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Speaker 1: wall Yep, welcome to you Stuff you should know from
Speaker 1: house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, Jerry's
Speaker 1: over there. So this is Stuff you should Unsolved Mysteries Edition, Yeah. Really,
Speaker 1: are you cool with this? No? I'm leaving. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think it's great. Man. I love me a good unsolved mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is super sad. So it's not like I
Speaker 1: love it and I think it's hysterical. I just I
Speaker 1: just like unsolved mystery. What's a what's an hysterical unsolved mystery? Um? Like,
Speaker 1: I got pants in the second grade and I don't
Speaker 1: know who did it. That's an hysterical unsolved mystery. I
Speaker 1: was just in line pants around the ankles turned around
Speaker 1: and like everyone's like did you just go with it
Speaker 1: and you're like, check it out, check me out of
Speaker 1: in second crate. Yep, God for that never happened. I
Speaker 1: made it up. Oh really yeah, it's called improv, buddy.
Speaker 1: It's a crowd. So end 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, UH of Italian extraction,
Speaker 1: as we'll see, Yes, and um very much so. Like
Speaker 1: you said, this is an unsolved mystery. They their family
Speaker 1: just going along totally normally has turned into one of
Speaker 1: the stranger unsolved mysteries in American history. Yeah, and certainly
Speaker 1: in West Virginia history. 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 there. They're brothers of 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 seems like the kind of cautionary
Speaker 1: tale that would be whispered about all over West Virginia.
Speaker 1: I can 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 that 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, though, should have
Speaker 1: says 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 Georgeiros who had
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. What I say, if you
Speaker 1: made that ship's voyage, just mull it over for a
Speaker 1: day or two. Yeah, because what if, like you're half
Speaker 1: way back, you're like, actually I should have stayed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might meet a pretty lady from Brooklyn. You see
Speaker 1: that movie bok No great? Really? Yeah? Yeah, okay, it
Speaker 1: sound surprised. I was a little surprised. Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: nominated for many awards. That doesn't always mean it usually
Speaker 1: means it's pretty good. No, it's Pence 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. It's kind of mind blowing. But
Speaker 1: then you think back to there there, they didn't really
Speaker 1: understand what childhood was at that point. So he's probably
Speaker 1: like of working age and have been for years. But
Speaker 1: it seems really weird to us now. He might have
Speaker 1: been retiring, right. He was smoking cigars already, so he,
Speaker 1: like I said, was a go getter. He started working
Speaker 1: at on the Pennsylvania Railroad and then moved to West
Speaker 1: Virginia to Smithers Smithers, West Virginia and worked as a
Speaker 1: truck driver and then said, you know what, this is America.
Speaker 1: Darn it. I didn't come here to drive a truck
Speaker 1: for someone. I'm gonna own my own trucking business. And
Speaker 1: the statue of Liberty went up, nice going king. So
Speaker 1: he started his own trucking business. Um, and he's in
Speaker 1: West Virginia. So in short order he starts hauling cole yeah,
Speaker 1: coal and dirt. And it wasn't like the hugest business.
Speaker 1: I think he did okay for himself. He did it
Speaker 1: okay for himself, like solidly middle class. Yeah, he didn't
Speaker 1: become like wealthy or anything. And as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: later on um a local local government official would say
Speaker 1: that the Sauders were, um one of the best middle
Speaker 1: class families in Fayetteville, and they had a small Italian
Speaker 1: population in Fayetteville, which I think is why he ended
Speaker 1: up there in his community. Yeah, and he moved there
Speaker 1: with his wife Jenny, right, Yeah, Jenny Cipriani who he
Speaker 1: met UM. She came over from Italy when she was three.
Speaker 1: He met her historic called the music box and they
Speaker 1: got married. And like Italian families do, they had ten kids.
Speaker 1: Ten kids in twenty years. That's a lot of kids,
Speaker 1: pumping them out with great regularity. And like you said,
Speaker 1: when they moved to Fayettville, the reason they moved to
Speaker 1: Fatville had no idea that West Virginia even had Italian
Speaker 1: people in it, let alone strong Italian communities. But they
Speaker 1: moved to Fayettville and they were part of the Italian community,
Speaker 1: and George was well known. Again, they were a respected
Speaker 1: middle class family there. He did pretty good for himself.
