by John Glatt
“I remember the chaos in the house when she eloped with David,” said Teresa. “Our whole family being in the house and my parents fighting and crying.”
A few days later, a police officer picked up the runaway couple in Fort Worth and made Louise call her parents to say she was all right. Ironically, it was her mother who wanted to press charges against David for kidnapping. When David’s parents heard the threat of legal action, they were livid, since their son would face prison for transporting a minor across state lines. They begged the Robinettes not to press charges.
After his initial fury when Louise had gone missing, Allen now had “mixed emotions.” As an evangelical preacher, he decided it was better to let them quietly marry, as extramarital sex went against his strict Church of God beliefs. His attitude was that Louise had made her choice and should now go off with David and live her life.
“He got on the phone and told Louise, ‘You’re now an adult [and] can take care of yourself. If this is what you want, you go for it,’” said Teresa.
It was only after Allen Robinette agreed to give written permission for his sixteen-year-old daughter to marry David that the couple drove back to Princeton.
* * *
On February 11, 1985, Louise and David Turpin were married at a small, quiet church ceremony in Pearisburg, Virginia, thirty-five miles east of Princeton. Only close family members attended. The bride wore a mid-calf-length conservative white dress, with a high mock turtle neckline and slightly puffed long sleeves. She had a simple white flower corsage. The groom wore a loose-fitting, brown three-piece suit with a striped tie and his usual grin.
Immediately after the wedding, the newlyweds returned to Fort Worth to begin their new life together.
There was no wedding report in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, and few of Louise’s classmates even noticed she had suddenly dropped out of school mid-semester and never graduated.
“She was supposed to be in my graduating class,” said Richard Ford. “She just disappeared.”
* * *
At the beginning of their marriage, David was making good money in his new job at General Dynamics, keeping his promise that they would live well. Although she still sent Elizabeth letters regularly, Louise turned her back on Princeton. She wanted nothing to do with her miserable childhood, blaming her family for her grandfather’s sexual abuse.
“When she first left home, she was mad and resented Mommy a lot,” explained Teresa. “She resented the whole family because they kept the secret.”
With Louise gone, her parents’ arguments became even worse. Eight-year-old Elizabeth and her three-year-old sister, Teresa, would hug each other to try to escape the continual fights.
Then Phyllis started an affair with a local man.
Late one night, after her father had gone to bed, Elizabeth heard her mother talking to somebody on the phone. She instinctively knew something was wrong. She woke up her father, telling him that her mother was on the phone with a stranger.
Allen picked up the phone and listened to the conversation for a few minutes before slamming it down. Then he confronted Phyllis, demanding to know who she was talking to. When she claimed it was only her father, he knew she was lying and berated her for being unfaithful.
Things got so heated that Phyllis finally called her father for help. John Taylor rushed straight over and ordered his son-in-law out of his own house, threatening to call the police if he didn’t leave.
Allen did leave. He filed for divorce the next day.
* * *
With Allen out of the picture, John Taylor started spending more and more time at the B Ray Street house. By then, he was also molesting Teresa, his youngest granddaughter. Without a husband to support her, Phyllis became more and more reliant on her father’s money to feed and clothe her children, so she allowed Papaw to molest them whenever he wanted to.
“She sold us to a wealthy pedophile,” said Teresa. “He would slip money into my hand as he molested me. I can still feel his breath on my neck as he whispered, ‘Be quiet.’ He would come to the car after every time and hand my mom money. And he thought that made it okay.”
Without their big sister to protect them, Elizabeth and Teresa would now have to endure their grandfather’s despicable behavior alone.
* * *
Soon afterward, Phyllis became pregnant by her new boyfriend, Billy Lambert, and they got engaged. Allen, who had recently been appointed chief deputy assessor of Mercer County, approved, believing the relationship gave Phyllis some stability. Lambert also got along well with Elizabeth and Teresa.
Then, days before the wedding, Billy was driving home from work when he suffered a brain hemorrhage. His car went over a cliff, and he died instantly. When Phyllis gave birth to his son months later, she named him Billy Jr.
* * *
Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, David and Louise Turpin were thriving. David was working as a computer engineer on the F-16 Fighting Falcon, one of the most popular military supersonic jet fighters. It was a high-paid job, and the couple often ate out at pricier restaurants around town. They spent weekends at the historic Fort Worth Stockyards, going to the rodeo and Wild West shows.
In 1987, David and Louise moved to Brea, California, for his job. Just thirty-three miles southeast of Los Angeles in Orange County, the scenic city is famous for its public arts program, which attracts tourists from all over the world. The Turpins loved the warm Mediterranean climate, with the average temperature in the eighties.
The Turpins found a modest two-bedroom apartment at 800 South Brea Boulevard. Though Louise still resented her family for her traumatic childhood, she embraced any opportunity to boast about her affluent new life. She wrote letters back to Princeton, vividly describing their beautiful home, fleet of cars, and frequent trips to Disneyland. She promised to fly her mother and sisters out soon to visit, all expenses paid.
