Man 'kept his family captive in filthy house'

For nearly four years, a South Carolina man held his wife and two sons captive in a house infested with maggots and human waste, authorities said.

The boys slept on a bare mattress as their mother was kept in a drug-induced stupor in a house that was decrepit except for a tidy one-room illegal gambling parlour run by Danny William Dove, police said.

The living room was covered in rubbish and upturned furniture, the kitchen’s cabinets were falling apart and dirty clothing was piled in waist-high heaps.

The boys, aged four and eight, did not go to school.

Police say they were rarely allowed out of the house, in Chester, South Carolina, and that a video camera monitored their room and the doors to the home.

Dove, 45, plied his wife, Tamara, with prescription painkillers, cocaine and crack, and forbade her to go outside, police said.

Dove was charged with two counts of distribution of a controlled substance, two counts of criminal conspiracy, operating a gambling establishment and two counts of child neglect.

He was remanded in jail on Thursday.

If convicted, he faces up to 40 years in prison.