My current personal working theory is that they were tortured back to Texas, that zip ties/ropes were found in photos of the house in Texas which is not just "weird" but is significant photographic evidence that the children were bound as captives and prisoners and tortured back in Texas prior to moving to California, and that the photo you cite was taking after 2010 because the background is southern CA, not TX, and that the longstanding torture and abuse has absolutely nothing to do with LT having the last baby, postpartum issues, pregnancy issues, etc. In addition, some Texas neighbors report cages in the house (the kids were probably kept in cages), locks in closets (who has locks in closets), makeshift airholes/vents from closets leading to the attic, padlocks and chains on refrigerators, etc.
If the torture had simply started in California recently, then one of the children would have escaped far earlier in my opinion. As it is, the siblings do not really know what normal is....they were held captive and not even given access to TV and radio.
Also, with the questions about you raised about whether the 82 lb and 29 year old had just 'voided' or was just simply dehydrated and the implication that this could have caused the low weight, LE did not say that it was only the 29 year old that had malnutrition. It might be normal for a 5 foot 1 inch 10 year old to be 82 lbs, but by the time a female of 5 foot 1 inch reaches 14 years old, 82 lbs is considered underweight by the BMI charts for teens by age/height.
This 29 year old was not just given fluids and released the next day. They said all but the 2 year old were starving, and the adults have significant cognitive deficits such that after being released from the hospital, they are having to be under conservatorship by the county and go into an assisted living center.
"Depraved" is a word you don't often hear in press conferences, but I definitely feel like the conditions were so awful that we can only imagine how bad it actually was.