A woman who kept mentally disabled adults captive in the basement of a Philadelphia home and in other states for their disability checks was sentenced Thursday to life in prison. Linda Weston, 55, apologized during the hearing, saying, "I believe in God and God knows what happened." US District Judge Cynthia Rufe replied that "there are a lot of people in this courtroom who know what happened too," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Weston pleaded guilty in September to all 196 counts against her that also include kidnapping, racketeering conspiracy and murder in aid of racketeering, hate crimes, sex trafficking, and fraud. Two women she held captive later died. In exchange, federal prosecutors agreed to recommend a life term. Her lawyers have said she wanted to plead guilty in the interest of her children.
Several victims described their horrific experiences before Thursday's sentencing. Weston has been in custody since October 2011, when a landlord found four bedraggled adults locked in a squalid boiler room of a home in the Tacony section of northeast Philadelphia and called police. One man was found chained to a boiler. Authorities accused Weston of using "cunning, trickery, force and coercion" to get mentally disabled people to designate her as their caretaker, allowing her to illegally collect about $212,000 in Social Security payments over 10 years. They said Weston, her daughter, and three others confined the victims like "zoo animals," often in the dark, in basements, attics, and closets at various times between 2001 and 2011. (Investigators said Weston may have brutalized up to 50 victims in similar schemes.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
