5 Children Disappear In A Housefire, 20 Years Later Their Family Receives A Cryptic Letter

five children disappear in a house fire 20 years later their family receives a cryptic letter [Music] [Applause] it was just after midnight when the fire reached the upstairs bedroom as george sodder raced through his fayetteville west virginia home all he could think about was getting his wife jenny and their nine children to safety but as the blaze grew and the smoke rose to blot out the night sky life for the solders would never be the same when the fire department finally arrived the next morning five of the children were unaccounted for at first glance it seemed they'd all perished in the fire but the solders were convinced that something else had happened that night and after decades of dead ends a cryptic letter proved they may have been right after all an unimaginable loss yet as george and jenny stood over the charred remains of their home on christmas morning 1945 there were just five things on their mind maurice martha louise jenny and betty but even in their intense grief the facts just didn't add up for starters the cause of the fire deemed faulty wiring was suspect as shortly before the blaze broke out jenny had come downstairs to find all the lights on if the fire had been electrical the power would have been dead another red flag arose when the repair men came to assess the damages to their telephone lines to their shock the handyman relayed that their lines hadn't been burnt like the fire report had stated they'd been cut more inconsistencies only continued to pop up the latter that george kept behind the house had been mysteriously absent the night of the fire and when he tried to move his trucks as a means of climbing to the upstairs windows they wouldn't start despite working fine the day prior even jenny recalled hearing something rolling on the roof shortly before the fire started and george later found a small rubber object in the yard that looked suspiciously like a napalm grenade but had someone really intended to harm the sodders george had made his fair share of enemies over the years a native of sardinia george was an outspoken opponent of benito mussolini a stance that sometimes ruffled a few feathers in his italian community he'd gotten into plenty of heated arguments over the years though as he looked out over the charred ruins of his home one particular exchange returned to him a few months prior a salesman had threatened george after he refused to buy insurance at the time his words seemed silly now they were eerily spot on your house is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed you are going to be paid for the dirty remarks that you have been making about mussolini foul play clearly wasn't out of the question though george's concerns were quickly overshadowed by another discovery or lack thereof at the site despite all five children supposedly having died in the fire no remains were found fayetteville fire chief f.j morris attributed this fact to the intense heat of the blaze though strangely none of the home's appliances were burned beyond recognition doubting the authorities jenny went elsewhere for answers jenny consulted a local crematorium learning that bones typically remain even after bodies are alight for two hours at 2000 degrees the solder home had been burnt in just 45 minutes with evidence mounting george and jenny resolved that until the bodies were recovered there was still a chance that their children were alive they began canvassing nearby towns soon discovering that there had been a handful of sightings of the missing five in the days after the fire one woman claimed to have seen the children peering from a passing car while the fire was still in progress and another said she actually served them breakfast at a rest stop some 50 miles west of fayetteville the most convincing account came from a guest at a hotel in nearby charleston according to the woman she spotted four of the children alongside two men and two women of italian extraction as they checked into the hotel around midnight she tried to approach the children in a friendly manner though the four adults refused to let them speak early the next morning they were gone george and jenny decided to contact j edgar hoover at the fbi for help with the investigation though when the bureau offered to send agents the local authorities refused there seemed to be a strangely dismissive pattern among fayetteville's law enforcement was there a conspiracy afoot suspicions grew after a private eye informed the couple that the insurance salesman that had threatened george had also been a member of the coroner's jury that deemed the fire accidental they also learned chief morris had hidden fake remains in the rubble in the hopes of placating the sodders into calling the investigation off the prospect of the supposed conspiracy only seemed to confirm that the children were alive spurring george onward as he traveled across the country chasing one lead after the next but each time he arrived in a new city on a new tip the missing solders were nowhere to be found yet george and jenny remained undeterred erecting a billboard and offering a ten thousand dollar reward for the information leading to the recovery of their children the solder sifted through countless dead ends for years though in 1968 more than 20 years after the fire they received a letter that changed everything the envelope postmarked in kentucky and bearing no return address contained a photo of a young man and a cryptic note louis sotter i love brother frankie lil boyz a90132 or 35. his resemblance to louie who was nine when he disappeared was uncanny though upon sending an investigator to track the man down he never returned time is running out for us george said in an interview but we only want to know if they did die in the fire we want to be convinced otherwise we want to know what happened to them but george died a year later and after two more decades of fruitless leads jenny passed as well the surviving solder children took up the search in their stead devising their own theories for what happened to their siblings on that fateful night trouble with the mafia was floated as a plausible motivation behind a possible abduction as george very well could have provoked the mob with his outspoken nature if their siblings were still alive there's a chance they never reached out in order to protect the family yet death ended this new wave of inquiry as sylvia soder who was just two years old the night of the fire is now the only surviving child of george and jenny she still continues to tell the story of that tragic christmas eve in 1945 hopeful that even 75 years later her brothers and sisters may still be alive and sylvia is not hopeless in her search with advances in investigation technologies authorities are now regularly solving centuries-old crimes even masterful cover-ups are being exposed [Music] you