“Bolted Restraints Found in Bidwell Trailer”:THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN THE EVIDENCE COULD BRING THE CASE TO A PERMANENT END, WITH AN UNEXPECTEDLY HIGH COST.

“Bolted Restraints Found in Bidwell Trailer”:THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN THE EVIDENCE COULD BRING THE CASE TO A PERMANENT END, WITH AN UNEXPECTEDLY HIGH COST.

Gentlemen, I’ve come to ask for some help. >> The case is uh great getting a lot of attention. >> The hidden kids of Boomer. >> That is what this is all about is they they are hiding these kids. >> A major update on the 16 Siders children. >> 456. Former residents of the Siders family from 2017 to 2018.

 [music] Condition noted by Gallia County building inspector. Unfit for human habitation. Extensive biological contamination throughout. That’s the official language. What it describes is a structure where human waste was so embedded in the floorboards that the remediation [music] crew had to remove the subfloor down to the joists.

 And yet, the family who lived there simply packed a truck, moved one county north, and started again. [music] Picture a child’s handprint. Not painted on paper, but fossilized in filth on a closet wall. That handprint remained there for 3 years after the Siders left. [music] Like a museum exhibit sealed under a layer of fresh paint by a flipper who had no idea what he was covering.

That single image should frame everything you’re about to hear. >> We have a major update on the 16 Siders children that law enforcement found inside that home on Omer Street in Vinton County more than 3 weeks ago. Vinton County’s prosecutor, William Archer, has actually given an update on the status of the children.

 And from the information Archer provided to county commissioners, it sounds like the Siders family may never be reunited with their children. I’ll get to that very shortly. This update comes as questions remain about the physical and emotional condition of the children. That is information we just don’t have at this time.

 We know that all of the children are out of the hospital and in therapeutic foster care. I’ll get to what prosecutor Archer said in this update to county commissioners shortly, and how the investigation into the family and the children is growing. The parents of the children, Gary Siders Jr. and Elizabeth Siders, and their grandparents, Gary Siders Sr.

 and Christina Siders, all face child endangering charges. They’ve pleaded not guilty. Gary Jr., Elizabeth, and Christina all remain in the Southeast Ohio Regional Jail. Only Gary Senior has been released from jail. He’s receiving treatment for a serious medical condition. We’re going to go through the new information that we’ve learned and we’re going to look at why Gary Ciders Jr.

‘s attorney asked for a continuance in his public indecency case. Gary Jr. is accused of exposing himself to someone who wasn’t his family at the house on Omer Street four times between May 23rd and May 31st. He was scheduled to appear in court this week, but Junior’s lawyer asked that the hearing be continued. Former Ohio prosecutor Mark Pittman will join me very shortly to discuss that request for a continuance, his thoughts on the case, and what is likely going on behind the scenes in this investigation.

Before we go deeper into what the documents actually [music] show, make sure you’re subscribed to Real Court Case Verdict because we don’t just cover the story, we follow the evidence. But first, let’s talk about the houses where the Siders lived before they made the move from Gallia County to Vinton County 2021.

 From the records we’ve gathered, it appears the Siders moved from Gallia to Vinton in 2020 or 2021. Birth records show that Gary and Elizabeth Siders lived at five different addresses beginning in 2015 when the first child was born. The last known address for Gary, Elizabeth, and their children was in Cheshire. The house sits on Honeysuckle Drive.

 A neighbor who did not want to appear on camera told us he remembers the family. He said he thought there were nine children. This would have been in 2020 or 2021. The neighbor said the family kept themselves and while he saw children outside at times, mostly they just stayed in the house. A woman who works nearby told us the house was absolutely trashed by the Siders.

She knows the man who owns it. And we previously told you that the man who rehabbed the house told ABC 6 in Columbus that the house was full of urine and pet and human feces. The man also said the attic was full of children’s clothing as if someone was living in it. The woman who works nearby told us that Gary Jr.

 actually used to come into the store where she works to buy scratch-offs. She said Gary Jr. didn’t buy anything else but scratch-off lottery tickets, and he tipped her 10 bucks one time. Another house where the Siders lived was on Garfield Avenue in Gallipolis. Records show the Siders lived in that home in 2019, possibly for a brief time before moving to the home in Cheshire that we already showed to you.

