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The Sodder Children

One of the more perplexing cases in American history reportedly occurred on Christmas Eve 1945, in Fayetteville, West Virginia. George and Jennie Sodder went to sleep as nine of their ten children settled in for the evening. Their tenth child was away from home, serving in the military. At around 1 a.m., shortly after the calendar flipped over to Christmas Day, a fire broke out in the Sodder home. George Sodder and his wife escaped the inferno with four of their children, but the other five seemed to vanish from the scene of the blaze.

George Sodder reportedly broke a window during the fire, re-entered the house, and quickly made his way through the smoke and flames that enveloped the downstairs. He reportedly figured his five children who didn't make it out were trapped upstairs. No fire trucks arrived at the house until 8 a.m., seven hours after the blaze. The Sodder house burned to the ground, and the five missing Sodder children were never seen or heard from again. Maurice, 14; Martha 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; and Betty, 5, disappeared without a trace.

George and Jennie Sodder reportedly refused to believe their five missing children were dead, especially after a search of the grounds revealed no human remains. According to Smithsonian magazine, the chief of the fire department said the blaze was so hot that it would have destroyed the bodies. A state police inspector blamed the deadly fire on bad wiring.

But the Sodders became suspicious when they pieced together strange events leading up to the deadly fire. A man looking for work at the Sodder house a few months before the incident had told George Sodder that the fuse boxes in the back of the house were "going to cause a fire someday." But the power company had recently checked the wiring and said it was working properly.

At about the same time, according to Smithsonian, an insurance salesman allegedly became angry with George when he turned down a life insurance policy. The man warned, "Your goddamn house is going up in smoke, and your children are going to be destroyed. You are going to be paid for the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini."

George was born in Italy and was allegedly outspoken about his dislike for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, sometimes reportedly getting into intense arguments with other Italians in their hometown of Fayetteville. Jennie remembered hearing a loud thud on the roof about an hour before she noticed smoke coming into her bedroom, questioning the suggestion that bad wiring caused the fire.

In the years after the fire, people reported tips about the missing Sodder children around the country. One alleged that daughter Martha was living in a convent in St. Louis. Another claimed the children were living with a relative of Jennie. In 1968, 23 years after the fire, Jennie received a letter with no return address and a Kentucky postmark. The letter contained a photo of a man in his 20s and, written on the backside, the words: "Louis Sodder," "I love brother Frankie," "ilil Boys," and "A90132" or "A90135." The Sodders reportedly hired a private detective to track to the lead, but to no avail. The five missing Sodder children were never seen again.