Back in Princeton, her family’s situation was less fortunate. After her fiancé’s tragic death, Phyllis Robinette turned to prostitution to survive. She would leave Elizabeth and Teresa home alone all night to care for their baby brother while she turned tricks downtown on seedy Mercer Street. Sometimes she took the kids with her, leaving them in the car while she entertained her clients.
Janie Farmer taught Elizabeth and Teresa in Mercer Elementary School. She could see the neglect the children suffered, eventually becoming their surrogate mother.
“I found them to be a sad, needy family,” recalled Farmer. “I hate to talk bad about their mother, because I think she did what she could, but she couldn’t do a lot.”
Each morning, the two Robinette sisters came to school looking unkempt with bad personal hygiene. They were made fun of by their classmates.
“They were not clean and kind of raggedy-looking,” Farmer said. “When the other kids would go out to play, they basically stayed by themselves. They seemed to be sad children.”
Farmer, who was good friends with their father, as they were both staunch Democrats, was surprised by how Phyllis always tried to keep her daughters away from Allen.
“The girls got to visit their father,” recalled Farmer, “but he didn’t seem to be allowed to be in their lives as much as he wanted.”
Although Phyllis never attended any parent-teacher meetings, she suddenly started visiting Mercer Elementary School for another reason; she had developed a crush on David Lee, the African American school custodian.
“She was smitten … infatuated,” said Farmer. “She would come to the school just to see the custodian.”
Most evenings, Phyllis would drive her little girls back to the school, leaving them in the car while she went in to see her new boyfriend.
“They dated,” said Elizabeth, “but it wasn’t normal dating. He cleaned the school at night … and we would keep him company while he cleaned.”
Before long, the two were virtually living together, leading to even more instability for Phyllis’s family. Janie Farmer became so concerned for the girls
that she confronted Phyllis.
“She’d say, ‘Well, I’m doing the best I can,’” said Farmer. “And for all purposes, she probably was. But the girls never spoke to me about abuse or anything like that.”
Although Farmer eventually lost touch with Elizabeth and Teresa when they both graduated to middle school, David Lee would stay in the Robinettes’ lives a while longer. Over the next four years, Phyllis would give birth to two of his children, McCeary and Alene Lee, before the couple finally drifted apart.
PART TWO
THE FAMILY
5
“I THOUGHT THEIR LIFE WAS PERFECT”
In the fall of 1987, Louise Turpin became pregnant. She and David were delighted. Louise had always told her family that she wanted a dozen children, and now she was on her way. The following summer, David photographed his twenty-year-old wife wearing a checked shirt and proudly displaying her eight-month-pregnant belly. She sent the photograph back home to Princeton, where her proud father duly wrote, LOUISE ANN ROBINETTE TURP, JULY 1988, at the bottom.
A few days later, on July 28, Louise gave birth to a little girl, whom they named Jennifer Dawn. Over the next few weeks, Louise would send a stream of photos of herself and David posing with their baby daughter at Disneyland and other scenic places in Southern California.
That Christmas, true to her word, Louise paid for her mother and siblings to come to California and meet her new baby. They took the Amtrak train from Princeton to Brea, where David and Louise met them at the station.
“It was so cool,” remembered Teresa, who was six at the time. “She took us to her house. It was very clean and well kept.”
For the next three weeks, the Robinettes stayed with the Turpins, going on lavish day trips to Disneyland, Universal Studios, and the Movieland Wax Museum.
“We saw the Hollywood sign,” said Teresa, “and the world’s biggest tree with a tunnel cut through it. It was a trip I will never forget.”
* * *
In early 1990, David Turpin was transferred back to Fort Worth by General Dynamics, soon to be taken over by the huge defense contractor Lockheed Martin. He moved Louise and their now eighteen-month-old daughter into 3225 Roddy Drive, a spacious, modern, four-bedroom, two-bathroom house in the fashionable Meadowcreek neighborhood on the outskirts of Fort Worth. They left a storage unit full of their belongings back in California, which was later auctioned off for nonpayment.
Finally, Louise and David were ready to introduce their little daughter, Jennifer, to Princeton, West Virginia. On August 6, 1990, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph featured a birthday picture of the Turpin toddler on the Lifestyles: Keeping in Touch page.
“Jennifer Dawn Turpin celebrated her 2nd birthday July 28,” read the caption below. “She is the daughter of David and Louise Turpin of Fort Worth, Texas, formerly of Princeton. Grandparents are Wayne Robinette, Mr. and Mrs. James Turpin, Phyllis Robinette, all of Princeton. Great-grandparents are John and Louise Taylor of the Athens Road.”
David Turpin was now earning a six-figure salary in his highly specialized engineering job. Soon after moving in, Louise invited her mother and siblings to visit. It was the start of a series of much-anticipated annual trips that the Robinette family would make to Texas over the next decade, with Louise and David paying for everything.
“She was paying for our airfare out there every year,” said Teresa. “My mom couldn’t afford that.”
And when they arrived, David and Louise were more than generous hosts, taking them all out to the Fort Worth Stockyards and Six Flags over Texas and dining at the best restaurants.
