For those not familiar with this case, there was a fire at a family home with 9 children present, and 5 of the children vanished.
There remains were never found, and there is no trace of them.

For those not familiar with this case, there was a fire at a family home with 9 children present, and 5 of the children vanished.
There remains were never found, and there is no trace of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCgCeRN8ZN0


Link is not UM, and is not copy righted material. A brief video covering the incident. Chilling story.

Any movies or books done about this case?

I remember hearing about it over the years and read a halfway decent synopsis somewhere. Can't remember if it was the internet or a magazine article or what.

The case is very strange, with the late phone call on christmas eve and then the house burning down. I have no idea what the motive could have been but it was suggested that someone wanted to abduct the kids that were missing.

It's probably more likely that someone tried to kill the whole family and not just some of the children. Another possibility is that it was an accident. It was christmas time and there are lots of house fires that time of year because of candles and defective light decorations. I need to find out more info about the ladder being moved and some other stuff tho.

Unless there's some kind of baskin-like family feud that we don't know about, it seems weird that some of the kids would be chosen for abduction while others were left behind.

Some of the missing kids are too old to be targeted by the kind of kidnapper who wants a child of their own, so steals one. The age ranges and genders make it look like this was not a sexual predator, they usually have an age/gender preference.

The logical conclusion is that the missing kids died in the fire, then the site was bulldozed, covering up any evidence and remains. I didn't realize that the site was destroyed by the father only a week after the fire. I thought it was several weeks or even months afterward, not just a few days. Did authorities thoroughly search for remains before he did that? Remember how badly investigators messed up the Lauria Bible/Ashley Freeman fire scene.

IIRC, bones were found at the Sodder site... small hand bones or something, but then it was later determined they were not human. I'm really not positive on those details.

And, would that many people be burned in a house fire, all the way to the point of not finding enough remains to prove their deaths? When a dead person is cremated, the fire has to be really hot, but they also pulverize the remaining bones to make the cremains. Murderers who've cremated their victims have actually tried to totally destroy the body as evidence and many have failed because fragments survived their attempts. (gah, I know way too much gross stuff....)

According to that link above, the fire department didn't arrive at the Sodder house for hours, when it was way too late to do anything. I can believe that because of the year and location, etc. But without purposely destroying the bodies, you'd think there'd be something at the site that would prove the kids died in the fire.

This is the charley page for the one child whose photo, supposedly him as an adult, was sent to the family. Links to the other children's charley pages are there too but the story is the same:

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/sodder_louis.html


This link takes you to several discussion threads on the websleuths site:

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=149

Lots of details in this article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5067563 Following is the full text:

December 23, 2005
Other than music that plays from a loudspeaker mounted on a storefront in the center of town, the streets of Fayetteville, W.V., are quiet as Christmas Eve approaches. Inside, they talk of presents and parties, and inevitably, what really happened to the Sodder family on Christmas morning 60 years ago.

Everyone has an opinion about the fire. These are the facts: When George and Jennie Sodder went to sleep on Christmas Eve in 1945, nine of their 10 children were with them. One son was away in the military.

George Bragg, a local writer and author of West Virginia Unsolved Murders, tells the story of that night's events: "Jennie woke up. She heard a noise. Somebody had thrown something on the roof. She got up and checked that out, and went back to bed. She woke up about a half-hour later, and she smelled smoke. She got up and realized one of the rooms where their office was [located] was on fire. She screamed for her husband and woke him up, and they both hollered upstairs where two of the boys were."

Neighbors reached Chief F. J. Morris at the Fayetteville Fire Department a little after 1 a.m. By then, it was already Christmas. Firefighters were told that children were trapped inside, but no fire truck was sent until 8 a.m. — seven hours later. Chief Morris is long dead. But another retired fire chief, Steve Cruikshank, tried to explain the delay. He says the fire department didn't even have a siren back then. When somebody called to report an incident, an operator would take the call and rouse a firefighter, who would then have to reach fellow firefighters one by one.

The Sodder parents and four of their children escaped. But five of the Sodder children, ages 5, 8, 9, 12 and 14, were never seen again.