Speaker 1: UM and he was also well known for his opinions
Speaker 1: and everything, including politics and UM. During the forties, the
Speaker 1: United States was at war with Italy and not all
Speaker 1: of the Italian Americans were UM feeling it. On the
Speaker 1: American side, there were a lot of disagreements over Mussolini
Speaker 1: and the government that he was creating. UM. Among Italian Americans,
Speaker 1: including in Fayetteville, West Virginia, and George in particular, hated
Speaker 1: Mussolini and very frequently spoke out about him and would
Speaker 1: get in arguments with some of the locals who who
Speaker 1: felt differently about Mussolini. And uh, I guess there were
Speaker 1: some hard feelings here there, but he doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: have taken them seriously very much. No, And we mentioned that, Um,
Speaker 1: if it sounds like we're setting something up for later,
Speaker 1: we indeed are, so just tuck that little fact away. Um,
Speaker 1: and then can we fast forward in time? Yeah? Too?
Speaker 1: Uh Christmas Eve? Christmas Eve? Right, so, um, here's what happens.
Speaker 1: It's Christmas Eve. Um. As his tradition, in some households,
Speaker 1: you can open up a few gifts on Christmas Eve. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is what happened. They opened up some presents
Speaker 1: comes time for Betty by and five of the children,
Speaker 1: Maurice fourteen, Martha twelve, Louis or Louie ten, Genie or
Speaker 1: Jenny as that was a little confusing because that's the
Speaker 1: mom's name. Eight years old. And Betty said, can we
Speaker 1: please stay up late and play with these new toys? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're older, sister Marian had. She worked at a five
Speaker 1: and diameond Town two miles down the road, and she
Speaker 1: had surprised her younger brothers and sisters with some toys
Speaker 1: that they had not been expecting. That's right, and they
Speaker 1: were very happy. So they asked mom if they could
Speaker 1: stay up. Yeah, and the older, the elder, Jenny, said yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you can stay up. Turn out the lights,
Speaker 1: locked the doors before you go to bed. I'm going
Speaker 1: to hit the rack with your dad. And are two
Speaker 1: year old daughter Sylvia, twenty three year old John and
Speaker 1: sixteen year old George Jr. Were I guess they were
Speaker 1: just ready for bed too. And then if you're thinking
Speaker 1: there's one missing child, he is away in the military,
Speaker 1: the eldest. Yeah, fighting either Mussolini or Hitler or to Joe,
Speaker 1: one of those guys. So he's away. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: could not, for the life of me find that guy's name. 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? At eleven? Something like that? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: she leaves those five youngest children, Um and Marian, they're
Speaker 1: older sister who I think was seventeen at the time,
Speaker 1: downstairs when she goes to bed Um. And then at
Speaker 1: about twelve thirty on Christmas Morne, because remember that was
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve, about twelve thirty at night, the phone rings,
Speaker 1: and um, this is not an era where and this
Speaker 1: kind of to me goes to show these people were
Speaker 1: doing all right. They had a phone in in West Virginia.
Speaker 1: They may have been the only people in West Virginia
Speaker 1: with the phone in nineteen I'm just saying, I don't
Speaker 1: think everybody had a phone in West Virginia, n so
Speaker 1: they certainly didn't have one at their bedside. So Jenny,
Speaker 1: the mom has to get up to answer the phone,
Speaker 1: and on the other line she hears a woman asking
Speaker 1: for somebody she didn't know or recognized, and in the
Speaker 1: background there's obviously a party going on. There's laughter, there's
Speaker 1: clinking of glasses, and uh, Jenny says, I don't know
Speaker 1: who you're talking about. You have the wrong number, and
Speaker 1: the woman laughs weirdly and hangs up. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and come out and say I think this
Speaker 1: means nothing, and it's total coincidence. So supposedly they tracked
Speaker 1: that woman down and she said it was just a
Speaker 1: wrong number. Potal coincidence, that's what I think. But think
Speaker 1: about that though, Like, had that not happened, a lot
Speaker 1: of other stuff would have gone unnoticed. Right, it's a
Speaker 1: big deal. So before she goes back to bed, she
Speaker 1: noticed the lights are on downstairs. She said, you know,
Speaker 1: turn the lights off, locked the door before you go
Speaker 1: to bed. So one of her kids is on the
Speaker 1: couch asleep. She's like, wait a minute, the doors unlocked,
Speaker 1: the lights are on. Um, they shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1: So let me lock the doors and turn off the lights.
