Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

The Mysterious Vanishing of the Sodder Children

Fayetteville, West Virginia is a small town in the United States. Today, it is the home of the New River Gorge Bridge, the Endless Wall Trail, and a 74 year-old unsolved mystery: the Christmas Eve disappearance of the five Sodder Children.

The Family

George was an immigrant from Sardenia, Italy. He came to the United States when he was 13 years old in 1908.A hard working young man, he took odd jobs for many years until he had saved up enough money to start his own trucking company. After he met Jennie, they quickly married and moved to a small, Italian community in Fayetteville, West Virginia. They were considered to be a respectable middle-class family and were well liked.

George and Jennie Sodder were also the proud parents of ten children. One of their sons served in the army, but the other nine still lived with their parents. They were: John – 23, Marion – 17, George Jr – 16, Maurice – 14, Martha – 12, Luis – 9, Jennie – 8, Betty – 5, and Sylvia – 2.

The Incident

On the night of December 24^th ,1945, the Sodders enjoyed a family dinner and some Christmas Eve festivities, including their tradition of opening one gift each before going to bed. With the excitement and anticipation of Christmas morning fluttering in their stomachs, the nine children and their parents rested their heads on their pillows, never expecting that the events of the next few hours would change their lives forever. They had just wished Maurice, Martha, Luis, Jennie, and little Betty a goodnight for the very last time.

Around 1:00 in the morning, the family awoke to discover that the house was on fire. George and Jennie picked up their 2-year-old daughter, Sylvia, from their first-floor bedroom and exited the house. They found their three eldest children(Marion, John, and George Jr) frightened, but safely outside.

Certain that his other five children were still in the house, George broke a window to re-enter the home,slicing his forearm very badly. Black smoke filled the air and red hot flames engulfed the entire first floor. If the children were still in their bedrooms, they would no longer be able to use the staircase to come down and there was no way for George to get to them. Not from inside, at least. That’s when he remembered the ladder.

George climbed back out and searched for the ladder that he always kept at the side of the house. He ran around the perimeter, but the ladder was nowhere to be found. Forced to think fast, George made a mad dash for one of his coal trucks. He could drive it up to the house, climb up on top of it and reach the children from the window. George jumped in cranked the ignition, but the truck he had used just yesterday wouldn’t start. He ran for his second truck. Mysteriously, it would not start either. The Christmas tree, still lit with tiny lights, was overtaken by flames and could be seen through the family room window.

From Bad to Worse

Daughter Marion, took off for the nearest neighbor’s house to call the Fayetteville Fire Department.She called and called, but could not get an operator on the line.Another neighbor saw the blaze and also attempted to call, but it was useless. There was no operator on duty. Not in the wee hours of Christmas Eve.

Not willing to give up hope, the neighbor got into his car and drove into town to track down the Fire Chief. The Fire Chief told him that he was not able to drive the firetruck himself, but he activated the phone-tree system, calling his firefighters to work. Back home, a helpless George could do little but scream his children’s names, hoping (in vain) to see any sign of them in the window.

The house was a pile of smoldering ashes by the time the Fire Department showed up at 8:00 am. The children were presumed dead. The coroner drafted five death certificates, listing the cause of death as “death by fire or suffocation”. A police inspector reviewed the site and claimed that the cause of the fire was faulty wiring. Case closed. A tragedy for sure, but the surviving family was left with the feeling that something didn’t add up.

As the days went by, they would start to question many things. Things that led them to believe that their children did not perish in the house fire. And if they were not in the house, then they might still be alive.

Let’s Look at the Facts

In the fall of that year, a drifter came onto the Sodder property, claiming to be interested in some hauling work. While talking with George, the strange man wandered to the back of the house, looked at the electrical box and said “This is going to cause a fire someday.” This comment stuck with George because he had recently installed a new stove in his kitchen and had professionals from the power company come to inspect the job. They told him his electrical was in great condition.

Within the same time frame, a life insurance salesman came to the door. When Mr. Sodder declined to purchase any, the salesman became irrationally and unexpectedly furious, screaming “Your goddamn house is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed. You are going to be paid for the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini!” It should be noted that Mr. Sodder was vocal about his disapproval of Mussolini in his community. 

Just before Christmas, one of the older sons recalled seeing a man parked on the highway, intently watching his younger brothers and sisters as they came home from school. He didn’t think anything of it at the time.

More On “The Night Of”

On Christmas eve,after everyone had gone to bed, the phone rang. Jennie answered and could hear what sounded like a party in the background. The woman on the other end of the line asked for a name Jennie didn’t recognize.Jennie told her she had the wrong number and the woman cackled and hung up. This is when Jennie noticed that the lights were still on in the family room. She saw Marion asleep on the couch, but the front door was unlocked and all of the curtains were drawn back. Jennie locked the door, drew the curtains closed, and turned off the lights.She didn’t see any of her other children and assumed they were all in their beds, so she went back to bed.

