The Family

Rickets in Marin?

Marin County, California, map

The address the women listed on the hospital paper work was located in upscale Marin County - a place known for its liberal, hot-tubbing residents, not for neglected children.

When sheriff's deputies drove to the address the next morning, they didn't immediately notice anything amiss. The three-bedroom house was on a quiet residential street lined with $600,000 homes. Large palm trees arched over the roof of the ranch-style house, which had a two-car garage and a wide front lawn it looked like a typical suburban tract home.

But as they walked up the sidewalk to the front door, they noticed that dark curtains covered every window, and that the house was silent, as if no one was home.

Nothing prepared them for the scene they beheld when the door swung open and they stepped over the threshold.

Huddled in the dark interior were 12 starving children ranging in age from 8 months to 16 years some of whom were severely deformed. On the walls were bizarre paintings, including one of a black man holding a rifle over his head and standing on the naked, prostrate bodies of a group of white women - the same women who'd brought the dead baby to the emergency room.