The Hidden Truth About The Most Inbred Family In The United States

Only 75 miles from West Virginia's state capital, Charleston, sits the village of Odd, population about 360. The town's unusual name — chosen, apparently, apparently, simply because it was unique —  means it occasionally pops up on lists of West Virginia towns with funny names, alongside such gems as Big Ugly and Hurricane. But this was its sole claim to fame — Odd and its residents were otherwise pretty far outside the wider world's notice.

Odd's anonymity ruptured in 2020 when photographer and filmmaker Mark Laita followed up on reports that an unusual family lived in the tiny settlement. His exploration led him to the Whittakers, a family whose complex intermarriages and resultant genetic abnormalities led them to be dubbed "the most inbred family in America." Even since Laita's photographs of the family and associated short documentary became public, the family has intermittently made news since, as the public cannot get enough of their story — which is almost as convoluted as their bloodline.

The origin of the Whittaker family lies in two identical twins, Henry and John. Two of their children, Harry and Sally, got married. They were cousins, of course, but they were even more closely related than usual because their fathers were identical, so their children had even fewer genetic cards to draw from. One of these seven children, John, then married Ada, his first cousin (tradition, at this point). The union produced nine children, among them Gracie.

Gracie built on the family tradition by marrying a double first cousin, John Whittaker. Double cousin relationships exist between people who are the result of two sibling marriages. So if two brothers marry two sisters, their children are double cousins to one another. A side effect of this collapsed family tree, aside from any genetic hinkyness, is that the double cousins only have one set of grandparents, which is probably a bummer at Christmas. Many of Gracie and John's 15 children would have serious genetic disabilities. These and their children are the Whittakers of documentary fame.

Inbreeding causes problems because it makes it more likely that a child will inherit two faulty copies of the same gene. Unrelated parents are usually genetically different enough that any dud gene contributed by one parent can often be offset by a healthy version of the gene provided by the other. (Genetics is complicated, and there are other factors in play, but this is the cocktail-napkin explanation.) Closely related parents, however, have already both drawn from the same genetic deck, so to speak, and are more likely to have similar genes. This means they can both pass faulty copies to any offspring.

The most famous examples of inbreeding in the West are royal families. The Habsburg kings of Spain and Holy Roman Emperors loved to marry cousins and the occasional niece, and their kids kept inheriting the same lantern jaw for centuries (the Habsburg chin). The last Habsburg king of Spain had so many genetic abnormalities that he was thought to have been hexed, and he was unable to father a child to keep the grim but politically useful project rolling.

A quick note: Inbreeding is not the same thing as incest, though obviously the concepts are related. Inbreeding is the process of too-closely-related individuals of any species producing offspring. Incest is culturally icky sex between relatives, and the degree of relation forbidden for sex and childbearing varies by culture.

Marriage between cousins is not universally taboo — it's widely practiced today across broad swathes of Africa and Asia (and among some immigrant communities originating in these cultures). Even the great prophet of evolution and natural selection, Charles Darwin, was married to his own first cousin. And without an understanding of genetic risks, it could make sense to marry someone your family already knows, keeping connections (and inheritances) close to the center.

Recent studies, however, have shown that cousin marriage is even more hazardous than we thought. The English city of Bradford has a large Pakistani population, among which cousin marriage is not unusual. A study published in Wellcome Open Research examined children born in Bradford and found that those born to cousin-parents have a small but significantly increased incidence of developmental problems than their peers with unrelated parents. Children of cousins go to the doctor more often, are more often diagnosed with language and speech difficulties, and generally seem more likely to encounter developmental lags. The study controls for other factors, like poverty and the education level reached by the subject's parents, and strongly suggests that even in the absence of a distinct, notable disability, children of related parents face more issues as they grow.

Given the risks of inbreeding in general, we can see how its repetition over generations might lead to serious disabilities, and some of the Whittakers indeed present with difficulties and deficits. Some have facial abnormalities, including eyes that do not seem correctly able to move in sync. Of the members of the family who live together, only Timmy,, a grandson of Gracie through daughter Lorene, was able to complete high school.

One of the most notable challenges members of the family face is that some of them cannot communicate verbally, instead using grunts and bark-like vocalizations. They do appear to generally understand spoken English, responding appropriately with gestures or other modes of communications, but they cannot or will not replicate speech. According to a 2015 paper published in Journal of Public Health and Epidemiology, these speech issues may be a manifestation of autism. While the roots of autism are not clearly understood (except that it does not come from vaccines, an utterly ridiculous conspiracy theory), a partial genetic link has been shown, and of course this could be amplified in the minimally branching Whittaker family tree.

The Whittaker family's fame comes primarily from Mark Laita, a successful commercial photographer who has turned to editorial and documentary work in recent years. Created Equal, a survey of black-and-white portraits of diverse Americans across the country, led to the Soft White Underbelly project, which focuses more on the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the outsiders. It was during the course of this project that he encountered the Whittakers in West Virginia.

Laita describes a difficult process accessing the family: They seem to have a complex relationship with their neighbors, who protect them from outside harassment but also mock them, as well as with their other relatives, who keep them at arm's length. Ultimately, though, he was invited into the house and was able to interview the family for his documentary YouTube channel, also called Soft White Underbelly. Laita was able to get details about the family's history (genetic and otherwise) over the course of his conversations with the verbal members of the group, particularly matriarch Betty.

Many West Virginians live in poverty, and it seemed that the Whittakers were in financial trouble, just as many of their neighbors were. Mark Laita helped them set up a GoFundMe to finance living expenses and some upgrades to the shared home, ultimately raising nearly $100,000. Additionally, Laita appears to have given them some money directly.

In September 2024, Laita reported that the family had, he believed, been scamming him: They had been receiving payments from the state, and money Laita had personally donated didn't seem to have been spent for agreed-upon purposes. Most shocking of all, Laita alleged that the Whittakers had faked the death of one of their members, nonverbal brother Larry, in order to raise funds for a funeral. Larry was later filmed alive (and as well as he ever was) well after his alleged death and burial. Reportedly, the scam was the work of Larry's daughter, BJ, who apologized to Laita and acknowledged issues with drug use.

The relationship between Laita and the Whittakers is complicated, and it's not entirely clear who's playing who (perhaps not even to the participants). Future developments will, undoubtedly, continue to draw eyeballs and spark speculation — and perhaps emphasize the importance of marrying someone unrelated.

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