Speaker 1: Hello, it's Richard McLean Smith here, not the impostor you've
Speaker 1: been listening to on the podcasts, the real one. Join
Speaker 1: me for Unexplained TV at YouTube dot com forward Slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained pod. In the early hours of Christmas Day nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five, dawn breaks over the small town of Fayetteville,
Speaker 1: West Virginia, in the United States. All across the county,
Speaker 1: children arousing from sleep dreaming of reindeers and presents under
Speaker 1: the tree. But as early rises sleepily draw back their curtains,
Speaker 1: they're startled to find thick smoke hanging over the town.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the festive haze of burning logs and roasting chestnuts.
Speaker 1: Acrid and deadly. On Beckwith Road, in a quiet rural
Speaker 1: district on the outskirts of town, people stepped out of
Speaker 1: their houses to see thick, black plumes of smoke spiraling
Speaker 1: upwards from number twenty sixty two. The house belonged to
Speaker 1: George and Jenny Sodder. The couple had ten children, nine
Speaker 1: of whom were home when the fire broke out. Like
Speaker 1: most other kids, they had all gone to bed filled
Speaker 1: with nothing but joy and excitement for the day to come. Instead,
Speaker 1: they emerged into a nightmare. When fire services made it
Speaker 1: to the property, they found George and Jenny huddled on
Speaker 1: the lawn with four of their children. Five others had
Speaker 1: yet to make it out. They could only watch in
Speaker 1: desperation as the volunteer crew did their best to stem
Speaker 1: the flames, hoping beyond hope for any sign of their
Speaker 1: missing children, but none appeared. Hours later, with the blaze
Speaker 1: having long since burned itself out, fire Chief F. J.
Speaker 1: Morris took on the grim task of searching for the
Speaker 1: bodies of the missing children. Black smoke hung thick in
Speaker 1: the air, still billowing from the rubble as he stepped
Speaker 1: from room to room, but the more he searched, the
Speaker 1: more confused he became. The children's bodies weren't there. After
Speaker 1: searching for more than an hour, Morris was exhausted and
Speaker 1: light headed from the smoke. Forced to admit defeat, he
Speaker 1: headed back outside into the chilly morning, Gulping in the
Speaker 1: fresh air. Across the front yard, the remainings of family
Speaker 1: members looked close to catatonic. Morris took a moment to
Speaker 1: rehydrate and compose himself, then walked over to the sodders
Speaker 1: told them that he'd searched the house from top to bottom,
Speaker 1: but for some inexplicable reason, he'd found no trace of
Speaker 1: Morris fourteen, Martha twelve, Louis nine, Jenny eight, and Betty five.
Speaker 1: It was almost too much to wrap their heads around.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the awful news they'd been bracing themselves for,
Speaker 1: but in ways they had yet to understand, it was
Speaker 1: perhaps even worse. Their five children, it seemed, hadn't burned
Speaker 1: to death in their beds, they'd completely vanished. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Giorgio Sodou was
Speaker 1: born on the Italian island of Sardinia, but in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh eight, when he was just US thirteen, he and
Speaker 1: his brother boarded a ship bound for America with the
Speaker 1: intention of immigrating. It isn't known why exactly, but shortly
Speaker 1: after their arrival at New York's Ellis Island, a tearful
Speaker 1: Georgio was given the crushing news by his brother that
Speaker 1: he would be continuing his journey on his own. Georgio's
Speaker 1: brother gave Georgio one final hug, then got straight back
Speaker 1: on their ship and sailed back to Italy. Georgio's only
Speaker 1: option was to assimilate as quickly as possible. By his
Speaker 1: mid twenties, the industrious Georgio Sodu had changed his name
Speaker 1: to George Soder in reaction to the anti Italian sentiment
Speaker 1: that was rife at the time, and was running his
Speaker 1: own trucking company in West Virginia. A short time later,
Speaker 1: he met Jenny Cipriani, who had also emigrated to America
Speaker 1: from Italy as a child. The connection was instant, and
Speaker 1: within a year they were married. Together they moved to Fayetteville,
