Adeptus Ridiculous - SODDER CHILDREN DISAPPEARANCE: Vanished Without A Trace | Detective Ridiculous

Episode Date: May 8, 2022

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://orchideight.com/https://www.collectiblesquids.com/ code: ADRICOn Christmas Eve, December 24, 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder residence in Fayetteville, West Virginia, United States. At the time, it was occupied by George Sodder, his wife Jennie, and nine of their ten children. During the fire, George, Jennie, and four of the nine children escaped. The bodies of the other five children have never been found. The surviving Sodder family believed for the rest of their lives that the five missing children survived.Support the show

Welcome everybody to Detective Ridiculous. My name is Bricky. My co-host here is D.K., and he is about to start telling me all the wacky and wonderful things of real life. Real life, true. Real life. Crazy happenings that we have basically no explanation for. Exactly. But if you'd like to support us on Patreon or check out other wonderful benefits that come from there, go to patreon.

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I am just shocked that this is even happening. What started as an April Fool's Day joke has manifested itself into a fully fledged once a month. I'm not commenting on the manifest part I agree I'm I was shocked at how many people liked it and once a month I think it's a perfect amount of time and it's not getting in the way of anything else so yeah yeah I at the end of that episode I was like oh Brookie's just being nice you know he's not actually having an existential crisis just being nice and then all those comments came and I was like holy shit people did like it what the fuck

See, that's why I'm not shy, because shy was definitely not going to be nice. Shy was like, ooh, how could I milk these two fucking kids for some more goddamn cash? Yeah, when after an episode, Shai is like, wow, good job. I was like, oh my God, that sounded almost like a compliment. Almost. We're on to some heavy shit. She's doing the emperor thing where she's like slowly pushing you like a sociopath or she's like, yeah, good job. Keep doing it.

Keep doing it. increase finances slowly cracks the whip slowly brings out the whip yep and then cracks it anyway

she was already cracking it for me now it's your turn oh shit so no boy that sucks so you ready you ready for today's you're ready for today's topic? I am extremely hyped

please do share I don't know if this falls into true crime I guess it kind of does but today we are dealing with the Sauter Children Disappearance. It's a mystery that has remained unsolved for, I think, nearly 70 years. It's been speculated, it's been picked apart at, but there hasn't ever really been any conclusive evidence or theory to put this mystery to bed. Now, can you repeat the name of the what children?

The Soder Children, S-O-D-D-E-R. So it's the name of the family. Gotcha. The Soder family children disappearance. But everybody just calls it the Sauter Children Disappearance. So clearly we're dealing with some kids that are disappearing. I do hate kids. Wow.

Rude. By the end of this, you're going to feel real bad about that. Anyway, so kids are disappearing. But let's get some context around the story and actually learned a little bit. bit about this Sotter family and their children. So we are time warping all the way back to 1908, long time ago. George Sotter immigrated to the United States from his hometown of Tula Sardinia in Italy when he was only 13 years old. Initially, he made the trip from Italy to Ellis Island with his brother, but as soon as they arrived, his brother was like,

And decided to immediately return to Italy. What? He goes right back. He gets to Ellis Island. He's like, nope, don't like America. I'm going back. And he leaves a little 13-year-old George to fend for himself in America. Oh, so this is, wait, wait, so let me get this straight.

He didn't even step off the boat. He just left. He'd stay, like. Pretty much. Pretty much. He was like, nope. Don't like it. Don't like it.

This is like our stereotypical, like old school Italian immigration way, way back in the day. Yeah. So this 13 year old kid. So those 13 year old kids going to be like considered street trash? Um, probably. I mean, you know, he would never really talk about why he decided to immigrate to America, didn't really talk about his childhood or what drove him to live. leaving Italy, maybe it was the dream of a better life.

Maybe he had family problems, or maybe it had something to do with the Italian mafia. Who knows? All we know for sure is that little 13-year-old Georgie is now on his own in America. And surprisingly, George does all right for himself, actually. He's got a lot of drive, a lot of ambitions, pretty smart, and he finds work on railroads hauling supplies and water for railroad workers. After a few years, he saves up enough money to move to Smithers, West Virginia, where he would start working as a truck driver.

Smithers West Virginia. Smithers! Smithers! Smithers! Smithers! Who is that fat oaf in my office? Wow, that's George. No, I shouldn't say that.

Wait, wow, so he went full, like, old school American dream. He got a job immediately, saved up money. Yep. Yeah, pretty much. As a kid, he's hauling supplies for railroad workers, and he's making some money. And after a few years, George, oh, so he saves up enough money, he moves to Smithers, West Virginia, and he starts working as a truck driver. And it's at this point that I guess George realizes that truck driving is like his calling. He's been truck driving for a little while and decides to sort of like stake his claim.

So he actually starts his own truck hauling company for dirt and coal. And his trucking business does pretty well. It's not like, it's not the end-all be-all of trucking, but George is doing well. He's doing well for himself and he is successful. He is, he has succeeded in the American dream and is now making a clean living as a truck driver for his own trucking company. What was his last name again? Uh, solder. Oh, no.

George Sauter Oh no Why it's a fine last name The no The cloud is looming Nah It's called the Sauter Children And he's having a good time

He's not gonna have a good time for much longer Well you know Let's let's talk about it We'll talk some more We'll get there I guess He's still having a great time So while driving his trucking route He would routinely stop by a local shop in Smithers

called the music box. And there, he would eventually meet the store owner's daughter and his future blushing bride to be Jenny Sipriani. It's a great Italian name. Oh, goddamn. Yeah, she was also an Italian immigrant who had come to America when she was just a toddler. And the two would get married in 1923, and they would have an absolutely staggering 10 children over the next 20 years.

10 children they would have. They would also move their gargantuan family to Fayetteville, West Virginia, not sure why I had to say it like that, whatever, which, as it turns out, has a pretty healthy and active Italian community. So look at these. He's successfully, he's got a wife, 10 kids,

he's got a successful trucking company. It's great. It's great for George. Imagine, imagine being able to afford to feed 10 kids and two adults off of just a trucking business. Yeah, he does. He does well. I actually don't know what Jenny does or if she's just like a housewife. I don't think they ever say.

I don't think it actually matters. God damn it. Back in my day, I had $5 in my pocket. I bought a house, a wife and had $3 left over. Yeah. Also, another thing we got to talk about with our boy, George, he was really opinionated. He was known for having really strong opinions on just about everything.

