- As World War II finally ends,
an infamous cold case begins.
Five siblings vanish...
in an instant.
- They didn’t find any traces of these bodies.
No bones. Not even a piece of a tooth.
Where could these kids have gone?
- Now we uncover the top theories
surrounding every parent’s worst fear.
♪ ♪
- Not only do we have an arson and a kidnapping,
but a possible cover-up.
- Were they brainwashed?
Or did they just not want to be found?
- Can new evidence finally reveal answers?
What really happened
to the notorious Sodder children?
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[music fades]
[dramatic orchestral music]
Just four months after World War II ends,
American troops head home
to spend their first post-war holiday with family.
One exception: Joseph Sodder,
who won’t be back in time to celebrate in his hometown
of Fayetteville, West Virginia.
- So who was the Sodder family?
The parents were George and Jennie.
They had 10 kids.
Their oldest son was in the army,
but nine of their children were home, living with them.
[somber music]
- Kids are celebrating Christmas Eve.
They’re allowed to stay up well past their bedtime.
Unbeknownst to them, all of their lives
are going to change within a matter of hours.
[foreboding music]
Fishburne: At 1:00 a.m., Jennie wakes up suddenly.
She smells smoke.
- She’s startled awake,
runs down to her husband’s study
where she sees one wall on fire.
[suspenseful music]
We have to remember that back in the 1940s,
smoke detectors had not yet been invented.
So by the time that Jennie discovers the fire,
there is not much time to get out of the house,
’cause the fire’s already roaring in the study.
- First thing they do
is get the four children out of the house
that are on the first floor.
And George and Jennie’s bedroom is on the first floor,
so this is very easy for them to do.
Get them out of the house right away.
[flames crackling]
Fishburne: Within minutes, George, Jennie,
and four of their children run outside.
But as far as they know...
♪ ♪
The remaining five are trapped upstairs.
- When they tried to gain entry to the second floor,
the staircase was fully engulfed,
and they were unable to save the children
that were sleeping upstairs.
And within 45 minutes, the house burned down.
[somber music]
Fishburne: The heartbroken parents
assume the remaining five siblings,
14-year old Maurice, 12-year-old Martha,
10-year-old Louis, 8-year-old Jennie,
and 6-year-old Betty are dead.
♪ ♪
But could there be more to the story?
♪ ♪
- Here’s why it’s such a mystery.
None of the remains of the five children
were ever found in the debris of the fire.
- No trace.
[dramatic music]
No bones.
No nothing.
Fishburne: Despite this,
authorities quickly jump to the simplest conclusion.
♪ ♪
- The official word was that the children died
in the fire caused by an electrical issue.
But we have an investigation that was questionable,
at best.
- As part of their investigation
after they arrived on the scene,
they interviewed Jennie and George as to what happened.
Fishburne: When Jennie first sees the fire
in George’s office, she reports it’s burning
near an electrical box on the wall.
The fire department believes the blaze accelerated
up through the wall.
♪ ♪
- The fire appeared to have burned
very quickly.
One of the theories out there is that the construction
of the house was what is called "balloon construction."
That is to say that it had vertical rafters
from the basement
running directly up to the second floor,
creating a void space,
which, if the fire started inside the walls,
it would’ve created the perfect chimney effect
and very quickly burned up through to the roof area.
Fishburne: George tells authorities
that after evacuating the four children downstairs,
he next tried repeatedly to rescue
the siblings upstairs.
[suspenseful music]
- Five of the children were upstairs
on the second floor.
And they were unable to get out.
And the fire is out of control.
There’s too much smoke and he’s unable
to go to the second floor,
where the five children are sleeping.
Fishburne: George screams to the kids
from the bottom of the stairs...
but hears nothing.
- He goes back out to the barrel of water
he has outside to put out the fire.
♪ ♪
But he finds the barrel’s frozen solid.
- He runs, looking for the ladder
that was on the side of the building.
The ladder that normally is there is no longer there,
and he doesn’t know where it was or who took it.
- So then he thinks he’s gonna use his trucks
and he had two trucks.
He was gonna pull those trucks up to the house,
get on the roof to try to access the second floor.
But unfortunately, neither truck would start that night.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Jennie has a similar experience.
