Entry 10: The Sodder Children
As we near the end of our cold case exploration and the holiday season, the final case follows the heartbreaking disappearance of five children from their home on Christmas Eve. The Sodder children’s disappearance has captivated the town of Fayetteville, West Virginia and has haunted the Sodder family for years, desperate for answers and diminished hope that their relatives might be found.
The Missing Sodder Children. 1945. “The Children Who Went Up In Smoke,” by Karen Abbot. Smithsonian, 25 Dec. 2012.
1945: The Sodder family included parents George and Jennie, and their ten children. On the night of Christmas Eve, 1945, nine of the ten children (as one son was away serving in the army) settled into bed in preparation for the morning. Around 1 a.m., a fire broke out. George and Jennie and four of their children escaped, but the other five were never seen again.
George had tried to save them, breaking a window to re-enter the house, though he could see nothing through the smoke and fire, which had swept through the living and dining room, kitchen, office, and his and Jennie’s bedroom. Outside with his wife remained Sylvia (2), Marion (17), John (23), and George Jr. (16). Unaccounted for were Maurice (14), Martha (12) Louis (9), Jennie (8), and Betty (5). George ran to the side of the house to get his ladder in an attempt to bypass the downstairs to get into the children’s bedrooms upstairs, but discovered his ladder to be missing.
In desperation, he thought he could drive one of his two coal trucks up to the house and climb atop it to reach the windows. But even though they’d functioned perfectly the day before, neither would start now. He tried to scoop water from a rain barrel to quell the fire but found it frozen solid. George’s voice ached from the smoke and from screaming out his young children’s names.
Marion sprinted to a neighbor’s home to call the Fayetteville Fire Department but couldn’t get any operator response. A neighbor who saw the blaze made a call from a nearby tavern, but again no operator responded. The neighbor drove into town and tracked down Fire Chief F.J. Morris, who initiated Fayetteville’s version of a fire alarm: a “phone tree” system whereby one firefighter phoned another, who phoned another until all responders were aware of the situation.
Though less than two miles away, the fire department didn’t respond until 8 A.M., finding nothing but ash and a grieving family. George and Jeannie assumed that five of their children were dead, but a brief search of the grounds on Christmas Day turned up no trace of remains. Chief Morris suggested that the blaze had been hot enough to completely cremate the bodies, though an official heat index reading was never taken.
A state police inspector combed the rubble and attributed the fire to faulty wiring. George covered the basement with five feet of dirt, intending to preserve the site as a memorial. The coroner’s office issued five death certificates just before the new year, attributing the causes to “fire or suffocation.”
Still, the Sodders began to speculate if their children had survived the fire.
George Sodder was born in Italy in 1895, and immigrated in 1908 with an older brother who quickly returned back to Italy. Once he met Jennie and they settled in West Virginia, they became “one of the most respected middle-class families around.” George held strong opinions about everything from business to current events and politics, but was, for some reason, reluctant to talk about his youth. He never explained what had happened back in Italy to make him want to leave. Fayetteville was quaint, with a small but active Italian immigrant community, and George made a name for himself, launching his own trucking company, hauling dirt for construction and later freight and coal.
A few weeks after the fire, the Sodders began recalling strange instances prior. There was a stranger who appeared at the home a few months earlier, back in the fall, asking about hauling work. After turning him down, he pointed out the two separate fuse boxes, and said, “This is going to cause a fire someday.” Since he had just had the wiring checked by the local power company, which pronounced it in fine condition, George thought little of it, aside from it being odd at the time. Around the same time, another man tried to sell the family life insurance and became irate when George declined. “Your goddamn house is going up in smoke,” he warned, “and your children are going to be destroyed. You are going to be paid for the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini.” George was outspoken about his dislike for the Italian dictator, occasionally engaging in heated arguments with other members of Fayetteville’s Italian community, and at the time didn’t take the man’s threats seriously. The older Sodder sons also recalled something peculiar: Just before Christmas, they noticed a man parked along U.S. Highway 21, intently watching the younger kids as they came home from school.
“Missing or Dead?” Greensboro News and Record, November 18, 1984
Undeterred, George and Jennie erected 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. Then there were the anecdotes: a letter from someone saying young Martha was in a convent in St. Louis, the motel operator who saw the children right after the fire, and a picture of a young girl from New York City who looked so much like Betty that George drove to see her, but was turned away by the girl’s parents.
The billboard stood for over 30 years, and now, only one Sodder child remains: Sylvia, who believes her brothers and sisters lived long past the fire. Her children and grandchildren continue the hunt for answers, and the local community holds the children in memory. Theories have circled around mafia involvement, kidnapping, or perhaps the melancholy reality that the children never survived the inferno.
As always, the BuzzFeed Unsolved video delving more in depth in details is provided here for future viewing. Best of luck in theorizing, and until next time (whenever that may be). Thank you for sticking around this long; I hope I’ve given you something to look forward to reading, and have been able to tickle your “Sherlock Holmes” gene at least a little.
