Christmas is meant to be the most wonderful time of the year gathering joyfully with family
and loved ones. But in 1945, one family was stuck with disaster and the disappearance
of half of the family in one night.
In the small town of Fayetteville on December 24, 1945, a family of 9 went to bed - anxious
for the following morning. George and Jennie Sodder were the parents of ten children, ages
ranging from 24 to 2-years old. One of their sons was on his way to the Army, and the rest
were at home with them.
A fire flared up within their home at 1 A.M. and George with his wife, and four of their
9 children in the home had escaped the blaze. Desperate to rescue his remaining children,
George rushed back into the burning home but was unable to find his other children.
After numerous calls to the fire department with no answers, then a neighbor personally
calling the fire chief’s home phone, did he start calling his firefighters into action
one at a time.
The fire department didn’t make it to the house until 8 A.M, by which then the house
was nothing more than smoldering ashes.
The five children were declared deceased from the fire, even though no remains were found.
The police report stated that the fire was caused by faulty wiring. The children’s
ages ranged from 14 to 5 years old.
Their names were Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie & Betty. They were all in the 2nd upstairs
bedroom of the home when it went up into flames in the middle of the night.
Losing one child is heartbreaking enough, but to suddenly lose five beloved children
is unimaginable.
The Sodders started piecing together strange events in the months before the fire of their
home, and the disappearance of the children.
A strange man visited their home when he suspiciously went to the back of their home and told George
that the two separated fuse boxes would cause a fire someday...even though George had the
wiring inspected and it was declared to be in fine condition.
Near that same time, a man trying to sell life insurance told them “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.” after George declined
him.
Mussolini was the Italian Dictator he had outspoken his dislike over with the local
Italian community and recently had some heated debates with them. Which makes you wonder
if they were the ones who were doing this, and what kind of connections Mussolini had
in the area.
The older sons remembered a strange vehicle and man parked along the road, watching the
younger children intently as they all walked home after school before Christmas break.
Christmas morning around midnight Jennie had a strange phone call from an unknown woman
asking for an unfamiliar name. All she could hear was laughter and the noises of clinking
glasses.
An hour after the strange phone call a loud thump on the roof woke Jennie up in the night
then a rolling sound followed by silence. Not paying attention or being suspicious,
she went back to sleep with her family. But soon after the noises from the roof disturbed
her sleep, a fire started engulfing the home.
After the fire, more strange events and discoveries continued to pop up. What looked to be the
remains of a Pineapple bomb was discovered by one of the daughters in the dirt where
the home once stood.
A neighbor came forth stating they saw a man with a block and tackle for removing car engines
was there the night of the fire, which could have been the cause for the family car to
not start.
Inspectors also concluded the electrical lines were cut, rather than burned, meaning faulty
wiring was not the real cause of the fire, despite what the official report stated. This
made sense to the Sodders since there were lights on in the downstairs rooms before the
fire.
Then witnesses started to come forth about seeing the five children hours to weeks after
the fire, all in the company of four Italian persons who were hostile and suspicious, each
witness farther from the town of Fayetteville.
Things continued to spiral around as the family investigated more and more, uncovering secrets
about the people who were supposed to have been helping them find their children or even
put out the fire that night years later.
We always think of the Fire Department as reliable and dependable, but this wasn’t
the case for the Sodders. After hiring a P.I, they discovered some things about the people
in the months before the fire.
It was discovered that the insurance salesman who threatened George was a member of the
coroner’s jury that deemed the fire to be accidental. Strange coincidence right? What
could this guy’s motive be to lie about something like a house fire?
The P.I also uncovered a piece about the Fire chief, who had stated at the home that there
were no remains, but whispered to others that there had been remains found.
Desperate, George and Jennie got the fire chief to show them where the remains were
and dug them up. Unfortunately, after sending the remains to a specialist, it was reported
that the remains were a beef liver that was untouched by fire.
The Fire chief later admitted to planting the beef liver, in an attempt to placate the
family enough to halt further investigations. He’s a fire Chief you don’t want in your
community. And why would he want to get them to stop investigating the destruction of their
home and loss of beloved children?
Years passed and tips and leads still kept coming in, keeping George and his family determined
to find their children. George followed many leads himself but always came back empty-handed,
and with more questions than before.
After seeing a newspaper piece about children in New York City, George rushed up there-
as one of the girls looked exactly like their missing daughter Betty. Unfortunately, he
never got to meet the girl, as the parents refused him and shut him out completely. They
even refused to so much as speak to him, which is even stranger.
In 1949 the Sodders decided to mount a new search of the destroyed home in the hopes
of finding more clues or new evidence on what happened to their children.
They brought in Washington, D.C. pathologist Oscar B. Hunter, who conducted a thorough
excavation of the home. Mostly small items were found such as coins, but the discovery
of vertebrae was the most important.
The bones were sent to the Smithsonian to be tested and the results were strange. They
were deemed to be from an individual estimated to be between 16 and 17 years old, but the
max-age could have been 22.
The oldest Sodder boy missing was 14. But the report noted that a 14-year-old boy could
have physical maturity signs similar to a 16 or 17-year-old. It was also noted that
the bones displayed no signs of having been in or near a fire.
It was noted in the report that the bones could have been in the dirt that was supplied
to fill in the basement to create the memorial. Which could be a hopeful sign for the family.
Jennie investigated further into how bones were affected by fires, suspicious in the
fact that nothing of the five children was left behind in the house fire. She conducted
her own experiments with different animal bones, and always got the same result; burnt
and charred bones.
The house only burned for roughly 45-minutes, which alone is not long enough to destroy
a human skeleton, let alone five of them.
A coroner from a funeral home explained to Jennie that a house fire would have left behind
skeletal remains, as a body burning for 2 hours at 2000 degrees F still left behind
charred bones.
Despite letters to the FBI asking for assistance, they never received any help from the local
or federal agencies. At a court hearing, it was declared that Sodder’s case was “hopeless”
and the case was officially closed again.
Soon after the case was officially closed they erected a billboard with their 5 missing
children’s photos and descriptions, as well as a reward for information leading to the
return of the children. They were determined to find their missing children.
In 1968, 20 years after the fire happened, Jennie received a mysterious letter about
Louis, the youngest Sodder boy to be missing. The letter came with a photo of a young man
in his 20’s, with numerous similarities to the son that went missing.
With their hopes rekindled on finding at least one of their children, they sent a P.I. to
investigate, but the P.I. was never heard from again. They never published the letter,
fearing harm would befall their son if they gave away the return address of the letter.
George and Jennie never saw their missing children again, and the descendants of the
family can only speculate about what happened. To this day it is still a mystery what happened
to the missing Sodder children.
In 1968 George passed away, and a year later Jennie followed behind him.
Many of the distant relatives can only speculate on what happened to the missing Sodder children,
but the youngest surviving child, Sylvia, doesn’t believe they were killed. She still
holds hope of seeing her lost siblings someday.
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