Monday’s disclosure by an attorney for Linda Ann Weston that the accused architect of the Tacony “House of Horrors” may be mentally unfit to stand trial was the latest in a string of new, often disturbing details in the case.
Speaking after a brief court hearing in which his client was granted a preliminary-hearing date of Dec. 19, defense lawyer George Yacoubian Jr. told news reporters that “a competency examination is probably a good idea. The worst that a professional is going to say is that she is competent.”
Weston is 51. Her co-defendants Gregory Thomas, 47, and Eddie Wright, 50, also were ordered to appear at the Dec. 19 preliminary hearing. All three remain in jail in lieu of bail.
The fourth defendant in the case, Weston’s daughter Jean McIntosh, 32, was scheduled for a status hearing on Wednesday during which her preliminary-hearing date was to have been set.
None of the defendants appeared in court Monday.
All are charged with kidnapping, conspiracy, false imprisonment, assault and related offenses. Authorities claim they imprisoned four mentally challenged adults inside the basement of a Tacony apartment building for at least 12 days after transporting the victims to Philadelphia from Florida, allegedly to steal their Social Security income.
Previously, Weston, Thomas and Wright are believed to have lived with at least some of the victims and perhaps others in Texas and Virginia.
In the 1980s, Weston was convicted of third-degree murder for imprisoning and starving to death a sister’s estranged boyfriend. Initially, she was found unfit to stand trial in that case but was eventually found competent. She was ultimately sentenced to eight years in state prison, served two, and was paroled.
After her release, she had to undergo psychological therapy and apparently complied, because her case was closed in 1993 after she completed probation.
Her latest victims, three men and a woman ages 29 to 41, were discovered on Oct. 15 by a landlord inside an apartment building on the 4700 block of Longshore Ave. McIntosh and Weston’s son lived in separate apartments in the building. The son has not been charged criminally.
The victims were chained inside a dark, damp and dirty boiler room described by police as a sub-basement. All were malnourished, police said.
The intense news media coverage of the case throughout the United States and internationally has brought a nearly endless stream of revelations about the case.
On Wednesday, Oct. 19, Philadelphia police and the district attorney’s office announced the arrest of McIntosh, who neighbors had earlier suggested was aware of, and may have been an active participant in, the conspiracy.
McIntosh reportedly had lived in the apartment building for two years before Weston, Thomas and Wright brought the victims to Philadelphia on or about Oct. 3. McIntosh reportedly had told her landlord that she was an Army nurse based in Texas before returning to her native Philadelphia.
Also, authorities revealed they had taken custody of six additional children and four teenagers who had been in the care of Weston. Among those was Beatrice Weston, 19, a niece of the lead defendant’s who had been reported missing in 2009.
Beatrice Weston had been beaten, tortured and locked in a closet in McIntosh’s apartment, and was still there when police found the first four victims days earlier, authorities said. After the initial arrests, Weston was moved to a house at an undisclosed Frankford address.
Also among the 10 rescued youths were a 2-year-old boy and 5-year-old girl believed to be the children of two of the adult victims.
Also on Oct. 19, a man who identified himself as a younger brother of Linda Ann Weston told television news reporters that she had forced him and other siblings to have sex with one another when they were children. Their mother had died when Weston was 15, leaving care of the family to her.
On Oct. 20, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Mayor Michael Nutter weighed in with sadness and disgust at the latest revelations in the case.
“I’ve been a policeman for a long time, forty-odd years, and I have never seen a victim whose injuries were any more severe than what I saw (on Beatrice Weston), at least not a living victim,” Ramsey said. “It makes you want to cry when you see her.”
On Friday, the Philadelphia Daily News reported that Linda Ann Weston, following her release from state prison in the late 1980s, convinced the city’s Family Court to award custody of at least four of her younger siblings to her, despite prior testimony from those siblings during Weston’s murder trial detailing her abusive and incestuous activity.
Several years later, Weston returned to Family Court and won custody of Beatrice Weston, whose mother — the elder Weston’s sister — was homeless and involved in drugs, the Daily News reported.
Also Friday, published reports indicated that authorities in Norfolk, Va., had begun to take a closer look at the mysterious 2008 death of a woman who had been living there with Linda Ann Weston.
Philadelphia native Maxine Lee had been under Weston’s care when she died inside their house. The medical examiner there ruled that Lee died of natural causes, including acute bacterial meningitis and malnutrition as a contributing factor. ••
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215–354–3031 or [email protected]