This cold case is extremely interesting to me, it reminds me of the disappearance of Charles Lindbergh’s baby in some capacities. My theory on this case is that maybe a part of the Italian Mafia (or the “italian gentleman’s club” as it used to be called where I am from several decades ago when it still existed) came to take the children as punishment for George’s outspoken remarks? But you with think they would want to see him truly punished and taunt him with the children, not have them completely vanish into thin air. Maybe this is an early case of sex trafficking? I feel like this scenario closely mirrors that except these people went out of their way to get the children. I wonder what made these children so special?
I think that in a way they did taunt George, not knowing whether the children were alive or dead. And the photo of Louis, the possible Betty in New York, and other reports of the children definitely haunted him.
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For the past hour or so I have been extremely involved in this case. I think that the answer definitely lyes somewhere is Italy. Probably no one knows what happened in Italy, as George would not talk about his youth. Clearly he had not told his won brother because his brother returned to Italy. Maybe he wrote what happened in journals or diaries, maybe there are some notes left in Italy about what happened. It was clearly done by multiple people, it takes a lot of organizing and planning ahead, and also how would you kidnap 5 children by yourself. I suspect that everyone was intended to die in the fire, or at least the house burn down in the fire, but the children were not asleep. I read somewhere that they stayed up late to play with presents, while the other family members went to sleep. Is it possible that the children were awake longer than people think, and that they saw the people who were trying to burn down the house? The telephone call also seems as if it were a distraction, maybe to distract the mother from hearing or seeing her children being abducted. If the children weren’t originally supposed to be abducted, it is likely that the kidnappers got rid of them as early as they could, but only somewhere where they couldn’t escape and tell people what happened to them. While I do think that the children are alive, I do not think that the photo of Louis is actually Louis. It could be a relative of George that looks like Louis that the abductors got in Italy. The children probably got sold into human trafficking or sex trafficking.
Another reason why it is clear that they were abducted, the age groups. The children abducted were between ages 5 and 14. 5 year old is old enough not to cause a scene when they shouldn’t, and 14 year olds probably can’t fight grown men(or women). Children ages 16, 17, 23, and 2 were not abducted. If Sylvia was taken from her crib at age 2, it is likely that she would have woken up and cried, causing a scene and making their presence known. The other children were all old enough to fight grown men and woman. If the children did go to bed and their kidnap was planned, this could be why.
Has there been DNA tests on Sylvia to potentially match it to any unknown DNA somewhere?
No there can’t be she’s dead
If that’s the case she has a daughter and there are other descendants of the sodder family that could provide DNA. If the missing Sodder children did survive then they may have descendants still living. I wonder what would happen if the sodder family did a DNA/ancestry test. George Sodder’s past in Italy is pretty mysterious and I wonder if an ancestry search could shed some light on it. Not to mention if they use a DNA service to look for living relatives. If people can use services like that to find birth parents or siblings given up for adoption than I see no reason it couldn’t be used here.
Here in 2021. It definitely was the mafia. Dad was way too outspoken about the Italian dictator, and they made him pay. Went to the fire station and police department and either payed them off or threatened them to keep quiet.
I think it was the visiting life insurance salesman, who, after being rebuffed, warned George that his house “[would go] up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed”, attributing this all to “the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini”. Someone that powerful probably wouldn’t even hear of or care about the dad, unless the dad was directly involved with him.
Why didn’t the parents and other sibling go into their room to wake them and get them out the house? George woke his older sons, but not the other children? One of the sons yelled to the he other 5 children as he passed their bedrooms but didn’t try to wake them? What if they were sound sleepers? What mother would just run out of the house not to make sure her other children were with her? So the survivors left the burning house and just hoped the other children escaped? So, when the other 5 children didn’t come outside, the George and Sons decided to get a ladder and go back up to the burning house and rescue them? The same burning house George, his wife, and the other children fled.
Sorry, but something about the survivors story doesn’t seem right.
Read more on this to get a sense of the layout of the house. The younger children slept in the attic, the parents had a bedroom of their own on the floor below, and 3 year old Sylvia was sleeping with them that night. Marianne was asleep in the couch in the living room. I’m not sure where the two oldest slept, but accounts I heard described them running down the already alight stairs with singed hair, while the parents hollered from the bottom of the stairs for the kids to come down the stairs, stairs already in flames. As I said, I’ve never heard where the two oldest boys slept, but I assume either they had their own room, possibly on the same floor as the parents, or if they slept in the attic, possibly though in a separate room ( I’ve never heard if the attic was one big room or not). If report of singed hair on the older boys is correct, it would lend credence that the fire started on the roof from a firebomb. I can see both boys awaking in a panic with smoke and flame around and rushing downstairs. John at first said he tried to rouse his younger sibs, his Dad said he felt John said that to alleviate guilt when in fact both he and his brother just rushed down the stairs ( which John later said is what they did without even seeing if the younger kids were in the attic or not). That sounds plausible to me, since if John really had taken the time to,try and awake the younger ones, why wouldn’t he have grabbed the youngest ( 5 year old) of the bunch and run down the stairs with them? Nevertheless, the murkiness of the details on the layout of the house, and where all the survivors were at the time the fire broke out does leave questions.
