“THIS IS MESSY: Ohio 16 Defendant RELEASED & Back On The Streets DESPITE Active Investigation “

“During the arraignment, or excuse me, the initial appearance, he has some very serious medical conditions that are going on. And I think for a person of his age, any serious medical—I think he’s now getting the care that he needs, but to suggest that he’s out of the woods would be a bit too much.”

To open his mouth and run it about things he had no actual knowledge about, he created a firestorm.

Well, it would appear that one of the four defendants as it relates to the case in Ohio is currently now out on bond and he is no longer under the care of doctors. So Gary Siders Senior, the grandfather in this case, since just after his arraignment, had been receiving care for a situation that developed during transport where he had fallen.

And according to William Archer, who is the prosecutor in Vinton County, due to the expense of the care that he needed, it was more cost-beneficial for the county to release him out on a recognizance bond so that the expense of the medical care did not fall under the county.

So when somebody is actually in custody, all costs for that defendant that’s in the custody of the county and in detention must be paid for by the county, even if they’re in the hospital. And so by releasing him from custody, the care he needed to be receiving would then fall on whatever insurance he has. I’m assuming based upon his age, he likely is using Medicare.

So Gary, after his arraignment, went to go get medical care, and he had some serious conditions that needed to be taken care of.

Now, the prosecution in Vinton County didn’t say anything about what had happened beyond the fact that a fall had occurred and that there was something that needed to be handled that would best be served outside of detention.

But his attorney was asked about this during interviews, and he really went from overzealous and being zealous in his advocacy to his defense client Gary Siders Senior to perhaps exaggerating the significance of what he was facing.

Now, I’m not here to say that anyone at age 73 cannot experience medical issues—that can be very, very serious. But to be clear, not all people that are elderly… not every single illness is going to be life-threatening.

Dorian Baum is the public defender assigned to Gary Siders Senior, and he has been very busy trying to push a narrative that his client has diminished capacity along with the fact that his client has some sort of serious medical condition which, at his age, could be deemed very significant to the extent that maybe he wouldn’t survive. He tried to paint a dire picture of his client, suggesting that he was not even remotely out of the woods, despite the fact that he had only seen Gary just one time.

Now, for a medical condition to be that dire, you would have to have something very, very, very serious. And just being 73 doesn’t mean that any serious illness will be dire, right?

I have an 89-year-old father-in-law and I promise you that man has had a lot going on in the last several years, but never once since the times that he’s been hospitalized have any of them been that dire. And he’s 89, so that’s 16 years older than Gary Siders Senior.

So, I think it’s very important that we remember that when we’re listening to the defense attorneys giving us a side of the story, they’re trying to defend their client and paint a picture that’s as bad as possible for their client to get sympathy. Okay?

Now, I’m not saying that Gary Siders Senior may not have some diminished capacity. Maybe he did have a stroke. Maybe he is dealing with memory issues and loss. That we don’t know.

And because at this point the competency hearing hasn’t taken place—because we don’t have the filed competency finding or the evaluation that’s supposed to have been done in the 30 days from July 9th until August 9th… Now that can get extended. But if he’s already met with someone, say someone met with him while he was in the hospital, I’m not sure. But the evaluation is supposed to be filed within 30 days, then there’s supposed to be a hearing and then the judge will decide whether or not he’s competent.

So currently, he is not deemed incompetent. It’s only been a concern raised at the present time.

So, it appears that whatever was going on with Gary has stabilized and he is now outside of medical care because he was before the county clerk, Karen Miller, today, and a recognizance bond was filed in his name on this docket.

It says that: “Gary Siders personally appeared before me and jointly and severally acknowledged themselves to owe the state of Ohio $1,000 to be levied on their goods, chattels, lands, and tenements if default be made on the following conditions…”

So instead of having to come up with $300,000, this basically says if he doesn’t meet these conditions and if he violates any of these, they can get the money from him somehow.

