she says, what I believe now is she knew daddy wanted to talk to the kids on Skype and she didn't want to have to tell him no.
[38:32] Her father passed away just three months after her mother died and sister refused louise refused to come to the funeral and that was terrible and she says when elizabeth says when louise didn't come to his funeral we got into a huge fight over this she even sent her in-laws to the hotel where we were staying for daddy's funeral to scream in my face about it i told them exactly how i felt i told them she wouldn't get anything after the way she treated my parents and wouldn't talk to them so that's interesting so her sister she's incredibly angry at her sister and draws these lines with her sister calls her sister full of evil and so on right which is just a wild thing which i'll talk about later but i just wanted to point it out here that elizabeth calls her sister evil draws lines with her sister won't accommodate any of her sister's abuse i told them she wouldn't get anything after the way she treated my parents and wouldn't talk to them. And so she really, really cuts off her sister, calls her evil, gets incredibly angry at her sister, even though her sister did more to protect her than her parents did as a child.
[39:40] So if there's this principle, then she should not be angry at her sister. She should be angry at her parents. But she takes care of her parents. She loves her parents. But she's incredibly angry at her sister, who sacrificed her own childhood in part to protect Elizabeth from some of the worst abuses. So, I find that wild that you can take all of the anger at your parents and take it out on your sister. And that is something else. That is really, really something else. Her father was heavily involved in politics and even his car said Democrat. So, this is, you know, massive pedophile family, not the father it seems, but, and he's a Democrat. a crown. So, it is really something, and I won't get into a lot of the later part of the book. Again, it's well worth the read to get a view into the kind of life that a lot of people have.
[40:38] And I like what she says later in the book. She says, parents need to discipline their children, but they must discipline, not abuse. There is a big difference. And this is from Ephesians 6.4. Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. And Carl 3.21 says, Fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged.
[41:01] Jesus knows you better than you could ever know yourself. He will help. From Hebrews 4.15-16 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin. And and.
[41:19] This can occur in the middle of a society that absolutely claims to love for and have no higher desire than to care for and protect its children is really amazing. That you can sail through in the midst of this living hell of abuse, violence, molestation, rape, torture, that you can sail through as a child in a society. And we're going to deal with this more in the next part of this when we talk about what actually happened in the Luis and David Turbin household, which is almost beyond belief.
[41:53] But it's like another dimension. You know, we have all these stories about other dimensions and parallel dimensions and alternate universes and so on. But that's where the victims of abuse live. That's where we live. We live in this universe where it's the same planet but different worlds. We sit in school with our secrets isolating us. The sense of decay and disaster clings around us and repels others. Or draws dangerous others to us. And society sees it all. And society knows it all. And society doesn't want to get involved. And that, of course, is everyone's choice. But the consequences of not getting involved we will talk about in the next part of this conversation, which you will really need to brace yourself for because it's about as dark as things get. But you can choose not to get involved. but you need to understand the consequences of not getting involved which we will see in detail when we talk about the Turpin family as a whole.
[42:57] And when you look at your own conscience as I've looked at mine as you look at your own conscience and say have I done what was necessary to protect the helpless and dependent children in my environment, in my life, in my world, if you haven't you need to come to terms with that you need to find a way to live with that and to change for the better as we all do, as I do, as everyone does thank you for, listening I look forward to your feedback on some of this true crime stuff.
[43:28] And I will get to the next part of this conversation about the Turpin family soon.
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