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A
I'm Howard Mackler. I spent my career building companies that help businesses solve problems. Now I built super sure because I think business insurance is broken. Some brokers hand you a policy, collect their commission and disappear until renewal. Your business runs all year and so are the gaps and the risks for companies with 25 or more employees. Whether you're the owner, CFO or HR manager, super sure is built for you. We're licensed in all 50 states covering business, insurance and employee benefits. We with year round support for you and your team. You can go to supershore.com and use the Fine Print Facts tool which translates your current policy into plain English so you see what's covered and what's not. The business value calculator helps you estimate what your company is worth so you know what actually needs protecting. Go to super sure.com all your policies in one place. Go to super sure.com that's supersure.com you can thank me later. Paid for by Super Sure Insurance Agency, llc, a licensed insurance agency.
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B
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C
That's so criminal.
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D
Just a few weeks ago, Ohio deputies arrived at a rural home and knocked on the door. They were there to serve a routine warrant. But when they entered, they found something
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B
else the story that's making national headlines. Sixteen children down in Vinton county found
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living in absolutely deplorable conditions.
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Sixteen children who'd been living in a 12 by 12 foot room for the past four years. One house with just one bathroom for 20 people. Unfathomable filth encompassed where the children were alleged to be sleeping.
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E
It really looked third world.
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What was discovered that day would become one of the most shocking child welfare cases the state had ever seen. I'm Lyndon Blake and you're listening to that's so Criminal.
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C
That's so Criminal.
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D
Vincent County, Ohio. The least populated of the 88 counties in the Buckeye State. It has a population of 12,600 residents. It isn't known for much, but the people who call Vincent county home describe it as a tight knit community. And the slow pace of life is a big reason not many people leave. In Hampden, the second largest city in Vincent county, the population is just 700. That's where the story starts. At a rundown house on Omer street in rural Ohio. People in this town knew of this family. Gary Siders Sr. Has bopped around that part of the state for decades. He lived in that small house on Omer street with his wife Christina, their son Gary Jr. And his wife Elizabeth. The four adults all under the same roof, but no one really saw kids. One local who works down the street at a Dollar General said she would rarely see the Siders with children and can recall Elizabeth being pregnant, but she never saw a baby. She had five because of the four I saw.
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F
And then when she was pregnant, which I never saw the baby at all after the pregnancy.
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D
What deputies saw on June 30, 2026, while serving an unrelated warrant for Gary Jr. S alleged public indecency was far from what they expected to find behind that front door. It's been described as a house of horrors. Human feces piled on the floor, garbage stacked several feet high, bug infested debris enough to make you gag. Broken windows and broken furniture scattered through the space. Photos released from inside the home showed food containers rotting among the trash. And in the middle of it all, an empty party sized bucket of fireball whiskey. You can literally smell that and you know it smells worse than a frat house after a 24 hour bender. Among the trash inside a room measuring 12ft by 12ft, authorities found 16 children. Their ages ranged from 18 months to 18 years old, and among them were two sets of twins. Authorities say the children have been living in that space for the past four years. Four years And a room that wouldn't pass as a pigsty for 16 kids.
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And I've never, I've just never seen anything like I saw today with respect to those kids. As we sat and we talked about, as the team kind of talked about, really looked third world. It's the type of thing that we're not used to seeing here in America.
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D
Investigators describe the children as almost feral. Most of them couldn't speak and none of them had ever been enrolled in school.
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F
I'm thinking back about when I gave birth and you know, women out there, you guys can sort of think back or remember way in here. But we had to either write down the name of our pediatrician or you know, the hospital would assign one to us initially. And then from there it was kind of like, well, if you, if you don't make these appointments, someone's got to hold you accountable because the hospital has all of this on record. And at least this was in my experience. And so I go back to like what happened in between.
- [06:56]
D
The four adults involved are now facing charges. Their children's mother, 33 year old Elizabeth Siders. Their father, 36 year old Gary Siders Jr. And the children's grandparents, 73 year old Gary Siders Sr. And 67 year old Christina Seiders. All four were arrested and each is facing 16 counts of felony child endangerment. One count for every child rescued from that room. And obviously we haven't seen photos of the 16 children who were rescued from that house. But because we have the Siders family mugshots, I'm going to describe to you what the four adults who were allowing the kids to live in those horrible circumstances looked like. And it's not pretty. You have Gary Siders Jr. Who at first glance looks like a somewhat normal guy, but that she's gone through some stuff. His wife Elizabeth looks like hygiene was not a part of her vocabulary. These people just looked like they were living in something that was described as a pigsty. But going to the grandparents, you have Christina who is only 67 years old but looks young, 20 years older, just run down and like she's not taking care of herself. Then Gary Siders Sr. I'm going to be honest, looks like a beat up Quasimodo. Just looking at their mugshots just gives you a glimpse of what life was like and what life did to them inside that house. And of course something like that doesn't happen overnight. Court records show that Elizabeth and Gary Jr. Married as teenagers. She was 15, he was 18. That was back in 2008 and the two crossed the border to West Virginia to do it.