But one of these opinions, one of these strong opinions, and keep this opinion in the back of your brain for potential of foreshadowing, was his very vocal disliking of Italian dictator Mussolini. Because at this point, we're in the 1940s now. You know, 20 years, they had 10 children. We're in the 1940s. So we're World War II time. Strong Italian community in Fayetteville.

That's not going to be the most popular opinion in certain circles of town, bad-mouthing Mussolini and saying you hate him. Even though he was in America and all that, yeah. Even though he was in America, Fayetteville had a really strong, proud Italian community. So he got into some arguments about his disliking and his disdain for Mussolini. Ah, shit. Yeah. So, with those family tidbits aside, and we'll circle back to this stuff a little bit later, we're going to fast forward a little bit to Christmas Eve 1945. The Sauter family have nine of their ten children at home. The one missing is named Joe, and this isn't the disappearance or anything. He's not gone missing. He's just off serving in the military, because, you know.

Okay. You got you. I was like, damn, we're hopping forwards. Yeah, it's World War II. He's off serving his country. What a good kid. Though, wait, December Christmas, 1945, isn't the war over? I think it is just about to be over, but he's still serving.

Because it's not like officially over, but it's just about to be. He's still serving. Okay. So their oldest daughter, Marion, who is 17 years old, has decided to surprise her three, youngest sisters, Martha, 12 years old, Jenny, eight, and Betty five, with an early Christmas

present. I couldn't find exactly what she bought them, but it doesn't matter. What is important is that the sisters were so happy, so overjoyed that they begged their mother to stay up past their bedtime and play with their new toys. And how could any... Oh, go ahead. A ball in a cup? I'm not actually sure.

I mean, Marion worked at a dime store. So I'm not exactly God, a bag of dimes. Holy shit. Although I'm assuming it's one of those general stores where like, you know how today we have dollar stores?

I'm assuming back then they were dime stores where you could just get a plethora of goods and it only cost you a dime. So I'm assuming it's saying like ball and a cub, maybe like a teddy bear or something like that. You know. I can't imagine the time frame. I mean, you have a cat.

You know what happens when you try to buy a, toy for the cat. They stood in the box. Yes, yes, they do. But I mean, at this point, whatever it was that Marion bought, they were all hype. They were so ecstatic and they wanted to stay up and, you know, how

could their mother, Jenny, possibly say no to that? You've got this wonderfully thoughtful gesture from your oldest girl. The kids are so excited. It's Christmas Eve. Of course you kiddos can stay up past your bedtime. With a few conditions.

the two older of the boys that are still awake, Maurice, who is 14, and Louis, who is nine, had to be awake. They had to make sure that they fed the chickens and put the cows away in the barn, lock the doors, turn off the lights, and just, you know, the normal shit you do before going to bed. Wait, what time do you feed the chickens? Like, like 9 p.m.? I don't know. But apparently they needed to feed the chickens and put the cows away before they went to bed. Maybe they just needed a late night snack.

It's Christmas, Bricky. They wanted to give the chickens Christmas dinner. You know, you know what? Okay. That, I don't fully believe you. But all right. Shai says, breed or hens consume their feed two to six hours each day. None of us know anything about breeding.

Oh, boy, that hits too hard. Hey. Hey. You know what? we're moving on. We are moving right along. Continue. Continue. The boys must stay up and do the things. Yes. So, at this point, George and his wife Jenny are sleeping in their room where they also have a crib that has their youngest daughter, Sylvia, who is two years old. The two oldest boys, John 23 and George Jr., 16, were already fast asleep from helping their father with work all day long. So let's just, let's do a quick overview as to where everybody is in the house right now.

Downstairs, you've got the three younger sisters with Maurice, Louis, and Marion, and all of their early Christmas presents. Upstairs, there's George, Jenny, and Sylvia sleeping in their room, and you have, oh, John and George Jr. are in their upstairs room as well. So, lots of kids, two adults, everybody is having a wonderful Christmas Eve. So, George's wife Jenny is awoken at around 12.30 a.m. by the telephone ringing. And you got to remember, this is the 40s. Telephones are not as widely popular as they are now. There isn't a phone in every single room, which also, we'll get into weird telephone shit later. But she has to go all the way downstairs to the one house phone to answer the phone. and when she does answer the phone

there's an unfamiliar woman's voice on the other end of the line asking for a name that she doesn't know. It also sounds like there's a party going on in the background with glasses clanging and Jenny also remembered that the woman has a really, really strange laugh. But she doesn't know the name,

so she chalks it up to a wrong number and hangs up. But while Jenny is downstairs, she takes note of a few things. For starters, she only sees Mary Marion asleep on the sofa downstairs. Where are the other kids? Is Marion the one that worked at the dime store?

Yes. She is the, yeah, she's the 17-year-old, worked at the dime store, gave everybody the presents. Is she the oldest, besides the one in the military? I think she is the oldest of the girls, yes. Okay. I think John is the oldest child they have at 23. And then there's the 14 and 9-year-old ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's four, or it's three boys, six girls? Yes. I will say yes. Okay. Yeah. So, Marion's the only one to sleep on the sofa downstairs. Jenny kind of just figures the other kids must have finally gotten tired when upstairs to bed. She also notices that the lights are still on, the door isn't locked, and the curtains aren't drawn like they usually are.

And I have to imagine this wasn't that weird to Jenny. She probably just figured kids will be kids. They forgot to do their chores. It's Christmas Eve. They were so excited. So Jenny turns off the lights, locks the door, shuts the curtains, goes back to bed. At around 1 a.m., Jenny is woken by a loud thud on the roof, followed by this loud rolling sound, like something hit their roof and then just do-t-t-took-took-took-took, rolled off of it.

I guess this didn't alarm her enough to get out of bed, though God knows if I heard something thud into my roof and roll off, I would get my ass up and see what it was. Yeah? But, yeah, but she decides, you know what? Ah, I don't hear any more sounds. It was probably just a harmless prank. No big deal. I'm going back to bed. I'm sorry, roll that back.

Did she actually think it was a prank? Yes, she thought it was a prank, bro. What the fuck? Is she, is she? she didn't even think it was fucking Santa Claus to that point. It's Christmas Steve, dumb ass. It's obviously Santa Claus.

