THE Colt family name sends shivers down the spines of locals in a remote Australian town – and anyone asking questions faces their wrath.
Australian Jamie Zhu found out for himself after visiting Boorawa in New South Wales to hunt for the world's most inbred family.
Within minutes of arriving in the town, which has a population of 1,800, the social media star was chased out by furious locals after being reported to the police.
Jamie, who has almost 900,000 subscribers to his YouTube page, told Flying Eze: “It was a very small town, so it's almost like everyone knows each other.”
Four generations of twisted inbreeding went unnoticed for decades until authorities busted the clan's isolated camp in 2012.
Unimaginable horrors were uncovered, and the sickening stories of the 38-strong brood's life of incest, neglect, and paedophilia shocked the world.
Images showed paper-thin mattresses inside tents and old sheds, and caravans where the Colt family lived.
Their names have all been changed to protect the identity of the victims.
The children – found filthy, malnourished, and barely able to speak – did not know how to brush their teeth or use toilet paper.
Perverted patriarch ran an “incest” farm where , fathered their children and encouraged his sons to do the same.
He and his sister June, also a product of incest, shared seven kids – Martha, Frank, Paula, Cherry, Rhonda, Betty, and Charlie.
The women gave birth to their own children – likely – adding more members to the barbarous brood.
Tim allegedly parented his daughter Betty's 13 children, four of Rhonda's offspring, and even his granddaughter Raylene's child, Kimberly.
Dark roots
The monster moved to from in 1970 after marrying sister June.
It was here that he headed up the clan, who were and poverty.
The campsite spread out into the outback, with sheds and caravans, and no running water or toilets.
By the time the family's revolting and remote camp was busted in 2012, Tim and June were long dead, and the family was headed by their daughter Betty.
To avoid detection, the clan had moved several times – but had been settled just outside of Boorowa for several years when their depraved way of life was uncovered.
Eight family members faced various charges of incest, child sex abuse and aggravated assault, with several trials taking place.
Content creator Jamie, 31, decided to visit the town to see if he could find out more about the family.
He said: “What the team and I like to do is investigate certain situations, especially in Australia, ranging from social issues to just news stories that we see.
“So we decided to go down and just kind of investigate what actually happened.
“We wanted to see if there were still victims there from that particular family and what impact it may have had on them.
“I think this sort of issue may happen to more people than we think which never gets spoken about.
“So we sort of wanted to raise some awareness for the people down there.”
The ten-minute video shared with Jamie's 892,000 subscribers on shows the influencer stopping people in the street to ask them about the Colt brood.
Most had little to say to Jamie and his videographer Nick – but one woman in a cafe revealed her children went to school with some of the clan.
“They just lived in caravans,” she said.
Another woman in the neighbouring shop then agreed to lead Jamie to the “Colt house”.
But in an apparent misunderstanding, she walked the influencer to the local courthouse instead.
She then claimed she was taking Jamie and Nick to the local police station to speak to an officer about the family.
Jamie said what happened next was “something out of a horror movie” as after more than an hour of waiting outside the station, the woman became incensed.
“Turn the camera off now, just f***ing turn it off,” she warned.
“I'm p***ed off. What do you know about the family?”
Jamie told her he didn't know much and didn't know where the children were now but asked if she knew where any Colt family members could be.
She fumed: “F**k me. Do you think I would honestly tell you if I knew where they were?
“Do you think I would be that f**king stupid, decrepit to tell you?
The woman then demanded the cops be called before the pair jumped into their car and fled.
But when Nick and Jamie made a stop, Jamie's mum called to warn them she'd been contacted by the police as they were using her car.
Panicked-looking Jamie later got a call from the police, but was relieved when the officer said he hadn't done anything wrong.
Jamie told Flying Eze most people he encountered in the town were friendly – and believes the woman who became furious misunderstood why he was there.
He said: “She started telling all the people in the town that we were doing something bad, which we weren't.
“And then one thing led to another, and we had to drive off and leave.”
While most people Jamie spoke to claimed not to have heard of the Colt family, he sensed the town carried the weight of its history.
“It was a mixed bag. I think everyone sort of knew about it,” he said.
“But I did sort of realise after some time that they did carry a bit of shame around the subject as well.”
After the clan was busted, the name “Colt” was given to them as a pseudonym by the courts and government agencies.
Their first names have also been changed.
Police launched an investigation after a descendant of the Colt clan was discussing the fact her sister was .
The girl, who rarely went to school like the other Colt children, revealed she did not know which of her brothers was the father.
Cops raided their camp and found the family living in squalor without running water or toilets inside run-down caravans and shabby tents.
They were ridden with chronic hearing, sight and dental issues, while one of the young girls was described as .
Psychological assessments disturbingly revealed the kids engaged in “inappropriate sexual conduct” with one another.
Many of them have now reached adulthood and have shown marked improvement in personal hygiene and – but they are still overshadowed by deprivations from their childhood.
Some have low-slung ears or misaligned eyes as a result of inbreeding and they look decades older than their calendar age.
Jamie believes the locals are protective of the victims, especially the younger ones who have been placed in care.
But he said anyone visiting the area would not realise its secret.
“It was a little bit eerie for us just from that knowledge of what happened,” he said.
“But all in all, if you look at the town itself without having any kind of background history of it, you'd think it was just a normal country town where normal people would just live every day as the rest of us do.
“It was disappointing [when we were forced to leave] because we didn't come to the town with any bad intent.
“We didn't mean to offend anyone.”
Brother and sister Martha and Charlie, who openly shared a “marital bed”, were the first to be detained after authorities found out about the Colts.
Their siblings Rhonda and Frank, Betty's children Derek and Raylene, as well as Frank's son Cliff were then arrested.
All of the Colt children were removed and placed in care, as a horrified court ruled there was “no realistic possibility of restoration of any of the children to their biological family”.
I realised they [the locals] carry a bit of shame around the subject.
Jamie Zhu
Three of the late Tim Colt’s daughters have been dragged through court trials, assaulted in prison, and ostracised in communities due to their inbred children.
In one Colt trial, Tim Colt's son Roderick was found guilty of raping his niece, who was also his half-sister.
The victim, Petra, was the biological child of Tim and Betty and was also attacked by her uncle Frank in the back seat of his car during a visit to the family farm in February 2010, for which he was convicted.
Betty was given 14 months in jail after being convicted of four counts of perjury, one of lying under oath and perverting the course of justice.
She later received another 12-month sentence after trying to kidnap two of her sons from their foster parents.
Betty was also forbidden from contacting other Colt family members after she attempted to get in touch with them via Facebook.
Rhonda received a 14-month intensive corrections order which expired in August 2021, according to reports.
Raylene was sentenced to a 16-month ICO for perjury while her brother Derek received a maximum of three years and ten months for incest in 2020.
Charlie Colt – who originally faced 27 charges – was found not guilty on two charges and acquitted, with the balance being withdrawn.
Of the original 80 charges originally levelled against eight Colts – including incest, child sexual abuse, indecency against a child and perjury – many were dropped.