Speaker 1: And she leaves the one that's asleep on the couch asleep.
Speaker 1: It was the one that got her to sleepy time
Speaker 1: on the couch. That's fine. But those five younger ones
Speaker 1: who've been playing with their toys, they were not ordered
Speaker 1: to be found, so mom just assumed they went upstairs
Speaker 1: to bed. So she goes back to bed, and then
Speaker 1: like an hour later she's awoken by like a thump
Speaker 1: on the roof. Yeah, and she falls back asleep again. Well,
Speaker 1: it sounded like a heavy thump and a sliding down
Speaker 1: of the roof. This was just something heavy head landed
Speaker 1: on it and then slid off, and she just went
Speaker 1: back to sleep. Very important matter. She probably figured it
Speaker 1: was a reindeer or something like that at being Christmas,
Speaker 1: you never know. Uh. The next time she woke up,
Speaker 1: she woke up to panic and chaos because their house
Speaker 1: was on fire. And Chuck, we'll talk about the fire
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, dude, the house is on fire,
Speaker 1: that's right. So Sylvia a litt two year old Sylvia
Speaker 1: is in their room with her the parents, so they
Speaker 1: get her out obviously with them because she's in the crib. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then seventeen year old Marion and twenty year old
Speaker 1: John and sixth year old George Jr. Are all outside
Speaker 1: and safe right at this point. So everyone is out
Speaker 1: except for these five other kids, right. And they were
Speaker 1: the top floor of the house, I believe, in two
Speaker 1: different rooms, and the only way down is this one
Speaker 1: single staircase. And George tried to go back into the house.
Speaker 1: He broke through a window, cut his arm quite badly.
Speaker 1: Um getting into through in through the window or opening
Speaker 1: the door. Um, and runs inside and the entire downstairs
Speaker 1: floor is totally engulfed in flame and smoke. He can't
Speaker 1: see anything, but he can see that there's no way
Speaker 1: he can go up the staircase or anyone can make
Speaker 1: it down the staircase, So he runs back outside of
Speaker 1: the house to try to figure out another way to
Speaker 1: get up to those kids on the on the top floor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and here's an interesting point, Um. One of the relatives
Speaker 1: of I think it was the guy who ended up
Speaker 1: marrying the youngest daughter later in life. UM Sylvia said
Speaker 1: they did a lot of research on this, and he
Speaker 1: said the original police report said that the very first
Speaker 1: statement said that the two sons, John and George, who
Speaker 1: got out, said they actually ran into the other kid's
Speaker 1: rooms and physically took them awake. And then later on
Speaker 1: in interviews 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 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. They would be found
Speaker 1: in a ditch like from the house later on, and
Speaker 1: later on witnesses supposedly saw dude stealing it, uh from
Speaker 1: the garage. But there's so many things that people say
Speaker 1: about this case that it's hard to know what's true
Speaker 1: and what was invented. That is true that they saw
Speaker 1: a guy a dude, well they report that they saw
Speaker 1: a guy. Well that guy the guy actually was found
Speaker 1: and was arrested and charged for stealing and never questioned
Speaker 1: about the actual fire. The guy that stole the ladder. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so they he says. The dad says, let me get
Speaker 1: my trucks, my big uh coal Holland trucks and pull
Speaker 1: because those are tall. Let me pull that next to
Speaker 1: the house. Climb up on that. Uh, neither one of
Speaker 1: the trucks start, even though they've been using them to
Speaker 1: work earlier that day. Yeah. So the thinking by the
Speaker 1: cops and everyone else pretty much is in the panic
Speaker 1: he and his son flooded the engines trying to get
Speaker 1: him started, and that they wouldn't start. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: became yet another like fishy detail that made this family
Speaker 1: suspect like something really weird happened here. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: later there was a totally don't understand the whole engine