Yeah, clearly. Santa Land. It took a wrong term cracked an ankle, then fell off her fucking roof, and he didn't check to go see if Santa Claus, they broke his neck on the way down. What a, what a fucking bitch. Santa Claus is dead in her goddamn lawn, and she was like, oh,

happy sleep time. My kids are all gone. Well, in all fairness, if it was Santa, and he had, like, broken a limb, she would have heard, like, thud! Ah! My leg! Or something, you know.

No, no, no. Say it's too much of a professional. Oh, you're... That's fair. That's fair. What the fuck? What the fuck? I don't know, man.

But she just thought, she thought it was a prank. She thought it was some kids that maybe threw a ball or something. But she didn't check. She didn't check. Oh, my God. All right.

Continue. So one hour later, Jenny is awoken again by the overwhelming smell of smoke. She jumps out of the bed, checks the adjoined room that George used as an office, and it was covered in flames. She quickly wakes up George, and if you're wondering why George hasn't woken up through all of this, you got to remember that Jenny had already been woken up twice, once from the phone call,

and again from the mysterious object hitting the roof. Yeah, Santa. She was probably still somewhat awake, little drowsy, about to doze off, whereas George, he is dead ass asleep after a long day of labor. So, in the ensuing chaos and panic of waking up to your house on fire, George, Sylvia, and Marion make it outside to safety. So that's George, the toddler, and the oldest girl. Jenny had been downstairs screaming at everyone upstairs to get out. The two oldest boys, John and George Jr., they eventually do come down, stumbling down the stairs, and their hair is already singed from the fire.

They all tried yelling and screaming for the rest of the children upstairs, but to no avail. Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jenny, and Betty are nowhere to be seen. George assumes that they were just too frightened to move and they're all huddled together hiding in the upstairs bedroom somewhere. Now, the efforts to try and get back into this house and rescue the five children is where things start to get a little weird. Wait, so is the master bedroom and the like on the bottom floor? Master bedroom is on the top floor.

So she ran, they ran downstairs and then screamed, Oh, because the toddler. Yeah, yeah. So they had to get the toddler out because they, I'm assuming first thing to do, grab the toddler, get her out of there. Yeah. And they start yelling upstairs for all the other kids. And only John and George Jr. come back down the stairs. And they've already been singed.

But some of the other ones that they thought, that they wanted to come down, they thought were upstairs, but they were actually the ones missing from downstairs that we don't know where they went. Yeah, we have no idea where they are. think they're upstairs. John and George Jr. had some conflicting reports after the fact, because at first they said, oh yeah, no, we saw the kids in the room and we tried to shake them and tell them, you know, get out there. But later on, they changed it and they said they had actually never seen the kids and they had only yelled through the door to try and get them to come down. So they kind of have conflicting reports. Some people say that maybe just through the shock

of everything. They remembered what they thought they should have done rather than what they actually did. So, anyway, the efforts to actually try and get back into the house to rescue these five children is where things do get a little weird.

So George tries to reenter the house by breaking through a window with his arm. And he actually ends up cutting his arm pretty badly. But... Yeah? But... You could pick up a fucking rock?

I guess there were none handy. And again, you got to remember, this is, this is like ultra panic mode. Yeah, all right, all right. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. He's like, oh my God, my kids are in the, my kids are in the burning fucking house. Holy shit, elbow.

I gotta get in and boom. He just, yeah. So through that, he can see the bottom floor and the staircase are pretty much covered in fire and flames at this point. There is, even if they got back in, there's no way to get up those stairs to the children. and there's no way for those kids to come down the stairs and escape through all of this fire. George then remembers that there is always, there is always a ladder near the house.

He knows exactly where it is. It is always there, and he can use that to get upstairs to the window and help the children out. But today, the ladder is mysteriously gone. They can't find it. Nowhere to be seen. George gets another idea. He's going to take one of his hauling trucks. He's going to back it up against the house, climb on top of it, and get the kids out on the truck.

But despite the truck working all day the previous day, tonight, it refuses to start. There's also a water barrel nearby that they could have used to maybe help extinguish the fire, but it's dead-ass winter in West Virginia. That water barrel is frozen solid. So I imagine, I imagine, I'd, imagine at this point people are thinking call the fire department why is no one called the fire department there's another problem well it's nineteen well it's nineteen forty something when they only have the one phone there's no cell phones they'd have to go into the burning house to call the fire department right

and that's to say true that's to say if the fire hasn't fucked up the the phone line somehow ah you you're pretty smart because the other problem is the solder's phone didn't work they kind just assumed that the line had been burned through because of the fire. But we will talk about that later. So, Marion, 17-year-old, worked at the dime store. She tries running next door and using the neighbor's phone to call the fire department. But again, 1940s, they couldn't connect with an operator. The operator was like away on holiday because it's Christmas. So a passerby. I think it was a neighbor, but some sources said it was just some dude that was driving past. I guess it doesn't really matter.

Someone drives past and sees this fire, and they actually go to the local tavern to also attempt calling the fire department. But guess what? Still no operator. Still no one to connect them with the firehouse. So this passerby actually drives into town and physically found the fire chief F.J. Morris

to tell him what has. had happened and that he is needed. What a girl. Yeah, I mean, you know, they saw a fire. You got to help, got to help, you know. And apparently, a fact I didn't know until I started looking stuff up for this episode, do you know how fire brigades rally in the 1940s? No, I do not.

They apparently start a phone tree where one firefighter calls another firefighter who calls another firefighter until all of them have been reached and assembled at the source. Sadly, though, it only took 45 minutes for the Sauter family's house to burn to the ground. Oh. And the firefighters didn't arrive until 8 a.m. the next morning to douse the still smoldering ashes of the Sutter family's house. Six hours. Something like that, yeah. And the firehouse, it was only 2.5 miles away.

It was only 2.5 miles away. Also, fun fact, the firefighters were further delayed the next morning because F.J. Morris, the fire chief, didn't know how to drive the truck and had to wait for someone who could. Oh Oh It's just so bad It's so bad What happens when you live in West Virginia Oh

I am not Hey listen West Virginians We love you here at Detective Ridicciccans I can't speak for those scrubs That Adeptus ridiculous But you know Anyway Yeah I'm from Adetist Ridiculous

Go have sex with your sister Oh That's brutal man Country Road All right, listen, fall 76 took place in West Virginia. It's one of the worst games ever made. There has to be a correlation. Oh, no.

