Woman Forced To Eat Mom`s Ashes
LALAMA: Tonight an entire family is behind bars after investigators say they humiliated and tortured their young relative. Holding the 22-year-old against her will and turning her into their personal slave. And family may not be the best word to describe these people. A mom, a dad, and their three adult children accused of forcing the reportedly autistic young woman to do housework just for food and water. Like, get this, brace yourself. Lapping up a spill with her tongue, cleaning the septic tank with her bare hands, and they supposedly had her sleeping in a chicken wire cage with only a bucket for a toilet.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That was what she had to lay on. This girl was eat up with the mosquitos, the bugs. It`s horrible. I mean, the damn dog got treated better than she did.</s>LALAMA: Well, according to appalling new court documents, the family threatened to kill the young victim, who was preferred to as only D.P. And they assaulted her multiple times with everything from a hammer to a bb gun to a cigarette lighter. In one nightmarish accusation, they forced her to, get ready, to eat her own mother`s ashes. And if that is not enough, investigators say the family was planning on sharing the victim with others.</s>SHERIFF DANIEL EDWARDS, TANGIPAHOA PARISH: They also had planned to bring her to another specific location for the purpose of her performing sexual acts on a large group of people in exchange for them, the captors, being paid money.</s>LALAMA: I want to bring in my panel. On the phone, Matt Doyle, assistant news Director for Louisiana radio network. Also, retired FBI special agent Maureen O`Connell, and defense attorney, Kirby Clements. So where do I begin, Matt Doyle, with you?</s>MATT DOYLE, ASSISTANT NEWS DIRECTOR, LOUISIANA RADIO NETWORK: Well, this all began back in August of 2015, when the victim`s mother died and her care was transferred over to her relatives in the Knope family. She was allegedly abused for about a year by that family until authorities made their initial discovery and arrest in June of 2016. Raylaine Knope, Terry Knope and their children, Bridget Lambert, Jody Lambert, and Taylor Knope, have all been hit with a pretty serious set of charges, including forced labor, attempt sex trafficking, hate crimes which is held up in federal court among others. The victim is related to Raylaine, and authorities say the family engaged in these calculated abuse to try to maintain control of the victim for some manual labor and her SSI checks. They got about $8,796 worth of those SSI checks. They were being mailed to Terry Knope at the time. You mentioned a few of those details that were fairly disturbing. She was kept in the chicken cage at night, according to authorities. A few other ones that were mentioned, the fact that she was forced to take methamphetamine and that was used as blackmail to prevent her going to the police, also allegedly forced to eat dog feces that was spread on bread. This went on for about a year until authorities made that initial arrest.</s>LALAMA: Maureen O`Connell, former FBI special agent. So, you were talking about federal crimes here. Explain why this is a federal case.</s>MAUREEN O`CONNELL, RETIRED FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Well, first of all, the good news is that the prosecutors and the police feel the same way about this victim that we do, and they hit them with every single solitary possible charge known to mankind, and thank you to that team that did that. It`s a federal charge for a number of reasons. It`s a hate crime. It took place in different areas. There were all kinds of things that bring it to a whole different level, which is why it was addressed by us, but the fact of the matter, and they were stealing money from her SSI account, and there were all kinds of little federal nexuses, but this -- what they did to this young person is absolutely probably the worst torture I`ve ever heard of.</s>LALAMA: Kirby Clements, defense attorney, when they were forcing her to eat her mother`s ashes, with a spoon, as if it were like a broth of some sort, they stood by and they laughed. They found this rather amusing. As a defense attorney, where are you going to go with this, if you happen to have any -- if you would have ever been involved in a case like this?