Ohio man who was living in squalor with his 16 grandchildren declared mentally incompetent to stand trial

A man whose 16 grandchildren were discovered living in squalid conditions at a rural southern Ohio home in late June was found mentally incompetent to stand trial Wednesday.

A judge in Vinton County accepted the findings of an evaluation report for Gary Siders Sr., and Vinton County Prosecutor William Archer did not object to the findings.

The 73-year-old Siders appeared in court in a wheelchair. His attorney, Dorian Baum, said after the hearing that Siders’ mental health has been declining for years and is “not restorable.”

“It’s not really a surprise to any of us that he’s not been found competent at this point,” Baum said. “He doesn’t fully understand or appreciate what’s going on.”

Siders was charged with 16 counts of child endangerment related to the children, who were rescued June 30 from a home in Hamden about 80 miles south of Columbus.

Siders’ wife, Christina Siders; son, Gary Siders Jr., and daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Siders, the children’s mother, have pleaded not guilty.

Authorities found the children on June 30 while carrying out a search warrant in an unrelated investigation. Investigators said the children remained mostly confined to a small room in the house under deplorable conditions. The children weren’t enrolled in school, the family moved around over the past two decades, and neighbors said they’d never spotted the kids.

At the time they were found, the children ranged in age from 18 months to 18 years, with some described as “feral” and unable to speak. Authorities said their medical conditions varied.

“Most of our livestock was kept in better conditions than the children,” Vinton County Sheriff Ryan Cain said in a July 2 news conference. “It was [an] extremely high presence, I’m sure, of bacterial and human feces; it was just a disgusting scene.”

“They looked like almost feral animals, it was terrible,” Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson said at the time, adding that the 18-year-old who was found in the home was unable to spell her own name.

“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 that are willing to do this to their own family,” Wilson said. 

Wilson also said in the news conference that the suspects “were pretty adept at keeping these kids out of sight and out of investigators’ eyes.”

The eldest was born in May 2008, two months after Gary Siders Jr., then 18, and Elizabeth, then 15, crossed into West Virginia to marry at the Mason County Courthouse with her parents’ consent, according to court records. She has been pregnant most years since then, the records show.