Six Held In West Virginia Torture Horror

Cops: Black woman raped, beaten, abused during week-long captivity

SEPTEMBER 11--A black West Virginia woman was sexually assaulted, stabbed, and tortured while being held captive by her white abductors, one of whom told her, "That's what we do to niggers around here." The 23-year-old victim was freed Saturday after cops responded to the home of Frankie Brewster for a "welfare check on a female that was reportedly being held against her will." When cops arrived, Brewster claimed she was the only one home, but then the victim limped to the door and said, "Help me." According to six harrowing criminal complaints, the woman, who apparently had been held for more than a week, had four stab wounds in her left leg, bruised eyes, and had been repeatedly sexually assaulted and humiliated. The woman told police that she was forced to lick Brewster's "toes, vagina, and anal cavity." Brewster's son Bobby forced the woman to eat dog and rat feces, according to one complaint filed in Logan County Magistrate Court. The victim, who is now hospitalized, was raped at knifepoint, choked with a cable cord, and had her hair pulled and cut during the ordeal. Police, who have arrested six defendants for their roles in the abduction and attack, are looking for other suspects who may have lured the victim to Brewster's home. The arrestees are seen in the below mug shots. Pictured clockwise from the upper left are Frankie Brewster, 49; Bobby Brewster, 24; Danny Combs, 20; George Messer, 27; Alisha Burton, 22; and Karen Burton, 46.

Police are looking for two more people in the torture, beating and sexual assault of a Charleston woman, and the Logan County prosecutor said he believes the woman first met one of her abductors over the Internet.

The two people being sought by police are believed to have picked up 23-year-old Megan Williams from Charleston and transported her to Big Creek, where she was held captive in a home for at least a week.

Police have arrested six people already. The FBI has entered the case because it is a possible federal hate crime, authorities said.

The victim is black and the alleged assailants are white.

Prosecutor Brian Abraham said he heard from one of the arresting officers that Williams met a Logan County man on an Internet site.

Abraham could not verify whether that person was already in custody or one of the suspects still sought by police.

“I think she may have met an individual on the Internet and he agreed to pick her up in Kanawha County and take her to Logan County,” Abraham said. “That individual may have befriended her and at some point turned her over to these people.”

Abraham, who has served eight years as prosecutor, said he has never witnessed or imagined a case of this proportion.

“We’re up to our eyeballs in murder cases in Logan County, but nothing quite like this,” he said. “We have typical homicides motivated by jealously, passion and theft. This seems like outright malice. It’s something you’d see in a horror movie.”

Magistrate Leonard Codispoti told The Logan Banner, “It was the worst case of human abuse I have seen since I have been a magistrate.

“Something like this is so horrifying it makes you want to puke. They got this girl out of Charleston and took her to Big Creek, threw her in a shack, raped and stabbed her, put a rope around her neck, made her eat animal feces and did other horrifying things to her.”