**The Sodder children disappearance**
On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder home in Fayetteville, West Virginia.
At the time, it was occupied by George Sodder, his wife Jennie, and nine of their ten children. During the fire, George, Jennie, and four of the nine children escaped. The bodies of the other five children have never been found.
The fire was blamed on "faulty wiring," however, one of the jurors involved in the inquest had, at one point, threatened George Sodder, saying his house would be "burned" and his children "destroyed".
The Sodders continue to question the official findings about the fire.
They wondered why, if it had been caused by an electrical problem, the family's Christmas lights had remained on throughout the fire's early stages, when the power should have gone out.
A telephone repairman told the Sodders that the house's phone line had not been burned through in the fire, as they had initially thought, but cut by someone who had been willing and able to climb 14 feet up the pole.
A missing ladder belonging to the Sodders was found at the bottom of an embankment soon after the incident.
A man whom neighbors had seen stealing a block and tackle from the property around the time of the fire was identified and arrested. He admitted to the theft, and claimed he had been the one who cut the phone line, thinking it was a power line, but denied having anything to do with the fire. However, no record identifying him exists, and why he would have wanted to cut any utility lines to the Sodder house while stealing the block and tackle has never been explained.
Jennie Sodder also had trouble accepting Morris's belief that all traces of the children's bodies had been burned completely in the fire. Many of the household appliances had been found, still recognizable, in the ash. A local crematorium supported her theory.
The trucks' failure to start was also considered. George Sodder believed they had been tampered with, perhaps by the same man who stole the block and tackle and cut the phone line.
The only bone fragments ever found on the site were a few human vertebrae fragments, although these were confirmed to have never been exposed to fire.
On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder home in Fayetteville, West Virginia.
At the time, it was occupied by George Sodder, his wife Jennie, and nine of their ten children. During the fire, George, Jennie, and four of the nine children escaped. The bodies of the other five children have never been found.
The fire was blamed on "faulty wiring," however, one of the jurors involved in the inquest had, at one point, threatened George Sodder, saying his house would be "burned" and his children "destroyed".
The Sodders continue to question the official findings about the fire.
They wondered why, if it had been caused by an electrical problem, the family's Christmas lights had remained on throughout the fire's early stages, when the power should have gone out.
A telephone repairman told the Sodders that the house's phone line had not been burned through in the fire, as they had initially thought, but cut by someone who had been willing and able to climb 14 feet up the pole.
A missing ladder belonging to the Sodders was found at the bottom of an embankment soon after the incident.
A man whom neighbors had seen stealing a block and tackle from the property around the time of the fire was identified and arrested. He admitted to the theft, and claimed he had been the one who cut the phone line, thinking it was a power line, but denied having anything to do with the fire. However, no record identifying him exists, and why he would have wanted to cut any utility lines to the Sodder house while stealing the block and tackle has never been explained.
Jennie Sodder also had trouble accepting Morris's belief that all traces of the children's bodies had been burned completely in the fire. Many of the household appliances had been found, still recognizable, in the ash. A local crematorium supported her theory.
The trucks' failure to start was also considered. George Sodder believed they had been tampered with, perhaps by the same man who stole the block and tackle and cut the phone line.
The only bone fragments ever found on the site were a few human vertebrae fragments, although these were confirmed to have never been exposed to fire.