Speaker 1: removal theory. So it doesn't make any sense that guy
Speaker 1: who stole the ladder was caught stealing a block and
Speaker 1: tackle that you would use to remove engines. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. But it doesn't mean like he
Speaker 1: messed with their car or used that block and tackle
Speaker 1: to do anything to the engines. They probably just flooded
Speaker 1: him that one. I'm I'm in Green Mountain. So this
Speaker 1: this family they're watching helplessly as the house is going
Speaker 1: up in flames that was burned to the ground in
Speaker 1: about forty five minutes, ostensibly with the children trapped inside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you think why didn't the fire the fire
Speaker 1: trucks come the Faettville Fire Department. Uh you know, it
Speaker 1: was was Fayetteville, West Virginia, Christmas. It was Christmas night
Speaker 1: or morning, I guess. At this point, um, uh you know,
Speaker 1: one of the daughters went to a neighbor's house called
Speaker 1: the fire department. No operators on duty even right, And
Speaker 1: another neighbor who saw this didn't have a phone at
Speaker 1: their house, so they went to the local tavern and
Speaker 1: they called the operator to report the fire too, and
Speaker 1: they couldn't get the operator either operator was probably at
Speaker 1: home sleeping for Christmas, that's right. So eventually someone drives
Speaker 1: 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, no, 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 statters
Speaker 1: were the only people in West Virginia with a phone
Speaker 1: in their house. That'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 truckside to wait
Speaker 1: for somebody who could. And also that house went up
Speaker 1: so fast there was no there wasn't any need for
Speaker 1: 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. Is so,
Speaker 1: what they find eight am as a house burn't to
Speaker 1: the ground, what they don't find are any remnants of
Speaker 1: those five children. Yeah, and here in is where the
Speaker 1: mystery really kicks in the family starts like paying attention
Speaker 1: to little weird details. At first, they just assumed that
Speaker 1: the kids have they're they're just totally gone. They were
Speaker 1: 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 this 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. The wiring is fine.
Speaker 1: So he basically knew almost for a fact that it
Speaker 1: wasn't faulty wiring in the house. Yeah. Not only that
Speaker 1: after the fire started, when they were outside, there were
Speaker 1: still lights on in the house, right, So remember Jenny
Speaker 1: came down and turned out the lights. She left the
Speaker 1: Christmas tree lights on, and while the house was burning.
Speaker 1: The Christmas tree was still the Christmas tree lights are 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 CONNOTI very nice, but weird
Speaker 1: and disconcerting after the fact. Obviously, sure he didn't think
Speaker 1: anything of at the time other than that's a weird
Speaker 1: thing to say. Yeah. Um. Another fishy thing that happened
Speaker 1: that really kind of stuck out in retrospect was the
Speaker 1: life insurance salesman. Right, a life insurance salesman came through
Speaker 1: and um tried to sell George some life insurance policies
Speaker 1: for his children, and George didn't bite, and the guy
Speaker 1: got I rate and his quote was kind of weird. Actually, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, your house is going to go up and
Speaker 1: smoke your g D house. Yeah, your children are going
Speaker 1: to be destroyed. And then here's here's where it really
Speaker 1: gets weird. He says, you will be repaid for the
Speaker 1: dirty things you've been saying about Mussolini. And George just
Speaker 1: went like, get off my property. Yeah, just the usual. Yea.
Speaker 1: So remember we said that he was outspoken about Mussolina
Speaker 1: and his politics. Um, clearly this got around to this dude,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's just a weird dis consort any thing
Speaker 1: to say, especially after these kids look like they may
Speaker 1: have perished in this fire. Yeah, especially if he didn't
Speaker 1: like make a big deal out of it at the time.
