Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Read: The Sodder children - did they die in a fire or were they kidnapped?

At around 1:30 a.m., Jennie Sodder was woken from her sleep by the smell of burning. The terrified woman realized that the house was on fire. She immediately woke her husband and rushed to save the children. After leaving the bedroom, the couple noticed fire coming from the fuse box. They tried to call for help but realized that the phone was not working. So they started shouting to their sleeping children upstairs, alerting them to the danger. John, George Jr., Marion, and Sylwia managed to get out. The other five children were nowhere to be seen. George and Jennie Sodder were born in Italy. Their parents emigrated to the United States to fulfill their American dream. George, a Sardinian, lived in his homeland longer than his wife, until he was 13. He settled in Pennsylvania, where he worked as a railroad hand, carrying water and provisions to workers. After a few years, he moved to Smithers, West Virginia, where he first found employment as a driver, and after gaining the necessary experience, he founded his own transport company, transporting earth and coal.

During this period, the young entrepreneur met Jennie Cipriani, a local woman who had left Italy at the age of three. The couple fell in love with each other and soon said their sacramental yes. Between 1923 and 1943, the couple welcomed ten children into the world. The whole group settled in Fayetteville, West Virginia, where they occupied a two-story wooden house with a large garden.

The Sodders easily found their place in the city, whose community consisted largely of similar Italian immigrants. George's transport business prospered and they soon became "one of the most respected middle-class families in the area."

It was Christmas Eve 1945. The Sodders were celebrating the joyous holiday with their nine children (one of the couple's sons, Joe, was serving in the U.S. Army and was due to return home any day now). When the evening came, the eldest son and the two oldest boys, John, 23, and George Jr., 16, decided to go to bed early, as they were tired from a long day at work in the family trucking business. The five younger children were allowed to stay up a bit longer in the living room to enjoy the toys that 17-year-old Mary Ann "Marion" Sodder had bought for the occasion. At about 10:30 p.m., Jennie Sodder also felt sleepy, so she went to the bedroom, taking her 3-year-old daughter, Sylvia, with her. Thirty minutes after midnight, the woman jumped to her feet, awakened by the ringing telephone. She went downstairs again and picked up the receiver. A woman's voice asked her for someone Jennie didn't know. She informed the stranger that she had dialled the wrong number. Mrs. Sodder laughed strangely and ended the call. Jennie dismissed the whole situation as a joke that wasn’t funny and went back upstairs. On the way, she noticed that the light in the living room was still on. Marion was asleep on the couch, she was alone. Mrs. Sodder assumed that the other children were in the attic, where their bedroom was. She turned off the light, drew the curtains, and went back to her bed.

At about 1:00 a.m., Jennie heard a dull sound, like something rubbery hitting the roof and then rolling down. She didn’t pay much attention to it, though. Half an hour later, she was up again. This time, the smell of burning woke her from her blissful unconsciousness. She realized that the house was on fire. She immediately woke her husband so that she and he could rush to save the children. The couple noticed flames coming from the fuse box in the room that George used as his office. They tried to call for help, but the phone didn’t work. They shouted to their sleeping children upstairs, warning them of the danger. John, George Jr., Marion, and Sylvia managed to get out. The other five children were nowhere to be seen. George was convinced that Maurice, 14, Martha, 12, Louis, 10, Jennie Irene, 8, and Betty, 5, were still in their beds in the attic. So he broke a window and went back into the house, cutting his hand in the process. Every room on the ground floor was engulfed in smoke and flames. Unable to get to the upper floor, he decided to try a different tactic. He ran back outside, hoping to reach his children through the window. To his dismay, he couldn’t find the ladder that always stood at the back of the house, leaning against one of the walls. George, however, didn’t give up. He ran to one of the two trucks parked on the property. If he could get close enough to the burning building, he could climb into the children’s bedrooms. But the truck wouldn’t start. And neither would the other truck parked next to it. Both had been working perfectly the day before. The desperate family elder tried to put out the fire with water from a rain barrel. However, it turned out that due to the freezing temperatures, the water had turned into a block of ice.

Marion Sodder, in despair, ran to her neighbours to call for help. Unfortunately, in those days, a telephone operator was needed to make the call. Despite Marion's repeated attempts to call her, no one answered. Finally, one of the witnesses to the tragedy got into his own car and traveled to Fayette to personally notify the fire department about the fire that had trapped five small children.

The firefighters did not arrive on the scene until around 8. Their delay was not due to ill will, but to staff shortages caused by the war and the fact that the unit commander did not have the qualifications to drive a fire truck, so the entire unit had to wait for a driver. By that time, all that remained of the Sodders' wooden house was the basement covered with a mountain of still-warm, smoking ash. It was clear to everyone that if the children had indeed been left in the attic, they had probably burned alive.

