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 AN OLNEY WOMAN described by a neighbor as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" has been charged with holding a woman with special needs captive in her basement. Police arrested Regina Bennett, 46, of Linton Street near 2nd, shortly after midnight Saturday following a verbal dispute with a neighbor. Authorities said that after taking Bennett into custody, neighbors informed them there was a small child living in the house, although police did not see signs of a child. Police said officers and a supervisor conducted a walk-through of the home and discovered a 36-year-old woman in the basement bound to a bed in "unsuitable conditions." She was cut free and taken to Albert Einstein Medical Center, where she was evaluated. 
 
 Authorities said the victim was extremely thin, with sores on her body. She appears to be mentally disabled with a limited vocabulary. 
 
 Investigators have been unable to determine Bennett's relationship to the victim, according to Officer Tanya Little, a police spokeswoman. 
 
 "I haven't seen anything that stated what their relationship was or whether she was the caretaker," Little said. 
 
 Bennett is facing a dozen charges, including aggravated assault, kidnapping for ransom and neglect of care. 
 
 Yolanda Cropper, who lives across the street from Bennett, said her neighbor showed two very different sides. 
 
 "When you see her, she's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If she's not drinking, she's quiet, very withdrawn," Cropper said. She added that Bennett had expressed prejudice against those who are not African-American like she is. 
 
 Despite only living on the block a few months, Bennett had numerous run-ins with neighbors, according to Cropper. She said that three weeks ago, Bennett cursed out a neighbor after the woman said hello to her. During this weekend's altercation with the neighbor, Bennett was visibly intoxicated, Cropper said. 
 
 "[Those] people don't bother nobody," she said of the other neighbor in the dispute. 
 
 Cropper said Bennett, known on the block as "Queen," has a grandson who visits on the weekends and plays outside. She said she had never seen the unidentified woman discovered in the basement. 
 
 "She was small . . . she did not look like a 36-year-old woman," Cropper said of the woman. 
 
 A woman identified as Phyllis, who claimed to be Bennett's cousin, told reporters Saturday that Bennett cared for the woman who police discovered in the house. 
 
 "When she was in her care, she took care of her like she was her own flesh-and-blood child. Her room was neat and clean; she went to her programs and fed her. That's all I know," she told 6ABC. 
 
 The case is similar to a case last September in which police said a disabled man was held captive for months in Southwest Philadelphia for his Social Security checks. Dwayne Young is awaiting trial in that case. It also sparks memories of the Tacony dungeon case, in which Linda Ann Weston, her daughter Jean McIntosh and three others were charged with an elaborate scheme to imprison four people in a boiler room for their Social Security benefits. 
 
 No attorney for Bennett could be located. 
 
 On Twitter: @ChroniclesofSol ||||| Philadelphia Police are trying to figure out how a 36-year-old woman with special needs was chained up to a bed in the basement of a house on the 200 block of Linton Street in the city's Olney section. 
 
 Philadelphia Police are trying to figure out how a 36-year-old woman with special needs was chained up to a bed in the basement of a house on the 200 block of Linton Street in the city's Olney section. 
 
 Philadelphia Police are trying to figure out how a 36-year-old woman with special needs was chained up to a bed in the basement of a house on the 200 block of Linton Street in the city's Olney section. 
 
 Philadelphia Police are trying to figure out how a 36-year-old woman with special needs was chained up to a bed in the basement of a house on the 200 block of Linton Street in the city's Olney section. 
 
 Special Needs Woman Found Chained Up In Olney Basement 
 
 Special Needs Woman Found Chained Up In Olney Basement 
 
 Police say a woman is facing charges following the discovery of a woman found tied to a bed in the basement of a north Philadelphia home. 
 
 Police say a woman is facing charges following the discovery of a woman found tied to a bed in the basement of a north Philadelphia home. 
 
 Police say a woman is facing charges following the discovery of a woman found tied to a bed in the basement of a north Philadelphia home. 
 
 Police say a woman is facing charges following the discovery of a woman found tied to a bed in the basement of a north Philadelphia home. 
 
 Woman Charged In Case Of Special-Needs Cousin Chained To Bed 
 
 A disabled woman found tied to her bed leads to her cousin being placed under arrest, accused of keeping her in deplorable conditions, police say. 
 
 It was at 11:54 p.m. Friday when 35th District officers responded to a home on the 200 block of Linton Street in reference to what police called "an ongoing neighborhood dispute." 
 
 Regina Bennett, 46, was arrested for threats and assault against a neighbor, police said. 
 
 As officers were leaving the location, they learned a young child was living where Bennett resides, although they said there weren't any visible signs of a child living there. 
 
 Officers and a supervisor conducted a walk-through of the residence, and that's when police say they discovered the 36-year-old woman bound to a bed in "unsuitable conditions." 
 
 Police said she was extremely thin, had sores on her body and has a limited vocabulary. 
 
 The woman's chains and zip-ties were cut off by officers, and medics transported the woman to Albert Einstein Medical Center, where she was admitted and continues to be evaluated. 
 
 FOX 29 broke the news to family members that showed up for a cookout Saturday. They say Bennett is the victim's cousin and caretaker. 
 
 Neighbors say regardless of the investigation's outcome, they want the suspect far from their block. 
 
 Bennett has been charged with terroristic threats, simple assault, public drunkenness, aggravated assault, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment and related offenses, police said Sunday. ||||| Eight children and teens linked to the accused Philadelphia basement captors were in protective custody on Wednesday, including a teen so badly abused that "it makes you want to cry," the city's police commissioner said. 
 
