INSIDE AN INBRED FAMILY

The poverty-stricken Whittaker family started inbreeding more than 100 years ago and the results have been devastating

- DENNIS CAVERNELIS

AS HE drove down a deserted dirt road he heard what sounded like a dog barking. The barks got louder as he approached an open patch of land with a trailer and a shack.

Then came a startling sight. “There are these people walking around and their eyes are going in different directions, and they are barking at us,” photographer Mark Laita recalls.

“And then one guy – you would look at him in the eye or say anything and he would just scream and go running away, and his pants would fall around his ankles, and he would go running off and go and kick a garbage can. This would happen over and over. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen.”

That was Mark’s first encounter with the Whittaker family, who’ve been dubbed “America’s most inbred family”.

The Whittakers live in rural West Virginia in the US, in a hamlet named Odd. It’s a scenic area with fewer than 800 residents, and rolling hills, lush forests and snow-capped mountains in winter.

Siblings Ray (70), Betty (72) and Lorene (77) and Lorene’s son, Timmy (44), live in poverty. They appear to have genetic defects that have caused physical and mental impairments. Two other siblings, Larry (67), Kenneth (65), live nearby and work in the town.