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A Body in the Basement Season 2 Episode 1

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Transcript
00:00to Coney is a neighborhood in Philadelphia there's a lot of old old buildings it's kind
00:14of hard to find if you're not really familiar with it the maintenance man of a building had
00:22heard some strange noises coming from the boiler room and saw that there was a chain around the
00:27door he got scared and called police and you know wanted backup to help them see what this noise was
00:37we had no idea what we were in for it made the hair on the back of your neck stand up
00:57when I arrived at the scene I saw a basement in two sections there's a large section where there
01:09is storage for residents and then there was a sub basement you go down and flight of steps there's
01:19another room down there that looks something out of medieval times if you think of a dungeon you
01:27would think of this basement and there was an old fire door to seal off the boiler in case it ever
01:37went on fire I worked in a butcher shop when I was young and it was like a butcher door when it shut
01:45you know it was shut it almost like sealed you knew once it shut you ain't getting out
01:53the door he took the chain off the door and opened the door
01:58the smell was horrifying
02:06the smell was just it just overtakes you
02:12the smell on a decomposing body is what it reminded me of it was disgusting there was blankets food cartons trash
02:25the first officer in the scene put his flashlight around the side
02:31and that's where he was all the four individuals huddled up on that that one side of the ledge they
02:48were emaciated and the chain was wrapped around them and wrapped around the boiler they were able to tell
02:56us their name dates of birth and where they were from the victims were Derwin McElmere Edwin Santa Maria
03:05Herbert Knowles and Tamara Breeden
03:12four victims were found in a sub-basement in this apartment building on Longshore Avenue
03:17chained to a boiler in complete darkness without food water or a bathroom it's being called the
03:24Taconi dungeon you don't get a call too often where people are chained to a boiler being held against
03:31their will and I mean I saw stuff that you know I'm a seasoned crime scene investigator I saw ones that
03:41I've never never seen they had damages to ankles and wrists from being confined they had evidence of old
03:51broken bones that had healed over I just remember thinking oh my god as a reporter I knew right away
03:59that I would very quickly be involved in covering that story I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy you
04:04understand what I'm saying you just don't do things like that I was in my office and I did receive a call
04:16and they told me that they had found several people in a basement of an apartment that had
04:21been chained up and there were significant signs of abuse that had taken place that by itself makes it
04:28an unusual case you don't get cases like that every day people in the community were surprised if
04:35something like that was taking place literally under their noses there were a lot of questions just from
04:42the public saying how could this happen who was responsible for keeping these people imprisoned
04:47in this basement it's it's pure evil this case was something that I knew I needed to see for myself
05:03I was taken inside and it was very very dirty down there and I remember saying you know clothing that
05:12was strewn about dirty clothing as well as the buckets where people were had to relieve themselves and
05:19so forth the conditions in which they lived it's actually amazing that any of them survived
05:26our investigation involved in an interview of the captives in the basement they presented with the
05:38results of starvation and the results of continuous brutalization and just beatings and I mean head to
05:46toe we asked who put them in the basement they identified Linda and Watson as the one who would
05:53kidnap them at the time all we knew is that she was a resident Philadelphia there was really nothing
06:00much remarkable about Linda Weston she was a middle-aged african-american woman she had children she lived in
06:09the building that where the individuals were located but this wasn't something that just happened over a
06:16week or two weeks or what have you you're talking several years where people have been held against their
06:22will by miss Weston and clearly there was an elaborate plan we don't know exactly what our motive
06:28was but we think that money was behind a great deal of it search warrants were obtained to search various
06:36apartments in the building but Linda Weston went from the scene before police could talk to her there was
06:42evidence that there may have been other victims during a search warrant of Linda and Weston's property we
06:49recovered birth certificates social security cards of other victims out there the four victims who were
07:06rescued from the basement turned out to just be the tip of the iceberg what police were about to discover
07:11was that this was only the beginning of Linda and Weston's criminal enterprise initially we believed that
