The dirt road into Odd, West Virginia, bends gently between tree lines and a seam of rusted fencing before opening onto the Whittaker property, a scatter of collapsing structures that look as though they have been exhaling for decades. The house, its siding warped by seasons, sits back from the road behind a porch where Halloween skeletons still dangle beside Christmas angels, their plastic limbs rattling in the slightest wind. Towels hang from a makeshift clothesline. Old tyres, crushed beer cans, chipped buckets and sagging refuse bins pool around the steps. The yard is littered with objects that once held purpose and now simply mark the passing of time.Inside, the air is thick with the smell of gas from a stove where beans and sausage have been left out, congealing as flies drift across the counters. The television blares in the background, absorbed by a room whose calendar remains frozen on March. Outside the window, beyond a collapsing chicken coop and several broken trailers wearing the weather like a permanent bruise, stands the family outhouse.This is the scene reporters from the Daily Mail encountered when they returned to the Whittakers’ home after the recent removals, the isolated West Virginia property long occupied by the Whittakers, widely known as America’s most inbred family, who have lived most of their lives out of public view and far from the wider community, and which once held seven or eight voices but now holds only two.Betty, seventy-three, and Larry, sixty-nine, occupy the house in the same unadorned way the house seems to occupy the land. Their days are quiet. Their relatives are gone. And they say they haven’t been told where.
Viral fame and the sudden disappearance
In September, three Whittakers, Ray, 72; his sister Lorene, 79; and Lorene’s son Timmy, 46, were removed from the family’s home in Odd, West Virginia by adult protective services, according to relatives who spoke to the Daily Mail. The operation was carried out quietly, and the two siblings left behind, Betty, 73, and Larry, 69, said no explanation was given to them at the time. Betty recalled being told only that the three relatives “couldn’t live here no more,” adding, “I miss them a lot, I raised them.” She and Larry have had no contact with them since the day they were taken.
Larry and Betty/ Image credits: YouTube/Soft White Undderbelly
Larry said he has received no information from authorities about their location or condition. “I’ve been staying at home, waiting on a phone call, but that’s all I know. They haven’t called or let me know nothing,” he said. “They won’t tell us where they at.” He believes the sudden intervention followed the enormous attention generated by online videos of the family. “People out theremaking money off them [the videos], and they don’t like it,” he said. “They told us don’t talk to nobody. They watching.”Officials from West Virginia’s Department of Human Services told the Daily Mail that they were “aware of the situation” but could not discuss the case “due to confidentiality laws.” The agency reportedly refused to comment further because of “the ongoing nature of the matter.”
The Whittaker family in their Odd home 2022/ Image credits: YouTube/Soft White Undderbelly
For the Whittakers, who lived most of their lives unseen by anyone outside their rural community, the shift from obscurity to global exposure, and now to forced separation, has left the remaining siblings without answers and without the family members they had cared for their entire lives.
A century of interlocking branches
The Whittakers’ story stretches back more than a century through the wooded hills of West Virginia. Their inbreeding traces to a single marriage between two sets of cousins descended from identical twin brothers, a convergence that effectively folded the family tree in on itself. Their parents, according to The Sun, were “first cousins, twice, because they share both sets of grandparents.” Identical twin brothers Henry and John Whittaker had children who later married each other, beginning a cycle of consanguineous unions that persisted through generations.
The Whittaker Family Tree/ Image credits: YouTube/Soft White Undderbelly
Scientists point to the predictable but devastating pattern known as “inbreeding depression,” a term that describes the expression of harmful recessive genes passed repeatedly through the same bloodline. A 2021 study by the University of San Francisco Valley, Brazil, noted that “There is an association between high rates of marriage between relatives and the development of congenital malformations, abortions, deafness, esophageal atresia, and mental and physical disabilities.” The Whittakers exemplified these consequences. Lorraine and Ray often communicated through grunts rather than speech; one relative told filmmaker Mark Laita, “They understand what you talking about. If they don’t like it, they start yelling – let you know they don’t like that idea.” The family did not know their genetic issues were the result of inbreeding. When Laita pressed them about physical abnormalities in his earlier films, Kenneth once suggested, “Might be coal mining.” Yet, for most of their history, the family’s struggles were private, until a filmmaker walked up the dirt drive.
When the world arrived in Odd
The Whittakers became a global spectacle in 2020 when filmmaker Mark Laita uploaded a twelve-minute documentary to his YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly. The video, meant to highlight “untold stories from across the country,” revealed the family’s living conditions and genetic isolation with an intimacy that shocked viewers. Laita described it as “one of the most disturbing interviews I’ve ever done.”
Image credits: YouTube/Soft White Undderbelly
He had first met the family in 2004 when he was taking photographs for his book Created Equal. Even then, the encounter came with resistance: “protective” neighbours confronted him with a shotgun, he recalled on the Koncrete podcast, explaining, “They don’t like people coming to ridicule these people.” Over the years he returned, filming more footage. Laita has compared the family to characters from the 1972 thriller Deliverance. He said, “It was out of control. There’s these people walking around and their eyes are going in different directions and they are barking at us. And [this] one guy, you’d 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.”
Image credits: YouTube/Soft White Undderbelly
The 2020 documentary drew tens of millions of views. Soft White Underbelly’s uploads turned the Whittakers from a sheltered, isolated household into a global curiosity. According to Laita, interest grew so quickly that he needed a police escort to return to the property.
Image credits: YouTube/Soft White Undderbelly
As viewers circled the videos, curiosity seekers began circling the house. Neighbours report that people regularly drove down the dirt track to film, photograph, or simply stare at the family’s home. For a clan that once fled from strangers, the world had suddenly arrived on their porch.
The removal, the silence and what remains
With Ray, Lorene and Timmy taken by adult protective services, the house in Odd now holds only Betty and Larry, who continue living in what reporters described as squalid conditions: a stove left running, food cooling on the burners, insects moving across the counters, and a yard strewn with discarded items, broken structures and holiday decorations left out through the seasons. Betty has repeatedly said, “I miss them a lot, I raised them.”Public reaction has been divided. Some accuse the internet of turning the family’s hardships into entertainment. One reader commented, “This is a total invasion of this family’s privacy.” Others expressed cautious relief: “I’m just glad that Ray, Lorene, and Timmy are in a clean environment now, with healthy meals to eat and the ability to take showers and stay clean.”What the state is doing with the three relatives remains unknown. Under confidentiality laws, no agency has released any information about their location or welfare.Meanwhile, Betty and Larry remain at the property in Odd, carrying on in the home where they have lived for decades, and where they continue to wait for news about the family members removed without explanation.
