Three members of America’s ‘most inbred family’ are now missing after state intervention

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 ac