The quiet California community of Perris has been left reeling after the discovery of 13 children found chained and malnourished in squalid conditions in their parents' house. Matthew Alex Padilla, a 20-year-old former Marine, said he was sickened to learn that Louise Turpin, the woman he served pizza to near the Perris property, had a house full of starving children. Mr Padilla has worked at Leonardi’s Pizza inside the WinCo supermarket for a year, and told The Telegraph he last saw Mrs Turpin a week or so ago. “Louise was in here every other day,” he said. “Sometimes with her husband, and a few times with a little girl, but never more than one. “We knew each other, and would chat – she was normal, if maybe a bit reserved. I had no idea she had 13 children, because she’d only ever order a slice of pepperoni, or a chicken club sandwich with no tomato. David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, were arrested after the discovery of the 13 children Credit: AFP “I’ve seen her buy food and eat, and yet there were 13 hungry kids at home? That’s messed up. They should be sentenced to a long time in jail. To do that to your kids – it’s not OK.” Louise and her husband David forced their offspring to march around the house, drill formation, at the dead of night, one neighbour claimed. Mike Clifford, a 60-year-old aerospace machinist, lived opposite the family for three years in Murrieta, where the couple rented a six-bedroom home between 2011 and 2014. Described by their family as “deeply religious”, the Turpins home-schooled their children and the youngsters were rarely seen in the community. “We thought they were mentally handicapped kids, so they kept them in,” said Mr Clifford, who worked late shifts and would catch sight of them in the evenings. “I never saw them play. What we did used to see a lot was on the second floor, the kids would be walking in circles like they were marching for hours at a time. It was military like.” He told the Mail Online he would see the Turpins bundling their children into their minivan at least twice a month in the early hours of the morning as he arrived home. Neighbours stand outside the house where the children were found Credit: Los Angeles Times “They would load up the kids at about one in the morning,” he said. “The garage doors would just pop open and half a dozen kids would get into the van and then they'd drive off. “My weirdest thought was that they were selling the kids, sexually or whatever.” Despite his concerns, Mr Clifford says he never saw anything that would have warranted a call to the police and said the children appeared clean, if “robotic” when spoken to. In 2014 the family moved up the road to Perris, from where the alarm was raised by their 17-year-old daughter on Sunday morning. Inside the house, police found 12 more of the couple’s children, aged two to 29, begging for water and food, some shackled to the bed in a stench-filled room. Gabriela Del Toro, manager at the Primos Mexican restaurant in Perris, said that Mrs Turpin would come in several times a week to get takeaway food – but never in family-sized quantities. “She was pleasant enough – there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary,” she said. “It’s mad to think that was going on just down the road.” The couple posted several pictures from family outings on their Facebook page Mr Turpin’s parents were also left reeling by the news. James Turpin, who lives near Princeton, West Virginia, with his wife Betty, told his local newspaper that their son was “a fine person". David Turpin grew up in West Virginia’s Green Valley area and studied at Virginia Tech before moving away – first to Texas, then to California. "He did an outstanding job and worked in school, and the last time we were out there was about six years ago,” he said. “The kids were fine. They were healthy and nothing was wrong. "I cannot understand. I'm going to talk to the kids as soon as they let me. I'm getting ready to make a call." Their other son, Randy, president of Valor Christian College in Ohio, said he was estranged from his brother and has taken leave to deal with the fallout. Yet on Mrs Turpin’s side of the family, a more damaging picture was presented. Elizabeth Jane Flores, her 41-year-old sister, appeared on US breakfast television on Wednesday and said her family tried "for years" to get in touch with her sister - but "she just shut us out of her life" for decades. "I want to reach out to the kids, I want them to know that for years we begged to Skype, we begged to see them, the whole family,” she said. The couple are being held on a $9 million bond Credit: Barcroft Media Mrs Flores said she lived with her sister and brother-in-law for a few months when she was at university. At the time, the couple only had four children and the eldest was in elementary school. "I thought they were really strict, but I didn't see any type of abuse," she said of the parents. "Now that I'm an adult, I look back, I see things that I didn't see then." She also said she had "uncomfortable" experiences with her brother-in-law but never told anyone because she was "young" and "scared." "He did things that made me feel uncomfortable," she said. "If I were to get in the shower, he would come in there while I was in there and watch me, and it was like a joke. He never touched me or anything." Mrs Flores said her mother drove for hours to visit the family in Texas at one point, but the Turpins didn't let her inside the house. A few years later, Mrs Flores said, her father bought a flight to see the family but his daughter told him not to come, insisting she would visit them instead – which they never did. Another sister, Teresa Robinette, said that Mrs Turpin did not visit her parents even when they begged, on their death beds, to see her. “She didn’t even show up to either of their funerals,” she said. “So we have really no connection with Louise in a long, long time since we were young.” She said her sister had married Mr Turpin when she was 16. “We always thought she was living the perfect life. She would tell us they went to Disneyland all the time. They would go to Vegas.” But, she admits, in hindsight there were signs of neglect. “I always made comments to Louise when I talked to her about: ‘Gosh, they’re so skinny,’” she told NBC’s Today show. “And she would laugh it off: ‘Well David’s so tall and lanky, they’re going to be like him.’ “I can’t even say the words to you that I would like to say to her — I’m so angry inside.”
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