US4 min(s) read
Published 15:57 10 Jul 2026 GMT
An Ohio native has revealed some of the signs she missed as a Dollar General clerk when Gary Siders Jr and Elizabeth Siders visited the store.
While they were gathering supplies, there were 16 children left behind in a feces-filled rural home, which has been coined the 'house of horrors' case, before being found in conditions similar to the "third world."
Aged between 18 months and 18 years old, the kids were discovered by the Vinton County Sheriff's Office in Ohio on June 30.
Since then, more details have emerged, as children were described as being "kept in worse conditions than livestock”.
Authorities found the kids in a 12-by-12 room which was crumbling, with the children appearing to have suffered “serious physical harm.”
Four family members, believed to be the children's parents and grandparents, Gary Siders Jr, 36, Elizabeth Siders, 33, Gary Siders Sr, 73, and Christina Siders, 77, have since been arrested and charged with 16 counts of second-degree felony child endangerment.
Now, a store clerk named Ariel Gutierrez has spoken about what she noticed in interactions with the family.
Ariel appeared on the Criminally Obsessed YouTube channel, claiming that "nobody knew" about the truth behind the Siders family.
The mom-of-six spoke about interacting with the family for almost two years, with the family often visiting the store late at night, before closing.
She revealed: "They would come in and buy these two main items. It was a jug of water and oil, but it wasn't a big bottle; it was the little kind.
"Occasionally there would be sugar, other items, and once in a blue moon, not all the time, it would be diapers, but I didn't think anything of it," she admitted.
Ariel also revealed that some employees helped them buy hygiene products and clothes out of their own pockets, but the items appeared unused.
She said that the family only lived a few blocks away, and that she rarely saw children with them when they were out.
Ariel noticed that Gary Sr and Christina were clean and appeared "separate" to Elizabeth and Gary Jr, leading her to believe that they weren't connected.
"I did see the kids twice in two years and when I saw them in the store, they mimicked their mother. So, they looked pale, they were very thin, they had hair over their head," she recalled.
"Honestly, I thought they were visiting because I never saw them with kids. So when I saw them twice, I didn't know they had 16 kids, period."
The kids would avoid eye contact and communicate mostly through pointing or nodding, with it looking like Elizabeth controlled their actions.
Looking back, she said that the warning signs were there: the children’s condition, Elizabeth’s appearance, and Gary Jr.’s controlling behavior, such as guiding his partner by the elbow around the store.
The clerk went on, admitting that while she didn't feel fear from Elizabeth, there was the sense that speaking up would cause problems.
Despite missing out on the signs herself, Ariel said she struggled to understand how others nearby had not noticed the family’s odd behavior.
Looking back, she wondered how the family's purchases kept them nourished, especially their consistent purchases of oil and not much else.
She explained that she has come forward so the children know that someone had seen them, and wishes that she had spoken out at the time, though she did not fully understand the situation.
Ariel concluded by saying that the experience has fully changed how she will respond to similar situations in the future, where she can sense something is wrong.
Investigators said that the crime was an "intrafamily" case, suggesting that some of the children in the house may have come from sexual relations within the family.
On June 30, officers executed a search warrant at the home as part of an unrelated criminal investigation.
Newly released images obtained by The New York Post show the property's basement almost completely overtaken by junk, with only a dining chair and a bicycle wheel seen among the piles of trash.
Outside, there is more garbage surrounding the five-bedroom, one-bathroom house.
Only a handful of children's belongings, including a broken bicycle and a copy of the children's book Jonathan James and the Whatif Monster, hint that children allegedly lived there.
Two neglected cars parked outside the property were also filled with cigarette butts, food wrappers, and other garbage.