Another family already appears to live here. The Siders had a third address in Gallipolis. The family lived here in 2008, according to records. This is where they lived when Elizabeth gave birth to the couple’s first child. That was obviously a very long time ago, so the property may look different than it did then, but the home is surrounded by other mobile homes.

 And finally, the Siders lived at a property on Poplar Church Road in Bidwell. The family lived here for several years, from at least 2009 to 2014. Gary Jr. and Elizabeth moved to Vinton County and lived in this home in Hamden for some period of time. Then they made the move to the house on Omer Street where the search warrant >> This newly confirmed property on Poplar Church Road in Bidwell isn’t the house where the 16 children [music] were found in Vinton County.

 It’s the fifth address now linked to Gary C. Siders Jr. and Elizabeth Siders, a waypoint in a deliberate decade-long rotation designed to keep these kids invisible. Public tax records show the couple purchased the trailer in 2009 for $18,000, sold it in 2014 for 900, [music] and left behind what a neighbor later called a smell you could taste from the road.

 The county never issued a condemnation notice until after the sale. The system processed the transaction [music] and moved on. The pattern was the alibi. Here’s the irony explosion buried in this paperwork. The real estate listing from 2014 described the property as a handyman special with plenty of potential.

 Meanwhile, the volunteer who later cleaned it out told the Gallipolis [music] Daily Tribune that they filled three dumpsters with children’s clothing, soiled mattresses, and [music] animal crates packed with feces. The gap between the public record and the lived reality is the whole story. This family didn’t just hide their children, they hid the evidence of hiding them inside transactions that looked ordinary to every institution that glanced their way.

 [music] Now, the parallel narrative unfolds. We already knew about the house on Garfield Avenue in 2019, the rental on Honeysuckle Drive in Cheshire where a rehaver found the attic stuffed with small garments as if [music] someone had been sleeping there. >> kind of moving around. I mean, the the allegation here is that these people just were not sending their kids to school.

 I mean, we have at least four prior addresses that we’ve visited in Gallia County. And the one house that they lived in before they moved to Vinton, it was trashed, we were told. Like absolutely trashed. Human feces, pet feces, urine, kids clothes in the attic. I mean, uh what on earth? Have you ever seen anything like that, Mark? >> No, I have not.

 And I’ve, you know, I I prosecuted for 44 years. I did specials in a lot of counties across the state. Um I’ve seen bad things, but no, I personally have never been involved in a case involving kids except a sex a a big >> And the Hampton mobile home they abandoned for the Omar Street address in Vinton County.

 [music] But the Bidwell trailer closes a chronological gap. Birth records show four children were born while the family lived at that address. Yet no pediatrician visits exist in any Ohio Medicaid database for those years. No school enrollment records, [music] no well child checks. They were born and then they simply did not exist on paper again until a search warrant [music] was executed on June 30th of last year.

>> Uh what what reason would anybody have to keep their kids out of school? I mean, it there there’s been some rumors and talk that maybe they were homeschooled, but you have to register with the state if you’re homeschooling kids. You can’t just like keep them home and say, “We’re keeping them home and we’re just going to do it ourselves.

” I mean, there there’s a process there. >> Yes, to me, if you’re not sending your kids to school and you’re not homeschooling them, you don’t want the people at the school to see these kids. And if if a kid is physically or emotionally or mentally somehow abused, people are going to pick up on that real quick at school.

 The classmates are going to go home and tell their parents, you know, so-and-so came to school today and either she told me this or I noticed this about her and word’s going to get out. So, I think that would be the main factor. These parents don’t want people to realize what’s going on in the house. >> You can’t miss what was never registered. The pattern was the alibi.

Prosecutor William Archer’s request for permanent custody of all [music] 16 children made during the July 14th Commissioner’s meeting. Take a listen. >> I’m making a request for a separate line item for the Snyder’s case. Um I’m asking for 20,000. If we don’t spend it, it’ll go right back to you guys, but I’m going to have overtime and things that I’m going to have to A case of this magnitude is not an easy thing to do and I can’t ask Annika’s staff to do work and the AG’s office is providing some assistance, but they’ve got their

own case lines as well. And just so you know, this is not just about the criminal case. There’s also the children services case, which we will be asking for permanent custody of all 16 kids. So, we’ve got that case and related cases that started all of this that’s going to be involved as well. Um and then uh we may do something about the house and the people who are trespassing into the house.

