Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 16 Kids Rescued From Ohio House of Horrors: Sheriff

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Sheriff's deputies and state agents found 16 children in a rural Ohio home on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, as they executed a search warrant. The Vinton County Sheriff and the state's Attorney General said the conditions in the home resembled something from a third-world country and one of the children was near death. Gary Siders, Sr., Christina Siders, Gary Siders, Jr. and Elizabeth Siders all face 17 counts of child endangering. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes through the disturbing case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest: Mark Weaver https://x.com/MarkRWeaverCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Most of our livestock was kept in better conditions than the children. 16 children hidden away in a rural Ohio home, a teenager who, according to investigators, couldn't even spell her own name and a smell so bad, the attorney general says he still can't shake it. It was just a disgusting scene. And now the adults who were supposed to be caring for these children are behind bars. This is pure evil, what we saw down here. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. You know, just when you think that you've heard it all, another case comes to light that makes you do a double take. And this story out of Ohio, it's one of those cases. It involves 16 children who were living in conditions that were so filthy and so deplorable, according to the sheriff, that most animals live better. In fact, the children had been living in the small home for some time. And the sheriff said, neighbor, had no idea that children live there. Imagine that. A home with 16 children living in it,

and the neighbors had no clue. The county prosecutor says one of the kids is actually 18, an adult, but developmentally, she's a child. She couldn't even spell her own name. And some of the children were in such bad shape that they had to be flown by medical helicopter to a level one trauma center. Unbelievable. That's what Deppie. in Vinton County, Ohio, about 75 miles south of Columbus, found this week. Vinton is a rural county. Fewer than 13,000 people live there. Vinton County Sheriff said that deputies and state agents discovered the children on Tuesday, June 30th, while conducting another investigation. Here's Sheriff Ryan Kane.

All right. Today on June 30th, the Vinton County Sheriff's Office, along with the Ohio Bureau investigation executed and is still continuing to investigate Omar Street in Handen, Ohio. Upon search in the home, evidence of other crimes were discovered. It's currently an ongoing investigation, and my office is still processing the scene and conducting interviews. My message to the community is that there is no outstanding threat. These are serious crimes and allegations that will be investigated fully. Our mission is to protect our citizens and our children. The scene is horrific, and these are horrific allegations.

We will do anything in our power to hold those accountable to justice. I want to thank Ohio BCI, the Ohio Attorney General's office, for working with us in this incident. The Hamden Fire Department, Vent County EMS, Jackson County EMS, Jackson County Sheriff's Office, the Ohio Department of Watercraft and Parks, Ohio Wildlife, for assisting us today. So the children were discovered because a search warrant was being executed on the home on Omer Street, related to another investigation. But the sheriff won't comment on what that investigation involved. I want to stress that our focus right now is on the safety of the children.

These kids are being evaluated medically and we're trying to get them placed and that is our primary concern right at this point. I also want to stress this is not conduct that is acceptable in Vinton County. These individuals were not from Vinton County. This is not appropriate and certainly is not reflective of the Vitton County values. The children were removed from the small house in the village of Haineston County. Hamden. They ranged an age from one and a half to 18 years old. Ohio's Attorney General says some of the children were in really, really bad shape. Here's AG Andy Wilson.

Agents from Ohio BCI participated in the search warrant this morning with deputies from the Benton County Sheriff's Office. And when they went into that residence, 16 children were removed from that residence. And I've been doing these types of cases for a long time. I spent a big portion of my career dedicated to prosecuting these types of cases. And I can tell you, this is pure evil. What we saw down here today is pure evil. And I have to commend the deputies from the Benton County Sheriff's Office and our agents from Ohio BCI and I who went into really kind of one of the worst environments that I've seen in my career and were there for those children in their time of need. Those children are currently being treated at hospitals throughout the

state, and this is, as you heard, an ongoing investigation. I'll get into more of what law enforcement says they found in the house shortly. Four adults lived in that house, the parents of the children and the grandparents. The parents of some of the children are believed to be Elizabeth Siders and Gary Siders Jr. The grandparents are believed to be Gary Siders Senior and Christina Siders. All four face 17 felony counts of child endangering. And more charges could be coming because this is just the beginning. The investigation is continuing. The sheriff says the house was beyond filthy. I'm saying livestock live. Mostly kept better.

