Yeah, my gut instinct is also that the motive was lagely one of keeping the kids as kids. Just looking at the photos and the comments the parents had made on them, where they seem very proud of having "a dozen" or "over a dozen" it seems like they used the kids as props.
I think the parents liked the attention of having a lot of young children. it wouldn't be quite the same with a noticable large age range and if the kids were allowed to grow up, they might not be willing to come on to vow renewals and trips and wear matching shirts and help draw that attention either.
It just feels to me like that is the primary thing. All those vow renewals, Mom dressed as Snow White with the baby, etc--it all feels very much about the attention it garnered for the adults (including maybe some "status" among their ultra religious sect for having such a large family when "called by God" to do so?).
I've wondered about the cell phone and knowing to call 911 as well. I wonder if there was a point when the kids were so brainwashed and the parents to confortable with them being so that they did not see giving the kids acess to a phone or teaching them to call 911 as a threat. Was the baby born at a hospital? Later labors can go quickly---maybe the parent trained one or more children to call for help if mom went into labor and dad was not available? Or for some other reason?
The mom being "perplexed" by the police arriving might well have been due to her believing so strongly that the kids were docily accepting of their treatment that they would never ask for help? Never even undertand or see their situation as a problem? Like she has come to be complacent and beleive they'd never attract unwated attention or negative reactions and was sort of shock to ralize otherwise?
I agree... I think the ultimate "goal" (as crazy & as tragic as it turned out) was to keep their children as "children". For whatever reason, they got off on having a large family.
Before their Facebook page was closed, I was looking at the pictures, & all the pictures of the mom w/ the baby stood out to me. There weren't any other individual pictures of the other kids - just the mom & baby - like that baby was somehow some kind of special reward, if that makes sense. The Snow White pictures were, in hindsight, particularly creepy to me.
The Elvis vow renewals, though, don't fit in w/ the "large family/quiver-full" lifestyle that has been made infamous by the Duggar clan & just add to the bizarre-ness of the whole thing.
I've always thought of the "quiver-full" lifestyle as being ultra-religious & dogmatic w/ lots of rules & behavioral standards. You wouldn't have your vows renewed in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator - if you *did* have a vow renewal ceremony, it would be reverent & religious & more somber. And you & your kids certainly wouldn't be dancing w/ Elvis.
It just doesn't "fit in" w/ the "quiver-full" set.
A little bit off-topic regarding the children's names all starting w/ "J" like the Duggar children - I remember, years ago (long before the Duggars), being in a church service with a visiting evangelist. I can't remember the context, but he was talking about large families & made the joke that, if you came from a large family w/ lots of siblings, your first names probably either started w/ B or J. And, at the time, I knew 2 larger families - one set had J names, & one set had B names.
Such a tragic and horrific story. How anyone can treat another human being that way, let alone your own children, is just unfathomable to me.
I agree that this couple likely wanted to control their children and keep them childlike forever. It’s possible that the wife is also a victim, yet she is still complicit in the abuse of the children.
I read that one neighbor saw some of the kids outside at night scrounging through garbage cans for food. Wouldn’t that be a huge red flag that something was amiss in that home?
And IMO, it seems like the grandparents and other relatives knew and saw enough to be suspicious and concerned for the children’s well-being, but sadly they chose to do nothing.
The husband is definitely creepy, and his haircut makes him look like a four-year-old. One of his wife’s sisters lived with them when she was young and said he would watch her in the shower. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if some of his daughters were sexually abused.
The sister is weird to me too.
Like I said earlier, when I went to their Facebook page, I noticed that the sister had commented on a few of the pictures (the ones w/ the mom & the baby) & made comments like, "She's so cute! I can't wait to see her" & "I love my sister & brother-in-law!"
Her comments on the Facebook page don't add up to what she's saying now, in my opinion.
I don't know how stock I put into what these eyewitnesses are saying.
Certain things they're claiming aren't "well hindsight is 20-20". I think some of the "reports" of what they noticed are being elaborated now that they know what was going on.
You see your neighbor's digging in the garbage for food and don't say/do anything? You watch (through a window, presumably) a bunch of kids being forced to march in the middle of the night for several hours and just shrug your shoulders?
I think some of these reports are being expanded upon based on what eyewitnesses saw and then are speculating why and reporting as fact.
And that helps no one, certainly not investigators.
I actually don't know that seeing neighbor children scrounging through garbage cans would make me suspicious. I wouldn't automatically think they were looking for food, though. I would first think they were looking for something that had been lost & possibly thrown out in the trash. If there were other odd things I had witnessed, maybe I would have noted the garbage incident, but, otherwise, that kind of thing probably wouldn't have registered w/ me.
We have a family in our subdivision, & I honestly don't know how many people live in the house - there are different people coming & going all the time. One afternoon, an injured rabbit was in our driveway. We came home to one of the younger women from the house in our driveway w/ whom we think was her boyfriend trying to decide what to do w/ the rabbit. We ended up calling a local rescue which came & picked up the rabbit. Anyway, when I walked to the neighbor's house to let them know about the rabbit, a woman I'd never seen before opened the door, & there were young kids w/ her I'd never seen either.
But, like you said, I think a lot of the neighbors are thinking back on things they saw & now realizing, in hindsight, there was something going on.
That said, one night after dark, I was preparing a lesson for a class I was teaching the next day & realized I needed leaves, so I sent our 2 older children outside w/ flashlights in the woods behind our house to gather leaves for me.
Within 5 minutes, our next-door neighbor was calling me asking if everything was okay.