Speaker 1: a town with a strong Italian American community where they
Speaker 1: felt truly at home. It was the ideal place to
Speaker 1: start their family. Over the next two decades, the Sodders
Speaker 1: had a total of ten children. Their eldest, John, was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen twenty two, and their youngest, Sylvia, in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. Jenny focused on raising the kids, and
Speaker 1: George concentrated on expanding his trucking business. By the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen forties, the Soders seemed to have firmly established their
Speaker 1: reputation in the community as a respected middle class family,
Speaker 1: but not everybody saw eye to eye with them. Although
Speaker 1: George had left Italy behind. He was deeply invested in
Speaker 1: his home country and had stronger peaions about the Fascist
Speaker 1: government and Benito Mussolini. Even after Mussolini was overthrown in
Speaker 1: forty three, this remained a controversial issue among the Italian
Speaker 1: immigrant community. George wasn't afraid to share his views in public,
Speaker 1: and his opposition to Mussolini led to some heated arguments
Speaker 1: with his neighbors. Still, for the most part, the Soders
Speaker 1: lived a quiet and uneventful life in Fayetteville. That was
Speaker 1: until the autumn of nineteen forty five, when a series
Speaker 1: of strange incidents occurred. One morning, a stranger knocked on
Speaker 1: the Soders front door and asked to speak to George
Speaker 1: about a possible job. When George invited the man in sight,
Speaker 1: he began wandering around the house, then suddenly made a
Speaker 1: beeline for the fuse box, pointing at the wiring with
Speaker 1: an oddly knowing look. The man said, this is going
Speaker 1: to cause a fire some day. The man lingered for
Speaker 1: a little longer, making small talk, than eventually left. George
Speaker 1: was confused. He'd only just had the houses wiring checked
Speaker 1: by the power company, and according to them, everything was fine.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks later, a traveling salesman arrived at
Speaker 1: the door attempting to sell life insurance. When George declined,
Speaker 1: the man refused to take no for an answer. When
Speaker 1: George then asked him to leave, the man grew angry
Speaker 1: and said that George would pay for his opinions on Mussolini.
Speaker 1: Just before George could shut the door in his face,
Speaker 1: the salesman snarled, of final warning, your goddamn house is
Speaker 1: going up in smoke and your children are going to
Speaker 1: be destroyed. Though disturbed by the incident, George chalked it
Speaker 1: down to the emotional turmoil of how things had unfolded
Speaker 1: in Italy towards the end of the war. It was
Speaker 1: a few weeks before the winter holidays of nineteen forty
Speaker 1: five when the two oldest Otter sons, John and George Junior,
Speaker 1: noticed that the same car kept parking across the street
Speaker 1: from their house. It didn't belong to any of their neighbors.
Speaker 1: The nearest house was several hundred feet down the road,
Speaker 1: and they didn't recognize the man behind the wheel. Even
Speaker 1: more unsettling, the car always seemed to be there When
Speaker 1: the youngest children arrived home from school as if the
Speaker 1: driver was keeping watch on them. Then just like that,
Speaker 1: the car was gone. On Christmas Eve, the Sodder's house
Speaker 1: was a twinkling haven of light on their dark rural road.
Speaker 1: Festive fairy lights adorned the front porch. Inside, tinsel and
Speaker 1: mistletoe hung from every available surface. A huge tree stood
Speaker 1: proudly in the living room with an array of colorfully
Speaker 1: wrapped presents laid out beneath. That night, George and his
Speaker 1: two eldest sons, John and George Junior, who'd been at
Speaker 1: work all day together, decided to get an early night,
Speaker 1: but for the rest of the kids, the night was
Speaker 1: only just getting started. It was a sod of family
Speaker 1: tradition that the younger children be allowed to open one
Speaker 1: present each on Christmas Eve. This year, they all chose
Speaker 1: to open their gifts from Marian, their seventeen year old sister,
Speaker 1: who'd bought toys from the dime store where she worked.
