Basement

Minutes after the school day began at Germantown High School, police said, a 15-year-old male student who was supposed to be in class slipped down a stairwell into the basement - an area off limits to students. He beckoned a female, also a freshman, to follow. She did, and it was there, the girl told police, that the boy violently raped her. Police have not disclosed how long the May 4 attack went on, but one local television station reported that the girl told police she screamed for help and no one heard her. While details of this case appear especially severe, crime in stairwells and other little-used areas of the sprawling school building has been a significant problem in recent years.

The trial for Linda Ann Weston and her alleged accomplices, accused of imprisoning four mentally disabled adults in a Tacony basement last fall, has been set for January 2013. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Jan. 28. The trial, which could last up to 10 weeks, would be scheduled to run for four days out of each week, attorneys said. Weston, 52, described by authorities as the ringleader of the group, is charged with kidnapping and assault, among other offenses. Also charged are Gregory Thomas, 48, Weston's boyfriend; Jean McIntosh, Weston's 32-year-old daughter, and Eddie Wright, 51. Prosecutors have alleged that they kidnapped the adults to steal their Social Security checks, then moved them around the country to escape detection by authorities.

Learning that the Defense Department may have stored away $30 billion worth of things it doesn't need made me feel a lot better about my basement. We don't have anywhere near $30 billion worth of stuff down there. In fact, according to the lowest estimate - that would be my wife's - what we have in our basement has no monetary value at all. She didn't actually prepare a formal estimate with hard numbers; I've put them together by extrapolation from the phrase "a bunch of worthless junk.

Anyone worried about basement flooding might find useful some tips from New Jersey utility PSE&G. Customers of other gas and electric providers should contact their utility company as needed. Peco, which serves Southeastern Pennsylvania, can be reached for non-emergencies at 1-800-494-4000 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday), or for emergencies, including outages, at 1-800-841-4141 round-the-clock. Online reporting, including through mobile devices, is available through www.peco.

A fire in a basement storage room caused the evacuation of 23 apartments at the Forge Gate complex on Snyder Road in Towamencin Township on Wednesday night. Damage was limited to Building D of the five-building complex and was estimated at $20,000. One resident was treated at the scene for minor smoke inhalation. The storage room was "gutted," said Towamencin Fire Chief Christopher Bohmueller. A laundry room in the basement also sustained heavy heat and smoke damage. The seven apartments on the first floor sustained heat damage, Bohmeuller said, and all 23 apartments in the building sustained smoke damage.

The strange phone calls about a body in a South Philadelphia house started coming in at the Roundhouse about 6:30 last night, Homicide Lt. Joseph Witte said. After the third or fourth call, detectives went to a rowhouse on Cleveland Street near Fitzwater, talked to the tenants who had moved in just a few months ago, and got permission from them and the owner to dig up the cement basement floor. "We dug down about 20 inches before we found the bones," Witte said. The unidentified skeletal remains - possibly those of a woman - were discovered wrapped in a sheet, just where the caller said they would be, Witte said.

Dear Polly: We would like to use our basement as a recreation area for the kids, but it has a very musty odor that I would like to clear up. Do you have any pointers for freshening up the basement? - Ann Dear Ann: If the basement is damp, you probably should install a dehumidifier, which will get rid of mustiness as it dries out the basement. Here are some other ideas to try: Place small bowls of baking soda around the room. Each week, stir the soda to loosen and activate it. After two or three weeks, replace the baking soda with a fresh supply.

In a brief meeting Monday, the Lower Merion Planning Commission recommended approving the conversion of a basement to an apartment in the Yorklynne Manor Condominiums at 465-471 City Ave., even though the proposal has yet to win authorization from the Zoning Hearing Board. Commission members John C. Donlevie, William H. Loesche, Davis Pearson and Francis J. Travascio voted in favor of the proposal. James Greenfield, Harry G. Rieger and Eleanor W. Winsor voted against it. A request for permission to expand the number of units on the lot is pending before the zoning board.

AS JANE McIntosh, daughter of Linda Ann Weston, moved from state to state, her mother usually would follow. McIntosh lived in Texas with her husband, who was in the military. She moved to Norfolk, Va., where her husband was to be stationed, said a man named Cameron - Weston's boyfriend in Norfolk and in Killeen, Texas. Weston, 51, the alleged mastermind behind a plot to defraud mentally disabled people of their Social Security benefits, recently ended up back in Philadelphia, where her daughter was living in a Tacony apartment building with a dank, dirty sub-basement.