So the conditions of this recognizance are such that: “the above bound Gary Siders personally be and appear before said Vinton County Common Pleas Court at the call of the court and there be answer to a charge of…” and then it says what the charges are, “…and abide by the order and judgment of the court and appear from day to day and not depart without leave until such case is finally disposed, and then this recognizance shall be void, otherwise it shall remain in full force and in virtue in law.”

So he has to show up for any of the court hearings, stay in the area that he’s in, and promise to appear basically.

But then there are other conditions: He must be a law-abiding citizen. He must keep the court informed of any address and telephone number changes. Appear at all court hearings. Appear before the sheriff of Vinton County, Ohio within 24 hours to submit to fingerprinting and DNA collection procedure. Submit to drug and alcohol screening at the request of law enforcement and GPS at state’s expense.

So, he is going to have an ankle monitor to keep track of him.

The fact that he needs to go to the Vinton County Sheriff’s Office and get fingerprinted and get his swabs done means he’s not in the hospital anymore. He’s out.

There have been a lot of people actively talking about this case on social media, and I noticed that a lot of people are still heavily focused on the fact that Elizabeth Siders and Christina Siders also asked for their bond to be modified.

And in the case with them, the judge didn’t respond and hasn’t responded.

Elizabeth filed hers in like the second week of July and her request was that—I think on July 8th she sought a modification and said that she wanted to reunite with her children, right? And the state didn’t respond.

Christina Siders also made a request like a week and a half ago, and the state has not yet responded.

I just want to explain why the state doesn’t respond and doesn’t need to respond, and why a judge at this point can put it on hold and not rule.

When they were arraigned, they were held on 16 charges, right? And the judge, based upon the charges themselves and the request from the state, weighing in the significance of what was being alleged, made the determination that this is what the bond needed to be.

She already stated and knew that they were indigent, right? So she already knew that. But bond setting for these types of allegations isn’t just about a reasonable bond and whether or not someone can afford it. It also has to match the severity of the charges that are being faced. And these are very significant, right?

This is a family who until recently has already shown that they will move around and try to avoid law enforcement or other agencies like CPS, DCFS, and they will do so to hide and conceal themselves. So there’s a risk here that if any of them are let out, that this same type of habit could happen again.

Just because someone signs a recognizance bond doesn’t mean people don’t abscond, violate, and flee. In a case where you already have people that have been doing that, that becomes a factor for setting a higher bond because there’s a risk factor.

Now the prosecutor made a comment that Gary Siders was not a danger to the community, and actually for all of them, but the reality is keeping them from connecting together—keeping them separated, making sure that there’s no tampering with witnesses or with evidence.

And then there’s this other factor: they don’t have an indictment yet.

Currently the case is on hold awaiting the grand jury indictment along with competency evaluations for Gary Junior, Gary Senior, and Christina.

An evaluation in and of itself—a request for one—does not mean that competency is an issue, right? It’s just being raised for a psychiatric evaluation. These types of evaluations can also help the defense determine if there’s any psychiatric issues that could have been impeding their client’s ability to make good decisions, which might have led them to the place that they’re at. So there’s a lot of reasons why these competency hearings are requested.

But when it comes to bond, the judge doesn’t have to order or even respond until an indictment hands down. And it’s in the best interest generally of the court to keep the defendants in custody who already have gone through their arraignment and had their bond issued, and they’ve signed off on a preliminary hearing.

So they’ve waived what is required in all cases where a defendant will see the evidence that the state has against them. Because they waived their preliminary hearing, the next step is the grand jury. And until they have the indictment, I just don’t see the judge releasing anyone else.

There has not been anything raised at this point that suggests that there’s a reason to release them. Simply saying, “Elizabeth wants to reunite with her kids,” that’s not a good enough reason.

Now, the other issue that’s been coming up has been: what happens with the kids? Is the state going to do reunification? Is there going to be removal of the kids completely?

