Philadelphia Jury Awards $45 Million to Woman Held Captive for Over a Decade in Tacony Basement
Won by Wapner Newman.
A Philadelphia jury returned a $45 million verdict in favor of Tamara Breeden, a mentally disabled woman who was confined, abused, and robbed of her Social Security benefits for more than a decade by Linda Ann Weston and two associates.
What happened
In 2001, Tamara Breeden came into contact with Linda Ann Weston. Over the years that followed, Weston and her associates, Gregory Thomas Sr. and Eddie Wright, confined Breeden in a series of locations across multiple states, including Texas, Florida, Virginia, and ultimately Philadelphia. Throughout that period, Breeden was starved, beaten with metal objects, and denied basic sanitation. Her government disability benefits were stolen throughout her captivity.
Breeden and three other mentally disabled adults were discovered in October 2011 in a cramped sub-basement beneath a Tacony apartment building. The space was so small that an adult could not stand upright. One of the other victims was found chained to the boiler. Investigators later established that Weston, who had a prior conviction involving a man who died of malnourishment while chained in her home, had been operating the scheme for years as she moved her victims from state to state to evade detection.
Breeden, represented by attorney Steven Wigrizer, filed a civil lawsuit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. A default judgment was entered against all three defendants after they declined to respond to the lawsuit. Weston, Thomas, and Wright remained in federal custody facing criminal kidnapping and fraud charges and did not appear at the civil trial.
The civil jury deliberated for approximately one hour and twenty minutes before returning a verdict of $45 million in compensatory and punitive damages on November 14, 2014. Wigrizer stated after the verdict that while collection was unlikely given that the defendants were incarcerated and without assets, the lawsuit was pursued to create a formal record of what Breeden had endured and to hold the perpetrators accountable in a court of law.
Weston was later convicted in federal court and sentenced to life in prison plus 80 years. The $45 million civil verdict stands as the court's formal finding of liability for what Breeden suffered across more than a decade of captivity.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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