07:18this was a local Philadelphia case but after interviewing the victims it was apparent that
07:25Linda and Weston operated in Killeen Texas West Palm Beach Florida Norfolk Virginia and Philadelphia the FBI was notified
07:37they got involved we later learned that there were actually a couple people that had died in Miss Weston's custody
07:45who are these people how did they get here how did it happen that they were imprisoned in this basement and for how long
08:07the captives in the basement initially indicated to the police that Linda and Weston had put them there but one of the victims was able to say Linda and Weston and Jean McIntosh
08:22Jean McIntosh was Linda Weston's daughter
08:26so that day we wanted to speak to Jean McIntosh and it took some investigating to get her we were on the phone with her trying to find out her location we were driving around and trying to lure her to the area around the apartment building which we finally did
08:42after we stopped the car we identified the individuals in the car Jean McIntosh with her children and another person Beatrice Weston she didn't look
08:57like she was in good shape she was missing teeth she had marks on her face and she was just disheveled
09:05Beatrice Weston is Linda and Weston's niece she is the daughter of Linda's sister and her injuries were as severe as the other victims
09:15Jean McIntosh was arrested and Beatrice went right to the hospital from there
09:21I saw Beatrice shortly after police had taken her into their custody and that's when I first saw just how badly injured she she was
09:32when the police commissioner he saw me he just started started like crying and stuff because he said he never saw nobody look look like that before
09:45I can compare what she looked like to pictures that I've seen of World War II Holocaust victims
09:56that's what she looked like to me she was that bad and I haven't seen anybody look that bad up until
10:04that point in my career it's just hard to imagine that someone would do that to another human being
10:11after talking to Beatrice Weston and we learned that Linda and Weston gained custody of Beatrice Weston in or
10:19about 2001 and she's been held and kept it for 10 years I think it's important for people to know about
10:27my story because there's a very traumatic story I knew eventually she's gonna get caught I was gonna be
10:36you know when that time what's going on
10:43I was little my mom and my siblings
11:04my siblings it was good but when I was like 10 my mom had had an aneurysm
11:09her mother at that time was unable to care for her her aunt Linda Weston stepped up and agreed to take
11:16temporary um guardianship of her Beatrice was placed in Linda's custody
11:22for the first year or two when I was with Linda it was normal she was treating me like a normal kid
11:32kid I was going to school with her kids eating and stuff with her kids just you know the normal stuff
11:41that kids do everything was fine till like I turned 12 that's when things start like getting bad
11:50it was just like one day they was all getting ready to go somewhere and she just put me in the basement
12:01and I'm like I asked her why I got to be put in the basement why I can't go with y'all
12:07she wasn't free anymore she was a prisoner
12:12Linda didn't even say nothing she just put me in the basement
12:16I saw Tamara and Edwin down there
12:22I just knew that they should be in the basement with chains and locks on the door
12:31so that's when I knew something was up
12:34I told Beatrice that Linda Weston like us in the basement before Beatrice came
12:41we was in the basement four months or twelve I don't know
12:49first we were staying in the street together me and Edwin
12:53and then I met Linda Weston there in the neighborhood
12:57she asked me did I want her to babysit her kids and I said yes
13:00Tamara and Edwin were looking for low rent places to live and Linda Weston offered them the option to live with her
13:15she cleaned the basement out for me and Edwin
13:18she bought some food for downstairs for us and stuff
13:23she was nice for a couple months
13:25then she turned evil
13:28whoever evil
13:30she locked the door with like a lock a great lock
13:37they couldn't leave when they wanted to leave
13:39they couldn't eat what they wanted to eat
13:41she was starting to control them more and more
13:45I went to the police station
13:51and I had told them
13:54my daughter Tamara is missing
13:56and they told me
13:59well she's 20
14:01they cannot do nothing for me
14:04she's grown
14:06I was crying
14:07I didn't know what to do
14:09and I asked God
14:11Lord wherever she's at
14:13please bring my daughter home
14:14bring my daughter home
14:24Linda Wood drug Tamara and Beatrice so she could control them
14:29she'd eat them physically if they crossed her if they tried to escape
14:35we barely ate
14:42she used to feed us one time a day and it used to be just like noodles or something or some kind of soup that she made
14:49it was cold
14:51we didn't have no tape put in the store to heat it up
14:53we used to be talking about we just can't wait till she get caught
14:57like we can't wait till the cops find out what she doing to us
15:00then they ain't never let me see my daughter
15:04I said where's my daughter?