- So while George is trying to rescue the children
on the second floor, Jennie tries
to call the fire department using their home phone.
But the line is dead.
♪ ♪
So then Jennie sends her daughter Marion
to a neighbor’s house to try to call the fire department.
But Marion is unable to get through.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Eventually,
a passing motorist offers to drive into town
and alert the fire chief.
- During this time in 1945,
most of the fire departments in that part of the country
were volunteer fire departments.
So when a fire would come in, it was up to the fire chief
to start calling everybody to come to the firehouse,
pick up their equipment,
and then rush over to the scene.
[bell ringing] So as a result of that,
the response time was quite lengthy.
[siren wailing]
Fishburne: Seven hours after the blaze first ignites,
fire trucks finally arrive.
- When the fire department finally shows up,
they spend, at most, a couple of hours
and they make a determination
that the fire was caused by an electrical issue
and that the five children who were sleeping
on the second floor all perished in the fire.
Within five days,
even though there were no remains,
the coroner’s inquest ruled
that these children died in the fire
as a result of an accident.
Even going so far as to issuing death certificates.
♪ ♪
- The fire marshal tells Jennie
he believes that as a result of the fire burning so hot,
it consumed the bones, the organs, and everything else
associated with the human body.
Fishburne: But without concrete physical evidence
of death, George and Jennie hold out hope
that their children somehow escaped.
- Jennie doesn’t end up believing
the fire chief’s explanation that the kids died in the fire
and that they’re gone.
They didn’t find any traces of these bodies.
No bones. Not even a piece of a tooth.
Jennie starts to feel like
there’s something else going on.
- She goes and speaks to a local crematorium
and they tell her
that bones--at least the fragments of bones--
usually survive all fires.
When you cremate a body at a crematorium,
you’re exposing it to temperatures
of approximately 2,000 degrees for several hours.
And even after that type of temperature,
they have to be grounded up to make ’em into dust
when they’re given to their loved ones
in the urns.
Fishburne: And George has his own reason
to doubt the fire department’s conclusion.
- George keeps falling back on two pieces of evidence
that, in his mind, this fire’s not accidental.
One is that during the fire,
he noticed that there were still lights remaining
in certain parts of the house
while the building was burning.
So in his mind is how can this be an electrical fire
if you still have lights on in the building?
- But also just a few months prior,
he had actually brought in an electrician
to check the wiring of the house.
The electrician gave it a passing grade
and George starts wondering
if there’s something else going on.
Now it is possible
that the electrician might’ve missed something.
You know, he is human after all.
Or it’s possible that between the time
of the electrician showing up and Christmas Eve
something else went on in that house.
Fishburne: Authorities soon discover
what that something else might be.
- So if you remember, Jennie actually tried
to contact the fire chief the night of the fire,
but her phone wasn’t working.
So the police investigate that a few days later,
and what they find could alter the entire course
of the investigation, because they find
the phone lines have been cut.
[foreboding music]
Fishburne: When five siblings seemingly perish
in a devastating house fire,
investigators initially see nothing suspicious.
They quickly rule that an electrical fire
caused their deaths.
But then they make a startling discovery.
Telephone lines outside the house have been severed.
Is it possible the fire was no accident?
- It is my opinion
that this fire was intentionally set.
[sinister music]
♪ ♪
Classifying a fire as an arson instead of an accidental fire
has a lot of implications, because an arson connotates
that there is a crime that’s been committed,
and if they would’ve found the remains of the children,
it’d be classified as a homicide.
♪ ♪
- But it’s interesting because the police just kind of
brushed this off, and they don’t really look into that.
Fishburne: But maybe they should’ve.
Because as it turns out,
George was far from well-liked in Fayetteville.
- I think authorities are missing the background story.
What was going on prior to the fire?
George had a lot of enemies, we’ve learned,
and he had conflict
with other Italian immigrants in that area.
- George Sodder, actually born Giorgio Soddu,
in Sardinia, Italy, in 1895,
emigrated to the United States when he was only 13 years old.
Years later, George moves to Smithers, West Virginia.
He finds work as a truck driver
and eventually gets to start his own company.
And he meets his future wife, Jennie,
who’s a fellow Italian emigrant.
Fishburne: The new couple moves
to Fayetteville, West Virginia,
a small town with a large population
of Italian Americans.