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F
A 15 year old could marry then with the consent of her parents. Could the judge have stopped it?
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D
The judge absolutely could have stopped this marriage.
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But Alexander says the law did not state the court needed to investigate.
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Their oldest child, one of the 16 now in state care, was born just two months after that wedding. Court records also show the couple had another set of twins, both girls born in November of 2022. Those two infants died the same day they were born.
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C
That's so criminal.
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Still ahead, why the county responsible for these 16 children says this case alone could bankrupt them. And the reason one of those four adults arrested isn't sitting in a jail cell right now.
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And we're live on matchday as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing. He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Pepsi, too. What a finish. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match Days deserve Pepsi.
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D
The scope of what's needed to care for these 16 children now falls, at least initially, on Vincent County. And the money for the state's smallest county isn't exactly flowing. It has the smallest operating budget of any of Ohio's 88 counties, and it now has 16 traumatized children who need housing, medical care and mental health treatment, likely for years. The Ohio Department of Children and Youth says placing these children in appropriate care will cost between $150 and $250 per child per day. If you do the math for 16 kids, that works out to roughly $850,000 a year. For a little bit of context, that's more than three times what Vincent County's entire levy for children's and senior services brings in annually. So that's why the state is stepping in with $1 million, money that's expected to move through a state legislative panel soon. It's meant to cover treatment for the children along with court costs and police overtime tied to this case. An Ohio agency is also now consulting attorneys about setting up a trust for the 16 siblings. And a local job and family services office has already started collecting donations for the kids on Facebook since his story made national news. And then there's the grandfather. Vincent County's Prosecutor, William Archer Jr. Said publicly that the medical costs for taking care of Gary Siders Sr. Behind bars could have bankrupted the county outright. After his arrest, Gary Sr. Fell inside the jail, and it became clear fast that his care needs were beyond what the county lockup could handle. His bond, originally set at $300,000, was changed so he could be released into hospital care instead, specifically so Vincent county wouldn't be stuck footing that bill. Let's listen to this again. The man facing 16 felony counts for endangering his own grandchildren was let out not because he's innocent, but because keeping him behind bars is too expensive for the county to absorb. That's the reality. In a place this small, there simply isn't a system built to handle a case of this magnitude. But Grandfather Siders isn't the only family member who didn't feel fit to be behind bars. The abused children's mother said her only wish is to reunite with her 16 children, and her attorney is fighting for her freedom. Elizabeth's attorney, J. Thomas Stolle, is arguing his client has no criminal record, she's not a flight risk, and she would comply with any conditions imposed by the court. He added that Elizabeth would agree to wear a GPS monitor, provide a stable address, and if released, regularly check in with a bond officer. But to me, the most shocking claim the mother's attorney is making about is the kids themselves. The attorney said, and I quote, there's no indication that the kids were not free to move about the home. There's no indication from my conversations with my client that the kids were not allowed to go outside. Remember now, no one saw the kids. No one knew much of anything except the parents seemed a little off.
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C
I don't know how they. I could barely walk behind them in the store and be able to breathe. And not being mean, my husband would always kind of, you know, shrug me like, you don't judge people just off of how they smell or how they look or what they're wearing because you never know.
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All four Siders have pled not guilty to the charges, and all but Grandpa remained jailed on $300,000 bonds after waiving their preliminary hearings last week.
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C
That's so criminal.
- [13:37]
D
Coming up, what family members are saying about a household that quietly unraveled for years and where this case goes from here. One person who has spoken publicly is Ronnie Fletcher, who was married to one of the daughters of Gary Sr. And Christina Siders. Fletcher told a local news station that he had no idea what was happening inside that home until he heard about it like everyone else did on the local news. He described his in laws as distant relatives. Not estranged, not fighting, just drifted over the years. He said everyone had simply gotten wrapped up in their own lives. His reaction, in his words, was horror, worry for the kids. And then the question any concerned family member in this position would ask, what can I do to help. Fletcher says his wife and her three sisters had no idea the situation inside the house had deteriorated to this point. Now, whether that holds up as more details emerge remains to be seen, but for now, it's the only account from inside the extended family as to where the case goes next. It has already moved to a grand jury for indictment after attorneys for the Siders family waive their preliminary hearings. That's a significant step. It usually signals the defense team isn't planning to fight probable cause at this stage. There's also a separate matter on the calendar. Gary Siders Jr. Is due back in court on July 23 for a public indecency charge unrelated to this endangerment case. It's a reminder that even as the state works to build a case around what happened to these 16 children, there are still loose threads attached to the people responsible. Because we're in the grand jury stage of this case, there's no trial date that's been set. Vincent County's budget, meanwhile, sits in the hands of state lawmakers, who are expected to take up that $1 million allocation in the coming weeks. As for the 16 children, they're safe now, and we're keeping them in our thoughts and prayers. And if you'd like to support the children directly, South Central Ohio Job and Family Services has been collecting those donations since this story broke. I'm Lyndon Blake, and you've been listening to that's so Criminal at Sock Talk.
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