Posted on 12/25/2025 1:05:00 AM PST by Morgana
It started out as a joyous Christmas Eve at the Sodder home on December 24, 1945.
George and Jennie Sodder were spending the festive holiday with nine of their ten children, ages 2 to 18, at their home in Fayetteville, West Virginia.
Then a devastating house fire broke out and five of their children - Maurice, 14; Martha Lee, 12; Louis, 10; Jennie, 8; and Betty, 5 - mysteriously perished.
Four of their children had escaped; the tenth child - one of their sons - was away in the service at the time. The bodies of the five missing children were never found, and their grief-stricken parents spent the rest of their lives looking for them.
They initially believed their children had burned in the fire, but when no remains were recovered at the scene, they suspected something nefarious had happened.
They offered thousands of dollars in reward money, hired private investigators, and traveled across the nation - New York, Kentucky, Florida - following leads, but to no avail.
Since then the mystery has led to fears, speculation and conspiracy theories about possible motives for the missing children.
Sylvia was the youngest of the Sodder children to survive the fire. On the night of the blaze, her older sister, Marian 'Mary Ann,' 18, rescued her from the blazing inferno.
In April 2020, Sylvia died from Alzheimer's and was the last living Sodder child, according to her daughter, Jennie Henthorn.
Henthorn told Daily Mail her mother rarely spoke about the night her siblings disappeared, partly because she was only two when the horrifying fire took place. But she said the mysterious disappearance stuck with the family.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Aliens...
If they were kidnapped, it would take more than one person to take that many kids.
If any of the missing survived and procreated, DNA could help. Mysteries like this bother me.
Strange.
But stranger that apparently no one has bothered to look.
I’d bet $$ that if anyone bothered, they’d find evidence of the family out there. Somewhere.
And there would be a trail to help explain what happened.
In this day and age, the greater mystery is why the DM would write such a story and the only mention of DNA would be in the word ‘kidnapped’... /s
Worse, the author of ‘No Direct Evidence: The Story of the Missing Sodder Children’ published in 2022, well into the era of DNA. Nothing.
This poster I just found echoes my words.
https://www.poorgailsalmanac.com/2021/10/14/will-dna-find-the-lost-sodder-children/
Do a search: Nothing.
This suggests that maybe the children were taken to Italy with no elaboration
https://charleyproject.org/case/betty-dolly-sodder
But I find no evidence that anyone has attempted a DNA search.
Very odd.
It would take a masochist to kidnap 5 kids
The Ransom Of Red Chief ... just one kid was more than enough.
Obviously, they were kidnapped; 5 children don’t just evaporate.
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