15:05she's at the school
15:07she's doing this
15:08she's doing this
15:09she's doing this
15:11Beatrice's family was shocked to find out what she's doing to us
15:13she's like
15:14she's doing this
15:15she's doing this
15:20Beatrice's family was showing up routinely
15:22almost everyday
15:23screaming, making a scene
15:25we want Beatrice back
15:27we know you have her
15:30her mother's begging her
15:31I want my daughter
15:34I want my daughter
15:36I want my daughter
15:39I want my daughter
15:40want my daughter. I remember one year my mom had called the cops and told them
15:47that Linda had me in there. They said we got her we gonna get her. The police
15:56responded when the two officers got there Beatrice is in the basement. When the
16:05cops came Linda showed them paperwork that she had custody of me. The cops never
16:11even came to see where I was making sure I was okay or nothing. And they left.
16:24It became clear to Linda that this type of activity was going to put her on the
16:30radar of not only law enforcement but also the Department of Human Services.
16:35And so she and her daughter Jean McIntosh made the decision that they were going
16:41to leave Philadelphia and go to clean Texas.
16:48In the middle of the night she moved us. She moved us inside these big vans. I
16:53remember like me, Tamara, Edwin, we was all piled up in the van. And we had like stuff
17:00all on us, like bags and stuff. And they just kept moving. And Philly was always the
17:06base because Jean was in Philly.
17:18People told me she moved. I called the cops and let them know that I need you to try to get my daughter
17:24because she missed him. I had hope that she would get caught. But as years went by, I just lost hope.
17:32And just thought that we might die by living with her.
17:34The Philadelphia Police Department is trying to find who's connected to the people locked in that
17:56basement. And so they're going everywhere. And to their credit, they were following those leads up very
18:04quickly. We found Linda Ann Weston in a house. After she was arrested, she didn't give a statement.
18:13You had children from a different family that were staying with Linda Weston. You had Linda Weston's
18:20own children. So we spoke to everyone.
18:24So it was now, let's find out who Linda Ann Weston is and why she came to have all these people in her
18:33care. You had several witness pools in this case. You had the victims themselves who were mentally and
18:38or physically disabled. You also had Beatrice Weston, who was not disabled.
18:44And she was obviously incredibly traumatized. But she was smart and told us everything she could imagine,
19:02including some of the really horrific things that were done to her or others in her presence.
19:08And that's how we were able to determine that some of the captives actually died.
19:24After Linda Weston and her daughter Jean McIntosh were arrested, she decided to have a press conference.
19:31I think this is quite possibly one of the most visible signs of man's inhumanity to man.
19:37The police commissioner discussed the case to a room just packed with with reporters, press,
19:43all types of people, police officers. I've never seen anything like this
19:48before in a living person. And I recall saying at that press conference,
19:53there was no punishment that was too severe for her for what she had done.
19:56Prosecutors need enough evidence to be able to get a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt,
20:04which is a pretty high standard. It's just remarkable that she is alive.
20:07They said that there were also children in the house.
20:11Initially, the police didn't know who the children were.
20:15There were eight children. Some of the children were from Linda Weston, others from her daughter.
20:22And there were some who we could not identify their parents.
20:25Children were well-fed, well-dressed, well-groomed, and well-mannered.
20:33We wanted to rely on DNA testing in order to see if we could find out who the parents really were.
20:39The police at first weren't sure what to make of Jean McIntosh. They knew that she was there in the apartment.
20:53All they knew beyond that was that she was Linda's daughter. She might have been a victim for all they knew.
20:58We interviewed Jean. She was smart. She was manipulative, like her mother.
21:05Jean McIntosh tried to paint herself as not really knowing what's going on, not really a part of it. Blame her mother.
21:14The detectives took me in a room by myself and started questioning me. But the first thing they wanted me to know
21:20was, did Jean have anything to do with it? That was the first question. And I told them,
21:25yeah, she was helping Linda abuse us too. And then the detective that was talking to me,
21:30he went to the next room and I could hear she was crying like, I didn't do it. It was my mom.
