Mystery of 5 children 'killed' in Christmas house fire as bodies never found – Daily Express US
However, what initially seemed like a fatal fire soon morphed into one of America’s most baffling unsolved mysteries. Once the flames were extinguished, none of the bodies of the children believed to be trapped in the house were discovered.
Initially, George and Jennie Sodder assumed that five of their children, ranging in age from five to 14, had died in the fire at their Fayetteville, West Virginia residence.
But they quickly began to suspect that things weren’t as they appeared and remained steadfast in their belief that their missing children were still alive for the rest of their lives.
Despite the case being marked by strange occurrences and spawning numerous conspiracy theories, from abduction to the involvement of the Italian mafia, it remains unresolved to this day.
Until bedtime on December 24, 1945, it had been an ordinary Christmas Eve in the Sodder household, where nine of George and Jennie’s ten children – their eldest was serving in World War Two – played and exchanged presents.
Around midnight, the phone began to ring, and mother Jennie went downstairs to answer it.
A woman asked for someone whose name she didn’t recognize, so she informed the caller that she had dialed the wrong number.
Downstairs, she discovered the lights and curtains were open, with Marion, one of the older sisters, asleep on the couch.
Assuming that the children had skipped their chores and gone directly to sleep in the attic, she decided to return to bed herself.
At 1am, Jennie was awakened by the sound of an object striking the roof of the house with a loud bang, followed by a rolling noise. Hearing nothing more, she went back to sleep.
However, half an hour later, she was roused again by the smell of smoke and discovered a fire had started in George’s office.
She woke him up, who then alerted his four elder sons, and the six of them managed to escape the house.
Unable to reach the upstairs due to the flames, they desperately called out to the children, but received no answer.
As the family frantically tried to save their children, a series of strange occurrences would later lead the Sodders to believe something far more ominous had taken place.
Initially, they attempted to call the fire department, only to find the line was dead.
It was later discovered that the phone line at the top of their power pole had been severed – even though someone had successfully made a call to the Sodder’s home just an hour and a half earlier.
George then tried to retrieve his ladder to help the children down from the second floor.
However, the ladder, which usually leaned against the side of the house, was nowhere to be found.
He made the decision to drive his truck underneath the window and climb atop it to reach them, but neither of George’s trucks would start, despite both being functional just a day earlier.
Meanwhile, one of the children, Marion, dashed to a neighbor’s place to call the fire department but was unsuccessful in reaching an operator.
Simultaneously, an individual from a nearby tavern spotted the fire and attempted to alert the fire department, but once more, no operator was on the line to connect the call.
The remaining family members were left helplessly observing as their house along with the five young children was engulfed by fire.
By the time the local volunteer firefighters, many of whom were away for the war, arrived the following morning, the family feared the children had been lost to the flames.
In the aftermath, four days post-fire, George cleared the site with intentions to create a memorial garden for his offspring, and death certificates were issued accordingly.
But the seeds of doubt began to sprout within the family shortly thereafter.
For starters, they noted that the Christmas lights remained lit early into the fire, which seemed inconsistent with an electrical fire caused by “faulty wiring” the official verdict from investigators.
Moreover, the family stumbled upon their previously misplaced ladder, oddly placed at an embankment nearby, not where it had been left.
And a witness said he’d seen someone at the fire taking a block and tackle typically used for removing car engines perhaps explaining why Georges vehicles unexplainably failed to start.
However, the most significant discovery was made by Jennie, who found kitchen appliances still intact amidst the rubble. She questioned why these appliances had not been reduced to ash if the bodies of their children had been completely consumed by the fire.
Her curiosity led her to contact a crematorium, which informed her that a two-hour fire at 2,000F – both hotter and longer than the fire at the Sodder’s house – would still leave human bones intact.
This revelation sparked the parents’ crusade to uncover the truth, and the case of the Sodder children became a lasting enigma that would captivate America for decades.
One of the most compelling theories, which George and Jennie eventually came to believe, was that their children had been kidnapped by the Sicilian mafia as retribution for George’s vocal criticism of Mussolini and the fascist government in his native Italy.
Two months prior to the fire, a traveling insurance salesman attempted to sell George a policy, but when he declined, the salesman allegedly responded with a chilling warning: “Your goddamn house is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed.”
The salesman’s ominous alleged words were: “You are going to be paid for the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini”.
In the weeks leading up to the blaze, some Sodder children noticed they were being watched by two individuals in a car as they walked home from school, and they informed their parents.
Yet, despite growing suspicions, the family never received any threats from the Italian mafia, notorious for using kidnappings to extort money from victims’ families.
Hearings failed to provide any clarity, informing the Sodders that their search was “hopeless” and declaring the case closed. Undeterred, they erected a billboard along Route 16 near the scene of the fire, offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of their children.
But while George travelled the country to investigate each lead, he always returned home without any answers. In 1968, more than 20 years after the fire, Jennie went to get the mail and found an envelope addressed only to her.
Postmarked in Kentucky with no return address, it contained a photo of a man in his mid-20s with features comparable to those of their son Louis, who was nine at the time of the fire.
Once again, they hired a private detective, but he failed to locate the sender of the letter, and the couple never heard from him again.
In a 1966 interview, George, then aged 71, said: “Time is running out for us.
“But we only want to know. If they did die in the fire, we want to be convinced. Otherwise, we want to know what happened to them.”
He died the following year, still hoping for a breakthrough in the case.
Jennie spent the rest of her life in seclusion, continuing to wear only black, which she had done since the fire as a sign of mourning, until her own death in 1989.
Their pursuit for truth was carried on by their adult children. Sylvia was the last remaining Sodder child, but passed away age 79 in 2021. Before her death she said she was as certain as her parents were that her missing siblings didn’t perish in the fire.
Sylvia had hoped to unearth the truth before her passing. She never forgot what happened that evening, but, sadly, she never came close to understanding why.
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