As I was saying, most of our livestock was kept in better conditions than the children. It was extremely high presence, I'm sure, bacteria and human feces. It was just a disgusting scene. Can I ask me, what did you feel like walking through there? Not necessarily what it looked like in the description. So it was disgusting even where the kids were. I would think it's typical. Most law enforcement have experience with homes in a similar fashion.

A large number of people, though, the children were kept in a roughly 12-12 area that it seems like is where they've spent the most of the last four years. And that's what it looks like. In a weird way, you're hit with most two emotions. There is joy when we realize that we're about to change 16 lies for the better. But you're also, it's hard. So the kids, the sheriff says, were kept in a 12 by 12 room, and there was feces all over the place.

The children were kept in absolute squalor. The Attorney General says the children were essentially hidden. I will tell you this, you know, there isn't much evidence that kids live there. As we talk to some of the neighbors, we talked to some people from the neighborhood. These people have been here for about four years, and you talked to some people who live in the neighborhood, he said, I had no idea that kids were people. And talking about, somebody asked about, to describe the conditions, added on to what the sheriff said.

I didn't actually go into the room where the kids were I just looked through the door. That was yesterday. I can still smell. I can't get the smell. I cannot get the smell off of me or away from me right now. We were just talking about that a little while ago. And then we were talking as a group about some of the evidence we looked at today where they actually discovered the kids and found the kids.

And it really, it's not that different than those old commercials you see of kids in Africa. just where they're covered in bugs and squatting and had that distant look in their eyes, it's terrible. I mean, it is absolutely terrible. And again, we've got to make sure the kids are safe. We've got to make sure they're placed in good, solid therapeutic placements. And we have to hold accountable the people who are willing to do this to their own family. The four-siders family members appeared in Vinton County Court on those 17 child-endangering charges.

The AG says the first. family has moved around a lot. They've been in Gallia, Jackson, and Pike counties, and even Wisconsin at one point, but they've been in Vinton County for at least the last four years. Back in 2021, the Pike County Sheriff posted on Facebook about Gary Siders Jr. The sheriff said he was requesting warrants for Siders Jr. for felony theft and receiving stolen property because items stolen from a construction site had been recovered from the home where he lived. But the children haven't been to school. enforcement says there are no medical or school records for them, and they're still looking into all of that. So I could think of no one better to take a look at this case and analyze it for us than Mark Weaver. He works as a special prosecutor in the state of Ohio, sometimes sits as a judge, and he has worked cases down in the area where this happened. He's also the author of a new book entitled God Bless America, 250 years strong. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. But first, Mark, your reaction to this case.

I'm shocked by it. Every time I think I can't be shocked, I'm shocked, I'm shocked because I can't imagine 16 children ranging an age from one and a half to 18 living in a house and nobody knows. Yeah. You're right. I have prosecuted cases, not in that county, but in counties surrounding that. This is Southern Ohio. This is Appalachia.

That doesn't excuse anything. It's just explanatory. Families with that many children in Appalachia is already pretty unusual. You don't see families with 7, 8, 9, 10 or more children typically in Appalachia. And then if you do, you certainly wouldn't see them confined in such a small room or such a small house. This is one of the smallest counties in Ohio, Vinton County, one of the poorest counties in Ohio, Vinton County. one of the poorest counties in Ohio. It came as no surprise to me that the Vinty County prosecutor

is partnering with the Ohio Attorney General Office where I used to work as the Deputy Attorney General because there's many more resources available, both through the state's Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which is the premier unit of investigators in the state and through the special prosecution section of the Attorney General's office. So normally a small town process,

prosecutor's office like Vinton would have three or four prosecutors who do felony cases at most. So they're going to need the help of the Attorney General's office to bring this significant case with lots of evidence and lots of troubling details. Let's break this down a little bit because it's beyond troubling. The entire reason that they discovered this, the children, and the Attorney General Andy Wilson described this as something like out of a third word. world country. He described it like those old commercials you'd see, and sometimes you still see them,

where you had the starving children in Africa, and you've got the kids with, you know, and you've got these poor starving children in their eyes, you know, they're staring kind of into the camera and the flies are flying around, that kind of thing. The sheriff said they walk in, there's a 12 by 12 room, and there's feces, and I mean, it sounds, I mean, just beyond disgusting what they described. But they were doing a search warrant on another, investigation. They were investigating another crime and they won't say what it was. And they go in and they find a 12 by 12 room, they say, with kids. And one of them, they say, is near death.

