The Ohio house of horrors mom Elizabeth Siders looked unrecognizable in a photo shared by her mother on Facebook in 2020, which was six years before she was arrested on child endangerment charges.
Siders, 33, is currently being held on a $300,000 bond after she was arrested and charged with 16 counts of child neglect alongside her husband, Gary Siders, Jr., and his parents, Gary Siders Sr. and Christina Siders.
In her mugshot taken on June 30, Elizabeth had dark brunette hair and appeared distraught as she looked deadpan into the camera.
Meanwhile, she appeared much more youthful in the 2020 snapshot. Elizabeth’s hair was blonde in the photo and wore makeup including lip gloss and eyeliner as she smiled for the camera.
“Happy Birthday to my daughter Elizabeth it [sic] hard to believe. My younhest [sic] is 28 today love you mom and dad,” Elizabeth’s mother, Lorie Russell, wrote alongside the Facebook photo shared on August 24, 2020.
It is not currently clear when the photo was taken. At the time the photo was posted, Elizabeth was already mother to nine children and was one month away from giving birth to her 10th child.
The photo resurfaced weeks after Elizabeth, Gary Jr., 36, Gary Sr. 73, and Christine, 66, were arrested when authorities found 16 children confined to a small room in a dirty home that contained human feces.
Authorities learned that none of the children were enrolled in school, and the oldest child – who is 18 and is believed to have developmental disabilities – is unable to spell her own name.
Each defendant has been charged with 16 counts of child endangerment and they have all pleaded not guilty. Additionally, all of their bonds have been set at $300,000 each.
Gary Sr. was released from jail on July 8 after he was hospitalized for health issues.
In light of her imprisonment, Elizabeth’s attorney, J. Thomas Stolly, filed a request asking that she be allowed to leave the jail under certain conditions so that she could reunite with her children, according to WOWK 13. Stolly argued that she’s not a threat and pointed out that she does not have a criminal history.
The court has not yet responded to the request.
Stolly made the filing one week after he appeared on NewsNation’s Russell, where he insisted that Elizabeth is not a bad person.
“The person that I met comes across as a mother who has been separated from her children, who is exhausted and who misses her children and is asking me constantly what she needs to do to see her children again, what she needs to do to ultimately be reunited with her children,” he said of his client during the July 9 appearance.
He added that the case has been “absolutely sensationalized by the media” and that Elizabeth had been painted in a negative light.
“That does not jive with the prosecutor’s narrative. It doesn’t jive with the attorney general’s narrative,” he said. “And I think because of that language that was used so early on in this case, we are sitting here now having to defend that on television and in the media instead of in a court of law.”
