When the neighbors said that they sometimes saw the kids lined up, oldest to youngest, it reminded me of this. People who lived in this city said he was quite well-known for doing the same thing whenever they went out in public.
Warning: graphic content.
They call it “bleeding the beast.”
I disagree. There hasn’t been a good drawing and quartering in ages. More time to sell ads.
My parents and us six kids all have “J” names . . .
When this story first broke, I kept thinking the mom looked familiar.
I’m in Ft. Worth and I’m wondering if I saw her. At one point…?
I saw something about police considering bringing dogs in to look for bodies.
But did they isolate you from people who didn’t follow their exact same religious beliefs, and go on reality TV to pay the bills?
My 3 sisters all have ‘C’ names. I have a ‘B’ name. I am officially on the b-team. I think maybe they didn’t tell me all the cult stuff the other kids got. I feel left out, for some insane reason.
I don’t get your reluctance to post the link. We’re grown-ups here, and have seen lots of wonky stuff in our lives.
??
Sequential thread titles! (Really!)
This thread and: Human bones found in back yard
I’d really like to know what went so horribly wrong in that home. How the parents progressed from being secretive and loners to starving the kids and physically chaining some of them.
That’s such a twisted journey into a rabbit hole and insanity.
I guess finances were part of the problem. Refusing to let them bathe may have been an attempt to keep the water bill low. Restricting them to one meal a day may have been another cost savings. The measures the parents took are unbelievably extreme and evil.
Tight finances are certainly no excuse for such appalling neglect. There are social programs that can provide aid. The mother and older children could take jobs to help bring money into the household. A family of 15 needs multiple incomes.
Also, bath water can be reused. Saving substantially on the water bill. Imagine what 15 showers a day would cost. 
That was very, very common in rural households when water was hauled to the house in buckets and heated on a wood store. Wood you had to chop and split.
Several family members used that tub of hot bath water because they had too. It took a lot of work to prepare that tub of water. I remember older relatives reminiscing about Sat night baths and the work required.
So you are a b-word and all three of your sisters are a c-word?
That’s pretty much the size of it! Another sad outcome of my name, my initials were ‘B.M.’ when I married my initials are’ now ‘B.S.’
It’s the story of my shitty life!
You’re joking, right? Attributing any part of this to tight finances is ridiculous. There wouldn’t be any need for them to worry about an expensive water bill if they’d simply allowed their adult children to grow up and get jobs.
It’s not much of an explanation for the ropes and chains, either. Or the midnight marching. Or the psychological torture, e.g. putting a pie on the counter and teasing them about not being allowed to eat it.
Did you bother to actually read my post?
I mentioned the wife and older children getting jobs as an option in the next paragraph.
I’m trying to understand how in the hell things went so horribly wrong. A childhood friend in Texas played with these kids until 2010. The family was weird and secretive. But the kids were allowed outside to play.
Things got much worse after they left Texas. A bankruptcy has been reported. Obviously they were in financial trouble.
What made them take such insane measures. Why in the hell didn’t they find jobs for the wife and older kids? Starving them is certainly not a solution.
People have reasons for their actions. No matter how sick or twisted. People don’t just wake up abd say, hey lets chain the kids to the bed and starve them. It takes a sequence of events to get to that level of depravity.
Not in the clip:
RICK: Do you want that bath water or not? You haven’t got much of a choice, actually, because there’s no more hot water.
NEIL: Well, it’s a bit cloudy, Rick.
[We see a shot of a disgustingly dirty tub, filled with horrible, thick black sludge]
RICK: Well, don’t look at me Neil. Vyvyan had the bath before me and Mike had it before him, and anyway Neil, the whole thing is left over from the bath you had last Tuesday. So stop being so bloody picky; that’s your filth!
(Full episode, ‘Nasty’, in case anyone is interested. Not sure why it doesn’t start from the beginning on preview.)
Look, I sympathize with your attempt to make rational sense of this. But nothing about this is rational. If there is a reason behind this, it’s not a reason that is accessible to non-pathological people. We could speculate that they were more concerned about keeping a water bill low than having their home not smell like a death camp, but there’s as much evidence for that as them believing their children were demon-spawn deserving of punishment. I actually think the latter idea is more plausible.
I’m a fairly imaginative person and yet I lack the capacity to imagine what life must’ve been like in that household. And I’m really relieved about that.
Remember that the parents are irrational. A normal couple might have applied for an EBT card (i.e. food stamps), but these people aren’t normal. Who knows what their thought processes were?
A neighbor said he saw the kids one night laying new sod in the front yard. I hope the police use cadaver dogs to do a full search of the property.