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At dsw, we ask the important questions like what shoes are you going to wear? Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay, the right shoes can make or break an rsvp. So own the moment. You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes at the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with Designer Shoe Warehouse. Head to your DSW store or dsw.com today and let us surprise you. So good, so good, so good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom Rack stores now and up to 60% off. Stock up and save on the brands you love like Vince, Sam, Edelman, Frame and free people. Join the NordicLub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hi everyone and welcome back to the into the Dark podcast. I'm your host, Peyton Moreland. I'm so glad you are here and listening to today's episode. Let's jump straight into my 10 seconds today. We are actually leaving here soon. We're going on a little weekend trip to celebrate Garrett's birthday. He has Sunday and Monday off at the bagel shop, so we're trying to get out. Today's Saturday, so we're trying to get out and then get back before he has to be back. But yeah, just to celebrate his birthday. He's been so busy lately that normally we don't go hard on birthdays. But I've kind of planned a lot this year because I just want it to feel special to him because he has been so busy and we haven't really been able to relax. So I've kind of been planning all that. I got him a bunch of clothes, Cheez its, deodorant, underwear, skims, all his favorite things. And then I think we're gonna do like a cake that is shaped like a bagel. So that is the plan for his birthday. But yeah, I've just kind of been running around with my head cut off this morning trying to get everything ready while he was working at the shop. We're bringing Daisy, so I had to, you know, get all her stuff, but I am almost there. I still have to do a quints ad and record into the Dark, but here we are. Just because I'm in a rush does not mean that I could not fit in today's episode. So let's get right into it now in Most true crime cases, you can be confident about certain facts. You can usually say if a person was murdered versus dying in an accident or of natural causes. You can typically be pretty confident that someone did something wrong to hurt or kill another person. But today, I'm covering an infamous unsolved mystery. It involves mysterious disappearances, impossible murders, and arson. Except to this day, nobody can actually prove a crime occurred. And the story all began in Fayetteville, West Virginia, back in the 1940s. That was when a couple named George and Jenny Sodder were raising their big family. They were both Italian immigrants, but they didn't meet until after they had each moved to the United States. So the parents had humble backgrounds. Jenny's parents had owned a store while George had worked in coal mines since he was a teenager. But after the two of them got married, George decided to start his own business. He owned two big trucks and used them to transport coal out of the mines and deliver it to buyers. It actually paid well at the time, which was good because he and his wife ended up having 10 children. In the 1940s, I wasn't exaggerating when I said they had a big family. And there was one other detail that made the Sodders stand out from everyone else in the neighborhood, and that was George's politics. See, he didn't like Italy's prime minister, Benito Mussolini. In fact, he openly complained about him a lot. When he was at church or the local diner or visiting customers, George would talk about his beliefs. And he always said, this leader was a terrible leader. The country would be better off without him. But this was not a popular opinion in Fayetteville in the mid-1940s, despite it being America, there was a huge community of Italian immigrants that lived here, and many of them supported their leader from back home and thought he was doing good work. So there were even rumors that the Italian mafia was actually very active in Fayetteville in the 40s. And it was said that the mob had close ties to the Italian leader. So, needless to say, everyone that is involved in the Italian space doesn't really like what George is saying. So every time he started talking about politics, his friends and neighbors argued with him, because, again, a lot of them were also immigrants. They made it clear they didn't agree with him, and they don't like what he had to say. And some people took things to extremes, actually threatening George over his beliefs. When he'd chat about politics at diners or during community events, they would tell him, hey, be quiet or else something bad is going to happen. And then something very strange and alarming happened Sometime in the fall of 1945, although I don't know the exact date. But what we do know is one day, a strange man showed up at George's house. Now, George didn't know the guy. He didn't understand why he was there. And when he asked the visitor, hey, why'd you come? The man said he was just looking for work. And George told him, okay, well, I don't have any job openings at the moment. But then the guy didn't leave. He sort of just wandered around the house like he was looking it over. And eventually, he even made his way into George's backyard. So Remember, George has 10 kids and a wife. So at this point, George asked him to go. And the man pointed at some equipment that was part of the home's electric system, and he said, quote, this is going to cause a fire someday. Which was pretty weird, because George had just gone through a routine home inspection not too long ago. A worker from the city's power department had actually come out to the home to look everything up over, and he'd said the wiring was fine, no risk of a fire or electricity problems. Now, once