Tim Elkins drank 10 to 12 beers in his basement as he and the kids watched a movie. No one sat on the other couch because it was mounded with empty Budweiser cans and other garbage.
Habitat for Humanity built the Elkins family the new house and since November 2012 the 11 family members filled room after room with their trash as pets defecated and an orange ooze grew beneath it all. They slept together on one grimy mattress as the trash closed in on them.
That is, they did so until the morning of Jan. 31. Baby Matthew wasn’t even two months old when his car seat flipped on the crowded bed and he suffocated sometime in the night.
The baby’s death did what no child welfare worker, relative or neighbor had been able to do. It ended the isolation that Tim Elkins demanded.
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This is the story pieced together from police, neighbors and experts that tries to explain how parents could allow their nine children to live in extreme filth and destroy every effort to help.
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