Speaker 1: Was this like a normal business attempt in West Virginia
Speaker 1: among the Italian community, Like your kids are gonna die,
Speaker 1: You'll be repaid for what you've been saying about Mussolini.
Speaker 1: Good day to you. I don't know, I'm sure that's
Speaker 1: not in the handbook. What's even fishier, though, Chuck, is
Speaker 1: that same guy served on the coroner's inquest jury that
Speaker 1: ruled that the fire was the result of faulty wiring.
Speaker 1: It all gets a little weird, uh, And then one other, well,
Speaker 1: not one other, quite a few other weird things. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the older sons said that, you know what,
Speaker 1: right before Christmas, there was a dude parked right across
Speaker 1: from our house, watching the school bus and watching the
Speaker 1: younger kids get off the school bus and come to
Speaker 1: the house. And it was clear that he was sitting
Speaker 1: there watching us, and it was strange. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: in a van. Bet he was. He would have been
Speaker 1: if it were like the seventies, all that sickos and seventies. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: let's take another break, because the mystery is about to
Speaker 1: deepen even more. The plot thickens, et cetera. All right,
Speaker 1: so thanks for getting a little weird. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, now Jenny and George the solder Um parents
Speaker 1: start thinking like, wait a minute, are our kids actually dead?
Speaker 1: Who was the last person to see them alive? That
Speaker 1: if if John and George Jr. To be believed they
Speaker 1: were the lasked ones to see him alive because they
Speaker 1: went and shook them awake, But they may not have
Speaker 1: actually done that well, and they changed her story to
Speaker 1: say that they didn't. So then technically Mary in, the
Speaker 1: seventeen year old older sister who brought the toys and
Speaker 1: was downstairs with the kids while they were playing with them,
Speaker 1: would have been the last to see them alive. But
Speaker 1: I could never find anybody pressing her for what her
Speaker 1: story was. So the assumption that I'm going on is
Speaker 1: that she just fell asleep on the couch, and when
Speaker 1: she fell asleep, the kids were still downstairs. But the
Speaker 1: solders are starting to wonder, like, wait a minute, where
Speaker 1: those kids even in the house when the house went down,
Speaker 1: And they they're backed up by the idea that no
Speaker 1: remains were found. Yeah, that's the one that really is
Speaker 1: bothering them. They're like, something should have been found. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, all of a sudden, this this story is
Speaker 1: starting to get national attention in the press, and the
Speaker 1: Sawders later on would say, George would say, if they
Speaker 1: were burned in the house, if they died in that
Speaker 1: house fire, I want to be convinced. And if they weren't,
Speaker 1: I want to know what happened to them. Um, and
Speaker 1: this kind of kicked off like a lifelong quest for
Speaker 1: for George and Jenny UM. And in nine to try
Speaker 1: to literally get to the bottom of it, they hired
Speaker 1: a guy to come in and investigate, to basically excavate
Speaker 1: the memorial site and look for the remains of the children,
Speaker 1: and he didn't find it. Well. Yeah, and previous to that,
Speaker 1: they did their own experiments with burning things, animal bones
Speaker 1: and uh, this sort of self experimentation to see what
Speaker 1: would remained. And there was always bones of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could never get them to just to to turn
Speaker 1: into ash. Uh. They went to a crematorium even and said,
Speaker 1: you know, we're probably just not even getting missing hot
Speaker 1: enough and they said, well, actually, at two thousand degrees
Speaker 1: it would take two hours to completely burn a body up.
Speaker 1: Your house didn't get nearly that hot and it only
Speaker 1: burned for thirty to forty five minutes, so there should
Speaker 1: definitely be human remains like all over the place. Jenny
Speaker 1: kind of really turned into like this citizen scientist. Actually,
Speaker 1: she taught herself forensics as far as burning of remains goes.
Speaker 1: She um looked into other fires. There was another fire
Speaker 1: that happened around the same time that killed seven people. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the remains of all seven people were found in
Speaker 1: the in the burned out house as well. So She's
Speaker 1: like getting more and more convinced, and so is George
Speaker 1: that their kids are still alive. So in ninety nine
Speaker 1: they had a a forensic investigator of some sort come
Speaker 1: and do an investigation and an excavation of the site.