21:36And I could hear them telling her to shut up and put her hands behind her back and stuff.
21:41And that was like a big relief. After talking to everybody and
21:46listening to what was going on, I think Jean was the most treacherous of the bunch.
21:55Jean was her mother's daughter. When Linda started capturing people, Jean assisted in that.
22:06She beat people. She beat these captives. So Jean was Linda's partner and we charged her as Linda's partner.
22:14Once we had enough to charge Jean as part of the quote unquote Weston family, which is what
22:24we named the conspiracy. She indicated through her lawyer that she wanted to cooperate.
22:29And so she was invaluable in us being able to completely tell the story. The motivation here
22:38was money, greed. They would target people who were disabled in some way. Most of them,
22:50they tricked into coming with them and then they never let them go.
22:57The social security administration will typically provide some level of support for someone who is,
23:03whose IQ is below a certain level. And that's the category that most of these individuals fell under.
23:10Linda Ann Weston was taking their social security checks and she would have them sign over their
23:18checks and she became the controller of all their money. And they were her little investments,
23:25her little stock market. Linda preyed upon people with mental disabilities and other types of
23:32disabilities because they were vulnerable people. They were people that it would be easy for her to take
23:37advantage of. She convinced all of them to sign that paperwork. And then once she did, she can literally
23:49move them around the country and social security has no idea what's going on with them.
24:02Maxine Lee was a young lady who was exploring her sexuality. She met Linda at a club in Philadelphia.
24:18Linda said that she was gay. They started to date. Maxine then started to stay with Linda for a few months.
24:26It was a pure relationship, a romantic relationship. Before I was in the basement,
24:33Maxine was like a babysitter or something. Me and Maxine used to be together a lot. She was a nice person.
24:41The children loved Maxine. She would help them with homework. She became a real member of that family.
24:48But eventually, Maxine wanted to go. And when she wanted to go,
24:58they first drugged her. And then they beat her.
25:05Maxine tried to escape one day and they caught her and they run her back in the house and they beat her
25:10with hammers and stuff. And they broke her ankles
25:17so that she wouldn't run again. Maxine couldn't escape if she wanted to.
25:22I used to talk to Maxine and she used to always be like,
25:25we can't do nothing. We just got to deal with her. It was like staring into the abyss.
25:41We learned that Linda met a woman named Donna Spadeo outside the social security office.
25:47And Linda figures out pretty quickly that Donna is receiving some sort of public assistance.
25:55Donna was suffering with some mental health issues. She also had significant physical issues.
26:03Linda offered her friendship. She brought her over to visit. She drugged her. Donna Spadeo never left.
26:09And they were getting Donna Spadeo's money because they had her ATM card.
26:16Donna was cursing, the cursing that in the Western, talking about why the F I'm here.
26:22Because she told me she got family, like a brother or something.
26:25Donna was a diabetic. One of Beatrice's jobs was to take care of Donna, give her her medicine.
26:33You can tell that Donna had a problem, like dementia or something like that. She seemed like she was crazy.
26:39She used to be cursing and telling them not to touch her and stuff like that.
26:44Donna became more difficult. And Linda was not feeding her, was not giving her her medicine.
26:52One day Tamara looked in on her and Donna wasn't breathing.
27:00I saw all these flies on her. I never saw a dead body before.
27:04Linda and her various co-conspirators moved Donna's body upstairs into the main house where, of course, she hadn't been living.
27:19I heard of cops and everything. And I was going to like want to get help, but I was so scared.
27:30Linda told police they had found her that way.
27:32Donna was suffering from a series of health problems to begin with.
27:37A medical examiner ruled that her death was natural causes.
27:41Donna was the first person that she killed.
27:50Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Come on.
27:53Donna passed away. Linda just upped and moved with all of us. Me, Tamara, Maxine, and Edwin.
28:01And that's why she moved state to state. It was constant rotation. If there was
28:07any chance of detection, they were moving.
28:16We knew that this wasn't confined to just Philadelphia. The detectives were backtracking
28:21where people had been held in other states, Florida, Virginia, and so forth.
