More shocking details about the lives of Louise and David Turpin’s children continue to surface. On Monday, the district attorney who worked on the case revealed that the couple plotted “psychological torment” by buying Christmas gifts and leaving them unopened in the garage, never giving them to the children. Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Kevin Beecham told PEOPLE investigators found bikes and unopened toys piled up at the Turpins’ Perris, California home.
“They had bikes in there,” Beecham explained. “They had toys. All of them unopened. They weren’t allowed to go in the garage and play with any of these, but they all knew that the garage was just filled with these random toys.” He said if the children were caught stealing food from the pantry, they were not allowed to celebrate Christmas. Louise even had a list of children who could not celebrate the holiday until 2021.
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“All the kids would have to be around the Christmas tree,” Beecham said. “The ones that weren’t getting gifts were just kind of sitting there, watching the other ones that did get gifts open them. And the ones that did get gifts felt really ashamed, they felt embarrassed opening a gift in front of the other siblings.” Beecham said one daughter was allowed to get a gift when she was in her 20s, but it was a Barbie doll.
The Turpin children were discovered imprisoned in their parents’ home in January 2018 after two daughters escaped. One got lost and returned to the house, but the other called 911. When police arrived, they found the siblings, ranging in ages from 29 to 2, suffering from malnutrition and living in filth. One of the sons was chained to his bed. Investigators said some of the older siblings looked younger than they were because they were so malnourished. The eldest daughter, Jennifer, weighed 82 pounds when police discovered them.
Louise and David Turpin first pleaded not guilty, but changed their plea to guilty in February 2019. They pleaded guilty to one count of torture, three of willful child cruelty, four of false imprisonment and six founds of cruelty to an adult dependent, all felonies. They were sentenced to live in prison, and only be eligible for parole after serving 25 years in prison.
Beecham told PEOPLE on Monday investigators discovered a “mountain of evidence” in the house. When investigators went in, they noticed all smoke detectors had low batteries. “There’s that annoying beep, that loud beep,” he explained. “That’s what you heard all throughout the house. The psychiatrist explained that’s one mechanism that torturers would institute to try to keep control by using sounds.”
Officials also discovered thousands of pieces of clothes Louise bought that still had price tags on them, even as the children wore dirty clothes for months at time. “The teenage girls had one item of clothing apiece, and then their pajamas,” Beecham said. “And of course, underwear that they’ve been wearing for like six months at a time.”
