A few years later, Weston was back in Family Court, fighting for custody of her niece Beatrice Weston. Again a judge said yes, according to McIntosh and other relatives.
Under Weston's care, Beatrice was locked in a closet and burned and beaten so savagely that police were amazed she survived, authorities said.
Weston's siblings were baffled at how DHS could entrust her with children, given her violent past.
"DHS gave those kids back to a sleeping monster," Troy Weston, Weston's 35-year-old brother, told the Daily News yesterday. "After that murder, they should have kept her longer. They should have put her in a program, in some kind of psychiatric home, put her away for awhile. . . . If she's capable of doing something like that once, she's capable of doing it again. They should have known."
Weston has at least eight children, three of whom are juveniles. Relatives told the People's Paper that DHS had some contact with all eight children. DHS spokeswoman Alicia Taylor would not confirm nor deny any open or closed cases yesterday.
Earlier this week, police discovered Beatrice in a Frankford home and rushed her to a hospital; police also freed four mentally disabled adults from a fetid, sub-basement dungeon in a Tacony apartment building on Saturday. Prosecutors charged Weston, 51, and three others - Weston's boyfriend, Gregory Thomas, 47, Eddie Wright, 50, and Weston's daughter Jane McIntosh, 32 - with aggravated assault, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment and related offenses in an alleged scheme to steal the four victims' Social Security disability benefits.
