Sodder Family Hope

On Christmas Eve, 1945, the Sodder family of Fayetteville, W.V., lost five children in a fire. Strange events that night and afterward fueled speculation, which continues to this day, that the children may have been kidnapped or murdered. This has been a question that has been asked for many years.

December 24, 1945 Snow was falling air was chilly children playing. Sounds like a regular holiday day. Exciting children impatient for presence that lay under the tree. Wonderment of when Santa would appear sounds normal but for one family this day became a nightmare that would haunt them and their own kids for the rest of their life.

That night was the night that a nightmare would unfold. Mr. Sodder told two of the boys to go out and lock-up the animals. The oldest daughter was reading a book. Later that night the phone rang and it was said that the call was from a lady that was asking for a person that Mrs.Sodder had never heard of. Half hr. Later the house was engulfed in flames. Mr.Sodder believing that his kids were upstairs asleep he tried to get to them but the fire was too hot. And for some reason vehicles that were used the day before would not start. It seemed that all was lost a family had lost five of it's member's. But once none of the evidence started, Why was it done, Who was involved? Why this family a family that had nothing and made something of their lives threw hard work evidence was not making scene nothing made since. The biggest question was why.

A brief, and a informal search took place, but instead of the skeletons they expected to find, firefighters encountered just a few bones and pieces of internal organs. The family was never told that anything was found. Because it was Christmas, a more thorough search was postponed.
The fire marshal told the Sodder family to leave the site as it was. He said authorities would come back and finish inspecting things later.

But the father, George Sodder, ignored the fire marshal. Less than a week later, he bulldozed four or five feet of dirt onto what was left of his home. The family planted flowers, a shrine to their lost children.

Two years later, George Sodder saw a newspaper photo of school children in New York and became convinced that one of the children was his missing daughter Betty. He jumped in his pickup and drove to Manhattan. Despite his insistence, he was not allowed to see the child.
But Sodder became convinced that his children were still alive -- if not in New York, then somewhere else. He and his wife hired a string of private detectives to search for the children.
Around the same time, Fayetteville Fire Chief Morris added a bizarre twist to the story. According to Unsolved Murders author Bragg, Morris told the Sodders that he had recovered a body part from the site of the fire and buried it in a box there.

If the box of remains could be recovered, that would be proof that the children had died that night. The family could finally move on. George Sodder and a private investigator asked Morris to show them where he'd buried the box.

"They got together and dug the box up," Bragg says. "They took it straight to a funeral home and asked the person in charge there to open the box and examine the interior. When he did open that box, he found what looked like a fresh beef liver."

That's when newspapers got hold of the story. Strangers began reporting that they'd seen the Sodder kids around the country. None of the leads went anywhere.
Today, there are no longer any traces of the 1945 fire at the former site of the Sodder house. Cars speed past a new white house at the end of a gravel driveway. A few Christmas decorations hang here and there around the house, but nothing stands out.

A huge reminder of the tragedy stood at the site: a billboard. The Sodders purchased the billboard in 1952. It featured black-and-white photographs of each missing child and an account of the fire. It also offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of any or all of their children. For years, people would pull over and walk up to the billboard, Bragg says. "When you walked up to that sign, you were looking right into the faces of the children," he says.

Boy in the Box

Case Information
In 1957, Susquehanna Road was a narrow country lane in the sparsely settled Fox Chase section of northeast Philadelphia. It was approximately a half-mile in length, linking Pine Road on the west with Verree Road on the east. The southern side of Susquehanna Road was wooded at that time, but the tree cover did not extend beyond a few yards from the road in most places. It quickly gave way to extensive stretches of open field and scrub growth. This provided a perfect habitat for rabbits, muskrats, and other small game. There were no houses on Susquehanna Road itself, but the compound of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, a religious order which operated a school for "wayward girls", adjoined the road on the north. A driveway providing access to this large, multiple building facility was located about 500 yards west of the intersection of Susquehanna and Verree roads. Almost directly across the street from the entrance to the Good Shepherd School was a wooded area choked with thick underbrush that was often used by local residents as a place to dump refuse. It was here, at the junction of two well-worn footpaths, that the victim's body was twice discovered during the final week of February 1957.

Description
An unidentified Caucasian male, probable age 4 to 6 years, whose nude body, wrapped in a cheap flannel blanket, was found lying face up inside a large cardboard carton just a few feet from the edge of Susquehanna Road . The body was dry and clean. The boy's arms were carefully folded across his stomach. The finger and toenails had been recently trimmed short and neat. The child was 40 1/2 inches tall and weighed 30 pounds. He had blue eyes, pale skin, and appeared malnourished. His hair was described as medium to light brown, or blond in color. It had been cut recently - very close to the head, in a crude, hurried way, perhaps as a deliberate attempt to conceal the child's identity. Small clumps of cut hair clung to his entire body, suggesting that someone had groomed him while he was unclothed, probably either shortly before or immediately after death.


If anyone would have information on this case or can remember anything about this please contact or leave information on this blog. American this is a time to help noone should have no name.

Philadelphia Police Dept. Homicide Unit, 215-686-3334 / 3335 / 3336
Detective Tom Augustine, 215-686-3334
America's Most Wanted: 1-800-CRIME-TV
The FBI - Philadelphia Field Office: 215-418-4000