 So, it really has got a life [clears throat] of its own and so um I’m asking the county’s commitment to help me with that. >> Now reads like a confirmation of what those walls contain. The prosecutor in Benton County, William Archer, um he briefed the county commissioners on this case recently and he said that the case is expanding.

 So So this case it’s it’s not getting smaller. They’re They’re apparently finding out more and he said that the county is seeking permanent custody of those children. So what does that tell you? I mean if you’re seeking permanent custody that and that is granted through a dependency action, those people are never getting those kids back.

>> Yeah. No. And it sounds like and again I had a similar case in Hamilton County. The Crafts, Robert and I forget the dad’s name but that we both went to trial on both of them. They were sexually abusing their kids and putting it over the internet. And those kids Hamilton County got permanent custody of those because there’s no way they were ever going to give them back and in fact the parents will both die in prison because of the sentences they got.

 So it’s a very unique situation to seek permanent custody because the main goal of Children Protective Services is to reunite the kids with the parents. But if a situation is that bad that you should never do it and to do it that quick it tells me it had to be a horrible situation. >> “We’re asking for permanent custody because reunification is not the goal.

” [music] He told the board his voice flat as if he was reading a budget line item. He needed $20,000 to handle a case that he said had taken [music] on a life of its own. But the real hard evidence sits in a supplemental filing from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation stamped August [music] 8th which lists the Bidwell trailer as a crime scene for potential felony child endangerment charges.

 That document confirms [music] forensic teams recovered DNA from what appeared to be a makeshift confinement area. A locked section of the trailer’s back bedroom with restraints bolted to the floor. >> Yeah. I I It’s just unbelievable to me that you’d have 16 kids and it doesn’t seem that they all have bedrooms or share bedrooms because they’re in this house that’s 13 to 1500 square feet.

They don’t have I’m assuming they don’t have 16 beds in that house. Um so, how they were actually living is just beyond me and we’ll find out more information about that in the future. What do you think is going on with this investigation right now? There’s been talk about downloading electronic devices.

 There’s been talk about a computer crime section with the AG’s office being involved in this case. And plus, you know, the interviews interviews of many family members. >> I think number one, they’re doing physical and mental examinations of the kids, just trying to see how seriously they were abused. If they are doing computer searches on them, then that tells me again, just from my experience, I know you said it, too.

 We don’t know what what is out there, but the only reason you would be doing that, in my experience, is looking for some kind of either sex videos that they’re downloading and sharing with the kids, or maybe sex videos that they’re producing with the kids. And again, I’ve had cases like that before where the the parents are physically having sex with two and three and four-year-old kids and then posting that online and sharing it with other people who will share their similar videos with them.

And those kids are ruined for life that are put through that. I mean, again, just from my experience, it’s hard to recover from that kind of abuse. And you’re going to turn out to be that kind of abuser in the future. Again, from my experience, that if that’s how you’re brought up, if that’s what you’re taught, that’s going to be your life.

>> When a family can erase children from every database, crossing county lines like a ghost, the question stops being just about one horrific house. It becomes a national security question of how many invisible properties are out there right now hiding what while the wheels of bureaucracy turn so slowly that a handprint can dry into [music] a permanent stain before anyone knocks on the door.

 Here’s where we land with the permanent custody motion. The state is now moving [music] to sever parental rights forever, which means the evidence from Bidwell, Cheshire, Garfield, Hampton, and Omar Street collectively paints a picture of systematic [music] deprivation that a judge will have to confront. >> But, we’re very early on in this.

 We’re We’re just a little more than 3 weeks in. And they’re saying, “We’re seeking permanent custody.” >> Well, that tells me that these kids must be permanently damaged. I I And I have had situations like that where even though they’re young kids, you can tell they’re never never going to recover from the abuse they’ve been going through, emotional, physical, sexual, whatever it is.