- Once George and Jennie settle down,
they moved to a little wood-framed house
about two miles outside of town,
and they have their first son, Joe, in 1923
and really kind of start making their way
as a well-respected middle-class family,
at least at first.
Fishburne: But George’s outspoken political beliefs
alienate some neighbors.
- It is very common for people that come to America
from another country to wanna live
in the same type of community that they’re used to,
because it’s familiar to them.
[tense music]
So George has a lot in common
with these other people in his community,
but politically, he does not favor
the ruling of Benito Mussolini
and makes it known to the public.
- At the time, Mussolini’s incredibly popular,
both with Italians at home and abroad,
and especially in Fayetteville, West Virginia,
which kind of leaves George as the odd man out.
- George is telling everybody,
"I don’t like what Mussolini’s doing."
And he makes it known to one person in particular,
Cleante Gros Janutolo.
During that time, Cleante Gros, C.G.,
is a local banker, and a local businessman,
and has fingers in just about everything
in the local community.
Fishburne: Janutolo has many unusual connections
to George Sodder.
- C.G. Janutolo is the director
of the Fayette County Bank.
He also is the employer of George Sodder.
And George Sodder has a mortgage
that is written by the Fayette County Bank,
which has an insurance provision
that Mr. Janutolo will benefit if there’s a fire at the home.
♪ ♪
- Yeah, this is where I have a real problem with this case,
because the person that is the benefactor of this home,
should it be destroyed by fire
or any other type of natural disaster,
is this C.G. Janutolo.
Most banks don’t do that.
Most banks have the bank be the benefactor,
not an officer within the bank.
♪ ♪
- In today’s times,
it would be not only a conflict of interest,
but it would be illegal for Mr. Janutolo
to hold a financial interest
in the property of George Sodder.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Just two months before the fire
and without Sodder’s knowledge,
Janutolo increases the insurance payout amount
to $1,750, almost $27,000 today.
- Janutolo’s greed didn’t stop there.
So about 60 days before the fire,
he ends up sending one of his good friends,
Russell Long, an insurance broker,
to George’s house.
And at George’s house, Russell Long attempts
to sell him life insurance for his kids.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: When George refuses the extra insurance,
Janutolo allegedly makes a chilling threat.
- Janutolo gets very angry and threatens him.
He says his house is gonna go up in smoke
and his children are gonna be destroyed.
And he also says that George will pay
for the dirty things that he had been saying
about Mussolini.
- Let’s put the pieces of the puzzle together.
Janutolo shows up at the house,
threatens George, the very individual
who was set to collect money
if and when the house was destroyed.
The house does, in fact, burn down.
And this starts putting everything together
that this was, in fact, an arson,
and not an accidental fire
as claimed by the local authorities.
Fishburne: But what about the cut phone lines?
- If Janutolo would’ve also cut the phone line
that was found cut the day after the fire,
he would be the prime suspect.
But, in fact, he isn’t. [siren wailing]
There is another suspect that comes to surface.
Several days after the fire, an individual is arrested
in possession of a block and tackle.
A block and tackle is used to lift a heavy object.
This block and tackle, as it turns out,
belongs to George.
The thief, while he’s being interviewed,
admits that yes, he did steal the block and tackle.
But he insists that he did not start the fire.
He was just present when the fire was burning
and used that as a distraction to steal the block and tackle.
♪ ♪
- Do we believe the thief’s story?
Sure, he could have just been there
to steal the block and tackle,
but why would somebody go all the way out
to George’s property just to steal that one small thing?
He could have been there to start the fire
and used the block-and-tackle theft
as a red herring to lead the investigation astray.
And it’s very plausible
that this thief was actually sent
by somebody like Janutolo himself.
- It appears that the authorities
believed what the thief told them.
And also they don’t bring in Janutolo
to question him further about his possible involvement
in this fire.
But in my profession,
as an investigator for 33 years,
I have found that there is no coincidences.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Whether the cause is arson
or electrical, another question remains:
did the five children die in the fire?
To answer that,
George starts his own investigation,
and in 1949, makes a shocking find.
- A few years after the fire,
George had an excavation done of the site
and they did recover what they believed might be human bones.