All right, that's how they want to fire. It does. Go, go more in that. The only conclusion the Sauters could come up with was that their five beautiful children had burned to death in the fire. The Sotters spent all Christmas Day, well, not actually not all Christmas Day. They spent the morning of Christmas Day combing through the burned wreckage of their home, looking for any remains of their children. Odd thing is, though, they didn't find any human remains in the wreckage.

Fire chief F.J. Morris suggested that the fire had been so hot that it simply burned their remains to ash, cremated them right then and there. The fire was also later attributed to faulty wiring, which we will talk about that later as well. So naturally distraught and just in immeasurable grief in the following days, George decides I cannot look at the wreckage of this house anymore, knowing that my poor children are under there somewhere. So he decides to cover the site of the fire with five feet of dirt and turn it into a memorial for their lost children. Despite the fire department telling him to just leave the site alone,

we're going to come back next week and we're going to conduct a proper investigation. But George is just, he's too distraught. You know, he just lost all these kids and he's just, I can't stand looking at it. Now, there were an astounding amount of strange occurrences that would lead the sodders to actually believe that this was no accident and that their children had not burned to death and were actually still alive and perhaps kidnapped. Okay, so we're going to circle back around to like before the fire happened and talk about some of these strange occurrences that in hindsight is probably like big red flashing lights that something bad is going to happen. Like a giant fucking thing landing on your roof?

We'll definitely talk about that. Also, there's no fucking way the fire was hot enough to burn the remains like that. There's no fucking way in hell. I mean, you try to tell me that I'm going to take the opinion of the goddamn fire chief. I can't drive a truck. A lot of people online say that that you cannot trust F.J. Morris because he's a fire chief that doesn't know how to drive the truck. What does he know about how hot it needs to be to cremate human remains? Also, if I'm fucking sure, I don't think a house fire can burn to that heat to literally cremate bone.

I don't, like, there's the reason why those cremation things are look like jet. engines in like a tiny little thing. You push them in there and goes, wah, and then it's all out. And don't worry, we will, we will be talking about that. Good. So, the solder family had serious doubts

about the fire's cause because it was declared that it was faulty wiring or some sort of electrical failing. But George had had the wiring of the house checked out because they had recently installed a new electric stove. And they had been told

that as far as their wiring was concerned, everything checks out. The Sauters also knew that the lights and the Christmas lights were still on and working when they fleed the house. So if it was a wiring issue or an electrical failing, why were the lights still working when the fire started? There was also a really strange man that had visited the Sotter's house a few months prior to the fire. he'd shown up inquiring about a trucking job from George,

but seemed oddly preoccupied with the back of their house near the fuse box. This weird man even told George, this is going to cause a fire someday. But, like we already said, George had all the wiring checked out by the power company. He knew it was fine. He knew it wasn't going to start a fire, so he just kind of ignored it and put it out of his mind. there was also a salesman

that tried to convince the sodders to buy life insurance from him but when George declined the salesman became very irritable and specifically said your goddamn house is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed you will pay for the dirty remarks you've made towards Mussolini

you literally said those exact fucking words That's exactly what he said What George said Oh no that's what the salesman said No that's what the salesman said To him said the salesman said Yeah that's what George said Because there's no official recording of it

That's just yeah Right And I know that sounds like it should be a massive red flag And cause for concern at the time But again George is known for being heavily opinion and severely outspoken in his disliking of Mussolini. He was always arguing with people in town about it.

So getting into like a heated exchange about his dislike for Mussolini like this was probably upsetting, certainly, but nothing that was like supremely out of the ordinary for him. Another fun little tidbit, that angry salesman that threatened him that day, he was actually one of the jurors for the inquest that decided that their house fire had been caused by faulty wiring. He was a, yeah, so, little, he's, one might say, he's a little sussy. So it's a little suss. Yeah, a little, a little, a little suss. A little, a little, a little, maybe a little too on the nose, but I will discuss that maybe.

Yeah, yeah, maybe. The older Sotter sons, John and George Jr., they also remember that before Christmas, there was this car parked on Highway 21, which was like the main highway through town, and there was a man in it that was watching the younger Sotter children return home from school that day. Also, remember how we mentioned that when the Sotters were fleeing their house, the lights were on, and they were all still working. As it turns out, the reason the telephone didn't work that night wasn't because the telephone line had been burned through by the fire,

like they initially thought. The telephone line was actually purposefully cut. Someone had actually cut the telephone line, mistaking it for the solder's power line, which was supremely fortunate for the solder's, because according to Jenny, she went on record as saying that if the lights weren't on and the power wasn't working, they never would have made it out of the house.

And the guy who cut the telephone line on mistake, neighbors had also seen him stealing a block and tackle, which is kind of like this pulley system they used to get engines out of cars, which could have been used to tamper with the solder truck engines and account for the reason the trucks wouldn't start. though it should be noted that one of George's son-in-laws once told a newspaper in 2013 that he believed they had accidentally flooded the engines in their panic and haste and just to save their children and ultimately that's why the trucks wouldn't start

because they accidentally flooded them. It's also believed, though I don't think it was ever proven, that this man actually also stole the ladder from the solder's house. Reason people believe this is because in order to get to the power line or accidentally cut the telephone line, you'd have to climb a 14-foot pole to do it. And not many people are just sort of jimmying up a 14-foot pole with some pliers and cut and whatever.

But the ladder itself was found in an embankment about 75 feet away. And strangely, there is no record of this suspect. There's no official record of them interviewing him or telling his motive or his reason for cutting the telephone line and stealing the block and tackle. I mean, we can kind of assume what he was doing, but there's no official record.

And I don't think we even know what his name is. So one of the most compelling reasons the Saughters thought that their children were still alive was indeed because they found literally no remains of their children. Jenny specifically found this odd because there were remnants of appliances and their tin roof in the ashes. But literally nothing of their children's remains. Like her microwave could make it through the... the fire, but some bones or some clothing or whatever couldn't make it through. Jenny even started to run some mock tests of her own by burning animal bones,

and she could never get the bones to completely burn away into ash. She even studied another local house fire that killed a family of seven, and guess what? There were skeletal remains of every single one of them. all seven of the people that died in that house fire, they found remains of all of them. Jenny even went so far as to check with an employee at a local crematorium and found that there were skeletal remains found from fires

that not only burned hotter than her house, but far, far longer. If the children were killed in that house fire, there is literally no reason there shouldn't have been skeletal remains. found. So you're right. That sounds that sounds very much right. It's man, it's almost like I took a bunch of fire tech courses in high school because I was trying to do become a firefighter and I know you can't fucking burn remains like that. Is that true you did? I didn't know that. Yeah, it was an EMT for a year. Remember because I was going to fire? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember you were an EMT. I didn't realize you were trying to become a firefighter though. That's oh, it was it's normally the first step. Yeah, it's like you got to yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't burn that it doesn't burn that fucking hot. Damn, look at you. Wow.

It's not, it, yeah, shut up. It's not, it's, it's not, it's, shut up. You can't burn that hot. In 1946, there would be some, we'll say, significant developments that would pretty much cement in the solder's mind and really any rational person's mind that this house fire was no electrical wiring mishap, but instead a very, very intentional case of arson. First, there was a bus driver that had been passing through Fayetteville that recalled someone throwing what he described as balls of fire at their house that night. And once, when visiting the memorial site of the house fire, their youngest daughter, Sylvia, was kind of playing around near the memorial, and she accidentally found a small green rubber ball-like object while she was playing.

When George inspected this and he looked at it, he decided that this small rubber object was actually the remains of a pineapple bomb, and that had been what Jenny heard hit and roll off the roof and started the fire that night. With some fucking napalm. See, that's a lot more believable than a lot of... the other thing is I'm thinking about. That one, that one was kind of what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I still can't imagine you. You hear something hits your roof, roll off, and you're just like, I should check. You know, I should see what that is. I would think that, but one would also think that maybe you don't be living in an Italian neighborhood and bad mouth in the leader of Italy. Yeah, you know, there's many thought processes there. Yeah, yeah. There were also several instances of.

of neighbors or people coming forward once this, you know, the news of this house fire got out, claiming to have actually seen the five children from the house. There was a woman who was watching the solder house burn and claimed she actually saw the five children peering from a passing car window. There was also a waitress at a rest stop that claimed she actually served these children breakfast and mentioned that the car that they got into in the parking lot had Florida license plates on it. So with all of these reports coming in, and naturally the police and the fire department are no help

because they've already chalked it up to faulty wiring. So the sodders decide to hire their own private investigator, a man named C.C. Tinsley. Tinsley found out that the fire chief, F.J. Morris, confessed to a minister. that he actually did find some of the children's remains. Specifically, he said he found a human heart in the rubble of the house fire

and secretly buried it in a metal box. Wait, just the human heart? That makes even less sense. That would be something that I imagine would burn quite easily compared to like Bowen. You would think, you would think, but that's what the chief said. Is this the same chief who couldn't drive a truck?

Yes, sir. All right, then you can go suck a dick. I don't give a shit what he says. It gets better. Well, or maybe worse. Probably worse, actually. As you can imagine, Tinsley and George wanted to have a few words with Morris about this human heart that he found. He confessed that he did find a heart.

He showed them where he buried it. But once they dug up this metal box, there was no heart in that box. Do you know what was in the box, Bricky? What was in the box, D.K. A goddamn beef liver that had never been exposed to fire. Okay. Morris would later... Right?

So Morris would... What? I will tell you. I will tell you. Tell me. Morris would later confess that he was hoping if the Saughters had found anything resembling the remains of their children, they would cease the investigation. and they would find closure in knowing that their children had died in the fire. This guy is such a fucking moron.

Oh, my good God. He put a beef. Oh, my God. This is like an Edna and Eddie skits. Yep. A beef liver that had never been exposed to fire. Round of applause for the fire chief, right? Round of applause.

Wow, the ingenuity. The creativity. So, yeah, the fire chief. Now, as one might imagine, George's life became consumed with finding any detail he could about the whereabouts or the fate of his children.

If any kind of lead came in, he would head across the country if he had to to check it out. There was an instance where he saw a picture of a kid that just kind of looked like one of his daughter and he booked it all the way to New York to frantically demand, demand that he'd be able to see what could be his long-lost daughter.

But naturally, the parents and the school she attended, they refused for obvious reasons because he was being fanatical and had no proof whatsoever. And so they just sent him packing and sent him home. And tragically, this is sort of just what happened. He would find a clue. He would find a lead. would go searching for it and

nothing would come up. And in their desperation, the Sotters even decided to once again do a thorough search of the charred remains of their house, which meant digging through and excavating

the memorial site that they had made on top of it. However, this time they actually found human remains in the memorial site. Oh my good God. They found human remains. Specifically, they found several shards of vertebrae. And after sending the vertebrae to the Smithsonian, it was determined that the vertebrae, vertebrae, wow. Vertebe. Yeah, those are some

sussy spinal bones, boy. Anyway, it was determined that the vertebrae probably belonged to someone age 16 to 17, and sadly, the oldest of the missing solder children was only 14. And the... How good was forensics at the time? I mean, they said there was, you know, a possibility that maybe it could be from a 14-year-old. You know, it's possible. But the other problem is the bones showed no signs of having any fire damage. What the fuck?

Plus, the Smithsonian was like, you know, it's really unlikely that you would only find some vertebrae. considering the house fire and that the house went down in 45 minutes and how hot it was, y'all should have found some fully intact skeletal remains. These are not the remains of your children. So, I imagine. They were plagued by fire chief. I knew it. You're probably wondering how the hell did those bone fragments get there, right? Remember how George Sauter, in his just immeasurable grief,

covered the site with five feet of dirt and turned it into a memorial site? Yes. In a cruel twist of fate, their private investigator Tinsley actually found out that the dirt they used to cover the memorial site actually originated in a nearby cemetery on Mount Hope. and that's why it had bone fragments in it. Oh my God, the man's, oh my God, the man's a grave, a grave robber. Oh, shit.

Unfortunately, the dirt he used originated from a cemetery. I mean, he couldn't have known that, I suppose, but yeah. And so when they went to excavate, they found bones. This guy, this guy, this guy. You can't catch a break. He can't get to break. This guy. It all started off so good for George, too.

