What happened to The Sodder Children?
This story takes place on christmas eve 1945, when the Sodder family of 10 children are preparing for a fun and loving christmas.
Christmas eve is synonymous with excited kids getting to bed early and awaiting the arrival of father Christmas, however, this fateful night in Fayetteville would see tragedy and destruction giving rise to a mystery spanning over 70 years.
Ellis Island is a small island poised in New York Harbor, just to the south of Manhattan Island and a mere stones throw away from the Statue of Liberty.
From 1892 until 1954 it was the busiest immigrant inspection station in the United States, immigrants from all over the world would pass through the gates in search for a better life and to lay down roots.
During that time almost 12 million people migrated to the U.S via Ellis Island and of those millions of people, one of them was 13 year old Italian, Georgio Soddu.
Georgio arrived at the bustling harbour in 1908, a long way from his birthplace in Sardinia.
However, he wasn’t alone though as he had traveled with his older brother, who had left Georgio to return back to Italy once the pair were processed through customs into New York.
Maybe it just wasn’t for him….
Georgio Soddu would become George Sodder after changing his name to what he felt was a more western sounding one.
Throughout George’s life, he remained very tight-lipped about his origins and his life back in italy.
George almost immediately started building his life in this new wondrous land of opportunity, he began work in the railroads in Pennsylvania and later would set up his own trucking and haulage company.
During this time, he met another Italian immigrant called Jennifer Cipriani and soon the couple would be married, they went on to have 10 children together.
The Sodder family eventually settled in Fayetteville, West Virginia, a place where, at the time, had a large Italian immigrant population, Although George would maintain his silence regarding his life back in Sardinia, he would soon be vocal about his feelings with regards to the rise of the fascist movement and his criticism of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, opinions which would leave a bad taste in the mouths of his fellow Italian Americans in the community.
In October of 1945, an insurance salesman found himself on the Sodders property only to be swiftly moved on and told that he’s not welcome. The salesman responded angrily and an argument ensued with the salesman shouting that the house would soon be up in smoke and his children would be destroyed.
As you can imagine, in these types of close-knit communities, reputation is everything, and although on the surface the Sodders were known to be a respected middle class family, rumors would hurt, as an example, a local tradesman, who for whatever reason, George Sodder refused to employ had made statements about the wiring of the Sodder house being so shoddy that it would only be a matter of time before the house burnt down.
In December of that year, George’s older sons made reports of a strange car parked by the roadside, in which the occupants seemed to be watching the younger Sodder children making their way home from school.
At half past midnight on Christmas Eve, the house phone rang unexpectedly, when Jennifer answered the phone, an unknown female voice just simply cackled down the line for a few moments and then hung up.
Around 30 minutes later, Jennifer thought she heard what sounded like an object or objects landing on the roof above her head.
Moments later a fire would break out in the Sodder home.
George immediately sprung into action in an attempt to stifle the ever growing blaze, but he would find that every effort he made, was cut off at every turn, for example, he had ran outside to obtain the barrel which he knew to be full of water, only to discover it was completely frozen and unusable, thinking on his feet, he remembered his long ladders were in the backyard, only once he got round there, they were gone.
Fate was in a fairly bad mood it would seem, because George’s next idea was to drive his truck up to the house so he could use it to climb up to the first floor, but BOTH of his trucks appeared to be tampered with as none of them would start.
The blaze soon became an inferno, and within the hour the house was reduced to almost nothing as the structure had collapsed in on itself.
Baby Sylvia and three of the eldest children had successfully made it out of the burning house, leaving five of the younger Sodder children still unaccounted for.
Young Marion ran to a neighbors house in order for them to call the fire department, however, fate would strike yet again as they could not get through to the operator, leaving marion to run to another neighbors house, only to be met with the same result, it was at this point that a third neighbor hurriedly drove the 2.5 mils into town and got help from Fire Chief F.J. Morris.
Now, remember it was 2.5 miles away, but the fire department did not arrive at the sodder house for another 7 hours! , eventually showing up at 8am.
After sifting through the ashes, it was determined by the fire department and chief, that the remaining Sodder children perished in the fire, although no evidence or bones were ever discovered, chief Morris would later say that he believed the fire burned so hot that it completely cremated their bones, leaving no trace.
Ultimately the cause of the fire was declared to be faulty wiring in the house, the week after this horrible tragedy, the Fayetteville coroner issued a death certificate for the five Sodder children.
Maurice (aged 14), Martha (aged 12), Louis (aged 10), Jennie (aged 8) and Betty (aged 6).
Soon after, George would cover the remaining foundations of the house with dirt in order to create a memorial for his children.
