Rant #2,064: Crazy

Yes, crazy.

There is no other word to describe what police found at a home in California yesterday.

They found 13 siblings, malnourished and dirty, ranging in ages from 2 to 29, in the same house, with many of them chained to beds.

And due to these horrific circumstances, their parents have been charged with torture.

Evidently, police would have never known what was going on in the house had not one of the children, a 17 year old girl, escaped from the house, and reported the situation to the Riverside County police department with a cell phone she found in the house.

The girl herself was so malnourished that she looked maybe half her actual age, according to reports. Six of the children are minors, while the other seven are over 18 years of age.

The 13 children's parents, David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, were arrested and each charged with nine counts of torture and 10 counts of child endangerment. They were ordered to be held on $9 million bail each. No motive was released.

Although neighbors said that they rarely saw the family, who moved into the neighborhood three years ago--one told CBS News that they had seen several children recently doing yard work--the elder Turpins did not make themselves that scarce.

They had a Facebook page showing the couple dressed in wedding attire, surrounded by 10 of their female children, who were all dressed in matching dresses. Three males were also in the photo, and they were in suits.

The parents were next due in court on Thursday to answer the charges.

What drives people to do such things is beyond my comprehension, and what is even more bewildering is that nobody in the neighborhood, nor government officials, had any clue about what was going on in that house.

I had heard this morning that the parents may have registered the home as a children's day care facility, but if so, weren't there any checks and balances in place--like simple inspections--to make sure that everything was copacetic?

And as for the neighborhood, didn't anyone wonder why, with such a large family, they rarely saw any of them on the outside?

Of course, more details of this horrific situation will be coming out in the days and weeks ahead, and by the time you read this, perhaps some of this information will have leaked out.

But from what we know right now, somebody evidently dropped the ball on this situation, and dropped the ball big time.

And as for the children ... they were supposedly so malnourished and unkempt that like with the one child who managed to escape, none of them looked as old as they were.

One child was all of two years old--were there no records of this child's birth?

We hear of weird cases like this on occasion, but this one might be the weirdest I, personally have heard about, simply because there were so many children involved.

What we hear in the coming weeks and months will paint a grisly picture, I am sure, and this picture will include how this family eluded the authorities for so long a time.

Somebody has to be held accountable for this mess, and you can bet that somebody will be the fall guy for the county's behavior.

We shall see.