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New details continue to surface regarding what many are describing as a 'house of horrors' in Ohio.
On June 30, authorities rescued 16 children from a run-down home in Hamden, Ohio, where they were "kept in worse conditions than livestock," according to officials. Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson stated the children ranged in age from 18 months to 18 years old and "looked like feral animals."
Four adults — Gary Siders Jr. , Gary Siders Sr., Christina Siders, and Elizabeth Siders — now face criminal charges. All four have entered not guilty pleas to child endangerment charges.
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Reporters from WBNS 10 spoke with Dollar General employees who had interactions with members of the Siders family. Staff disclosed the family usually shopped late at night, buying chips and diapers, reports the Mirror US.
They were also reported to have purchased water, vegetable oil, and sugar on different visits.
Employees said the family sometimes had difficulty paying for their items and displayed evidence of poor hygiene, though they pointed out this wasn't uncommon considering the area's economic challenges.
One Dollar General employee, who requested anonymity, told 10TV he frequently saw Siders Jr. and Elizabeth shopping near closing time. He also remembered them using multiple different payment cards during checkout.
"It makes me question my own actions," he told 10TV. "Whether or not I should have asked them about it, or seen if they needed anything, or anything I could have done to maybe prevent this in any way, because there were signs."
Co-worker Ariel Gutierrez told WSYX ABC 6 that when she saw Elizabeth and Gary Jr. , "I noticed that he would keep her really close to her and she was not allowed to speak to nobody."
She added, "When she came in with the kids, the kids were all very thin, very, very thin, ghost white, didn't have any weight on their bodies, and they had their hair over their face like to block out, you know, the outside world, to not see them."
Vinton County Sheriff Ryan Cain described finding a "high presence" of bacterial and human waste as officers gathered evidence from the residence. He said the children "were literally about to fall through the floor."
"Livestock has been kept in better conditions than the children," he claimed. "I believe it was typical that even law enforcement has experience with homes in a similar fashion. The children were kept in a 12x12 area in what seems like the last four years."
In an interview with WBNS 10TV, Elizabeth's lawyer, Tommy Stolly, disputed investigators' description of the household conditions as "pure evil."
Following his Thursday meeting with Elizabeth, Stolly reported that she and Gary Siders Jr. "always wanted a big family" and confirmed that all 16 of their children were delivered in hospitals. He also pushed back against claims that the children were confined to a single 12-by-12-foot room, stating he has seen no evidence to support that assertion.
Stolly further maintained that the older children did have cell phones, used social media, and shared "inside jokes," implying they weren't entirely cut off from the outside world, contrary to earlier reports.
Authorities believe the case centers on "prolonged and extreme interfamilial neglect and abuse."
Including the 2022 conjoined twins who passed away just hours after birth, Elizabeth Siders has delivered four sets of twins in three years. She has been pregnant nearly every year since 2008.
