The 10x6 foot room looked even smaller with a massive rusty boiler that occupies it. This was the same boiler one of the victims was chained to when a landlord found him and three others inside Saturday.
Investigators say Linda Weston, her boyfriend Gregory Thomas, and Eddie Wright would leaves the victims at night with no light, little water, and a bucket to defecate in.
"It's inhumane, it's terrible, and for someone to do that to another human being, it's very, very disturbing," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said
Detectives believe Weston used the handicapped adults for their social security checks and there may be more victims.
A search of the apartment upstairs where Weston was staying turned up at least 50 pieces of identification of other people including social security numbers.
"We are trying to track all those down, find those people find out their whereabouts, are they missing, and so forth.
Police believe Weston, her alleged cohorts, and the victims arrived in Philadelphia a little over a week ago. But over the past few years they'd been living in Killeen, Texas, as well as West Palm Beach, Florida where Weston owns a house. "They didn't care at all, they fight all through the night, you hear banging all through the night, it was a mess over there," a neighbor said.
"There is some indication that as law enforcement or human services or some government agency got close they'd move and change locations. So that literally could keep this going on, well it did, for years," Ramsey said.
Some of the victims may have been in Weston's care for over a decade.
Two are from Philadelphia, including Tamara Breeden, whose mother reported her missing to Philadelphia police in 2005 and again this year.
Commissioner Ramsey says those reports are being investigated.
Herbert Knowles is from Virginia; his family learned of his whereabouts after seeing news reports over the past two days.
Knowler's niece Tiffany Davis said.
"We just kept hoping nothing was wrong with him…we just didn't know where to find him at," Knowler's niece Tiffany Davis said.
Weston was convicted of murder in the 1980s. She tied up and locked her sister's boyfriend in a closet and starved him to death. Police hope this case does not rise to that level.
Weston and her alleged accomplices are charged with kidnapping, conspiracy and other related offenses.
The investigation is still in its early stages and more charges could be forthcoming.