</s>CLEMENTS: As a defense attorney, I would certainly hope my clients would be the younger one. The daughter, who I believe, one is like 21 and one 20, which would have put them at 17 or 18 when this all began, so I would argue they were subject to the influence of Raylaine and Terry Knope, who are the older people, that is they are the ones that were driving the boat. So, from a defense perspective, I would go with the younger ones and that is who I hope would be my clients, because I`d be able to argue that they were coerced into this or compelled to do this by their parents. And it was just a survival method for them.</s>LALAMA: But Maureen, let me ask you as a long-time law enforcement person, is this like the mob mentality? How is it, where`s the moral compass, where is one member of the family that says, whoa, this is wrong?</s>O`CONNELL: Obviously there`s no moral compass and the parents are bullies and that is just the beginning. I mean, these people like control, they wanted the money. I`ve seen children sexually abused, I`ve seen them murdered, I`ve seen them tortured, but the depth and breadth of this particular situation is beyond anything I can possibly imagine. There is no moral compass in the younger people, the young children, and their young adult children that are involved in this. They`re ruined for life, as well they should be.</s>LALAMA: Absolutely. And so let`s hear from the sheriff, I believe, of this county about this case.</s>EDWARDS: The degree of trauma that somebody like this goes through is probably indescribable. And it`s something I can`t imagine. So I would certainly ask that we all, you know, keep her in our thoughts and prayers.</s>LALAMA: Wow. So Mike Boyle -- excuse me -- Matt Doyle, tell me, they`re all charged, but one of the adults has a much lesser crime held against her, and why is that?</s>DOYLE: Well, they have not released a lot of information on that specific area. This is pretty early on in the process. It would appear that maybe she was less involved with some of the other aspects of it, such as the sex trafficking, and that indicates reason why she may be having a lesser charge.</s>LALAMA: All right. So, let me ask you this, we understand that this victim is autistic. Is there any information on the spectrum? Was she able -- what was her mental capacity? And I know that she tried to escape at least one time. So clearly she knew that she was living in a veritable hell.</s>DOYLE: Well, she would have been verbal enough to communicate to guests and communicate to authorities, but at this time, they`re really not mentioning much of anything. All we have is the initials, and I think authorities are trying to keep her as protected as they can from the public. I can only imagine that would be incredibly detrimental to her development and they`re trying to shield her from a lot of the media attention.</s>LALAMA: Kirby, I just have about 20 seconds, I would guess that prosecutors want to work one defendant against the other?</s>CLEMENTS: In a case like this, you would probably work the younger ones against the older ones, but given the conditions here, as a prosecutor, I mean, from my prosecutor days, I would go after everybody hard and they`d have to give me a reason to want to cut a deal. Because the facts are so compelling.</s>O`CONNELL: And Pat, I think it`s most likely that the one that got the lesser charge is the one that has been cooperating the most so far.</s>LALAMA: Right. Let`s hope if there is a best case scenario that they all burn. Tonight -- if they`re guilty. Tonight in Waterloo, Iowa, hundreds of people are expected at a vigil for Mollie Tibbets as the desperate search for the 20-year-old college student continues. Two weeks ago, Mollie vanished after an evening jog and hasn`t been seen or heard from since. The night she disappeared, she reportedly was supposed to have dinner with her mom. And Mollie`s mom said the past 14 days have been a surreal nightmare.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The first night she went missing, I was -- you know, I was -- I was distraught. And I knew her phone was dead, but I sent her a text anyway saying, you know, I love you, we`re looking for you, and we`ll find you no matter what. My greatest fear is that we wouldn`t find her. But I can`t go there right now.</s>LALAMA: Police and the FBI have conducted more than 200 interviews without any solid leads on where Mollie is. She was dog sitting for her boyfriend and her brother when she was last seen and police have ruled them out as suspects. Tomorrow morning at noon Eastern, her family and crime stoppers of central Iowa will have a joint press conference about that search and HLN of course will bring that to you live. Everyone thought she was abducted when the cops found a missing mom`s car. Everyone but maybe her ex, who reportedly just made a big confession. What happened to Bellamy Gamboa? That`s next.