The Mysterious Disappearance Of The Sodder Children

**The Mysterious Disappearance Of The Sodder Children** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded onto YouTube on December 23, 2016. It was the ninth episode of the first season of BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime, and the fourteenth episode overall. You can find it here.

## Description

What happened on the fateful night of 1945 to the Sodder children?

## Notable Events

This is the first True Crime episode where Shane appears as the co-host instead of Brent.

## Background

On December 24, 1945, in Fayetteville, West Virginia, George and Jennie Sodder, along with nine of their children, Sylvia, two; Marion, seventeen; John, twenty-three; George, Jr., sixteen; Maurice, fourteen; Martha, twelve; Louis, nine; Jennie, Jr., eight; and Betty, five; were asleep when a fire started in their home.

George, Jennie, Sylvia, Marion, John, and George, Jr. all escaped, as the rest of the children shared two bedrooms, which were upstairs. George broke back into the house to save the rest of the children (Maurice; Martha; Louis; Jennie, Jr; and Betty), but the staircase was on fire; and when he went to the back of the house to use his ladder, it was missing. His coal trucks, which he wanted to use to park and climb on top of, could not start.

Marion ran to a neighbor's house to call the fire department, but the operator did not respond, and the same thing happened with another nearby house. The latter neighbor ran to the fire department and found the fire chief, F. J. Morris, but though it was only 2.5 miles away, it took the firefighters seven hours to reach the home, at which point it was ash.

Authorities excavated the ash, looking for remains of the five missing Sodder children, but nothing was found, and they were presumed dead. The basement still remained, but was later covered up to create a memorial for the children. The fire was deemed to originate from bad wiring in the house, and the week after, the Fayetteville coroner's office issued death certificates for each of the children. F. J. Morris claimed that he had found a heart in the fire—but when the "heart" was examined, it was revealed to be beef liver. Morris said that he had wanted to give the family closure.

In 1947, George and Jennie attempted to involve the FBI in the case, believing that their children were still alive and that the fire had not been an accident. However, it was later blocked by local authorities.

The couple also asked a private detective, C. C. Tinsley, to help in the case, along with a different detective in 1968, who later disappeared. In August 1949, they hired Oscar B. Hunter, a pathologist.

In 1950, after calling hearings in the West Virginia State Capitol Building, the governor, Okey L. Patterson, declared the case officially closed. George and Jennie Sodder then put up a billboard along Route 16 advertising their missing children, which remained for forty years.

George Sodder passed away in 1969, and Jennie Sodder in 1989. To their deaths, they believed that their children were not dead, but that they had been kidnapped. George and Jennie was buried in High Lawn Memorial Park, in Oak Hill, West Virginia, with their daughter Marion, who passed in 2005. John passed away in 2001 and was buried in Huse Memorial Park in Fayetteville, West Virginia; and George, Jr. passed away in 2012 and was buried in Montgomery Memorial Park, London, West Virginia. There was apparently a memorial built for the missing Sodder children where the house once stood.

The last Sodder child, Sylvia Sodder passed away on April 21, 2021, but maintained that her siblings did not die in the fire. Her daughter, Jennie Henthorn, asks any with information to post it to websleuths.com.