Speaker 1: By ten pm, the children were all excitedly playing with
Speaker 1: their new toys and begged their mother to let them
Speaker 1: stay up a little while longer, since it was Christmas
Speaker 1: after all. Jenny was happy to agree on the one
Speaker 1: condition that Marian keep watch over them. Then she scooped
Speaker 1: up her youngest, two year old, Sylvia, and went upstairs
Speaker 1: to bed. A few hours later, Jenny was woken by
Speaker 1: the sound of something ringing. As she roused from sleep,
Speaker 1: she realized it was the phone. Squinting at the clock,
Speaker 1: she saw, to her confusion that it had just gone
Speaker 1: past midnight. Grabbing her nightgown, she shuffled into the hallway
Speaker 1: and made her way to the phone downstairs. Hello, she said,
Speaker 1: answering the call. For a moment. On the other end,
Speaker 1: she heard only the muffled noise of what sounded like
Speaker 1: a party, glasses clinking, and indistinct chatter. Then a man
Speaker 1: asked to speak to someone whose name Jenny didn't recognize.
Speaker 1: She replied that they must have the wrong number. Then
Speaker 1: the caller let out a strange laugh and hung up.
Speaker 1: Jenny stared at the phone in disbelief, then replaced the receiver.
Speaker 1: Turning around, she saw Mario fast asleep on the sofa,
Speaker 1: but no sign of the other five children. They must
Speaker 1: have finally gone upstairs to bed, she thought. Then she
Speaker 1: noticed something strange. The living room curtains were wide open,
Speaker 1: and all the downstairs lights were still on and the
Speaker 1: front door was unbolted. Now she was annoyed. She'd specifically
Speaker 1: told Marian to make sure everything was off and the
Speaker 1: house secured before going to bed. Too tired to dwell
Speaker 1: on it, Jenny drew the curtains, locked the door, and
Speaker 1: turned off all the lights. Then she walked back upstairs
Speaker 1: to bed and fell back to sleep. Jenny had only
Speaker 1: been sleeping for half an hour when she was startled
Speaker 1: awake again, this time by a loud bang, like something
Speaker 1: had just hit the roof of the house and rolled
Speaker 1: off it. Still half asleep, she figured it was just
Speaker 1: an animal, or maybe a tree branch. After a few
Speaker 1: moments of silence, she dozed off again. It was thirty
Speaker 1: minutes later when she woke again, coughing violently. The air
Speaker 1: was thick with suffocating smoke. The smoke seemed to be
Speaker 1: snaking into the bedroom from the hallway. Disorientated, she staggered
Speaker 1: out of the bed and followed it to George's office,
Speaker 1: where a blaze had broken out in the corner of
Speaker 1: the room. She watched in horror as the flames began
Speaker 1: to spread outwards at terrifying speed. Jenny screamed for George,
Speaker 1: who emerged from the bedroom seconds later, holding their two
Speaker 1: year old Sylvia. With Marion now awake too, the couple
Speaker 1: handed Sylvia to her and told her to get to
Speaker 1: safety while they concentrated on getting the rest of the
Speaker 1: children out of the house. John and George Junior appeared
Speaker 1: sprinting down the stairs. Together with their father. They began
Speaker 1: to try and fight the fire. They ran outside to
Speaker 1: the well to fetch water, but the water was frozen solid.