And they sent those bones to the Smithsonian,
and an expert there said it was, in fact, human vertebrae
potentially from a young man
between the ages of 16 and 24 years old.
Fishburne: If the bones were indeed
from one of the children,
the only possible match could be Maurice...
14 years old at the time of the fire.
- Despite the fact that the report says
that these were vertebrae from a male
between the ages of 16 and 24,
there’s still enough uncertainty
that a 14-year-old could have been within that range.
However, what is interesting
is that the report also notes that there didn’t appear
to be any evidence of charring on the bones.
That would be very unexpected for someone who was cremated
in a fire.
So we have to ask whose bones are these?
Were they already there before the fire started?
Or were they part of the dirt
that was used to bulldoze over the site?
Unfortunately, we’ll never know.
Fishburne: Even though the Sodders were disappointed
with the excavation results, it reinforces their hope
that their children still could be alive.
[mysterious music]
- It’s clear that the fire happened
and burnt down the house.
And it’s clear that the investigation
that was done after the fire was incomplete, at best.
And it’s also clear that the remains
of the children were never found.
So in George’s and Jennie’s mind,
their children are not dead.
- George and Jennie,
because they’re not getting answers,
seek the public’s help and they ask for anybody
knowing what happened to their children
to contact them.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: When their home burned down early
on Christmas morning, 1945,
did five Sodder children die in the blaze?
[dramatic music]
That’s what fire investigators believe.
But the Sodder parents are not convinced.
♪ ♪
- Over time, understanding that no remains were found
and that the fire was most likely caused by arson,
Jennie and George wanted to get some answers.
♪ ♪
- If law enforcement are not gonna step up to the plate,
who else is gonna do it?
Nobody else has more on the line than you do.
- So as parents would do,
they get desperate to try and find their children.
So seven years after the fire,
they erect a billboard in their area.
George and Jennie offer a reward
for any information about their children.
The offer is at $5,000 in the beginning
and eventually increases to $10,000.
♪ ♪
Which is a lot of money back then.
Fishburne: Eventually, that investment pays off.
- A woman comes forward named Ida Crutchfield,
and she has information about the children.
Fishburne: Crutchfield runs a motel
in Charleston, West Virginia,
about 60 miles away from George and Jennie’s home.
- According to Ida,
about a week after the fire, four children
who matched the description of George and Jennie’s children
were at her hotel that she managed.
And they were accompanied by two men and two women.
She describes the men and the women
as being of Italian descent.
- Ida actually tried to have a conversation
with the children, but she was quickly shut out
by the Italian-speaking adults.
Fishburne: The group rents multiple rooms for the night.
But the next morning, they’re gone.
- So Ida Crutchfield really didn’t know about
the missing Sodder children at the time.
She just saw a situation
that she thought was very unusual--
the children with a large number of adults.
Only later did she realize
that she was a potential witness to a kidnapping.
[sinister music]
♪ ♪
- This is good news and bad news
for the Sodder family.
- On one hand, there was actually
a possibility the children are alive
and they’ve been taken under unknown circumstances.
But on the other hand...
can we recover them?
Is there any way to possibly get them back?
So knowing that they’re alive is not enough.
Unless you can actually recover them
and bring ’em back to your family.
It’s a known fact that George had enemies.
It’s one thing to destroy his property,
but it’s quite another thing to actually take his children.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Perhaps the most heartbreaking part
of Crutchfield’s account is its timing.
- It took her seven years to come forward
after she saw the children at her motel.
And even if it’s true,
seven years later, how could you follow it up,
understanding that long period of time that has passed.
Fishburne: But Ida isn’t the only witness
to eventually come forward.
- Over the years, the Sodder family
are contacted with a lot of tips and different stories
about what happened to their children.
- In that time period,
there were no security cameras.
It was eyewitnesses.
It was people that thought they saw something.
And you had to rely
on their very often blurry memories.
Fishburne: Sifting through various leads,
there are two accounts
that catch the Sodders’ attention.
- One of the tips that comes forward is a woman who says,
"I saw all the children in a car being driven
by somebody leaving the house."
Another woman comes forward
who operates a diner between Fayetteville and Charleston
and she says, "The night after that fire,
"there was children in that restaurant
with a stranger."
Fishburne: Combining these accounts
with Ida Crutchfield’s story helps the Sodder family
form a potential time line.