His mental health is deteriorating at such a degree. Oh, yeah. But he's not given up. He's, you know, he's a driven individual, this George Sauter. So George even tried to get the FBI to intervene and conduct a thorough investigation of their own to see if they could help figure out this kidnapping. Believe it or not, George Sauter of West. West Virginia, Fayetteville, West Virginia, he actually got a response from FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover.

Wait, really? Yeah, he actually, he got a hand, I think it was a handwritten letter from Jay Edgar Hoover. Unfortunately for him, Hoover's response was, although I would like to be of service, the matter related appears to be of local character and does not come within the investigative jurisdiction of this bureau. Ah. However, J. Edgar Hoover did make sure to let

George Sotter know that if the local authorities allowed it, the FBI would investigate, and Jay Edgar Hoover could actually send agents to help with the investigation. But... But...

The local police and fire department declined the offer, and the FBI could do nothing. You know, I don't think I blame them. I think how many years has it been since the incident? How many years has it been? I would have to say maybe five or ten. Okay, because like that's the thing is while I completely can sympathize with the difficulty of our man George here,

like, at this point, I imagine he's like the local basket case. who's just constantly like losing his fucking mind every day trying to freak out he's like the local conspiracy theory kind of guy and like i i i get it but i can imagine all everyone in the town is just like i'm so tired of hearing about like like like like i don't want to be mean but get over it but like you know like it's been 10 years kind of thing i you know i haven't thought about uh the way that the locals would sort of view him at this point because he is fanatically searching for anything he can find on his missing children. And actually, the FBI later down the road, they would get involved. I think it was maybe shortly after George dug up the memorial site and found the bones.

His investigation had started to get a little bit of national attention, I guess because of the bones. So the FBI figured, hey, this could be an interstate kidnapping. We might have the jurisdiction for this. Oh. But they couldn't find any significant leads and drop the case after two years. In West Virginia, there were also two different hearings on the case, but because of lack of any real credible evidence, I think that's what it was. The case was deemed hopeless, and the case was closed on a state level two.

So all avenues are pretty much. So you got to understand, the sodders at this point, they've tried everything. Like, you would think at this point, okay, look, it's time to give up. Something happened to the kids, and we just got to get over it. They've done everything, they could, and still nothing. But they still don't give up, and they still have an idea on what can get a little more widespread attention on their missing children. So they print out flyers that have the children's photos, names, and a $5,000 reward, which would later be up to $10,000 as time went on. And in 1952, they would put up one of the most iconic billboards in West Virginia history.

Shai just put it in the chat, but it was this simple billboard. It had all the same information as the flyers, pictures, names, age, and what they think, what the family thinks, happened to their children, and they built it on top of the memorial site. And this billboard, it would remain standing for 37 years on U.S. Route 19 in Fayetteville, West Virginia. When was it finally taken down? I will get to that, actually. Okay. So I will tell you when it comes down.

Don't, well, okay, okay, I'm sorry for something to gun, D.K. It's okay. Well, it's not a huge spoiler. It's, uh, it gets taken down after, uh, Jenny Sotter passes away. Ah, okay. Yeah. Um, but, uh, all of this did bring a little bit of new attention to the case. And it actually brought in another lead.

And this lead, boy, the Sotter family really latched on to it. Uh, it was made by someone named Ida Crutchfield. who ran a hotel in Charleston, West Virginia, she claimed that the children came into the hotel a week after the fire. She claimed that she didn't remember the exact date, but that the children were accompanied by two women and two men, all being Italian. They all stayed at a hotel in a large room with several beds at around midnight.

When she tried to approach and talk to the children in a friendly manner, kids, what's up? How are you doing? The men appeared hostile and refused to allow her to talk to the children. She claimed that one of the men looked at her in a hostile manner, then turned around and began rapidly talking in Italian, and then the whole party stopped talking to her and left the next morning. And while this may seem like just the lead of the century and the Saughters thought it was a big deal, Ida was determined to be a not credible witness. because she had, one, never met the Sotters, two, only seen their picture two years after the fire,

and three, she waited five years to come forward with the story. And George Sauter wasn't necessarily being quiet about this either. That's true, again, you know, and I assume that this billboard was getting a lot of attention because you cannot go through Fayetteville. Why do I keep saying it like that? Fayetteville without seeing this thing. It was getting a lot of attention.

So, you know, she was deemed not credible, and nobody really further investigated it. But again, that's just how all of these leads went. George would hear something promising. He would search high and low for it. And damn it, I came up empty again. So it wasn't until 1968. So, 1968.

So 23 years later. Yeah. It wasn't it that they got another kind of weird piece of evidence? They got an envelope in the mail that was addressed to Jenny Sotter, and it was postmarked in Central City, Kentucky with no return address. In the envelope was a picture of a young man in his 30s that bore a very, very striking resistance. resemblance to their son Louis. He shared basically the same hair, brow, and nose features that young Louis had. The back of the photo also had this really strange message on it that no one has ever been able to make sense of.

But it read this. Louis Sauter. I love brother Frankie. I-L-I-L-L-L-E-L-E-E-N-3-2 or 35. What? Nobody knows what the fuck this means. It all seems like a bunch of gibberish. Nobody knows if it's code, if this is actually Louis Sauter, or what I love brother Frankie is.

Who knows? Nobody knows. Naturally, the family wanted to know where the hell this thing came from. So they hire another private investigator to sort of scope around Central City, Kentucky, see if he can find anything. But the investigator never got back to them, and they could never locate him again. And after this, the Sotters were worried that if they published either the photo or any interest in Central City, Kentucky, it could bring danger to Louis if he was there because they sent the private investigator and he disappears. Is it because they sent him there? Is it because somebody knew?

Is it because somebody wanted to silence the investigator? I don't know, but... So all they could really do was they put the updated photo of Louis on the billboard and hope to gather a new lead. And even more sad news, George died a year later in 1969, still hoping for one last lead in the case or one last glimmer of proof about what happened to his children. Whether or not they were alive, he just wanted closure. He just wanted to know for sure if his children What had happened to his children

And Jenny would pass away In 1989 And it was after her death That the family finally took down the beaten up Old Billboard for good So that billboard stayed up until 1989

Huh 89 89 89 1989 And he died in 1689 And he died in 69 or 89? He died in 69.

