The Family Next Door by John Glatt

The Family Next Door by John Glatt

Thirteen siblings were held captive in their own home--and lived to tell their story.

On January 14, 2018, a seventeen-year-old girl climbed out of the window of her Perris, California home and dialed 911 on a borrowed cell phone. Struggling to stay calm, she told the operator that she and her twelve siblings--ranging in age from two to twenty-nine--were being abused by their parents. When the dispatcher asked for her address, the girl hesitated. "I've never been out," she stammered. She wasn't even sure how to spell her own last name.

Louise and David Turpin presented themselves as loving, faithful parents. On social media they shared snapshots of family outings and vacations, often with their children in matching outfits. But what police discovered when they entered the Turpin home would eclipse the most shocking child abuse cases in history. For years, Louise and David had kept their children in increasing isolation, trapping them in a sinister world of torture, fear, and near starvation.

New York Times bestselling author John Glatt's The Family Next Door is the definitive, devastating, and unforgettable account of the Turpins: a family whose dark secrets would shock and captivate the world.

"Thoroughly researched and thoroughly disturbing." --Booklist

"Unflinching...this chilling portrayal of abuse and secrecy may leave readers looking differently at their neighbors."--Publishers Weekly

John Glatt is the author of many bestselling true crime books, including Lost and Found, Secrets in the Basement, and others. He has worked as an investigative journalist in both England and America for more than 30 years. Glatt dropped out of school at the age of 16 and did a number of jobs, including tea boy and messenger, until landing a job as a reporter for a small weekly newspaper. He freelanced for numerous English newspapers before moving to New York in 1981, where he joined the News Limited staff and freelanced for Newsweek and the New York Post. In 1981, he wrote his first book, a biography of Billy Graham, and in 1998, he published For I Have Sinned, his first true crime novel.

He has appeared on Dateline NBC, Fox News, A Current Affair, BBC World News, and A&E Biography, among other programs, all around the world. His time is split between New York City, the Catskill Mountains, and London with his wife Gail.