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Speaker 1: I don't think it stories of things we simply don't
Speaker 1: know the answer too. Hey everybody, and welcome again to
Speaker 1: another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve as always,
Speaker 1: of course, joined by Devon, Joe and once again, actually
Speaker 1: I guess this week we are what is This is
Speaker 1: the third week of Thinking Sideways. Most wanted something like that,
Speaker 1: so this is the third most second runner up. However,
Speaker 1: Devon calls it it's the third most requesting episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's this is actually a big one that's been
Speaker 1: actually got a big, huge write up in Smithsonian magazine.
Speaker 1: It does, it does well. We're gonna talk about is
Speaker 1: the Solder children. Yeah, mysterious missing Sodder children. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: and I gotta I gotta tell you right from the outside,
Speaker 1: I never really thought there was a whole lot to
Speaker 1: this story. I think that's one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: I was never inclined to do it. But once you
Speaker 1: get into it, you find some details. But I think
Speaker 1: part of my problem with the story is it's got
Speaker 1: a lot of what we here in this room would
Speaker 1: call shoddy retellings or very edited retellings for sensation. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the one of the protagonists of the father in this
Speaker 1: case was I think Sicilian, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: people automatically assumed the mafia connection. Yeah, there's a very
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff that went on, and so it's kind of,
Speaker 1: in my mind, inflated the story. And because of that,
Speaker 1: anybody needs to listen to the show for amount of
Speaker 1: time knows that when I get a story like this,
Speaker 1: I love to tell the fantastic version and then pull
Speaker 1: in reality after the fact. But I want to do
Speaker 1: that today. I kind of instead want to take the
Speaker 1: track of here's what happened. These are the bits that
Speaker 1: you're gonna get told, and then we're going to bring
Speaker 1: in reality as we stepped through each piece of the story.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna leave out this stuff that is obviously
Speaker 1: not true. Well, yeah, when there's there are going to
Speaker 1: be things that are gonna get left out in this
Speaker 1: telling because I cannot in any way, shape or form
Speaker 1: validated can't. I can't say, well that really happened, because
Speaker 1: I don't know when that was introduced to the story.
Speaker 1: Was that there in the beginning or not? So what
Speaker 1: about the UFOs? I I have to leave those out,
Speaker 1: but I do want to tell folks who are really
Speaker 1: really interested in the story, you've done a lot of
Speaker 1: reading on it, there are going to be parts that
Speaker 1: aren't in there, and that's because I've left them out
Speaker 1: because I can't prove that they actually have. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: do that a lot, and we don't usually add this disclaimer,
Speaker 1: but I think they on some of the feedback that
Speaker 1: we've been getting, we're going to start letting people know
Speaker 1: when we're doing that, because it's it's not as you know,
Speaker 1: but we've seen it and we just don't think it
Speaker 1: is it really worthwhile to add it to the story. Well,
Speaker 1: when you see it written exactly the same every time
Speaker 1: over the entire course of the Internet, it makes me
Speaker 1: start to question if it wasn't just a continual copy paste,
Speaker 1: especially when it happens to also be missing from like
Speaker 1: the more reputable sources. But it's in all of the
Speaker 1: like black background, white text. You starts to be a
Speaker 1: kind of an indicator. Yeah, okay, started in wonder some
Speaker 1: of these unsolved mystery pages are just bots. When they're
Speaker 1: not even people go on grab that grab the text
Speaker 1: from another page's I think, so all right, Well, I
Speaker 1: think we've had you know, enough of a disclamer. Probably
Speaker 1: get into the story yet. Okay. Our story begins on
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve in Fayetteville, West Virginia. We are at the
Speaker 1: home of George and Jeanie Sauder, who have ten children,
Speaker 1: huge family of kids. Nine of the kids were home,
Speaker 1: the tenth was away in the army. It's Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1: Mom and dad have let some of the kids open
Speaker 1: some presents. Those kids say, hey, can we stay up
Speaker 1: late and play with some presents? And they say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine, as long as you block up and shut
Speaker 1: everything down tonight before you go to bed. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: It's Christmas Eve? Why not? Yeah? Man? About midnight, the
Speaker 1: phone rings and missus Sauder gets up and answers it,
Speaker 1: and somebody said, is your refrigerator running? No? No, they
Speaker 1: asked for somebody that didn't live at the house, and
Speaker 1: so she of course said, no, you got the wrong number.
Speaker 1: Person said okay and hung up. That's creepy and mysterious
Speaker 1: and when she when she was done on the phone,
Speaker 1: she realized that the kids, being kids, hadn't done what
Speaker 1: they were supposed to. The lights were on and the
Speaker 1: door was unlocked, and her old one of her daughters, Marian,
Speaker 1: was asleep on the couch. She goes, shuts everything down,
Speaker 1: locks it up, goes to bed, she says. She remembers
Speaker 1: as she was in bed falling asleep again, she heard
Speaker 1: something hit the roof or sounded like it hit the
Speaker 1: roof and rolled off, and then she would sleep, yeah somewhere. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I guess, I just I'm not totally sure why the
Speaker 1: door would have been unlocked anyway, Like, why wouldn't she
Speaker 1: just say, okay, make sure to turn. It's not like
Speaker 1: the kids were playing outside with their toys, just locked
Speaker 1: the door. When you put up as your as a parent,
Speaker 1: that's that's a good point. But these are back in
Speaker 1: old times. I used to live in a small town
Speaker 1: and when I was a kid, and we didn't lock
Speaker 1: our door, we would go away. Yeah, I mean, so,
Speaker 1: I guess since she asked them to lock the door
Speaker 1: and it later, why did she lock it? It might
Speaker 1: have been a key lock situation. I grew up in
Speaker 1: a house where the only way to lock the doors
Speaker 1: from inside or out was with a skeleton key. The
Speaker 1: house was sold, so you couldn't act the lock it
Speaker 1: from the inside without the key, so it might not
Speaker 1: have been just so easy to shut the door and
Speaker 1: just flip locks around one thirty in the morning, ballpark
Speaker 1: is And by the way, their bedroom, I believe it
Speaker 1: was on the ground floor of the house, right, the
Speaker 1: bedroom was the parents bedroom was on the ground floor.
Speaker 1: There was a entire story above them. We don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know that we'll we'll get into some of
Speaker 1: the spatial weirdness of this house. Yeah, I'm just wondering
Speaker 1: because of the thing that we a little bit glassed
Speaker 1: over that she heard something fall on the roof, so
Speaker 1: if she were a few stories down. So yeah, let's
Speaker 1: let's let me describe the house briefly as best as
Speaker 1: I can tell. Okay, there's a lot of questions in
Speaker 1: this story, and one of them is how is this
Speaker 1: house laid out? Yeah, because because there's my photoswings. But
Speaker 1: mom and dad Mr and Mrs Solder their bedroom is
Speaker 1: on the ground floor, and apparently they also had a
Speaker 1: home office in the house that was on the ground floor.
Speaker 1: On floor, and then the children were upstairs. And what
Speaker 1: I don't know is if upstairs was a true second
Speaker 1: story or or a story and a half house, or
Speaker 1: story and a half where it was just the attic,
Speaker 1: and you know that's where the because all the kids
Speaker 1: slept upstairs in two rooms. So I don't know where
Speaker 1: the staircases in the house. I don't know where anything
Speaker 1: in the house is related, because we never get any
Speaker 1: description of the home. So I don't know exactly how
Speaker 1: she would have heard if it is a true two
Speaker 1: story house, I'm not quite sure how she heard something
Speaker 1: hit and I'm using air quotes here and rolled down
Speaker 1: the roof. I don't know answer. It could have been
Speaker 1: something big and loud enough that it would care you
Speaker 1: would hear it throughout the house. Could have been but
Speaker 1: you would think that people upstairs would have heard it.
Speaker 1: Do you think that also could have been a toy,
Speaker 1: It could have been a lot, It could have been
Speaker 1: something in the second story or in the attic space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't chunk of ice. It is Christmas and it
Speaker 1: is freezing cold, and it was it was because we're
Speaker 1: in West Virginia, freaking gold there in the winter. Well,
Speaker 1: and sometimes squirrels will landing here with the big thump
Speaker 1: and just sort of scamper off. Not at midnight, though,
Speaker 1: squirrels don't do that. Squirrels hibernate. Joe, Yes, but we're
Speaker 1: way off anyway, Stop talking about squirrels. So about one
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning, she wakes up, missus Sauer wakes
Speaker 1: up again and realizes that their smoke and the house
Speaker 1: is on fire. And as you briefly mentioned earlier, I
Speaker 1: think it was Joe actually talked about there was a
Speaker 1: home office, and she figured out that there was a
Speaker 1: fire and it was all the smoke was coming from
Speaker 1: the home office. Husband and wife wake up, scream at
Speaker 1: the kids to get out, and they run outside. Totally
Speaker 1: makes sense, let's get out of a burning building in retrospect,
Speaker 1: and maybe they should have gone upstairs and grab the kids. Well,
Speaker 1: actually I don't agree with that because here's here's the
Speaker 1: thing is that the kids that were upstairs. I told
Speaker 1: you Marian was on the couch, she fall asleep downstairs,
Speaker 1: and then mom and dad were downstairs and the youngest,
Speaker 1: the three year old child, was also on the ground floor.
Speaker 1: The others were upstairs, and the ones that were upstairs
Speaker 1: there was John he's twenty three, George Jr. Sixteen. We
Speaker 1: have Marian who was downstairs. She was seventeen. I'll just
Speaker 1: give everybody's ages here because it kind of is important
Speaker 1: because you see the range of the kids. Uh. Sylvia
Speaker 1: was the little one, the three year old. She was
Speaker 1: the one that sleeping downstairs as well. So the people
Speaker 1: who got out were John, George Jr. Marian, Sylvia, and
Speaker 1: then Mr and Mrs Saulder. They got out of the house.
