The Mysterious Disappearance Of  The Sodder Children

     On Christmas Eve night in 1945 George and Jennie Sodder and their nine children enjoyed the holiday.  George and Jennie went to bed around ten o'clock but allowed the children to stay up late.  Around twelve thirty Jennie is awakened by the phone ringing.  She gets out of bed to answer the phone and sees one child asleep on the couch and the lights still on.  She assumes the other children have all gone upstairs to bed.

     Jennie answers the phone, but the caller asks for someone Jennie doesn't know and she hears laughing in the background.  Jennie hangs up the phone and returns to bed.  About thirty minutes later Jennie hears something hit the roof and roll down it.  She doesn't get up or alert her husband.  She goes back to sleep.  Then, around one thirty Jennie is again awakened.  This time she is awakened by the smell of smoke.

     The Sodder home is on fire.  George, Jennie, and four of the children make it outside.  They frantically try to get to the other five children that they assume are upstairs.  George immediately thinks to get the tall ladder he keeps on the side of the house, but it is mysteriously missing.  George then thinks to pull his work truck up to the side of the house and stand a shorter ladder up in the bed of the truck.  However, the truck fails to start.  George goes to a second work truck, but it too fails to start.  According to George both trucks had started the previous day.  

     One of the Sodder children runs to a neighbor's house to call the fire department, but the neighbor can't get through to the fire station.  Another neighbor was also unsuccessful in reaching the fire station and finally someone drove to the fire station to alert them.  It still took the fire department six hours to respond to the Sodder home.  Apparently, they were understaffed and had trouble finding someone who could drive the fire engine.  By the time they arrived the Sodder home had been reduced to rubble.

     Authorities conducted a search of the rubble in order to recover the remains of the five Sodder children who had been trapped upstairs.  No remains were able to be recovered, but death certificates were issued for the five Sodder children who died in the fire.  However, George and Jennie never accepted this.  They believed the children were still alive and had been taken by someone.  Could they be right?

     The Sodder's thought the fire itself was suspicious.  The cause was determined to be faulty wiring, but George had the wiring inspected just a few months earlier and Jennie noted that the lights were still on while the fire was engulfing the house.  George also claims to have been threatened just a few months earlier by a man selling insurance.  When George refused to by the insurance the man told him his house was going to burn down and his children were going to die.  George thought it was possible that some pro-Mussolini Italians in the community were angry at George for speaking out against Mussolini.  George felt they could be angry enough and connected to enough of the right people to take his children and burn his home down to cover up the kidnapping.

     A woman who knew the Sodder family reported seeing the children get into a car near the Sodder home around the time the fire started.  A waitress in a nearby town thought she saw the children the next morning at the diner where she worked.  She said the children were accompanied by two men and two women.  A few weeks later a woman at a hotel thought she saw the children.  She also thought they were accompanied by four adults.  George and Jennie Sodder even offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the return of their children, but the case grew cold.

     Then, in 1968 Jennie received an envelope in the mail addressed only to her.  Inside was a photo of a young man and on the back of the photo it said:  Louis Sodder, I love brother Frankie lil boys.  The Sodder's were baffled by this.  Could the young man in the photo be their missing son, Louis?  The envelope had been mailed from Kentucky, but despite hiring a private investigator the Sodder's were never able to determine who mailed it or if the young man in the photo was Louis.  Both George and Jennie died believing their five missing children were still alive and out there somewhere.

     So, what do you think?  Did the Sodder children die in the house fire in 1945?  Or were they abducted or lured away from their home by someone that night?  Is this case ever likely to be solved?