Morbid - Episode 10: The Sodder Children….where the hell are they?
Episode Date: July 25, 2018This one us so frustrating, guys! When George and Jennie Sodder's home burned downed on Christmas Eve in 1945, they were thrust into a lifelong battle to find 5 of their children who, despi...te leaving no remains, were never seen alive again. This case has inept authorities, conspiracy theories and a tale of parental dedication that will thaw your cold, dead heart. This is, the Sodder children mystery. Sources: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-children-who-went-up-in-smoke-172429802/ https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5067563 Sodder Family Tragedy: The Mystery of Five Missing Children by Douglas MacGowan See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey, Prime members, you can listen to morbid, early, and add free on Amazon music.
Download the app today.
You're listening to a morbid network podcast.
Do you want a straighter smile without ever needing to enter a dental office?
It sounds impossible, but with bite, you can transform your teeth entirely from the comfort
of your own home.
Bite offers clear liners that are Dr.ed and delivered straight to your doorstep.
Prep time for your smile journey is minimal.
Just take an impression mold of your mouth, preview your 3D smile, and order your all-day
or at night aligners.
That's it!
You'll even get to track your smile's progress every step of the way with the Bite app.
Plus, you'll have access to your clinical team 7 days a week.
Best of all is that average treatment time for all day liners is faster and more affordable
than traditional braces.
Get the smile you've always wanted.
Go to byt.com and use Code Wondry at checkout
to get your at-home impression kit for just 14.95.
That's Code Wondry at bite.com for over 80%
off your impression kit.
Whether you're running errands on your daily commute
or even at home, you can enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app, the Audible app.
As an Audible member, you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog.
This includes the latest bestsellers and new releases.
Plus get full access to a growing selection of included audiobooks, audible originals,
and more.
If you've been wanting to form good habits, break bad ones, and improve motivation, atomic
habits written and narrated by James Clear is a great lesson.
It'll reshape your mindset on progress and success by helping you develop strategies
to transform your habits.
New members can try Audible Free for 30 Days.
Visit audible.com slash wonderie pod or text wonderie pod to 500-500 to try Audible for
free for 30 Days.
That's W-O-N-D-E-R-Y-P-O-D.
Audible.com slash wonderie pod or or text WonderingPod to 500-500
to try Audible for free for 30 days.
Hey weirdos, I'm Ange.
I'm Elena.
And those are small bad.
Oh. I'm gonna be back.
And we're at Death Metal Band now.
Whoa, blah, blah.
Oh.
That actually hurts my throat when I couldn't do that.
That's a lot.
We'd just shove yourself into the table
and make everything move.
Sorry.
Really?
Not sorry.
What do you think you are?
We're back in our pod lab.
And I'm kind of sweaty.
We're helters waltering up here.
I wouldn't say helters waltering.
I would just say like brief sweat.
Yeah. I'm like glistening.
Low-grade sauna.
Low-grade, you know, glisten.
Yep, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm back in America.
Yeah, ash.
Hey, had herself a little cruise.
Yeah, it was so fancy.
Which I know it sounds like we just cruise all the time.
Like that's the thing we do.
But like both of us had never been on a cruise before these last two things yeah and we just happened to
book our first cruises within a couple weeks actually didn't even book mine
Annie's parents brought us on a cruise see which is how I'm gonna introduce our
special guest it's Annie hello everybody she actually doesn't want to be on the podcast, but I want her to be on the podcast.
I don't know if you can tell, but she's super.
She's been waiting her whole life for this moment.
Because I wanted to tell our story about going to Bermuda and snorkeling, and Annie was there.
So I wanted her to be able to like shed some light on her experience.
I want to just talk about the turtles.
Okay, that's a different experience
and you can't talk about that.
Just put their word turtles.
But nice try though.
No, the sn...
The sn...
But no, no, no, no, no, no.
The turtles were not there when we were snorkeling.
But, um, Permuda has the most shipwrecks in the whole world.
That's wrong.
I mean, I actually don't want you on the podcast anymore,
and I just like to remind you that my IQ is not that high,
and I don't retain information, and I don't research.
You're really funny.
I think you're.
Anyways, so yeah, they have a lot of fucking shipwrecks,
A.E.B.
A whole buttload of shipwrecks.
Yeah, apparently not the most in the world.
I listen to the tour guide.
You know, I actually don't want you here at all.
Why did I invite you?
This took a really dark turn.
And that was the end of their relationship.
But we went snorkeling in the Bermuda Triangle, which is awesome.
And I've always wanted to go to the Bermuda Triangle.
We were snorkeling up in the Bermuda Triangle,
and how many ship bricks were there?
Two.
There's two.
And I would like to say that I am terrified of shipwrecks
to bring in this to wear.
Do you say you're terrified of things that are submerged
under water?
I don't like submerged objects.
The Titanic underwater really terrifies me
so I don't like shipwrecks.
I get that.
But you know what?
I get that.
She sacrificed it for our love.
What a woman!
Okay, so we like cruise out there and the guys like telling us all this stuff that apparently
fucking Annie retained, but I didn't. And so then they like tell you how to snorkel. It's
pretty straightforward. You two are flippers. I was like that was fun. I was living my best mermaid
life. And we dive in and one of the shipwrecks was just like the boat wasn't there anymore
But it was carrying all these cement bags because it was from like what you're any
I don't I don't remember the year it was like 18
So there was the one the cement bags that had it was a wooden boat
Yes, the boat created yeah, and the wood all drifted away.
So it was like a phantom shipwreck.
Yeah, but all the cement bags were still there
and they, kind of like more of them to be seen.
Yeah, so I'm just swimming.
I, so then there was another boat
that was like a 250 foot steel boat.
And remember when I was like, I don't see it.
And I see, I literally get in the water
and I just look down and see this huge boat
that's watering in my heart, is like pounding
and Ash is like, where's the boat?
You know?
No, because it's like, there's coral all over it.
And so it like blends in, it's like camouflage.
But then you look a little harder
and you're like, oh, there's the boat there.
You look a little harder and you're like,
there's Mike Pence.
Okay, that's a little harder and yelling. There's Mike Pence.
Okay, that's a different story for another day. As holes.
This is what happens when Annie and Alaina get together with me.
They just fucking light up my spine.
This actually might be of note to some people, because it's funny.
Well, we should begin by saying that if Ash kind of mistakes any older white dude
for Mike Pence.
I'm just on the lookout for Mike Pence
because I know he wants to fry the game.
Yeah, she's good.
I'm scared.
Honestly, you should be too.
You're smart.
But you always say it in like a monotone voice
and you're like, is that Mike Pence?
Because in disaster situations,
you're supposed to remain calm. So you're just on the lookout. I'm just like, is that Mike Pence? Because in disaster situations, you're supposed to remain calm.
So you're just on the look out there.
I'm just like, is that Mike Pence?
But it's literally any older white dude, she's like, that must be Mike Pence.
Yeah.
No.
Anyways, I was living.
Annie's just like floating above the water, but I'm like, face deep.
I'm like, hold my noodles so I can dive deeper.
Hold my noodles.
They made you have noodles and I was pissed.
I mean, yeah.
They don't want you floating down into the ship right?
I wanted to.
Getting a golfed in the B-mute of triangle.
That's exactly what I wanted.
You should go down.
I know.
Every day that we were on the cruise ship,
I contemplated how much trouble I would get in
if I jumped off just because I wanted to swim in the water.
Probably a lot of trouble physiologically.
Yeah, no, I know that.
But like, you know?
I think your internal organs might look like
I'm gonna see your body just like wants to do the things
that know what it's not supposed to do.
Yeah, because it's like some primal weird thing.
Yeah, no, it's a thing.
It's a thing.
And every day I would just be like over like the balcony
and be like, I could jump off right now.
I actually, that's weird that you had that thought
because I'm more, you had that thought. Because you had that thought,
like I'm gonna be this graceful mermaid
that just dives into the water and lives among the fish.
But I would stand on the balcony,
I'd be like, what if I just uncontrollably
threw myself over here?
And then I would die and it would be awful and I drown.
Like I had these awful nightmarish thoughts of the water.
You don't know that though, you could have turned into a mermaid.
You were gonna be Ariel,
and like sing about part of your world.
I don't know if anybody would want me to sing in the ocean.
I would want you to sing in the ocean.
I was just living my best life.
Here's my other story.
So my nose ring, and Annie can attest to this, I almost fucking cried.
My nose ring is very special to me, and I'm gonna make you cry a little bit,
because we got them done together.
Like my first night's piercing, like my little nostril stud.
It's really fucking special to me.
Because I was like 18 and we went together.
Yeah, anyways, and it was like my first pier-
kind of my first piercing.
We'll go with that.
Yeah, we'll go with it.
I realized on the sunset cruise where we were with Annie's family
that I didn't have my nose wringing.
And I was like, I lost my fucking nose ring in the Permuda Triangle.
Can I just say that everyone was very confused because you weren't like being clear as to
which nose ring it was?
Because Ash has to.
Because multiple of my family members came up to me and they're like, is Ash okay?
Like her nose ring is still...
Wait, did they really?
Yeah, they're like, she still has her nose ring in.
And I was like, now it's not that bad.
She had to have a moment.
She had too many rum swizzles.
Did she have an emergency contact?
My nostril piercing, not my septum piercing,
is the one I lost.
So my nostril piercing.
It, I thought it was gone.
And then I'm sitting there.
And I'm like, I have this vision because I'm a white witch.
And I'm like, okay, maybe I'm gonna get home or like back to the cabin and it's gonna be like on
The little vanity where I get ready like I feel like it's gonna be there.
Ooh.
I fucking get back to the cabin and my fucking nose ring is on the vanity.
Are you kidding me?
It was fucking there and I was like, that's bananas.
I just believe that like the beer mew to triangle like spit it out, but then realized how sad I was and Annie's mom
Definitely thinks I'm like a psychopath. No, you know what? I think that's exactly what I think that's what happened
I think the Bermuda triangle was fucking with me because the catamaran cruise was also in the Bermuda triangle
Yeah, so I had been in the Bermuda triangle twice that day. This was pure Bermuda triangle
Yeah, well, that's like is that really hard to say?
Does anyone else have a triangle?
Bermuda triangle.
I think I just love it so much that I can say
Bermuda triangle, Bermuda triangle, Bermuda triangle.
Yeah, I can't do that.
I can barely say it once.
I'm like, Bermuda.
Bermuda, Bermuda.
Bermuda triangle.
But yeah, so that was my trip to the Bermuda triangle.
I did a lot of other stuff.
I went jet skiing, Annie swam with turtles.
It's pretty cool. But yeah, go on vacation sometimes. That's the last of our vacations for like ever.
So you'll never have to be without us again, because we got it all out of the way in the months of June and July.
Yeah. Goodbye everyone.
Bye Annie. We've just sent her to her corner on the floor.
Yeah, she just falls asleep when we're podcasting.
I don't blink, it's on the floor.
She's never been relegated to.
But yeah, everybody, that's my bay.
Angie has made it easier than ever
to connect with skilled professionals
to get all your home projects done well.
Whether it's routine maintenance and emergency repair
or a dream project, Angie lets you browse,
homeowner reviews,
compare quotes from multiple local pros
and even book a service instantly.
So the next time you have a home project,
just Angie that and start getting the most out of your home.
Download the free Angie mobile app today or visit Angie.com.
That's ANGI.com.
What makes a person a murderer?
Are they born to kill or are they made to kill?
I'm Candice D'Long and on my podcast, Killer Psychie Daily, which you can find exclusively
on Amazon Music, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and
behaviors of the criminal masterminds you read about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse, FBI agent, and a criminal profiler.
On Killer Psychie Daily, I'll give you my expert perspective on cases like the mysterious
New York City drugings, Breaking Down Lori Vallow, a.k.a.
Mommy Doom stays motives and what drove Caitlin Armstrong to murder? I'll also bring on expert guests who add even more insight into these criminal minds.
I promise you won't regret adding these 10 minutes to your morning routine.
Hey Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast Killer Psychie Daily in
the Amazon Music app.
Download the app today. So tonight's case is kind of a fun little unsolved mystery and by fun I mean tragic and awful,
but yeah, super fun. Good times. Fun like spooky and there's a lot of theories.
The theories are like the most fun part. And what's fun is that I might have an autopsy later. Ooh!
So we'll get through this.
So tonight's topic,
is the mysterious disappearance of the solder children.
Whoa!
Do-do-do-do-do!
I'm gonna give you a brief little overview
and then we'll get into some, you know, some of the like real details of this whole thing.
The Deets. So the Slaughter Children Disappearance begins 1945, Christmas Eve.
Yes.
Holidays and shit. It's like supposed to be cheerful. You know. Like deck, the house, my house, my house, my house, the housemate. And then like, what is it? It's like nothing was stirring.
No.
Some separate blazing fire, spoiler alert.
Yikes.
So this is in Fayette's,ville, West Virginia.
Parents, George and Jenny Sotter had nine children.
Too many.
One might say too many.
Far too many children.
They had, they actually had 10 children,
but nine of them were in the house.
Because their oldest child was away in the army.
And I looked everywhere and you cannot find this child's name.
That's really weird.
It's weird.
But nine of their children were in the house.
They were awoken in the middle of the night by a fire.
And George and Jenny got out of the house
along with four of their children, two-year-old
Sylvia, 17-year-old Marion, 23-year-old John, 16-year-old George Jr.
They all got out of the house.
No, I don't know if you guys know math, but that's four kids.
That's four kids.
There are five left in the house.
There are five who did not come out of the house.
Quick, mental math. The five that did not come out of the house were 14-year-old Maurice,
12-year-old Martha, nine-year-old Louis, or Louis, eight-year-old Jenny, and five-year-old Betty.
