TAMPA, Fla. - Five children were starved, shocked and hit with a hammer by a couple who disappeared after they were confronted by authorities, officials said.

John Dollar, 58, and his wife Linda Dollar, 51, remained missing Friday, four days after they skipped a hearing with the Department of Children & Families, the Citrus County Sheriff's Office said. The Dollars are wanted on felony charges of aggravated child abuse.

The five children, along with two others who did not appear to have been abused, were removed from the Dollars' home in Beverly Hills after one of the children called an ambulance for a 16-year-old boy who weighed less than 60 pounds and had suspicious injuries on his head and neck. The doctors alerted authorities.

The children, who ranged in age from 12 to 17, told officials that the Dollars struck them with a hammer, administered electric shocks and used pliers to pull off their toenails, sheriff's spokeswoman Gail Tierney said. The children showed signs of injury, including missing toenails, Tierney said.

Twin 14-year-old brothers were severely malnourished, weighing 36 and 38 pounds each, about 80 pounds below the normal weights for their age, police said.

Five of the children also told deputies they were forced to sleep in a locked walk-in closet because the Dollars accused them of stealing food and misbehaving, the sheriff's office said.

Officials declined to describe the relationship between the Dollars and the children, citing privacy concerns. The Dollars were not the children's biological or foster parents, child welfare department spokesman Bill Daiuto said.

The Dollars had moved with the children in August from Tennessee to the tidy home in a wooded neighborhood about 70 miles north of Tampa.

The children did not attend school and no other adults had regular contact with them, preventing authorities from intervening sooner, Tierney said.

"My impression was that they were basically prisoners in this home," Tierney said.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... ly_torture



If hell does not exist, it's best it be invented for people like this.

Further proof that trying to understand some people is pretty much hopeless...

Oh my goodness! The thing that really struck me was the 14 year old twins weighing only 36 and 38 pounds!! They're FOURTEEN years old and they weighed 36 and 38 pounds?!? That's absolutely unimaginable. That's just insane. That's like skin and bone. Urggh. Horrible.

Starving them, choking them, hitting them with hammers and pulling off their toenails? And then punishing them for trying to sneak eating food, when they're bloody dying of starvation! What the hell did these parents think they were accomplishing?

PEACE, Mike

I don't know what the hell went on in their minds, if anything. This just goes to prove that some people will intentionally inflict harm on others, and derive pleasure out of it. I can't think of any other reason than that these are fundamentally sick, perverted beings who must be looked after. By that I mean, lock up their asses and keep them as far away from children as possible.


This is profoundly sad and sickening. I hope the kids can find someway to pick themselves up and live normal lives.

This reminds me of the Dave Pelzer trilogy about his harrowing life - "A Child Called It"

Horrifying how inhumane some people can be.

Stuff like that makes me sick and just angers me.

This is So So gross. I can't believe these people lived close to me. Yech. That's all they have been talking about on the news. I hope they catch them. The whole pulling-toe nails-off-with-a-plyer stuff is nasty.