[robowombat]

One of the oldest and most baffling of cases of the disappeared.

[dp0622]

Dad covered the wreckage with dirt even though the forensic investigation wasn’t over yet?

The mom ASSUMED, even with the front door unlocked, that the kids all went to their rooms?

She didn’t check on ONE?

Hmm.

[Ciaphas Cain]

Thanks for posting. Had never heard of this before.

[bgill]

All kinds of creepy and what ifs. Read more at the wiki page. Too many vehicles didn’t run that night especially the fire chief not able to drive a fire truck. Too many warnings the house was going to burn down one day.

No way could the kids have been kidnapped without at least one of them screaming bloody heck and knocking over furniture. One boy was 14 so old enough to land a few punches loud enough to wake the parents.

Yeah, it’s hard to burn bones so don’t know where to go with that. Forensics wasn’t worth beans in 1945 so no telling what really happened.

I’m going to chalk it up to the parents couldn’t deal with the children’s deaths so wanted to believe they were still alive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodder_children_disappearance

[stylecouncilor]

Ping

[Jamestown1630]

This story gets muddier the more you learn - I was curious about the beef liver:

...Tinsley, [a PI hired by the family] learned the fire chief had told a minister he'd found a heart at the scene of the fire, but had buried it. Tinsley and the fire chief unearthed it, but it was merely beef liver, not a human heart. Later, the chief claimed he'd buried the beef liver in the hopes of convincing the Sodder family about existing remains, so that they would cease their search.

https://www.ranker.com/list/disappearance-of-the-sodder-children/melissa-brinks

[BenLurkin]

“she heard a noise that she later claimed sounded like something hitting the roof and then rolling down and onto the ground. Feeling too tired, she did not investigate”

That right there is baffling. How often did things fall on her roof?

[TalBlack]

Off the top of my head my WTH moments while reading: Who would allow the kids to stay up like this? Who would put off locking the house till the playing kids went to bed? Who would find the lights ablaze and the door unlocked and not check the beds? Who would have known that the trucks would be needed in some way? Why wasn’t the problem with the trucks not found and revealed? Why was Pop so hot to spoil the scene? And on and on...