Minutes after the school day began at Germantown High School, police said, a 15-year-old male student who was supposed to be in class slipped down a stairwell into the basement - an area off limits to students. He beckoned a female, also a freshman, to follow. She did, and it was there, the girl told police, that the boy violently raped her. Police have not disclosed how long the May 4 attack went on, but one local television station reported that the girl told police she screamed for help and no one heard her. While details of this case appear especially severe, crime in stairwells and other little-used areas of the sprawling school building has been a significant problem in recent years.

  A student at Germantown High School was in police custody Tuesday after he allegedly raped a fellow student in the basement of the school early Friday morning. Special Victims Unit Capt. John Darby said the students, two freshmen who'd known each other a few weeks, had been hanging out talking in a stairwell around 7:45 a.m. Friday when the boy ran down the stairs into a basement area, prompting the girl to follow. "The initial contact on that particular day was conversational," Darby said.

Hercules was barely a dog anymore, confined and forgotten in a Gloucester County basement like a box of dusty, old toys. Meanwhile, upstairs, Roxanne Notaro's chocolate Lab "Little" had food, warmth, and love. Officials with the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals say it's a miracle Hercules, an American bulldog, is alive after police officers found him locked in a small crate, covered in feces, urine and fleas in the basement of Notaro's home on Vassar Road in the Wenonah last week.

The trial for Linda Ann Weston and her alleged accomplices, accused of imprisoning four mentally disabled adults in a Tacony basement last fall, has been set for January 2013. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Jan. 28. The trial, which could last up to 10 weeks, would be scheduled to run for four days out of each week, attorneys said. Weston, 52, described by authorities as the ringleader of the group, is charged with kidnapping and assault, among other offenses. Also charged are Gregory Thomas, 48, Weston's boyfriend; Jean McIntosh, Weston's 32-year-old daughter, and Eddie Wright, 51. Prosecutors have alleged that they kidnapped the adults to steal their Social Security checks, then moved them around the country to escape detection by authorities.

Question: I am a victim of my own creativity. Several years ago I put a faux marble finish on my basement floor and covered it with a polyurethane. I would like to repaint it. I tried just floor paint. The paint never dried. I mopped it off several days later. The paint adviser at Lowe's recommended paint remover or sanding. Do you think epoxy paint would cover it? All other options seem like a lot of work. Answer: On the one hand, I like to hear that a product - in this case, the polyurethane - is doing its job by protecting your faux floor.

A Burlington County grand jury has indicted a 34-year-old man for growing marijuana in his basement last year, authorities announced Wednesday. David J. Stanton of Fieldsboro used a false wall to conceal 80 marijuana plants he was growing in two areas with the use of indoor-gardening lights, Burlington County Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi said. Acting on a tip, state police arrested Stanton on June 28, with assistance from the Prosecutor's Office. The street value of his operation was $156,000, officials said.

GARY HEIDNIK is Philadelphia's most infamous murderer. Between November 1986 and March 1987, he tortured and raped six young women in the basement of his home on North Marshall Street, in Franklinville. He kept the young sex slaves captive in a dirt hole, tethered to chains. Heidnik, 43, killed two of the women - Sandra Lindsay and Deborah Dudley. He cooked Lindsay's body parts and mixed them with dog food to feed his prisoners. He dumped Dudley's body in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

A Northeast Philadelphia man was charged Thursday with the starvation death of his 82-year-old father. Thomas Hauck, 57, was arrested Thursday morning on charges of murder, abuse of a corpse, reckless endangerment, and theft, among other offenses, the District Attorney's Office announced. Medics responded to a home on Kirkwood Road near Eden Street on Dec. 26 to treat Hauck's mother - who was malnourished - and found Leonard Hauck, 82, dead in the basement, District Attorney Office spokeswoman Tasha Jamerson said.

I received a letter from readers in Hatfield about the failure of a paint they had used on the concrete floor of their basement. Enclosed was a sample of what was peeling from the floor. Rather than quote from the letter word for word, I'll give you the gist of what happened: The couple had bought a washer and dryer that had to go into the basement. A year ago, they went to Lowe's looking for concrete floor paint to pretty the place up. They told the salesperson what they were doing, and he "highly recommended" Valspar Porch and Floor Paint.

Driving a scantily veiled race car is indelible business. I'll never forget my time behind the wheel of the fabled Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren, a 617-horsepower two-seater that topped out around 200 miles an hour and listed for $452,500. More recently, I spent a week with another thinly disguised track denizen, the 2012 Chevrolet Corvette ZO6, a 505-horsepower two-seater that also runs out to about 200 miles an hour but lists for a bargain-basement $75,525. Granted, the Z06 is not as sophisticated and classy as the impeccable SLR was. But like its supercharged, 638-horse stablemate, the Corvette ZR1 ($111,600)