Yes. I was talking to Attorney General Wilson last week on another matter. I had no idea this would come up. But I'm glad he's there. Andy Wilson is an experienced prosecutor. And he's been appointed as our Attorney General in the interim because the one who was elected. resigned to take another job. So he's our short-term Attorney General, but he really is well-suited to handle this case, and I'm glad that he showed it such a high priority. We do need to know more facts. I expect the defense lawyers for these people who've been charged will ask for a bill of particulars,

which is a more detailed description of the crimes being alleged. I've read the indictments. They're rather pro forma, meaning they're simply saying the required, elements of the statute, child endangerment, which is a second-degree felony in this case. So we're not getting a lot of insight from the records that have been released so far. Yeah, we're getting nothing. We're getting nothing except it's literally like the bare bones complaint that they gave us. We have no like info other than what they've told us. And I think part of that is because they were caught by surprise when they went in there. They're looking for,

they're looking for X and they find A through, you know, L or whatever. You know, they find 16 kids when they go in there and they're looking for whatever else they were looking for in the first place. And, you know, they find feces, a floor falling apart, 16 kids, one or two of them in really bad shape. Now they have to find homes for these 16 kids. And the big question is, Mark, who is the mother of some of these children? and the 18-year-old, you know, they said, couldn't even spell her name, hadn't been to, been to school. And they said that this 18-year-old, which is, this is so sad, it's so stunning to me. I'm highly doubting that Elizabeth Ciders is the mother of this 18-year-old since she's, I think, 33.

And there's no way she had 16 children in that time span. We were just talking about that before we came on here. So where did this child come from? And they're calling her a child. They're charging child endangering because they said basically, she can't even spell her name. So basically she's 18, but she developmentally is a child. Sure.

And certainly she was endangered or abused at age 14, 15, 16, 17, all of which would be within the statute of limitations for a crime like this. Prosecutors are going to have to talk to these kids. it's unclear which ones can give a coherent account of who did what or who didn't provide food or the basic sustenance that every parent or guardian is required to provide a child. So a couple things are going to happen during this investigation are probably happening right now. Number one, every one of these kids, once their medical needs are attended to, is going to be interviewed to get as much information as they can about this level of abuse or neglect.

And then once the prosecutors identify the least culpable, the least responsible adult who's charged, they will work to flip that person to testify against the other ones. So the person with the least culpability would get the shortest amount of prison time and they will use that testimony to convict the other people. And we don't know who that is at this point in time. There's no way of knowing. And the kids are going to be the key to this. But once again, we don't have insight into how verbal they are or how aware.

where they are. Severe malnutrition affects not just your body but also your brain and your memory. And so I'm sure defense lawyers will be interested in eventually cross-examining these kids to show that perhaps they don't remember things well. So it's a bit of a challenge with respect to who the witnesses will be to say what did or didn't happen. Having said that, there's a civil Latin phrase in the law called raciopsiloquiter. the thing speaks for itself. You don't need a lot of evidence to show that kids in your care who are this poorly treated or whose conditions are so bad is the responsibility of the adults in the house. What I want to break down here a little bit, and this is just me from a high up looking down kind of view,

but there's a report out there that Elizabeth Siders, the wife of Gary Jr., that she used to go to this baby pantry, you know, where if you are a person in need and can't afford stuff, you go there and you can get diapers and formula and stuff like that, and that she would come in and she was kind of, like she would come in once a week. You were allowed to come in once a week, but that she would sometimes try to come more than once a week. and that Gary Jr., this is what the report says, that he would wait out in the car or the truck or whatever, and she'd come in and she seemed kind of anxious and stuff like that, and she'd come in and get what she needed, and then she'd leave.

So Elizabeth is the newest member of this family, the Cider's family. The grandparents, Christina, and Gary Sr., they are obviously the matriarch and patriarch, patriarch of this family. Gary Jr. is their child. So they've been together the longest. And then somehow at some point, Elizabeth is brought into the fray. And so I think we're left to deduce that these children are somehow like a part of the initial threesome of Gary, Senior, Gary Jr. and Christina, you know, the older children. And we have Elizabeth coming into this. And then there's another report talking about how Elizabeth's mother has been posting

on Facebook. Like, I can't wait to see my daughter again. Happy birthday. Like, you know, I hope to see her again soon and stuff like that. And there's a picture of her that we need to verify, but she had blonde hair. Now she's got this dark black hair. So is it possible that she is somewhat of a victim in all of this, too? Could be. Could be. I want to give viewers, context around this region. It's a poor area, but there is plenty of social safety net for families to eat and take care of their children. There are welfare benefits.