Speaker 1: By the time they got back to the house, the
Speaker 1: entire staircase and foyer was engulfed in flames. With five
Speaker 1: children still inside the property, George smashed a window in
Speaker 1: the side of the house, cutting himself badly. Pushed back
Speaker 1: by the heat from inside, he yelled for his children
Speaker 1: to get out, over and over again until his voice
Speaker 1: was hoarse, but the children, whose bedrooms were on the
Speaker 1: second floor did not appear. Now Frantic, George, John and
Speaker 1: George Junior rushed to the other side of the house,
Speaker 1: where they kept a step ladder. Perhaps they could reach
Speaker 1: the upstairs window and get to the children that way,
Speaker 1: they thought, but the ladder was missing. George sprinted to
Speaker 1: his truck and jumped into the driver's seat. His plan
Speaker 1: was to back it up to the house, then he
Speaker 1: and the boys could climb on top of it, but
Speaker 1: the truck wouldn't start, and neither would his spare truck
Speaker 1: that he kept on hand for emergencies. Paralyzed by horror,
Speaker 1: George and Ja had no choice but to simply stand
Speaker 1: on the front lawn and watch helplessly as the flames
Speaker 1: engulfed their entire home. They screamed and screamed for the
Speaker 1: missing children, Morris, Martha, Lee, Louis, Jenny and Betty. If
Speaker 1: one of them could just make it to the window,
Speaker 1: they begged, they'd find a way to get them down,
Speaker 1: But there was still no movement from inside, and within
Speaker 1: minutes the entire house was a raging inferno. As the
Speaker 1: situation became increasingly helpless, Marion handed Sylvia to her mother
Speaker 1: and ran as fast as she could to the nearest
Speaker 1: house to call the local fire department. With so many
Speaker 1: able bodied men still posted overseas for the war effort,
Speaker 1: the emergency services were stretched dangerously thin, with only a
Speaker 1: handful of volunteers left to sustain it. When the neighbor
Speaker 1: failed to raise anyone on the phone, he drove to
Speaker 1: the home of fire Chief Morris and hammered on his
Speaker 1: door to wake him up. By the time Marian returned home,
Speaker 1: the house had burned completely to the ground. When Chief
Speaker 1: Morris and the rest of his team finally arrived at
Speaker 1: the scene several hours later, there was little left for
Speaker 1: them to do except surveyed the damage and recover the
Speaker 1: bodies of the missing children. But after several hours of searching,
Speaker 1: he had to tell the sodders that he couldn't find
Speaker 1: any sign of them. With the remaining family inconsolable, Morris
Speaker 1: tried to make sense of it all. He explained the
Speaker 1: most likely theory that the fire had been so hot
Speaker 1: it had simply left no trace of the bodies. There
Speaker 1: were tanks of fuel stored in the basement, which could
Speaker 1: potentially have intensified the flames enough to make this possible.
Speaker 1: Deep down, however, this explanation didn't make sense to him,
Speaker 1: the family had little choice but to accept it. A
Speaker 1: few days later, the missing children were officially declared dead
Speaker 1: by fire or suffocation, But as the days went by,
Speaker 1: Jenny couldn't help but dwell on the strange events that
Speaker 1: preceded the blades. Having found Marion asleep but all the
Speaker 1: lights on the curtains wide open and the front door unbolted.
Speaker 1: At the time, she naturally assumed that all the other
Speaker 1: children were upstairs in bed, But now an alternative theory
Speaker 1: took shape in her mind. What if the children had
Speaker 1: never made it to bed at all, but had instead
Speaker 1: been abducted, And if that was the case, then they
Speaker 1: were possibly still out there somewhere alive. After the worst
Speaker 1: night of their lives, Jenny and George now had a
Speaker 1: shred of hope to cling to, and cling to it
Speaker 1: they did. Losing five children is a horror beyond words,
Speaker 1: and it was a relief to Jenny Soder, especially that
Speaker 1: she had something else to focus on. Morris, Martha, Lee, Louis, Jenny,
Speaker 1: and Betty were all she could think about. The pain
Speaker 1: of their absence, like a black hole of anguish inside her,
Speaker 1: forever on the verge of consuming her entire being, and
Speaker 1: so to try and satiate it, she looked for proof
Speaker 1: that they were still alive. She sifted through the ashes
Speaker 1: of her home and found remnence of household appliances that
Speaker 1: survived the fire. This in itself made the official explanation
Speaker 1: seem ridiculous. How could a toaster survive, she thought if
Speaker 1: human bone could not, She began experimenting burning various kinds
Speaker 1: of animal bones chicken, cow, pig, to see if she
Speaker 1: could reduce them to ash. In every case, fragments of
Speaker 1: bone remained, even when she let the fire burn for
Speaker 1: hours on end. Seeing his wife's desperation, George felt it
Speaker 1: important to share what he knew too. He told her
Speaker 1: about the bizarre incidents he'd experienced in the lead up
Speaker 1: to the fire, the stranger who warned him that the
Speaker 1: fuse box might burn the house down, and the insurance
Speaker 1: salesman who'd made that chilling and seemingly prophetic threat. And
Speaker 1: from these settling pieces, the Sodders began to put together
Speaker 1: a picture of what they think happened. Somebody had targeted
Speaker 1: their family with a view to burning them alive in
Speaker 1: their beds. But what if their real plan was actually
Speaker 1: to kidnap the children and the fire was merely a distraction.
