Lavonia, GA: Mobile home "so rank & squalid it forced police investigator to vomit upon entering"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Neighbors unaware of man's family, trailer's squalor

By Eliott C. McLaughlin
CNN

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/14/captive.family/index.html



Residents of Beaver Creek in Lavonia, Georgia, say they had no idea a neighbor was holding his family captive.



Police say Raymond Daniel Thurmond kept his wife and children locked inside a trailer for three years.

LAVONIA, Georgia (CNN) -- Sonya Savage's back door opens to a cozy wooden porch that serves as a shelter for her 9-year-old son's bicycles and spare parts.

A 30-foot tract of red clay and splotchy crab grass separates her mobile home from the home of Raymond Daniel Thurmond, a residence so rank and squalid that it forced a seasoned police investigator to vomit upon entering. Another officer donned a gas mask just to walk inside.

Savage and her neighbors say they had no clue that Thurmond, 36, had a wife, let alone four kids; they were also oblivious that Thurmond may have held the five hostage in the three-bedroom mobile home for three years.

The kitchen floor was rotted. Heavy, brown stains covered both toilets. There were anthills under a mattress in the master bedroom. Roaches freely roamed the inside of the refrigerator, and maggots owned the stove.

There were several piles of trash, including one reaching the laundry room ceiling and a mound of Diet Mountain Dew bottles between a recliner and the living room couch. Tufts of human hair were scattered on the kitchen floor among bags of fetid trash.

Collins said she went behind an adjacent mobile home and vomited when she and another officer first opened the door. This was after the windows had been opened to air out the residence.

Collins said she had never experienced such a stench -- this from a police investigator who as recently as last week rode in an ambulance with a corpse that had been pulled from a burning building.

When Collins went in the bathroom and pulled back the once-clear-but-now-chocolate-brown shower curtain, it revealed so many roaches that the bathtub floor appeared to be moving.

On Wednesday, after a week of cleaning that has already yielded two Dumpsters of trash, dozens of roaches still scurried across the floor and walls. A stench still lingered, and a film of bug feces covered the kitchen counters.

Medina said she has to gut the entire trailer and replace the floor, walls and ceiling before she can rent it again. Collins said rebuilding the family may take more work.

[XemaSab]

1. The owner thinks she's going to rent it again?

Uh... think again, there. :eyes:

[madeline_con]

3. She should take a match to it.

But the bugs would all go next door! :puke:

That dude had crazy eyes!

[Fenris]

9. Someone's going to get burned by craigslist.

[MadMaddie]

2. Why would they spend the money and time to try to

gut and rebuild. The trailer has bad vibes it should be destroyed.

[dysfunctional press]

10. if she's going to rplace the walls, floor, and ceiling- what else is there..? the tires?

:shrug:

[Muttocracy]

20. She could buy a normally used one somewhere for less than that cost

I'm with you. :shrug:

[flvegan]

4. Enjoy prison, douchebag.

Just like the locks and hasps you likely imprisoned your family with, you will now experience. Only much worse, because when those locks open, you become prey. Prey for folks much less kind (if you can believe that) than you.

That's punishment.

[Fenris]

5. Sadly, prison is relatively clean. Comparatively, at least.

[flvegan]

6. I think that the other prison downsides trump "clean".

[Fenris]

8. Clean! Three square meals! Healthcare! Unlimited free time! Gangs and prison rape!

No thanks.

[dysfunctional press]

15. in his case- there's probably a lot of sense in protective custody...

hilariously ironic as that would be. :evilgrin:

[Fenris]

7. If you haven't eaten in a few hours, or, say, a week, there's a video walkthrough.

It was filmed on 'August 8 2033' (future looks pretty bright!) and I personally would like to thank the videographer who did a close-up of the toilet. If that fails to make you nauseated you've probably watched your fair share of the "Faces of Death" series or you're a member of that family.

[dysfunctional press]

11. ummmm....link?

pretty please?

[Fenris]

13. Here:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/14/captive.family/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

[dysfunctional press]

16. thanks -sorry about the whole too lazy to look for myself thing...

but it's late and i'm tired.

[SheilaT]

21. All I get is a blank black square.

No thing to click on to play the video. Oh, well.

[qanda]

14. nevermind

[qanda]

12. That was pretty gross

I just cannot imagine living like that. I think I'll go clean something now.

[dysfunctional press]

17. it was not NEARLY as bad as i had imagined from the build-up...

and believe me, i've seen worse. MUCH worse. it may be a pigsty, but it isn't really SQUALOR.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

22. agreed...

i was expecting excrement all over the place and giant hissing cockroaches...it WAS nasty...but having done some summer work in a trailer park after people abandoned trailers...well, i have been in worse. it was always the SMELL that got to me, though.

sP

[Amerigo Vespucci]

19. I bailed on the video after the first couple of minutes...

...right after the third or fourth close-up of roaches walking up the walls.

[TahitiNut]

18. "Trailer trash" epitomized ... as opposed to trailer park residents (of which I was one).

The range of conditions to which human beings can adapt is truly astonishing.

:puke: