Speaker 1: M Hey everyone, it's me Josh, your old friend, and
Speaker 1: for this week's s Y s K Selects, I've chosen
Speaker 1: our episode from two thousand sixteen, The Unsolved Mystery Disappearance
Speaker 1: of the Sodder Children. Uh. It's a story, a very
Speaker 1: tragic and sad one, but also incredibly enthralling about five
Speaker 1: children who disappeared after a house fire on Christmas back
Speaker 1: in It's one of my all time favorite episodes, which
Speaker 1: is why I'm choosing it as a select and I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy it as well. Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles
Speaker 1: W Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. So this is Stuff
Speaker 1: you should Unsolved Mysteries Edition. Yeah. Really, are you cool
Speaker 1: with us? No? I'm leaving. Yeah. I think it's great. Man.
Speaker 1: I love me a good unsolved mystery. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is super sad, So it's not like I love it
Speaker 1: and I think it's hysterical. I just I just like
Speaker 1: unsolved mystery. What's a what's an hysterical unsolved mystery? Um?
Speaker 1: Like I got pantsed in the second grade and I
Speaker 1: don't know who did it. That's an hysterical unsolved mystery.
Speaker 1: It was just in line pants around the ankles turned
Speaker 1: around and like everyone's like, did you just go with it?
Speaker 1: And you're like, check it out, check me out him
Speaker 1: in second grade. Yep, good for you. That never happened.
Speaker 1: I made it up. Oh really yeah, it's called improv, buddy.
Speaker 1: It's a craft so en scene and scene and seen.
Speaker 1: Have we are established which one it is? Yeah? A
Speaker 1: few times and nope, it is Chuck. We are talking
Speaker 1: about a family called the Solders. Um, not the Soldiers right,
Speaker 1: not the welding technique. No, the Solders. They are a
Speaker 1: family out of Fayetteville, West Virginia, of Italian extraction, as
Speaker 1: we'll see. Yes, and um, very much so. Like you said,
Speaker 1: this is an unsolved mystery. They they they're family, just
Speaker 1: going along totally normally. Has turned into one of the
Speaker 1: stranger unsolved mysteries in American history. Yeah, and certainly in
Speaker 1: West Virginia history. Oh definitely. And I should say I
Speaker 1: texted our friend Justin McElroy of the McElroy triplets. Well,
Speaker 1: they're not triplets, they're they're they're brothers. Oh yeah, my brother,
Speaker 1: my brother and Me podcast because they are from West Virginia.
Speaker 1: And as you'll see here, there's a very famous billboard
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about about this case. And
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, dude, do you ever do you
Speaker 1: remember where you know seeing this thing? How far are
Speaker 1: you from Fayettville? He said, just a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: he said, but I've never heard of that. And I
Speaker 1: was like, really, this seemed like the kind of cautionary
Speaker 1: tale that would be whispered about all over West Virginia.
Speaker 1: I could see that. But he said he never heard
Speaker 1: of it. And then he looked it up and said,
Speaker 1: oh wow. And I said, I bet your dad knows
Speaker 1: about it, and then he said he didn't. He didn't respond.
Speaker 1: You didn't text him back? Answer me, No, that's right.
Speaker 1: I am Facebook friends with his dad. That should have
Speaker 1: SA yeah, ask him. Yeah, go go to the source.
Speaker 1: That's right. So well, let's go back to the beginning,
Speaker 1: Chuck back to that's right. That's when Georgiros, who would
Speaker 1: become George sodder I, was born in Sardinia and came
Speaker 1: to the US and nineteen o eight as a young
Speaker 1: lad of thirteen years old. Yeah, and he was a
Speaker 1: go getter. He really was so his. He had an
Speaker 1: older brother who traveled with him from Sardinia to New York. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess he was like, I don't want to do this,
Speaker 1: and right when they made it through Ellis Island, he
Speaker 1: turned right back around and went back to Italy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's I don't know, man, Go get a cup of
Speaker 1: coffee and think it over, is what I say. After
Speaker 1: you made that ship's voyage, just mull it over for
Speaker 1: a day or two. Yeah, because what if, like you're
Speaker 1: halfway back, you're like, actually I should have stayed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might meet a pretty lady from Brooklyn. Did you
Speaker 1: see that movie Brooklyn? No? Great? Really? Yeah? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean it will check it out. You sound it surprised.
Speaker 1: I was a little surprised. Yeah. It was nominated for
Speaker 1: many awards. Yeah that doesn't always mean. It usually means
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. No, it depens. Okay, Brooklyn highly recommended
Speaker 1: about young Italian man who falls in love with an
Speaker 1: Irish immigrant. Oh well, this has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: this thing. No, not at all, because this man falls
Speaker 1: in love with an Italian immigrant. That's right, right, So, um, George,
Speaker 1: like you said, he was a bit of a go getter.
Speaker 1: He's thirteen, he's on his own, literally without any any
Speaker 1: other family in America. Yeah, it's kind of mind blowing.
Speaker 1: But then you think back to there there. They didn't
Speaker 1: really under to what childhood was at that point. So
Speaker 1: he was probably like of working age and had been
Speaker 1: for years. But it seems really weird to us now.
Speaker 1: He might have been retiring right at thirteen. He was
Speaker 1: smoking cigars already, so he, like I said, it, was
Speaker 1: a go getter. He started working at the on the
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Railroad and then moved to West Virginia to Smithers Smithers,
Speaker 1: West Virginia, and worked as a truck driver and then said,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is America, darn it. I didn't
Speaker 1: come here to drive a truck for someone. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: own my own trucking business. And the Statue of Liberty went,
Speaker 1: ah yep, nice going kid. So he started at his
Speaker 1: own trucking business. Um, and he's in West Virginia. So
Speaker 1: in short order he starts hauling cole yeah, coal and dirt.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like the hugest business. I think he
Speaker 1: did okay for himself. He did it okay for himself
Speaker 1: solidly middle class. Yeah, he didn't become like wealthy or anything.
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, later on UM a
Speaker 1: local local government official would say that the Sauders were,
Speaker 1: um one of the best middle class families in Fayetteville. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they had a small Italian population in Fayetteville, which
Speaker 1: I think is why he ended up there, right in
Speaker 1: his community. Yeah, and he moved there with his wife Jenny, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jenny Cipriani who he met, Um. She came over from
Speaker 1: Italy when she was three. He met her historic called
Speaker 1: the music Box, and they got married. And like Italian
Speaker 1: families do, they had ten kids. Ten kids in twenty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of kids, pumping them out with great regularity.
Speaker 1: And like you said, when they moved to Fayettville, the
Speaker 1: reason they moved to Fayville. Had no idea that West
Speaker 1: Virginia even had Italian people in it, let alone strong
Speaker 1: Italian communities. But they moved to Fayettville and they were
Speaker 1: part of the Italian community, and George was well known. Again,
Speaker 1: they were respected middle class family there. He did pretty
Speaker 1: good for himself, UM. And he was also well known
Speaker 1: for his opinions on everything including politics and UM. During
Speaker 1: the forties, the United States was at war with Italy,
Speaker 1: and not all of the Italian Americans were UM feeling it.
Speaker 1: On the American side, there were a lot of disagreements
Speaker 1: over Mussolini and the government that he was creating UM
Speaker 1: among Italian Americans, including in Fayetteville, West Virginia, and George
Speaker 1: in particular, hated Mussolini and very frequently spoke out about
Speaker 1: him and would get in arguments with some of the
Speaker 1: locals who who felt differently about Mussolini. And Uh, I
Speaker 1: guess there were some hard feelings here there, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have taken them seriously very much. No,
Speaker 1: And we mentioned that, Um, if it sounds like we're
Speaker 1: setting something up for later, we indeed are. So just
Speaker 1: tuck that little fact away, um. And then can we
Speaker 1: fast forward in time? Yeah too, Uh Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve?
Speaker 1: N So, Um, here's what happens. It's Christmas Eve. Um.
Speaker 1: As his tradition, in some households, you can open up
Speaker 1: a few gifts on Christmas Eve. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: what happened. They opened up some presents comes time for
Speaker 1: Betty By and five of the children, Maurice fourteen, Martha twelve,
Speaker 1: Louis or Louie, ten, Genie or Jenny as that was
Speaker 1: a little confusing because that's the mom's name. Eight years old,
Speaker 1: and Betty said, can we please stay up late and
Speaker 1: play with these new toys? Yeah, they're older. Sister Marian
Speaker 1: had she worked at a five and diamond town two
Speaker 1: miles down the road, and she had surprised her younger
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters with some toys that they had not
Speaker 1: been expecting. That's right, and they were very happy. So
Speaker 1: they asked mom if they could stay up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the older, the elder Jenny, said yeah, I guess you
Speaker 1: can stay up, turn out the lights, locked the doors
Speaker 1: before you go to bed. I'm going to hit the
Speaker 1: rack with your dad. And are two year old daughters Sylvia,
Speaker 1: twenty three year old John In sixteen year old George Jr.
Speaker 1: Were I guess they were just ready for bed too.
Speaker 1: And then if you're thinking there's one missing child, he
Speaker 1: is away in the military. The eldest, Yeah, fighting either
Speaker 1: Mussolini or Hitler or to Joe, one of those guys, right,
Speaker 1: So he's away and I could not, for the life
Speaker 1: of me find that guy's name. Then I couldn't either. Actually, So, um,
Speaker 1: the mom goes to bed. Jenny goes to bed, and uh,
Speaker 1: the dad, George and his two next oldest sons, who
Speaker 1: had been working with him that day, they'd all gone
Speaker 1: to bed about ten. Um. What time did the mom
Speaker 1: go to bed? Eleven something like that. Yeah, but she
Speaker 1: leaves those five youngest children, Um and Marian, their older
Speaker 1: sister who I think was seventeen at the time, downstairs
Speaker 1: when she goes to bed. Um. And then it about
Speaker 1: twelve thirty on Christmas Morne, because remember that was Christmas Eve,
Speaker 1: about twelve thirty at night, the own rings and Um,
Speaker 1: this is not an era where and this kind of
Speaker 1: to me goes to show these people were doing all right.
Speaker 1: They had a phone in in West Virginia. They may
Speaker 1: have been the only people in West Virginia with a
Speaker 1: phone in nineteen I'm just saying, I don't think everybody
Speaker 1: had a phone in West Virginia, so they certainly didn't
Speaker 1: have one at their bedside. So Jenny, the mom has
Speaker 1: to get up to answer the phone, and on the
Speaker 1: other line she hears a woman asking for somebody she
Speaker 1: didn't know or recognized, and in the background there's obviously
Speaker 1: a party going on. There's laughter, there's clinking of glasses,
Speaker 1: and uh, Jenny says, I don't know who you're talking about.
Speaker 1: You have the wrong number, and the woman laughs weirdly
Speaker 1: and hangs up. Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and come
Speaker 1: out and say, I think this means nothing in his
Speaker 1: total coincidence. So supposedly they tracked that woman down and
Speaker 1: she said it was just a wrong number. Total coincidence,
Speaker 1: that's what I think. But think about that though, Like,
Speaker 1: had that not happened, a lot of other stuff would
Speaker 1: have gone unnoticed. Right, it's a big deal. So before
Speaker 1: she goes back to bed, she noticed the lights are
Speaker 1: on downstairs. She said, you know, turn the lights off,
Speaker 1: locked the door before you go to bed. So one
Speaker 1: of her kids is on the couch asleep. She's like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, the doors unlocked, the lights are on. Um,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't have done that. So let me lock the
Speaker 1: doors and turn off the lights. And she leaves the
Speaker 1: one that's asleep on the couch asleep. It was the
Speaker 1: one that got her toys. Sleepy time on the couch.
Speaker 1: That's fine, But those five younger ones who've been playing
Speaker 1: with their toys, they were in ordered to be found,
Speaker 1: so mom just assumed they went upstairs to bed, right,
Speaker 1: So she goes back to bed, and then like an
Speaker 1: hour later, she's awoken by like a thump on the roof. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she falls back asleep again. Well, it sounded like
Speaker 1: a heavy thump and a sliding down of the roof
Speaker 1: was just something heavy head landed on it and then
Speaker 1: slid off, and she just went back to sleep, very
Speaker 1: important matters. Probably figured it was a reindeer or something
Speaker 1: like that. At being Christmas, you never know. Uh. The
Speaker 1: next time she woke up, she woke up to panic
Speaker 1: and chaos because her house was on fire. And chuck,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the fire right after this. All right, dude,
Speaker 1: the house is on fire, that's right. So Sylvia, a
Speaker 1: little two year old Sylvia is in their room with
Speaker 1: her the parents, so they get her out, obviously covered
Speaker 1: with them because she's in the crib. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: seventeen year old Marion and year old John and sixth
Speaker 1: year old George Jr. Are all outside and safe right
Speaker 1: at this point, So everyone is out except for these
Speaker 1: five other kids, right, And they were on the top
Speaker 1: floor of the house. I believe in two different rooms
Speaker 1: and the only way down is this one single staircase.
Speaker 1: And George tried to go back into the house. He
Speaker 1: broke through a window, cut his arm quite badly. UM
Speaker 1: getting into through in through the window or opening the door. UM,
Speaker 1: and runs inside and the entire downstairs floor is totally
Speaker 1: engulfed in flame and smoke. He can't see anything, but
Speaker 1: he can see that there's no way he can go
Speaker 1: up the staircase or anyone can make it down the staircase.
Speaker 1: So he runs back outside of the house to try
Speaker 1: to figure out another way to get up to those
Speaker 1: kids on the on the top floor. Yeah, and here's
Speaker 1: an interesting point. UM. One of the relatives of I
Speaker 1: think it was the guy who ended up marrying the
Speaker 1: youngest daughter later in life. UM Sylvia said they did
Speaker 1: a lot of research on this, and he said the
Speaker 1: original police report said that the very first statement said
Speaker 1: that the two sons, John and George, who got out,
Speaker 1: said they actually ran into the other kids rooms and
Speaker 1: physically shook them awake. And then later on in interviews
Speaker 1: they said no, they just called out to them. UM,
Speaker 1: and assume they heard. But it's still is a mystery
Speaker 1: as to whether or not that really happened. Police will
Speaker 1: say the first statement is usually the accurate one, um,
Speaker 1: But that's just speculation. So from what I understand, the
Speaker 1: family rationalized that later on by saying that the two
Speaker 1: boys probably felt very guilty, and they said that they
Speaker 1: did what they wished they had or felt that they
Speaker 1: should have done. That makes sense, and that their revisions
Speaker 1: later on were actually the factual ones. That they tried
Speaker 1: to rouse their um siblings by just shouting up the stairs.
Speaker 1: I can buy that. UM. So Papa tries to get in,
Speaker 1: cuts himself really bad. Then he says, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I have this ladder that leans up against the house.
Speaker 1: Always always let me go grab that ladders. Not they're
Speaker 1: very weird. It is very weird, and it would be
Speaker 1: found in a ditch like from the house later on,
Speaker 1: and later on witnesses supposedly saw dude stealing it, uh
Speaker 1: from the garage. But there's so many things that people
Speaker 1: say about this case that it is hard to know
Speaker 1: what's true and what was invented. That is true that
Speaker 1: they saw a guy a dude, well, they report that
Speaker 1: they saw a guy. Well that guy the guy actually
Speaker 1: was found and was arrested and charged for stealing and
Speaker 1: never questioned about the actual fire. The guy that stole
Speaker 1: the ladder. Yeah, okay, so they he says, the dad says,
Speaker 1: let me get my trucks, my big uh coal Holland
Speaker 1: trucks and pull because those are tall. Let me pull
Speaker 1: that next to the house, climb up on that. Neither
Speaker 1: one of the trucks start, even though they've been using
Speaker 1: him to work earlier that day. Yeah, so the thinking
Speaker 1: by the cops and everyone else pretty much is in
Speaker 1: the panic he and his son flooded the engines trying
Speaker 1: to get him started, and that they wouldn't start. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it became yet another like fishy detail that made
Speaker 1: this family suspect like something really weird happened here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then later there was a totally don't understand the
Speaker 1: whole engine removal theory. So it doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: that guy who stole the ladder was caught stealing a
Speaker 1: block and tackle that you would use to remove engines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense, But it doesn't mean like
Speaker 1: he messed with their car or used that block and
Speaker 1: tackle to do anything to the engines. They probably just
Speaker 1: flooded him that one. I'm I'm an agreement on. So
Speaker 1: these this family they're watching helplessly as the house is
Speaker 1: going up in flames. That was burned to the ground
Speaker 1: in about forty five minutes, ostensibly with the children trapped inside. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you think, why did in the fire the
Speaker 1: fire trucks come the Fatte Fire Department? Uh, you know
Speaker 1: it was was Fayetteville, West Virginia. Was Christmas? It was
Speaker 1: Christmas night or morn I guess at this point, um, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the daughters went to a neighbor's house,
Speaker 1: called the fire department. No operators on duty even, right,
Speaker 1: And another neighbor who saw this didn't have a phone
Speaker 1: at their house, so they went to the local tavern
Speaker 1: and they called the operator to report the fire too,
Speaker 1: and they couldn't get the operator either operator was probably
Speaker 1: at home sleeping for Christmas, that's right. So eventually someone
Speaker 1: drives and literally physically tracks down uh fire Chief F. J. Morris,
Speaker 1: who does not come out smelling well in this, Well
Speaker 1: he doesn't. He said, well, I can't drive the fire
Speaker 1: truck as the fire chief. And the way that they
Speaker 1: don't even have a siren, The way that they alerted
Speaker 1: the fire department was it's called a phone tree. They
Speaker 1: just start calling one another. Then they called the next person,
Speaker 1: which made even the last sense because again the solders
Speaker 1: were the only people in West Virginia with a phone
Speaker 1: in their house. It's not true. Uh So eventually, seven
Speaker 1: hours later, at eight a m. The fire truck arrives
Speaker 1: to find a smoldering pile of ash, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people are like, well, clearly the fire department was
Speaker 1: paid off or told to halt. From what I gather,
Speaker 1: it was sheer ineptitude. And also the sense I think
Speaker 1: the fire marshal or fire chief defended himself later saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: he said I couldn't drive the fire trucks side to
Speaker 1: wait for somebody who could. And also that house went
Speaker 1: up so fast there was no there wasn't any need
Speaker 1: for us to get there in any kind of hurry. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's probably true. He also said burned in
Speaker 1: like between thirty and forty five minutes. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: a fire chief, that's not what you want to say,
Speaker 1: you know, like who cares when we get there? Also,
Speaker 1: one of the firemen who showed up was Jenny Satter's brother,
Speaker 1: So it's not like there was this conspiracy to among
Speaker 1: the fire department necessarily, although that is a common belief
Speaker 1: in people who pay attention to this case. It is
Speaker 1: so what they find eight am as a house burnt
Speaker 1: to the ground. What they don't find are any remnants
Speaker 1: of those five children. Yeah, and here in is where
Speaker 1: the mystery really kicks in. The family starts like paying
Speaker 1: attention to little weird details. At first, they just assumed
Speaker 1: that the kids have they're they're just totally gone. They
Speaker 1: were totally burned up. Well, that's what the fire chief said.
Speaker 1: He was like, there's no remains whatsoever because it burned
Speaker 1: them to nothing. They did, like a cursory examination of
Speaker 1: the rubble. They did find some other stuff, like they
Speaker 1: found appliances that were recognizable, They found a couple other things,
Speaker 1: but they never found any of the kids. Um, And
Speaker 1: they took the fire chief's word at face value and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: well our kids are in there. We can't bear to
Speaker 1: the side of this any longer. So George went and
Speaker 1: got a bunch of dirt and buried the site in
Speaker 1: about five ft of fill dirt and decided to plant
Speaker 1: a memorial garden there on the side of the house. Fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is on January two, so that he wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to do this. They're supposed to leave it open to
Speaker 1: continue to investigate. Um. The state police inspector said it
Speaker 1: was faulty wiring. It's now covered in dirt. Um, and
Speaker 1: so now the family has just left alone, saying what
Speaker 1: happened to our children? Are they? Were they in there? Right?
Speaker 1: So that that when they buried the place and dirt,
Speaker 1: they assumed that the children were still in there, and
Speaker 1: this was there. They're grave now. They were never going
Speaker 1: to be found um. But then, like you said, they
Speaker 1: started thinking about weird details that emerged. Right. One of
Speaker 1: the first ones was the idea that it was faulty wiring.
Speaker 1: George basically knew for a fact that it wasn't faulty wiring.
Speaker 1: He'd recently had um an electric stove installed and just
Speaker 1: to make sure again there he was doing pretty well,
Speaker 1: just to make sure that the house didn't burn down
Speaker 1: with this new fangled electric stove. He had the wiring
Speaker 1: in the house redone, and then he had it inspected
Speaker 1: by the power company, who sent out an inspector and
Speaker 1: said they did a good job. Wiring is fine. So
Speaker 1: he basically you almost for a fact that it wasn't
Speaker 1: faulty wiring in the house. Yeah. Not only that after
Speaker 1: the fire started, when they were outside, there were still
Speaker 1: lights on in the house, right, So remember Jenny came
Speaker 1: down and turned out the lights. She left the Christmas
Speaker 1: tree lights on, and while the house was burning, the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree was still the Christmas tree lights were on,
Speaker 1: which must have been like a really ghastly thing to see,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, speaking of the wiring, there was a
Speaker 1: point a few months earlier, and this is definitely a
Speaker 1: strange thing, when this guy showed up. He was a stranger,
Speaker 1: no one knew him, and he asked about, you know,
Speaker 1: working as a driver, and he didn't have any work
Speaker 1: for him, but he was sort of just I guess.
Speaker 1: They had the conversation outdoors, wandered around at the back
Speaker 1: of his house and said, you know, what you're wiring
Speaker 1: here at your fuse box is going to cause a
Speaker 1: fire someday. And George thought, well, that's a really weird
Speaker 1: thing to say, because not only did I have it
Speaker 1: just inspected and it's fine, it's just a strange thing
Speaker 1: for you to say, Mr stranger, get off my property
Speaker 1: pretty much, but take the cannoli very nice, but weird
Speaker 1: and disconcerting after the fact. Obviously, sure he didn't think
Speaker 1: anything of it at the time other than that's a
Speaker 1: weird thing to say. Yeah. Um. Another fishy thing that
Speaker 1: happened that really kind of stuck out in retrospect was
Speaker 1: the life insurance salesman, right, Yeah, a life insurance salesman
Speaker 1: came through and um tried to sell George some life
Speaker 1: insurance policies for his children, and George didn't bite and
Speaker 1: the guy got I rate and his quote was kind
Speaker 1: of weird. Actually, he said, your house is going to
Speaker 1: go up and smoke your g D house. Yeah, your
Speaker 1: children are going to be destroyed. And then here's here's
Speaker 1: where it really gets weird. He says, you will be
Speaker 1: repaid for the dirty things you've been saying about Mussolini. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and George just went like, get off my property. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just the usual. Yeah. So remember we said that he
Speaker 1: was outspoken about Mussolina and politics. Um, clearly this got
Speaker 1: around to this dude, and uh, it's just a weird,
Speaker 1: disconcerting thing to say, especially after these kids look like
Speaker 1: they may have perished in this fire. Yeah, especially if
Speaker 1: he didn't like make a big deal out of it
Speaker 1: at the time. Was this like a normal business attempt
Speaker 1: in West Virginia among the Italian community, Like your kids
Speaker 1: are gonna die, You'll be repaid for what you've been
Speaker 1: saying about Mussolini. Good day to you. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's not in the handbook. What's even fishier, though, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is that same guy served on the coroner's inquest jury
Speaker 1: that ruled that the fire was the result of faulty wiring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it all gets a little weird. Yeah. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: one other, well, not one other, quite a few other
Speaker 1: weird things. Um. One of the older sons said that,
Speaker 1: you know what, right before Christmas, there was a dude
Speaker 1: parked right across from our house, watching the school bus
Speaker 1: and watching the younger kids get off the school bus
Speaker 1: and come to the house. And it was clear that
Speaker 1: he was sitting there watching us, and it was strange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was in a van. Was he really? No? I
Speaker 1: bet he was. He would have been if it were
Speaker 1: like the seventies all that. Yeah, that's trip sickos and seventies.
Speaker 1: So Chuck, let's take another break, because the mystery is
Speaker 1: about to deepen even more. The plot thickens et cetera.
Speaker 1: All right, so things are getting a little weird, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, now Jenny and George, the solder
Speaker 1: um parents, start thinking, like, wait a minute, are our
Speaker 1: kids actually dead? Who is the last person to see
Speaker 1: them alive? The if if John and George Jr. To
Speaker 1: be believed they were the last ones to see him
Speaker 1: alive because they went and shook them awake, but they
Speaker 1: may not have actually done that well, and they changed
Speaker 1: her story to say that they didn't. So then technically
Speaker 1: Mary in, the seventeen year old older sister who brought
Speaker 1: the toys and was downstairs with the kids while they
Speaker 1: were playing with them, would have been the last to
Speaker 1: see them alive. But I could never find anybody pressing
Speaker 1: her for what her story was. So the assumption that
Speaker 1: I'm going on is that she just fell asleep on
Speaker 1: the couch, and when she fell asleep, the kids were
Speaker 1: still downstairs. But the solders are starting to wonder, like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, where those kids even in the house
Speaker 1: when the house went down, And they they're backed up
Speaker 1: by the idea that no remains were found. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the one that really is bothering them. They're like, something
Speaker 1: should have been found. Yeah, and um, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: this this story is starting to get national attention in
Speaker 1: the press. And the Saw later on would say, George
Speaker 1: would say, if they were burned in the house, if
Speaker 1: they died in that house fire, I want to be convinced.
Speaker 1: And if they weren't, I want to know what happened
Speaker 1: to them. Um. And this kind of kicked off like
Speaker 1: a lifelong quest for for George and Jenny. Um. And
Speaker 1: in nine to try to literally get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of it, they hired a guy to come in and investigate,
Speaker 1: to basically excavate the memorial site and look for the
Speaker 1: remains of the children, and he didn't find it. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and previous to that, they did their own experiments with
Speaker 1: burning things, animal bones and uh, just sort of self
Speaker 1: experimentation to see what would remained. And there was always bones,
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, they could never get them to just
Speaker 1: to to turn into ash. Uh. They went to a
Speaker 1: crematorium even and said, you know, we're probably just not
Speaker 1: even getting this thing hot enough. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: actually at two thousand degrees it would take two hours
Speaker 1: to completely burn a body up. Your how didn't get
Speaker 1: nearly that hot and it only burned for thirty to
Speaker 1: forty five minutes, so there should definitely be human remains
Speaker 1: like all over the place. Jenny kind of really turned
Speaker 1: into like this citizen scientist. Actually, she taught herself forensics
Speaker 1: as far as burning of remains goes. She um looked
Speaker 1: into other fires. There was another fire that happened around
Speaker 1: the same time that killed seven people. Uh, and the
Speaker 1: remains of all seven people were found in the in
Speaker 1: the burned out house as well. So she's like getting
Speaker 1: more and more convinced, and so is George that their
Speaker 1: kids are still alive. So in nine they had a
Speaker 1: a forensic investigator of some sort of coming and do
Speaker 1: an investigation and an excavation of the site. And he
Speaker 1: turned up some stuff. He found some coins, found a
Speaker 1: dictionary that had belonged to the kids, and he did
Speaker 1: actually find some vertebra and he had the vertebras sent
Speaker 1: off to the Smithsonian Institution actually, and they investigated this
Speaker 1: and issued a report about the bones. Yes they did.
Speaker 1: They said the human bones consist of four lumbar vertebrae
Speaker 1: belonging to one individual. The transverse recess of fused, so
Speaker 1: the age of this individual death should have been sixteen
Speaker 1: or seventeen top limit twenty two UM. And on this basis,
Speaker 1: the bones show greater skepter maturation than what I would
Speaker 1: expect from a fourteen year old who was the oldest
Speaker 1: missing child. So basically, it was either placed there by someone,
Speaker 1: It was not charred, it was not a part of
Speaker 1: the fire, one of the fire, It wasn't one of
Speaker 1: the kids. And it was either place there by someone
Speaker 1: or brought it happened to be in that dirt. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine that? Like, think about that. George went and
Speaker 1: got a bunch of filled dirt to come and fill
Speaker 1: in this memorial site and ended up disturbing a grave,
Speaker 1: like maybe an unmarked grave somewhere that didn't find I
Speaker 1: didn't think that was remarkable. That's crazy. If you ain't
Speaker 1: got filled dirt and you found bones, human bones, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. Can you tell by the pitch of my
Speaker 1: voice that that is crazy? I can. The other weird
Speaker 1: thing that they found was a, uh, this green rubber
Speaker 1: casing that later they found out it was a part
Speaker 1: of some kind of bomb um an incendiary device, And
Speaker 1: some people think that that's a weird thing to have
Speaker 1: on your property. House had just burned. And they think
Speaker 1: this could have been the sound that Jeanie heard in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night when something hit the roof
Speaker 1: and rolled off. Who knows, but she didn't hear a
Speaker 1: big boom. It seemed like if it was a bomb,
Speaker 1: that would have been pretty obvious. Yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 1: if it was like a napalm bombment doesn't necessarily explode
Speaker 1: it just like nites breads. Yeah, so then I'll make noise.
Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll go experiment with one. UM so
Speaker 1: that that objection speculation right. That Smith's Zonian report actually said,
Speaker 1: it's really curious that that the bodies weren't recovered or
Speaker 1: found in this pretty good excavation that you guys hired
Speaker 1: this dude to do. UM and it actually set off
Speaker 1: a larger investigation in West Virginia. The governor and the
Speaker 1: UM I think the state police superintendent both said, what
Speaker 1: you guys are doing is hopeless. The cases closed. Your
Speaker 1: kids died in that fire. The case closed. And the
Speaker 1: solders were like, no, we're going to go hire a
Speaker 1: private detective. And they did hire a private detective and
Speaker 1: he started sniffing around town. And UM, I heard a
Speaker 1: weird rumor that the police that the fire chief had
Speaker 1: said that he actually found a heart and had put
Speaker 1: it in a box and buried it at the site,
Speaker 1: which is a weird thing to do, it is. And
Speaker 1: he went to the guy and was like, you gotta
Speaker 1: show me where this thing's buried. Uh. He does. He
Speaker 1: actually dig it up, and they find a sort of
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say fresh beef liver, freshish but not burned.
Speaker 1: And then he admits, you know what, I put this
Speaker 1: there hoping that someone would find this and just think
Speaker 1: it was a body part of one of their kids.
Speaker 1: We can close the case, very ham fisted way of
Speaker 1: closing a case. Yeah. And it's just I don't know
Speaker 1: why he thought that would work. I don't want to
Speaker 1: say he's dumb, but it was a pretty dumb thing
Speaker 1: to do. Uh. So previous to this, all sorts of
Speaker 1: weird claims had started to fly in reportings of sightings
Speaker 1: all over the country. One woman was operating a tour
Speaker 1: stop about fifty miles west and she said, no, I
Speaker 1: saw them the morning after the fire, served in breakfast. Uh.
Speaker 1: They got into a car with Florida license plates. Um,
Speaker 1: and and trust me it was your kids. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that freaks him out, of course. Uh. Then there was
Speaker 1: a hotel not too far in Charleston, and apparently late
Speaker 1: at night, the UM I think four kids had checked
Speaker 1: in accompanied by some adults, two women and two men,
Speaker 1: all Italian. And she said, I tried to talk to
Speaker 1: the kids and tried to be nice, and the dudes
Speaker 1: freaked out and started talking Italian and like shuffled the
Speaker 1: kids out of there real quick. Yeah, and they left
Speaker 1: early the next morning, super super sketchy. Some ladies said
Speaker 1: that she saw the kids looking out of a car
Speaker 1: that was driving by as the house was on fire. UM.
Speaker 1: And then there were even more tips that kind of
Speaker 1: poured in over the years, UM, including one uh that
Speaker 1: said that they were actually being held by a distant
Speaker 1: relative of Jenny's. UM. Someone said that Martha was in
Speaker 1: a convent out west I believe YEP. In nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: they got a letter from a lady in Houston said that, uh,
Speaker 1: the oldest boy or one of the boys Lewis had
Speaker 1: lived in that town, got drunk one night and basically
Speaker 1: told everyone who he was. UM. They actually went and
Speaker 1: in fact, George Sauder and sometimes Jenny he would go
Speaker 1: all over the country tracking down these leads and always
Speaker 1: sadly comes back empty handed. When he went to Texas,
Speaker 1: he got down there, met with the guy and it
Speaker 1: wasn't his son, obviously, but um, you know, I had
Speaker 1: to go back and tell his wife, like another another
Speaker 1: zero in this one. Yeah, and like it's really sad
Speaker 1: when you step back and look at it from the
Speaker 1: perspective of the parents, like they were not convinced that
Speaker 1: their kids died in this fire. They were open to
Speaker 1: the possibility, but they weren't convinced, and they wanted to
Speaker 1: know for the rest of their lives. So Yeah, he
Speaker 1: would go all over the country chasing down leads. And
Speaker 1: the reason he would do this, Chuck, is because he
Speaker 1: got no help whatsoever from the local authorities. They the
Speaker 1: solders actually wrote to the FBI and got a reply
Speaker 1: from j Edgar Hoover himself that said, I'd love to help,
Speaker 1: but this is out of our jurisdiction. If your local
Speaker 1: cops will invite us to help, we'd be happy to
Speaker 1: help investigate. And the local cops said, thanks anyway, and
Speaker 1: turn the FBI down. I can't imagine how frustrating that
Speaker 1: must have been for the solders to see that to
Speaker 1: see Jack or Hoover say we'll help out, But these
Speaker 1: guys have to invite us and get turned down for that,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, so that I mean it was the
Speaker 1: kind of their life obsession, and obsession is a really
Speaker 1: good good way to put it. There's a story of
Speaker 1: George seeing a picture in a paper of a ballet
Speaker 1: class in Manhattan, and he became convinced that one of
Speaker 1: the girls in the picture was his daughter, Betty, and
Speaker 1: he drove to Manhattan and demanded to see his daughter,
Speaker 1: and the parents are the school was like, you need
Speaker 1: to get out of here, dude, you've lost your mind.
Speaker 1: This is our kid. No, you can't see our kid.
Speaker 1: So he had to go back home after that. So
Speaker 1: it gets super weird. Jenny comes home, gets a male
Speaker 1: and sees a letter addressed to her, not to the
Speaker 1: family or to her and her husband. To Jenny Sawder
Speaker 1: opens it up, post markedin Kentucky, no return address, and
Speaker 1: there was a photo of an Italian man. Well, I
Speaker 1: looked at the Italian in his mid twenties, so the
Speaker 1: age fits. And on the back of it it said,
Speaker 1: in handwriting, Louis Solder, I love brother Frankie, I l
Speaker 1: I l boys, A little boys, A nine zero, one
Speaker 1: two or three five, no idea, the most weird, mysterious
Speaker 1: thing you could imagine. And I looked at a picture.
Speaker 1: They were like, this very well could be our son.
Speaker 1: It looks a lot like him. It looks more like
Speaker 1: him than I do. I didn't think it was him.
Speaker 1: I was like, the eyebrows didn't match to me, the
Speaker 1: nose didn't match. But you can never tell a kid
Speaker 1: from nine to twenty five, you know, because this is
Speaker 1: almost twenty he might have looked like you know, it
Speaker 1: could be true, he might have looked different enough. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that mystery just was never ever solved. And
Speaker 1: so back in the fifties, like after they started getting
Speaker 1: shut down by the local cops and then the state
Speaker 1: cops and everybody, they you know, they started to take
Speaker 1: matters in their own hands. And one of the things
Speaker 1: they did was erect that billboard that you asked Justin
Speaker 1: McElroy about. It became kind of famous. Aside from the McIlroy's,
Speaker 1: everybody in West Virginia knew about it. UM. And it
Speaker 1: was a billboard on the Sawder's property with pictures, big
Speaker 1: pictures of the five children UM with their name and
Speaker 1: age and then basically uh rundown of what the family
Speaker 1: thought may have happened to them. And it was at
Speaker 1: first they offered a five thousand dollar reward and then
Speaker 1: up to the ten thousand dollars. Yeah, and they owned it.
Speaker 1: So it was there for I mean until the eighties
Speaker 1: until um so, George died in night and then Jenny
Speaker 1: died in nine And after Jenny died, they took the
Speaker 1: billboard down. That's right. What other reports came in. One
Speaker 1: bus driver said he claimed he saw someone throwing quote
Speaker 1: fireballs onto the house. Some of this stuff reeks that
Speaker 1: I was pretty wasted at the time. Some of the
Speaker 1: stuff reeks of like that after the fact stuff that
Speaker 1: people kind of invent like wait a minute, saw gout
Speaker 1: throwing fireballs? Right, But there was verified after the fact weirdness.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure. You know that keeps this this
Speaker 1: case alive. Like one thing we didn't mention. Their telephone
Speaker 1: line was cut. Yeah, and some people say it was
Speaker 1: a guy that stole the ladder, climbed up cut the
Speaker 1: phone lines so they couldn't reach anyone. Uh but I
Speaker 1: mean you said they found the guy. Did he did
Speaker 1: they ask him about that? From what I understand, they
Speaker 1: didn't ask him anything. They just find him for for theft,
Speaker 1: ladder theft and block and tackle theft. Oh. The other
Speaker 1: weird thing is, um they hired another private investigator at
Speaker 1: one point to track down where that letter came from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Kentucky picture of Lewis and this guy just disappears. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He may have just been like a CD gum shoe,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe and just took their money. Quite possibly,
Speaker 1: or maybe he was murdered because he found out the truth.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but they said that he literally vanished
Speaker 1: like they couldn't ever reach him again. I think it's
Speaker 1: likely he was a seedy gum should we just took
Speaker 1: some desperate families money and hopefully he's burning in hell?
Speaker 1: Did the mafia rub him out? Because that became one
Speaker 1: of the leading theories is that George was approached by
Speaker 1: the mafia, rebuff their advances and um that was it.
Speaker 1: They they took the kids. Uh well yeah, And supposedly
Speaker 1: it's not just a total flight of fancy. Apparently the
Speaker 1: mafia was really big in the coal business and the
Speaker 1: trucking business in the area at that time, so it
Speaker 1: is entirely possible he was approached by the mafia, and
Speaker 1: he does sound like the kind of guy who tell
Speaker 1: him to like go stick it. Yeah, you know. He
Speaker 1: also may have made some enemies with the Mussolini cracks. Uh.
Speaker 1: What else was there? Well, one thing that that was
Speaker 1: lost to time was that vertebrae, even though it's almost
Speaker 1: that it was not one of the kids. At least
Speaker 1: if they still had that, they could DNA test it now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but of course they can't. Yeah. And so little little
Speaker 1: baby Sylvia who was two maybe three at the time,
Speaker 1: I think two is is what I've seen most Um
Speaker 1: is the last surviving Solder child. And she said, like
Speaker 1: these are her earliest memories are of that night of
Speaker 1: the fire and seeing her father like losing his mind,
Speaker 1: training in his house and bleeding. Um. And she promised
Speaker 1: her parents that she would keep the story alive, so
Speaker 1: she she talks about it a lot. Um. She goes
Speaker 1: onto the online like online sleuth websites that talk about
Speaker 1: the case, and like kind of feeds information to people
Speaker 1: and tries to keep the story alive. It's just crazy, man.
Speaker 1: You go to bed, you wake up with a fire,
Speaker 1: and five of your five of your children are just vanished,
Speaker 1: and there's no way they burned up to nothing. That's
Speaker 1: just impossible. So I I read this blog post. Like
Speaker 1: a MPR person named Stacy Horn did a piece on
Speaker 1: it like years back, and she wrote this really long
Speaker 1: blog post about stuff they have been cut from the
Speaker 1: from the piece, and I got the impress and they
Speaker 1: were trying to play up the mystery. And she said
Speaker 1: that she personally came to believe that the children did
Speaker 1: die in the fire, and that there was plenty of
Speaker 1: evidence that supports that idea, but that the media tends
Speaker 1: to play up the other But she also said that
Speaker 1: there's enough weird stuff surrounding it that if she learned
Speaker 1: that they were still alive, she wouldn't be shocked. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and the fact that they never got in touch, because
Speaker 1: you you know, it's not like these kids were strange
Speaker 1: from their parents or I mean, they were a tight
Speaker 1: knit family by all accounts, right, And the family rationalized
Speaker 1: that by saying that their family was in danger and
Speaker 1: they were trying to protect their parents by never getting
Speaker 1: into which would kind of align with the mafia theory. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just terrible, man, lose half your family without a trace. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about this. There's plenty
Speaker 1: of sites on the internet that have stuff, but we
Speaker 1: found this really great article that we basedus on by
Speaker 1: Karen Abbott. It was called The Children Who Went Up
Speaker 1: and Smoke. Yeah, the NPR wents good and Stacy Hornson
Speaker 1: is pretty old too. You know, it's weird. Does I
Speaker 1: have a good friend named Stacy Horn is not the
Speaker 1: same one? No? But when I clicked, I was like, oh, interesting,
Speaker 1: and I clicked on her thing and it said Stacy
Speaker 1: Horn like cat. She's a cat person. My friend Stacy
Speaker 1: is a noted cat person and it's not the same person,
Speaker 1: you know, And I was like, weird doppelganger? Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: maybe the name doppelganger. Yeah, I'd have to see her face.
Speaker 1: I think I said something, well, how about this search bar?
Speaker 1: And since I since search bar, it's time for listener mail,
Speaker 1: Chuck handy dandy search bar. People said that they miss that.
Speaker 1: I used to say that the handy search bar. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think I said handy dandy did ida? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe Jerry said yes, that's back when she listened,
Speaker 1: so I would take that better word. Hey, guys, huge
Speaker 1: fan of the show too. Exclamation points. Yeah. I've been
Speaker 1: listening to your show for about a year now, and
Speaker 1: I turned my wife and kids onto the program, and
Speaker 1: they're all hooked. We had a stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: marathon even in our car ride back to Chicago from Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 1: We look forward to your new episodes and are burning
Speaker 1: through them quickly to pick up the pace. You guys
Speaker 1: made reference to lead paints being on roadside signs. That
Speaker 1: is highly unlikely, says Sean. Uh. Those signs are changed
Speaker 1: quite frequently in our base, predominantly uh. And then he
Speaker 1: goes on to name like eight different types of pigment
Speaker 1: chemistries which I won't read out, and other mixtures of
Speaker 1: iron oxides uh. He said. Lead chromates can still be found, however,
Speaker 1: in road markings like yellow and white lines on the street.
Speaker 1: Any new road markings are now done with the chemistries
Speaker 1: I mentioned previously, but there are many states across the
Speaker 1: country that still haven't gotten around replacing removing the lead
Speaker 1: chromate based paints on the street. Not trying to knitpick.
Speaker 1: It's common misconception of people outside the color industry, and
Speaker 1: based on my nerd ing out with the chemistry name dropping,
Speaker 1: I bet you can't guess what industry I'm in. Here's
Speaker 1: a hint. I don't dance. So he's saying he's a
Speaker 1: chemistry nerd. Was ever dood dancing? Chemistry nerds don't dance.
Speaker 1: I think that may be a reference. Is something we
Speaker 1: said that I'm not picking up on. Maybe maybe Sean
Speaker 1: can clear it up. Yeah, we need to follow up
Speaker 1: listener mail. All right, that's from Sean Mula. Oh it
Speaker 1: was German. He didn't he dropped the room out. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Mueller he didn't want that association. Well, thanks Shan,
Speaker 1: we appreciate that. Uh, let us know about the dancing thing.
Speaker 1: I think we're not the only ones who are curious, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that means. If you know what
Speaker 1: Shaan is talking about, you can tweet to us at
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