- So in Fayetteville, we have a lady that believes
that she saw the children in a car
the night of the fire.
Then we have a lady that thinks she sees the children
in a diner between Charleston and Fayetteville.
And then we have Ida Crutchfield that believes
that she saw the children in Charleston.
- If these tips are true, it paints a picture
of these children that were kidnapped that night
and they’re on the move,
traveling with somebody against their will.
Fishburne: After they leave the Charleston motel,
there are no further sightings of the children.
And while it seems like a dead end
for the kidnapping theory, it won’t be.
♪ ♪
- The search for the missing Sodder children
becomes more difficult with each passing year,
but their parents never give up.
Then, in 1967,
two decades after the fire, a mysterious letter arrives.
George and Jennie are convinced it’s proof one son, Louis,
is alive.
[dramatic music]
[music fades]
[foreboding music]
- George wanted to find his children
and there’s no doubt about it.
He would follow every tip, no matter what the cost.
He would go anywhere, to the ends of the earth
to find resolution.
Fishburne: George Sodder spends incredible time
and resources scouring the country.
- Decades go by, and he’s tired.
And he’s about ready to give up.
But then, in 1967,
George and Jennie receive a strange letter
addressed to them at their home
and it contains a photograph.
♪ ♪
- The photo was mailed from Central City, Kentucky.
This photo was the first piece of physical evidence ever
to be presented in this case.
And I must say, it was substantial.
- It was of a man in his 30s
that could be one of the children.
It was what appeared to be a photo of Louis Sodder.
[mysterious music]
- I can’t even imagine.
This has gotta be huge for them.
They finally see a picture of one of their children
after all these years.
- When the Sodders turned this photo over,
they are dumbstruck.
Fishburne: On the back of the photo
are three handwritten lines
starting with a name, "Louis Sodder."
But unfortunately,
the rest of the writing on the photo is a mystery.
- Next to his name is written "I love brother Frankie."
And then underneath is "Ilil boys."
And finally, there are two numbers,
"A90132 or 35."
Fishburne: The desperate parents
struggle to decipher the message.
- No one knows who Frankie is.
No one in the family’s named Frankie.
None of the friends of the family are named Frankie.
So who could Frankie be?
Could be the name of the kidnapper.
Or it could be the name of a person
that is harboring the children or Louis.
- The little boy comment is disturbing.
We don’t know what that means.
Does that imply, you know,
something nefarious has happened with a child molester
or is this someone,
you know, talking about their little brothers?
We don’t know.
- And it appears that all the useful clues
that are left are possibly those numbers
at the end of that photo.
Fishburne: A90132 or 35.
It’s a sequence that looks familiar.
♪ ♪
- When the photo comes in,
it’s actually only four years after
the U.S. postal zip code system had actually been implemented
in the United States.
So it’s fresh in everybody’s minds
and that’s actually the first thing
that George and Jennie think when they see those numbers
printed on the back of the photograph.
Could be zip codes.
90132 and 90135.
Are they actually in the United States?
Well, they go to check it out, and it turns out
that neither one of those numbers
applies to any zip code in America.
[ominous music]
Fishburne: But the United States
isn’t the only country to use five-digit postal codes.
♪ ♪
- We have to look a bit further.
George is of Italian descent and is from Italy.
Those zip codes match Palermo, Sicily.
And Palermo is the capital of Sicily
and also is the home base
of the reputed organized crime organization,
La Cosa Nostra.
I do think that there is a distinct possibility
there could be some Sicilian Mafia involved
in this case.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Could this be the break
the Sodders are looking for?
- For one, George is from Italy.
For two, the views of George really weren’t that endearing
to the Italian government.
And third, because of the organization
of the fire and the events thereafter.
♪ ♪
- I think that the zip codes are a pretty telling sign
that even if they’re not where Louis was
or if Louis was alive, it just adds to this idea
that these children did not die in this fire.
That they might be out there.
Fishburne: Initially, George and Jennie
are reluctant to share this information.
- George and Jennie don’t say anything
about this possible Sicilian connection
because they don’t want the kidnappers
to possibly do something to Louis
and/or the other children who may have survived.
- Eventually though, curiosity gets the best of both
Jennie and George and they can’t lay low forever.
