'House of Horrors' parents mysteriously VANISHED after shocking complaint: Unseen files reveal alarming new details... as neighbor tells of what she found in family's attic

Published: 17:17, 16 July 2026 | Updated: 17:17, 16 July 2026 Six of the siblings who were rescued from the Ohio 'House of Horrors' mysteriously stopped showing up to school years before they were found living in putrid squalor – but nothing was ever done about it, the Daily Mail can reveal. Gary Siders Jr, 36, and his wife Elizabeth, 33, were hit with a flurry of complaints back in 2021 after a handful of their 16 kids were labelled 'habitual truants' for routinely missing classes at their local elementary school in Cheshire, Gallia County, court documents show. Despite the glaring absences, the parents managed to dodge being reprimanded because authorities couldn't ever track the family down, according to the filings lodged in the county's juvenile court. The six kids – then aged between seven and 13 years old – were supposed to attend Addaville Elementary, a school of some 300 children just a five-minute drive from the three-bedroom home the Siders were living in at the time. In an October 2021 complaint signed by school attendance officer Ronald L Hammond, the official initiated legal action after accusing the parents of failing to send their children to school. Complaints were also filed against the six children individually, with each being labelled an 'unruly child by way of being a habitual truant' from school who had 'failed to make progress in absence intervention plan.'  'The child has been absent from school without legitimate excuse for the entire 2021-2022 academic year to present, an amount in excess of 72 hours for the school year; and as such is thereby a habitual truant,' one of the complaints noted. But just months later, a judge overseeing the ordeal abruptly shelved the matter. The entire family was holed up in this 1,300sq ft single-family home in Hamden, which was filled with human waste, filth and trash, back on June 30 Gary Jr, 36, and his wife, Elizabeth, 33, were hit with a flurry of complaints back in 2021 after a handful of their 16 kids stopped showing up to their Ohio elementary school Debris could be seen through an open window of the home The judge, Thomas S Moulton Jr, wrote in the January 2022 filing that the couple and their six children were 'unable to be served' as their whereabouts were 'unknown to the court.' It wasn't immediately clear whether the children were ever re-enrolled at another school.  A spokesman for Gallia County Local Schools said it could not comment on students' educational records.  Prior to their disappearing act, the parents, who married in West Virginia when Elizabeth was 15 and heavily pregnant, had been living in the three-room dwelling close to the school. A neighbor, who only referred to herself as Melissa, previously told the Daily Mail that residents only got a glimpse into the conditions inside the home when the Siders suddenly vacated. 'Our neighbor took a tour of that house, and they said a couple of the doors had padlocks on the outside,' Melissa said. 'She said the conditions were horrible inside. 'She said there was something really weird about the house, so they didn't buy it.' After the property was left empty, piles of kids' clothing were discovered in the attic of the house and the floors had caved in due to the sheer amount of urine that had eroded the floorboards, requiring extensive renovation work, another local claimed. Addaville Elementary School, where some of their kids – then aged between seven and 13 years – were supposed to attend but stopped showing up The grandparents, Christina and Gary Sr, were already living in the rented house when their son and his wife moved in June last year, records show Christina Siders, 67, and her husband Gary Sr, 73, who were arrested alongside their son and daughter-in-law and have pled not guilty  The troubling details came to light only after the Siders, as well as the kids' grandparents, Christina Siders, 67, and Gary Siders Sr, 73, were arrested late last month and slapped with child endangerment charges. All four have pleaded not guilty.   The family, who had since relocated to a dilapidated rented home in Hamden, were discovered living in conditions decried as 'pure evil' by Ohio's top prosecutor – complete with piles of human waste and trash. The children – aged between 18 months and 18 years old – 'looked like feral animals' when they were found in a 12ft-by-12ft room on June 30, Attorney General Andy Wilson said. Some of them couldn't speak or walk. Seven of the children were rushed to hospital, including two by helicopter – with one initially reported to be in a critical condition. Since then, few updates have been released about the children, other than they are 'safe and being cared for' by the county. The Siders moved frequently, did not enlist their kids in schools and avoided setting up any medical and government records in an alleged bid to 'hide' them, Wilson said. Vinton County Local School District, which the Hamden house falls under, said it had no record any of the Siders children being enrolled in its schools or in any home-school arrangement.  Christina Siders and her daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Siders, 33. They each face 16 charges of child endangerment and have pled not guilty Gary Siders Jr, 36, and his 73-year-old father, Gary Siders Sr, who were arraigned on the string of charges on July 1 and pled not guilty Elizabeth and Gary Jr moved into the 1,300sq ft single-family Hamden house – which had only one bathroom – with his parents around June last year, property records suggest.  The raid on the family's Hamden home resulted in the arrest of all four adults on 16 counts each of child endangerment, a second-degree felony, to which they have all pleaded not guilty. Astonishingly, the kids' appalling living situation was only discovered by chance after sheriff deputies conducted a search warrant for a separate investigation. Christina, Elizabeth and Gary Jr are all being held in jail on a $300,000 bond, per court papers seen by the Mail. Gary Sr was released on an amended bond last week after requiring hospital treatment for a serious medical condition. If he is released from the hospital, he will have to wear a GPS tag. He also faces a judge-ordered mental evaluation to determine if he is competent to stand trial and whether he is not guilty by reason of insanity, following a motion by his attorney Dorian Baum, according to court documents. Gary Jr, meanwhile, is separately facing four public indecency charges linked to incidents when he allegedly exposed himself to strangers outside the house at the end of May. A pre-trial hearing in that case is set for the end of this month. His plea to those charges is unclear. The Daily Mail contacted attorneys for Elizabeth and Gary Siders Jr, as well as the Gallia County Local Schools district about the latest developments. The Siders' house, where neighbors told the Daily Mail they had no idea of what was unfolding inside A baby's car seat was among the discarded items dumped outside the dilapidated home in the wake of the arrests Items could be seen strewn around the house through the open door Elizabeth's attorney, Tommy Stolley, has said his office continues to investigate whether Elizabeth herself could also be a victim. 'I have previously stated she does not characterize herself as a victim, but the investigation from the prosecutor's office and my office is still ongoing,' he told reporters last week. He revealed she has been constantly asking about her children and had said 'positive things' about her husband. 'What she's told me repeatedly is that she and Gary wanted a big family. I don't know if they wanted a family that was this big,' he said in an interview with 10TV. 'She said that kids are a gift from God.' Stolley has filed a motion for a recognizance bond for Elizabeth, who has no known criminal history and who is desperate to reunite with her children, he said in court papers viewed by the Daily Mail. He strongly objected to early characterizations of how the children were found – particularly the descriptions of them being 'feral' and the living conditions being 'pure evil.' He said there was no evidence to show the children were locked in the 12-by-12 room and not free to move about the home or go outside – and revealed the kids even had phones and access to social media. 'This is a case of poverty. This may be a case of isolation. It may be a case of parents getting in over their heads when it comes to their children and their family. But this is a case of these people living together here,' Stolley told NewsNation's Chris Cuomo. Meanwhile, Gary Siders Jr's attorney R Lee Roberts Jr asked a judge on Tuesday to issue a gag order on officials involved in the case to protect his client's right to a fair trial.