In the fire, George had tried to save them, breaking a window to re-enter the house, though he could see nothing through the smoke and fire and cut his arm in the process. Outside with his wife remained John (23), Marion (17), George Jr. (16), and Sylvia (2). Unaccounted for were Maurice (14), Martha (12) Louis (9), Jennie (8), and Betty (5). In another attempt to save the children in the fire, George ran to the side of the house to get his ladder to get access to the floor they were on but he discovered that his ladder was missing which was unusual. In a last final attempt, he was going to drive on of his two cal trucks up to the house and climb to the windows, but he discovered that neither of the trucks would start even though they worked perfectly fine the night before.

Marion had gone to a neighbor’s house to call the Fayetteville Fire Department but couldn’t get any operator response. The fire department didn’t respond until 8 A.M that day despite only being less than two miles away. George and Jennie assumed that the remaining children were dead but when the fire department showed up they found no trace of human remains inside what was left of the house. Chief Morris of the fire department had suggested that the blaze of the fire could have been hot enough to completely cremate the bodies.

The fire was caused by faulty wiring and George covered the basement with five feet of dirt to “preserve” the site as a memorial. The coroner’s office issued five death certificates with the cause of death being “fire or suffocation.”

There are a few strange instances that happened but they could just be coincidental. The first being that a man asked about some work he was looking for but was declined by George. The man pointed out of the two separate fuse boxes and said “This is going to cause a fire someday.” At the time that he said this, George had just had the wires looked at by a power company and said they were fine. George hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Around the same time, another man had tried to sell the family life insurance and became irritated when George declined. He yelled “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.”  He didn’t take these man’s threats seriously.

George and Jennie put up a billboard along Route 16 and passed out flyers offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of their children. They soon increased the amount to $10,000. Of course, there were people that are money hungry though. To name a few, a letter from someone saying Martha was in a convent in St. Louis, a picture of a young girl from New York City who looked a lot like Betty that George drove to see her, but was turned down by the girl’s parents, and the motel operator who saw the children right after the fire.

The billboard stood for over 30 years, and now only one Sodder child remains Sylvia, who still believes her brothers and sisters survived the fire. To this day, children and grandchildren continue the search for answers as to what happened to their aunts and uncles.