Philadelphia police Wednesday probed a growing kidnapping horror after removing 10 children found in the care of a woman accused of holding four people captive in a cellar.
"This is a very complicated case," Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said late Tuesday. "This is a very sad story. It makes no sense. When you look at the kids, the psychological trauma is pretty apparent. It's some of the worst things I've ever experienced."
A fourth suspect was also charged in the case Wednesday after four mentally disabled adults were freed having been held against their will in a filthy, dark, fetid cellar of a Philadelphia apartment house.
Authorities said they have now also arrested the 32-year-old daughter of the primary suspect, Linda Watson.
The alleged captors imprisoned three men and one woman to cash in their government aid checks, and police said their captivity might have gone on for years.
Images show (L-R): Linda Westen, 50, Eddie Wright, 51, and Gregory Thomas, 48, who were charged after 4 mentally handicapped adults were found in a Philadelphia basement (AFP PHOTO / Philadelphia Police Department)
A statement from the Philadelphia District Attorney's office said officials have charged Jean McIntosh with several counts, including kidnapping, conspiracy and aggravated assault. She was to be arraigned on Wednesday.
Ramsey told CNN on Wednesday that 10 children aged from two to 19 had been taken into care, including Watson's niece, Beatrice, who was reported missing in 2009.
Police said they are trying to find the parents of the children, two of whom may have been born to the woman held in the basement. The others, they said, may be kidnap victims. They were going to use DNA records to identify the children.
Authorities said the three adult victims aged 29 to 40, but with a mental age of around 10, were undernourished with bed sores, and at least one of the men was chained to a water heater, police said.
The four adult victims were discovered by a landlord at the apartment house on Saturday, locked behind a steel door along with two small dogs in a basement space with a dirt floor, some makeshift beds and no bathroom.
Police said Weston had the identity papers of as many as 50 people when she was arrested Sunday, suggesting she might have defrauded dozens of people in several states, moving around with victims whenever she came under suspicion.
Also under arrest was Weston's boyfriend Gregory Thomas, 47, and Eddie Wright, 49.
The adult victims have been revealing details of their grim ordeal. One of them, Darwin McLemire, 41, had been kept in a closet for almost a year in a West Palm Beach house in Florida, according to a police affidavit.
McLemire told police he met Weston in Florida last October and moved in a few weeks later. Weston took his papers, shut him in the closet, and sometimes beat him, he said.
Weston previously served eight years in prison for killing a 25-year-old man who starved to death in her Philadelphia apartment in 1981.
Ramsey told CNN that Philadelphia had now set up a special task force to investigate the case, which may have spread through five US states -- Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia and Texas, and possibly also North Carolina.
- AFP/wk
