If you’ve ever come across the wild stories of the Whittaker family from Odd, West Virginia, you know their reputation precedes them.
Famously dubbed America’s most inbred family, the Whittakers have been documented by filmmaker Mark Laita for nearly 20 years — and now he reveal’s the ‘craziest thing’ he ever saw them do.
Mysterious way of communicating
The Whittakers don’t speak like most of us. Instead, they grunt, bark, and use gestures to communicate — a stark reality that filmmaker Mark Laita first encountered in 2004 when he met family members like Ray, Betty, Kenneth, Timmy, and Lorene.
But getting close to the family wasn’t easy. Laita recalls:
“My initial visit was met with hostility from protective neighbors. They were armed with shotguns and wary of outsiders ridiculing the family.”
Despite the rough start, Laita slowly gained the family’s trust and went on to photograph them for his book Created Equal, a project exploring America’s diverse cultures. Laita’s stories from his visits paint an eerie picture.
On the Koncrete KLIPS Podcast, he vividly described the family’s behavior:
“It was like that little scene from Deliverance that everyone knows. We came around to this road, which turns into a country road, which turns into a dirt road… And there’s these people walking around and their eyes are going in different directions, and they are barking at us.
“And then one guy, you would look him in the eye or say anything, and he would just scream and go running away, and his pants would fall around his ankles, and he would go running off and go and kick a garbage can. And this would happen over and over. It was out of control – the craziest thing I have ever seen.”
Though Laita can’t confirm the exact family connections, he suspects inbreeding plays a significant role in the family’s physical and mental health issues.
“There is no way I would be able to confirm that the Whittaker parents were related, but given that this does happen in this part of the country and the Whittakers are the most extreme case I’ve seen so far,” he explained.
“I would bet that inbreeding was at least partly responsible for the mental and physical abnormalities seen in [siblings] Lorene, Freddie, Ray, and [cousin] Timmy.”
Laita’s work led to two fundraising campaigns aimed at helping the Whittakers, but the relationship has been rocky. Things got worse when YouTuber Tyler Oliveira released a video about the family, including an interview with Betty Whittaker.
Betty claimed she didn’t know what happened to the money raised for her family — a claim that shocked and angered Laita, who fiercely defended his efforts:
“Look at the Whittakers; their lives have improved greatly since I came into it, and that’s because I came through for them every time.”
Fundraising drama and family scandals
Laita also revealed the family often requested thousands of dollars, but how that money was spent remains unclear. After showing evidence of fund transfers on his channel, Laita decided to end his fundraisers.
Even then, Betty seemed confused when Laita confirmed he hadn’t held back any funds. In 2024, Larry Whittaker was rumored dead after relatives told Laita he died of a heart attack. But Larry was very much alive and unaware of the rumors.
In a revealing video, Larry’s daughter admitted to fabricating his death to get money — $1,000 meant for a “funeral.” She confessed with remorse, smoking a cigarette:
“I shouldn’t have done it. I’m trying to get help for my drug addiction.”
Despite the chaos, Laita gave Larry $700 to take his daughter to North Carolina to start fresh — but Larry allegedly kept the money without following through. In a candid conversation with Larry’s cousin, Laita admitted:
“I don’t know what to do with them other than just walk away.”
Recently, Laita reconnected with the family. Larry apologized:
“I’m sorry for what they’ve done to you and I want to tell the whole world that I’m sorry for what they done.”
Laita accepted the apology, saying:
“I’m very good at forgiving and understanding. I’ve missed you guys, I think a lot of my viewers have missed you guys too.”
But despite this, Laita is now warning others to think twice before approaching the Whittakers:
“They are kind of protected by the neighbors and the relatives [who] don’t like these people coming to ridicule them.”
Family tree
Pastor William Plumley told the Daily Mail:
“I think the documentary about them is good and bad, good because it has helped them. But also, it’s brought a lot of people to the area who just want to mess with them.”
The Whittaker family’s complicated and troubling legacy stretches across generations, exposing how tightly interwoven relationships have resulted in significant genetic struggles.
Mark Laita, who documented the family extensively, finally uncovered a tangled family tree marked by inbreeding that caused various physical and mental disabilities among its members.
At the heart of the story are siblings Loraine, Timmy, Ray, and their cousin Freddie — who tragically passed away from a heart attack. The roots of their genetic issues trace back to identical twin brothers Henry and John Whittaker, whose descendants repeatedly married within the family.
Henry and John’s children, including Harry and Sally, had seven children, among them John Isom Whittaker, born in 1882. John Isom married his first cousin Ada Rigg, and together they had nine children. One of their children, Gracie Irene Whittaker (born in 1920), married her double cousin John Emory Whittaker in 1935, and the couple had 15 children. Unfortunately, many of these descendants suffered severe mental and physical impairments due to generations of inbreeding.
The Whittakers’ story is a mix of tragedy, controversy, and raw humanity — but for now, Mark Laita says this much is clear: Don’t go looking for the Whittakers. Some families need privacy and respect, not more outsiders stirring the pot.
