The Family Next Door

by John Glatt

  “No.”

  “To be clear,” she continued, “she didn’t describe him touching her chest area. Correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  “She didn’t describe him touching her genital area?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Or her buttocks, for that matter?”

  “Correct.”

  “And she described that her father was clothed during this incident. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what she told you was that she immediately stood up and pulled up her pants, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “She said she didn’t like that?”

  “That is correct.”

  “And her father never said anything during this actual incident. Correct?”

  “Just that she’d better not tell anybody,” said the deputy.

  She then moved on to the claims Jordan had made about her father trying to kiss her.

  “I think you used the words forcible kissing,” Lowe said. “But to be clear, she said that she believed he tried to kiss her mouth on several occasions. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah,” replied the deputy. “She did use the word force. She said, ‘He would try to force kisses on my mouth.’”

  “But he never actually accomplished that. Correct?”

  “She said he would just try. She didn’t specify whether he was successful or not.”

  “Did she provide any sort of demonstration as to what this would encompass?”

  “No, she did not.”

  “Did she ever provide a specific time frame as to when any of these incident occurred?”

  “Yes,” Campos said. “She said when she was twelve, and the last time being when she was fifteen or sixteen.”

  After a short recess, Louise Turpin’s attorney, Jeff Moore, began his cross-examination. He first asked Deputy Campos about the “choking incident.” The deputy confirmed that Jordan couldn’t remember if Mother had choked her with one or both hands.

  “You asked her if she had lost consciousness during the incident. Right?” asked Moore.

  “Yes,” Campos answered.

  “And she told she hadn’t?”

  “That is correct.”

  “And she actually volunteered that it didn’t make a place, and the word she used was place. Correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Did you interpret that to mean bruise?”

  “Yes,” he replied, “or some type of injury, yes.”

  The deputy said that Jordan was unable to estimate how long Mother had choked her for.

  “But what she said was,” said Moore, reading from his notes, “‘Do you want to die?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And she said, ‘Yes, you do. Yes, you do.’ She said, ‘You want to die and go to hell.’ I know it lasted that long. Right?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Well, her description gives you a couple of pieces of information, right?” Moore said. “It gives you kind of an estimate of how long it lasted, more or less?”

  “Yes.”

  “Long enough for a short exchange of words from both persons. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It also tells you that she was able to verbalize while she was being choked, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” conceded the deputy.

  * * *

  After the midmorning break, co-prosecutor Kim DeGonia recalled lead detective Tom Salisbury to the stand. He had interviewed both defendants at Perris Police Department the day of the escape.

  DeGonia began by asking about his hour-long interview with thirteen-year-old Jolinda a few hours after the rescue.

  “Did the two of you speak about her education?” asked DeGonia.

  “That prior to moving to Murrieta in June of 2010, that she was being homeschooled,” said the detective.”And that they had worked their way up to the letter I of the alphabet. But since that time, her mom had done a little bit of additional homeschooling with them at the Perris house, and that she had worked her way up to the letter J or T. She couldn’t remember which one.”

  “What did she believe was her grade level?” she asked.

  “Well, she wanted to … accelerate to the first grade, because she was tired of doing kindergarten work.”

  “Did she indicate how Mother would react if they would get questions or answers wrong while doing the kindergarten curriculum?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “If they didn’t do straight lines or stay within lines, Mother would pull their hair and throw them across the room.”

  “When you were speaking to her,” asked DeGonia, “did you notice her inability to understand basic words, like the word estimate?”

  “Yes. There were a lot of words that she had problems understanding. And she self-admitted that she even had a problem with the word said, s-a-i-d.”

  The detective also said Jolinda, who was born in Texas, did not know whether it was a state or country.

  “Did she call Texas a country?” asked DeGonia.

  “Yes.”

  The prosecutor also asked what Jolinda had told him about the hall monitors who Mother used as her eyes and ears. He said that her two oldest siblings, Jennifer and Joshua, acted as hall monitors, as well as her older sisters Julianne and Jeanetta.

  “And did she indicate … why there were hall monitors in their home?”

  “Yes,” Salisbury answered. “To stop the kids from getting candy [and other] things out of Mother’s room, and to … stop the kids stealing food out of the kitchen.”

  Then DeGonia asked what Jolinda had said about her early life in Rio Vista, Texas. Salisbury replied that she knew she had been born in Texas and had lived in a trailer with her siblings.

  “[It was] without her parents present,” said the detective. “Mostly her older brother Joshua cared for them and the trailer was filthy, dirty, smelled bad.” Jolinda told Salisbury that she hadn’t bathed since May 2017.

  DeGonia then asked what physical abuse Jolinda had suffered.

  “Pulling and yanking of the hair,” he replied. “And in addition to that, she had been pinched by her mother, choked by her mother, and hit by her mother.”