## Theories

* The Sodder children perished in the fire.
	+ F. J. Morris suggested that the fire may have been so hot that it completely cremated the children's bodies.
	+ However, bones are not typically burned away in fires, even long-lasting ones, and usually remain in fragmented form. In speaking to a crematorium employee, Jennie found that bones were always left behind, even when bodies burned at 2,000**°** Fahrenheit for two hours—and the Sodder home burned for only 45 minutes. Additionally, no smell of burning flesh was reported at the scene, and remains of household appliances were found in the rubble, meaning not everything was ash.
	+ Oscar B. Hunter, the pathologist, excavated the Sodder basement and found four shards of human vertebrae. However, upon sending it to the Smithsonian Institute, they found the bones likely belonged to a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old—but the oldest missing Sodder child was only fourteen. There was also no evidence that the bones had ever been exposed to fire, and they had likely only originated from dirt used to fill the basement. The bones were later lost.
* The Sodder children were kidnapped, and the fire was set by someone else. There was possibly a cover-up by Fayetteville law enforcement.
	+ George had gotten the wiring checked earlier that fall by the power company, who had deemed it in good condition. Therefore, the claim of bad wiring starting the fire was unlikely to be true.
	+ George Sodder had immigrated from Italy, and Fayetteville had a small community of Italian immigrants. George held controversial views against Benito Mussolini, the Italian prime minister/dictator, and often vocalized them, which angered some of the population. George had also never revealed why he left Italy, adding to rumors that he may have been involved in "shady business."
	+ In the fall, a life insurance salesman had come to the house. After apparently seeing that he would not be able to sell the policy to George, he threatened that "[George's] Goddam [sic] house is going up in smoke, and [his] children are going to be destroyed. [He's] going to be paid for the dirty remarks [he's] been making about Mussolini." There is no record of this ever being followed up on by local law enforcement.
	+ Days before the fire, two of the surviving Sodder sons had noticed a man watching the younger Sodder children come home from school on Highway 21.
	+ The night of the fire, around 12:30 a.m., Jennie got out of bed to answer a phone. She noticed the lights were still on, and as she returned to sleep, heard a loud bang on the roof, followed by the sound of something rolling. An hour later, she woke to the smell of smoke entering her room downstairs. Later, the Sodders would claim they had seen the lights on while the fire was occurring. If the fire had truly been set by faulty wiring, the lights would not have been on, as there would have been no power to the house. Also, when visiting the memorial with her family, Sylvia found a hard rubber object in the yard, which Jennie believed caused the noise she heard on the roof. George examined it and believed it was a Napalm "pineapple bomb," which would have started the fire.
	+ A witness to the fire claimed they had seen a man removing a block and tackle. A block and tackle is a pulley system, typically used for removing engines from cars. This could contribute to the fact that George's cars were not working.
	+ Witnesses have claimed sightings of the missing children. The sightings are listed below in separate bullet points, due to their number.
	+ The night of the fire, a woman said that she saw the children in a car driving by.
	+ The day after, a woman operating a tourist stop fifty miles west of Fayetteville claimed to have served them breakfast and that there was a car with Florida license plates at the stop as well.
	+ A week after, at a hotel in the nearby town of Charleston, a woman reported that she had seen four of the five children, saying, "The children were accompanied by two men and two women, all of Italian extraction. [She does] not remember the exact date. [She] tried to talk to the children in a friendly manner, but the man appeared hostile and refused to let [her] talk to these children... [She] sensed that [she] was being frozen out and so [she] said nothing more. They left early the next morning."
	+ A few years later, George saw a photo of New York City schoolchildren in a newspaper. One of the children resembled his missing daughter, Betty, and George drove up to New York to try and speak to her. However, the parents did not allow him to speak with her.
	+ A woman in St. Louis sent a letter to the couple telling them that their oldest daughter, Martha, had been enrolled in a convent.
	+ In 1968, a letter postmarked in Kentucky and addressed to Jennie Sodder included a photo of who they believed to be their son Louis, with the caption "Louis Sodder. I love brother Frankie. llil [sic] boys. A9032 or 35."
	+ In 1947, the FBI offered to help, but the Fayetteville police and fire department declined their offer. The private investigator, C.C. Tinsley, that they had hired, discovered that a member of the coroner's jury, who had decided the fire was an accident, was none other than the life insurance salesman who had threatened them previously.

## Quotes

* Ryan: "I'm not saying I'm condoning them for being seven hours late to a fire that was 2.5 miles away..."
	+ Shane: "It's just not a—not great."
	+ Ryan: "I—in fact, I'm pretty sure I could run that in probably an hour, at least."
	+ Shane: "I could *spit* the fire out in that time."
* Ryan (on the salesman): "He just listed every single aspect of the case in a nice, easy laid-out fashion."
	+ Shane: "House on fire, kids are gonna go up [inaudible], yeah."
	+ Ryan: "It was like the third act of a student film where they have to wrap everything up in exposition and dialogue."
	+ Shane: "Yeah, 'oh, shit, it's due tomorrow!'"
* Ryan (quoting a witness): "'I served them breakfast. There was a car with Florida license plates at the tourist court, too.'"
	+ Shane: "Nice of her. Giving 'em breakfast."
	+ Ryan: "Yeah. At a h—"
	+ Shane: "Nice to have breakfast."
	+ Ryan: "Yeah, I mean, she's just—okay, well, I'm—I agree. Breakfast is nice. I enjoy bacon."
	+ Shane: "Agree to agree."
	+ Ryan (laughing): "What are we doing here?"
* Ryan (narrating): "George and Jennie turned to a private investigator named C. C. Tinsley—"
	+ Shane (imitating a '40s detective): "'Yeah, C. C. Tinsley's here!'"
	+ Ryan (wheezing): "That does sound like—"
	+ Shane (still imitating): "'What'd you say? No bones, huh? Sounds like a case for C. C. Tinsley!'"

## Trivia

* In chat, Ryan remarked that this was one of his favorite cases.
* This is one of the episodes in which a character in the case has become famous in-fandom: C. C. Tinsley.