28:29And they think they've seen it all.
28:30And then something comes along that is just worse than what you could imagine.
28:52There was DNA tests done on all the kids. It took a good bit of time to get the results back and
29:00we later determined that two of the children were actually Tamara Breeden's children.
29:04When Linda Weston was kept on beating me, I lost a baby. That was my first baby.
29:10We discovered Tamara Breeden and Edwin Santabria had children while in custody of Linda and Weston.
29:18They had numerous children. A few died in childbirth. Two of them survived because they were found with Linda and Jean.
29:26I had my son, they showed in the tub. I had him at Jean McIntyre's apartment.
29:36And I was crying to Edwin and I said, Edwin, Jean took our baby.
29:44Then she said, my son was dead.
29:46When Tamara and Edwin had their first surviving daughter, Linda told them that the baby did not survive.
29:55But miraculously, a week later, Linda and Weston had a baby.
30:01That baby was raised as Linda and Weston's child.
30:04Me and Edwin used to play with her own daughter, but I didn't know that's my daughter.
30:09They said my baby was dead the whole time.
30:13Tell a woman that had a child that her child died and then force her to actually babysit.
30:21I mean, it's just beyond anything that I can personally even imagine.
30:25We learned that Linda and Weston went to a clean Texas.
30:42This is the second time they were in clean.
30:45Instead of living in apartments, they lived in a trailer park and they rented numerous trailers.
30:51And one of those trailers, they had Tamara and Beatrice.
30:58And Linda would allow men for pay to spend the night with them.
31:08People make the comparison to modern day slavery with this case.
31:12She's trafficking these women, profiting from that.
31:16And this was day in and day out.
31:20And they were beaten, particularly Tamara, if she didn't participate.
31:27And Beatrice was just a kid.
31:30She was a teenager.
31:37I just felt numb to a lot of stuff.
31:41It became like normal to me.
31:42In Texas, someone called the police and they just kept moving.
31:50Eventually, we were able to track Linda, her children and the victims from Colleen, Texas to Norfolk, Virginia.
31:57Herbert Knowles met Linda in a mall, a shopping center in Virginia.
32:11Herbert was on disability.
32:14He has cerebral palsy, as well as underlying significant mental health issues.
32:19He took a cab to Linda's house and he, within a week, decided to move in.
32:28And he never left.
32:31Because the minute he made the decision to move in, Linda put him in captivity.
32:36As Linda's operation expanded and she took on more and more victims, the harder it was to control them all.
32:51And so those who would not fall in line were more brutally dealt with as a means of controlling everyone.
32:58One day, me and Tamara, we wouldn't go get us something to eat because nobody was around the food.
33:06When she came back, she tied me and Tamara up.
33:09She tied me and Tamara up and knocked her front teeth out with a hammer.
33:30She did this when I was trying to block my face.
33:33She broke my hand.
33:34This was wide open right here, wide open like my bones were sticking out.
33:39I just stitched it up.
33:42And then she did this to my ear right here.
33:47In Norfolk, Maxine Lee became very combative.
33:52And so Linda made Maxine go into the attic.
33:54And that was her punishment.
33:56She would be placed in that attic naked.
34:00When Beatrice would get in trouble, and that would be often,
34:04Beatrice would also be put in the attic.
34:07It was full of pink insulation.
34:10There was no ventilation in that attic.
34:12As we was in the attic, day by day, I realized Maxine was getting weaker and weaker.
34:18She hadn't eaten for days, hadn't drank anything for days.
34:23She went from 180 pounds to half her weight.
34:29She looked like a skeleton.
34:31And then one day, she stopped talking or moving or anything.
34:36And then I realized that she had died.
34:42Linda left to go to the store.
34:44And when Linda comes back, she finds Maxine dead.
34:48And Linda made us prop Maxine on the chair to make it seem like she just passed away in front of the TV.
34:58Linda had to escape detection.
35:00She called the police, reported her death.
35:02She was on the chair, just lay dead.
35:05And Linda Weston was pretending like she was crying to the cops.
35:09Talking about her best friend passed away.
35:10My girl passed away.