  Jolinda had also told him how Mother would get angry and hit her on the head with her knuckles.

  “Did Jolinda indicate to you whether she had been choked by Mother?” asked the prosecutor.

  “Yes,” Salisbury said. “She was taking a bath, and it wasn’t until she got into the tub that she realized she had to go to the bathroom. And her mom got extremely upset and pinched her. [She] placed her full hands around Jolinda’s neck and picked her up off the ground.”

  DeGonia then turned to the lead detective’s interview later that day with Jonathan, who had been chained up when the police had first arrived.

  “Did he know whether anyone else, other than himself, was chained?” she asked.

  “Yes, he did. He knew that he, along with his two younger sisters, Julissa and Joanna, had been chained up. Told they were ‘suspects,’ quote, unquote.”

  “When you said they were ‘suspects,’” asked DeGonia, “what did he tell you about that?”

  “We talked a lot about suspects,” said Salisbury. “He said that was a term that Mother used. They were suspects of stealing stuff and being disrespectful to their parents and siblings.”

  The prosecutor asked what Jonathan had done to become a “suspect.”

  “The original thing,” said the detective, “was he took his older brother’s camera and hid it in the trash can, and it later got thrown out. And then … he was a suspect of stealing food.”

  The detective said Jonathan had been chained up on and off for six and a half years—first with ropes in the Murrieta house and then chains in Perris.

  “So ropes first to restrain, and then chains?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he know why Mother and Father switched from ropes to chains?”

  “Objection,” said Lowe. “Misstates the testimony
and assumes facts not in evidence.”

  “Overruled,” said Judge Schwartz.

  “When they tied him with ropes,” explained the detective, “he was able to escape using his teeth. And so they switched to what he referred to as small chains. And then when he was able to slide those off the bed rail, they used thicker, heavier chains.”

  Salisbury testified that Jonathan told him Father had first chained him up, and then Mother had taken over. When officers arrived at the house, the detective said, they had found Jonathan chained to his upper bunk bed. He had been there for a couple of weeks but had previously been chained up to two months at a time.

  In cross-examination, Allison Lowe returned to the detective’s testimony that Jolinda had difficulty understanding certain words.

  “And I think one of the examples you used was estimate?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “But overall,” she continued, “isn’t it true that she understood the questions you were asking her and provided appropriate responses?”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, you told her that she was very articulate. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes,” answered the detective. “I tried to encourage the kids during the interview.”

  “Did Jolinda ever tell you about any injuries that were caused by her father?” asked Lowe.

  “No,” Salisbury said.

  29

  “SHE WAS TERRIFIED OF HER MOTHER”

  After breaking for lunch, the preliminary hearing continued and the prosecution called its third witness, investigator Brett Rooker of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Under Kim DeGonia’s direct Rooker testified that he had interviewed Joanna, Jessica, and Joy Turpin at the Perris Police Department on the day of their escape. The prosecutor began by asking about any abuse Joanna had suffered after moving to California.

  “She said that when she was about eight or nine, living in Murrieta,” said the investigator, “that she was thrown down the stairs by her mother.”

  “Did she indicate whether, after she was thrown down the stairs, she had injuries?”

  “She said her neck and back hurt,” replied Rooker, “and that she was dizzy.”

  The prosecutor asked why Mother had thrown her down the stairs.

  “She was caught in her mother’s room by her mother. [Mother] became very upset and threw her around the bedroom and was yelling at her. And then when she stood up, she pushed her down the stairs.”

  “Did she indicate to you,” DeGonia continued, “whether or not she’s been abused in any other way, physically, by Mother or Father?”

  “She said that she was chained up.”

  “What did she tell you about that?”

  “She said that the chaining started because she would take things and that she would have dark places on her arms from the chains.”

  Rooker had asked Joanna to show him the “dark places.”

  “She lifted up her sleeves on her jacket,” he recalled. “I saw dirt caked on her arms.” He said she had been chained up since the previous October.

  The prosecutor then showed Rooker a photograph of Joanna’s arms a few hours after the rescue.

  “And what are we looking at here?” she asked.

  “The inside of her left forearm,” he replied. “And you can see that there’s clean spots on her wrists from where the chains were.”

  Then the prosecutor showed him a photograph of the fourteen-year-old’s right forearm, with a similar clean ring around the wrists where the chains had been.

  “Did she describe for you how often she would take a bath?” asked DeGonia.

  “She told me that the last time she had had a bath was about eight months prior to that, [on] Mother’s Day.”

  “Now, did Joanna speak to you about whether or not any of the siblings would stay up all night and monitor the hall?”

  “Yeah,” Rooker said. “She said that Julianne and Jeanetta would stay in the hallway. And … since they moved to Perris, somebody would be up all hours day and night, watching them to make sure nobody stole food or snuck in Mother’s room.”

  “Did she indicate how she felt about Mother and Father?”

