Two Queens True Crime

At around 10pm on Christmas Eve 1945, in Fayetteville, West Virginia, Jennie Sodder granted six of her nine children permission to stay up late; the oldest daughter, Marion (19) had purchased some toys for three of her younger sisters as a Christmas surprise causing great excitement. Eliciting promises firstly from her sons Maurice (14) and Louis (9) that they would take the cows in and feed the chickens before retiring, and then from Marion, Martha (12), Jennie (8) and Betty (5) that they would turn off the light and draw the curtains, Jennie herself went to bed, taking Sylvia (2) with her. Her husband George and their two eldest sons, John (22) and George Jr (16), were already asleep after a hard day at work.

Jennie was woken at 12.30am by the sound of the telephone and went downstairs to answer it. On the other end of the line was a woman asking for a name that was unknown to her, after telling the late-night caller that she must have the wrong number, Jennie hung up and went to return to bed. She would later recall the woman’s ‘weird’ laugh and that she thought there was some sort of party going on in the background. On her way back to the bedroom Jennie noticed that the lights in the living room were still on and the curtains not drawn, upon entering she noticed that Marion had fallen asleep on the couch and presumed the other children had gone up to bed. After completing these two forgotten tasks she then went back upstairs.

Sidenote; the woman who made the call was later identified as a neighbour and interviewed, she would confirm that it had indeed been a wrong number.

Only half an hour passed when Jennie was once again disturbed from her sleep, this time by a loud bang of something hitting the roof followed by a rolling noise. She lay awake for a few minutes but heard nothing further so settled back in to sleep once more. The third time she woke it was to the smell of smoke, it was now around 1.30am, and upon getting up she discovered that her husband’s office was on fire.

Before fleeing the house, attempts were made to get up to the attic room where five of the Sodder children slept, however the staircase was already engulfed in flames. George, Jennie, Marion, John, George Jr and Sylvia all escaped outside, they desperately called out to the remaining children, apparently still asleep on the top floor, but received no answer. Whilst Marion ran to a neighbour’s house to call the fire department, George and his eldest sons tried to reach the attic window.

At first they ran for a ladder but it was not in its usual spot and could not be found anywhere, they then decided to pull the two trucks they used for work up against the side of the house, but neither would start. George would then climb barefoot up the outside wall and smash the window but this would also be to no avail. Meanwhile Marion was struggling to contact the fire department, the neighbour’s phone was not working and, when she ran into town to use another, could not get an answer. A passing motorist who had seen the flames was also trying to call for help from a nearby bar but he too could not get through.

Devastatingly, the remaining Sodder family had no choice but to stand and watch as their home burned, eventually collapsing 45 minutes later. The fire department, low on manpower due to the war, with a Chief who could not drive the truck and reliant on individual firefighters contacting each other, would not arrive until later that morning. It would be around 10am when Chief F.J Morris would inform the family that they had not found any remains however he believed that the missing children did indeed perish in the fire.

Sidenote; it would be discovered by a private investigator that Morris had confessed to finding some remains at the site, subsequently burying them. George and the investigator would force him to take them to the location and a box was indeed unearthed, however when it’s contents were examined they turned out to be beef liver. Morris later admitted that he had planted it in the hopes of the family accepting that the children were really dead.

Before leaving the property Morris instructed George Sodder to not interfere with the site as the Fire Marshall’s Office would be able to conduct a more thorough investigation than his team of volunteers ever could. However, after four days George would bulldoze five feet of soil over the remains of his home, he and his wife no longer being able to bear to look at it.

The next day an inquest was held which ruled that the fire had been accidental, caused by faulty wiring, and that the five missing Sodder children; Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie and Betty had died in the attic that night. Death certificates were issued on 30^th December 1945.

Sidenote; The oldest son John would later claim that he had gone into the other children’s room (he and George Jr slept in the second attic room) and tried to shake them awake to no avail, before escaping the house. Some say that he fabricated the story to alleviate his guilt for not checking on them, others believe him and that this proves the younger children were already unconscious or dead from smoke inhalation.

As winter turned to spring and the family attempted to rebuild their lives, they would also begin to question whether the children really had perished in the fire, and if the fire itself really had been accidental. A telephone repairman had told them that the phone lines had not been destroyed by the fire but were, in actual fact, cut. Then a bus driver who had been passing through Fayette late Christmas Eve reported seeing people throwing ‘balls of fire’ at the house.