The police and firefighters began to dig up the ashes. However, they did not do it thoroughly enough, and at around 10:00 the commander of the unit told the distraught parents that no bones had been found among the charred remains. The next day, the local coroner officially announced that the five children had died in a fire caused by faulty electrical wiring. He also confirmed that the flames ignited in this way were hot enough to completely incinerate a human body.

The parents were issued death certificates. On January 2, 1946, a symbolic funeral was held for Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie Irene, and Betty. George and Jennie were unable to attend, so they sent their surviving children to replace them.

Shortly afterwards, the Sodders attempted to return to reality. George hired a bulldozer to cover the basement that had survived the fire with a 1.5-meter layer of earth, transforming it into a memorial garden. Jennie planted plants there, which she carefully tended to until the end of her days. However, the couple was not allowed to forget the tragedy. As time passed, they began to question all the official findings regarding the tragic fire. Above all, they suspected that it was not a coincidence at all, but a deliberate act.

George recalled that in the fall of 1945, a stranger had visited him. He had asked if there was anything he could do, but Sodder had said no. Instead of thanking him and going his own way, the stranger had walked around the family’s house and stopped at the fuse box. “This is going to catch fire someday,” he had said. Only then did he turn on his heel and walk away. George didn’t take his words to heart. A few days earlier, he had received an official certificate from the fire department that the installation had been done correctly.

In October 1945, a travelling insurance salesman tried to interest the Sodders in a life insurance policy. When he was turned down, he became angry and warned George, “Your house will burn down and your children will die. And it’s all because of the comments you made about Mussolini.” Soon after, an unknown car began to appear outside the family’s house.

The lead did seem promising. George Sodder was known in the area for his categorical views. He had repeatedly spoken out critically of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, causing disputes and quarrels in the local Italian immigrant community. Some of them were even offended by the insults directed at the Duce. Could it be that they decided to teach their rebellious neighbor a lesson?

The Sodders dug deeper. They consulted a telephone line installer. The man stated that their line appeared to have been deliberately cut, not burned. A witness reported to the police that he had seen a stranger on the family's property that day hanging around George's trucks.

With time, doubts grew. One day, little Sylvia found a round object made of hard rubber in the yard. Jennie recalled that on the night of the fire, she had heard a noise like something rolling on the roof. George concluded that it was a so-called "pineapple bomb", a specially prepared grenade that is filled with napalm. Such a bomb can be used to set fires remotely.

Jennie shared her husband's doubts. In addition, she could not come to terms with the information received from the firefighters that the bodies of her children had burned completely. After all, many household appliances were found in the ashes, which were still recognizable. If the little ones really died in the flames, some remains should have been preserved. The woman read an article in the local press reporting on a similar accident in which a seven-person family died. Seven skeletons were found in the ashes.

Jennie did not stop there, however. She experimented with fragments of animal bones, throwing them into the kitchen stove. Despite hours of roasting in the fire, the bones retained their shape. So the distraught mother went to the local crematorium. She learned that human bones can survive up to two hours in a cremation oven at temperatures of around 1,000 degrees Celsius, conditions far more difficult than those experienced during the Sodder house fire.

Later, witnesses emerged who had allegedly seen the missing children. One woman claimed that during the fire she had seen five children sitting in a car driving in an unknown direction. A roadside diner employee confirmed this testimony, saying that she had served children and adults the following morning. The license plate indicated that the car was from Florida.

Desperate, the Sodders decided to hire a private investigator named C.C. Tinsley. He discovered that the insurance salesman who had threatened George in the past was on the coroner's advisory board that ruled the fire an accident. The family tried to get the Federal Bureau of Investigation involved in their tragedy, but the FBI refused, saying that they did not deal with local cases.

In August 1949, the area was searched again. Several fragments of human bones were found. The bones were found to belong to a man between the ages of 16 and 23 (the eldest of the missing Sodder sons, Maurice, was 14) and were certainly not in contact with the flames. Ultimately, it was determined that the bones most likely came from soil used to level the terrain. In 1950, the case of the missing children was officially closed. Despite everything, the Sodders did not give up hope. They printed flyers with photos of their children and offered a $5,000 reward for information about their fate. They soon doubled that amount to $10,000. They hired another private investigator, but his efforts did not yield much results. George Sodder died on August 16, 1969, and Jennie on February 15, 1989. The youngest of the 10 children, Sylvia, passed away on April 21, 2021.

Sources:

Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Read

Sunday, September 8, 2024

The Sodder children - did they die in a fire or were they kidnapped?

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