Speaker 1: As unlikely as it might seem, the theory gained credibility
Speaker 1: when a neighbor of the Sodders claimed to have seen
Speaker 1: one of the children being driven away in a car
Speaker 1: just after the house caught fire. A bus driver also
Speaker 1: reported seeing what looked like a ball of fire being
Speaker 1: thrown onto their roof around one a m. Then, Jenny
Speaker 1: later found a rubber looking object in the back yard
Speaker 1: of the house, which George identified as a hand grenade.
Speaker 1: The couple tried their best to convince the state police.
Speaker 1: They described the threats, the apparent prank call, and the
Speaker 1: mounting evidence that this was arson. They begged them to
Speaker 1: look into the possibility that whoever was responsible for it
Speaker 1: might still have their children. Though the police seemed sympathetic enough,
Speaker 1: they simply wouldn't get on board with what they saw
Speaker 1: as the couple's outlandish theory. At a coroner's inquest, the
Speaker 1: fire was eventually ruled to be an accident caused by
Speaker 1: faulty wiring. Exhausted and defeated, the Sodders felt they had
Speaker 1: little choice but to give up and try to move
Speaker 1: on for the sake of their remaining children. The remains
Speaker 1: at the house were bulldozed away completely and the ashes
Speaker 1: covered over with fresh dirt. Despite their best efforts to
Speaker 1: move on, not a day went by that Jenny and
Speaker 1: George Sodder didn't think about their missing children. They were
Speaker 1: haunted by possibilities, unable to stop imagining what they might
Speaker 1: be going through if they were still alive. Finally, they
Speaker 1: decided to hire a private investigator, who soon turned up
Speaker 1: some interesting clues. They learned that the insurance salesman who
Speaker 1: threatened George later served on the jury during the coroner's inquest,
Speaker 1: where the fire was ruled accidental. Then came a much
Speaker 1: more bizarre discovery. The investigator uncovered that while fire Chief
Speaker 1: Morris was scarring the ashes for signs of human remains,
Speaker 1: he had in fact found a human heart. For reasons unknown,
Speaker 1: Morris decided to bury it in a box in the
Speaker 1: backyard without ever revealing it to the family. The investigator
Speaker 1: successfully lobbied for the heart to be dug up and analyzed,
Speaker 1: only for it to turn out to have actually been
Speaker 1: a cow's liver that had somehow survived the inferno. After
Speaker 1: this strange red herring, the PI hired a pathologist to
Speaker 1: excavate the site at the sodders Old home just to
Speaker 1: make sure there were no more surprises hidden in the ashes. Incredibly,
Speaker 1: there were several shards of human vertebrae that looked to
Speaker 1: be from a teenager, probably around sixteen or seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: The Sodders were devastated. For the first time, it seemed
Speaker 1: they had concrete evidence that their rather children did in
Speaker 1: fact perish in the fire. A later analysis of the
Speaker 1: bone showed that it had never been exposed to fire
Speaker 1: or significant heat. Most likely, it did actually come from
Speaker 1: the supply of dirt which the Sodders had used to
Speaker 1: cover up the ashes after bulldozing the property. Despite the
Speaker 1: disappointment of these dead ends, the private investigator did turn
Speaker 1: up plenty of tips from people across multiple states who
Speaker 1: all claimed to have seen the missing children in various locations.