  “She said she was terrified of her mother,” he replied. Joanna told him that Mother physically beat her, pulling her hair and hitting her on the head.

  “Did she indicate anything to you about the blinds in their bedroom?” DeGonia asked.

  “Yes,” Rooker replied. “She believed that when the chains started, Mother had closed her window and adjusted the blinds so that nobody could see in.”

  The prosecutor then questioned him about the photographs of the six minor siblings’ clothing taken at Perris Police Department. Rooker said that he had actually picked the items up to pose for the police photographer.

  “How did they feel?” asked DeGonia.

  “They were very heavy and soiled,” he answered.

  “How did they smell?”

  “Putrid. All the clothing was difficult to lay out.”

  “Why so?”

  “Just because of the smell.”

  “Was it dirty?”

  “Extremely.”

  The investigator testified that he had later gone to Corona Regional Medical Center to collect and photograph the seven adult siblings’ clothing.

  “Did you notice the same smell, odor, the dirty clothing, on the adults as you did the minors?” asked DeGonia.

  “Yes,” Rooker replied.

  The investigator told the court that after talking to the seven adults, he had placed an involuntary 5150 hold on them for their own safety.

  “They were all gravely disabled adults,” Rooker testified.

  “Objection, Your Honor,” said attorney Macher, rising to his feet. “That states a conclusion.”

  “Sustained,” the judge ruled. “‘Gravely disabled adult’ is stricken.”

  The investigator then testified that he had received police academy training on dealing with adults that were a danger to themselves or others.

  “I’ve 5150’d numerous people,” he said. “And that day, they were evaluated not just by me but by the other investigators in his case. We all decided that just based on their diminished capacity, their lack of education … they were [unable] to care for themselves in any way. So I placed a 5150 hold on them so that they could get the care that they needed.”

  “At that point,” asked the prosecutor, “were the adult Turpins then admitted to Corona Regional?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

  In cross-examination, David Macher asked if Joanna had been crying during the interview.

  “She was crying,” Rooker said. “She said she was scared.”

  “And did she tell you she was afraid for her parents?” asked Macher.

  “Yes, she did.”

  Then David Turpin’s lead attorney continued his strategy of mitigating his client’s role in what had happened.

  “Did Joanna tell you that David Turpin was always at work?” he questioned.

  “Yes,” replied Rooker.

  “Did she tell you that when he [was] home on the weekends, he and Louise were gone all day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she tell you that David Turpin did not do anything to her?”

  “I don’t believe she used those exact words,” Rooker said.

  “Okay,” pressed Macher. “Did she indicate that David Turpin hurt her?”

  “No.”

  “Now, did she indicate that her parents argued?”

  “Objection,” said DeGonia. “Relevance.”

  “Overruled,” said Judge Schwartz. “You may answer.”

  “I don’t recall.”

  Then Macher asked if Joanna had mentioned how several of the adult siblings had been allowed to watch television.

  “She said the older ones that helped Mother were able to watch television,” Rooker replied.

  “Did she tell you that Jessica and Joy always go with Louise when
she leaves the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she said that her brother Joshua goes to college?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “All right,” said the defender. “And you inquired about sexual abuse?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was her answer negative?”

  “Yes.”

  Kim DeGonia had no redirect questions, and Rooker was excused.

  * * *

  The next witness was Deputy Dan Brown of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, who had interviewed Julissa, Joshua, and Jeanetta a few hours after their rescue. He spent just under two hours with eleven-year-old Julissa, who told him about the siblings’ diet.

  “She was always hungry,” said the deputy. “They would have lunch and supper at the same time as one meal. It would be either peanut butter sandwiches or jalapeño baloney sandwiches and then some sort of freezer food.”

  “Did she indicate whether or not sometimes they received just plain bread?” asked DeGonia.

  “Yes, she did,” he replied.

  “Did she indicate whether or not Mother and Father ate different than they ate, ‘they’ meaning the Turpin children?”

  “Yes, the parents ate different food,” Brown said. “She said specifically that the parents would eat Jersey Mike’s, pizza, french fries.”

  “But the children would not. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  Then the prosecutor asked what Julissa had told him about pies.

  “She stated that Mother would purchase pies,” said Brown, “and either leave them in the fridge or in the pantry. They would wait until they got moldy, and then she would throw them in the trash.”

  “Did Julissa indicate whether or not she wanted to eat those pies?”

  “Yes, she did.”

  Julissa also told Brown she’d last had a bath on Mother’s Day of 2017.

  “Her mother washed her hair, [and] she washed the rest of her body. She changed her clothing to go out for Mother’s Day and then immediately upon returning back home, she [had] to put the same dirty, soiled clothing back on.”

  “When [was] the last time Julissa had her sheets changed?” asked DeGonia.

  “Christmas 2016,” replied the deputy.