I love Big Bang Theory but it really has not done a great job of accurately portraying things. The characters really are stereotypes.
That hair can be taken up into a ponytail. Folks, this is CA. The engineers I was talking about were all breeds. Working on a biotech project - EE, ME, CSE… you name it. Definitely NOT meeting with any clients. Just working as a team. Sort of. 
As you may know, West Coast dresses quite casually. Compared to many other places. And I doubt the parents deprived themselves of hot showers etc. so while the hair looked weird, put a clean tee and a pair of jeans in that guy and he will not stand out of the crowd.
YAY!! Restraining orders were entered against the parents today, barring them from having any contact with the kids for 3 years. This is normal but in this case it’s super important because the parents had such control over them and a phone call from jail could be petrifying for them.
I don’t get the “transfer” part either. I thought David Turpin was unemployed. If he worked, did he work nights? Or work from home? Or…? I ask because the kids were up all night and slept during the day.
David T has a degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech. He was elected to an engineering honor society and awarded some sort of prize for academic excellence during his junior and senior years. He is not a stupid man.
Not stupid, just cruel.
Thanks for that info @jonri He grew up in West Virginia but close to the Virginia border so Virginia Tech was a logical choice for him. This whole thing is so bizarre .
It is more than bizarre. How can any parents run what was basically a concentration camp for their kids?!
I will be curious to see what more comes out about this. How the mental health people analyze this. Hoping the children end up with some hope for anything approaching normalcy at all after this. It really is so strange that a family with 13 children can go so undetected for so long. It makes me wonder how many other situations are out there that just don’t get noticed or reported.
The employment thing is strange. I’m assuming he’s an old school assembly programmer down in the dungeon with a mainframe or something. Or maybe the night operator
Could you imagine working in a cubicle next to this guy for years and then this comes out??
I am being freaked out by the relatives.
The younger kids are being released from the hospital on Thursday and will go into foster care.They are being split into two homes. The older kids moved into an assisted living facility today.
Everyone in the Robinette/ Turpin family seems to be volunteering to take the kids. I am showing my biases, but I don’t want the kids anywhere near any of them–though, obviously, my opinion doesn’t matter.
David’s brother is the president of a “Christian” CC, a"fiery" preacher and a “faith healer.” He’s saying he wants the youngest 7 kids and he’s made a video addressed to them saying that. He visited the family and went to Disneyland with them in 2011.
Teresa Robinette says Louise’s side of the family should get them.
I think they shouldn’t be allowed near the kids, at least until the trial is over.
http://www.insideedition.com/turpin-house-horrors-uncle-says-he-wants-care-children-40105
Link to David T.'s photo and list of ECs, major etc in college yearbook. http://wset.com/news/local/man-accused-of-shackling-children-to-beds-graduated-from-virginia-tech
They have so far had no one step forward to shed much meaningful light on this at all- family, neighbors, friends, coworkers. It is a mystery to me and the pictures of them with Elvis and Disney places now creep me out.
Things are sounding increasingly bizarre. The last thing these kids need is to be under the custody of another person who may starve them or in any way mistreat them, blood relative or not. Wow!
Just chiming in here - I live in coastal Los Angeles, near where a lot of Defense contractors are located including Northrup Grumman. As the “aging hippie” look is very prevalent here, I doubt David Turpin stood out among his coworkers for his appearance. I can think of a number of people, engineers and non-engineers alike who work for those companies and are far more “out there” in appearance than he is. I worked at Hughes Aircraft (now Boeing) in the 1980s and while more formal office attire was expected in those days, it is way more relaxed now.
I have spoken to several of my friends who work for Northrup. All said that David Turpin’s name was listed in the Company Global Email Directory until the day of his arraignment. Sometime during that day it magically disappeared “poof!” and later that same day Northrup sent a company-wide email asking employees to refrain from speaking to the media about the case, in particular about David’s work for the Company. While I doubt he had a clearance, given his two bankruptcies, any work he did would be considered company private and his coworkers could get in trouble for spilling the details of his job. Oh, and there are plenty of engineering jobs at Northrup that don’t require a clearance.
I don’t think Turpin’s appearance is relevant, but I agree with all those who say his appearance wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in a systems development environment. My second day on the job with a tech company in Boston, I arrived at the office very early in the morning only to discover a homeless man in the coffee nook on our floor. I backed out of the suite into the hallway to call security who came up to the floor, walked through the coffee area, and returned to tell me that that man was the company’s prize programmer and that he slept under his desk most nights rather than bother to commute to his apartment. He was filthy, disheveled, and aromatic, but the company loved him and had no problem with the ratty sleeping bag under his desk. Over the course of my career I, too, have seen the gamut in tech environments. No biggie.
^^^Wow!!
@ChoatieMom thank you for sharing that!
I worked at a biotech company where two PhD scientists decided that since they were moonlighting in the lab, they were better off living in the lab. They set up camp in their cubes in the office area. There was a shower for bike commuters to use where they showered when they wanted and plenty of company-provided sodas and snacks in the kitchen. No one complained.
I think the last couple of posts illustrate why people sometimes don’t report people who later turn out to have been highly dysfunctional, even dangerous. They’re afraid the person whom they suspect might be a David Turpin is really just @Choatiemom’s crazy looking but apparently high functioning programmer. No one wants to be the one to narc on an innocent person.
So Sue - why would anyone report the two guys I was talking about and to whom? Their bosses knew it, the CEO knew it… there was no “probable cause” to call authorities and tell them that two employees were living in their offices at a private company.
I live in Colorado and his look probably wouldn’t even get a second glance here.
Well, I did report him, but I agree with @BunsenBurner. Co-workers howled with laughter at the story of the new person who called security on X. I never lived that down. I even learned to like the guy. From a distance.