again, George is like, random, man. You need to leave. And finally, the stranger did drive away. But for weeks afterward, George and his children kept noticing the same car was always parked in front of their house. Showed up right when school got out, and the driver would pull over to the curb just in time to watch the youngest children walk home and go inside. And then this person would drive away. Now, it made George, his wife Jenny, and all of the kids feel like they were being watched. But this wasn't even the most alarming thing to happen in the summer of 1945. See, one day, a different man came to the house. So not the same one as before. It was someone new. And he says, hey, I'm an insurance salesman. And. And he wanted to know if George needed any new policies. And George was like, yeah, we're not interested. And that's when the salesman became incredibly pushy. He said George needed to take out life insurance on his children just in case they died. And when George explained, okay, I'm not really worried about my 10 children dying, the salesman snapped, quote, your house is going up in flames, and your children are going to be destroyed. You are going to be paid for the dirty remarks you have been making about mussolini, the italian leader. So this was the second time in a matter of weeks that summer that someone had warned or threatened George that his house was going to burn down. But George and Jenny didn't want to listen to these warnings or let anything get to them, especially because when they found out it was about politics, they were like, yeah, we're not going to be intimidated or silenced. So instead, they focused on living their best lives and taking care of their kids. Time goes on. And that was particularly important during the holiday season. By Christmas Eve 1945, World War II was finally over after six long years, and George and Jenny's oldest son had been serving as a soldier in the army, and he was still overseas for the holiday season. But he had just gotten word that he was going to be allowed to come home soon. So in the meanwhile, the rest of the family did what they could to make the holiday feel special. On Christmas Eve, none of the kids had bedtimes. They were allowed to stay up as late as they wanted, playing games, talking, eating snacks. And by around midnight or so, Jenny, the mom, was tired, but the kids still wanted to stay up. So she told them that when they were ready for bed, they should turn off the lights, close the curtains and make sure the doors were locked. And the kids were like, yep, will do. So Jenny went to her room and fell asleep right away. Except she woke up at around 12:30am when the phone rang. She dragged herself out of bed and trudged to the living room because she didn't have a phone in her room. Turns out it was a wrong number, which was annoying. But after Jenny hung up, she noticed something odd in the house. All of the lights were still on, the curtains were open, and Jenny went to the door to check it. She found it was unlocked too. Now, as near as she could tell, nobody in the house was still awake. She figured, okay, I guess the kids didn't do what I asked before going to bed. But it was too late to worry about that now. Jenny decided, I'll just say something to them. In the morning, she turns everything off, locks everything up and goes back to bed again, only to wake up a second time about a half hour later around 1am to the smell of smoke. She opened her eyes to see flames raging in the hallway outside of her bedroom. Her house was on fire, and since fire alarms hadn't been invented yet in 1945, she and her husband George hadn't noticed the blaze until it was raging right outside of their door and the smell woke them up. So at this point they both leapt out of bed and they ran to the crib in one corner of their room where their youngest, two year old Sylvia, was still Asleep, they grab the baby and then they run out the front door. Now the good news was that many of their children had actually also woken up and made it outside. So aside from baby Sylvia, you had 23 year old John who was outside, along with 17 year old Marion and 16 year old George Junior. Sylvia was okay, the oldest was still overseas, but this left five kids unaccounted for. You have 14 year old Maurice, 12 year old Martha, 9 year old Luis, 8 year old Jenny Jr. And Betty who was five. Now all of them, their bedrooms were on the second floor of the home. So when George realized this chunk of kids are missing, he knew what to do. He ran back into his burning house, but he didn't make it far. He gets inside and notice the entire staircase is blazing. There's no way for him to even safely get upstairs. Except obviously George is desperate. His house is on fire, he has kids missing. And luckily he was pretty handy. He did a lot of work around the house. He knew that he had a ladder outdoors, so he went to grab it, thinking he could climb up to the children's bedroom windows instead and then he'd help them escape. Except when he went to the area where the ladder was usually stored, it wasn't there. Someone had either misplaced it or taken it. And George at this point isn't sure what had happened. But he didn't want to waste time looking for it. So his next idea was drive his truck up to the house. His truck was tall, tall enough that he could maybe stand on its roof and reach the kids windows. So George screamed to the children, don't be afraid, he'd get up to them soon. And then he jumped into the truck, put the key in the ignition and turned it. But nothing happened. Now his truck had never had car troubles before, but that night it wouldn't start. Which meant he couldn't drive it closer to the house, stand on top of it and rescue the kids. So the only idea George had left was just to try to put the fire out by dumping buckets of water on the house. It seemed impossible that such a tiny amount of water could extinguish such massive flames. But at this point, he doesn't have any other better ideas. So George grabbed the nearest bucket, which was already full of water, or more accurately, it was full of ice. It had frozen solid during the chilly Christmas Eve and he couldn't defrost it fast enough to do anything about the flames when he was almost ready to give up. It was at this point that one of his sons actually ran to the neighbor's house and they called the fire department. The phone rang and rang and rang, but on this Christmas Eve, nobody ever picked up. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know I love Quince. If you don't know what Quince is, it is the place you go to for the staples in your closet. I have so many Quince items in my closet. Not just clothing either. I have a makeup bag, I have shoes from Quince. They have everything that you need at quality quality products. Okay? I'm telling you you can trust me on this. When you purchase from Quince, you are going to get a quality product that is going to last long. Which is why I'm telling you they're the staples in my closet. 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Prime Obsession is in session and this summer Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle every year after the Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point and more slow burns, second chances chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Now, in the middle of all this chaos, a passerby also happened to drive by the house around this time and they too spotted the flames. Instead of pulling over to help, they drove to the nearest bar, figuring it's going to be open. They have a phone I can call for help, but they run into the same problem. Nobody is answering the fire department's emergency line now. Luckily this passerby was smart. They realized that if they couldn't get anyone to answer the phone, they could just drive to the station in person and tell the firefighters, hey, there's a huge, massive house fire. So that's what they did or tried to do. The problem was, when they get to this fire station, nobody is there. Made sense why nobody was answering the phone because all of the firefighters had gone home to celebrate Christmas with their families. So the neighbor literally then had to figure out where the chief firefighter lived, go to his house, wake him up, and beg him to get help. Then the chief had to call all of the others one by one and say, hey, report into work. We've got a home ablaze. And to make matters worse, they were already short staffed because a lot of the firefighters had enlisted with the army During World War II, so many of them were still overseas. So there just weren't many people around to help in the emergency. And it was taking them forever to even get to the scene. In fact, while they were still assembling, the fire actually went out on its own because it had burned the solder's house to the ground. So by 2am or so, every trace of their once happy home was gone. And for the next six hours, George, Jenny, and their surviving children stumbled through the ruins in a daze. They yelled their missing kids names, hoping they'd somehow emerge from the rubble safe and sound. But they didn't see the children, and oddly, they couldn't find their bodies. By 8am when the firefighters finally arrived, they helped George and Jenny with the search. Other officials showed up over the course of the day, and this included a representative from the local phone company. Now, this was important because that man discovered George and Jenny's phone had gotten disconnected. It must have been at some point between the wrong number call during the night and that morning. But the representative didn't see any sign that the wiring had been damaged in the fire. Instead, he said, a part of your cable was cut, like neatly cut right through. Someone had sliced it with a knife rather than it burning in the fire. Now, George and Jenny hadn't even attempted to call the fire department that night. They'd been too focused on getting the kids out of the house. But now they realized, even if they had tried, that the call wouldn't have gone through. And things in this case only got stranger when the family picked through debris, uncovering the charred remains of things they had once owned. I'm talking pots, pans, bed frames, dishes, clocks, and toys. Many of these items were identifiable, but covered in soot and warped from the heat. However, no matter how hard they looked, nobody was able to find the remains of the five children who had been trapped inside the burning house. They couldn't even find bones, clothing, jewelry. Which was strange, especially because the more George thought about the fire, the more he realized there had been other odd details. Like how the whole time he had been trying to open the children's windows, he actually hadn't seen any of them inside. You'd expect them to be screaming for help, maybe pounding on the glass or attempting to even jump out into the yard. But there had been no sign that the kids were even in the house. Plus, George assumed that if anyone had been trapped indoors and he would have smelled their body burning, except he hadn't noticed any kind of odor like that. And it's at this point that George and Jenny wonder, is it possible their children had somehow escaped the fire and were still alive somewhere? I mean, if you remember, they hadn't done their bedtime chores of locking up and turning everything off that night. Well, right as the Sodders began to feel hopeful, the police offered a theory that deflated all of their optimism. After an investigation, they said, hey, your children probably died in the fire. Maybe the flames had been hot enough to completely cremate their remains. That's why nobody was able to find their bodies, because they'd