Tag: Hostage

We got a horror story coming out of Pennsylvania. In today’s story we have a woman who has been sentenced to life in prison for imprisoning multiple, including some with mental disabilities, in what is now called “The Basement of Horrors”.

In 2011, a landlord found four people held captive in a boiler room. One man was even chained to the boiler itself. Soon after, investigators found out that 55 year old Linda Weston, along with four other people including her daughter Jean McIntosh, began holding people hostage in 2001 so they could get their disability and state benefits. The victims were found in locations around Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Florida.

Weston and her accomplices held the victims in basements, closets or attics, drugging them with and isolating them and depriving them of food and water. They were often beaten, burned or stabbed captives who tried to escape or fight back. Victims even begged authorities not to rescue them because they were afraid of facing punishment later.

Weston and the others also forced victims to eat their own or each other’s waste when there wasn’t enough food to go around, victims testified. Tamara Breeden, 33, told the court she had to drink her own urine for 10 years.

In all, Weston and her group victimized six disabled adults and four children. Two of the adult victims died in captivity one in 2005 and one in 2008. After their deaths Weston ordered her accomplices to move the bodies before reporting the deaths. One of the child victims was Weston’s own niece, 23-year-old Beatrice Weston, who was in her aunt’s custody when she was 10 years old. She said her aunt beat her, knocked her teeth out with a bat and forced her into prostitution.

Weston, 55, pleaded guilty in September to a slew of federal charges, including racketeering conspiracy, kidnapping resulting in the death of a victim, forced human labor, murder and sex trafficking. The plea was part of a deal that spared her the death penalty. Her other accomplices have yet to go to trial.

If I was the judge I still would’ve gave her the death penalty. She didn’t care about those people dying so why should the judge care about hers?