Strange Events Surrounding That Night

What happened next unfolded in such a way as to almost guarantee that the story of the Sodder fire would be forever surrounded by misinformation, wishful thinking and rumor.

All that remained of the Sodder house was a basement full of ashes. A brief, informal search took place, but instead of the skeletons they expected to find, firefighters encountered just a few bones and pieces of internal organs. The family was never told that anything was found. Because it was Christmas, a more thorough search was postponed.

The fire marshal told the Sodder family to leave the site as it was. He said authorities would come back and finish inspecting things later.

But the father, George Sodder, ignored the fire marshal. Less than a week later, he bulldozed four or five feet of dirt onto what was left of his home. The family planted flowers, a shrine to their lost children.

Two years later, George Sodder saw a newspaper photo of school children in New York and became convinced that one of the children was his missing daughter Betty. He jumped in his pickup and drove to Manhattan. Despite his insistence, he was not allowed to see the child.

But Sodder became convinced that his children were still alive — if not in New York, then somewhere else. He and his wife hired a string of private detectives to search for the children.

Around the same time, Fayetteville Fire Chief Morris added a bizarre twist to the story. According to Unsolved Murders author Bragg, Morris told the Sodders that he had recovered a body part from the site of the fire and buried it in a box there.

If the box of remains could be recovered, that would be proof that the children had died that night. The family could finally move on. George Sodder and a private investigator asked Morris to show them where he'd buried the box.

"They got together and dug the box up," Bragg says. "They took it straight to a funeral home and asked the person in charge there to open the box and examine the interior. When he did open that box, he found what looked like a fresh beef liver."

Rumors Swirl

That's when newspapers got hold of the story. Strangers began reporting that they'd seen the Sodder kids around the country. None of the leads went anywhere.

Today, there are no longer any traces of the 1945 fire at the former site of the Sodder house. Cars speed past a new white house at the end of a gravel driveway. A few Christmas decorations hang here and there around the house, but nothing stands out.

But for decades, a huge reminder of the tragedy stood at the site: a billboard. The Sodders purchased the billboard in 1952. It featured black-and-white photographs of each missing child and an account of the fire. It also offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of any or all of their children. For years, people would pull over and walk up to the billboard, Bragg says. "When you walked up to that sign, you were looking right into the faces of the children," he says.

The billboard fed new rumors: The children had been sold to an orphanage. They were taken to Italy. Some even suggested the mafia had somehow been involved.

And through it all, the Sodder family clung to hope. After all, no one had seen the children at the windows, crying for help. But that's not unusual, says West Virginia State Fire Marshall Sterling Lewis. He says that when young children feel heat and smell smoke, they are likely to hide. "We find them under beds. We find them in closets. We find them crawled up in the bathtubs," Lewis says.

Hope Springs Eternal

For the rest of his life, George Sodder traveled the country, tracking down rumors of his missing kids. He died in 1969, his wife, Jennie, 20 years later. After her death, the billboard came down.

The youngest child who survived the fire, Sylvia Sodder Praxton, didn't want her voice recorded for NPR's story. What she did want: to fulfill her parent's wish to keep the story alive.

So every Christmas, the people of Fayetteville go over what happened that night, repeating the same reasons for believing their version of the story. Without physical evidence, they can't say for sure, but fire professionals are convinced the blaze that took place in 1945 probably cost the Sodder children their lives.

For some, the children died 60 years ago. For the family and many of their neighbors who grew up looking into the faces of the Sodder children, and who firmly believe the children are still out there, this could be the Christmas they finally come home.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wvrcbiog/WhatReallyHappenedToChildrena.html

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wvrcbiog/WhatReallyHappenedToChildrenb.html

Should link to an image of a readable newspaper article from 1968 and a photo/article about the Sodder case.

This case is so bizarre that it sounds like it was right up Unsolved Mysteries' alley, but there's one comment here from someone claiming to be a friend of the Sodder family who says that UM actually did try to get in touch with the surviving members of the family at some point in order to do the story, but that they turned them down. The Sodder family has apparently turned down numerous requests to do movies, documentaries or books on the case and probably just wants to put the incident behind them.
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/fayetteville-wv/T9RU3V19KEH59KSP1

It took the fire department 7 HOURS to respond?!? I realize it was Christmas in the year 1945, but good god that seems excessive.