Oh, five is like really, that like getcha. Yeah. And your heart. So the five children that didn't
come out of the house shared two bedrooms that were upstairs.
Mm-hmm. So in the end of all this, the house burned down, and those children no one knew what
the fuck happened to them because no remains were found. So that's the basis of this. Right. So that's
crazy. That's just a sad story. So to go back, George Sauter, he immigrated from Italy to Fayette'sville when he was 13
years old.
Oh, shit.
He came over as Georgios Sodou.
That's my name.
Or something close to that.
And then he got changed to George Sotter because that's what we do here.
We change your name into an American name.
We change your cool last name.
Yeah, your cool last Italian name into an American name.
It's a great system.
When he arrived in Fayette'sville,
Fayetteville, excuse me,
he met in film, love with Jenny Sipriami.
Aw, another Italian, right?
And yeah, sounds Italian, right?
Sipriami for sure.
For sure.
They actually had a total of 10 children together
and like I said, the oldest was in the army.
And in Fayetteville, there was actually a really tight knit
and active Italian immigrant community.
Most people around the town respected George, you know, he was a good dude, he was pretty chill.
They were a middle class family.
George was very active in this Italian community, but he was also pretty vocal, which is the kind of...
Which is a good idea.
I mean, it's a good idea to be quiet. I'm just kidding.
Like, you know, speak up. Yeah.
No your audience. Yeah, just no your audience. But so he was very vocal about a lot of things.
Like people knew he had opinions. But his one thing that he was like really,
really vocal about was his disdain for the Italian Prime Minister slash fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Benito.
K-Chanone who Benito Mussolini is.
Mussolini or Mussolini.
Oh, I was like, am I?
That's the police.
You mean Mike Pence?
It's Mike Pence, essentially.
So, I mean, this guy was a fascist.
And he was just a really bad guy. He was a
he had a lot of super loyal followers. Okay, kind of like someone else. You might be able to think of like rings about name any names.
So Benito Mussolini was actually executed along with other members of the fascist movement.
Two days before Hitler and his girlfriend, Ava Braun, before they committed suicide. So on April 29th, 1945, Mussolini's corpse was loaded into
a van in the middle of the night and brought south of Milan where they dumped him on the ground at a
place called the... Italian names, man. Piazzale, l'arato? Piazzale, l'arato!
That's nice.
Yeah, that's way better.
Pizza.
Pizza, muah.
Ah, this is super stereotypical here.
So it's okay.
This place was the site where 15 antifascists were executed
recently, so it was kind of fitting that they threw him there.
All right.
His corpse was kicked and spit on by the crowd.
And then it was Huck Huck hung upside down from the roof of an SO gas station where it was then stoned by the
crowd as well. Shit. He was then buried in an onmarked grave in Musoko cemetery north of Milan.
So he was a bad guy. Guess so. You know, you don't just do that to anybody. So yeah.
Wild. So, but again, he had people that believed that the fascist movement was the way to go
Unfortunately, so I think it was though George did not agree with this
so
George eventually
Ran a trucking company of his own that took off pretty well again. They were like a middle class solid middle class family
Before this though
He worked for a man named
Fioranzo Janitolo, who strongly disagreed
with George's views on Mussolini.
Oh good.
Despite these differences, the two of them
actually seemed to remain like be pretty close,
even after George left the company to start his own company.
So when he left that company, he had a $1,500 mortgage insurance clause that was payable
to Fioranzo Janitolo.
What does that mean?
So like if something happened to the house and the family like he would get the payout.
Oh, yeah.
But only $1,500.
But again, back then, that's probably a lot more.
It's not super low, but so allegedly,
Genitolo increased this to $1,750
without the Sauders Approval or Knowledge.
And he actually ended up with the payout after the fire.
Even though George didn't die?
Yeah, because it was signed over to him.
It was a clause.
Oh, shit.
Yeah. What a a clause. Oh shit. Yeah, so what a stupid clause right so according to the Fire Marshalls
Reports 60 days before the fire
Genitolo accident actually attempted to trick George into signing an additional life insurance policy on top of the other insurance
Oh damn, that seems pretty spooky. Yeah, spooks like come on
Now when he was trying to trick him
into buying this insurance policy,
he got super pissed when they didn't want it.
And he actually yelled at George, quote,
your goddamn house is going up in smoke
and your children are going to be destroyed.
You're going to be paid for the dirty remarks
you have been making about Mussolini
What? K-solved
Who heard that like I think we can leave now. Yeah, and that was um the case and that was that he did it
Like how did what and this is an unsolved case
And this is unsolved because I think we just cracked the code. I mean, maybe I'm using like my super advanced
You know well-honed detective skills here
I don't know Sherlock, I think it seems like the the case is solved as fuck. Yeah, but
It's like when the villain in movies reveals their entire evil plan and you're like, why are you doing that?
This is like a Scooby-Doo case. Yeah, like there's like a guy who passed gay care. Yeah, like it doesn't make sense.
No.
But anyways, it's still unsolved.
We don't know.
I don't know.
So about a month before the fire, a stranger had showed up
at the solder home inquiring about some hauling work.
So that's not too weird.
Like, what's going on?
What's going on those days?
Like hauling stuff away.
Oh, like cleaning?
Just like picking up shit and bringing it away.
Like, hey, I just want to pick up the shit at your house.
I just want to haul shit.
Can I just haul your house?
And that was like a thing back then.
So it's just like cleaning.
Show up and be like, can I haul some shit?
And you do like, yeah.
Yeah, you can do that.
So the forties were at time.
So this man lingered around the back of the house where the two fuse boxes were located. Don't like that
And he actually noted to George these are gonna cause a fire someday
So that's weird because in George was like, no, they're not because
He had recently had the power company come to his house because I believe he was putting in like a new fancy stove because again they were like making a little money. Yeah so he
was getting that stove put in and because he's a smart guy he was like you know
what while you're in here can you just make sure that all the wiring is like
correct is like do you want to cause a fire? Yeah and so the power company came
and looked at the shit and was like these wires are perfect everything's good
So that's creepy
Now a couple of days before the fire two of the surviving children saw a man watching the younger
Sauder children coming home from school on highway 21
Ew
In fact, that's what I wrote to you. I read it, but then I actually said it. I saw it. Hey there, fellow podcast listener.
It's Elena.
And Ash.
And we're taking you back to the days before streaming services.
Whoa.
You know, when you would come home from high school,
and it was only a few hours until that TV show,
everyone was watching was about to come on.
Well, in 1999, that show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In our podcast with
Wondery, the rewatcher Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we take it back to 1999. So get out your
knee high boots and paste that poster of Angel on the wall. It's time to enter the Buffyverse.
Some of you avid morbid listeners already know what we've gotten store? Joanne knows. Joanne says we sway our way through Buffy's drama,
action and romance.
Episode by episode.
Slacy, follow the rewatcher, Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen early and add free
on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- Darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn, darn,arn, darn, darn, darn,arn you know, Christmas Eve at 12.30 a.m. the phone rang and Jenny answered it.