Speaker 1: The rest of the children, we've got Maurice he who
Speaker 1: was fourteen, Martha twelve, Lewis ten, Genie eight, and Betty
Speaker 1: six didn't get out of the house. John the oldest son,
Speaker 1: the twenty three year old. He said that he shook
Speaker 1: the other kids awake before he left. I think John
Speaker 1: and George were in a separate room, right, there are
Speaker 1: five kids in one room and then on a George
Speaker 1: in the other room. I think so. I'm not sure though, again,
Speaker 1: no descriptions are really good of who was where in
Speaker 1: that upper story I do. I have read that it
Speaker 1: was two rooms, but I'm not really positive who was
Speaker 1: in what. But it does sound like the younger children
Speaker 1: were in the room together. The five young ones, because
Speaker 1: it would make more sense if you'd be all boys,
Speaker 1: all the boys in one room and all the girls
Speaker 1: in the other. You know, maybe I don't you know,
Speaker 1: they may not have had that that luxury rooms. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of boys of creaming in one room. Though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Boys. You're boys are terrible. Yeah, yeah, so terrible,
Speaker 1: pun Joe. Okay, So houses on fire, several kids get out,
Speaker 1: five of them are not out. Mr Sawder tries to
Speaker 1: get back into the house, but he can't because the
Speaker 1: fire is so intense. He runs through the rain barrel
Speaker 1: to get water to throw on the fire. But we
Speaker 1: already talked about it's Christmas Eve. It's once or an
Speaker 1: in the morning. The bucket is fro or the barrel
Speaker 1: is frozen solid. Can't do anything there. He runs to
Speaker 1: get his ladder from where he normally keeps it so
Speaker 1: he can get to the second the window where the
Speaker 1: kid's room is at. His ladder is missing, runs to
Speaker 1: his truck to start one of his trucks because he's
Speaker 1: got a freight business. He hall's freight and he halds coal.
Speaker 1: Trucks won't start, which is mysterious because his plan was
Speaker 1: to back up to the house and then get on
Speaker 1: the top of the truck. Sabotage. Sabotage obviously, but yeah,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't start Marian to try and get the fire department.
Speaker 1: She runs to a neighbor's house. And this ferries from
Speaker 1: the version you read. But she either couldn't get ahold
Speaker 1: of the operator, because this is back in the day
Speaker 1: when you didn't dial a number, you called the operator,
Speaker 1: who then connected you either couldn't get ahold of the operator,
Speaker 1: or did get ahold of the operator and was connected
Speaker 1: to the chief of the volunteer fire department. The other
Speaker 1: version is she couldn't get through. Somebody else saw the
Speaker 1: fire tried to call the operator, also couldn't get through,
Speaker 1: and then that person drove to either the operator's house
Speaker 1: or the chief's house, not sure which. And that's all
Speaker 1: they had was a volunteer volunteer fire departments all they had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would seem like they probably drove to the chief's house.
Speaker 1: Why bothered with the operator, I don't know. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Here's something that everybody wigs out about
Speaker 1: is when the fire department showed up eight o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning. It does seem like a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does unless you understand how the fire department worked,
Speaker 1: its volunteer fire department, so they would just stand out
Speaker 1: a group tax i assume. Of course, they used what
Speaker 1: was called the phone tree system. So person one calls
Speaker 1: person to and says, hey, there's a fire, get to
Speaker 1: the station. Okay, I will. Person one hangs up, goes
Speaker 1: to the station. Person to calls person three, Hey there's
Speaker 1: a fire, Get to the station, and the process repeats,
Speaker 1: and you it's the tree to get ahold of everybody.
Speaker 1: In my experience that it had always been more like
Speaker 1: we used phone trees when I was in elementary, Should
Speaker 1: you call two people? That's probably more like what he
Speaker 1: probably was. I'm just keeping it as simple as possible here,
Speaker 1: because it took me a while to remember what a
Speaker 1: phone tree was, because it's such an old concept. You
Speaker 1: can't just send out a mass email no, no, do
Speaker 1: you know what they don't miss is the mass text
Speaker 1: messages anyway, So people wig out about this, But that's
Speaker 1: the system they had. They didn't have a a siren
Speaker 1: at the firehouse, so they couldn't just ring that and
Speaker 1: get everybody's attention. One of the things that you will
Speaker 1: see when you come across this story, and this is
Speaker 1: about the fire, is that it lasted for about forty
Speaker 1: five minutes, which is wrong. Really, it's absolutely wrong. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of house fires do when I last that long,
Speaker 1: but that's when the fire department shows up and puts
Speaker 1: it out. The house burned for days. Forty five minutes
Speaker 1: to an hour is the length of time the house
Speaker 1: was on fire before the roof collapsed. The roof collapsed,
Speaker 1: the house continued to burn. It was so hot that
Speaker 1: when the fire department showed up they still had to
Speaker 1: hose it down to get in. So this is six
Speaker 1: and a half hours of fire. So this is all
Speaker 1: those things that you read that is incorrect. Yeah, by
Speaker 1: the time they got there, it was probably just mostly
Speaker 1: smoldering ashes and sitting in the basement. Well, I see,
Speaker 1: that's the thing is I I don't know that because
Speaker 1: if it is a two story house, and that's that's
Speaker 1: a good thing to bring up as the basement. But
Speaker 1: if it's a two story house, that's a lot of
Speaker 1: material and that's all your possessions. Joe talks about the basement,
Speaker 1: which is important here because the house had a basement.
Speaker 1: We don't know how big. I'm guessing it's about a
Speaker 1: five feet to eight feet deep basements and normal size basement,
Speaker 1: but we don't know that. But there's a reason I
Speaker 1: say that, and you know, come up shortly. Wouldn't be
Speaker 1: like a normal size No, but this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is the forties and you just dug a basement.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a standard for how deep. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be to be like a cross base, a large space. Yes,
Speaker 1: you couldn't stand up I mean deep. If you have
Speaker 1: a five ft deep basement, that could be below grade
Speaker 1: and then you got like a foot and let me
Speaker 1: a couple of feet above. That's about standards. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that could absolutely be it. Well, the obviously everything that
Speaker 1: was on fire fell into the basement and everything was
Speaker 1: contained and it would have kept burning. So that's where
Speaker 1: all that fire is and that's what they where they
Speaker 1: would have had to put everything out. Something I came
Speaker 1: across and I hadn't really thought about, and you never
Speaker 1: really see list in this story, is that homes in
Speaker 1: that area at that time we're heated with coal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which means that there's a coal shoot, which means there's
Speaker 1: piles of coal sitting in the basement to heat the
Speaker 1: home with which when house catch on fire, it's going
Speaker 1: to also catch all that coal on fire. And didn't
Speaker 1: Mr run a cold business. He hauled coal. So that's
Speaker 1: another that's another bit to say, well they probably he
Speaker 1: did with living in coal country Western exactly my house.
Speaker 1: My house is ninety years old. Originally it had a
Speaker 1: coal burning furnace in it, and we're not even living
Speaker 1: in coal country. Yeah, so yeah, I'm so here's something
Speaker 1: there that I that I want to bring up about
Speaker 1: that is if people don't realize is that coal can
Speaker 1: burn extremely hot in two thousand degrees fahrenheit, depending on
Speaker 1: the conditions, type of coal, how much airflow. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of things that it can influence that temperature. But
Speaker 1: it's gonna burn easily a thousand degrees. That's pretty damn hot.
Speaker 1: Keep that in mind. Now we get back to the
Speaker 1: fire department. They arrive, they hosed the place down, they
Speaker 1: start combing through the scene. It's a bunch of volunteer firefighters.
Speaker 1: They don't know how to look for bodies. And let's
Speaker 1: be honest, at this point, everybody's expecting to find skeletal remains.
Speaker 1: Because it's been hours and hours and hours of the
Speaker 1: houses on fire, they expect to probably find full intact bodies,
Speaker 1: but full attack skeletons. Yes, they don't know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and they're combing through. In their search, which according to
Speaker 1: the lore, was only about two hours long, they a
Speaker 1: identified the source of the fire, which was a faulty
Speaker 1: fuse box, and be they found no remains. They then
Speaker 1: after two hours, because it was Christmas morning, told Mr Sowder, Listen,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go home and we're gonna come back and
Speaker 1: we will finish the search. Just give us some time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the fact of the matter is is like, you know,
Speaker 1: what's the point of spoiling your Christmas? When there's five
Speaker 1: dead bodies in there? They're not going to go anywhere, sadly, brutally.
Speaker 1: That's the truth that really is. That's that's a harsh
Speaker 1: way to put it, but it's it's absolutely right. But
Speaker 1: here's a problem that's also not correct in terms of
Speaker 1: the report that they found nothing. Oh, there's reports that
Speaker 1: they did find things. The volunteer firefighters UM, along with
Speaker 1: a priest who was there and Mrs Sauder's brother, one
Speaker 1: of her brothers all said that they saw remains in
Speaker 1: the basement. Soe bone and we're talking, we're talking like
Speaker 1: in the basement, as in the house has collapsed into
Speaker 1: the basement. Not correct, Okay, it's clarify. Everything burns, everything's
Speaker 1: burned and fallen in and it's a hole in the
Speaker 1: ground that's holding all of that burned stuff. Okay, cool.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to clarify because when I first was
Speaker 1: reading through this and they're seeing the term in the basement,
Speaker 1: I was like, what, that doesn't make sense. That would
Speaker 1: they be in the basement. Okay, yep. So the thing
Speaker 1: is though they didn't tell Mr. And Mrs Suder what
Speaker 1: they had seen. Okay, they still have to finish with
Speaker 1: their their their search, but they don't say anything because again,
Speaker 1: it's Christmas morning and you've just lost five children. You
Speaker 1: don't say, hey, you saw a couple of bones and
Speaker 1: they're just so you know, but hey, like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're totally totally barbecued. Man. So yeah, the terrible thing
Speaker 1: to say, and that's not what they were going to do,
Speaker 1: and which I get. Yeah, you want to say Merry
Speaker 1: Christmas more, you want to like, you know, suck them up.