Speaker 1: And he turned up some stuff. He found some coins,
Speaker 1: found a dictionary that had belonged to the kids, and
Speaker 1: he did actually find some vertebrae, and he had the
Speaker 1: vertebrates sent off to the Smithsonian Institution actually, and they
Speaker 1: investigated this and issued a report about the bones. Yes
Speaker 1: they did. They said the human bones consist of four
Speaker 1: lumbar vertebrae belonging to one individual. The transfers recess of fused,
Speaker 1: so the age of this individual death should have been
Speaker 1: sixteen or seventeen top limit twenty two UM. And on
Speaker 1: this basis, the bones show greater skelepter maturation than what
Speaker 1: I would expect from a fourteen year old who was
Speaker 1: the oldest missing child. So basically it was either placed
Speaker 1: there by someone, it was not charred. It was not
Speaker 1: a part of the fire. It wasn't one of the kids,
Speaker 1: and it was either place there by someone or brought
Speaker 1: it happened to be in that dirt. Can you imagine that? Like,
Speaker 1: think about that. George went and got a bunch of
Speaker 1: filled dirt to come and fill in this memorial site
Speaker 1: and ended up disturbing a grave, like maybe an unmarked
Speaker 1: grave somewhere that didn't find. I didn't think that was remarkable.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. If you went and got filled dirt and
Speaker 1: you found bones, human bones, Yeah, I wouldn't. Can you
Speaker 1: tell by the pitch of my voice that that is crazy?
Speaker 1: I can uh. The The weird thing that they found
Speaker 1: was a uh this green rubber casing that later they
Speaker 1: found out it was a part of some kind of
Speaker 1: bomb um an incendiary device. And some people think that
Speaker 1: that's a weird thing to have on your property house
Speaker 1: that just burned. And they think this could have been
Speaker 1: the sound that Jeanie heard in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night when something hit the roof and roll off. Who knows,
Speaker 1: but she didn't hear a big boom. It seemed like
Speaker 1: if it was a bomb, that would have been pretty obvious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean if it was like a napalm bomment
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily explode it just like nites threads. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they don't make noise. I don't know. We'll go experiment
Speaker 1: with one. UM. So that that objection speculation, right. That
Speaker 1: Smithsonian report actually said it's really curious that that the
Speaker 1: bodies weren't recovered or found in this pretty good excavation
Speaker 1: that you guys hired this dude to do UM and
Speaker 1: it actually set off a larger investigation in West Virginia.
Speaker 1: The governor and the UM I think the state police
Speaker 1: superintendent both said, what you guys are doing is hopeless.
Speaker 1: The cases closed. Your kids died in that fire. The
Speaker 1: case closed, and the solders were like, no, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go hire a private detective. And they did hire a
Speaker 1: private detective. And he started sniffing around town and UM
Speaker 1: heard a weird rumor that the police that the fire
Speaker 1: chief had said that he actually found a heart and
Speaker 1: had put it in a box and buried it at
Speaker 1: the site, which is a weird thing to do, it is,
Speaker 1: and he went to the guy and was like, you
Speaker 1: gotta show me where this thing is buried. Uh, he
Speaker 1: does he actually dig it up and they find a
Speaker 1: sort of I wouldn't say fresh beef liver, fresh ish
Speaker 1: but not burned. And then he admits, you know what,
Speaker 1: I put this there hoping that someone would find this
Speaker 1: and just think it was a body part of one
Speaker 1: of their kids. We can close the case, very ham
Speaker 1: fisted way of closing a case. Jerk. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: just I don't know why he thought that would work.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say he's dumb, but it was
Speaker 1: a pretty dumb thing to do. Uh. So previous to this,
Speaker 1: all sorts of weird claims had started to fly in
Speaker 1: reportings of sightings all over the country. One woman was
Speaker 1: operating a tour stop about fifty miles west and she said, no,
Speaker 1: I saw them the morning after the fire, served in breakfast.