As they thought more on the happenings of that devastating night more and more things began to seem less ironically tragic and perhaps more intentional. For example, why did they eventually find the missing ladder 75 feet away at the bottom of an embankment? What caused both trucks, which had been running fine just a few hours previous, to simply not start? How were the Christmas lights still on when Jennie discovered the fire if it was caused by faulty electrics? And, if even after a cremation which burns at 1090 degrees Celsius there are still bone fragments left why was there nothing to be found of their children?

When the Sodder’s began to push for another investigation, and begin their own, at least one answer seemed to be found. A thief, identified by neighbours, was arrested and admitted to stealing block and tackle from one of the Sodder’s outbuildings on the night of the fire. It was claimed that he confessed to having cut the phone lines, believing them to be power cables, and had used the ladder to do so, which would explain why it was discarded some way from the property. However, some question why he would even think to cut power lines if he was stealing from an outbuilding (in 1945) and why he would risk taking the extra time to steal a ladder and make the rather dangerous climb to make the cut. Strangely, there is no record identifying the thief nor transcripts of his interviews.

As George and Jennie grew increasingly convinced of arson, and the possibility that their children may not be dead, witnesses began to come forward. A woman who had been watching the fire from the road claimed that she was certain she had seen the faces of the missing children peering from the window of a passing car whilst the house was still burning. Another, who worked at a rest stop between Fayetteville and Charleston, believed that she had served them breakfast the next morning, claiming that they had been traveling in a car with Florida licence plates.

After hiring a private investigator, George would eventually be able to persuade a noted pathologist, Oscar Hunter, to personally search the site and examine any remains that were found. In August of 1949 several artefacts were uncovered, including some small bone fragments. These were determined to be human vertebrae and were subsequently sent to the Smithsonian.

After being examined by a specialist, Marshall T. Newman, they were identified as lumbar vertebrae, all belonging to the same person, most likely aged around 16 or 17 years (with the top age being 22). Marshall stated that in his professional opinion they could not have belonged to any of the children, with Maurice being the oldest at 14 years, but there were rare circumstances that a younger male could have advanced enough to appear to fall into the lower end of the range. He also noted that the bones showed no sign of fire damage and was puzzled that there had been no skeletal remains, which would be expected in a wood fire which lasted the amount of time the Sodders claimed.

Sidenote; it was speculated that the bones had been transferred from a local cemetery to the site during George’s bulldozing. They were released back to the Sodder’s in September 1949 and their location is currently unknown.

This investigation would bring more attention to the family and their case, paving the way for two more hearings which were held in 1950. However, following these the Sodder’s were told that the case was ‘hopeless’ and it was officially closed at a state level. Still there was hope though, as the FBI took over, stating a possible interstate kidnapping, but after two years chasing dead ends the agency also closed it’s files on the supposedly missing children for good.

Despite all of this George and Jennie would dedicate the rest of their lives to finding out what happened to their five children. Over the years there would be many more witnesses coming forward with supposed sightings and leads, and George would investigate each one himself, often driving for days on end. These would include;

• a woman who had apparently met them in a Charleston hotel a couple of weeks following the fire.
• a source claiming that Martha was being held at a convent in St Louis, Missouri.
• a woman in Houston who claimed that Louis had admitted his true identity to her after too much to drink. [George and his son-in-law met the man, and another who could have been Maurice, but both denied the admission and that they were two of the missing children].
• the most credible was a photograph posted to Jennie in 1967 of a young man around 30 years old who strongly resembled Louis. On the back was written ‘Louis Sodder, I love brother Frankie, llil boys, A90132’ [35?]

Some who have studied the case (professionally and within the true crime community) believe that the Sodder children really did die in the fire and the search of the site was where the mistakes were made. Others theorise that they were indeed kidnapped and possibly taken to Italy (George’s home country). During the war years George had often spoken out against Mussolini, which angered many in the Italian community of Fayetteville, and he had previously received threats against himself and his family. The private investigator initially hired by the family also learned that an insurance salesman who had threatened George over his anti-Mussolini sentiments had been on the coroner’s jury that ruled the fire an accident. 

For all of the different theories out there, what most can agree on is that the fire was indeed arson and, whatever fate befell the five children, the arsonist meant grievous harm to the entire Sodder family. The last of the Sodder children, Sylvia, passed away in 2021. She was probably the one person who experienced the most of her parent’s grief and lived through their unwavering dedication to finding out what happened to her siblings. Her daughter, and other family members, continue the fight to keep the story in the media.