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| Linda Weston |
A Philadelphia woman was sentenced today to 80 years in prison for
kidnapping mentally disabled people, keeping them prisoner in her
basement, and starving at least two of them to death. Prosecutors said
the woman and her cohorts drugged, beat and abused their captives, and
forced them to sign over their Social Security disability checks and
state benefits.
Linda Weston, 55, pleaded guilty to all charges today in U.S. District
Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Four people were found
being held captive in her small Philadelphia basement when she was
arrested in October 2011, authorities said, noting that one of the
captives was Weston’s own 19-year-old niece, Beatrice, who was found
malnourished and suffering from cuts and wounds. At least six disabled
adults and four children were victimized, authorities said, and two of
the adults died while in captivity.
According to court documents, Weston targeted mentally challenged people
who were estranged from their families, first befriending them and
offering them a place to stay. Once the victims moved in, Weston and two
co-conspirators confined them to locked rooms, basements, closets,
attics and apartments, prosecutors said. While confined, the captives
were often isolated in the dark and sedated with drugs that Weston and
other defendants placed in their food and drink, prosecutors said. If
the prisoners protested, Weston and two other would punish them by
“slapping, punching, kicking, stabbing, burning and hitting them with
closed hands, belts, sticks, bats and hammers or other objects,
including the butt of a pistol," prosecutors said.
When Philadelphia police first uncovered the plot, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey called it “pure evil.”
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