 Four accused captors are charged with kidnapping four mentally handicapped adults, each with the capacity of a 10-year-old child, found in a basement dungeon in what authorities said was a scheme to steal their Social Security disability checks. 
 
 The four adults were discovered malnourished and imprisoned in the filthy basement room over the weekend. One was chained to a furnace. Authorities said two of those held had been captive for roughly 11 years. 
 
 Police said they also had eight children and teens in protective custody, the youngest a 2-year-old, and were working to determine the nature of their relationships with both the suspects and captives. 
 
 One of the teens, Beatrice Weston, 19, is a niece of suspect Linda Ann Weston and had been beaten and tortured, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. She had been reported missing in 2009. 
 
 The dank sub-basement room in Philadelphia where the four weak and malnourished mentally disabled adults were found. 
 
 "It is remarkable that she is alive," Ramsey said, adding that she was covered in burn marks and suffered pellet gun wounds on her ankles. 
 
 "It is absolutely one of the worst things you can see," he said. "It makes you want to cry when you see it." 
 
 Police said that in addition to the eight children and teens, two other young people had also briefly been in custody before being released. 
 
 Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said he was not certain the word "horrific" was adequate to describe the situation. 
 
 "This is sheer madness," Nutter told a news conference, adding the case was an "incredibly tangled web of horror." 
 
 Linda Ann Weston, 51, of North Philadelphia; Gregory Thomas, 47, also of North Philadelphia; and Eddie Wright, 50, described as homeless, have all been arrested in the case, along with Jean McIntosh, 32, who is Weston's daughter and was arrested on Wednesday. Weston remains jailed on $2.5 million bail, along with Thomas, whom she described as her boyfriend, and Wright. 
 
 More than 30 years ago, Weston was convicted of starving to death a 25-year-old man in her apartment in North Philadelphia and served eight years in prison, authorities said. 
 
 Police in Virginia confirmed they investigated the 2008 death of a woman living with Weston, who's accused of being the ringleader in the Philadelphia basement case and who cleared out of the Norfolk home hours after calling police about the death. 
 
 A Virginia death certificate said 39-year-old Maxine Lee died of meningitis but also suffered from a wasting disease. 
 
 The suspects in the current case were charged with a lengthy list of crimes, including kidnapping, conspiracy, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment and assault. 
 
 The four captives were discovered by a landlord during a check of the two-story apartment house in the working-class Tacony neighborhood. Police identified them as Derwin McLemire, 41, of North Carolina; Herbert Knowles, 40, of Virginia; and Tamara Breeden, 29, and Edwin Sanabria, 31, both of Philadelphia. 
 
 Police say there may be as many as 50 victims in multiple states in the case. 
 
 The case could be among the first of its kind prosecuted as a federal hate crime, according to a law-enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. 
 
 The 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is named for two victims of notorious hate-based killings and expands earlier federal hate crimes law to include sexual orientation or disability, among other things. 
 
 The law has been used sparingly since its passage. The first to go to trial was the case of Frankie Mayberry, of Arkansas, who was convicted in May of attacking a car last year with five Hispanic men inside it. 
 
 Police believe Weston had been stealing the Philadelphia victims' Social Security disability checks, perhaps as part of a much larger fraud scheme. They found dozens of other Social Security and identification cards, along with power of attorney documents, in a search of McIntosh's apartment, where Weston had been staying. 
 
 Weston was legally disqualified from cashing the victims' government disability checks because of her criminal past. 
 
 But she apparently did anyway, enabled in part by a lack of accountability and follow-through by government agencies and police. 
 
 The Social Security Protection Act of 2004 generally bars people who have been imprisoned for more than a year from becoming representative payees, those who cash someone else's check. Yet a 2010 report by Social Security's watchdog found that staff members do not perform background checks to determine if payees have criminal records. 
 
 The report from the Social Security Administration's Office of the Inspector General said that people who apply to become payees are supposed to answer a question on whether they've ever been convicted of an offense and imprisoned for more than a year. But the report noted that the agency recognizes that self-reporting of such information "is not always reliable." 
 
 The inspector general said that in the cases it reviewed, about 6 percent of non-relative payees had been imprisoned for longer than a year and "may pose a risk to the beneficiaries they serve." 
 
 A Social Security spokesman declined to provide details of the agency's investigation into Weston but said the agency recently strengthened oversight of payees.
– It's the kind of story where you don't want the word "again" to come into play. But Philadelphia is once again in the news with the revelation that a woman with special needs was being held captive in a basement there. The Philadelphia Daily News reports that the discovery came in a roundabout way: Regina Bennett, 46, was arrested in the wee hours of Saturday morning after getting into an altercation with her neighbor; police were told there was a young child in her home, but when they searched it, they instead found a 36-year-old woman chained and zip-tied to a bed in "unsuitable conditions," reports MyFoxPhilly. Bennett's relationship to the victim remains murky: While some outlets describe the women as cousins, others say Bennett was the woman's caretaker. WPVI reports that it spoke with the victim's sister, Alissia Robinson, who puts her mental ability at that of a 10-year-old and says police told her the 36-year-old was found naked. Robinson says her sister began living with Bennett in 2007, and that she hadn't seen her for a year following a fight with Bennett. Bennett is staring down a dozen charges, including aggravated assault, kidnapping for ransom, and neglect of care.