On Christmas Eve of 1945, the home of Italian immigrants George and Jennie Sodder of West Virginia burned to the ground. Five of the 10 Sodder children were still alive an accounted for, but Maurice (14), Martha (12), Louis (9), Jennie,(8) and Betty (5) (inset) seemed to have vanished into thin air. In the ruins of the fire, there was absolutely no evidence of the children, which is virtually impossible from a scientific standpoint. That wasn’t all that smelled off about the events of that night. Apparently, George tried to save the children he believed were still trapped inside using his coal truck. Strangely, it was inoperable. The phone lines to the house were found to have been cut, and a woman claimed to have seen all five missing children peering from a passing car while the fire was in progress. A woman at a Charleston hotel saw the children’s photos in a newspaper and said she had seen four of the five a week after the fire. She said they were accompanied by two women and two men. She tried to talk to the children, but the men wouldn’t allow it. The Sodder family theorized that the children had been kidnapped, perhaps in an attempt to extort money, maybe to coerce George into joining the local mafia, or possibly in retaliation for George’s outspoken criticism of Mussolini and Italy’s fascist government. From the 1950s until Jennie Sodder’s death in the late 1980s, the Sodder family maintained a billboard on State Route 16, with pictures of the five vanished children and offering a reward for information. The last known surviving Sodder child, Sylvia, 69, still doesn’t believe her siblings perished in the fire. The mystery remains unsolved.
