I apologize for the extended (and largely unplanned) hiatus. I am back this week with another historical true crime gem, the story of the vanishing Sodder children. This is another heartbreaking case about parents who suddenly lost five of their ten children in an incident that has never been fully explained.
The Sodder Family
George Sodder, born Georgio Soddu in Tula, Sardinia, Italy, immigrated to the United States at the age of 13. He initially found menial jobs with the railroads in Pennsylvania before starting his own trucking company to haul fill dirt and later coal. He married Jennie Cipriani, the daughter of a storekeeper, in 1922.
George and Jennie Sodder settled in Fayetteville, West Virginia, in the southern part of the state, in part because it had a sizable population of Italian immigrants. Over the years, the couple had ten children. The family enjoyed a good reputation, and their business prospered. However, George had strong opinions and was not shy about expressing them. He was particularly vocal in his opposition to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. This led to clashes with some members of the immigrant community.
By the time the Sodders’ youngest child, Sylvia, was born in 1942, the second-oldest child, Joe, had left home to serve in the military during World War II. George and Jennie, along with nine of their children, lived in a two-story timber-frame house located two miles outside of town.
The Sodder House Burns
By December 1945, the war was over, and Mussolini was long dead, executed by Italian partisans at the end of the war in Europe.
On Christmas Eve, the Sodder family celebrated. The adults then went to bed, giving the younger children permission to stay up later than usual. A telephone call awakened Jennie around 12:30 a.m. The caller was a woman whose voice she did not recognize, asking for someone she did not know. Jennie told the caller she had the wrong number and hung up. Although the call was mysterious, later investigation determined it had nothing to do with what happened next.
Half an hour later, Jennie woke again to the sound of an object hitting the roof with a loud bang, followed by a rolling noise. Hearing nothing else, she went back to sleep. Another half hour passed, and then Jennie awoke to the smell of smoke. She found that the room George used for his office was on fire, the flames centered around the telephone line and fuse box. She woke her husband, who in turn woke his older sons.
George and Jennie escaped, as did Marion, Sylvia, John, and George Jr. They yelled and screamed at the children upstairs, but received no response. By this time, the flames had reached the stairway, making it impossible to use it to reach or escape from the second floor.
George attempted to climb into a second-floor window, but the ladder he intended to use was not in its usual place, and he was unable to find it. He then tried to pull the trucks he used in his business up to the window, but neither would start. Both had operated normally the day before.
The six Sodders who escaped could do nothing but watch as the house burned and collapsed over the next 45 minutes. The fire department, its manpower sapped by the war and lacking effective communication, did not arrive until 10 a.m.
Where Were the Missing Sodder Children?
Firefighters could do little but sift through the ashes in the Sodder basement. They may or may not have found traces of human remains; the record is unclear. Fire Chief F.J. Morris believed that the children had died in the fire and that the flames had consumed their bodies. However, the search was at best cursory by modern standards.
At the coroner’s inquest, which determined that the fire was an accident caused by “faulty wiring.” Death certificates for the five children were issued on December 30, and their funeral took place on January 2, 1946. George nd Jennie were too grief-stricken to attend, but the surviving children did.
Not long afterward, the Sodder family began to question the official account. They found the missing ladder at the bottom of an embankment 75 feet from where it should have been. Additionally, the phone line had not been burned through, but had been cut. One witness also reported seeing someone throwing “balls of fire” at the house. Despite much to generate suspicion, no concrete evidence emerged proving arson, kidnapping, or murder.
Epilogue
Four days after the fire, George bulldozed five feet of dirt over the site of the destroyed house, intending to turn it into a memorial garden for his missing children.
George and Jennie Sodder never gave up the belief that their missing children were still alive and put up a $5,000 reward for information about them. In the 1950s, the family erected a billboard along West Virginia State Route 16 with pictures of the five missing kids.
George Sodder continued to investigate leads until he died in 1969. After his death, Jennie stayed in the family home, tending the memorial garden. She wore black for the rest of her life. When she died in 1989, the family finally removed the weather-beaten billboard.
Bob Lane Bragg recounts the story of the Sodder family tragedy in No Direct Evidence: The Story of the Missing Sodder Children. Another book on the topic is Marco Mareno’s The Sodder Children: A Family’s Unanswered Questions.
Don’t Miss Out! Subscribe to the Newsletter
Subscribe to True Crime in the News, a monthly email newsletter that examines recent news stories of interest to true crime enthusiasts. The newsletter also summarizes the previous month’s blog posts. You won’t want to miss this. Join the newsletter mailing list today.