Former Texan neighbours of David and Louise Turpin, the American couple whose 13 children were discovered chained and malnourished last week, have described a previous home littered with faeces, dead animals and a makeshift classroom. Ricky Vinyard, a tree feller from Rio Vista also told how one Christmas eight bikes arrived but remained untouched outside until they bleached in the sun. And that one of the daughters once ran away from home, only to be returned to her parents by another local resident. “It was waist-deep in filth. There were dead dogs and cats in there,” he told the Los Angeles Times. He described how he found two Chihuahuas that had survived by eating waste from a mound of soiled nappies in a trailer behind the property where the children slept. “There were no beds, just mattresses." Inside the four-bedroom, two-bathroom home he said that: "There wasn’t a place that wasn’t filthy. “Everything had locks on it: the closet had locks, the toy chest, the refriger...
