The Sodder Family Mystery

On Christmas eve 1945 Jennie Sodder awoke to fire at her house in Virginia . She woke her husband, George and he managed to wake 4 of their 9 children who were still at home. They left the house and watched it burn to the ground. Afterwards they went to see if the bodies of their 5 children who were left to parish were in the rubble, but to their surprise they were not.

George Sodder was a well known hater of Musolini. Some even say that his own people disliked him. Jennie and George were suspicious from the get go and that their children were taken in retaliation for his critism of his native Italy.

They made a plan to remember the children who everyone thought died in the fire, to build a memorial garden on the land where the house once stood. It was never built.

The Sodder's erected a billboard with the faces of the 5 children who went missing and it stood for 39 years. It was only taken down after George and Jennie passed away.

There were a few suspects that the police and the Sodder's wanted questioned.

Before the suspects were questioned, the fire marshall told the Sodder's to leave the house. They tried to say that the house burned down because of "Faulty wiring". On December 30, 5 death certificates were produced.

In August 1949 , George convinced a pathologist in Washington to do a excavation of the site,where they found human vertabrae. They confirmed that the vertabrae was of someone who was of 16-17 years of age.

In 1967, a letter arrived with a photo claiming to be George and Jennie's son, Louis.

George died in 1969, never knowing what happened to his children. Jennie for the rest of her life, wore black in mourning for her children.

One of the suspects was a insurance salesman who George declined insurance from. He was quoted as saying "you'll be sorry when your house goes up in flames" Strangely the insurance salesman was one of the jurors picked out to judge what happened to the children. Jennie was accused of being the reason the children dissapeared with rumours circulating that they had insurance on the children totalling $75,000.

A woman contacted the family who lived 50 miles from their house and said "“The children were accompanied by two women and two men, all of Italian extraction. They registered about midnight. I tried to talk to the children in a friendly manner, but the men appeared hostile and refused to allow me to talk to these children. One of the men looked at me in a hostile manner; he turned around and began talking rapidly in Italian. Immediately, the whole party stopped talking to me. I sensed that I was being frozen out and so I said nothing more. They left early the next morning.”" (source : listverse).

Alot of people believe that the dissapearance had something to do with the Italian Mafia as George was very against the Musolini regime. The surviving children complained of a black car following them home from school.

When they recieved the photo that claimed to be Louis, The Sodder's hired a private investigator, that was a dead end. George was quoted as saying “like hitting a rock wall – we can’t go any further.”

Even though the photo was never confirmed they still put the photo above the fire place.

The only surviving member of the family that still lives today is named Sylvia who was only 2 the night of the fire.

Jennie died in 1988, unaware of what happened to her children.