She heard a female voice asked who asked to speak to someone that she didn't know.
And she said in the background there was clearly a lot of laughter. There was like glasses
clinking like they were toasting in the background. It looked like a party. And it's good to see you. So, you know,
so Jenny said you have the wrong number and she hung up the phone.
She's just a thief, so you know. So Jenny said you have the wrong number
and she hung up the phone.
Now, this would seem weird,
but later they were able to track down this woman.
Oh, they weren't?
And she literally just had the wrong number.
Like it was like she was just a party.
Oh, weird.
It has the confidence.
So there's nothing to that,
but it's still a part of the story.
Yeah.
So while she was talking on the phone,
she noticed that the lights were still on downstairs
and Marion was asleep on the sofa.
Because what had happened was...
Did she let them stay up late or something?
Exactly.
So she, it was Christmas Eve, they had gotten presents, a couple of presents, and I believe
it was Marion the 17-year-old, it was like working at like the five-in-time, and she had
bought all her younger siblings' toys and like surprised them with them. They're all excited and they
asked their parents got tired I think around like 10-30 and we're like we're
going to bed and the kids were the younger kids were like you know you want to stay up
and like can we stay up and the parents Jenny and George were like you can as
long as you do you complete your, chores before you go turn off the lights, right? And the
chores were to go outside, I think it was like to feed the cows,
something with the chickens, you know, it was just like that kind of shit,
but it was outside and then come back in and make sure you do something.
So it's on the outside. So just keep that in mind. So again, and you know, so she noticed the lights
were on downstairs.
Mary was asleep on the sofa.
She locked the door, shut off the lights,
and went back to bed.
So just as she was beginning to fall asleep,
she heard a loud bang on the roof,
followed by something that sounded like it was rolling.
Now, like, she just went back to sleep. So if you hear something on your
roof in the middle of the night, just like a morbid podcast tip. Yeah, it's like it's like how we tell
you that fresh airs for dead people. Yeah, things rolling on your roof are cause for alarm. Nothing good
is banging around on your roof. No, you should definitely find the source of what's on your roof.
I just do something. Don't go back to sleep. Just don't. Yeah, yeah. Just don't. Call a neighbor. Yeah. What's on my roof girl?
What's on my roof girl? Hey girl, what you doing? I got my roof. Come on in. Can you use my roof?
Do that anyways. So minutes later, she smelled and spotted smoke
going into her room, which is my worst nightmare.
So she immediately woke George, ran and grabbed two-year-old Sylvia from her crib,
while screaming for her other children to get out of the house.
Marion, Jenny, George, and Sylvia ran through the front door still screaming for everyone to leave
23-year-old John and 16-year-old George Jr. ran out as well from their bedrooms upstairs
And they were also screaming for the other kids to leave get out of the house as they were
So they all waited for the rest of the kids to run out as well
But it wasn't long before George sprang into fucking super dad mode and decided to just save his kids himself.
He's like fuck this.
So George had actually broke back into the house to try and bring out his kids.
Holy shit.
He sliced his arm open on a bro- like he broke a window and sliced his arm open in the process.
Damn.
And he was stopped at the staircase because the entire staircase was on fire.
I'm like, God.
So, then he decided, okay, I know I have a ladder outside.
I'm gonna get the ladder.
I'm gonna go up to the second floor and I'm gonna get him.
Well, wasn't it not that?
The ladder was fucking missing from the spot.
He literally always put it in.
Not normal.
It was later found about 75 feet away from the home in a ditch.
Not normal.
I mean, that says something. So being
the persistent human he is, which you will see later on George Sauder, is a very
dedicated and persistent father. Which like breaks my heart. Yeah it does. He had
the idea to then use his cold trucks to park outside of the house and stand on
it to climb up and get his kids. Damn. But they were suddenly not starting.
Which didn't make any sense.
They had worked perfectly only the day before.
Right.
So in desperation, he actually tried scooping water out
of a nearby rain barrel, but it was frozen.
Oh my god.
And he kept trying to enter the house.
Oh.
Now, the other thing is, why the hell are there
no reports of seeing these kids
trying to get out of the house?
Right.
Like none of them came to the windows.
You didn't hear any screaming.
Nothing.
So they just laid in bed and silently turned to dust.
Nope.
Nope.
That's not how that works.
So 17, while this is all going on,
you know, the parents ago would not
so everybody's trying to get those kids.
17 year old Mary and Rand to the neighbor's house
to call the fire department.
Unfortunately, the operator on duty was not on duty
and did not answer.
So there's just no one on duty?
So Marion ran to another neighbor's house to call
and they too could not get an answer.
What the fuck?
So do you think somebody like, oh, sorry, paid off
like the person to leave?
Well, it gets weirder.
This second neighbor actually went into town to get the
fire chief FJ Morris in person, where he found him at a local tavern. So the fire department was
only 2.5 miles away from the solder home, but because the chief claimed he couldn't drive the fire
truck without one of the other firefighters, and he was having to call them all to get into work.
out one of the other firefighters, and he was having to call them all to get into work.
They didn't get to the solder home until 8 a.m.,
which was seven fucking hours after the fire began.
So do you, they must have been paid off.
Something weird is going on.
Cause that doesn't make any sense, even for like,
I mean, 1940s.
Something's weird.
Yeah.
I mean, 19, the thing is, it's all weird, but it was Christmas Eve, so they didn't have anybody on duty.
Right. And it was like a volunteer basis, so all that was going against them.
But still. Yeah, the whole thing is weird. It's a weird, weird thing.
So by the time they got there seven hours later, the house was gone. Oh, it was? Yeah. Is that how fire works? Yeah, that's how fire works. Oh, okay. Is that why we have firefighters on duty just on there? Yeah, okay. Yeah. Well, you know,
glad we cleared that up. Glad we cleared that up. Yeah, that's what they do. They fight fires.
I like that's what they really mad at. So seven hours of response time is not really a situation
where like response is even people can can spin that, you know, they can't be like we're
re-evaluating our response time and we're training our staff you know, they can't be like, we're reevaluating
our response time and we're training our staff better for next time. It's like, you know,
you had one job. Yeah. You're the keepers of the hoses. Yeah, didn't do it. Straight up failure.
Like to the fire department. We can't really talk to that. Like seven hours is unacceptable
for takeout. So it's definitely unacceptable for people coming to save you from a burning house.
Seven hours is like insufficient for many things.
It's ridiculous.
So, so.
It's a full night sleep for me.
Yeah, take-home.
So once they got there, they looked in the ashes of the home for the remains of the missing
kids.
And there were no remains.
Nothing was found. Bum bum.
Bum.
Now this is better. I met for that to be creepy, but I don't think it was like the law was. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la So the fire department didn't find any kids.
Only investigated for two hours.
Not even the full seven, I took them to get to.
Exactly.
Now, again, nothing's here, bud.
It was suggested by the coroner's office that the cause of the fire was, quote, bad wiring in the house.