I could go either way on this. It sure sounds suspicious (and after a week they hadn't investigated fully?) but then again it could be just a fire.

If the kids were upstairs and sleeping when the fire started, they could have easily been trapped and/or overcome by smoke. Assuming they died in the fire, as the house collapsed they would fall with it and their bodies would be burned and possibly crushed by the house falling into the basement. You should be able to find skeletons but it would be tough if there was that much material on top of it.

I would love to know if they (or why didn't they) dig up the site. Even if the father bulldozed it and put five feet of dirt over the scene, you should still be able to go back and find bones if they were there. If there were none, then that says a lot.

What a weird case. I wish UM had done a story on it.

This is the blog page from the reporter who wrote the NPR story I linked to earlier. She quoted parts of interviews that had to be cut to fit the time constraints of the on air radio interview she did.

There's probably more on her site but just this one page shows she got a lot of answers to nagging questions such as the mysterious midnight phone call. There had been speculation that the call was from someone who may have had knowledge of a mass murder plot and they were calling in an attempt to wake the whole family up so they could get out of the house. Turns out it was just a lady who dialed the wrong number.

And the phone wires weren't cut discreetly at the house. They were cut at the top of the pole. A man caught stealing equipment out of their garage on the night of the fire confessed to cutting their phone lines, and was fined. That's it.

There has to be more to this part of the story. The Sodders received the misdialed number about midnight. One of the children ran to a neighbor's to call the fire department about 1:00am. While the family is trying to save trapped children, this guy is stealing stuff from an outbuilding. He must have cut the wires between midnight and 1:00. Did he set the fire, too? He's quite an obvious suspect, imo, especially since he was the only person caught right in the middle of committing a crime just outside the burning house. It looks like he cut the phone line so they can't call the police, set the house on fire so they don't interrupt his activities, then was free to steal their property while they fight for their lives.

Also, cutting the phone lines at the top of the pole instead of at the house could explain why the ladder was not in it's usual location. Mr. Sodder couldn't find it so he couldn't use it to climb to the upper windows to save anyone who might be trapped upstairs. The ladder was later found away from the house in a ditch or ravine. They wouldn't have been able to find it in the dark that night, imo.

There's speculation about why it took the fire department so long to arrive. Everything from racism to conspiracy to laziness is discussed.

Personally, I think the delay was caused by a combination of christmas day, freezing cold wind blowing weather, unprofessional volunteer firefighters, poor phone communication, and the fact that the firefighters knew they had no rescue equipment so could do nothing that night except watch the house burn. Instead, they decided to stay home until daylight then go spray some water on the smoldering basement. But that's jmo.

http://www.echonyc.com/~horn/stacy/?p=80

This whole case is downright freaky. And what's up with the liver in a box? I believe there should have been more evidence of five bodies if the kids really did die in the fire. Kidnapping seems hard to prove, too. What do you guys think of the picture sent to the parents? Total fake?

I would love to know if they (or why didn't they) dig up the site. Even if the father bulldozed it and put five feet of dirt over the scene, you should still be able to go back and find bones if they were there. If there were none, then that says a lot.


They did another "excavation" I guess you could call it in 1949, but it was unprofessional and didn't lead to anything new.

Honestly, I'm thinking that the kids died in the fire and everything was just handled poorly, with no genuine effort to find remains, then the father, thinking no one was going to ever come back and look for his kids decided to basically bury them himself.

That would be a bizarre situation to be in... Your house burned to the ground on Christmas, you're ignored by the fire department, an extremely brief search reveals nothing, and you're told to leave your charred house which likely holds the remains of your five children open to the elements until someone eventually shows up sometime to do something.... then no one shows up. For a week!

The "mystery" part didn't come about until a couple years later when the father thought he saw a photo of his missing (presumed dead) daughter in a magazine and went about trying to locate her.