 And I don’t care what these parents do in the future, there’s no way we can in good conscience ever let these kids go back with those I’ll call them animals that were raising them. So, it’s got to be pretty bad right out of the gate. Yeah. >> The parents have pleaded not guilty to child endangerment, but these properties tell a story no opening statement [music] can erase.

 The pattern was the alibi. >> I could see one thing is uh if he pleads him guilty, I mean, there’s got there’s evidence that could be used against him in the future on other crimes. And a public indecency is a you know, a weird charge. The fact that people are outside exposing themselves, and if there’s some kind of sex offenses coming down the road, uh that you wouldn’t want to have your client already admit to a sex offense, and then they can bring that up in the other case. That’s one possible thing.

 The other thing is just it’s a small county. I’m sure everybody’s following this case. And again, if he would go to court on this case, it’s going to keep him in the mind of the public, and they’re going to remember that down the road if there’s more serious charges that he has to go to trial on.

 So, I can see him not wanting to do anything on the case until he knows everything that he’s facing. >> Uh you know, it’s so interesting to me that out of nowhere, it seems, we have this investigation into this family, and they won’t tell us what the initial search warrant was for that they they went there for, but they they said it wasn’t related to these 16 children.

They were shocked when they went in there, but obviously, somebody reported and we don’t know who it is. Somebody reported that Gary Jr. was exposing himself at the home address on four different occasions in the last week of May. So, in my my mind, I’m like, well, what took so long? Cuz that’s a pretty unless somebody there was a lag in reporting it.

 What What do you think could be behind that? >> Uh again, it’s it’s a smaller county. It’s got a smaller police department. Um that’s a weird charge, but maybe they had bigger things they had to take care of at the time, or maybe it’s a situation where it’s my understanding the kids had not been going to school. You know, that’s one thing they have to look at.

 Now, you’ve got the dad exposing themselves, and maybe somebody decided, you know, there’s probably more there than we’re seeing. So, maybe that’s why they geared up. They got in BCI. They got the attorney general involved. And um probably did a good job on the search warrant. So, when they went in there, they could get everything.

>> Now, the unanswered question, how many more [music] properties harbored these children before 2009? Gary Jr. and Elizabeth were married when she was 15. Their first child arrived shortly after. Elizabeth married Gary Jr. when she was 15. Um so, she was pregnant right as she turned 15 or while she was maybe around 14 years old.

 Uh you know, they they go to West Virginia to get married. We’ve heard different stories about her demanding to do this and and other things. I mean, either way, the parents had her parents had to sign off on this. You know, there’s been so much talk about this. Um out that way, we’ve heard from a lot of people who get married who had been married or got married at age 15, which is just stuns me.

 Um, what are your thoughts on that? >> It’s just a different society. Again, I’m, you know, I was 21 when my wife and I we got married, so that nowadays that almost seems young, but to be 15 years old and actually being carrying kids and getting married, uh, it would take a rare individual to me to be able to do that and then grow into normal adulthood.

 I mean, I’m sure there are some that do, but that’s a just a subsection of society that it’s it still exists. >> Did the cycle begin in a rental we haven’t [music] found yet? Maybe in West Virginia where the marriage license was issued. The Ohio Attorney General’s office confirmed they are examining [music] out-of-state records, but no subpoenas have been made public.

>> And that is so incredibly awful and I hope to God we don’t find out that that’s what’s happened here, but you know, we have to wait and see what the investigation reveals. You know, this case is going to go it to a grand jury. The Vinton County prosecutor said that they were trying to get it to the grand jury.

 They only have grand jury every like month and a half out there in Vinton County. It’s not like a bigger city where or bigger county where they have it every day. That could be an ongoing process though, because often these grand juries are used to issue subpoenas and investigate cases. >> Here’s your call to research.

 The property transfer affidavit [music] for 887 Poplar Church Road, Bidwell, Ohio is a public document accessible through the Gallia County Auditor’s website. Go find it. Look [music] at the date of sale and then cross-reference that with the earliest known CPS contact in Gallia County.

 The one that multiple sources confirmed occurred before the family fled to Vinton County. Then answer this question in the comments. How many [music] months did this family have to pack up and disappear before any agency followed up? Because the timeline is the indictment of the system itself. If you believe sunlight is the best disinfectant, [music] like this video, share it with someone who needs to see how the machinery of neglect operates.

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