Which is pretty unoriginal.
Yeah.
Like, that's like, oh, there was a fire, probably bad wiring.
Like, nope. Yeah, like that's like oh, there was a fire probably bad wiring like no F.J. Morris the fire chief also suggested that the fire must have been so
Narlie that it just cremated the children is not a direct quote direct quote so
Narlie, no, that's not how like bones deteriorate though
Even if you light a bone on fire it doesn't deteriorate. No, and I'll explain all the signs behind this. Oh goodie
My favorite part, you know what he suggested like what a guy. He just got cremated. No, he was like, why don't you scoop some ashes up from the site and bury them like it's your kids?
Are you like how crude? Like fuck this guy. Like that's just crude. Like fuck this guy. He gets even
weirder by the way. Like FJ Morris the fuck maybe he I think kid he knew someone yeah
so a week later after the fire the corner issued a death certificate for all five kids without
any of the bodies oh so typical yeah so the only thing left of the house was the basement basically
and four days later George had it covered with five feet of dirt
as kind of like a makeshift grave slash memorial to his missing presumed dead children.
Oh my God.
He actually intended to cover it with a garden or something beautiful for his kids.
I'm not okay.
Like this guy.
I'm not fucking okay.
Seriously, George's Sotter, man.
So, it wasn't long after the fire that George and Jenny
started to think that their kids probably didn't die in that fire and that
they were actually kidnapped and not dead what they had been told. As smart
people they questioned why the fuck it took the fire department seven hours to
get there. NPR conducted an interview with retired fire chiefs Roy and Steve
Crookshank. They were a father and son, you know, team that had been working in a close by
area at the time of the fire. They said that the Fayetteville Department didn't
even have sirens on their trucks at the time. What? And no one was manning the
station because of the holiday. West Virginia Fire Marshall Sterling Lewis said in an interview that in 1945,
Fayetteville firefighters didn't even have self-contained breathing apparatuses. Holy shit.
It should make it impossible for them to go into a fire without smoke in the whole nation.
So they literally couldn't go into that house to save the kids even if they had gotten there in time.
Top notch. Awesome.
Top notch.
That's fucked up.
So
George and Jenny theorized that the fire was set, set intentionally as a diversion for a kidnap.
Mm-hmm.
This was partially due to the fact that
George knew that wiring thing was bullshit.
And the ladder had it fixed.
Exactly.
So there was just too much that was pointing like we are shit and the car is not started
He says he never heard his children cry out. Yeah, so it's like that doesn't make sense now
If the fire was caused by faulty wiring then how were the lights still on in the house downstairs?
Oh shit if the wiring was faulty there would be no power to the house. Right.
I know this because I asked my dad who was an electrician you're kidding. And he confirmed that the lights would not be working if
there was faulty. No! The lights wouldn't work. What do you think? What? What? What? That's my dad. What kind of question is that? So thank you dad. That night an eyewitness said that they saw balls of fire being tossed
onto the sauters roof. They didn't fucking do anything about it. Which could be what Jenny
heard bang into the world. Also like maybe you should tell someone that right away.
Another morbid tip. If you see balls of fire being tossed on some poor person's home, perhaps do something about it. Maybe call a police or something
I don't know. Yeah, let's somebody. I don't know what would have happened. Maybe they just would have been like we're at the tavern drinking
So yeah, I can't drive. I'll actually I'll be there in like seven hours. Yeah, we'll be there sometime to worry
You'll probably be fine
So when the family returned to the scene later to pay
respect set the memorial that George was creating, Sylvia the two-year-olds found a hard rubber object in the
yard. George looked at it and believed that this object was a napalm, napalm,
pine, apple bomb. Excuse me what? Napalm, pineapple. We're mew to triangle. Which were used in the war at the time.
Now these could be the things. Jenny was like this is the thing that I heard hit the roof.
Yeah. Yeah. Like it fits perfectly. Yeah.
Thought shit makes sense. This is too much here. This case is so spooky.
It's so spooky. It's like insane. So the reports of the, you know, that makes the reports of the fireballs really credible.
Right.
The flames had also spread from the top floor to the ground,
which contradicts the idea that the fuse box
on the ground floor was responsible for the fire
because they started from up top.
Okay.
But cool, let's blame the fuse box.
So, like who thought that?
This really pissed Mama Jenny off.
And she started going science on this bitch.
Yeah.
So she started experimenting by burning different animal bones herself
and found that all of them left identifiable remains of some sort.
Yeah.
She could not get one to burn all the way to the tashes.
Now this is when she spoke to a crematorium employee who told her
that bones were left behind even when a body was burning at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours.
Which is not what? An average house fire burn born... are you okay? An average house fire burns
normally at about 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. The solder home only burned for about 30 to 45 minutes.
So it never would have. There would be bone fragments and shards at the very least.
Yeah. And that's being very, you know, generous. Right.
To further illustrate how bananas the idea of these children being burned to ash is the fact that
household appliances were found intact among the ash. Oh shit yeah so your fucking
toaster is gonna survive with your kids not know. And also if five children had
been cooked in that house then the smell would have been pungent as fuck burning
flesh smells like shit and they would have smelled that shit all through town
right five kids were burning in there like come, come on. Oh, that's horrifying.
So I did a little more research just to make sure.
Do you like to research?
I love research.
Oh, you do?
I really do.
People love that you love to research.
I'm glad people love that.
Someone said that even I was good at researching.
They did.
That was generous.
It's max.
Max, max.
Thank you, Max.
His IQ is also 11.
We loved that email, I was dying.
So according to the forensic pathology reviews, volume one,
in the section morphological findings and burn bodies, I'm actually sleeping.
It states that, just kidding.
Even if high temperatures are applied for several hours,
there will usually still be enough skeletal remains to allow successful determination
of species, the body measurements, and the sex as well as to identify skeletal anomalies in the presence of possible injuries.
Well, so there would be a lot left. You just sounded official at shit. I'm just saying.
So that that night in the following nights there were sightings of the kids.
Uh-huh.
So the first sighting was that night.
The fire night.
The first sighting was like the night that the fire happened.
Yeah.
Or Christmas, probably. Christmas day.
Oh, okay, yeah.
A woman said she saw the children driving by in a car while the fire was still burning.
So, like, did she identify the driver?
No, she couldn't see the driver.
Oh, shit.
They were looking out a window.
Another sighting was 50 miles away from Fayetteville.
A woman that ran some kind of like tourist stop said that she saw the children the morning
after the fire, Christmas morning, and she said, quote, I served them breakfast, and they
got into a car with Florida license plate.
Oh, damn.
I just like, I was like, plate.
Sss.
With a Florida license plate.
Pull eight.
Sss.
Pilates?
Another side.
Ha, ha, ha.
Pilates?
Yes.
No.