Not long after the fire, George and Jennifer would begin to wonder, maybe their children were not dead, and in fact, they were convinced they were kidnapped and the fire could have been set as a diversion.
Jennifer would later speak to a friend that worked in a crematorium, they informed her that after cremation, bones are always left behind, despite the heat from said cremation reaching 2,000 degrees over a period of 2 hours.
A witness claimed to have seen the children leaving the area in a vehicle when the fire was still burning, another witness, a woman working at rest stop outside Fayetteville claimed to have also seen the children, she even went on to state that she had served the five kids breakfast and that they had arrived in a car with Florida license plates.
At a hotel in nearby Charleston, another woman reported seeing the children in the days after the fire. She said
“The children were accompanied by two women and two men, all of italian extraction, i tried to talk to the children in a friendly manner, but the men appeared hostile and refused to allow me to talk to these children, i sensed that i was being frozen out and so i said nothing more, they left early the next morning.”
A few years later, George saw a photo in a newspaper of New York school kids, he believed one of the children was his daughter Betty, George then drove to New York in order to follow up on his assumption, and although he was able to track down the girls parents, they refused to speak to him or allow him to see or speak to the girl.
In 1947, George and Jennifer took the case to the FBI to ask for help, the FBI agreed on the condition that local law enforcement allowed this to happen and co-operated, in another strange twist of fate, both the Fayetteville Police and the Fire Department refused to accommodate the FBI, thus stopping their involvement.
So, the next step was George and Jennifer then hired a private investigator called C.C. Tinsley.
During his investigation, one thing he discovered was, that a member of the coroner’s jury, you know the same folk that determined that the fire was an accident? Was the salesman from earlier in the story, remember the one that said ……. What did he say again?
Oh yeah! , “the house would soon be up in smoke and the children would be destroyed.”
Another finding by Tinsley, was, during his interviews with the townsfolk, he learned that the fire chief had found a heart in the wreckage of the fire, believing it to be human, he decided to hide it from the Sodders and the investigation, burying it in a box in the ground where the house once stood.
Tinsely followed this allegation up by going to the fire chief and after instructing him to show him where he buried the heart, they dug up the box only to find that it wasn’t a heart at all, but a joint of beef liver that certainly had never been in any fire.
In August of 1949, the Sodders hired Oscar Hunter, a pathologist, and he proceeded to excavate the dirt from the basement of the Sodder home, he found four parts of human vertebrae and sent it off to the Smithsonian for analysis.
They found that the bones belonged to someone aged around 17 years old, however, the oldest missing Sodder boy was only 14, so investigators and the Sodders believed the bones did not belong to him.
They also discovered that there was no evidence that the bones were ever exposed to the fire.
Soon after all of this, West Virginia Governor, Okey Paterson called a hearing in the state capitol building in Charleston in order to officially close the Sodder case, he would tell George and Jennifer to stop searching because their efforts would prove “hopeless”
This led George and Jennifer to set up a billboard on route 16 depicting the missing Sodder children and asking for information, the billboard would remain there for 40 years.
Popular theories are that the mafia was somehow involved, or that they were kidnapped and shipped back to Italy, others say that they may have been sold to an orphanage.
A witness in St Louis sent a letter to the Sodders saying that the oldest daughter , Martha, was actually in a convent there.
Another woman in Florida would report that the missing children were living in Florida with distant relatives of Jennifer, George Sodder would personally investigate all of these tips, however all would prove negative.
In 1968, 23 years after the fire, Jennifer Sodder received a letter personally addressed to her with no return address although it was postmarked from kentucky.
This letter contained a photograph of a man in his 20’s that claimed to be Louis Sodder, who was 9 at the time of the fire.
A note on the rear of the photo read
“Louis Sodder. I love brother Frankie. Llil boys . A90132 or 35.”
The Sodders, finding this to be a very promising lead, hired another private detective to pursue this lead and goto Kentucky, but strangely, the detective vanished and was never heard from again.
George Sodder passed away in 1969 at the age of 74, his wife Jennifer passed away 20 years later in 1989, she was 85 years old.
Sylvia Sodder, who was the youngest at the time, is the last remaining survivor of the Sodder children and to this day she maintains that her siblings did not die in the fire that day.
It’s been over 70 years since that fateful night in Fayetteville, and still the question remains, what happened to the missing Sodder children?
Did they perish in the house fire?
Why was there never one single shred of evidence to suggest they did?
Were they taken from the family home as it burned to the ground?
Unfortunately due to the passage of time and lack of any leads, I fear that this case may forever be classed as an unsolved mystery. However, with the advent of genealogy studies, social media and internet detectives, I sincerely hope that answers are found.
