Three years after the Turpin children were removed from their abusive parents’ care, two of their daughters, Jordan Turpin and Jennifer Turpin, are speaking out about escaping the “House of Horrors” in a new interview. 

“I was actually [walking] on the road,” Jordan, now 21, tells Diane Sawyer in the upcoming 20/20 special airing Friday, November 19, about the escape. “I didn’t even know about the sidewalks. You’re supposed to be on the sidewalk, but I’d never been out there.”

“I think it was us coming close to death so many times,” Jordan continues in the interview. “It was literally now or never.” 

When Jordan was 17, she crawled out of a window in the home of David Turpin and Louise Turpin in Perris, California — dubbed the “House of Horrors” by the media — on January 14, 2018, and contacted police, informing them that she and her siblings needed help. 

“I just ran away from home,” Jordan is heard saying on the recording of the shocking 911 call. “And we have abusing parents.”

Turpin Kids Photo
Oxygen

Jordan and her 12 siblings, ranging from the age of 2 to 29, were subjected to years of abuse at the hands of their parents. They were subjected to beatings and strangulations, starved, rarely let outside and were sometimes chained. According to NBC News, the children were only allowed to shower twice a year. Their then-29-year-old daughter weighed only 82 pounds 

“They hit us,” Jordan continued on the 911 call. “They like to throw us across the room. They pull out our hair. They yank out our hair. My two little sisters right now are chained up.”

According to Jordan, she was not allowed outside and was unable to provide the address to the house. The dispatcher was able to trace her location using the GPS on her cell phone, and Jordan stayed on the line for 22 minutes until police arrived. 

“When they got there, they found three children shackled by chains to the bed,” Elizabeth Flores, sister to Louise, said in House of Horrors Family: The Friends Speak, according to Us Weekly

“The only word I know to call it is ‘hell,'” another Turpin sibling said in the interview.

Louise, 53, and David, 60, were handcuffed less than two hours after Jordan’s phone call. In 2019, they were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after they both pleaded guilty to 14 counts, including cruelty to an adult-dependent, child cruelty, torture and false imprisonment. 

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