A real-life house of horrors

One of the worst things about this job is some of the stories you get exposed to every day.


As my wife always tells me when I get home and immediately start to review the papers, "How do you deal with this stuff all day?"


It's a good question, one I've thought about a lot. Most of the time it simply goes with the territory.


Then there are stories like this one.


Some days you just shake your head and wonder at man's ability to inflict pain and damage on other living beings.


In this instance, police say four mentally challenged adults were being kept in what amounted to a "dungeon" in the basement of an apartment house in the Tacony section of North Philly.


Three people have been charged in what appears to be a scam to collect the individuals' benefit checks. Nice, huh?


And get this, a woman who is charged in this case is not exactly a stranger to this kind of activity. Police say she has an extensive record, including a murder conviction in an eerily similar instance in Florida.


The basement is being likened to a 'house of horrors.'


That doesn't really do it justice. And I'm not sure what would, with the exception of making these three people live down there, perhaps chained to the boiler as one of the men was.


As I said, some days you just shake your head.



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