Speaker 1: Uh they got into a car with Florida license plates.
Speaker 1: Um and and trust me it was your kids. 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 I think four kids had checked in
Speaker 1: accompanied by some adults, two women and two men, all Italian.
Speaker 1: And she said I tried to talk to the kids
Speaker 1: and tried to be nice, and the dudes freaked out
Speaker 1: and started talking Italian and like shuffled the kids out
Speaker 1: of there real quick. Yeah, and they left early the
Speaker 1: next morning, super super sketchy. Some ladies said that she
Speaker 1: saw the kids looking out of a car that was
Speaker 1: driving by as the house was on fire. Um. And
Speaker 1: then there were even more tips that kind of poured
Speaker 1: in over the years, um, including one uh that said
Speaker 1: that they were actually being held by a distant relative
Speaker 1: of Jenny's. Um. Someone said that Martha was in a
Speaker 1: 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 Solder 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: Sawders 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'm I can't imagine how frustrating
Speaker 1: that must have been for the Sawders to see that,
Speaker 1: to see Jagger 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 looked
Speaker 1: at the Italian in his mid twenties, so the age pits,
Speaker 1: and on the back of it said, in handwriting, Louis Solder,
Speaker 1: I love brother Frankie. I l I l boys A
Speaker 1: little boys A nine zero, one, three two or three five,
Speaker 1: no idea, the most weird, mysterious thing you could imagine.
Speaker 1: And I looked at a picture. They were like, this
Speaker 1: very well could be our son. It looks a lot
Speaker 1: like him. It looks more like him than I do.
Speaker 1: I didn't think it was him. I was like, the
Speaker 1: eyebrows didn't match to me, the nose didn't match. But
Speaker 1: you can never tell a kid from nine to twenty five,
Speaker 1: you know, because this is like almost twenty he might
Speaker 1: have looked like you know, it could be true, he
Speaker 1: might have looked different enough. Um. But yeah, that mystery
Speaker 1: just was never ever solved. And so back in the fifties,
Speaker 1: like after they started getting shut down by the local
Speaker 1: cops and then the state cops and everybody, they you know,
Speaker 1: they started to take matters in their own hands. And
Speaker 1: one of the things they did was erect that billboard
Speaker 1: that you asked Justin McElroy about. It became kind of famous.
Speaker 1: Aside from the mcilroys, everybody in West Virginia knew about it, um.
Speaker 1: And it was a billboard on the Solder's property with pictures,
Speaker 1: big pictures of the five children, um, with their name
Speaker 1: and age and then basically uh rundown of what the
Speaker 1: family thought may have happened to them. And it was
Speaker 1: at first they offered a five thousand dollar reward and
Speaker 1: then up to the ten thousand dollars. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: owned it. So it was there for I mean until
Speaker 1: the eighties until um, so George died in and then
Speaker 1: Jenny died in nine and after Jenny died, they took
Speaker 1: the billboard down. That's right. What other reports came in.
Speaker 1: One bus driver said he claimed he saw someone throwing
Speaker 1: quote fireballs onto the house. Some of the stuff reeks that.
Speaker 1: I was pretty wasted at the time. Some of the
Speaker 1: stuff reeks have like that after the fact, stuff that
Speaker 1: people kind of invent like wait a minute, saw I
Speaker 1: got throwing fireballs? 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.