So they actually hire a private investigator
to go down to Kentucky,
which is where the postal code had been printed
on the front of the envelope.
Fishburne: That investigator is never seen
or heard from again.
- It makes you question what this private investigator did.
Did he take the money and run?
Did he maybe find something out
he wasn’t supposed to know?
And the people involved either kidnapped him
or took him out.
Fishburne: The investigator may have disappeared,
but the family hires another private detective
to investigate in Fayetteville.
His name is Oscar Tinsley.
- Tinsley keeps digging.
And the more he digs, the more that he finds evidence
that whatever happened to these kids,
it was not an accident.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: When private investigator
Oscar Tinsley begins looking
into the disappearance of the Sodder children,
he has no idea what he’ll uncover.
- The official investigators,
they think that the Sodder family children
died in a house fire, whereas George and Jennie,
they believe that their kids were kidnapped.
- The investigator hired by George and Jennie,
Mr. Tinsley, uncovered something
that was breathtaking.
That the authorities, the police, fire department
may have been in on the kidnapping.
[sinister music]
♪ ♪
We have four things in this case
that are suspicious and are significant.
Number one, we have a fire that was not investigated.
Two, we have threats against George and his family
that people were not questioned or interrogated.
Three, we have a letter with a picture
with possible ties to the Sicilian Mafia
that was not followed up on.
And four, we have a conclusion
that the children died in the fire,
but yet, we don’t have any remains.
[dramatic music]
Any one of these things, individually or collectively,
should have launched a major investigation.
But none resulted.
- Tinsley, he thinks he’s uncovered evidence
that the authorities were in on it.
Fishburne: And soon enough, he uncovers potential proof.
♪ ♪
- Tinsley starts with the coroner’s report
that came out of the inquest.
A coroner’s inquest takes place after an incident has occurred.
The coroner selects 12 individuals
from the community to sit in a jury.
They’re presented with the facts of the crime
or the incident, and then they determine
if there is enough there to classify this fire
as either accidental or as an arson.
Without finding the remains
of the five children, what could they have concluded?
- In the coroner’s inquest,
evidence that they might have been considering,
in my opinion, was nonexistent.
They didn’t recover any evidence.
They didn’t even have time to recover any evidence.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: On the official record
declaring the fire an accident
is a familiar name.
- So do you remember C.G. Janutolo,
the man who had threatened George’s life
and was the director of the bank?
He was also one of the members of the coroner’s jury
who had ruled the Sodder family house fire
an accident.
- And his name is on all five
of those children’s death certificates.
He signs under penalty of perjury
that those children died in a fire
and that they died of asphyxiation.
[ominous music]
How does he know that?
They never found the remains.
- I think Mr. Janutolo is trying to use his influence
in the community to cover up what really happened.
Did he make good on his promise to burn down the Sodder home?
And two, did he use his contacts
within the Sicilian Mafia
to have the children kidnapped?
♪ ♪
Fishburne: According to Tinsley,
the cover-up might go even higher.
- During his investigation, Tinsley discovers
that the fire chief spoke to the parish priest
and told him that he did find some remains,
but buried them at the fire scene.
[dramatic music]
- George confronts the fire chief
and they go back to the house,
and they dig up a tin box.
Fishburne: But what they find doesn’t add up.
- In that tin box
is what appears to be some sort of old rotting organ
of some sort, and the fire chief says,
"These are human remains."
[suspenseful music]
So they take these remains to the local funeral director
and he tells them, "It’s not human remains.
It’s a beef liver."
- And the funeral director tells them
that not only are these remains not human,
they appear that they’ve never been burnt.
That it’s just rotted because of it being buried
in the ground.
Fishburne: Why would Fire Chief F.J. Morris lie
about finding human remains?
- There are two ways you can look at this.
One is the sympathetic way,
that the fire chief is just trying
to give the family closure.
♪ ♪
The other way to look at it is that the fire chief
is involved in the conspiracy, and he’s trying to keep George
and Jennie from continuing to look for their children.
So potentially, Chief Morris may have been
in on the conspiracy with Janutolo.
Fishburne: This isn’t the only time the fire chief is accused
of working against the Sodders.
- It’s important to remember that,
back at the night of the fire, it took over seven hours
for the fire department to show up to the Sodder family house.