burned up in the fire until only ashes were left behind. Obviously, George and Jenny have their doubts. In fact, Jenny talked to a local funeral home worker about what the police had said, and the friend's like, hey, that's actually impossible. Apparently, when they cremated remains, they needed to keep them in a fire for at least two hours. And it had to be incredibly hot, 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit or more. And even after all of that, the remains were never completely burnt up. According to the funeral home employee, there was no way to destroy bones in a fire. Instead, they burned everything else, the skin, the tissue, the muscle and organs, and then they ground up the bones in a separate process. This was at this time. Now, we don't know how hot the fire at George and Jenny's house got, or if it reached 2000 degrees. But we know it didn't burn for two hours. It went out after 45 minutes or so. And of course, even if it had gone on long enough to burn the children's bodies, well, science says it wouldn't have destroyed the bones. So after this conversation, Jenny is more certain than ever her children had not died in this house fire, and they were still out there somewhere. And possibly alive. Now, more importantly, in the days and weeks after the fire, people began contacting the Sodders from all across the United States. Because you. You have to think about how weird this is. This house goes up in fire, and now you have five children missing, and nobody. They just vanished. Nobody knows where they went. Lots of witnesses had seen children who resembled the missing kids, alive and well, far from the house. For example, one waitress who worked in a diner about 50 miles outside of Fayetteville came to the police shortly after the fire. And she said that on Christmas Day, just hours after the blaze went out, a big crowd came into the restaurant, and there were two adult men and two adult women and five children. They were all speaking to one another in Italian, and they had Italian accents. When they talked to her in English, she claims the whole group had a weird vibe. The waitress tried to be friendly and upbeat, just like usual, but she got the sense that the adults, these four adults, didn't want to talk to her. In fact, they seemed almost hostile, especially when the waitress tried to speak with the kids or put them at ease. She just got the sense that the men and women did not appreciate her efforts, did not want her talking to these children, and wanted her to go away. So she did her best to take their orders, bring their food, and otherwise avoid them as much as possible. And then it was just a few days later that she saw a news story on the Sodder family. And when she saw photos of the missing children, she realized they looked exactly like the five Italian kids who had come into her restaurant. She didn't recognize the adults, but now she wondered if these were the kidnappers. Now, unfortunately, by the time she went to the police to tell them, the entire group was long gone. Nobody knew where they were headed or who those four adults were. Another woman called the police to say she had seen only all five of the solder children in a car early on Christmas morning. But again, she didn't know where they had been headed. And she hadn't thought to write down the car's license plate or any other identifying information. And after she came forward, even more witnesses spoke up. They all told pretty similar stories about how they thought they had seen the missing children alive, but they didn't know where they had gone or who they were with. So it was kind of impossible to follow up or even act on any of these leads. Still, by mid-1946, George and Jenny had come up with an own theory based on these sightings and the other evidence they had managed to gather. I mean, at this point, it's been a while. Five of their children are missing. And they believed someone had wanted to punish George for speaking out against Mussolini, the leader. The Sodders weren't sure who was responsible for the crime, but they figured the culprit had set their house on fire to send a message. After all, they had received multiple threats from random people that their house was going to burn down. But according to the Sodders, the arsonist didn't stop there. They also stole George's ladder, tampered with his truck engine to stop him from getting up to the second floor, and. And they'd also cut the Sodders phone lines so they couldn't call anyone for help. And George and Jenny believed it was no coincidence that the firefighters had all been off duty on Christmas Eve. They figured whoever was responsible for the fire might have had ties to the department. And they might have encouraged the chief to just send everyone home and to take multiple hours to respond to the report, all to ensure no one would be available to help that night and the Sodders entire home would burn down. But there was a hopeful element to their theory, because George and Jenny still did not think the arsonists were murderers. Instead, they figured the culprits had kidnapped the five missing children. They'd saved the kids from a painful death by Bernie, but also ensured that they'd hurt George and Jenny by taking their sons and daughters away, possibly leading them to believe they had died. Maybe they had held them hostage or put them up for adoption with other families. But of course, George and Jenny don't just think their kids are dead. They refused to give up on their children, and they spent the entire rest of their lives looking for them. Except the whole time. Officials back in Fayetteville continued to insist that the parents, George and Jenny, were wrong. In fact, soon after the fire, the local coroner had an inquest. It was an investigation to help the medical examiner decide what to list as a cause of death on