Transcripts tell of savage sister

COURT TRANSCRIPTS of Linda Ann Weston and her sister Venus' 1981 murder case and their 1982 arson case portray Linda as savage, domineering, frightened by "evil spirits" and perhaps ravaged by incest.

Besides beating Venus' then-boyfriend, Bernardo Ramos, with a broomstick, ordering him tied up, and keeping him hostage in a closet for two months until he died of starvation, Linda instilled fear in her siblings and beat them, the documents show.

And according to a transcript of Venus' 1983 guilty-plea hearing in Ramos' death, a prison chaplain who got to know the sisters told a judge that "there has been incest in this family since the time the girls were 9 years of age."

The court transcripts were obtained exclusively by the Daily News yesterday.

In October 1981, Linda, then 21; Venus, 19; another sister, Valerie, 16; a brother, Alexander, 12; and Linda's two small children, about 1 and 2, lived in an apartment on 33rd Street near Norris in Strawberry Mansion.

Their mother had died, and Linda was in charge of the house, Valerie later testified.

That October, Ramos, 25, the father of Venus' unborn child, came to the apartment and told Venus he would not support the baby.

"[Linda] Ann got mad and said, 'You wasn't going to take care of my sister's baby.' She got the broomstick and was hitting him with it," Alexander testified of Linda.

"She said, 'Tie him up, put him in the closet.' " Alexander said that he and Venus bound Ramos' feet and hands with rope. Alexander contended that no one had put Ramos in the closet but that he had "hopped to the closet" by himself.

During the next two months, Ramos, whom a prosecutor described as "possibly mildly mentally retarded," was kept hostage in the closet and fed at times, and allowed out to go to the bathroom, but then became so "ill and vomited and could not [eat] anything," according to court transcripts.

And during those months, Linda controlled her siblings.

Alexander, who testified at Linda and Venus' 1983 preliminary hearing in the murder case, said Linda had hit him and Venus.

"With the broom or her hands or what?" Venus' attorney asked.

"Hit with anything she would pick up," Alexander, then 13, testified.

Valerie, who separately testified at Linda's 1984 trial, said she had been warned not to go outside because Linda said she would hit her, like "she used to hit me all the time," sometimes with an ironing cord.

About two months after being tied up in the closet, Ramos, who had been getting skinnier and weaker, and was looking purple, was no longer breathing.

After the siblings discovered this, Linda started crying and told them to "get him out of here," Valerie testified, saying that "Venus and Alexander put him in a plastic bag," put him in a baby carriage and rolled the body to a place on Green Street.

(An attorney later said the carriage was a shopping cart.)

A medical examiner later testified that Ramos, who was 5 feet 4, weighed 78 pounds at his death and appeared emaciated, "like he starved."

Ramos' body was found by two men Dec. 28, 1981, in an abandoned convent in Spring Garden. Authorities initially thought he had died of natural causes.

It wasn't until January 1983 that Linda and Venus were charged in his death after a family member told police what had happened.

Besides the murder offense, Linda and Venus faced arson charges in connection with a Nov. 12, 1982, fire in a closet of the apartment they lived in on 33rd Street near Norris.

According to later testimony in a 1987 motions hearing for Venus, she and Linda had told a homicide detective that they had "set the fire to run the evil spirits out of the closet."

In exchange for Venus' guilty plea to third-degree murder in Ramos' death, the prosecution agreed to drop the arson charge.

Linda initially was deemed incompetent to stand trial, but after she was ruled competent, she was found guilty Dec. 14, 1984, by a judge of third-degree murder but not guilty of arson.

- Staff writers Phillip Lucas and Barbara Laker contributed to this report.