William Archer spoke to the Ohio Vinton County Joint Commissioners—that’s how they do all the budgets for Vinton County—and he told them mid-July that the state is seeking permanent custody. They are going to override and skip any reunification.

This means that even though Elizabeth wants to reunify and reunite with her kids, that’s not going to happen.

A lot of you that are from Ohio have said: “Well, it’s standard procedure that the courts always will do what’s in the best interest of the children, and reunification is the standard track.”

It is, unless there’s something in the case that is severe enough to warrant it, and it’s in the best interest of the children that they not ever be reunited and placed back with the family.

In a case like this where you had them hiding and they were essentially in a room—I think 12 x 16 or 12 x 12, I think they were estimating—and they weren’t in school, and several of them had to go to the hospital, two of them had to be airlifted, and all of them are being charged with a form of endangerment that leads to serious physical impacts to these children…

When there’s an aggravating factor like that, they can automatically void out that it’s in the best interest for the children to be reunified.

So right now there’s no possibility of reunification. The state is doing a side-by-side dependency case where they’re probably in the process of actively working towards parental termination and gaining permanent custody of these kids so that the kids can—they’re all in foster care now, but by terminating the parental custody, it can get them into more stable placements where they can move towards adoption.

Adoption is always the best option when there is parental termination. Not all children end up being adopted, especially the older they are, the harder it can be to find families that want to adopt. If they just remain in foster care, they stay depending upon their issues either until 18 or until 21.

The state has already told lawmakers when they sought a million dollars for the care of these kids that the kids would be in therapeutic foster care, which is completely different than standard foster care.

It means that there are specific needs of the children that are above and beyond those of a typical foster care child, and they require a level of care and foster parents that have a level of training and understanding of dealing with children with complex needs. It also requires that the foster parents work in tandem with the state and their care team.

Usually, that means there is therapy and therapeutic professionals like psychiatrists, psychologists, and medical doctors. It’s different than just standard foster care, and that costs more money. Because of what’s happened to them, several of these kids are significantly delayed or disabled. There are disabilities here. Even the 18-year-old who’s of legal age, they’ve stated has a developmental disability.

So, the kids are in foster care. They have been placed, but they will never be returning to the parents.

There’s also been a lot on social media from family members of the Siders coming out to defend them—a brother of Elizabeth who hasn’t seen her in like 18 or 15 years, a sister of Gary Siders Jr. (which I don’t know if it’s really her or not). There have been fundraisers and GoFundMe pages started. There have been a lot of accounts created to sort of gain notoriety off of it.

So I just want to say this to anyone that’s involved in these kinds of cases: never feel compelled to donate to defendants or defendants’ families. Clearly, the family units that are defending it and trying to explain it away are at the same level of denial and tolerance for what happened to these children, and their inability to see it as criminal is part of the problem.

I would be very reluctant to donate to anyone that is seeking to raise money for bond release or wanting to send money to any of the family members that are incarcerated. I would just be leery of that.

The Child and Family Services in Vinton County are not accepting monetary donations. They are accepting physical donations for clothing and toys, and they’ve already made public statements about where items need to be dropped off. They’re really looking for local help, not out-of-state. And the state has a million dollars, at least for now, to get through the first year of care for the kids.

So with all that being said, Gary Senior is now free, right? But he has a GPS. Where he’s going to be living, I don’t know. And how he’s going to be navigating the care he has—given that his own wife told a court that he was incapable of caring for himself without her—remains to be seen.

Where he stands with his competency and the rest, we’ll find that out soon enough.

It’s been a month since the kids were removed and this is how cases obviously go. There’s usually a lot that happens initially, and then we get to this phase. I would suspect that once there’s an indictment—and formally an indictment with a true bill issued—we’ll learn more of what the evidence showed, what other charges will be added, and the severity of issues and crimes that occurred.

Until then, it remains very tight-lipped because grand jury processes are sealed.

So, Gary Siders Senior is back on the streets. Hide your children… I’m just kidding.

What are your thoughts about all of it? Tell me in the comments below.