Vicks wrote:It seems the Turpins said goodbye to their friends on Saturday and told them they were leaving town.
I wonder if they intended on leaving the children behind to die?
$9 million dollar bail is pretty steep and by the looks of things, the sheriff doesn't want them released.
The John List story comes to mind. Not sure how well known it was here, but here’s a rundown:
“On November 9, 1971, List methodically murdered his entire immediate family. While his children were at school he shot his wife Helen, 46, in the back of the head, and then his mother Alma, 84, above the left eye. As his daughter Patricia, 16, and younger son Frederick, 13, arrived home from school, he shot each of them in the back of the head. After making himself lunch, List drove to his bank to close his own and his mother's bank accounts, and then to Westfield High School to watch his elder son John Jr., 15, play in a soccer game. He drove the boy home, then shot him repeatedly in the chest and face.
List placed the bodies of his wife and children on sleeping bags in the mansion's ballroom. He left his mother's body in her apartment in the attic. In a five-page letter to his pastor, found on the desk in his study, he wrote that he saw too much evil in the world, and he had killed his family to save their souls. He then cleaned the various crime scenes, carefully cut his own picture out of every family photograph in the house, tuned a radio to a religious station, and departed.
The murders were not discovered until December 7, nearly a month later, due in part to the family's reclusiveness and refusal to socialize, and in part to notes sent by List to the children's schools and part-time jobs stating that the family would be visiting Helen's mother in North Carolina for several weeks. He also stopped milk, mail and newspaper deliveries. Neighbours noticed that all of the mansion's lights were illuminated day and night, with no apparent activity within. Finally, as the lights began burning out one by one, they called police.”
He remained at large for 18 years, assuming a new identity in another part of the country.