To prove the kids were really dead, the fire chief decided to bury fresh beef liver on the site to dig up and pass off as the remains of a child that had been discovered years earlier on the day of the fire.

What about the photograph of the male sent to the family? I wonder if it's a hoax. I also wonder if the FD or PD had some sort of rift with the father or other family members which explains the negligence/delays.

I am still reading the threads at websleuths and anything else I can find about this case.

I came across more information since posting #11 and I'm CORRECTING A STATEMENT I made in that post.

Apparently, the 1949 excavation was not unprofessional. If the information is true, it was conducted at Mr. Sodder's request and was led by Dr. Oscar B. Hunter Jr. who was a famous pathologist from Washington, DC.

This sounds like it was an expertly conducted search that would have turned up remains if any were at the site. Information from a 1951 Sodder family letter says that when searching for bones, the soil was not screened, however Dr. Hunter said screening wouldn't be necessary because they should be finding large bones.

IMO, they should have done both. Since the search was a few years after the fact and it eventually became obvious they weren't going to find large bones, they should have begun screening and looking for fragments. But I can see why Dr. Hunter didn't do it. The fire simply wasn't intense enough to destroy entire bodies without leaving a trace.

BTW, this is the excavation where the vertebrae were found. They were said to have been from one person, age 16 - 22, IIRC, and had not been exposed to fire. The oldest missing child was 14, so it was unlikely to be him. He is one of 5 people who were presumed lost in the fire, yet only a few (4?) vertebrae were found in the whole site, and those had never been in a fire.

IMO, they were planted, just like the ridiculous liver incident.

There have been rumors that a child or the children were observed sitting in a taxi cab, watching the house burn. Turns out that a taxi brought people from a local bar by the house, for whatever reason.... maybe on the way home but stopped to watch the fire, or someone alert the patrons of the fire and they decided to gawk?

Either way, a WS poster makes an excellent point: The bar patrons were able to make it out to the house to watch it burn. Where the heck was the fire department?

The Sodder parents and four of their children escaped. But five of the Sodder children, ages 5, 8, 9, 12 and 14, were never seen again.

Interesting story. Just found out about it from this thread so all I've done so far is watched the video and read a few things over the past 20 minutes.

In my opinion, the kids died. The poor handling of the fire and Sodder bulldozing the place damaged the chance of finding the bodies.

I can totally believe that a newborn can be kidnapped and have no knowledge of their true family. I'm not so willing to believe that a 14 year old can just be ripped out of their family, and not at some point in their life, either go to the authorities, or try to reconnect with their family.

I remember this case now. still gives me the chills. well to be fair wouldn't it have been harder for a kid to try to reconnect with their family in the late 40's and so on? if they didn't know where they were. Correct me if I'm wrong but back then didn't children actually listen and obey there parents? so maybe they were discouraged to going to the Police.

But ultimately I believe they were sadly killed and the bodies just have not been found. what a sad and twisted case.

Two months before the fire, the Sodders had an argument with another Fayetteville resident who tried to sell them life insurance. He warned that their house would burn and the children would vanish.[1] He was also a member of the coroner’s jury which ruled the fire accidental.

Here are some hightlights from Inside Detective, February, 1968 that I just found:

The title is "The Children who went up in Smoke" -According to the article it all began a few months before Christmas 1945. A stranger appeared in the fall of 1945 to discuss some hauling work. While there, he made a point of examining the wiring of the house. He stated there was going to be a fire pointing to two fuse boxes. Mr. Sodder had not ask him to inspect the fuse boxes.A few days before Christmas the family noticed another thing which seem unimportant at the time. A man parked in an automobile was seen watching the Sodder children when they came home from school. The unknown man was seen several times parked along the highway.There was no Christmas tree that year because the family was sad Joe had not made it home for Christmas. (So, a Christmas tree did not start the blaze).When the telephone rang at 12:30 a.m. Mrs. Sodder saw Marian alseep on the couch in the living room.

I remember this case now. still gives me the chills. well to be fair wouldn't it have been harder for a kid to try to reconnect with their family in the late 40's and so on? if they didn't know where they were. Correct me if I'm wrong but back then didn't children actually listen and obey there parents? so maybe they were discouraged to going to the Police.

