Suspect in family captivity case is innocent, lawyer says

The Franklin County man whom police say for three years held his family captive in a trailer is innocent of the charges against him, his lawyer said Friday.

Raymond Daniel Thurmond of Lavonia has not committed rape, held family members against their will or abused his children, said Joel Shiver, who heads the public defender’s office for Georgia’s Northern Judicial District. The four-county region comprises Franklin, Hart, Madison and Oglethorpe counties.

“We categorically deny all the charges,” Shivers said. “We’re going to let the judicial system take care of these charges.”

Thurmond, 36, is charged with one count of rape, four counts of first-degree child abuse and five counts of false imprisonment — all felonies. He is in the Franklin County Detention Center awaiting a bond hearing, which has not been set.

Lavonia police allege Thurmond raped his 38-year-old wife, whom they have not named, behind the locked doors of a singlewide mobile home in the Beaver Creek Mobile Home Community. Police also say they’ve charged Thurmond for never letting his family leave the trailer, nor providing them adequate food or medical care. Investigators say the children, 14, 13, 12 and 9, did not attend school.

Police began investigating the allegations earlier this month, after Thurmond’s wife said she escaped from the locked trailer and sought help. When police visited the home for the first time Aug. 7, officers said they encountered a home so filthy and foul-smelling that one detective vomited at the front door. Another donned a respirator.

According to reports and a video the park’s manager took, the home was filled with debris, bags of trash, rotting food and roaches beyond number. People who lived around the trailer said they never saw or heard anything at the home.

For three years, say police, the family ventured out only once, for a quick trip to North Carolina on Easter.

Shiver, meantime, said he is still collecting information to defend his client.

“This [news of the case] is all over the world,” he said. “This is really going to be a weird thing when it shakes out.”