Where the children of the Sodder family disappeared: a mystery that has no answer even after 76 years

On Christmas Night, 1945, the Sodder family's home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, was engulfed in flames. The house burned to the ground, and five children of the family disappeared in the fire. Why did they disappear and not die? It's simple - among the charred ruins of the house, their bodies simply did not turn out. Even now, 76 years later, neither the police nor independent investigators are any closer to solving this disappearance.

There were 10 children in the large Sodder family. The oldest was in the army, and there were 9 minors and two adults in the house during the fire. On the evening before Christmas 1945, George and Jenny Sodder and their children went to bed. The fire broke out around one o'clock in the morning. The parents and four children ran out into the street, but the five people who remained in the house were never seen again.

Journalist Karen Abbott, who has been dealing with the mysterious history of the Sodder family for many years, has reconstructed some of the events of that night. The father of the family did not stand idly by and tried to get to his children. He broke the glass with his bare hand and climbed through the window into the living room. But the wall of fire prevented him from going to the stairs to the second floor, where the children's bedrooms were.

Then George got out into the street and ran around the house to climb to the second floor by a ladder. But the staircase, which had been standing in one place for years, mysteriously disappeared. There were two Sodder trucks parked in the yard and from their cabins it was possible to get to the windows of the second floor. But not a single car started, although everyone was on the move the night before.

Attempts to extinguish the fire on their own were also unsuccessful. The water tank standing in the yard of the house froze to the very bottom. That night in general was filled with strange coincidences, depriving children of a chance of salvation. Even firefighters could not be called immediately — the neighbors' telephone connection failed.

To report the accident, a neighbor of the Sodders had to rush by car to the center of Fayetteville. There they managed to find the fire chief F.J.Morris, who organized the team's departure. It also took a lot of time — the alert system in the city worked very strangely. One firefighter called another at home and the alarm message was passed along the chain.

It was possible to assemble the team only at 8 o'clock in the morning. When the fire truck overcame 4 km from the duty station to the Sodder house, only smoldering ruins remained of the house. Rescuers poured water over the rubble and began to disassemble them, hoping to find the bodies of five dead children. To the surprise of everyone, no remains were found in the conflagration.

Fire Chief Morris suggested that the fire had completely cremated the children's bodies, leaving only ashes from them. The Fayetteville police chief agreed with him, as there were no other options. The investigation went quickly and the cause of the fire was recognized as a malfunction of the electrical wiring.

After that, the coroner issued 5 death certificates to the inconsolable parents. They indicated vague causes of death: "fire or suffocation." The whole city was sure that the children had died. Only the Sodders themselves, who had serious reasons for doubt, did not think so.

George and Jenny decided to keep the place where the house stood as a memorial to the missing. They covered the basement with earth — the only room untouched by fire, and planted flowers on top. When the grief subsided a little, the couple began to analyze the events preceding the tragedy. They remembered a lot of strange and interesting facts.

George Sodder was engaged in the transportation of goods, but he did not have an office. Therefore, customers often came to the family home. A few months before the fire, one of the potential customers visited George. He was remembered for the fact that, passing into the back of the house, he casually said a strange phrase. The guest pointed to the two fuses in the electrical panel and said: "Someday it will cause a fire."

The Sodders did not pay attention to this, especially since they were sure of the wiring. Recently, the house was checked by employees of the electric company and did not find a single violation. But that wasn't all. Soon after, an insurance agent looked into the family home and offered his services. George Sodder refused to take out a policy and the agent was furious. Standing in the doorway, he shouted:

The intemperate man was a fellow countryman of George, who emigrated to the USA from Italy. But unlike Sodder, who hated fascism, the agent turned out to be a fan of the Duce. The father of the family did not attach importance to this episode, as he often argued with his fellow tribesmen from the Italian community on political topics. But after the tragedy, this quarrel surfaced in my memory and no longer seemed harmless.

The older children also remembered something. One day they noticed a man who was watching the younger children from a parked car. Strange things happened on the tragic night. Less than an hour before the fire started, the phone rang in the house. Jenny picked up the phone, but the caller got the wrong number. Immediately after the call, the woman noticed that someone had left the light on in one of the rooms on the first floor. When she came down, she was surprised to see that the front door was unlocked.

Jenny turned off the lights, locked the doors, and drew the curtains on the way. She returned to the bedroom on the second floor and, barely starting to doze off, woke up from some rumbling on the roof. The next time she came to her senses, it was amid the clouds of smoke that filled the room.

The mother of the missing children could not believe that the bodies could burn without a trace. Jenny burned animal corpses in the backyard to make sure there were at least some bones left. She remembered that after the fire she found a lot of things made of combustible materials that were damaged, but were not completely destroyed.

The unfortunate woman was talking to a crematorium worker, and he reinforced her doubts. He said that even if the body burns in a special furnace at a temperature of 1100 degrees for two hours, this is not enough for complete destruction. But the Sodder house burned for only 45 minutes.

A survey of neighbors showed that a man with a toolbox was seen near the house. Perhaps it was he who made it so that the trucks did not start. The Sodders' faith in the criminal nature of the fire was strengthened by the discovery made by their two-year-old daughter. The child found a rubber ball in the grass, not far from the ruins of the house, similar to an incendiary bomb with napalm. Jenny did not rule out that it was the impact of this object on the roof that she heard at night.

George Sodder called the specialists of the telephone company to the scene of the tragedy. They found out why it was impossible to reach anyone on that fateful night. It turned out that the line had been cut, not burned, as the police said.

Sodders interviewed hundreds of residents of Fayetteville and the surrounding area and received a lot of different information. One woman remembered seeing children during a fire in someone's car. Another, who worked as a waitress in a roadside cafe, allegedly fed them breakfast the next day. It was 80 km from home, and they arrived with an Italian man in a car with Florida license plates.

In 1949, the Sodders invited an expert who thoroughly searched the ruins of the house. He found several vertebrae, but they did not belong to teenagers and children, but to an adult man. In the same year, George and Jenny installed a sign near the highway asking for help to find the children. He was there for almost 40 years, but he could not help find the children.

In 1968, 23 years after the tragedy, George Sodder received a letter without a return address with a Kentucky stamp. Inside was a picture of a young man, surprisingly similar to 9-year-old Louis Sodder, who was declared dead. On the back was written: "Louis Sodder. I love Frankie's brother. Ilil boys. A90132 or 35".

George immediately hired a private investigator and sent him to Kentucky, but he disappeared and got in touch again. In the same 1968, George died and Jenny herself continued the search. She left this world in 1989 and only after her death the stand with photos of children by the road was dismantled. Now Sylvia Sodder, who was only 2 years old in 1945, is trying to find out the truth about the fate of her brothers and sisters. She promised her parents that she would finish the job and was determined.