Speaker 1: One woman who worked at a hotel in Charleston, a
Speaker 1: city fifty miles north of Fayetteville, said that she'd seen
Speaker 1: four of the five missing children at her hotel the
Speaker 1: week after the fire. They were apparently accompanied by four
Speaker 1: Italian adults who seemed tense. She said. When she tried
Speaker 1: to talk to the children, the adults snapped at her
Speaker 1: and ushered them away. The whole thing had left her
Speaker 1: with a bad feeling, she said, but no further information
Speaker 1: was found to substantiate the claim. In the end, the
Speaker 1: Soders were left with a huge pile of possible clues
Speaker 1: that could have been something, but equally nothing. Overwhelmed, they
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to the FBI asking for help, and
Speaker 1: were thrilled to receive a reply from the bureau's director,
Speaker 1: j Edgar Hoover. Having been dismissed by law enforcement for
Speaker 1: so long, this validation was much needed. However, Hoover told
Speaker 1: them that although he'd like to help, the FBI didn't
Speaker 1: have jurisdiction over state matters. The Bureau would be more
Speaker 1: than happy to assist with the case if the local
Speaker 1: authorities gave their permission, but for some reason, the Fayetteville
Speaker 1: police declined. In nineteen fifty, they officially declared the case closed.
Speaker 1: By now, it was clear to the Soders that the
Speaker 1: authorities in Fayetteville wanted to put the whole thing behind them.
Speaker 1: But was this merely down to complacency and a reluctance
Speaker 1: to spend any more resources on a five year old case,
Speaker 1: or something more sinister. Either way, Jenny and George refused
Speaker 1: to give up. Shortly after the case was closed, the
Speaker 1: Sodders paid to have a huge billboard erected along Route sixteen,
Speaker 1: where it would be seen by anybody driving in or
Speaker 1: out of Fayetteville. It showed a picture of their five
Speaker 1: missing children above a caption which read, on Christmas Eve
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, our home was set on fire and
Speaker 1: five of our children kidnapped. It went on to list
Speaker 1: the inconsistencies in the official story, including the fact that
Speaker 1: no bones were ever found. It ended, what was the
Speaker 1: motive of the law officers involved? What did they have
Speaker 1: to gain by making us suffer all these years of injustice?
Speaker 1: Why did they lie and force us to accept those lights.
Speaker 1: The billboard remained up for close to four decades, and
Speaker 1: as a result, supposed sightings of the children rolled in
Speaker 1: for years. There was even a man in Texas who
Speaker 1: claimed to be Louis Sodder, who bore a striking resemblance
Speaker 1: to the child they remembered. George spent years traveling the
Speaker 1: country to follow up on these tips, but all came
Speaker 1: to nothing. George died in nineteen sixty nine. For the
Speaker 1: next twenty years, Jenny wore black every day as a
Speaker 1: sign of her mourning for her husband and the children
Speaker 1: they'd lost. Then, in nineteen eighty nine, at the age
Speaker 1: of eighty six, Jenny also died. With her passing. The
Speaker 1: families billboard was finally taken down, but the questions it
Speaker 1: posed in bold black letters remain forever unanswered. This episode
Speaker 1: was written by Emma Dibden and produced by me Richard
Speaker 1: McLain Smith. Thank you as ever for listening to the show.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate it if you haven't already done so.
Speaker 1: You can also now find us on TikTok at TikTok
Speaker 1: dot com, Forward Slash at Unexplained Podcast. Unexplained as an
Speaker 1: Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain Smith. All
Speaker 1: other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also
Speaker 1: produced by me Richard mclin smith. Unexplained. The book and
Speaker 1: audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase
Speaker 1: from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please
Speaker 1: subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get yours,
Speaker 1: and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts
Speaker 1: or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like
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