Speaker 1: Which I don't know how you would in the situation.
Speaker 1: They saw remains like of what I don't ask, don't
Speaker 1: I mean, was it We don't know, but it's got
Speaker 1: to be skeletal remains. After that much time, there would
Speaker 1: be very little flesh left. I saw some claims that
Speaker 1: they found some internal organs, which that's later on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I find hard to believe because I mean, because
Speaker 1: after all that time and it was really high temperatures,
Speaker 1: you would think all that stuff would be just charred,
Speaker 1: just charred ashes, one of the last bits of the
Speaker 1: human body aside from bones, flesh, just to flesh that's
Speaker 1: left over in the fire, believe it or not, as
Speaker 1: you're intestines because they're so dense and full of moisture
Speaker 1: and waste, so they don't burn as fast as everything else.
Speaker 1: But those would be one of the few things that
Speaker 1: would be left before then it's just bone and charred bone.
Speaker 1: Charred bone blends in with the rest of the charred stuff. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: that is absolutely true. Mr Sadder, being a grieving father,
Speaker 1: several days later, decides against the advice of everybody because,
Speaker 1: by the way, the volunteer fire Department hadn't had a
Speaker 1: chance to come back. Yet it's the holidays. They got
Speaker 1: things to do. I guess they don't come back. Yet.
Speaker 1: He decides that he's going to make the what remains
Speaker 1: of the house and memorial to his children, and he
Speaker 1: fills in the basement with dirt, five vertical feet of
Speaker 1: dirt the bulldozer and packs it in there, and then
Speaker 1: they plant flowers on top. Now, I yet, planting flowers
Speaker 1: on top that is totally a memorial thing. To get
Speaker 1: the bulldozing bit is weird to me. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that I never find when you read about
Speaker 1: the fact that he filled in the sight, you never
Speaker 1: hear if they cleaned out the basement first. We don't
Speaker 1: know did did somebody come along and pull out all
Speaker 1: the stuff? Did he just say to hell with it
Speaker 1: and bury it all? I think, yeah, I kind of
Speaker 1: get the feeling that they left all the stuff in there,
Speaker 1: and he pushed the dirt in on top because it's
Speaker 1: his he was sure at that point that his kids
Speaker 1: remains were still in there, and I'm going to fill
Speaker 1: it in. I absolutely feel the same way. But we
Speaker 1: don't how anything says one way or the other. And
Speaker 1: however horrible this is are. Is there a theory that
Speaker 1: he was trying to cover something up. No, actually, that's
Speaker 1: never in any of the theories. It's never that mom
Speaker 1: and dad are directly responsible. Okay, I don't never. I
Speaker 1: don't think that if he had actually, say, murdered his
Speaker 1: kids and was trying to cover it up, I don't
Speaker 1: think it would have called so much attention to the case,
Speaker 1: because they really they kept this case alive for sure.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make sure that wasn't going to
Speaker 1: come up. So everybody believes that this was just the
Speaker 1: really ill fated actions of a grieving father, the filling in, yes,
Speaker 1: as a lot of grieving parents will do. Of course,
Speaker 1: Mr ms Sutter tried to go on with their lives,
Speaker 1: but eventually, because they don't get all the details of
Speaker 1: the case, they start to disbelieve what they're told, to
Speaker 1: the point that they don't believe that their children were
Speaker 1: actually in the fire, which I guess is weird. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a normal to have accepted it in the beginning.
Speaker 1: He did. But there's a lot of parents who child
Speaker 1: commits suicide and they believe at first that it was suicide,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly year two years later they staunchly believe
Speaker 1: that their child was murdered and that it's to cover
Speaker 1: up of some kind some kind of diabolical scheme. It's
Speaker 1: a lot easier to believe that, oh helly something you
Speaker 1: would rather believe. Yeah, they want to believe they are
Speaker 1: and and that's exactly what happened. I think the thing
Speaker 1: that really planted the seed for Mr. Sawder was, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not too long after, he sees a picture
Speaker 1: in the newspaper of a girl who he's pretty sure
Speaker 1: is one of his children, and he goes to try
Speaker 1: and see her. She's in New York by the way.
Speaker 1: There in West Virginia, no shocker. The child's parents tell
Speaker 1: him to buzz off, get away from us, crazy man.
Speaker 1: But he's sure at that point that his kids, that
Speaker 1: his kids didn't actually die, and they continue to to
Speaker 1: follow that. They eventually get the case into the destruction
Speaker 1: of their home and potential murder or theft, abduction, kidnapping,
Speaker 1: thank you of their children reopened. It was reopened, it
Speaker 1: was reinvestigated. Nothing ever comes of it of an actually
Speaker 1: the site of the home was excavated. It was in
Speaker 1: There's a pathologist by the name of Oscar Hunter. He
Speaker 1: excavated the site. By his own admission, though he didn't
Speaker 1: do what's called screening, and if you don't know what
Speaker 1: that is, it's literally running the dirt that you dig
Speaker 1: up across the screen to get the large particulate out
Speaker 1: of it. He didn't do larger. He didn't do that
Speaker 1: because he was expecting to find full solid bone, so
Speaker 1: he didn't. He didn't find it. Why was he expecting that?
Speaker 1: Because he expected to be the bodies of five children
Speaker 1: in a house that had burned, and that their bones
Speaker 1: would not have broken down. So there was no no
Speaker 1: like briefing on the case of like, hey, this house
Speaker 1: burned for like a million hours, and I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know why he thought that, but I will be like,
Speaker 1: if he was qualified to look for it, he should
Speaker 1: have also known. But I will bring up the fact
Speaker 1: that it's kind of common knowledge how cremation works. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if at the time it was,
Speaker 1: but he's a pathologist, so I would think he would
Speaker 1: understand this. And we'll talk about this now. Is that
Speaker 1: if you don't know how cremation works, they put a
Speaker 1: body in a furnace for about two hours, they burn
Speaker 1: all of the flesh. The bones, however, don't burn entirely
Speaker 1: and they have to be ground up, so it's not
Speaker 1: as if we just completely turned to ash. I think
Speaker 1: he was expecting a situation like that because the process
Speaker 1: of cremation it takes about an hour two. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's it, and then there's just solid bone left. But
Speaker 1: the thing about it is is these kids. First of all,
Speaker 1: they were small, lighter skeletons and full on adult skeletons absolutely,
Speaker 1: and they were in the middle of the house that
Speaker 1: collapsed on top of them, so they would have been
Speaker 1: all crunched up. And then a bunch of volunteer firefighters
Speaker 1: came along trooped through the site while they hosted down
Speaker 1: number one with high pressure hose which would have a
Speaker 1: polarizing effect. And then number two they trooped through the site,
Speaker 1: stopping on the bones, and then five of dirt were
Speaker 1: poured on top of the thing. I mean, it just
Speaker 1: it just seems silly that he would have expected in
Speaker 1: any way to have found full bones there. I I personally,
Speaker 1: I think that at the time there was a certain
Speaker 1: professional arrogance in a lot of fields, and I think
Speaker 1: that he might have suffered from that Okay, so, of
Speaker 1: course no bones are discovered when this guy excavates the site. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's a lie. Two sets of bones were found, some
Speaker 1: vertebrae and the hand of a boy. Well okay, so
Speaker 1: except that those bones were never in a fire, so
Speaker 1: they didn't actually belong to any of the children. So
Speaker 1: they were introduced as part of the fielder. Either they
Speaker 1: were introduced as part of the fielder or there was
Speaker 1: a grave that was opened up not too far away,
Speaker 1: and by opened up, I mean robbed, and people think
Speaker 1: that somebody might have dug it up and buried the
Speaker 1: bones so that the family had something to find. When
Speaker 1: this guy showed up to then give them some sort
Speaker 1: of closure, I was going to say, it's it's weird
Speaker 1: to me that unidentified boy's hand and vertebrae showed up
Speaker 1: in this and everyone was like, well, it wasn't the
Speaker 1: kids we were looking for, so it doesn't matter who
Speaker 1: it belonged to. We don't care where the hand of
Speaker 1: a boy showed up. What you put it on a
Speaker 1: p B on a kid that's missing some vertebrae in
Speaker 1: a hand. Yeah, I don't know why they didn't do that. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you know that's I guess that I would.
