The disappearance of five Sodder family children from their Fayetteville home is arguably the biggest unsolved mystery in West Virginia history.
The children vanished without a trace on Christmas Eve in 1945. The evening must have started like any other. George and Jennie Sodder, two Italian immigrants, had gone to bed before their children.
Philo Nordlund/Flickr In the early morning hours, the phone rang, and a strange woman asked Jennie for someone she didn’t know. Jennie told her she had the wrong number. The woman laughed strangely and hung up. Jennie later woke up smelling smoke — the house was on fire. A room that George used as an office had caught fire around the telephone and fuse box.
The mother and father, along with four children — Marion, Sylvia and two older boys John and George, survived the blaze. However, Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie and Betty were nowhere to be found. Not even traces of their remains were found.
Fair use A coroner had declared the children legally dead. The family put up a billboard seeking information about the children at the site of the house. The billboard became a landmark in the Fayetteville area.
Unknown The family believed that the children were kidnapped and spent a fortune on detectives to investigate the incident. In 1968, the family received a mysterious photo, supposedly from Louis Sodder. On the back was the message “Louis Sodder, I love brother, Frankie. Ilil boys A90132 (or 90135)”. The family hired a detective to investigate the photo but he vanished and wasn’t seen again.
Various sightings of the children have been reported over the years, but George and Jennie Sodder both went to their graves without finding out what happened to their children.
Philo Nordlund/Flickr
In the early morning hours, the phone rang, and a strange woman asked Jennie for someone she didn’t know. Jennie told her she had the wrong number. The woman laughed strangely and hung up. Jennie later woke up smelling smoke — the house was on fire. A room that George used as an office had caught fire around the telephone and fuse box.
The mother and father, along with four children — Marion, Sylvia and two older boys John and George, survived the blaze. However, Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie and Betty were nowhere to be found. Not even traces of their remains were found.
Fair use
A coroner had declared the children legally dead. The family put up a billboard seeking information about the children at the site of the house. The billboard became a landmark in the Fayetteville area.
Unknown
The family believed that the children were kidnapped and spent a fortune on detectives to investigate the incident. In 1968, the family received a mysterious photo, supposedly from Louis Sodder. On the back was the message “Louis Sodder, I love brother, Frankie. Ilil boys A90132 (or 90135)”. The family hired a detective to investigate the photo but he vanished and wasn’t seen again.
Had you heard about the Sodder family mystery? What do you think happened?
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