But ultimately I believe they were sadly killed and the bodies just have not been found. what a sad and twisted case.

A 14 year old would have enough memory of his/her life prior to the abduction to have an idea where they lived. At some point, in his 20's and on, would he not feel comfortable enough to break away from whoever abducted him?

Sure it was long before the internet/texting days, but he could as an adult, go to the local authorities regardless of what part of the world they're in, and try to contact the local authorities in his home town which he would have remembered. Even if the family moved, I can't see how even back in the 40's, 50's, 60's, that some re-connecting couldn't have been done.

From what I've been reading, that billboard of the missing kids was up for a long time, so its not like the local's forgot about it.

There was no reconnecting because they died in the fire. Those bodies were trapped, burned to a crisp and was covered in debris. This was the 40's, and identifying bodies was in such an archaic state at that time. I can see how they could have missed the remains, which was further complicated by the bulldozing.

That is a far more likely scenario rather than some gang managed to abduct 5 kids ranging from 5-14 with no witnesses, and those 5 kids are never heard from again. The father died over 20 years later, and the mom died over 40 years later. This isn't a case of young kids being dragged away by some adoption agency in the 40's with no paper work to trace where they went.

This is a group of kids, up to 14 years old who were taken away. All that 14 year old had to do, once he got old enough, buy a ticket and fly back home and go to the authorities in his home town. Case closed. But that never happened. Because they're dead.

I've read everything I could find over at WebSleuths. I'm not a member there so I can't use the search feature.

I read Sodder Thread #1 all the way through. It was locked. Thread #2 was started and there was a link there for me to quickly follow.

Some Sodder family members were participating (I even found out that a young woman who lived in a tiny town I used to live in here in MI recently died and was a Sodder descendant.) Anyway, in about 2006, the family started a website sodderchildren.com, but by 2011, it's already defunct. Another Sodder descendant (a great grandson, I think) started a blog but he never posted anything to it after the initial entry 5 years ago.

WebSleuth's Sodder thread #2 ended, and was locked, without a link to a thread #3, so I don't know if there is one.

It ended with no explanation of why the family website was taken down. I put the info into the waybackmachine ( http://www.archive.org/web/web.php ) but there was no info archived regarding things mentioned in the WS threads, including a copy of a pamphlet circulated by the family back when they were searching for the kids. It just had some photos and minor info that we already know from other sources.

Any interested members here who are WS members and can search to see if the threads #1 and #2 are all the info there is left there on the Sodder case? They had the best stuff, including links to the NPR article (the author participated at WS, too) and her blog, and all kinds of other interesting things.

I found a site and in the comments section, there were several people claiming to be Sodder family members. Of course on a site like that there is no way to tell for sure, but if what they say is true, it sounds like there was a lot of disagreement in the extended familly about what happened and how it was investigated.

I mean no disrespect to the Sodder family if this is not true. I'm just reporting what I read.

At this point, I think other than finding a skeleton somewhere or one of the children coming forward and saying they are in fact alive, there will never be resolution to this case.

With my very limited knowledge of this case, I am of the belief that they died in the fire and all else is circumstantial or coincidental. But stranger things have happened...

A sad, sad story no matter what actually happened. My prayers for the Sodder family. :(

I am a member at websleuths. I don't know if you've read these but here are a few other threads (besides #1 and #2) that talk about them if anyone is interested:


http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64776&highlight=Sodder

http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45400&highlight=Sodder

http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144117&highlight=Sodder

http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120871&highlight=Sodder

http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65030&highlight=Sodder

Thank you CD (and nice Stack avie!) :)

I think the children probably died in the fire.

I wanted to know why no remains were found, since a house fire is unlikely to destroy every sign of them. I did learn that children's bones don't take as much time and heat to disintegrate as those of an adult. Their bones aren't as dense so less remains in a fire would not be unusual. But other house fires have left very large amounts of remains so this would all depend on the circumstances.