the five children's death certificates. Assuming, that is, that they even were going to fill out death certificates, which they wouldn't do if they believed the kids might still be alive. But during the inquest, all sorts of city officials insisted, no, the children are definitely deceased. We do not have a random kidnapper who kidnapped five children. They continued to say the bodies and bones were burned, although this is impossible. They also ignored all of the strange details, like the threats George heard in the months beforehand, or the fact that the latter was mysteriously missing that night, or that his truck had been Tampered with a local man named Lonnie Johnson, even came forward during this inquest. There were rumors he had mafia connections, and he openly admitted he himself had tampered with George's truck and cut the solder's phone lines so they couldn't call the fire department. But he claimed, that was my only job. I had nothing to do with the fire with the children going missing. He said he had happened to drive by while the house was burning. And according to Lonnie, he was such an opportunist that he had decided to steal parts out of George's car in the chaos, knowing he'd get away with it. He's like, I. Like, I wasn't even set up to do this. I just took. I just took advantage of someone in a bad situation. But still, he insisted. I don't know how the fire started. I don't know who took the kids. I just know that I stole stuff. So he was charged with theft and found guilty. But even with this confession, Fayetteville officials still claimed the fire was accidental. They said it had started due to bad wiring, even though, like I said, George had the wiring tested just a few months before the fire, and everything had been fine. Now, naturally, a lot of people don't think the coroner's inquiry was run in a fair way, because a jury helped make the ruling. And you might remember a man I mentioned earlier, the supposed insurance salesman who had warned George that his house was going to go up in flames and the children would be destroyed. Well, that guy was on this jury, and it gets wilder. He had taken out a life insurance policy on the Sodder children, even though George had refused to buy one. And the man had named himself as a beneficiary, meaning this insurance salesman literally bought a policy without authorization, knowing he would make a huge profit if these kids died. And then he was one of the people who decided whether to legally declare them dead and how to classify their death. This is a massive conflict of interest. But that didn't stop him from being put on the jury. The worst part was that the city didn't even disclose this issue to the solders. It was way later that George and Jenny even found this out. They had hired a private eye, and he discovered this. The detectives also learned another detail, which, I'll be honest, right now is incredibly weird and confusing. The PI Questioned the fire chief, who, like, came to the house after the blaze, and the chief told the PI that he knew for a proven fact the children were dead. So the fire chief, who examined the scene Is like, nope, nope, nope. I know for sure the children are dead. He tells the PI that when he had been searching the rubble, he had found a human heart lying in the ash. Now, remember, no full body, no other organs or bones, just a heart. The chief claimed he hadn't said anything because he hadn't wanted to disappoint George and Jenny. So instead, he put the heart into a box and buried it in the area where the house once stood. Well, as soon as the detective told the Sodders about this tip, they drove right to the house. They dug as deep as they could, and they actually found something. There was a box, and when they opened it, they saw a decomposing organ inside. But it wasn't burnt. It, like, seemed fresh. George and Jenny didn't even know what to make of it, so they turned it over to the city's corner. He took one look at it and said, first, this isn't even a heart. This is a liver. And second, this is not a human liver. It's from a cow. And finally, just like George and Jenny has suspected, there was no evidence that it had ever been in a fire. So. But it was the fire chief who talked about this, saying this had happened on the day of the fire. So this just feels like someone planted evidence to try and later convince, like, recently planted evidence. But it's just confusing. They asked around and gathered as much information as they could, and eventually the fire chief did confess. Okay, I planted the liver at the scene long after the fire had gone out. He said, I just wanted you guys to eventually have closure. And he figured that if they found the evidence that their children were dead, they'd make peace with the situation and move on. Apparently, he thought they wouldn't notice that this uncooked beef liver looked nothing like a human burn victim's heart. This is weird, for sure. And it made George and Jenny wonder. Had he really done this to give them closure, or was he hoping this would be found and try to throw them off from what actually happened? I mean, all of these eerie inconsistencies, lies, and apparent cover ups are starting to add up. I mean, five kids don't just vanish into thin air. So in 1949, George and Jenny raised a bunch of money to do another search of the rubble where their house had once stood. Their hope was that maybe if they brought in an unbiased team, they could find something the firefighters had missed three years earlier. And sure enough, after a brief survey, the searchers did discover something. Human vertebrae, which are the bones in your Back and neck. Except it's almost like a repeat of the beef liver incident, because all of the searchers agree the vertebrae we found aren't burnt. They actually sent them off to forensic experts, and they said the vertebrae had definitely