Speaker 1: I would guess it had to have come from that
Speaker 1: that great then, or else there would have been a
Speaker 1: huge outcry, Yes, where did this come from? Because where
Speaker 1: he got the fieldert? Like, if you just managed to
Speaker 1: happen to get some remains of that's a huge problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. It is entirely possible, though, that that
Speaker 1: he did just get it along with his fieldert. I
Speaker 1: mean I found bones, and I just randomly digging. I
Speaker 1: found bones, like human bones. I don't know what they were,
Speaker 1: human or animal bones. Probably animal bones probably well, yeah,
Speaker 1: probably carried by dogs. Yeah, probably. I mean it's like,
Speaker 1: not like you can call at the police department every
Speaker 1: time he's stumped across the bone, you know, oh man,
Speaker 1: I mean you could, but eventually they would get they
Speaker 1: would get a little angry with you. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: say it was probably from the open up grave, probably
Speaker 1: from the opening pie. Yes, now, I said that we
Speaker 1: thought that they think that somebody put that there for
Speaker 1: the family to find. Wasn't the only thing that was
Speaker 1: put on the site for the family to find. People
Speaker 1: were really trying to help the family along. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: police chief of the volunteer fire department. Yeah, not the
Speaker 1: Plice chief. The fire chief me no more better English.
Speaker 1: The family hired a private investigator, actually several of them,
Speaker 1: and one of them was talking to the chief, and
Speaker 1: the chief let it slip that he had found internal
Speaker 1: organs at the site and had buried them in a
Speaker 1: box on the site. After the fact. Is that air
Speaker 1: quotes let a slip. Yes, I think that that's air quotes.
Speaker 1: Let it slip. Well, of course Mr Solder wants to
Speaker 1: know the p I and he get the chief to
Speaker 1: take him to the site show where he buried it.
Speaker 1: They dig up this box which they immediately run to
Speaker 1: the corner who immediately opens it up and says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a beef liver and it's never been through
Speaker 1: a fire, and it's kind of fresh, and this is
Speaker 1: quite This is at least a year later. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that I believe any of this, because, I mean,
Speaker 1: the chief can't be that dumb as to think that
Speaker 1: as to think that and he could have just put
Speaker 1: it through a fire and then buried it. I you
Speaker 1: know what, I I don't know, man. That's this is
Speaker 1: one of those things in this story. And there's a
Speaker 1: number of them that we've already talked about. I just
Speaker 1: don't know where that came from. I can tell you
Speaker 1: that this part that we just talked about has spurred
Speaker 1: a lot of conspiracy theories and put the chief at
Speaker 1: the heart of that, along with some other people. I
Speaker 1: don't we're not going to go into that particular theory,
Speaker 1: but it's a whole theory. Is like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's from Cis, Mr Solders from Sicily, so there's a
Speaker 1: mob connection. Of course, that the latter was missing. The
Speaker 1: truck wouldn't start, just like the parents of the child
Speaker 1: who commits suicide. Suddenly things don't add up, so it's
Speaker 1: got to be a plot. Yes. The investigation by the
Speaker 1: police eventually was closed and continued to have the same
Speaker 1: ruling that it was an accidental fire and that the
Speaker 1: children died in the fire. Like the cops. Never nobody
Speaker 1: ever changed the ruling. They humored the family and they
Speaker 1: looked into it again, but they closed it and then
Speaker 1: they refused to look at it any further, despite the
Speaker 1: objections of the family. They had made their decision. And
Speaker 1: that also is something that fuels people to say, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, there's something going on. On. They ignored it
Speaker 1: on purpose, which I personally don't believe. There were some
Speaker 1: things that the solders did that really helped keep the
Speaker 1: story alive. The billboard, the billboard is exactly what I
Speaker 1: was going. If you looked at this case on the THEWS,
Speaker 1: the billboard is no longer there. No, No, it's not
Speaker 1: twenty year or something like that. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: billboard and it was only a couple of feet off
Speaker 1: the ground. It wasn't you know. The giant tall women
Speaker 1: see on the side of the freeway had the pictures
Speaker 1: of their five children who had disappeared in before the fire,
Speaker 1: not what I said, disappeared before the fire, because that's
Speaker 1: the way the family sees it. And the story asking
Speaker 1: for anyone to come forward with information, and several people did. Shocking,
Speaker 1: shocking and always I'm gonna give you a couple of them.
Speaker 1: And these again, these are ones that you'll see in
Speaker 1: the lower and I just don't get why they're hung
Speaker 1: on too with so strongly, because the first one I
Speaker 1: want to talk about is woman named Ida crutch Field.
Speaker 1: Ida says she saw the children hung the night of
Speaker 1: the fire, and that they were at her hotel being
Speaker 1: supervised by two Italian males at this hotel where she
Speaker 1: was staying at it. She worked at the hotel she
Speaker 1: worked there. Um, as we talked, as Joe's talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, the family was Italian. They were actually immigrants.
Speaker 1: I think Mrs Sauder came over when she was three.
Speaker 1: Mr Sawder came over when he was like fourteen or fifteen,
Speaker 1: something like that. But they were they were natively from
Speaker 1: their native Italians. Um. But anyway, back to Ida. What
Speaker 1: she says is that the children, she tried to talk
Speaker 1: to them, the adults gave her the stink eye. They
Speaker 1: then brusquely talked to the children, who then clammed up
Speaker 1: and wouldn't talk to her anymore. They talked to the
Speaker 1: kids in Italian, and they talked to the kids in Italian.
Speaker 1: Didder children speak Italian? I don't know. You know, who
Speaker 1: else I don't know spoke Italian or even knew what
Speaker 1: Italian sounded like? Yes, how did I even know that? Well?
Speaker 1: Actually it's possible, because I I sure that Fatville actually
Speaker 1: has a pretty decent sized Italian immigrant population, or did
Speaker 1: at that time. I'll give you that. Yeah, I've heard this,
Speaker 1: But here's here's some other problems with her with Ida.
Speaker 1: She never saw the pictures of the daughter children until
Speaker 1: two years after the fire. She then waited another five
Speaker 1: years to come forward with her story, for a total
Speaker 1: of seven years from the date of the fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that does sort of reduce your credibility. Yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: to be nice, I'm going to say that she was
Speaker 1: trying to help and really just wanted to be involved.
Speaker 1: You want because actually, yeah, if you showed me pictures
Speaker 1: of five children and I had seen them five years before,
Speaker 1: I doubt that I would remember them exactly. Yeah. Did Sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know the answer. Did Mr
Speaker 1: Mr and Mrs Sauder? Did they come over with their
Speaker 1: families like their parents brought them over? Right? They must have.
Speaker 1: Mrs Sauder came over with her family. She was much
Speaker 1: too young come on her own. Mr. Sauder came over
Speaker 1: with his older brother who basically hit American soil, turned
Speaker 1: around and went whole. So he was on his own.
Speaker 1: That I'm just because, you know, my grandfather came over
Speaker 1: and they spoke Italian to him. He was older than this, obviously,
Speaker 1: but that was you know, the family still spoke Italian.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if the grandparents were involved in
Speaker 1: the Solder children's raising, they may have spoken Italian to them.
Speaker 1: Just to address that question, Yeah, I know, it's entirely possible.
Speaker 1: A lot of children of immigrants wind up bilingual. So yeah, partially, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know enough to understand somebody sternly talking to you,
Speaker 1: because that's how Nona did it. And you mean no, no,
Speaker 1: your grandma, Oh I've never heard. It was not okay,
Speaker 1: my family, it was non no, okay, okay. So we've
Speaker 1: got some more reports of the children. Yeah, there were
Speaker 1: reports that the children were seeing on the night of
Speaker 1: the fire across the street in a taxi. That's a
Speaker 1: great getaway vehicle, it really is. I mean, well, you
Speaker 1: know they were spotted, of course, because locals came to
Speaker 1: watch the house burn, because what else are you going
Speaker 1: to do on Christmas Eve? You know. It turned out
Speaker 1: there was some other locals who were at a bar
Speaker 1: who heard about the fire and wanted to see it
Speaker 1: and hired a taxi to haul them to it, and
Speaker 1: then had the taxi haul them away. And that's who
Speaker 1: was spotted. And it just happened to look like children
Speaker 1: age ranged from Have you ever seen a bunch of
Speaker 1: drunks in a car. They looked like kids. They really
Speaker 1: do look like yeah, exactly. That's kind of the where
Speaker 1: the story sat, you know, Like I said, it was
Speaker 1: looked into, reported locally, and then it just kind of
Speaker 1: sat there for a while. And it wasn't until the
Speaker 1: sixties when a magazine re ran the story and spread
Speaker 1: it to the world that it really kind of gained traction.
Speaker 1: And that's probably one of the only reasons that we
Speaker 1: know about it is because it got so publicized, and
Speaker 1: that that of course is going to attract cranks to
Speaker 1: the story. It's gonna attract a lot of people. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Sadders, they tracked down every lead they got. They
Speaker 1: went after him. In eight they got a really weird lead,
Speaker 1: which is Mrs Souder went to the mailbox and she
Speaker 1: found a letter with no return address, but it was
Speaker 1: postmark from Kentucky. Inside of the envelope was a picture
Speaker 1: of a young man that sort of kind of maybe
Speaker 1: looked like their son, Louis. He was ten when he disappeared.
Speaker 1: This is twenty three years later, so that means he's
Speaker 1: a fertile, looks like a man and his young his
Speaker 1: early twenties, but at that point he would have been
Speaker 1: in his thirties. It's an odd bit that they immediately
Speaker 1: said it must be him. But they say that well
Speaker 1: on the back of the photo. I think this is
Speaker 1: probably why. If this is true, it says Louis Sauder,
Speaker 1: I love brother Frankie. Is it ill? Little boys? Bill boys? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I I never know what that means, followed by the
Speaker 1: often America of a nine zero one, three two or
Speaker 1: maybe it ends in three five, not sure, But he
Speaker 1: didn't have a brother named Frankie, right, No, that's the
Speaker 1: weird thing. Yeah, that's the really odd thing about this photo.
Speaker 1: I know what I was about to say something about.