I found (can't remember where) information that said the Sodder house was heated with two coal stoves. Coal burns very hot, and depending on the circumstances, could greatly reduce the amount of remains. For example if coal was stored in the basement, (people did this, they had coal chutes on the side of the house where the truck would deliver the coal right into the basement) then the house with the children's bodies inside collapsed into the basement, then the house was left to burn all night (as it was, since the fire department opted to sit this one out), the bodies would then be in close proximity to the very hot burning pile of coal for hours. I can see where this could have been what happened.

On top of that info, there is no doubt there was planted evidence and a poorly conducted initial search. I don't think there were a lot of remains left, maybe teeth and fragments of the larger or more dense bones. After nearly a week of no officials inspecting the site, after promising they would, Mr. Sodder bulldozed over what was left of the house, with the children inside, and made a burial site/shrine.

I don't believe the sighting of a child or all the children watching the fire from a taxi (as I explained above). And I have to discount the sightings of the children after the fire.

These sightings by motel clerks (sighting of one child and of four children) and in FL, someone over hearing a person in a TX border town call another "maurice sodder", etc, were reported way after the fact and done by people who had never met the children. Keri Lynn Nixon's case, among others, proves how wrong sightings by strangers can be.

The photo of the NY school girl in a magazine, as seen by Mr. Sodder, is a look alike, imo. The children were 100% ethnic italian, both their parents were born in italy, and NY has a huge italian population. Dark haired, dark eyed little girls pictured in black and white photographs can look very much alike.

The photo of "Louis Sodder" sent to the family in 1968 is probably a hoax. A detective magazine had just done a story on the case and within months, the photo is mailed to Mrs. Sodder. It may have been an attempt to help or it may have been a cruel prank, but IMO, it was instigated by the magazine article.

The stories of the mafia or relatives kidnapping the children due to feuds or business intimidation are gossip, imo. If the mafia wanted to intimidate Mr. Sodder, there are better ways than to abduct 5 of his children.

The stories of the children being shuffled off to Italy are also just gossip, imo. IIRC, those stories got started after the billboard went up several years after the fire. IMO, Italy had just come out of a devastating war and those folks were having enough trouble taking care of their own without importing 5 children to feed, clothe, and house. Not to mention the amount of travel required to move the kids half way around the world in the winter. Such an act would have required a network of conspirators, getting the kid's birth certificates and any other papers required for travel and immigration into a foreign country. These kids were all americans, all born in the US. Their only ties to Italy were their parents' extended family. There would be a lot of work involved in getting them out of the US and into another country. Why would someone do that?

Next is the theory that they were stolen by a Georgia Tan type illegal adoption ring. Some, if not all, of the kids were too old for that, and what a weird night to be stealing kids: very cold, high winds, christmas eve, and taken straight from the house while the parents were home. I believe there would have been better opportunities than this one, if illegal adoption kidnappers wanted these kids. Adopting out the older kids for labor might have happened, but again, right after WWII, I think people were just doing their best to take care of themselves without taking on little kids as "labor". Only the 12 y/o girl and 14 y/o boy would be useful for this purpose. The other children would probably be a financial burden until they got older.

The source of the fire, IMO is arson. I don't think it could have been the wiring, even though it's suspected. The family had their wiring recently changed with the installation of a new electric stove and there'd been a strange man commenting on their fuse box a few days prior to the fire. BUT, if the wiring had been at fault, the lights wouldn't have been on in the house, which is how the family was able to get out.

There were corrupt local politics in town and unions/mob/coal wars were going on. At least one man made threats against the family, and then there's the guy who cut the phone line and was stealing equipment the night of the fire. All these could have been situations that resulted in an arson.

I think the intent was to burn down the house with the whole family inside, but some of them escaped. IMO, the best suspect is the thief, who admitted to cutting their electric lines. He only cut the phone line by mistake. (I have no idea why this doofus didn't notice that he'd cut the wrong wires. Cutting live power lines at the top of the pole would have electrocuted him. Maybe he lied and meant to cut the phone line all along, so they couldn't call for help.)