She lived a good while after. God damn. Yeah. And I believe it was reported that she wore black every single day to mourn for her children and her husband. So now we're basically caught up with sort of the majority of what we know about the disappearance of the Sauter children. Did they perish in the fire? or they kidnapped. The surviving family

believed that the incident was because of the Italian mafia and their father's strong dislike of Mussolini, that the mafia had tried to get him to join their ranks or extort money from him. And when he refused to play ball, this is how they chose to get him. Some believe that they may have even taken the children back to Italy or that if they were told that if they ever tried to contact a family

or anyone they used to know, the mafia would take them out, too. But one of the biggest questions is if the children were kidnapped from that house, how the fuck did they get out of that house? Because Marion is sleeping downstairs on the couch. So if someone is trying to wrangle and force five kids, the oldest one being 14, out of, you're trying to wrangle all these kids, you're telling me there's no way Marion or someone else in the house. doesn't wake up.

If she woke up by a phone and Santa Claus falling down, like she'll wake up from that fucking thing. Kids scream. They scream. They screech when things are normal. Yeah. No way in hell. Yep. Though some people have said that maybe

it was a person that the kids knew. So it wasn't alarming because it was like, oh, hey, it's Johnny from across the block and he's here to take us to go do some Christmas shenanigans. So maybe That's why they didn't make any noise. It's also been theorized that you gotta remember what tasks the children were given by their mother before she went to bed.

These kids were specifically told to make sure that they put the cows away and fed the chickens outside. Just the boys, though. The girls were playing with their toys. True. I think all of the children were responsible for putting the cows. and feeding the chickens? I don't think it was specifically said. But that's kind of the theory, is that when they went outside to feed the chickens, put the cows away, that's when the kidnapper struck, and he grabbed them, and he took them all away before the fire even started, which would

explain why the door wasn't locked, why the lights were on, why the curtains weren't drawn, because the kids never got to come back to tend to any of that stuff. So for all we know, kids were long gone before the fire even started. It's also speculated that the police and the fire department may have been involved in covering up this whole incident. I mean, we know how competent good old F.J. Morris is. And also, they declined to let the FBI investigate. So was this a cover job?

Was this an inside job done by local police and fire departments that maybe had a thing for Mussolini? Who knows? And some people, the Sauter family included, also noted that if the children were in the house during the fire, why hadn't they gone to their bedroom window and just started pounding on it and yelling and screaming that they were there and trying to alert anyone to their presence? As I found out when looking stuff up for this episode, apparently it is rather common that during house fires, Young children will not go screaming and pounding and yelling their brains out and being scared, but rather it is really common for them to stay hold up and hide somewhere they think is safe

instead of just absolutely losing their fucking mind. So just because they didn't alert anyone doesn't mean they weren't up there. And there's actually another big problem with the mafia kidnapping theory. So, Stacey Horn did a piece for the NPR about the disappearance of the Sotter Children, which ate it infinitely in this episode. And she spoke to someone named George Martin, former head of the Crime Commission for West Virginia. And he said, even if the mafia had a presence in West Virginia at the time, the modus operandi of this particular event doesn't in any way,

comport with what the mafia would have done. To me, it's like saying the Martians landed in the fields and took these kids away. So according to this expert, there is no chance.

There is no way that this was a mafia kidnapping hit job. Are we not going to rule out the possibility that the kids just ran away? Well, I suppose that is entirely possible, but they had no reason to.

George and Jen, they had a good family. Everything was good. Did they? Like, as far as we know, I mean. Yeah, on whose record, George's and Jenny's? Well, according to the surviving family, I suppose. You know, the kid, the other kids, you know, I mean, I guess it's not impossible that maybe the kids decided to run away for whatever reason, but they would never come back. They would never tell anyone. they would never report to a newspaper or tell anyone about it after they ran away.

I don't know. It's a bizarre thing because it was, nine or ten kids. Well, whatever happened to the one that was overseas? Did they come back? Oh yeah, he eventually came back. Not too much was, I didn't find anything about him and what he thought about this whole thing. But that must have been a startling thing to come back home to. After dealing with World War II, he comes back home.

What do you mean the house burned down and five of my siblings are missing? Yeah, missing and or dead. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, wow, that's, I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna go back to the military. You know, you know,

I think it doesn't seem, it's seen that the obvious, the obvious, like, answer-ish one for me is that, that when Santa Claus fell off the roof, that was obviously the little bomb thrown to the house on fire. Like, I don't believe Jack in the whole faulty wiring thing.

I got, I got, I got, on that one. Yeah, that was pretty much disproven. And everybody's like, yeah, that did not happen. There is no evidence to suggest that it was faulty wiring at all. The line was cut. And, you know, yeah, I think everybody is in agreement that that is not faulty wiring. And it was indeed the pineapple bomb and the napalm that started that fire. Yeah. I also really absolutely do not believe that that salesman guy has anything to do with it. That's like, his statement, if that is exactly the statement that Mr. George said,

that's way too on the nose. That's like, that's like George, because at that point, George is a fucking basket case. That's true. He's insane. Because I think after the couple years, he's,

because not only, not only was he viewed as probably the weird conspiracy theorist by his peers because of his hatred for Mussolini, which is a fine thing because Mussolini wasn't a great guy, but he's already seen as the conspiracy theorist

the time. And then like half of his kids go missing or die. And then, and now you're going to tell me that after like all this pain and difficulty he's been going through. And then one of the people literally says you will regret this

and your house will burn down and your kids will die. It's like, it's pretty on the nose. It's too on the nose. It sounds like he would fucking make up. Maybe. Or he would misconstrued in order to try to get something like, like like mentally, you know?

Mm-hmm. As far as we know, that's what the guy said, as far as we know. As far as we know via George Mr. Crazy Man. George and the family and any reporting done on it. Yeah. Oh, also, fun fact, almost forgot. They actually did track down who called them that night. I was about to say, I had a feeling that the people who called them may have been,

well, actually, no, you tell me first. Well, as it turns out, It was just a coincidence, and that was literally just a wrong number. No conspiracy here. It was literally just a wrong number. They found the person, and she was just like, yeah, I called the wrong number. My bad. That's it.

Is that completely, like, are we taking their word as well? I mean, because I can, I can vary. Like, police did an investigation and they could find nothing to suspect her other than, yeah, I called and it was the wrong number. And, I mean, theoretically, though, if the person that called wanted to do anything suss, they actually wouldn't have called. Because, like, again, you got to remember, like, when that call happened, it actually woke up Jenny. If the call doesn't happen, she doesn't wake up. And I mean, maybe she doesn't even hear the pineapple bomb rolling off of her roof. I disagree.