Florida license Pilates. Ha, ha, ha. So in Charleston, West Virginia, in a hotel, a woman
who worked there said she saw four or five children a week after the fire occurred. She
said, the children were accompanied by two women and two men, all who spoke Italian. I do
not remember the exact date. I tried to talk to the children in a friendly
manner, but the men appeared hostile and refused to allow me to talk to these children.
That's scary, I spoke. I said that I was being frozen out and so I said nothing more. They
left early the next morning. Okay. And they said that they showed up at like 12.30 at night.
And then they left the next morning. So they were just like stopping
to clap. So a few years later, George actually saw a photo of New York City school children
in a newspaper and believed that one of the kids was his missing daughter, Betty. No, I'm
not okay. He drove to New York to investigate and actually tracked down the child's parents,
but they wouldn't talk to him. Oh my god.
Now George literally personally investigated every single one of these tips.
No.
And he did, like, throughout this story, every tip or any citing or any story or theory that we mentioned,
George personally investigated it.
Dude, because that's your fucking babies.
Five of your kids, like, and the youngest one was five?
Yeah.
I mean, that's crazy.
So, this is around the time that they decided to hire a pathologist,
which, you know, good on them,
cuz old-timey coroners were not exactly, like, up to snuff.
Yeah.
A lot of them were, like, elected officials.
Like, they weren't even doctors.
Good.
Yeah.
It's changed now.
I'm not gonna down coroners or anything. But back in the day was back then was Oscar B.
Hunter. And this guy actually excavated the dirt that was on the site because
he was you know like doing his job like one of the only people that's nice
that's doing his job. He ended up finding four pieces of human vertebrae
Which is crazy mm-hmm. He sent those pieces to the Smithsonian Institute to be tested
Okay, they thought that the bones appeared to be four lumbar vertebrae with fused transverse recesses
Now from what I've seen this was reported back as confirming that the bones belonged to a 16 or 17-year-old person.
But I didn't think that was right.
So it's kind of false.
From what I kind of false.
You see, these were Lumbar vertebrae.
You have five vertebral bones in your Lumbar region
that make up your sacrum, which is what?
Lumbar sacrum, where?
Fucker right above your butt.
Oh my buttocks.
Now these bones like a lot of bones in your body, they start to fuse once you stop growing.
They start to fuse.
Yeah, like they start to fuse.
So it couldn't have been a 16 or 17 year old.
So this happens anywhere from
16 years old to 23 years old. That's when they start to feel not 16 to 17
Like they gave a very small they were like well, this must be a 16 or 17 year old and it's like no
This can be a 20 year fully fused. Yeah, it could be but it's they gave a very small window of what like they were like this has to be a 16 or 17 year old
and it's like no it's a 16 to 23 year old so like they just wanted a quick answer yeah so I mean our
clavicle bones don't fuse until like 26 years old that's these right yeah you're your collar bones they fuse yeah
together a lot of your bones fuse like these two go together. No
To mind look like they go together. No, that's why I was how I confused
What do you mean they fuse what the fuck the bones fuse?
I'm lost. Yeah, it's okay
So it's entirely possible that these vertebrae belong to a young adult in their early 20s even
Okay, so it wasn't that these vertebrae belong to a young adult in their early 20s even. Okay, so this is not for anybody's vertebrae. Not to mention that the oldest missing Sartre kid was 14-year-old Maurice.
So even if it wasn't 16-year-old, it's really not happening.
Yeah, fuck that theory.
They also determined that the bones had definitely not been in a fire at all.
So why were they there?
So they said that the bones had probably come from the dirt
that George had got to cover the site. So they're like, yeah. So that's somebody else.
Somebody else? That's dead and not in that dirt, but that's great. And this was all before DNA was
used. So people were really confused. So people were given back to George and now no one knows where
they went. Oh, I mean, we, it sucks because if we had them now,
we could DNA test.
He lost them?
Nobody knows.
He lost them.
How do you lose bones?
Maybe she didn't lose them.
Maybe he died with them in a box somewhere.
Yeah, no, I believe that he did.
He was like after everything.
Yeah.
So after this all happened, the governor,
Oki L. Patterson,
same's legit, called the hearing in the state capital building in Charleston, West Virginia,
and officially called the close to this case.
Hmm, liar.
He literally told George and Jenny that they're search for their clearly abducted children,
whereas hopeless. That's nice.
The Fayetteville County prosecutor said
that it would only be reopened
if evidence of kidnapping came to light.
So like all the tips.
Kind of seems like it already has.
Yeah.
I don't know.
So he ended with saying, quote,
something is haunting this family
and I would do anything to put their minds at ease.
I think what's haunting this family
is the fact that they're fucking five kids.
Children disappeared and thin air. and you're closing the case
Yes, maybe that's haunting them
In 1947 George actually tried to get the FBI involved
Jay Edgar Hoover himself contacted George back and was like totally good
We will help you because this is shady as fuck hell. Yeah! But because this is falling under, quote, local character, we need to get permission
from your local authorities to step in.
And they wouldn't?
Well, the Fayetteville Police Department
and the Fire Department declined their offer to help.
Okay, well, they're dicks.
So there's no reason to do that,
unless you're guilty.
Right, some covering something up.
Right, some covering something up.
Now, another interesting bit was the night of the fire
an eyewitness recalled that they saw two recognizable men stealing the block
and tackle crane which is like the hook thing that normally is used to lift
the lift engines out of the cars from the solder residents Residence. Oh. Now, these two people were,
were these two people were identified as Dave Afkins
and Lonnie Johnson, who are owners of a nearby, like,
beer place.
Okay.
Only Lonnie was ever questioned because Dave
pieced out to the army to avoid prosecution.
Good.
Lonnie said he cut the phone lines that night
because he thought they were power lines.
So how? That was that better.
The only weird thing. Why did he cut them? Did he say why? I don't know.
I have no idea. Did a nasty awful question.
Yeah, well, that's very, very inept authorities here.
Yeah. To be quite honest. Also, the power lines were 14 feet up in the air.
So how the hell did he get to it?
So people were like, did he steal the ladder?
Yeah, but he didn't say anything.
So Lonnie ended up pleading guilty to a stealing charge
and paid a $25 fine.
You're fucking kidding me.
Super.
Officials definitely admitted later that Lonnie and George's old employer,
who we talked about before, for your Renzo there,
who got the money after the fire
Those two were not investigated enough like the the authorities who like officials now are like yeah, they should have been looked at more
Yeah, so they definitely could have involved
Slush world some of the tips that came in around the like this time because they started getting tips all the time now
probably a lot of bullshit
they started getting tips all the time now. Probably a lot of bullshit. Some people around town believe that the mafia was involved and some believe that the children were taken back to Italy
where they were sold to an orphanage. That's horrible. The family actually received a letter from a
woman in St. Louis that claimed that the oldest daughter Martha was in a convent there. The fuck?
Someone in Florida also claimed that they were now living
with Jenny's distant relatives in Florida.
Why wouldn't her distant relatives call her?
Exactly.
And another tip came from Davenport, California,
where the sheriff received a letter saying
that one of the solder children
was attending school in the city.