Speaker 1: Um Okay, so sawders, like I said, they chase everything down.
Speaker 1: They didn't tell anybody what town in Kentucky this postmark
Speaker 1: was from, but they sent a p I to that
Speaker 1: town to look for the center of it. Sadly they
Speaker 1: chose a really bad p I because that p I
Speaker 1: took their money and never came back, which sucks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like if you, if you're an ethical private investigator,
Speaker 1: would tell these people not to waste their money. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but twenty some odd years later, you're looking
Speaker 1: into this case, you probably just want to get a
Speaker 1: cup bucks. Probably sit around on your delf and do nothing.
Speaker 1: Mr sawder Um he died in so not but about
Speaker 1: the actually would have been the same year that they
Speaker 1: sent the p I off. He died that same year.
Speaker 1: Mrs sawder she died in nine. Both of them died
Speaker 1: believing that their children had been taken and that they
Speaker 1: didn't die in the fire, but were taken. The whole family,
Speaker 1: because there are generations that have lived on all seemed
Speaker 1: to believe this. It's all of them, all of them,
Speaker 1: almost all of them. There is I think there's one
Speaker 1: member of the family who won't, who never talked about it.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the one family member who didn't
Speaker 1: believe that they got out. Which one was that? That
Speaker 1: was the older brother John, Well, yeah, I think about
Speaker 1: it is is John shook the kids awake before he
Speaker 1: fled down the stairs. If John is telling the family
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily believe him. They think that he's just been
Speaker 1: feeling guilty of over fleeing the fire and so. But
Speaker 1: but if John he said that on the night that
Speaker 1: had happened, like evidently with one of the investigators asked
Speaker 1: him that night, or somebody asked him, and he said, no,
Speaker 1: I shook him awake. And I've actually read stuff from
Speaker 1: cops and say, the first statements that somebody makes right away,
Speaker 1: those are usually the true ones. After that they start
Speaker 1: getting regrets and remorse and doubts, and they'll massage and
Speaker 1: change their story. But he said that on the first night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so John has to know that the kids
Speaker 1: were in the house, and so there's no way they
Speaker 1: could have been kidnapped, and he's probably got regrets of
Speaker 1: I should have just shaken him and run. I should
Speaker 1: have grabbed the little boogers and hauled him out with me.
Speaker 1: I can't exactly grab five kids, but they could have
Speaker 1: at least grabbed a couple of a little yea one
Speaker 1: under each arm, and said come with me. The other
Speaker 1: two Yeah, I mean three. He could have six year
Speaker 1: old and eight year old him pretty quickly. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so he probably should have. But also he was twenty three.
Speaker 1: He was not really thinking about it. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's a lot of guilt on everybody's part. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Normally this is where we would stop, because this is
Speaker 1: kind of where our story ends. Normally we would jump
Speaker 1: right into theories. But we're not going to what why,
Speaker 1: Because I remember in the beginning I said that there
Speaker 1: was a lot of bad retellings, and there were things
Speaker 1: about the story that get just hammered on, and then
Speaker 1: people just figured that they must be part of it,
Speaker 1: and that's why something else happened. Well, I found some
Speaker 1: of the answers to some of these things, and I
Speaker 1: want to kind of put some of it to be well,
Speaker 1: not necessarily debunking, as taking some of the wind out
Speaker 1: of the sales. All right, Okay, remember that funny phone
Speaker 1: call that the Sauders got, Yeah, the refrigerator phone call.
Speaker 1: You will hear said that there was laughing in the
Speaker 1: background and the woman giggled when she was talking to her. Well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily mean that that's true. And actually they
Speaker 1: tracked down the phone call and it was a woman
Speaker 1: who lived in the area, and she did totally called
Speaker 1: the wrong number. Well, and she could have been giggling.
Speaker 1: I mean, she could have been drunk. She could have
Speaker 1: been drunk. It's it's Christmas Eve at midnight. She accidentally
Speaker 1: dialed the wrong number because she was drunk, giggled and said,
Speaker 1: oh sorry, we'll see now. But the thing is their
Speaker 1: theories out there to say that that phone call was
Speaker 1: a warning to the family, waking them up so that
Speaker 1: they could wake up and get out of the house
Speaker 1: before I know, I know. But the point is they
Speaker 1: figured out who the lady was, and she really was
Speaker 1: trying to call somebody else, and she really did she
Speaker 1: really did. She remembered Miss Dyling evidently, yes, or the
Speaker 1: operator missconnector one of the two. I guess that was
Speaker 1: an operator, was an operator system but it was a
Speaker 1: wrong number. Um, we maybe the operator was drunk. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do a bunch of members in here. Remember
Speaker 1: when Mr Sauder couldn't find his ladder, Yeah, somebody stole it.
Speaker 1: They did. It was down in embankment. Turns out there was.
Speaker 1: This is the weird thing. It was some guy on
Speaker 1: their property either pre or post the fire, trying to
Speaker 1: steal things, and one of the things he was trying
Speaker 1: to steal was their ladder. It had to have been
Speaker 1: before well I don't know if he was trying to
Speaker 1: steal things before the fire, because he was caught after
Speaker 1: the fact on the property trying to steal stuff, so
Speaker 1: he didn't care that the property was on fire. He
Speaker 1: was trying to steal things, which is just the dumbest
Speaker 1: thing in the world. It sounds to me like he
Speaker 1: because the ladder was gone right after the family back.
Speaker 1: The ladder was gone, so he was there before the
Speaker 1: fire started. He said he stole the ladder to cut
Speaker 1: the phone line, and admittedly the phone company said that, yeah,
Speaker 1: the phone line looked like it was cut, but it
Speaker 1: was also cut at the top of the pole, which
Speaker 1: nobody believed that this guy would have could have climbed
Speaker 1: all the way up there with the ladder and cut
Speaker 1: the line. Also, why the hell would he cut the line?
Speaker 1: Why did it look like it was cut? Then, according
Speaker 1: to the phone I'm guessing that it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: pulled by pressure and snapped or cut with a knife.
Speaker 1: It looked like it was actually cut with ply or snips,
Speaker 1: is the impression I got, but right, But the question
Speaker 1: still stands, why was the phone line cut if the
Speaker 1: guy couldn't have gotten up there with the ladder. I
Speaker 1: to be honest, the house was on fire and the
Speaker 1: walls were falling in, and I'm betting that the walls
Speaker 1: fell over and pulled the wire and it snapped and
Speaker 1: looked like it was cut. That's my personal opinion, totally
Speaker 1: totally the way that I would explain Nash. But nobody
Speaker 1: believed this guy that he cut the line he did.
Speaker 1: Eventually he got arrested for I'm not sure whether it
Speaker 1: was the attempt or the actual success in stealing things
Speaker 1: from the property. He was stealing block and tackle, which,
Speaker 1: if you don't know, block and tackle is it's pullies
Speaker 1: and hooks and ropes used to pick up heavy things.
Speaker 1: Mr Sauder hauled freight. He had to pick up heavy
Speaker 1: things by himself. He had a police Stone's weird that
Speaker 1: that would be what you would say, just try and steal,
Speaker 1: but sure, well, kind of untraceable, totally totally useful in
Speaker 1: an area where a lot of manual labor takes place.
Speaker 1: Um oh okay, yeah, here's the other thing we talked
Speaker 1: about John a little bit, uh and the fact that
Speaker 1: he had shaken the children awake. What I don't think
Speaker 1: we've talked about, and you don't always see, is that
Speaker 1: George Jr. And John, both of them their hair was
Speaker 1: singed when they got out of the house, which means
Speaker 1: the flames were big enough and hot enough that it
Speaker 1: was burning hair when they ran out, So it's very
Speaker 1: possible that those children woke up and tried to run
Speaker 1: down the stairs and just wasn't too hot, couldn't get out, yeah,
Speaker 1: the window, and like gone out that way. Well, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that we're going to cover
Speaker 1: is that people talk about, well, why weren't the children
Speaker 1: at the windows screening for their parents to save them.
Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about the reasons why that
Speaker 1: might not have happened, because we're going to do that
Speaker 1: in the theories section. But we're still not done with
Speaker 1: Steve's question section, which is what we're in. Remember Mr
Speaker 1: Sauder said that he tried to start the truck and
Speaker 1: back it up to to get into the window, and
Speaker 1: neither of the trucks started, which must have been a
Speaker 1: sabotage job. Yeah, no, they were probably diesel trucks, was
Speaker 1: the main thing. And I don't know if anybody has
Speaker 1: tried to start a diesel truck when it's cold, but
Speaker 1: it's a pain in the butt, especially in nineteen forties
Speaker 1: era truck which is does not like cold weather. That's
Speaker 1: the reason they made things like starter fluid, which is
Speaker 1: um ether. You know, you spray ether into the carburetor
Speaker 1: and it it sparks it to life. That's why his
Speaker 1: trucks probably didn't start. It was freezing cold, cold enough
Speaker 1: to freeze the water. And plus uh, nobody ever found
Speaker 1: any evidence of sabotage because somebody had, say, stolen his
Speaker 1: distributor cap or something like that, that would have been
Speaker 1: discovered and he would have said something about it, but
Speaker 1: there was no evidence of it. He was also I
Speaker 1: mean obviously he was also panicked, right, so you you know,
Speaker 1: when you're in that kind of panic mode, you try
Speaker 1: something like twice and you're like, I'm not it's ruined.
Speaker 1: I gotta go do something else, instead of you know, saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: well it's cold, I just keep trying and I'll probably
Speaker 1: eventually get or let it sit and let the globe
Speaker 1: plugs heat up before you started, because you have to
Speaker 1: do with these things. You can't just turn them on.
