Philadelphia (CNN) -- More victims could emerge in a case involving three people suspected of locking four mentally disabled adults in the cramped sub-basement boiler room of a Philadelphia apartment building, the city's police commissioner said Tuesday.
"We don't know the extent of this," Charles Ramsey told CNN. "We do know it goes beyond the borders of Pennsylvania -- at least Texas, Florida and Virginia, and we suspect other locations as well."
The case began over the weekend, when the four people were found locked in the room, with no food and only a bucket for a toilet, police said. The pitch-black, 15-foot-by-6-foot space houses what police described as a boiler used to heat the building. A penetrating stench of urine and feces still hung in the chamber days after the discovery.
One of the four, Derwin McLemire, was chained to the boiler, police said.
The three suspects -- Gregory Thomas, 47, Eddie Wright, 49, and Linda Ann Weston, 51 -- face charges including criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, kidnapping, criminal trespass, unlawful restraint and false imprisonment, Philadelphia police said Sunday. Police said they were investigating whether the victims' Social Security checks had been stolen, as well as several other leads.
Weston had identification documents for about 50 people with her when she was arrested, Ramsey said. They included Social Security cards and court documents giving power of attorney, among others. "That just happened to be what she had in her possession on the night she was arrested," he said.
"We have to track all those down and find out ... whether those people are still living, where they're located, what happened to them, to see whether or not they were victims," Ramsey said. "So we don't know whether there are more people involved as offenders or as victims."
"We believe it's a strong possibility that there are other (victims)," he said. "We don't know how long this has been taking place. It could go back as far as the late '90s that she (Weston) has been involved in this activity."
On Monday, three of the four people rescued from the room spoke about their harrowing experience.
"That was real dirty of you. That was wrong," a tearful McLemire told CNN affiliate KYW , talking about his alleged captors.
The alleged victims said they were beaten and were afraid of the suspects in the case.
Tamara Breeden told KYW Weston hit her in the head, "and all this was bleeding and everything."
McLemire, Breeden and a third man, Herbert Knowles, told KYW their Social Security information was taken from them.
Meanwhile, officials in West Palm Beach, Florida, said Tuesday a 15-year-old who has been missing since July was recovered by Philadelphia police.
West Palm Beach city spokesman Chase Scott would not say whether Benita Rodriguez was among those held in the sub-basement, but Philadelphia police said earlier all the captives were adults, ages 29, 31, 35 and 41.
Rodriguez was last seen in the company of a male believed to be Thomas' son at a West Palm Beach home thought to be near where the Philadelphia suspects lived earlier this year, Scott said.
Rodriguez was considered an endangered runaway, according to a missing persons flyer issued by West Palm Beach police.
Her mother, Juana Rodriguez, told CNN affiliate WPBF Tuesday that her daughter went willingly with "the young man."
"As long as she's been found and she's doing good, that's all that matters," Juana Rodriguez said. "I can breathe. I can breathe now. Because she's doing good."
Rodriguez was being held Tuesday at a police facility "until a family member can make arrangements to pick her up," Scott said. He did not release any further information.
Juana Rodriguez spoke to her daughter briefly. "She's just crying," she told WPBF.
Bond for each of the three suspects was set at $2.5 million, according to the Philadelphia district attorney's office. The FBI joined the probe after detectives discovered one of the accused had traveled to at least two other states with the people found in the basement of the northeast Philadelphia apartment building, police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers said.
McLemire, who said he is from North Carolina, said he met Weston on an online dating site, according to KYW. He said once he attempted to escape from a home of Weston's, "and I didn't get away, so they got me."
Authorities were still trying to unravel the shocking details about the case.
Weston served eight years in prison for killing her sister's boyfriend in the early 1980s, Ramsey said earlier. In that case, the victim "was held captive for an extended period of time, locked in a closet and he literally starved to death," he said.
"That concerns us because obviously, she's capable of quite a bit of a lot of different things," he said.
Asked why Weston is not still behind bars, Ramsey said Tuesday, "That's a good question. Our legal system is what it is, but you would think that someone who's committed a crime that horrific would still be in jail. But she wasn't, and obviously she wasn't fully rehabilitated, either."
Ramsey said he has an entire team of detectives working the case, and is likely to put a task force together for long-term investigation, because "this is not one that's going to end very quickly."
Weston is believed to have been in McLean, Texas, with some or all of the alleged captives. They then traveled to Florida and Philadelphia, Evers said. All seven had been traveling together, Evers said, but he did not know for how long.
Scott told CNN that Thomas was arrested in West Palm Beach on a burglary charge in July and was a suspect in a grand theft case later that month. Authorities initially identified Gregory Thomas as Thomas Gregory, and later corrected the name.
Philadelphia police have identified several juveniles in Philadelphia who have ties to West Palm Beach, Scott said Monday, but it was unclear whether the youths had been reported missing. Scott said Monday that Rodriguez was not one of the juveniles identified.
A preliminary hearing for the suspects on the charges and evidence in the Philadelphia case was set for October 24. No pleas were entered on Monday, with that to happen at a formal arraignment at a date yet to be set.
The building's owner, Turgut Gozleveli, discovered the four captives after being informed that people were milling in and out of his basement, where no one was supposed to be. Gozleveli said he checked out the basement Thursday and found a few things out of place, but no people. On Friday, he found a dog dish and thought one of his tenants was attempting to conceal a pet.
On Saturday, after hearing a dog barking, he went to the building's sub-basement and found a door chained shut. He removed the chain and found the four inside.
The alleged victims were brought out on stretchers, said Danyell Tisdale, the block captain who notified Gozleveli. She said she was concerned about some of the things she'd seen recently, including people being brought in from the back of a sport utility vehicle with out-of-state plates.
"I hope I did enough," she said. "I called."
CNN's Melanie Whitley, Tom Faust, Susan Candiotti, Ross Levitt and Kyra Phillips contributed to this report.
