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Further details continue to surface surrounding what many are now referring to as the Ohio House of Horrors.
On June 30, 16 children were rescued from a dilapidated house in Hamden, Ohio, where they were "kept in worse conditions than livestock," according to authorities. Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson stated the children ranged 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, are now facing criminal charges. It comes after a chilling discovery was made in the house of horrors, with fears all 16 kids would have died within 24 hours.
• Ohio 'house of horrors' mom reportedly pregnant again after 16 kids rescued
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All four have pleaded not guilty to child endangerment charges.
Reporters from WBNS 10 spoke with Dollar General employees who had previously encountered members of the Siders family. According to staff, the family typically shopped late at night, purchasing chips and diapers, and occasionally water, vegetable oil, and sugar.
Employees noted that the family sometimes lacked sufficient funds to complete their purchases and displayed signs of poor hygiene, though they acknowledged this was not uncommon given the level of poverty in the surrounding area.
One Dollar General employee, who requested anonymity, told 10TV he regularly saw Siders Jr. and Elizabeth shopping just before closing time, and recalled them cycling through multiple payment cards at 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."
Another employee, Ariel Gutierrez, told WSYX ABC 6 that when observing 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 reported witnessing a "high presence" of bacterial and human feces when he and his officers gathered evidence from the residence. He said that the children "were literally about to fall through the floor."
"Livestock has been kept in better conditions than the children," he said. "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' characterization of the household conditions as "pure evil."
After meeting with Elizabeth on Thursday, Stolly conveyed that she and Gary Siders Jr. "always wanted a big family" and maintained that all 16 of their children were born in hospitals. He also contested claims that the children were confined to a single 12-by-12-foot room, asserting that he has seen no evidence to support that accusation.
Stolly also maintained that the older children did possess cell phones, utilized social media, and exchanged "inside jokes," indicating they were not entirely cut off from the outside world as has been reported.
Investigators believe the case involves "prolonged and extreme interfamilial neglect and abuse."
Including the 2022 conjoined twins who died just hours after their birth, Elizabeth Siders has given birth to 4 sets of twins in 3 years. She has given birth basically every year since 2008.
It comes after a chilling room was spotted on the house of horrors floor plan after 'feral' kids were found.