35:11Maxine Lee died from bacterial meningitis.
35:17But it was staged to look like it was a death that just occurred as a result of the disease.
35:23And not because she had been held captive.
35:25Not because she was malnourished.
35:27All these other types of things.
35:30And her death is ruled natural causes.
35:35And they just kept moving.
35:36And that's how she remained undetected.
35:41She moved to West Palm Beach, Florida.
35:44In West Palm Beach, Florida, Linda met Derwin McElmire on a dating website.
35:49He was under the impression that they would have some sort of personal relationship.
35:54Instead, he becomes one of her captives.
35:59Derwin had a lot more fight in him.
36:02So Derwin was beaten.
36:04Into submission, he was drugged.
36:07He was kept in closets.
36:13The death penalty for the deaths of Donna Spadella and Maxine Lee.
36:26These are all federal crimes that were charged for Ms. Weston at the time.
36:31The death penalty for the deaths of Donna Spadella and Maxine Lee.
36:39She pled guilty in exchange for a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
36:45And that's literal.
36:47She will die in prison.
36:49No matter what she does, her sentence will never be shorter.
36:51I felt like they was being lenient with her on that scene.
36:56I felt like she should have got the death penalty because she did so much stuff to people
37:00and killed so many people.
37:02Why is she just doing life?
37:04It's not enough for me.
37:07She didn't go to the message here.
37:10So we could see her, die.
37:12When I think about this case, the one person that stands out for me is Beatrice.
37:39She was 19 at the time and Weston had her since she was 10 years old.
37:46I mean, you know, where does she go from here?
37:50Life now is good.
37:52Very good.
37:53I got three kids.
37:55I get to see my family whenever I want.
37:59My kids make me happy.
38:01She's good.
38:02But I still am very afraid of doing a lot of stuff.
38:09Just because of what I went through, it's very hard to trust people.
38:14My own sister did that to my own daughter.
38:16So I want you all to know it can happen to anyone.
38:20I feel so good that I felt my daughter, she's living and she's good now.
38:25And I trust God in the power.
38:27Thank you, Jesus.
38:28Tamara's doing wonderful.
38:31Oh, wow.
38:34She's independent now.
38:35She has her own apartment.
38:38She pays her own rent now.
38:41She loves her children.
38:43She loves them to death.
38:46I got custody of one of them.
38:47She gets them every week.
38:49I want people to know I'm a strong warrior.
38:54And survivor.
38:57I thank God for everything.
38:58I'm glad I'm free.
39:00I'm living and I'm a s***.
39:03And Ag wouldn't want to get back with me.
39:05You're working things out.
39:06You know, there are cases you remember.
39:22There are cases you forget.
39:23And there are cases that you want to forget.
39:25And this is one of those that I wanted to forget.
39:28It was just not easy going back to think about or even talk about this particular case.
39:36A lot of the emotion came back along with it.
39:38And I'm not alone in that.
39:39I'm sure the investigators feel the same way.
39:43You know, those feelings and those emotions don't go away.
39:48Linda was evident that there is evil.
39:51Like, she was evidence that you could be completely depraved.
39:58That you could be so self-absorbed and greedy that you would do anything.
40:06And that sticks with me.
40:09No justice will ever be enough.
40:13Nothing can ever give people back their lives.
40:17Nothing can ever take away the suffering that these people endured.
40:20I don't know that there's such a thing as justice when you look at all that was taken from these people.
40:35So I just went in the basement and there's a tarp.
40:42And what looks like it could be blood leaking from you.
40:45love you,
40:47ι­”μž₯ tanker,
40:48love you,
40:48love you,
40:50love going,
40:51love you,
40:51love you,
40:51lovey,
40:52love you...
40:53love you,
40:54lovey,
40:54love you,
40:55love you,
40:56love you.
40:56I just went into the basement when you went inside the basement.
40:57Okay?
40:58Yeah,
41:01the big Dell cannot be a tree anymore.
41:06But they are a surprise.
41:07what's the most interesting supposed to happen in the responsible realm?
41:08Wilson has a mystery.
41:10How do you keep up as well?
41:11to the crew origami from its own functions,
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