A California couple arrested on suspicion of torture are due in court after investigators discovered they were holding their 13 malnourished children captive in a suburban home.
David Allen Turpin, 57, and his wife Louise Anna Turpin, 49, had registered their home as a school, but instead of teaching materials, investigators found signs of torture inside.
County officials investigating the case announced a press conference for this afternoon. The court was expected to announce charges a few hours later.
Sheriff's deputies in Perris, a town southeast of Los Angeles, found three children shackled with chains and padlocks in their filthy, foul-smelling home on Sunday after receiving an emergency assistance call from their 17-year-old sister who had managed to escape.
She was so emaciated that officers first thought she was a young child.
Officers also initially assumed all the other siblings to be children, but were shocked to discover seven ranging in age from 18 to 29.
All 13 are being treated for malnutrition and undergoing other diagnostic tests.
Mark Uffer, chief executive officer at the Corona regional medical centre where the adults were being treated, described their condition as stable.
The Turpins were charged on suspicion of torture and child endangerment with bail set at $9m each.
Neither was able to immediately explain why their children were restrained, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.
Police said there was no initial indication of sexual abuse, but cautioned that the investigation was still going on.
Nor was there any indication that either suspect suffered from mental illness, Perris police chief Greg Fellows said, or that the children's ordeal was linked to the family's religious beliefs.
Initial investigations have confirmed that the couple were the biological parents of all 13 siblings, Chief Fellows said.
According to police, the family moved in 2014 from Texas to a middle class neighbourhood of Perris, around 110km southeast of Los Angeles, homeschooling their children.
A sister of Ms Turpin, Elizabeth Flores, told ABC the couple kept to themselves.
"This has been going on before they even had children ... they were real private, and they didn't come around much," said Ms Flores.
"We begged to Skype them. We begged to see them."
As a university student Ms Flores lived with the Turpins for a while. "I thought they were really strict, but I didn't see any abuse," she said.
