On Christmas Eve in 1945, five children from the large Sodder family disappeared and were never seen again.
Their family home in Fayetteville, West Virginia was the site of a huge fire and while parents George and Jennie and four of their children managed to escape the burning building, five of their children were unaccounted for, and their remains were never recovered.
They were 4-year-old Maurice Sodder, 12-year-old Martha, 9-year-old Louis, 8-year-old Jennie, and 5-year-old Betty.
In a strange and upsetting twist of events, a significant amount of unexplained problems arose when George Sodder tried to rescue his children, including a ladder being missing, windows not opening and no operator at the fire station working that night.
How the fire started and what happened to the Sodder children remains unknown today but according to several true-crime podcasts such as Casefile True Crime, a possible motive relates to George's criticism of Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini. George was an Italian immigrant and his opposition made him a vulnerable target of the Sicilian mafia.
George demolished the house before it could be established whether his children were dead or missing.
According to the Press, the surviving Sodder family believed for the rest of their lives that their relatives had survived the fire. A billboard was erected in the 1950s with images of the children, and a reward was offered for information. It remained standing until Jennie Sodder's death in 1989...
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