If the thief wasn't an arsonist, what is the likelihood that all these events come into play? It's christmas eve, a monday night, the family's home accidentally catches on fire (or is firebombed by enemies) and in the middle of the night, in this bitterly cold weather, with the house blazing, this man happens by, cuts their phone line, and starts hauling stuff out of the garage?

Now, if the house was on fire, it drew a crowd, and he took the opportunity to steal while everyone's attention was on saving the kids/watching the fire, I could see where he wouldn't be the arsonist. But he cut their phone lines and stole from them. He planned to be there, it wasn't a crime of opportunity. I suspect him and would like to know who he is, what his reputation was, and how he was connected to the local muckity mucks.

Thank you CD (and nice Stack avie!) :)
Thanks...:D

I don't know what to think with this case.
I would be inclined to believe that the children all died in the fire, but
that creepy photo that was sent to their Mother years later makes me
think otherwise. It really *does* look like the son.

I don't know what to think with this case.
I would be inclined to believe that the children all died in the fire, but
that creepy photo that was sent to their Mother years later makes me
think otherwise. It really *does* look like the son.

I agree that the photo sent in 1967 or 68 looks very much like that young man could be one of the Sodder children (grown up) or a relative. IIRC, the shape of the brow bone, face shape, and bridge of the nose really made me think this could be legitimate.

Over at WS, (dang I need to join that place, I've been reading non-stop there) one of the Sodder descendants stated that the family had a specialist look at the photo to determine if it was a picture of an aged Louis Sodder. The expert determined that it was not him.

HOWEVER, another Sodder descendant asked the one who made that comment for details, since he/she had never heard of the suspect photograph being analyzed by a professional. That discussion thread was later locked and it contained no answers about the photo from anyone, including posters who are the direct family members.

The following is jmo. I have not idea what really happened that caused the Sodder kids website to close and forum communications from the family to end.

One poster/descendant was finishing an advanced degree at school and was very busy traveling, working on school, and IIRC getting a career going.

The other poster/descendant's sibling made the sodder children's website. Their parent was already elderly at the time the conversation ended. I suppose it's possible that the parent became very ill or passed. The WS poster and his/her sibling could also be getting up there in age, so may not be in the best of health. Or perhaps they're keeping things updated in a thread at WS that I haven't found yet.

I'm currently reading Death's Acre about Dr. Bass's "body farm" in Tennessee. There were some interesting things he mentioned about house fires that I though I would share here. It seems to pretty much confirm what I mentioned in a post above and may help us understand more about what could have happened at the Sodder family home when it burned, and the subsequent, unsuccessful search for remains.

Some info from the book, with a little paraphrasing and editing, my comments are in parentheses:

A fairly low temperature house fire will turn the long bones black or caramel colored but will leave them relatively intact. A fire fueled by an accelerant or hot burning material (like coal) can reach extremely high temperatures.

At high temperatures, the bone undergoes a chemical and structural metamorphosis. The carbon burns out of the bone, leaving behind what is called "calcined" bone. It may still retain it's shape, but it is very lightweight, grayish in color, riddled with heat fractures, and is so fragile that it can easily crumble in your hands and will certain crumble underfoot. (If the childrens bones were burned at such high heat that they were basically turned into this softened ashy material, they could have easily been mixed in with the burned rubble from the house and disintegrated completely, especially after Mr. Sodder filled the basement with several feet of dirt.)

The single thing that does the most to destroy forensic evidence at a fire scene is not the fire itself. It's an untrained, overzealous investigator armed with a rake. An investigator who hasn't been trained in human osteology and doesn't know how to recognize and identify severely burned bone fragments can wreak havoc at a fire scene. (The untrained volunteers who performed the brief, informal search, were looking for recognizable skeletonized remains, not understanding what actually happens to victims of house fires. Even when the professional search was conducted years later, they did not use fine screens because the investigator said they were looking for large bone pieces. He didn't screen for small bones or teeth and if the bodies were in the condition described above, the bones would have been pulverized and mixed with ashes and dirt, which explains why he never found the large bones he was looking for.)

