A Quiet Christmas Eve Turned Nightmare
The Sodder family story begins with George and Jenny Sodder, two Italian immigrants who built a life in Fayetteville, West Virginia. By 1945, they had ten children and a thriving trucking business. On Christmas Eve of that year, the family was waiting for their older son Joe to return from his World War II service before fully celebrating the holiday. Five of the children, Maurice, Martha, Lewis, Jenny, and Betty, were allowed to stay up a bit later than usual to play with new toys. However, by 1:00 AM on Christmas morning, the family home was engulfed in flames. While the parents and four of the children escaped, the five who had stayed up late were never seen again.
“The truth is that once you take a look at all the evidence it becomes clear that this was not a tragic accident after all but a terrible crime that was covered up.”
Too Many Coincidences to Be an Accident
As George and Jenny tried to save their children, they were met with a series of impossible obstacles. The water in their bucket was frozen solid. When George tried to start his trucks to use them as a ladder to reach the second floor, they wouldn’t turn over, even though they had worked fine earlier that day. Even more suspicious, the family’s ladder, which was always kept against the house, was missing and later found 70 feet away in an embankment. Before the fire, George had been threatened by a man who warned him that his house would “go up in smoke” and his children would be “destroyed” because of George’s vocal dislike for Mussolini. After the fire, it was discovered that the telephone wires had been intentionally cut rather than burned.
“Your god house is going to go up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed and you are going to be paid for the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini.”
The Evidence That Just Doesn’t Add Up
The most haunting part of the Sodder mystery is the total lack of physical evidence. Despite local officials claiming the children died in the fire, a search of the debris yielded no human remains. Jenny Sodder later conducted her own experiments, burning animal bones to see if a house fire could truly incinerate a body to ash, and she found it was nearly impossible. There were even bizarre cover up attempts, like when the local fire chief, FJ Morris, claimed to have found a human heart in the ashes. When the family finally had it examined, it turned out to be a piece of fresh beef liver that had never even been near a fire. To this day, the family believes the children were kidnapped before the fire was set.
“It is an established fact that in the hottest and most prolonged fires which take the lives of human beings there usually remains in the debris positive traces of their bodies.”
Ready to dive deeper into the clues that local officials tried to bury? You can watch the full investigation into the first part of this tragic mystery in the original video.
