THE CHILDREN WHO WENT UP IN SMOKE
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The Sodder Children case : what happened to them?
A CHRISTMAS EVE TRAGEDY By Stuart Jones
W
henever we think of horrifying, unsolved instances of children disappearing, the one that probably comes to mind first for most of us is the story of the Beaumont children. But although the Beaumont children are one of the most famous cases, they’re far from the only one — and some of them are even more perplexing. Like, for example, the case of the five missing Sodder children. Other than music that plays from a loudspeaker mounted on a storefront in the center of town, the streets of Fayetteville, W.V., are quiet as Christmas Eve approaches. Inside, they talk of presents and parties, and inevitably, what really happened to the Sodder family on Christmas morning. Everyone has an opinion about the fire. These are the facts: When George and Jennie Sodder went to sleep on Christmas Eve, nine of their 10 children were with them. One son was away in the military. George Bragg, a local writer, tells the story of that night’s events: “Jennie woke up. She heard a noise. Somebody had thrown something on the roof. She got up and checked that out, and went back to bed. She woke up about a half-hour later, and she smelled smoke. She got up and realized one of the rooms where their office was [located] was on fire. She screamed for her husband and woke him up, and they both hollered upstairs where two of the boys were.” Neighbors reached Chief F. J. Morris at the Fayetteville Fire Department a little after 1 a.m. By then, it was already Christmas. Firefighters were told that children were trapped inside, but no fire truck was sent until 8 a.m. — seven hours later. Chief Morris is long dead. But another retired fire chief, Steve Cruikshank, tried to explain the delay. He says the fire department didn’t even have a siren back then. When somebody called to report an incident, an operator would take the call and rouse a firefighter, who would then have to reach fellow firefighters one by one.
By Elisabeth Northwood
O
n Christmas Eve of 1945 in Fayetteville, West Virginia, George and Jennie Sodder had been celebrating the Christmas season with nine of their ten children.
Their son, Joe, was away in the Army. As the night grew later George retired for the night to bed followed shortly after by his sons John (23) and George Jr. (16). When Jennie decided it was time for the rest of the children to go to bed, they pleaded with her to stay up and play with their toys that their older sister, Marian (17), had gotten for them. After her children promised her that they would get a few chores done before bed, Jennie agreed to let them continue playing and then took her youngest child, Sylvia (3) to bed with her. The phone ringing awoke Jennie a little past midnight. Jennie answered the phone and a woman asked to speak to someone Jennie didn’t know. When Jennie told her she had the wrong number the woman laughed and hung up. Jennie thought this was just a prank call and didn’t give it much thought. She then noticed that the lights were still on in the house and the doors were unlocked. She found this unusual because her kids were normally very good about attending to these things before bed. She turned off the lights, locked the doors and went back to sleep. Jennie had barely fallen back asleep when she heard a thump on the roof followed by the sound of something rolling. She realized the house was on fire around 1:30 AM. She screamed for her husband and children to get out. The oldest boys, John and George Jr. made it out of the house as well as the oldest girl, Marian who ran out with baby Sylvia. Jennie and George also made it out. When George was outside and saw that five of his children were still inside he tried everything possible to re-enter the home and save them. He first broke a window and in doing that cut his arm. Through all the smoke he saw that flames covered the entire first
The Sodder parents and four of their children escaped. But five of the Sodder children, ages 5, 8, 9, 12 and 14, were never seen again.
The murdered house
floor of the house. He then ran to a rain barrel to get buckets of water to try to extinguish the fire, but to his dismay found the water to be frozen solid in the cold winter. Thinking quickly, he ran to where he always kept his ladder, but it had mysteriously vanished. He attempted and failed to climb the house by hand. In one last attempt he and his sons thought to pull their work trucks up to the house to climb on them to get inside the top floor. Their terrible luck continued when they found that the trucks would not start due to the frigid weather. In the meantime, Marian had run to a neighbor’s house to call the fire department. At first the operator could not be reached to place the call and when finally they did reach the operator each of the town’s firemen had to be called, woken up, and dispatched to the scene. The fire station was less than three miles from the Sodder home, but the firemen didn’t get there until 8 AM. and it was far to late because the house burned to the ground in less than 45 minutes of the fire starting. The police arrived on the scene in the morning and after only a two hour investigation, concluded that the fire was started by faulty wiring. George argued that that couldn’t be because he had just gotten the wiring redone and the lights had stayed on for a time after the fire started. The reports at the time claimed that there had been no remains whatsoever found in the ash and rubble. It was ruled by the coroner’s jury that the missing Sodder children had died in the fire. A few days after the fire George Sodder plowed over what was left of his home and planted flowers there in memory of his children though the Fire Marshall advised against doing so. George and Jennie believed that their children had been kidnapped and that the fire was intentionally set to cover the crime scene.