I have seen cases where part of a body has burned and fallen through a hole in the floor, leaving the other part of the body to settle atop a different layer of rubble. (If the Sodder children were upstairs, something like this could have happened to them, separating their remains as the house collapsed, which would have further confused the searchers who were expecting to find basically intact skeletons.)

I think because the fire could have been arson, it's easy to jump to the abduction theory, but I have a hard time believing that myself. I think this was definitely an arson judging from everything I have read, including that the telephone wires were cut, the ladder was moved and found in an embankment, and Jenny awoke to noises on the roof before the fire. I have trouble with the abduction theory though. Who would have been capable of snatching five kids without anyone noticing? But even if all the kids died in the fire, which I find the most likely scenario, the case is shrouded in mystery. Besides the obvious question of where they are, I want to know:

1) Why did the discovered bones have no indication of fire damage?
2) Why would the missing children have been unable to get out? Where was the fire's origin and how far away from any exit was the area where the kids were playing in the house with their presents? Or at that point, were they dong their chores as promised? I would like to know the layout of the home and why they would have been trapped and the sleeping kids were able to escape.
3) One of the children who escaped claimed that he called to the missing siblings while fleeing the house and heard them answer. If this is true, where were they heard from?
4) Is the creepy telephone call related or a coincidence?

I honestly want to know how they never arrested anyone for starting that fire. It's fairly obvious it was set, it's a small town with a small population, and yet they couldn't arrest someone for it? Surely there has to be a good idea of who it was that did it.

Is the creepy telephone call related or a coincidence?

Best I can remember, the telephone caller was identified. A woman had dialed the wrong number and they think the timing was just a coincidence. I would have to read back through here and on the reporter's blog to be sure about that tho.

I honestly want to know how they never arrested anyone for starting that fire. It's fairly obvious it was set, it's a small town with a small population, and yet they couldn't arrest someone for it? Surely there has to be a good idea of who it was that did it.

I would have taken a hard look at the guy who was out there cutting the wires.

I read all the Sodder threads over at WS when I first joined. Its taken me awhile to make my mind up but I've come to the conclusion that the children died in the fire. It was wishful thinking on the parents part that they were kidnapped.

Last month a five year old perished in a cabin fire in Gatlinburg. Searchers looked for about a week. Even with today's technology, no trace of the little boy was found. That just made me even more certain that the children died in the fire and their bodies were consumed by it.

Life was cheap in coal country, even in the 1940s. I could tell you stories from my family that would make you cringe, and as far as I know, they're pretty typical.

That being said, Fayetteville is bituminous country. The glow point of bituminous coal (what they would likely be heating the house with) is 850 degrees F. If they were burning coal in the house, they likely had a supply of it in the house that fed the flames. It would have burned very hot.

I can't, however, get past the weird things that went on leading up to the fire. I don't think the kids were all in there. If they survived and were taken, they may have been told the rest of the family perished. Or they may have been killed elsewhere.

I really do believe they perished in the fire. Are there are any circumstances in which their remains could have been totally consumed? Or could their remains simply have been missed? Five children is so many...I really couldn't imagine how they would miss them though.

I was unaware that the detective they hired to look into the photo vanished and was never seen again. (http://www.historicmysteries.com/sodder-children-mystery/) Add that and the planted skeleton and I'm pretty sure something off was going on. Whatever it was, the police messed this up bad.

I listened to this podcast a few months ago about the Sodder Children and thought I would share as I found it very informative. I really enjoyed the part of how they explained how intense a fire would need to be to destroy a human body.

http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/the-unsolved-mystery-disappearance-of-the-sodder-children/

Hope you enjoy

There was a documentary being worked on about this story. I haven't heard an update in a while.

I recently came across the case of the Quintinshill rail disaster in Scotland in 1915. The first thing I thought of was the Sodder children because, like them, there was a claim that some of the bodies (mostly adult soldiers) couldn't be recovered because they were consumed by the fire caused by the chain reaction train crash.

Two of the cars were coal tenders, and others contained wood and other flammables, so there were many sources of fuel for the fires.

Just thought I'd mention it here, in case someone else was wondering if there have been any situations similar to what happened at the Sodder house, for comparison.