PHILADELPHIA — A mentally challenged man chained to a basement boiler. A disabled woman with her teeth knocked out. A malnourished niece with burn marks and pellet gun wounds. A two-year-old child the weight of an infant.

These are the some of the victims emerging as police investigate a ring that allegedly took in the downtrodden and disabled for their Social Security checks, then held them captive in wretched conditions, without enough to eat or drink.

“The things that I have heard, the things that have been described, I’m not sure that horrific covers it,” Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said Wednesday.

The four adult victims found locked in a Philadelphia crawl space on Saturday have the mental capacity of 10-year-olds. One said he had met accused ringleader Linda Ann Weston, 51, through an online dating site. Weston and three others, including her daughter, are charged with kidnapping, assault and other charges, with her bail set at $2.5 million.

It’s unclear how Weston met the other disabled adults found Saturday, one of whom may have borne several children in recent years. They were treated at a hospital and then moved to a social services agency.

Eight children and four young adults linked to the defendants have since been taken into protective custody after they were found at various locations around the city.

They include the 19-year-old niece, Beatrice Weston, who was left locked in a closet in recent days, according to police. Police took the unusual step of asking reporters Wednesday not to try to locate or interview her.

“I have never seen a victim whose injuries were any more severe than what I saw last night,” Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said. “This girl was beaten, was tortured. It makes you want to cry when you see her.”

She may be the same niece who, according to neighbors, lived with Weston, co-defendant Gregory Thomas and the couple’s four children in northeast Philadelphia from about 2003 to 2005. Neighbors called police, and the city’s child-protection agency, after hearing the adults scream and curse at the youngsters, whom they said could be found outside at 6 a.m. and late at night. They also thought they heard them being beaten.

Nothing seemed to have been done, the neighbors said. After about two years, the family was forced out for unpaid rent, the neighbors said. The next tenant kept getting Social Security statements mailed to the house for Weston, Thomas, victim Tamara Breedon and others. She called the post office and the Social Security Administration.

Police went to the same address at one point to check on a report of a missing person involving another victim, Herbert Knowles. The current resident said she didn’t know anyone by that name. There is no indication there was any follow-up by police.

The defendants — Thomas, 47; co-defendant Eddie “the Rev. Ed” Wright, 50; and Weston’s daughter, Jean McIntosh, 32 — are scheduled to have their first court hearing on Monday. Weston’s lawyer has not returned calls for comment. It’s not yet clear if the others have attorneys.

Weston, along with a sister, were convicted of murder in the early 1980s after locking the sister’s boyfriend in a closet for weeks until he died of starvation. McIntosh has a prior arrest for theft by deception, and securing a document by deception. Her teenage son and daughter were taken into protective custody on Wednesday, shortly after she became the fourth defendant arrested in the case.