Just as Jennie was about to fall back asleep, she heard a thump on the roof and the sound of something heavy rolling off. One hour later, the house was ablaze.

All of the facts leading up to the fire were suspicious; however, the most compelling reason for the Sodders to believe their children could still be alive was that there were absolutely ZERO traces of any of the bodies found in the ashes. No bones, no fat deposits, no jewelry. The Fire Chief told the family that the fire had been hot enough to incinerate the bodies. This was a blatant lie. The house could never have reached the temperature required to obliterate any and all evidence of a human body in the 45 minutes it took to burn to the ground.

The Post Fire Findings

The Telephone repair man informed the Sodders that their phone line had been cut, not burned. The Sodder family realized that if the fire was caused by faulty wiring, the electricity would not still have been on while the house was burning.

A witness came forward claiming they saw a man on the Sodder property the night of the fire, walking around with a device used to remove car engines.

Upon visiting the site, daughter Sylvia found a hard, rubber object in the yard, which her father believed to be a piece of a bomb. This was likely what Jennie heard rolling off of the roof.

Then Came the Sightings

A woman came forward claiming to seethe children watching the fire through the windows of a car across the street. A waitress, after seeing the children’s photos in the newspaper, claimed to have served them breakfast the day after the fire. She said they had come in with two men and two women, all of Italian heritage. The car they had pulled up in had Florida plates.Another woman saw the children at a hotel one week after the fire. She remembered the incident because when she tried to speak with the children, the Italian men they were with became very unfriendly and told her not to engage with the kids. They spoke Italian between each other and checked out of the hotel the next morning.

With all of these reports, the Sodders were convinced that Maurice, Martha, Luis, Jennie, and Betty had been taken. They had lost everything in the house fire, but the hope that their missing children were still ok (in relative terms) kept them going. They hired a private investigator and a few years later they hired a pathologist to review the burn site.

The Private Investigation

The man who tried to sell George life insurance was also part of the coroner’s jury who had concluded that the fire was caused by faulty electrical wiring. After the fire, the Fire Chief had buried a beef liver in the pile of burnt debris,hoping the family would find it and think it was evidence of one of their children, though it was not burned in any way. Yes, the Fire Chief tried to trick the family. In another strange twist, a handful of vertebrae bones consistent with someone between the age of 16-22 were eventually found in the rubble. These were not likely to be their eldest, Maurice, but could have come from the pile of dirt that was used to fill in the basement at the site. But if the vertebrae bones did not come from the children, whose bones were they?

Though the state considered the case closed, George and Jennie kept their search alive. They paid for a billboard with the pictures of their children on it. They handed out flyers with the promise of a reward for any information leading to the finding of the kids.

The closest the Sodders ever came to finding new information was 20 years later. Jennie received a letter with the picture of a young man inside. The back of the picture had some hand writing on it that said “Louis Sodder. I love brother Frankie. Ilil Boys. A90132 or 35.” Neither George or Jennie could make any sense of it, other than agreeing the picture *could* be Louis. They hired another private investigator to dig into the letter and its Kentucky postmark origin; however, after receiving his initial payment, the PI was never heard from again.

The End?

Sadly, both George and Jennie died without ever knowing what really happened to their kids. Their surviving children and grand-children continue to keep the investigation alive.

Was the Sodder home deliberately set on fire on Christmas Eve all those years ago? The evidence suggests that it was and that it was orchestrated by members of the Italian mafia.

Were five of the Sodder children kidnapped? Though the family truly believed this, there are too many unanswered questions that make it difficult to buy into. For instance:

• If the incident was planned, were Maurice, Martha, Luis, Jennie, and Betty specifically targeted to be taken from the home?
• If yes, why them?
• How many kidnappers would be required to sneak into the house to take 5 children without making a sound?
• If the children were kept alive, why would they never try to contact their parents years later?
• If the children were kidnapped and killed later, what would be the kidnapper’s motivation? Why wouldn’t they just let them burn in the fire?
• Does the lack of evidence of the children’s remains definitively mean that the remains weren’t there?

Though this mysterious case is cold, it is far from being closed. It’s never too late to find the truth. What do you think happened? Enter your thoughts in the comments section below.

References:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-children-who-went-up-in-smoke-172429802/

https://stacyhorn.com/2005/12/28/long-long-long-sodder-post/

https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/the-unsolved-mystery-disappearance-of-the-sodder-children.htm