“It was the highlight of our year,” said Teresa, “because that’s when we got to do the fun things.”
But she never really got to know her brother-in-law, David, who always seemed very distant during the visits.
“He was very quiet,” remembered Teresa. “He … always sat back and watched and observed. He was very, very … smart. Book smart. The nerdy type.”
* * *
Back in Princeton, Allen Robinette had given up preaching and had been elected Mercer County surveyor, running his own office in the Mercer County Courthouse on Main Street. He was very active in the West Virginia Democratic Party.
“Everybody liked [Allen],” said his friend Verlin Moye, a Mercer County clerk. “He did a lot of complex tax formula work [with] land tables and that kind of thing. He specialized in the appraisal end of the assessor’s office.”
Robinette would proudly talk about his son-in-law, David, saying he was making big money for a defense contractor. But he never mentioned how his daughter, Louise, had run away at sixteen to elope, leading to his bitter divorce.
“I just really didn’t know that they had a falling-out over that,” said Moye. “[Allen] just never did divulge any of his personal life to me.”
Still deeply religious and active in the Princeton Church of God, Allen started every county commission meeting with a prayer. When he wasn’t busy assessing taxes, he collected celebrity autographs and NASCAR memorabilia. His prized collection included every American astronaut and many U.S. presidents and world figures.
A few years later, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph would run a story about Allen Robinette’s impressive collection of celebrity autographs. With the headline TRUE COLLECTORS NEVER KNOW WHEN TO SAY WHEN, there was a photograph of Louise’s father, in which he wore a checked shirt and overalls, standing by his collection.
In the article, Robinette boasted that he now had more than three thousand autographs in his collection, including almost every American astronaut. He said his first ever autograph had been Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who lost to Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
“I was a student [in] high school and a Goldwater admirer,” explained Robinette. “I wrote him and he replied. That is how I started collecting.”
With prized autographs of every president from John F. Kennedy to George Bush, Robinette had strong views about anyone trying to profit from selling famous people’s autographs.
“He had an extensive, impressive collection,” recalled Moye. “Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and Princess Diana … just anybody and everybody. It was just amazing to me.”
But while Allen Robinette held one of the most important jobs in Mercer County, his ex-wife and two youngest daughters were now destitute and living in a homeless shelter in Tennessee.
* * *
On February 3, 1992, Louise Turpin gave birth to a baby boy. He was named Joshua David. From then on, all their babies’ Christian names would begin with the letter J.
Soon after Joshua was born, David and Louise Turpin filed chapter 7 bankruptcy. Despite David’s high salary, the couple had been living beyond their means and had maxed out their credit cards, racking up substantial debt. Louise had also recently discovered a passion for gambling and had been losing heavily.
But she never admitted any financial problems to her family, always pretending that everything was fine. And during her family’s annual visit, Louise was as generous as ever.
“It was a pride thing,” explained Teresa. “She was the only one of us that had made it in the world … I believe she was ashamed to tell us anything bad had happened.”
6
MEADOWCREEK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
In July 1993, Louise met her family at Dallas / Fort Worth International Airport, heavily pregnant with her third child. Once again, Louise insisted on paying for everything. Being homeless, Phyllis and her daughters were delighted to be staying in Louise and David’s house on Roddy Drive.
“That house was beautiful,” said Teresa, “It was fun and happy.”
On November 3, Louise gave birth to a baby girl named Jessica Louise at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Southwest Fort Worth. There was a brief mention in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the new baby’s parents were “Louise Ann and David Allen Turpin of Fort Worth.”
In the spring of 1994, the Telegram invited readers to send in some of their favorite famil
y photographs, accompanied by a short sentence about their mother, for an upcoming feature to celebrate Mother’s Day. David and Louise Turpin entered a number of photographs, resulting in three appearing in the newspaper.
In one photograph, Louise is pictured with Jennifer, Joshua, and baby Jessica in their backyard, playing with their pet dog, Blackie. In another, David and Louise pose with Jennifer as a baby, along with her paternal grandmother, Betty Turpin.
“My mother is very special and we love her very much,” read David’s caption below.
The third, which was around five years old, showed Phyllis Robinette holding her newly born son, Billy Jr. Next to them stood David with Louise, holding Jennifer.
“There is no other like my mother,” read Louise’s caption. “She’s the best.”
* * *
Fifteen months later, eight-year-old Jennifer Turpin started first grade at Meadowcreek Elementary School, just a few blocks from her home on Roddy Drive. Every morning, Louise would drive her to school and then collect her in the afternoon.
From the start, the frail-looking girl was cruelly taunted by her peers. Not only was she a couple of years older than everybody else in her class, but she had poor personal hygiene. She wore the same white-and-purple floral puffy top to school each day, and her long, greasy brown hair, crudely cut into bangs, was never brushed. She was also missing her two front teeth, as her adult ones had not come in yet.
“She was definitely criticized,” recalled Jared Dana, who was in Jennifer’s class. “She used to wear the same smelly clothes every day; a pair of beaten overalls and a purple shirt. A lot of the time, she’d take foil out of candy bars to do up her hair.”