Speaker 1: You can at first, but they tend not to work
Speaker 1: very long when you do that. So there's there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of questions. I mean, we've already talked about the
Speaker 1: spatial layout of the house. I'm very curious how that
Speaker 1: house was laid out. I think we already said this,
Speaker 1: but one of the things that was the cause of
Speaker 1: the fires is attributed to the fuse box being bad.
Speaker 1: The family has said that that can't be which we'll
Speaker 1: get into, but I would like to know where the
Speaker 1: fuse box was in relation to that, Like that office
Speaker 1: space that they say caught on fire, it was probably
Speaker 1: an older houses. Typically there it's in the basement the
Speaker 1: fuse box. Yeah, typically see Now in this case, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's outside because they're there are stories of
Speaker 1: people wandering around outside of the house before the fire
Speaker 1: and looking at the fuse box. So it was an
Speaker 1: exterior fuse box, wasn't an interior It's actually it's an
Speaker 1: old style thing to do. They're on the outside. I
Speaker 1: my family has a house where we had to build
Speaker 1: a little faux building around at exterior fuse box because
Speaker 1: it gets wet. Yeah, you don't want to get in
Speaker 1: wet is electricity my house, My house is from the
Speaker 1: nine twenties and it's got a fuse box inside. So
Speaker 1: but it's in the basement. It's like when the stairs
Speaker 1: between the main house and the basement. That's where it
Speaker 1: is in my house too. And it maybe that's a retrofit.
Speaker 1: You never know. That's that's possible. Yeah, but I mean, regardless,
Speaker 1: I don't know. The only thing about fuse boxes is
Speaker 1: that even if it was in good shape, something a
Speaker 1: lot of people used to do back in the other days,
Speaker 1: which was stupid, but they did it anyway, is if
Speaker 1: they were having trouble with fuses burning out, they would
Speaker 1: bypass the fuse by putting a any in the socket.
Speaker 1: You know, that's possible. Sad said something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mr Sauders said that he had recently had the fuse
Speaker 1: box service by the electric company, so he was positive
Speaker 1: that there was no problem with it. I don't know
Speaker 1: how long ago it was service. I don't know. Whenever
Speaker 1: I think of Christmas in like that kind of time,
Speaker 1: I think of a Christmas story right where they're like, now,
Speaker 1: which fuse is it? That? That one? And they, you know,
Speaker 1: blow it because there's like twenty different strings of lights
Speaker 1: attached to everything and all that stuff there, and there
Speaker 1: were not that many plugs necessarily, and I don't think
Speaker 1: that there was. They would have had gads and cads
Speaker 1: of Christmas lights like we do these days. Maybe not,
Speaker 1: but it's still possible that, say, if you've got a
Speaker 1: fifty nap circuit and you put a much much beef
Speaker 1: your fuse into that. It was also freezing cold. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they may have been doing things. Maybe a kid, one
Speaker 1: of the kids got an electric toy that he plugged in.
Speaker 1: I mean, good call, thought about a toy. There's always stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't bother me that it could have been a fusepot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think maybe it was outside. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it supposedly was outside, but it could have been on
Speaker 1: the outside of the office. Yes, it could have. That's
Speaker 1: the thing I just want to I just want to
Speaker 1: have this freaking house was laid out. I really I
Speaker 1: can't find it. We're moving on. It's hard to say
Speaker 1: where it started too, because I've read a couch and
Speaker 1: firefighters and experts on if it started at the basement,
Speaker 1: they can travel up through the walls and be all
Speaker 1: you clear up to the top floor of the house
Speaker 1: and no time at all. Yeah. No, fire doesn't just
Speaker 1: move vertically horizontally and it'll it'll race away and then
Speaker 1: go up. Yeah. Yeah, it's yeah, that one. When they
Speaker 1: opened the front door to flu, they probably gave it
Speaker 1: a boost and with a lot of air into the house. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's why I was looking at you like when
Speaker 1: you're crazy. When you were like, they should open the window,
Speaker 1: I was like, why would they open the window? No?
Speaker 1: I mean I for escape, Yes, of course us. But
Speaker 1: it might well and they might have they might have
Speaker 1: tried to do that. The thing about it is is, again,
Speaker 1: my old house, it's got you. It's got double paint windows,
Speaker 1: and some of them are not easy to open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially especially if they've been painted shut. Maybe that happens
Speaker 1: to you paint them a couple of times, then you're done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you paint them and then you close the window, not
Speaker 1: realizing you've sealed it, or you just don't even open
Speaker 1: the window while you're painting. Yeah, that awesome idea. Okay Ogi,
Speaker 1: shall we get into theories. Yes, there are not a
Speaker 1: lot of theories here. We have three. Basically. That is
Speaker 1: the first theory that we have, and it's, as I
Speaker 1: said before, the family's favorite theory. Okay, mainly I know
Speaker 1: this is their's because it means that their kids are
Speaker 1: alive and they didn't get hard. This is like you
Speaker 1: liking a lot of the theories that we have. It,
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is not my theory. This is
Speaker 1: not the one that I think is right. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: this is the one they like. Yep. Well, people have
Speaker 1: said that, Yeah, I know, the children were totally abducted,
Speaker 1: were not in the house. They were taken before the fire.
Speaker 1: And there's a number of different ways that that goes.
Speaker 1: One of them is that it was Mrs Sauder's family
Speaker 1: members who stole the children before the house was set fire. Okay,
Speaker 1: they were taken from the house and then they were
Speaker 1: split up and sent to different relatives. And this could
Speaker 1: be I'm sorry, it could have been Mrs Sder's relatives,
Speaker 1: it could have been somebody else. It's because of the
Speaker 1: they call it the Old World network. Mr Sauder was
Speaker 1: very vocal about his opinions, and it's thought that people
Speaker 1: were not too excited about his opinions. He uh, he
Speaker 1: didn't like Mussolini. He thought Mussolini was a nut job.
Speaker 1: And yeah, because Mussolini wasn't job, was already dead by
Speaker 1: this point, I know, I know. Don't don't get ahead
Speaker 1: of me here, Joe. You don't take the wind out
Speaker 1: of my sales on this one, damnit. But they say
Speaker 1: that it was or that he was bad mouthing things
Speaker 1: about the Old Country, and maybe people in the Old Country,
Speaker 1: and that news got back to the Old country, said
Speaker 1: person found out and said, do this as retribution. That's
Speaker 1: the simple version of the body of the abduction theory.
Speaker 1: Because you know, as you both know, the Italians are
Speaker 1: nothing if not the most horrible, vindictive and because somebody
Speaker 1: is kind of running their mouth a little bit in America,
Speaker 1: you hear about it in the Old world. And what
Speaker 1: you do is say, all right, burn their freaking house
Speaker 1: down and steal their kids and separate them two relatives.
Speaker 1: But because you know you want them to like stay
Speaker 1: in the family, but also those relatives, they will never
Speaker 1: say anything, of course, not ever, because they're on our side,
Speaker 1: that whole thing. She's absolutely right. Yeah, you know, that's
Speaker 1: how I was raised by my second on because my
Speaker 1: mom started mad nothing everything. How it happened in my family,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, I know. And sooner or later,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, the kids, uh, the kids get
Speaker 1: older and they might want to re establish contact with
Speaker 1: the well. But like I mean, none of them were
Speaker 1: so young that they wouldn't remember. I mean, they were
Speaker 1: all older. Fourteen was the oldest one, yeah, and youngest
Speaker 1: was six. They would have all remembered their childhood and
Speaker 1: that they had this thing happened and they were taken away.
Speaker 1: And you know, especially at fourteen, you start feeding a
Speaker 1: kid alie like, they're probably gonna think twice about that.
Speaker 1: Six maybe six year olds you can get away with it,
Speaker 1: probably get away with it, even eight year old. But
Speaker 1: a fourteen year old you're gonna have You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to have him under lock and key because he's going
Speaker 1: to like get away and re established contact with his family, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's crazy, yes, but sorry. The only tie that
Speaker 1: I've ever found to the old world family connection thing,
Speaker 1: and this is really weak tie, is that that photo
Speaker 1: that was Lewis, you know, that had the stuff written
Speaker 1: on the back of it, the A nine zero, one,
Speaker 1: three two or three five? Um. I guess that was
Speaker 1: supposedly a postal code in Palermo, Sicily. Now is that now?
Speaker 1: Or was that correct? I don't know. I didn't bother
Speaker 1: to look it up because I don't actually think that
Speaker 1: there's anything too that I actually feel like that has
Speaker 1: been inserted the story, and that was the I don't
Speaker 1: know there were zip codes. I have no idea when
Speaker 1: it's Italy started the zip code system. I don't know
Speaker 1: why you don't look this stuff up because it takes
Speaker 1: like a two second Google search while you two are
Speaker 1: back and forth do a thing about it had a time, Okay, So, um,
Speaker 1: Palermo Sicily. Uh, there's zip code, their postal code. Their
Speaker 1: zip codes look like United States zip codes. There's there's
Speaker 1: not an A or anything like that, Okay, but Palermo does.
Speaker 1: It's the ranges um from nine zero zero one zero
Speaker 1: to nine zero one one. It's within that range. There
Speaker 1: was something there without the A. I don't know what.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a P. A is there like code right,
Speaker 1: like we have o R for Oregon. So maybe Palermo.