come from a person. They were human, specifically an adult male between the ages of 16 and 23. But the oldest missing solder boy had been 14 at the time of the fire. I suppose it's possible he was maturing quicker than your average teenager. So his bones looked more like a young adult's than a teenager. But the forensic examiners said there was no sign of smoke or fire damage in the bones. Instead, they were like, we think the bones ended up in the yard. After the fire, they actually used dirt to try to, you know, calm everything down. So they were wondering if maybe they dug up some dirt that had a decomposing body in it and used that dirt to put out the ashes. And it had vertebrae in it. So despite all of this, George and Jenny are like our children are still missing. Even when years and then decades went by without a solution, they didn't give up hope. And sure enough, in 1967, over 20 years after the fire, an anonymous tipster sent the parents an odd letter in the mail. It included a photo of a young man who looked an awful lot like an adult version of their missing son, Lewis. He had gone missing when he was 9, and the man in the photo was in his mid to late twenties, exactly the right age. And George and Jenny really thought this person could be their missing son. They hired a private detective, not the same man who'd found out about the beef liver decades before. And this investigator determined the letter had been sent from Kentucky. He told the Sodders he was heading out of state to investigate further. And then they never heard from him again. To this day, no one knows if he was a con artist who just took their money and ran or if he himself went missing. Now, later that same year, a woman wrote a letter to George and Jenny. They had never met, but she said, hey, I spotted two men who looked a lot like adult versions of Lewis and his brother Maurice, drinking together at a bar in Houston, Texas. Apparently, they had a little too much and became tipsy. And according to this woman, one of the men actually told her his name was Louis Sodder. So as soon as he read this note, George didn't waste a single second. He drives all the way to Texas, tracks down the two men, and the second he lays eyes on them, he knows these are his sons. They're Alive and well. Except when George tries to talk to the men, they're like, we have no idea what you're talking about. Our names are not Maurice and Louis. They never met George, their supposed father. They're like, we were never kidnapped. We never lived through a fire. None of it. And no matter what George said to these men, he couldn't get them to admit that they were his sons, or at least who he believed they were. Eventually, George leaves him alone. He figures either he was wrong, maybe he just wanted to see his sons and these men, or they really are his sons and they're lying and pretending not to know him. He doesn't really know why they would do that, but wondered if someone had threatened them or blackmailed them into keeping quiet. Which of course this hurts because he desperately wants to be reunited with his kids. So he did take some comfort in his belief that they really were alive and that he had even had a chance to talk to maybe two of them. Now, as for Jenny and the rest of the family, well, they weren't so sure. If George's theory was correct, they needed better proof. In lieu of real answers, they bought a billboard near the place where the house once stood and it had pictures of their five missing children on it, along with a tip line people could call if they knew what had happened. It stood until 1989, almost 45 years after the fire. Just the eerie reminder of the missing Sodder children. Now, by that time, George and Jenny both died of natural causes and both of them were buried without answers. And afterward, their surviving children kept up the efforts, trying to learn what had happened to their brothers and sisters. And over the next three decades, each of them also passed away. The youngest Sodder, Sylvia, the one who was sleeping in the crib in the parents room, she died in 2021. Even she didn't know the truth on the day of her death. The sad thing is, is that today it's very unlikely any of the original children are still alive. I mean, it's been over 80 years now. So George and Jennie's grandchildren, who weren't even born yet at the time of the fire, are still searching for their long lost cousins and distant relatives. If the other Sodder children did survive, it's impossible to say if they ever told their spouses and children the truth about where they had come from. So if there are more Sodders to be found, they might not even know who they really are. And I mean, this is an infamous mystery that might never be solved. And to this day, we don't even know. Is this story about an arson, a kidnapping, a murder? Or was it a tragic accident and a family clung to wild theories rather than move on? I do hope they were able to find peace even if they never found out what happened. Or maybe someday soon we will learn the truth about the missing Sauder children, but until then it seems like they just up and vanished. All right you guys let me know your theories about this. It is really eerie to think that five children could just go missing. And the way it all happened, a family fire, them discovering there was no remains. It's just eerie. Again, you can leave a comment on Instagram, I will read them and I'll see you next time as we go further into the dark together. Goodbye. Insurance isn't One Size Fits all that's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's Name youe Price Tool for years now. With the Name youe Price Tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com. find a Rate that works for you with a name, your Price Tool Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and Coverage Match limited by state law.