Details emerging of early cruelty

Revelations of unfathomable cruelty have emerged since Linda Ann Weston was charged with chaining four mentally challenged adults in a Tacony boiler room while collecting their Social Security checks and have left even hardened investigators at a loss for words.

But her family is not surprised.

"We knew what she was capable of," said her brother Troy, one of five of Weston's relatives interviewed by The Inquirer. Three of her siblings told of years of childhood abuse at the hands of Weston, 51, and another sister, including allegations of physical and sexual torture, incest, and drugging.

Some of these same allegations were raised during a 1984 murder trial in which Weston was convicted of starving a man to death in the coat closet of her North Philadelphia apartment.

The family members said that Weston locked her own children in closets and basements, but that she had begun hurting her family as a teenager. Sometimes it was for money; other times there was no reason at all, they said.

"Linda Ann is evil," said Vicky Weston, a younger sister. "She doesn't care about no one. She has treated people bad her whole life."

Vicky Weston, 50, said Linda Ann Weston kidnapped her daughter, Beatrice, about 10 years ago so she could receive Beatrice's Social Security checks.

Police placed Beatrice Weston in protective custody Tuesday, saying the badly bruised and scarred 19-year-old had endured years of terror from Linda Weston, including being starved, burned with a heated spoon, and shot with a pellet gun.

Linda Weston was in her late teens in the 1970s when her mother, Alice, died, her family said.

Some of the 13 children went to live with grandparents. Others stayed with Linda and an older sister in a brownstone in the Francisville section, and then bounced around other apartments.

Troy Weston remembered older sisters burning him with an iron on his forearm for not completing his homework - he displayed the scar - drugging him, and forcing him to eat cockroaches for misbehaving.

The siblings said that Linda Weston sometimes forced some of her sisters to have sex with their brothers and cousins so they could become pregnant with children who would bring in more benefit checks.

"She would say it got her income up," said a brother who, like others, asked not to be identified, as they are still trying to put their pasts behind them.

That same sibling was 11 in 1981 when Linda Weston and another of his sisters, Venus, beat Venus' boyfriend, Bernardo Ramos, 25, with a hammer and starved him to death in the closet after he had questioned whether he was the father of Venus' unborn child.

"I remember him beating on the doors, scratching and stomping," said the sibling, who testified at the Westons' 1983 murder trial, in which Linda was sentenced to 12 years in prison. She served about four years for the crime.

Linda Weston broke his toes with a hammer when he tried to bring Ramos food, he said, and eventually had him dispose of the body by wheeling it to a vacant house.

"I was 11," the man said.

To escape the horrors in the apartment, the sibling said, he and another sister would sit in their room and play a game where they imagined they were in heaven.

"We'd imagine we were angels," he said. "Anything just to escape that environment."

The new details came as investigators in four states - Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, and Texas - were trying to piece together the trail and alleged crimes of Weston and two accomplices.

So far, four people have been arrested in the case, which police said involved collecting benefits checks from the disabled adults. The adults were allegedly kidnapped and moved from state to state.

Weston, who has been described by police as the ringleader, was charged with kidnapping and other offenses. Also charged were her boyfriend, Gregory Thomas, 47, and Eddie Wright, 49, who describes himself as a minister.

Police also arrested Linda Weston's daughter, Jean McIntosh, 32, who lived in the building where the adults were imprisoned. She told police that her mother fled Texas and Florida because police were investigating the group.

Investigators are poring over paperwork and identification documents for about 50 people that were found in Weston's possession, trying to determine the scope of the scheme.

Police took six children and four teenagers into protective custody this week after learning from authorities in West Palm Beach, Fla., that Weston had children with her.

Philadelphia Police Lt. Ray Evers said DNA testing was under way to determine the parents of the children in custody.

The task force assembled to handle the case has been fielding calls from former neighbors, landlords, and others who know the Weston family, Evers said.

"Seeing these atrocities on television, they feel compelled to tell the task force what's been going on, what they know about these people," he said.

McIntosh, police sources said, may have functioned as a facilitator for Weston, possibly using her jobs in nursing facilities to identify potential victims.

Police took two of McIntosh's young children into protective custody and said McIntosh might have locked Beatrice Weston in a closet at the Longshore Avenue building after the police raided the house.

Vicky Weston said Linda Weston took her child from her about 10 years ago, when she was recovering from an illness. She knew her sister was a murderer, she said, but said Linda had looked after some of her other children. "She was always bringing them back."

Police are investigating whether there was a court custody agreement between Vicky and Linda Weston. Weston's fraud scheme also involved forging official documents such as birth certificates, police said.

Vicky Weston said that she tried to get her daughter back, but that Linda had moved away with the child.

"When she found out I was looking for my daughter, she just kept moving and moving around," she said.

In 2009, a Weston relative filed a police complaint - and notified Vicky Weston - after seeing Beatrice in a Frankford home that Linda Weston was living in with Gregory Thomas.

The relative said she saw the girl was lying on the floor, frail and sick, and later told Vicky that her daughter was hurting. Vicky said she went to the house and saw her daughter in the window, but Linda denied she was there.

Police told her that it was a court matter and that they could not intervene, Vicky said.

"The next day I went back to the house, and it was empty, they were gone," she said.

Vicky Weston said McIntosh helped Linda move Beatrice from house to house and also abused her.

"She was her mother's helper," she said of McIntosh.

Vicky Weston said detectives have warned her against seeing her daughter just yet, that she needs to heal.

"They told me I wouldn't see her like she is now," she said.

Linda Weston's siblings said she began taking advantage of people for money at a young age.

One brother said that when she was about 17, Linda befriended a girl from the neighborhood named Ruby. The girl talked like a child, he said.

He said he saw his sister put a pill into the girl's food, and soon "she becomes lethargic and couldn't talk."

"Sometime later, the girl was upstairs having sex with three guys Linda Ann pulled in from the neighborhood," he said.

One brother remembered Linda as a pretty and loving girl until her mother died, when "she went berserk."

The siblings all said Linda endured abuse, including violent sexual abuse, at the hands of an older sister.

One sibling said the oldest sister once punished him for crying about his dead mother by hanging him from his hands in the closet.

"This is for Christ's sake," he remembered her saying.

One sibling remembered Ramos, the man Linda starved to death in 1981, as a friendly man who liked salsa and kung-fu movies. Ramos was wearing a black-leather Members Only jacket and burgundy polyester pants the night he argued with Venus Weston about whether he fathered her child.

When he tried to leave, Linda Ann Weston hit the man with a hammer in the shoulder. The man stumbled, and she hit him again. She and Venus then stuffed him in the closet.

The brother said he was too afraid of his sister to try to free the man, but did try to sneak him food through a crack in the closet door. After a few weeks, Ramos was too weak to walk or bang on the door.

"She would open the doors, and the smell got so bad," he said. "She would throw air fresheners in the closet."

The man died after two months. Linda wrapped him in plastic sheets and in a trash bag, and "put him in a stroller and told me to dump him in the first vacant house."

As adults, he said, he knew his sister had kept mentally challenged people with her in homes over the years, but did not know she was stealing their money.

"We called them the people under the stairs," he said.

One sibling said he considered calling the police when Linda's adult son called on him a few years ago, telling him that his mother had drugged him and locked him in a basement with some other people.

The son was afraid to go to the police.