Speaker 1: So it could have just meant A. I mean, I
Speaker 1: could have they meant that. I don't know. And it
Speaker 1: was it was where either one of the Stauds from Sicily.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if there was a question off top
Speaker 1: of my head and I remember, but I don't think
Speaker 1: it's worth taking the time to dig into because I
Speaker 1: still think that this is just a convenient thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the photograph I think was just the work of a
Speaker 1: crank because you know, again the brother Frankie reference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't it doesn't make sense. Yeah, let's move on
Speaker 1: to the next theory. Oh yeah, this is the one
Speaker 1: that UFOs damn it um. So what is uh that
Speaker 1: they did die in the fire, and this is the
Speaker 1: one that actually is probably right. Here's here's what's the
Speaker 1: reason that I think about that. When you read about
Speaker 1: the reactions of people in fires and in house fires
Speaker 1: from firefighters, there's a break in how people react, and
Speaker 1: it's based on their age at around the teen. So
Speaker 1: thirteen fourteen, you run, you run away from a fire.
Speaker 1: But if anyone younger than that is in that situation,
Speaker 1: they hide, They try to hide from the fire. Kids
Speaker 1: naturally hide from things. But you would expect that the
Speaker 1: twelve and the fourteen yeard at least we have tried
Speaker 1: to get out of there. Well, the age doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that that's gonna happen. It's kind of an age range.
Speaker 1: But also if they're in there with their younger siblings
Speaker 1: and they're trying to get them, you know, the kids
Speaker 1: are hiding and they're saying like, no, come on, we
Speaker 1: gotta go, and then coaxed out quick enough, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly either they're overcome by smoke or the stairway is
Speaker 1: impassable and the as we said, you know, the windows
Speaker 1: could have been painted shut or on them and gotten
Speaker 1: out the smoke hiding and smoke annilation would totally explain
Speaker 1: why they weren't in the windows because they were hiding,
Speaker 1: and then they died because of the smoke travel upward too.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and it genuinely could be that the fourteen
Speaker 1: year old was the only one in the room saying
Speaker 1: you gotta go, like coax, You're not going to necessarily
Speaker 1: leave your three siblings, four siblings in there, you know,
Speaker 1: because if they're hiding, you're saying, Okay, come on, what
Speaker 1: what I don't know what their names were on Betty, like,
Speaker 1: let's go. Kind of got you know, John, the twenty
Speaker 1: three year old had enough sense to get out. The
Speaker 1: next kid, the oldest one. At that age, you have
Speaker 1: these weird, you know, beliefs that your your totally gonna
Speaker 1: save everybody and I can totally make this happen, and
Speaker 1: then it totally turns out your wrong diet of smoke
Speaker 1: in elation, thinking that I can just get them out
Speaker 1: and then I can run them down the stairs and
Speaker 1: everything will be fine, and Mom and dadd'll hug us.
Speaker 1: I also don't think they did, Like we did a
Speaker 1: lot of fire training. We learned, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: duck and the stop, drop and roll and they like
Speaker 1: you crawl under the smoke and all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: I don't think they used to do that then, So
Speaker 1: I don't know that, not as much. So they may
Speaker 1: not have just known, you know, since it's drilled into
Speaker 1: in a young age and in this day and age.
Speaker 1: But they could have been different jump you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the nation was not as safety crazy, I might say
Speaker 1: conscious as crazy as we are today. Safety crazy. It's insane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to I'm going to stay on track with
Speaker 1: the story. Let's do it. Another thing that I find
Speaker 1: interesting is the bones of the children. I had an
Speaker 1: idea and I'd read some of this online and I
Speaker 1: got ahold of I got a hold of our some
Speaker 1: of our experts and Nina, who I got ahold of
Speaker 1: huge help. So thank you to her. She really kind
Speaker 1: of helped me on. This is what she's what happens
Speaker 1: to bones in fire? What does the human bone do? Yep?
Speaker 1: If you know, like we talked about with cremation, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't just completely disintegrate, at least not right away.
Speaker 1: There is a five level scale of how bones break
Speaker 1: down because your organic matter, the organic matter will eventually
Speaker 1: burn yes in in some fashion or another. Well, there's
Speaker 1: a scale that's called the cro Gasmin Scale CGS. It's
Speaker 1: you know, one through five, one being yep, totally a
Speaker 1: burn skeleton sitting right there too. That's a nice human
Speaker 1: shaped ash, you have, nice human sand. Level five, Level
Speaker 1: one is yep, it's totally a skeleton all the way
Speaker 1: to level five, which is okay. If the fire had
Speaker 1: burned hot for almost seven hours, it's completely plausible that
Speaker 1: those bones had gotten to level three the CGS. Level three,
Speaker 1: that level, the description of that level is major portions
Speaker 1: of arms and legs missing, the head is present, but unrecognizable,
Speaker 1: widened area for disartake, disarticulated remains. Forensic anthropologists called for
Speaker 1: identification process super broke down. They're still bones, but they're
Speaker 1: coming apart in places like you know, the skull is
Speaker 1: made up of several pieces. Guessing unrecognizable skull means it's
Speaker 1: not fused together anymore, and all the all the things
Speaker 1: that hold your bones together will have been burned away.
Speaker 1: It's all gonna fall apart. It's not gonna be a skeleton.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be chunks of bone at this point. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna be solid bone, is the way that I understood,
Speaker 1: And that could be wrong because that's before the volunteer
Speaker 1: fire step all over or somebody chars a high pressure
Speaker 1: hose on your remains. Yep. There's also the fact that
Speaker 1: if you know anything about how bones develop, children's bones
Speaker 1: obviously aren't full grown, and they have the growth lines
Speaker 1: or growth plates in them. Those those are actually made
Speaker 1: not from the same material as your bones, but they're
Speaker 1: actually made from cartilage. Cartilage burns easier than the bone,
Speaker 1: like super fast, which means that the things that are
Speaker 1: holding these different areas who bone together are cartilage, which
Speaker 1: would have burned up, which makes them breakdown and be
Speaker 1: even harder to recognize. So so the whole idea that
Speaker 1: they burned in the fire is a little radical. I'm
Speaker 1: still liking the UFO abduction better, but I got this,
Speaker 1: that's a sensible theory. Oh my god, it's radicals from
Speaker 1: the man who turns oper all the time. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I personally think that this is this is kind of
Speaker 1: evidence that they were probably in the fire. But we're
Speaker 1: going to go onto our last theory, which is that
Speaker 1: the children were murdered. Were they murdered, were they abducted
Speaker 1: and murdered or just murdered in place? I don't know,
Speaker 1: to be quite honest with you. It really kind of
Speaker 1: depends on the version of the theory that you get.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's the the who and the how.
Speaker 1: Who did it? And then how did they do it?
Speaker 1: And we're gonna tackle that in two parts, the who
Speaker 1: and then sort of maybe the how. Okay, we've got
Speaker 1: three groups that are pointed at. Joe brought up the
Speaker 1: first one, which is the mob. We also have the
Speaker 1: k k K and of course the Italian fascists. They're
Speaker 1: also pointed at as the ones who are responsible this.
Speaker 1: Um well, the Fascist because to the fact that Mr
Speaker 1: Sauder was bad mouthing the Mussolini and everything that the
Speaker 1: Italians were doing in the war. Because he was definitely
Speaker 1: the only one, yeah, I mean, Solder, Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: definitely the only person bad mouthing Mussolini. And of course yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's probably the only one in this country. Yeah no. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's the reason that the that the fascist did
Speaker 1: at the KKK. Well, the solders were Catholic, and the
Speaker 1: kk doesn't like Catholics or Catholic immigrants. Yes, that is
Speaker 1: even worse sometimes to them. Um, And they were business owners,
Speaker 1: which seems to enrage the k k K even more.
Speaker 1: And the mob, well, it's the mob because Mr Solder
Speaker 1: had a business and the mob was trying to get
Speaker 1: into that area. And I mean there is some historic
Speaker 1: evidence of the mob having a problem with a lot
Speaker 1: of cold well they were they it was the shipping, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, not like a small time business dude. And
Speaker 1: you know, the bomb thing is total garbage because the
Speaker 1: mob really wasn't in that area at the time. It's
Speaker 1: just an easy you were Italian obviously the mob. I
Speaker 1: think I made this that same statement in a recent episode,
Speaker 1: knowing how foolish it sounds, and intentionally yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's hard to believe they were in West Virginia.
Speaker 1: I mean there are times on the you know, in
Speaker 1: certain other areas they'll ask they'll just basically demand protection money.
Speaker 1: They were in a protection racket and if you don't cooperate,
Speaker 1: then's something bad does happen. But even so, I think
Speaker 1: they would have probably choose chosen probably a less deadly
Speaker 1: way to send their message, I would think, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: and picked a more profitable family. Yeah yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 1: and the KKK. It's just that's such a stretch for me.
Speaker 1: The one that just I can't understand this every time.
Speaker 1: It's the fascist. Okay, like Joe's talked about, Mussolini was
Speaker 1: killed in the Spring of the Italians were defeated by
Speaker 1: the Allies. In the early Mussolini had been you know,
Speaker 1: taken down as prime minister. I think it was three
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, yeah, two years before he
Speaker 1: was killed. And he was killed by the resistance, the
Speaker 1: Italian resistance, and hung for everybody to see. His body
Speaker 1: was hung naked and upside down. Yes, a train station
Speaker 1: or something something like that. So, I mean, why if
Speaker 1: the leader has obviously been taken down and the party's
Speaker 1: in disarray, why would this one family be targeted for
Speaker 1: saying bad things against Maybe maybe the family was actually fleet,
Speaker 1: maybe he was the son of someone really important in
Speaker 1: Italy and they had they had come because he was fleeing.
Speaker 1: Stop making that face. I'm trying to fill his heart.
