Th Sodder Family Children Disappearance

George Sodder was given the name Giorgio Soddu at birth in Tula, Sardinia, Italy, in 1895. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 13.

Sodder finally found work on Pennsylvania railroads, transporting water and other supplies to workers. After a few years, he got a job as a driver in Smithers, West Virginia.

He then established his own trucking company, initially transporting fill dirt to construction sites and eventually transporting coal produced in the area. Jennie Cipriani, a Smithers storekeeper's daughter who had also arrived from Italy as a kid, married George.

The Sodders settled outside nearby Fayetteville, which had a large population of Italian immigrants, in a two-story timber frame house.

In 1923, they had the first of their 10 children. George's business prospered, and they became one of the most revered families in the neighborhood.

However, George had strong opinions about many subjects and was not shy about expressing them, sometimes alienating people. In particular, his strident opposition to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had led to some strong arguments with other members of the immigrant community.

Mussolini was deposed and executed in 1943. However, George's criticism of the late dictator left some hard feelings.

On Christmas Eve, 1945, the Sodder family home burned down. The cause was traced to defective wiring despite the fact that Christmas tree lights were still on after the fire started.

Jennie was awakened again at 1 a.m. by the sound of an object striking the house's roof with a tremendous bang, followed by a rolling noise. She went back to sleep after hearing nothing else. She awoke after another half hour, smelling smoke. When she awoke, the room George used for his office was on fire, engulfing the telephone line and fuse box. Jennie jolted him up, and he in turn awakened his older sons.

Frustrated, the six Sodders who had escaped were forced to watch the house burn and collapse for  45 minutes. They assumed the other five youngsters were killed in the fire. Due to staffing shortages caused by the war, the fire service did not respond until later that morning.

The oldest two sons and daughter and the youngest daughter survived, but the five middle children were missing and no trace of their remains were found. Believing that the fire was a cover for the abduction of their children, George and Jennie Sodder spent a fortune on detectives to investigate.

fter four days of the incident, George and his wife could not bear the sight of the destroyed family house anymore, so he bulldozed 1.5 m of dirt over the site with the intention of converting it to a memorial garden for the lost children.

Several pieces of evidence and eyewitnesses backed up George's kidnapping belief. In 1968, a photo, supposedly from Louis Sodder, was mailed to the surviving family; on the back was the message: “Louis Sodder, I love brother, Frankie. Ilil boys A90132 (or 90135)”.

A billboard depicting the family mystery was built near the site of their house in 1952, but no investigations into the children's disappearance was conducted thereafter, and the coroner's report pronounced them legally dead.

George Sodder passed away in 1969, and Jennie died in 1988. The billboard about their missing children  was removed in 1989.

Suspects

None are known, although theory suggests that the children were abducted with the assistance of local police by an illicit child-selling agency similar to Georgia Tann's.

The Sodders had a disagreement with another resident who tried to sell them life insurance two months before the fire. He predicted that their house would burn down and the children would vanish. He also served on the coroner's jury, which determined that the fire was accidental.