♪ ♪
- One of the reasons Morris came up with why he
and his crew took seven hours to arrive at the fire scene
was that he had no one available
to drive the fire truck.
They were away at World War II.
- Now, World War II’s actually
kind of a convenient excuse.
Christmas Eve, 1945, this was over seven months
after the Allied victory in Europe,
and about three months after the Allied victory in Japan.
So while there could have been some volunteer firefighters
serving overseas, it wouldn’t have been that many,
and there certainly wouldn’t have been a complete
lack of manpower.
Whatever was going on at the time,
there were definitely people in that town
that did not want the truth to come out,
and they would have done anything
to make sure that it didn’t.
♪ ♪
- I think any parent can understand George and Jennie
wanting to search for their children all of these years.
But should we also consider another theory,
as unpleasant as it may be:
what if the Sodder children disappeared on purpose?
Fishburne: In the decades after the five Sodder children
seemingly vanish, countless new questions arise,
and the case captures the public’s attention.
♪ ♪
Sleuths focus on one mystery in particular.
- I often ask myself,
if the children survived the fire,
why didn’t they ever present
themselves to their family?
Were they brainwashed?
Did they want to protect their families?
Or did they just not want to be found?
♪ ♪
- One of the theories is that
the children didn’t die in the fire,
that they actually started the fire as a distraction
so they could escape and disappear forever.
Fishburne: In 1967, the same year the Sodders received
the mysterious alleged photo of their son, Louis,
something else happens.
- A woman from Houston, Texas sent a letter
to the Sodder family stating that she was in a bar
with Louis Sodder and Maurice Sodder,
and that Louis Sodder, in a drunken stupor,
confessed that he was
one of the missing Sodder children.
- So much for Louis Sodder being in Italy, right?
Either the photograph is fake,
or the lady in Texas is lying.
But what if there is more that might lead you
to think Louis is in Texas?
Remember those postal codes,
90132, 90135.
They’re actually also found in Mexico,
which is in very close proximity to Texas.
Fishburne: Is it possible that Louis
has been living in Mexico,
and that he’s now crossed back into the United States?
- George has no choice
but to follow up with the Houston, Texas lead.
It’s either going to lead to the long list
of leads that led nowhere,
or it’s gonna lead to finally finding his children.
Fishburne: George and his son-in-law, Grover Paxton,
take a road trip from West Virginia to Houston.
- So George travels to Texas and tries to find this woman,
and he cannot.
He is, however, able to contact
the two men described by this woman in the letter.
♪ ♪
- I’m sure possibly on the eve of meeting his children,
he’s fraught with anxiety,
he’s nervous.
He probably is on an emotional roller coaster
of finally being able to meet his children,
alive, in person.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: George meets with the two men
and asks if they’re his long-lost children.
♪ ♪
- George asks,
and they deny that they are his sons.
No matter how much he presses them,
they still hold that they, indeed, are not his sons.
- As a parent myself,
I can imagine George actually approaching somebody
that he believed could have been his children,
and then they deny they’re his children.
And he really has no way to know for sure.
You know, all he had was their word.
And that just wasn’t good enough for him.
- I--I can’t even imagine how that must have felt
for George on that long drive back to West Virginia.
You just met two potential sons
that you’ve been looking for all these years,
and they deny that they’re your children.
But yet you think they are. They look like them.
You had information that they were telling people
that they were them.
Uh, I just--I can’t imagine how he must have felt,
the disappointment.
- After that meeting,
George believed until the day he died
that the two young men that he talked to
in Houston, Texas were indeed his sons.
- On one hand,
I’m sure George was very happy and relieved
to believe that his children were still alive.
But it also must have been very heartbreaking
to think that they were denying that he was their father.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: George Sodder died in 1969,
two years after his trip to Texas.
When Jennie died in 1989,
the weathered billboard pleading for information
was finally taken down.
The youngest Sodder child, Sylvia,
died in April of 2021.
Sylvia’s children have promised
to carry the torch and keep looking
for their aunts and uncles.
But time is running out.
The missing children would be
between 81 and 90 years old if there’s any chance
they’re still alive and waiting to be found.
I’m Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
"History’s Greatest Mysteries."
♪ ♪