More victims? 10 kids, adults taken into custody

POLICE TOOK 10 people - six kids and four adults - into custody yesterday as part of the crazy, ever-evolving case of four mentally disabled people found malnourished Saturday in a dirty, urine-reeking basement dungeon in Tacony.

Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told reporters at a news conference last night that the 10 had been removed from homes in and near Frankford. They were not arrested; most were taken in for care or to determine whom their parents are.

Police yesterday also said that the woman who had been held captive in the basement, Tamara Breeden, 29, may have previously given birth to two children. Capt. Jack McGinnis of the Northeast Detective Division said she did not give birth to the kids while in the basement of the apartment building on Longshore Avenue near Vandike Street, dispelling a TV report.

Breeden and three male victims were allegedly taken to the Tacony house the week of Oct. 3 from West Palm Beach, Fla., by suspects Linda Ann Weston, 51; her boyfriend, Gregory Thomas, 47; and Eddie Wright, 50.

Weston, Thomas and Wright were arrested Saturday and have been charged with kidnapping, conspiracy and related offenses in an alleged scheme to steal the four victims' Social Security disability benefits. Weston is the alleged mastermind.

One of the adults taken into custody yesterday was Beatrice Weston, 19, a niece of Linda Ann Weston, who police said had custody of her since 1994. In 2009, Beatrice was reported missing. McGinnis said she appeared malnourished and showed signs of physical abuse yesterday.

The children taken into custody range in age from 2 to 16, and are in the care of the Department of Human Services, police said.

Officers are looking into a tip that Breeden may have given birth to two of the children when she was previously under Weston's care outside Philadelphia, police spokeswoman Officer Tanya Little said before the news conference.

A neighbor on the block where the four mentally disabled adults were found said last night that police took two children from the Longshore Avenue building yesterday afternoon. The two kids lived with Weston's daughter, Jane McIntosh, who lives in a second-floor apartment.

McIntosh was one of the four adults taken into custody yesterday. It was not immediately clear if she would face charges, or if she was being considered a victim. Earlier in the day, the Daily News reached McIntosh on her cellphone. Immediately McIntosh said: "Everything, everything, the kids are distraught." The reporter then identified herself, and McIntosh put her on hold for 25 minutes before hanging up.

Police have identified the four victims found in the dank basement - in a locked boiler room - as Derwin McLemire, 41, of Florida; Herbert Knowles, 40, of Virginia; and Edwin Sanabria, 31, and Breeden, both of Philly. Breeden had been reported missing from Philly in 2005.

Over the past four days, Philly cops have been working with the FBI and authorities in Florida, Texas and Virginia to see if there are victims there. It is believed that the four victims found in the basement had also been in Texas and Florida.

Separately yesterday, the landlord of a single-family home in Norfolk, Va., told the Daily News that Weston had been living with and taking care of about three women in the home, until about November 2008, when they suddenly vanished. "My neighbor called me, said an ambulance had been there," said the landlord, who wanted to give only his nickname, "Mo." The ambulance came because one of the women under Weston's care had died, Mo said. He went into the abandoned house and found that Weston and the other women had "left everything" behind - including clothes, beds and a couple of TVs.

That day or the next, Mo said, he found a looseleaf paper in one bedroom near a TV. Handwritten on it, he recalled, was: "Linda didn't take good care of the girl. That's why she died."