No staff at any of the schools knew of this at all,
and were like, no no we have no idea who
that is. All class photographs were checked and it was revealed to be bullshit. Why call in and
waste your fucking time pit like like that's your shit head. Like your real shit head. George
investigated all of these tips. My god seriously like dad power. People are the worst. Literally. Now John Sotter, the oldest son,
came back from the army.
Not the oldest son that was in the house at the time.
Not the army one.
He was the oldest son, like you never hear from him again. I don't know where he went.
He was just armying somewhere.
Okay.
So John Sotter, the 23-year-old son, he hypothesized that if his siblings were kidnapped,
then maybe they he agreed that they were taken to Italy.
We're George's from. Okay.
Especially due to the hotel story with the Italian speaking adult, like that one he was like, that's gotta be it.
Why? We don't know. Maybe it was because George said stuff about Mussolini and so is revenge, but it's all kind of...
That's a false stopper revenge.
Yeah, and everything's super jankily put together these theories, but like some of them
make sense, some of them don't.
Yeah.
Pieces of them make sense, pieces of them don't.
It's like, the one thing that doesn't make sense at all is that they burned in the fire.
Yeah, that doesn't make sense.
That just didn't happen.
So this one's pretty interesting.
In 1968, a tip came in 23
years after the fire. This contained a photograph and was sent specifically to
Jenny. There was no return address, but it had a Kentucky post-park. The photo
was a man that was in his mid-twenties and George and Jenny immediately were
like, that's our son, Louis. Oh my god. Who was nine at the time when he
disappeared? Same features, dark curly hair, brown eyes, same nose, like long immediately were like that's our son Louie. Oh my god. Who was nine at the time when he disappeared.
Same features, dark curly hair, brown eyes,
same nose, like long nose,
and slightly tilted left eyebrow.
And if you look at the pictures,
I'll put them up on the Instagram.
This picture, the photograph,
and the picture of Louie when he was nine.
It's like undeniable.
It looks like it could definitely be him grown up.
And what does it say?
There's like little features that you're like, that is the be him grown up. And what does it say? There's like little features that you're like that is the exact same feature.
Okay, what does it say? So the note was on the back of the photo and it was weird as fuck.
It said, what exactly? So did they have a brother, Franchie?
No.
So they were like, what the fuck is this?
But they were nervous that releasing the photograph
to the police would put their son in danger.
And danger?
So they hired a private detective to go to Kentucky
to try to find where this came from.
Holy fuck.
Well, the fucking detective went missing.
No.
Yeah.
He vanished with their money. So they don't know if he took
their money and just took off or if he literally went missing but no one ever heard from me. I just
got chills. Right. Like when did I find my PI and all of the my kids? Literally. And then it's like if
you took the money and just ran like like fuck him. And also it's like how much money did you get?
Like you just like what?
Like that's a weird thing to do.
I don't know, that seems fishy.
So I don't know.
There are thoughts that the numbers on the back
corresponded to zip codes in Palermo, Italy,
which makes a lot of sense.
So George and Jenny were again steadfast parents.
And George was quoted as saying at this time like in the late 60s
he said time is running out for us if they did die in the fire we want to be convinced otherwise
we just want to know what happened to them oh my god so they were still just like just like I need
answers so this is what I mean they were definitely losing faith in authorities and law enforcement helping them at all
And in response to all the bullshit
George and Jenny set up a billboard on Route 16 that had photos of their missing children and a message with all the available
information including
Mentioning how it was a miscarriage of justice that someone was clearly lying
Yeah, and it stayed put for more than 40 fucking years.
Oh my God.
They kept that billboard up for 40 years.
Wow.
Over 40 years.
They even passed out flyers similar to the billboard
and offered a $10,000 reward for any information
leading to the discovery of their kids.
That's a lot of money now.
That was a lot of money back then.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I put a picture up of the billboard on the Instagram,
but this is what it says.
It says on Christmas Eve, 1945, our home was set a fire
in five of our children, age five through 14, kidnapped.
The officials claimed defective wiring,
although lights were still burning after the fire started.
The official report stated that the children died in the fire,
however, no bones were found in the residue and there was no smell of burning flesh during or
after the fire. What was the motive of the law officers involved? What did they have to gain
by making a suffer all these years of injustice? Why did they lie and force us to accept those lies?
Oh my god. I literally have goosebumps like look at my leg like what bad
You guys yeah, this is bullshit my entire body is covered in really
Like damn homes. I love it. I love it
So at this time this is when they turn to another private investigator named C.C.
Tinsley to help them.
Fuck yeah.
That's a name.
C.C.
Tinsley.
Now this motherfucker found out from a member of the coroner's jury who helped to decide,
now this is a member of the coroner's jury with a people that helped determine the cause
of the fire.
Right.
These people determine that it was faulty wiring.
He, this guy that he talked to that determined it was faulty wiring, got paid off.
Was one of the fucking life insurance salesmen. No.
That basically the one that went with, uh, what's his name there?
Fierranzo.
Yeah.
Went with him to try to sell this shit.
So he just wanted the money.
So it seems like he might have a motive here.
Right.
So he also talked to the Fire Marshall, Sterling Lewis, unseen.
And this guy said that he talked to everyone that sorted through that scene that morning,
and they all said they found human remains.
But they didn't.
So why did Chief F.J. Morris say that they weren't any found?
Sterling Lewis was like, oh, they were probably rushing because they took two hours
normally in excavation after a house fire takes like days to weeks.
So he's literally like, they were just rushing and he must have been just not
paying attention to the human remains that were found because-
The fucking what was it? Five human remains.
It's five human remains, which would be a lot of remains.
Yeah.
Very noticeable.
So he quote thinks some remains quote may have been found that day but shit it was Christmas
and we were rushing.
Okay, like actually a big fuck you.
Like what? It's gigantic fuck you.
So this guy literally thinks that there was remains found,
but he was like things were kind of weird and like I think it just got like swept under the rug.
Like I don't know.
No, I don't think so.
So I also saw reported quite a bit that investigators were really looking carefully for a main, especially internal organs because from what I've read, everyone was like, because they turn a bright shade of red when they're exposed to heat.
And they'll be noticeable among the ashes. But that's bullshit too, because internal organs may be considerably reduced in size when
they're exposed to flame, because of fluid loss and consumption by the actual fire.
Right.
So they're not going to look like these plump, beautiful, red, huge things that you're going
to see floating around.
They're going to be like shriveled and fucked up.
Right.
So that's bullshit.
So because this wasn't lining up with what Morris had said that he didn't find remains,
Tinsley went searching for answers. So he found a minister that F.J. Morris, the fire chief,
who was super awesome at his job then, I clearly, told this minister in a confession
that he had found a heart in the ashes. Uh-huh. He said he put that fucking heart
in a box and buried it with a house once stood.
I know this one though. Tinsley actually convinced the fire chief to show him where this box was buried and dug and dig it up.
But it was a human heart.
The heart he had actually buried was a fucking beef liver.
