The people who left 19-year-old Beatrice Weston’s body covered in wounds and scars from years of torturous abuse deserve the worst punishment possible, Philadelphia’s district attorney and police commissioner both say.
“When we talk about that kind of cruelty to somebody, over and over and over again, there is no penalty, and I repeat – no penalty, too harsh for the people that did this,” Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said in a Wednesday night press conference.
The kind of cruelty Ramsey talks about is finding a 19-year-old girl in the custody of her aunt, a convicted murderer and prime suspect in the kidnapping and imprisonment of disabled adults, with scars on her face, arms and legs; burn marks that appear to have come from a heated up spoon; fractured bones that have healed over; ankles that have been repeatedly shot with a pellet gun; malnourishment; as well as the emotional and mental scars from the prolonged abuse.
“I have been a policeman for a long time – 40 some odd years – and I have never seen a victim whose injuries were any more severe than what I saw last night with this young woman – at least not a living victim,” Ramsey said Wednesday. “It is absolutely one of the worst things you’ll see in terms of what an individual can do to someone else.
District Attorney Seth Williams and Mayor Michael Nutter were also visibly disturbed by the facts of the case and what they have seen.
Williams said that because the fraud and kidnapping case against “ringleader” 51-year-old Linda Ann Weston and her three accomplices includes alleged crimes in Florida and Texas, many have asked him what he wants to happen to the people responsible and where he wants them to be prosecuted.
“Without hyperbole or being glib…wherever the prisons will be the worst,” Williams said Wednesday.
According to Ramsey, Beatrice Weston was reported missing 11 years ago. Ramsey said that there was a feud between Linda Weston and Beatrice’s mother Vicky Weston. Somehow Linda took custody of then-8-year-old Beatrice. Whether or not her custody of Beatrice was legally obtained is still unknown, though Ramsey said that Vicky Weston was having medical issues at the time.
In addition to Beatrice, police have taken eight children away from the custody of Linda Weston. One of the mentally disabled victims who was being held in a Tacony basement is the father of two of the children, Ramsey said.
Where all of the children came from is still unknown. Ramsey said, “We’re taking DNA to verify who belongs to whom.”
The discovery of the children is in addition to police discovering four mentally disabled adults chained in a boiler room of a sub-basement in a Philadelphia apartment building Saturday.
Police have arrested Linda Weston, her daughter Jean McIntosh, Gregory Thomas, 47, and Eddie Wright, 50, all on charges of kidnapping, conspiracy, unlawful restraint, simple assault, burglary and related charges.
Charges in regard to the malnourished and abused children have yet to be filed, as police are still investigating.
“My grasp of the English language limits how I can describe the facts and evidence of the case,” Williams said. “‘Horrific’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
To add to the bizarre and terrible facts in the case, Weston was convicted of keeping 25-year-old Bernardo Ramos in the closet of her North Philadelphia apartment until he starved to death in 1981.
“The things that I have heard, the things that have been described, I’m not sure ‘horrific’ covers it," Mayor Nutter said. "This is sheer madness."
