Betty, Lorraine, Ray, and Timmy Whittaker live an almost bucolic existence in a remote rural region of West Virginia. How come they became global celebrities? They were all born out of serial incest.
Uncovering the very special – and heartbreaking – story of “America’s most inbred family” was photographer Mark Laita, who first met them in 2004 at their home in Odd and a second time in 2020.
It all began in 1887, when two cousins – sons of identical twin brothers – had the first of as many as 15 children. However, babies came into the world marked by terrible genetic malformations that made some of them unable to speak and, in some cases, resulted in death.
According to Laita, who runs the Soft White Underbelly YouTube channel, members of the Whittaker family often behaved in animalistic ways, speaking in grunts and running away from people who came to visit them.
“There’s these people walking around and their eyes are going in different directions and they are barking at us,” Mr- Laita explained, “The one guy you’d look at him in the eye or say anything and he’d scream and go running away and his pants would fall around his ankles and he’d go running off and go kick the garbage can. This would happen over and over.”
Laita also recalls being confronted by very protective neighbors wielding a rifle at his first meeting with the Whittakers in 2004. “They don’t like people coming to ridicule these people,” said Laita, who was eventually allowed to take pictures.
The Whittakers, town residents claim, have never harmed anyone and do not deserve to be messed with. Fate, after all, has already been pretty hard on them, exposing each of them to exponentially higher risk of deadly diseases.
Nevertheless, the family does not actively try to hide, and spends much of the day on the porch grunting. “They understand what you talking about,” a relative told Laita. “If they don’t like it, they start yelling — let you know they don’t like that idea.