Yeah. I'm screaming. Like, what? Did he think it was a heart?
No. This beef liver had never been in a fire at all.
It was a beef liver. So he bought beef liver at some store?
I think you have seen a liver in a heart side by side.
They're completely different. They don't look alike.
So why the actual fuck did the fire chief of the town do this weird ass shit?
He said he
thought it that by bearing that and saying that you know there was a heart and
everything it would provide closure to the solder family yeah the fucking beef
liver didn't provide any closure thank you this is a weird shit I have ever
heard yeah and what I'm wondering is if he told this minister in this
confession hoping that it would be a better way to say so that I'm wondering is if he told this minister in this confession, hoping that it would get back to the slaughter family,
and that it would, it would clear, basically save his ass.
Yeah, that didn't work out though.
And that's what, because Sterling, he's still on his bullshit.
And he thinks, he thinks Morris made the liver the whole thing up to save his ass for possibly losing or just not giving a shit,
but about actual remains of it.
Right. Because Sterling is still pretending that there was your remains found there.
Like girl seeing-
But he is just there itself out.
Oh well Morris must have done that whole thing just because he knows he fucked up and he wanted to
try to put none of that makes sense. Literally none of this makes sense. Like these officials
are a bunch of fucking idiots. And they think everybody else is idiots.
I'm like like dumbfounded Yeah, so unfortunately in the end all that remains are theories
Some of the theories are as follows one two three four five a local mafia attempted to recruit George and he wasn't having it
So in revenge they took his kids and let his house on fire
So in revenge, they took his kids and lit his house on fire. So people think that they lived out the rest of their days without saying anything because they didn't want their family to get in trouble.
This one doesn't really make a lot of sense because why the fuck would they steal only five children?
And why would they get the children that were on the top floor?
Yeah.
And not the ones that were sleeping on the first floor.
Right.
It doesn't make sense. Another one is that FBI records actually say that many
believed the whole thing about Jenny's distant relatives in Florida. Really? I think one of Jenny's
brothers kidnapped the kids and took them to Florida. But Jenny's relatives all took tests to prove
that they're kids were their kids and they all passed. Okay. So people also hypothesize that the
kids were kidnapped when they went out late that night to finish their chores
Right, I think eating the cow in the chickens and shit that makes sense
And that it had the fire happened after that and maybe by the people who have a distraction
George Sotter passed away shortly after this, you know, whole thing with the beef liver and everything in
1969 and he was 74 years old.
Oh, Jenny lived much longer and spent her last days building rooms onto her home and adding fences
around her home to keep everybody out. She would only wear black clothing since the fire.
I'm not okay. And kept a flower garden around the spot of the fire. And she like tended to it constantly. She eventually
passed away in 1989 at the age of 85. Wow. It was shortly after her death that the billboard was
taken down. Which is so fucked up. They should have just left it there. So Sylvia was the two-year-old
at the time. She's the last remaining solder child. How old is she? I don't know, how old would she be?
It was in 1945.
Oh, 1945.
Puzz on, I'll do it.
She was too.
Keep going, I'll do it.
Okay, I can't math.
Sylvia is a hundred percent certain
that her siblings didn't perish in the fire.
And she says that although she was only two years old,
the fire was her first real memory.
She says she can still remember her father screaming, bleeding and crying for his kids.
I think she'd be 75. That sounds good. Right now either 75 or 71. I like it. Yeah. Either way, she's still rocking around.
But she still remembers her father screaming and crying for his kids.
Not bleeding from trying to get in that place.
That legitimately hurts my soul.
Doesn't it?
Like my soul hurts.
Now Jenny Henthorne, who is Sylvia's daughter,
told the Times West Virginian to post any information on websloth.com.
Oh my god.
She said, quote,
my mom promised my grandmother that she would never let this story die.
That's what my brother and I are doing.
I just got fucking chills for the 84th time.
I know.
I'm gonna cry on my way home tonight.
Like now Sylvia, the two-year-old's children.
Is Jenny and George's grandchildren?
Yeah.
Like Sylvia promised her mother
that she would never let this story die.
Don't let it die.
Don't let it die.
Some happen to those kids, man.
Mm-hmm.
It's...
But the problem is now that all the people that would even know are dead.
I know.
It is a kind of a rough thing, but...
I don't know.
I mean, some of those kids would be...
could be alive.
Like, super old, though.
Like a five-year-old?
Yeah, she'd be like in her late 70s,
so she still could be alive at the same time. She's still very rough in super-old? Yeah, she'd be like in her late 70s so she still could be a lot of her options. She's super old. Yeah. Damn. And then wow. Wow. Look at this point, like just come out.
I know. Like when you're super old. That's the thing. I just don't know what the
I can't. But who knows? Exactly why. Like it's a very bizarre story. All I can say is for
It's a very bizarre story. All I can say is personally, I believe that they did not die in that fight.
No.
Do you think they got taken it, Italy?
I think they might have.
I think that's like the most plausible.
Do you say plausible?
Is that wrong?
Plosible?
Is it plausible?
Is it impossible?
Whatever.
I think that's the most plausible, plausible.
It might be the most plausible, too. Does it plausible? Whatever. I think that's the most plausible, plausible. It might be the most plausible too.
Does that work?
No.
A weapon is the IQ.
Is that my pants?
Is that my pants?
I bet my pants nose.
I bet you just know what happened to those kids.
But I don't want to hear from him so fuck that.
We're going to get fucking red lighted somewhere.
Oh yeah, great.
I'm not gay.
I'm not gay. I'm not
Yeah, that's the solder children disappearance
Wow, yeah
We want to hear from you guys. What do you think happened? Yeah, I want to hear theories
Yeah, I know everybody's got a different take on this so yeah, once again. I don't think they died in the fire
No, they definitely kidnapping in my opinion. I'm not sure what kind of kidnapping,
but it might seem like they are in Italy. So that's my stance. I feel like that's also my stance.
So give me your theories. We want to hear them. Hit us up.
Hit us up. Call me. And also, we are loving the messages, people.
Yeah, it's going straight to my head.
Can't say it enough. They warm my cold dead heart. Mine too. My white witch soul. So keep them
coming. Play. And I'm not sure what we're going to do for next week's episode but, you know,
stay tuned. Stay tuned. Keep watching. Suggest some action.
Maybe we'll take a suggestion.
Maybe.
We've gotten a few.
Perhaps.
We've got a lot of good suggestions.
I just have to like parcel through them.
Which ones we want to do next.
Parcel.
But we'll announce it in the next couple days.
Yeah, yeah.
I get to go in and perform an autopsy now.
I'm going to go home and go to sleep.
We hope you keep listening.
We hope you keep it weird.
Subscribe, reviews, tweet us, follow us, email us.
Follow us on Instagram at morbidpodcast, follow us on Twitter at AmorBidPodcast, follow us
on Facebook and go subscribe.
Live your life.
Live your life, your life. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to morbid, early, and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download
the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple podcasts.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.