Speaker 1: There's no no, you're right, there's yeah. I mean, even
Speaker 1: even the solders themselves, I don't think I ever speculated
Speaker 1: about anything like that, they would have known. For the
Speaker 1: most part, Now, they didn't. They didn't think that that
Speaker 1: was although there are bits of the story that have
Speaker 1: left out because I can't corroborate that people always attribute
Speaker 1: to the fascist did it bit, But I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't buy it. I don't. Yeah, I think they have,
Speaker 1: especially since they you know, they hired so many private investigators,
Speaker 1: and they would have known if if if any group
Speaker 1: we're going to do this as a terrorist act against
Speaker 1: the family, they would have made themselves known and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been this huge, big thing. How did it happen? Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing about it is too, is that Mussolini in
Speaker 1: the forties was not not terribly popular in America, and
Speaker 1: so lots of people were bad mouthing him and their
Speaker 1: houses didn't get burned. So uh yeah. So we talked
Speaker 1: about the who. Now let's talk about the how. The
Speaker 1: how according to that they were murdered is well, they
Speaker 1: were murdered in the house and the fire, right, it's
Speaker 1: pretty simple. Yeah, but how so do you remember the
Speaker 1: official the official description or cause of the fire was electrical.
Speaker 1: People say that the fuse box was sabotaged whether it
Speaker 1: be jamming a penny in it, as Joe had mentioned,
Speaker 1: or doing something out putting an inappropriate Yeah, something as
Speaker 1: simple as that. Now, the Sauters say, there's no way
Speaker 1: that it was an electrical problem because there were lights
Speaker 1: on during the fire off, and she did. But I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that maybe some lights got hit on the way
Speaker 1: out and turned on. You run by and you flip
Speaker 1: the switch that you can run through the wall and
Speaker 1: not fall over the But the point, as they said,
Speaker 1: there was no way it could have been electrical fire
Speaker 1: because there were lights on in the house, except I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: a circuit can go bad and cause a fire somewhere
Speaker 1: and the other circuits can still be working fine or
Speaker 1: a good amount of time. Well maybe their house only
Speaker 1: had one circuit. Yeah, I don't think that's And they
Speaker 1: go back to Christmas lights. It was the Christmas lights
Speaker 1: that were on. But the last time I broke a fuse,
Speaker 1: you know, half the lights stayed on and half the
Speaker 1: lights were off, And exactly that's what a few system does. Also,
Speaker 1: let's be fair, if you're running for your life out
Speaker 1: of your house, you're not going to necessarily be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that one light fixture is out, and the other one
Speaker 1: I think this is they were observing it from outside
Speaker 1: once they had escaped from them. Even then, how are
Speaker 1: you going to know necessarily, like which ones of those
Speaker 1: are on and which ones aren't. I don't know, honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that. And that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's why I don't think that that that's not accurate.
Speaker 1: The other way that this that the house was set
Speaker 1: fire according to these theories is that it was firebombed.
Speaker 1: There was you remember, Miss Sutter said a midnight or
Speaker 1: so she heard something hit the rough and roll down. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: When they came back to the house a day or
Speaker 1: so or a couple of days later to fill the
Speaker 1: hole in, yeah, I'm guessing that that right. But maybe
Speaker 1: it was after that. Their daughter Marian said she found
Speaker 1: a weird, heavy, melted rubber ball thing, which Mr Sodder
Speaker 1: was pretty sure and other people seemed to coral agree with.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is right or not, that
Speaker 1: it was akin to a napalm bomb. Napalm bomb, Wow,
Speaker 1: that was hard to say. Yeah, a lot of ls
Speaker 1: in there. I didn't know they made those out of rubber.
Speaker 1: I According to this theory, they do. I don't know
Speaker 1: that they did, but according to this, somebody threw a
Speaker 1: fireball on top of the house and that's what caught
Speaker 1: the house on fire. I guess I thought that would
Speaker 1: make more of an explosion noise. No, Actually, a napalm
Speaker 1: doesn't explode, melts through and then it burns, and so
Speaker 1: it would have taken an hour and a half from
Speaker 1: the time that it landed on the roof to catch
Speaker 1: the house on fire enough to wake people up exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, then I've got it outside. If you if
Speaker 1: you've got a fire by my house, you you want
Speaker 1: to chuck the bomb into the house, you want to
Speaker 1: go like walk up to say the basement and open
Speaker 1: or break a window. Yeah, and just open a coal
Speaker 1: shoot and drop it in. Yeah. I mean at the
Speaker 1: scene of the fire, you're gonna find all kinds of
Speaker 1: melted stuff. That was probably some of their own possessions. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It probably was like a weird toy that they were
Speaker 1: supposed to open the next morning, like a rubber ball. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was like a soccer ball. I
Speaker 1: think this was kind of thicker, but god knows what
Speaker 1: it was. It could have been anything melted in misshapen
Speaker 1: and just looked round dish, really just look round dish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I just the whole napalm ball napalm you too, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that the house was fire bombed. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things again because it can't
Speaker 1: corroborate it. We're not going to talk about the fact
Speaker 1: that somebody said they saw fireballs being thrown in the
Speaker 1: sky that night because I just think that that's something
Speaker 1: that was tacked on later. Yes, so that's our story.
Speaker 1: Those are all the facts that I can find on it,
Speaker 1: both proven and some unproven, and I don't really put
Speaker 1: a lot of stock in but that's all I've got.
Speaker 1: I mean, I sleeve sadly think that children perished in
Speaker 1: the fire on if you too have any different they
Speaker 1: unfortunately died in the fire. Yeah, no, it's it's I
Speaker 1: think they did too. It's absolutely certain, but it's possible
Speaker 1: that it was arson. It's or possible more likely it
Speaker 1: just began accidentally. Maybe maybe the most house fires do. Yeah, yeah, electrical,
Speaker 1: the furnace maybe. I mean, there's all kinds of wors
Speaker 1: the time of your cat knock something over, because cats
Speaker 1: are diabolical creatures. Well, there's the whole the Christmas tree
Speaker 1: fire problem. Right, You've got your Christmas tree and by
Speaker 1: that time of the year, it's actually probably much drier
Speaker 1: than it's going to be because you've had it for
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks and you have your one faulty
Speaker 1: plug and with your Christmas lights as wrapped around. This
Speaker 1: is the thing, this happens. I was just thinking, I've
Speaker 1: never heard of Christmas tree you never hear that. Assume
Speaker 1: they did, but I guess they might not have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean because I've had Christmas lights
Speaker 1: that my family's had for thirty years and have plugged
Speaker 1: them in and then touch the plug and it was hot.
Speaker 1: All it'll send us spark out, you know or whatever.
Speaker 1: If the fuse blue, um, you know, sometimes that can
Speaker 1: send us spark out the plug and catches the whole
Speaker 1: thing on fire. That's that's It's just a million ways, yeah,
Speaker 1: a million, ten million ways. I don't know. Alright, ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen. Well we're going to go ahead and stop here,
Speaker 1: because it's all we really have. We can just keep
Speaker 1: talking about the millions of different No, I really I
Speaker 1: don't want to keep doing that. Speculations. If you want
Speaker 1: of the Sider kids get in touch with us, we'd
Speaker 1: like to hear from Yes, yes, well they can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us by sending us an email. How's
Speaker 1: that Okay? We do have an email address. It is
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You're welcome to
Speaker 1: send story suggestions, comments, feedback, whatever whatever you feel like
Speaker 1: you can send there. You can also put comments on
Speaker 1: our website. The website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com
Speaker 1: and we've got our links to research as well as
Speaker 1: the episode there. And like I said, you can leave comments. Um,
Speaker 1: I have noticed a funny thing lately, which is I
Speaker 1: think that everybody thinks that the internet is a free state,
Speaker 1: when whereas our website is actually well it's a little
Speaker 1: more autocratic. We will trim comments, so people are welcome
Speaker 1: to leave comments, but don't mean people ever get their
Speaker 1: comments whatever you want. Yeah, but if you have like
Speaker 1: feedback and things like that, we love to have a
Speaker 1: conversation with you about that. So we can't explore that
Speaker 1: a little more. And the face or the website is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the best place for that. Probably the email
Speaker 1: address email is the best place. Yeah, just as a
Speaker 1: as I mentioned absolutely um no, Like I said on
Speaker 1: the website, we've got the episodes. You can stream the
Speaker 1: episodes from the website. You can download them from the website.
Speaker 1: You can stream them from anywhere else you want to
Speaker 1: on the internet. You can also stream or download directly
Speaker 1: from iTunes. If you're on iTunes, please do leave us
Speaker 1: a comment and a rating. We do appreciate those. We
Speaker 1: also are going to be on social media, so we've
Speaker 1: got the Facebook group and the page. Lots of fun,
Speaker 1: lots of things going on there. It's been crazy busy lately.
Speaker 1: And uh then of course we are on Twitter. We
Speaker 1: are Thinking Sideways on Twitter, So no g in the middle.
Speaker 1: And last, but not least, if you're enjoying the podcast
Speaker 1: and you're enjoying what we do and you'd like to
Speaker 1: help out, visit Patreon. It's patreon dot com slash Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways totally volunteer system if you want to take part
Speaker 1: in that. Think that now I got everything. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have to look at the list this time after
Speaker 1: two years, got it down. All right, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: Well we're going to get out of here next week.
Speaker 1: We will be doing more of Thinking Sideways month wanted.
Speaker 1: We've got a special one for you. We're gonna tell
Speaker 1: you what it is because we're jerks that way, but
Speaker 1: you'll just have to wait. Yeah. Exciting, so exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to you guys next week. Everybody, Hi, guys,