A filmmaker who documented the lives of an inbred family has returned 22 years later - with the group revealing that two of them sleep in same single bed.
Donors have raised thousands in the hopes of lifting the family from the abject squalor of their back-country shack.
The Whittaker family lives in an isolated rural area of West Virginia and have been largely cut off from civilisation.
They've had limited access to education, with only one of the relatives, Timmy, claiming to have graduated from high school.
Photographer Mark Laita first met the Whittakers 20 years ago and has returned to their cramped home where they live with several dogs several times in the past year.
The relatives are beset with a number of severe physical and mental impairments, with some unable to articulate themselves and speaking only in grunts instead. It is believed to have been a result of inbreeding.
In April, the filmmaker set up a fundraiser to help the lift them from the squalor of their dilapidated house which is falling apart.
To date, the GoFundMe has raised just under $35,000 (£27,800) of its $50,000 (£39,700) goal.
Visiting the family after they received the generous donations, Mark found they had spent the entire sum out on a number of home improvements and had spending the entire sum on a new truck, roof, kitchen refit and a coal heater.
One of the relatives takes Mark on a tour of their cramped home, where two of the adult men share a single bed and an elderly woman sleeps on a sofa in the living room all year round.
The family have little contact with anyone in the outside world and when Laita first attempted to photograph the family, neighbours threatened him.
He revealed he travelled down the aptly named Odd, a rural village in West Virginia - where a police officer led him down an isolated lane, Daily Star reports.
His videos have been viewed millions of times and speaking on the Koncrete KLIPS podcast he recalled his first impressions of the family and their environment.
He said: “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 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."
In his YouTube videos, Laita warns any curious folk intending to visit to mock or disturb the family to think again as they will be chased off.
The Whittakers eventually allowed him to take some photos after he offered to take a portrait for them to place in the casket of a loved one who had recently died.
"They are kind of protected by the neighbours and the relatives [who] don’t like these people coming to ridicule them," he added.
"And everybody in the area kind of knows of them and are like, 'let's go over to the Whittakers' and laugh at them or whatever.'"
After his first alarming visit, Laita kept in touch with the family.
In 2020, he returned and shot a film, Inbred family - The Whittakers, which he posted on his YouTube channel, Soft White Underbelly.
The documentary film shows him conversing with the three siblings, Betty, Lorraine and Ray, as well as with their cousin, Timmy.
Another brother, Freddie, had died of a heart condition.
When pressed about their background, Betty won't say if her parents were related and says she didn't know why Ray, Lorraine and Timmy had disabilities
A year later, in a follow-up video, Betty confirms their parents were double first cousins.
Another video released earlier this year features another relative, Kenneth. Laita discusses with him his family members' disabilities and facial abnormalities.
When asked why their eyes don't point forward, Kenneth says: "Might be coal mining."
He said some of the feedback from his work with the family had been critical, calling him "an exploitative b*****d".
But he's defended his work, saying: "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."
