Mystery of five children 'killed' in Christmas Eve house fire whose bodies were never found

Daily Mail UK ^ | Christmas Day 2025 | RUTH BASHINSKY

[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.

[maddog55]

Aliens...