I swear I showed this to my grandfather when we were eating our nuggetsfavorites. And showed him the photos and paintings of these 5 children. He said they looked like these people he knew and two are still alive, he said. They were apparently Italian, and probably 10 to 15 years after the fire. He said he was good friends with them and even started dating one of them. It didn’t work out between them and they ended up still being friends. The person he dated was Martha. She didn’t have the name and he said there was no way they were just doppelgängers.
The disappearance of the Sodder children has captivated the town of Fayetteville, West Virginia and has haunted the Sodder family for years, desperate for answers, I would recommend that you print photos of the missing children currently on Mcdonalds menu prices and on milk cartons across the country, hopefully let this help you find them.
My guess is that they were murdered elsewhere. I find it very hard to believe that as long as this story has been out that not one of them would have come forward by now. Clearly the town was involved in this.. from the fire dept to the police dept…. So that tells me that there is more to this story then we will ever know.
I recently heard about this story and don’t know if something I say is already said or done but I clearly see the description on the foto as a code and I know that’s nothing new but: The zip code, what should be in Italy, gets another result, when I type it in to google I get a lot of results with Franklin, Kentucky but when I open a page there’s no link to that number. But I found it strange that I get Kentucky results. Could Frankie stand fot Franklin ? And another thing; I see the “s” of “Llil boys” as an “5” . Llil boy 5
Maybe someone can do something with this.
answers and diminished hope that their relatives might be found.
agario unblocked
Я слежу за этой историей уже много лет, но никакой конкретики так и не появилось за это время. Вся история описана в общих чертах и копируется с одного сайта на другой. Я удивлён что за такой период времени никто так и не смог добавить что то нового, каких-либо документов: протоколов допроса, плана дома, даже номер телефона с которого звонили в дом вполне можно было выяснить. Поэтому у людей и возникают вопросы на которые просто физически нет возможности ответить. У меня вот один момент уже много лет вызывает вопросы, если отец пытался добраться до окна на втором этаже что бы попасть к детям, то почему дети сами не могли выбраться через это окно, ведь это не десятый этаж, можно было бы и самому выпрыгнуть, тем более тому которому было 14 лет. Но возможно и не было окна, план дома многие бы вопросы снять мог, и ведь план дома это не секретный документ, но почему то ни на одном сайте не в одной статье я не видел данного документа!!! Поэтому я с каждым годом все больше склоняюсь к мнению, что родственники не так уж сильно и заинтересованы в поиске. По сути кроме как нескольких фотографий нет ничего, ни адресов, ни данных о людях упомянутых в статьях, чем они занимались в дальнейшем, как сложилась их жизнь, чем больше информации, тем больше шансов за что то зацепиться!
Я слежу за этой историей уже много лет, но никакой конкретики так и не появилось за это время. Вся история описана в общих чертах и копируется с одного сайта на другой. Я удивлён что за такой период времени никто так и не смог добавить что то нового, каких-либо документов: протоколов допроса, плана дома, даже номер телефона с которого звонили в дом вполне можно было выяснить. Поэтому у людей и возникают вопросы на которые просто физически нет возможности ответить. Чтобы попасть на второй этаж отец искал лестницу, дети могли бы и сами выпрыгнуть со второго этажа, тем более которому было 14 лет. Но возможно и не было окна, план дома бы вопросы снять мог, и ведь план дома это не секретный документ, но почему то ни на одном сайте не в одной статье я не видел данного документа !!! Поэтому я с каждым годом все больше склоняюсь к мнению. По сравнению с несколькими фотографиями нет ничего, ни адресов, ни данных о людях упомянутых в статьях, чем они занимались в дальнейшем, как сложилась их жизнь, чем больше информации, тем больше шансов за что то зацепиться!
Hello I used a translator to read your comment and the youngest survivor of the fire passes away in April of 2021 she has a daughter that is still searching I would also be curious about the floor plan of the house.
My mother‘s brother, Bob Crowder, married one of the Sodder children. My mom was born in Charleston West Virginia, and mentioned the story to her children, I’m one of them. I can’t believe that there wasn’t a better investigation. Why wouldn’t the operator not answer the phone, and why did it take seven hours for a fire department to respond to a call that was 2.5 miles away? This is a story of tragedy. I am one of 10 children, and if anything happened to even one of us, my mom would have never stopped investigating, or looking for the truth. The fact that my mom never let us out of her sight, leads me to believe that she carried this tragedy deep within her. We were never allowed to go to anyone’s house, or leave our yard has children. I don’t know that this case could be solved after 75 years, but I would hope that family Members never stop looking for answers. My heart goes out to each and everyone of them, and I pray for peace and answers.
I appreciate the passion and enthusiasm you bring to your writing. Thank you for making a difference in the lives of your readers.
I appreciate the time and effort you put into researching and writing your articles. Your dedication to your craft is evident in the quality of your work.CalStampede
Has there been any DNA testing and evaluation of current genealogy records to locate the missing children or their family line?
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