Speaker 1: The picture of Lewis and this guy just disappears. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he may have just been like a CD gum too,
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's a CD gum. She we just took some
Speaker 1: desperate famili's money and hopefully he's burning in hell. Did
Speaker 1: the mafia rub him out? Because that became one of
Speaker 1: the leading theories that George was approached by the mafia,
Speaker 1: rebuffed their advances and um that was it. They they
Speaker 1: took the kids. Uh well yeah, And supposedly it's not
Speaker 1: just a total flight of fancy. Apparently the mafia was
Speaker 1: really big in the coal business and the trucking business
Speaker 1: in the area at that time, so it is entirely
Speaker 1: possible he was approached by the mafia. And he does
Speaker 1: sound like the kind of guy who tell him to
Speaker 1: like go stick it. Yeah, you know, he also may
Speaker 1: have made some enemies with the Mussolini cracks. What else
Speaker 1: was there? Well, one thing that that was lost to
Speaker 1: time was that vertebrae. Even though it's almost that it
Speaker 1: was not one of the kids. At least if they
Speaker 1: 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 is 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 of her earliest memories are of that night of
Speaker 1: the fire and seeing her father like losing his mind,
Speaker 1: trying to get in his house and bleeding. Um. And
Speaker 1: she promised her parents that she would keep the story alive,
Speaker 1: so she she talks about it a lot um. She
Speaker 1: goes onto the online like online sleuth websites that talk
Speaker 1: about the case, and like kind of feeds information to
Speaker 1: people 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 read this blog post. Like a
Speaker 1: MPR person named Stacy Horn did a piece on it,
Speaker 1: like years back, and she wrote this really long blog
Speaker 1: post about stuff that had been cut from the from
Speaker 1: the piece, and I got the imperson they were trying
Speaker 1: to play up the mystery, and she said that she
Speaker 1: personally came to believe that the children did die in
Speaker 1: the fire, and that there was plenty of evidence that
Speaker 1: supports that idea, but that the media tends to play
Speaker 1: up the other. But she also said that there's enough
Speaker 1: weird stuff surrounding it that if she learned that they
Speaker 1: were still alive, she wouldn't be shocked. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: the fact that they never got in touch, because you
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like these kids were strange from
Speaker 1: their parents or I mean, they were a tight knit
Speaker 1: family by all accounts, right, And the family rationalized that
Speaker 1: by saying that their family was in danger and they
Speaker 1: were trying to protect their parents by never getting into
Speaker 1: 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 bass 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 cool too. You know, it's weird. Does I
Speaker 1: have a good friend named Stacy Horne. It's not the
Speaker 1: same one. No, But when I clicked, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh interesting, and I clicked on her thing and it
Speaker 1: said stay seehorn like cat. She's a cat person. My
Speaker 1: friend Stacy is a noted cat person and it's not
Speaker 1: the same person, 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 the search bar?
Speaker 1: And since that, since search far, it's time for listener mail, Chuck,
Speaker 1: 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 I? Maybe
Speaker 1: Jerry said yes, that's back when she listened, so I
Speaker 1: would take that better word. Hey guys, huge fan of
Speaker 1: the show. Two exclamation points. Yeah, I've been listening to
Speaker 1: your show for about a year now, and I turned
Speaker 1: my wife and kids onto the program, and they're all hooked.
Speaker 1: We had a stuff you should Know marathon even in
Speaker 1: our car right back to Chicago from Athens, Georgia. We
Speaker 1: look forward to your new episodes and are burning through
Speaker 1: them quickly to pick up the pace. You guys made
Speaker 1: reference to lead paints being on roadside signs. That is
Speaker 1: highly unlikely, says Sean. Uh. Those signs are changed quite
Speaker 1: frequently in her base, predominantly Uh. And then he goes
Speaker 1: on to name like eight different types of pigment chemistries
Speaker 1: which I won't read out, and other mixtures of iron oxides. Uh.
Speaker 1: He said. Lead chromates can still be found, however, in
Speaker 1: 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 nitpick.
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. He s needs a chemistry nerd.
Speaker 1: Was that do thing thing in street? Nerds don't dance?
Speaker 1: I think that that may be a reference. Is something
Speaker 1: we said that I'm not picking up on him. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe Sean can clear it up. Yeah, we need to
Speaker 1: follow up listener mail. All right, that's from Sean Mula.
Speaker 1: Oh it was German. He didn't he dropped the m rail. Okay,
Speaker 1: so more he didn't want that association. Well, thanks Sean,
Speaker 1: we appreciate that. Uh, let us know about the dancing thing.
Speaker 1: I think we're not the only ones who're curious, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that means. If you know what
Speaker 1: Shawn is talking about, you can tweet to us at
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You can
Speaker 1: send us an email and stuff podcast at house stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, and he's always joined us at home
Speaker 1: on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, does it
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