Story here. Say, I wonder if he knows the guy who’s girlfriend was stuck on the toilet for a number of years.
And this part is a bit odd: “‘I want you to see this with your own eyes,’ she recalled the maintenance worker saying to her. ‘You better wear some shoes and gloves or something’.”
So, they really don’t wear shoes in Georgia??
My favorite part of the article is the following obligatory statement :
Alma Medina, the property manager for the Beaver Creek mobile home park, lived three doors away from the family for the past 2½ years. Medina said Thurmond was late paying his rent but was very respectful.
“A very nice guy, very quiet,” she said. “He never bothered nobody.”
“Never bothered nobody”, indeed.
Well, even as backwards they are in Georgia, I still think it is wrong for Russia to attack them.
d&r
From the article:
People always complain about noisy, obnoxious neighbors, but you’d think they’d learn. It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for.
So is it possible to have a feral family? I wonder if they had access to TV or radio. Did the trailer have bars on the windows? Did the mom have some role in keeping the kids inside? Otherwise, why didn’t they get the hell out of there on their own or by yelling for help from a neighbor? The padlocked door would be a problem, sure. But how hard can it be to escape from a rotting trailer?
I would assume that perhaps she had sandals on, and he felt she needed more protection.
I’m wondering…where was the family when they broke the door down? Had they already gone to a shelter, and what had precipitated that move? Or were they still in the trailer at that time?
I think for victims of systematic torture, their minds no longer work that way. Long-term self preservation takes a back seat to immediate survival. If they fear getting caught, that fear will trump the long-term escape from the situation. It’s psychological terrorism.
Oh, wait…I re-read the story, and I see they were at the shelter on the 4th, the landlady didn’t break in until the 6th…wonder why they went to the shelter, though…
I was doing okay till I read the part about one officer going in and throwing up and another having to get a gas mask. WTF is going on with people these days? First, some poor woman growing into her toilet, then this? Sheesh.
I just read the story in my local newspaper and it said that the wife and children went to the shelter when he told her he was leaving her for another woman.
I’m happy she escaped and I hope that he goes to jail for what he did to them.
That’s why I think the Mom may have been inadvertantly helping the dad keep the kids inside. If she was too scared to try to escape, she may have passed that on to the kids.
I’ve seen two somewhat similar cases in my area. One was a self-proclaimed voodoo priest whose wife was a prisoner in her own home. No locks on the doors/windows; they weren’t necessary because he had cast a spell of some sort to kill her if she left the house. When her relatives intervened and police brought her out, she was hysterical and didn’t want to leave. At the time I was working for an animal shelter that was contracted by the county to house a chicken until trial (it was evidence-used for ceremonies along with some goats).
The second case was a drug sting. A husband and wife lived in a “nice” trailer, in which they were trafficking drugs. Their original trailer sat next door, and it was there that they kept dozens of cats and dogs along with their three young children. The animals eliminated indoors. The kids ate whatever they could; dry macaroni, dry cereal, etc. The kids were malnourished and so flea bitten they looked like they all suffered some horrible skin disease.
This sounds a lot like the Messiest Home in America featured on Clean House a couple months ago. (Clean House is a TV show that sends in a team to de-clutter and organize messy houses.)
The Wheeler home was different. It wasn’t just cluttered, it was filled with garbage. They had cut a hole in a closet floor rather than use a litter box for a cat. They hadn’t seen the cat for a couple of years, and there was about 20 pounds of cat poop in the closet. These people didn’t have children though. Thank God.
Same here. And one wonders if he would do to his next woman what he did to this poor lady?
So I’m confused; was he a voodoo priest or a Doper?
It’s not just for creepy Austrians anymore.