They're SNAP. There are local churches that have food pantries. There are a lot of good Christian and hardworking people in those counties who will help other people in need. So this is not like we saw in the 1960s when President LBJ started his war against poverty. in Appalachia because there were simply no resources. There are resources there. Having said that, there's also an opioid scourge that continues.

There's a methamphetamine scourge that continues. So many of the cases I've prosecuted or worked on in Appalachia touch against drug addiction and generational drug addiction. I would not be surprised if we learn that some of the parents of these children are no longer parenting or on the scene because of drug addiction. And that's something interesting that you bring up too. I noticed some redness around the eyes and the mugshots and stuff like that. I wonder if we will learn that drug abuse addiction is a part of this story.

We're just talking here. We don't know that for certain, but it could be a piece of this puzzle. And you're right. There are programs out there. These people could have easily registered for welfare benefits. SNAP benefits, all of those things could have been done to get nourishment, good food for these children so that they could be fed and housed more properly. 16 kids, you've got some explaining to do, though.

If you've got 16 kids, you've got some explaining to do to the government about why you got 16 kids. So one thing I find interesting about this too, Mark, so sad but interesting. is the fact that, I mean, you're keeping these kids apparently indoors. Endors, I guess, for four years. This is a, you know, it's not like a subdivision where you've got kids running around on bikes and stuff like that. It's by a railroad track and, you know, there's some brush and stuff like that. But there are neighbors.

But the neighbors didn't see the kids. Like, I don't even understand how that's possible. Like, as you said, the kids are going to be the key. Yeah, keeping children indoors in itself. for a long period of time is neglect and endangerment, because we all know children need fresh air, they need vitamin D. They also need to go to school,

whether it's the public school or the local Christian or charter school or even homeschooled by an appropriate parent or adult who's willing to take on that responsibility. But every adult in that house, once they've allowed children in, has now a legal obligation to look out for the interest of that child.

The law is not that only parent, parents are responsible for children. But any functioning adult who's the head of the household, you mentioned the matriarch and the patriarch, or a responsible adult who's looking out for children, you're bringing on to yourself a higher obligation that a stranger would not have to look out for the welfare of these children. And these charges that are currently being brought,

I wouldn't be surprised if these charges get amended and added to, or all second-degree felonies, each one of which could serve eight to 12 years in prison potentially consecutively. So these adults, whatever their relationship are to these children, are criminally liable for what happens to these children. And these are very serious crimes and could result in decades and decades in prison. And that was going to be my next question to you. I'm glad you brought that up about whether you believe more charges will be added because, this is just an initial complaint, an initial document that they filed, basically after they find these kids in this house. It's horrific. You know, I went to summer camp in Benton County back when I was like a kid. Like, I don't remember how old I was. But I went to summer camp there. It's a beautiful area. I bet you had a great time. What was this beautiful country there? Yeah, it's very beautiful, very beautiful. But as you mentioned, yeah, very poor. It's the least populous state.

or county, rather, in the state of Ohio. And so, but there still are resources. There are resources to help people down there. So, Mark, you have a new book out. Talk to me about God bless America. 250 years strong. It's a children's book about America's birthday. We all know it's coming up, and I anticipated that.

So I wrote a book for ages 5 to 11. It's wonderfully illustrated by Dan McKenzie. I can't take responsibility for the wonderful image, but I did write it. And it tells America's story, including some of the legal stories that you and I talk about on law and crime, and walks children through each of the moments of the high parts of American history, reminding them how special our country is. And so it's been selling very well on Amazon. We've been very pleased.

It's called God Bless America, 250 years strong. Well, people should check it out. America's birthday is here. It's 250th birthday, and the kids need to know all about the history of our country. So Mark Weaver, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. We will keep a close eye on this case because it's horrific, and those kids deserve justice, and I hope now they're being well taken care of. Yeah, thanks for bringing this delight. Good talk to N'Jennette. Now, the Forsyiders family members are being held in jail. A judge set their bail at $300,000, $300,000. each and more charges could be coming. So we'll keep a close eye on this case and let you know what happens. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for

being with me. I'll see you back here next time.