BREAKING: OHIO ‘HOUSE OF HORR0RS’ DAD WAS ALLEGEDLY ‘UNDER THE INFLUENCE’ WHEN POLICE MOVED IN TO RESCUE 16 CHILDREN, NEW RECORDS CLAIM
Clockwise starting with top left: Gary Siders Jr., Elizabeth Siders, Gary Siders Sr. and Christina SidersPhoto: Southeast Ohio Regional Jail
More allegations have emerged about the Ohio couple accused of keeping 16 children in a house of horrors.
Gary Siders Jr. was allegedly under the influence of alcohol or drugs when he and his wife, Elizabeth Siders, were arrested for child endangerment on June 30, according to a booking sheet obtained by People. When reached by Oxygen.com, Gary Jr.’s attorney declined to comment on allegations his client was under the influence during the arrest, citing a gag order about the case.
Gary Jr. and Elizabeth are being held at the Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail on a $300,000 bond each. They have pleaded not guilty, according to previous reporting by Oxygen.com.
The couple—along with Gary Jr.’s parents, Gary Siders Sr. and Christina Siders—allegedly kept the children in living conditions that Vinton County Sheriff Ryan Cain called “horrific” during a July 1 press conference.
Authorities made the discovery when they executed a search warrant for an unrelated investigation. Inside the Hamden home was a “disgusting” scene, Cain said, with the children allegedly confined to a 12-by-12-foot area of the residence.
“Most of our livestock was kept in better conditions than the children,” Cain said during the press conference. “[There] was extremely high presence, I’m sure, of bacterial and human feces.”
Officials said the children, who had not attended school, looked “almost feral” and that one, who was developmentally disabled, could not spell their own name.
Elizabeth’s attorney, Thomas Stolly, later disputed the allegations.
“When you use language like feral kids, you’re imagining people that have been isolated away from human contact,” he toldWBNS-TV on July 9. “People who have never interacted with any sort of social media, with the internet, with humans outside of their own home, or even humans in general, who completely lack the ability to use language. There’s nothing to suggest that that is the case here. And in fact, we’ve seen some things to contradict that.”
Stolly also denied that the children were kept in such tight quarters.
“There’s no indication that the kids were not free to move about the home,” he told the outlet. “There’s no indication from my conversations with my client that the kids were not allowed to go outside.”
Lieutenant Matthew Zartman of the Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail told Oxygen.com that he cannot comment on the Siders case due to the gag order.
