A filmmaker has shared his shocking experience of meeting America’s most inbred family, the Whittakers. Mark Laita described the encounter as “like a scene out of Deliverance”, referring to the 1972 thriller.
Laita was threatened by protective neighbours when he first approached the Whittakers about filming them for a documentary. However, he was soon escorted by a police officer to meet the family, who live in a rural village in West Virginia named Odd.
The filmmaker’s videos have been viewed by millions and he recalled his first impressions of the Whittakers on the Koncrete KLIPS podcast. He said: “It was like that little scene from Deliverance that everyone knows.”
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“We came around to this road, which turns into a country road, which turns into a dirt road, and we come to this trailer and then a little shack on the other side of the 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 at 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.”
The Whittakers, known as America’s most inbred family, live in a rundown shack cut off from the rest of the world. They have no education and their home is in a terrible state.
When filmmaker Laita met them, he found three siblings and a cousin living together in a dirty house with lots of dogs. Some of the family could only make noises instead of talking and seemed to have health problems. In his YouTube videos, Laita warns people not to bother or make fun of the family, or they’ll be chased away.
He said: “They are kind of protected by the neighbours and the relatives [who] don’t like these people coming to ridicule them.”
After a lot of convincing, the family let Laita take some photos when he offered to do a portrait for a loved one’s funeral. After his first visit, Laita stayed in touch with the family and later made a film about them called Inbred family – The Whittakers in 2020.
The film was posted on his Youtube channel, Soft White Underbelly, and shows him talking to siblings Betty, Lorraine and Ray, and cousin Timmy.
Another sibling, Freddie, passed away due to a heart condition. Betty, when asked, didn’t confirm if her parents were related and remained unsure why Ray, Lorraine and Timmy had disabilities.
Laita stated: “There is no way I would be able to confirm that the Whitaker parents were related, but given that this does happen in this part of the country and the Whitakers are the most extreme case I’ve seen so far. I would bet that inbreeding was at least partly responsible for the mental and physical abnormalities seen in Lorraine, Freddie, Ray, and Timmy.”
When Laita returned to the family a year later, Betty confirmed their parents were double first cousins.
In a 2022 video, a relative named Kenneth discusses the family’s disabilities and facial abnormalities. When asked about their unusual eye direction, Kenneth suggests: “Might be coal mining.”
Laita’s videos have helped raise funds for home repairs and improvements for the Whittaker family. The fundraising continues as he now aims to buy them a new house.
Despite criticism labelling him “an exploitative b*****d”, Laita defends his work, stating: “I think it’s good for people to know that a lot of these things exist.”
“Everything can be viewed as exploitative. I’m exposing or creating awareness of what is going on in our country.”
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