I can see them completely feeling out the situation. Oh, really? Okay. Does a call finds out if the people are there, the people that we really don't like. Oh. Oh, they pick up the phone. Oh, sorry. Wrong number.

Hang up. They're there. Throw the fucking thing. Because the thing comes after the call, correct? Oh, that's true. It's about an hour after the call. I don't know why I didn't think about it like that. In my head, I was like, oh, she's awake.

And like, if she's awake, she gets everybody out of the house. She's the reason everybody's safe. You're right, though. And I know, like, I think about, like, you go back to the lady and you're like, hey, lady, you call the, did you actually call the wrong number? It's like, we got this dude who's been on this for like five years now. And he's still, this thing. She's like, yeah, I call the wrong number.

number and then the police is like okay thank you because we're so sick of this fucking case and then they leave that's true and in the 40s how would they check it did they would they really have been able to verify like ooh they they don't have call receipts if she was in cahoots with someone throwing something no one would fucking know they probably and they probably couldn't check to see if she made a call to someone else after she called the solder's house anyway so she could have and been like hey yeah drop the bomb ooh I like that I'm just saying if you want if you wanted to kill some people or at least fuck their day up real bad you'd call it make sure they were there before you bomb the thing that's true oh I do like that

now I don't know about the kid part of it the kids disappearing I got nothing but I fully I fully do agree that their house being burned down was absolutely some kind of arson there's and I also don't think their kids their kids burned up whatsoever because there'd be totally more remains. But I think I don't know what's up with the kids. Yeah. And Sylvia, the youngest that was in the crib

during the fire, she only recently passed away in 2021. But she kept the family story alive as yeah, she her, I think she actually told some newspaper that her earliest memories were of

her father's bloody arm and him just screaming and screaming and screaming until he was hoarse trying to get those kids back. That's like her first memories of him. And she would keep the story alive as best she could, and she would actually go on the internet and discuss the incident with cyber sluice and try to come up with theories or just talk about her life

because she had promised her parents that she wouldn't let the story die and that she would do everything she could to find closure for her lost siblings. though in recent times most people or a lot of people i shouldn't say most people because there are probably some people that still don't believe it a lot of people have come to believe that the most logical theory is probably the most likely theory as well that the solder children did indeed perish in the fire um so the issue with there being no remains and the fire not burning long enough or

hot enough, some have explained it as, and I think some firefighters actually tried to explain it like this, is that really the fire didn't just burn for 45 minutes. Rather, it burned all night long and through the morning. Because sure, the house collapsed and burned to the ground in 45 minutes, but when the fire brigade showed up the next morning, the remains were still so hot that they had to douse them to investigate. So the theory is that maybe you couldn't see actual fire, but the ashes and the remains were so hot that they actually did kind of burn away the bones.

I don't know if that's true because I'm not a firefighter, and I don't know if the ashes can actually get that hot, but that's the theory. I was never a firefighter either, but I don't know. I just don't, I don't know if I'll believe that. Yep, that's how some people have tried to explain there being no remains. It's also believed that the initial search of the house, or the wreckage of the house,

was nowhere near long enough or thorough enough to actually find any conclusive evidence, because that first search was only two hours. They only spent two hours coming through that stuff. By today's standards, that would have been a days-to-week-long process sifting through every little piece of debris. They only took two hours. It's also possible that the firefighters at that time didn't know what they were looking for. In this case, if the bones had been burned to ash, theoretically, I guess the next thing you look for, according to a firefighter that was interviewed about this, apparently the next thing you look for are pops of red from, grim as it sounds,

any potential leftover entrails or organs from the body which is kind of gross to think about there's also the issue with how the actual scene how the wreckage was handled by both local authorities and the

sodders because at no time did the police or the fire department tape off or restrict the area pretty much anyone could have come to the scene, tampered with any amount of evidence they wanted, and no one would have known. Someone could have theoretically come and taken the bones out of the wreckage if they wanted to,

and nobody knows. There's also the issue of George Sotter not listening to the fire department. They specifically told him, leave the site alone for like, I don't know, a week, and then we'll come back, investigate further, and whatever. But, and I mean, you can't blame him for being so grief-stricken that he does this, but he doesn't listen to them. He bulldozes over the site with five feet of dirt and contaminates the whole scene and makes any evidence basically worthless. No, I'm just saying, I think he's a little crazy. Yeah, he's, I mean, understandably, but yeah. And personally, I'm starting to think that the children did tragically die in this housefire.

Because, like, I'm not entirely sure, like, with this mafia theory, right, even if it was them, what did they gain by kidnapping five of the Sotter's children? It wasn't for a ransom or to get the Sotters to do something because they never got any demands. They never let the Sotters even know that the mafia had their children. like they don't gain anything from it it's just a lot of trouble for some petty revenge I was about I was about to say I don't know the mafia do some pretty fucking terrible things for some very light reasonings

I get have we not ruled out the idea that the mafia or whoever took the kids and just straight up fucking killed them oof I hadn't thought about that I hadn't thought about the mafia just like kidnapping the kids and then just yeah and then like like then the father will never know where they went and he'll never get closure and then he spends his last rest of his life as a crazy person

that's not out of the realm of the mafia's concepts it's a little it's a little uh it's a little moving parts but just take the kids just or just they killed the kids and then took him away like oh that's possible that's possible um oh yeah the fire fire was likely arson shy um so yeah the fire the fire definitely feels like arson that that that that I'm convinced on the arson part. Yeah. Yeah, I hadn't thought about

like the mafia just took the kids and just off the, but like, why wouldn't you just let them perish in the fire? Well, I guess you've got no way of knowing for sure, right? Because if they do manage to get out, then you don't fuck up the sodders for the rest of their time. And I mean, maybe, I suppose so.

Yeah, it's possible. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of all we really really. know for sure though is that it was probably arson and the kids were never found again and their remains never found again to this day

people are still speculating on what happened what the hell does the back of that photograph mean with that weird freaky you know I love my brother Frankie nobody knows no no that that that photo is

totally just a pretender there's no way that is someone that is someone who absolutely wants to get a fucking who wants to get their name in a news story or they want to to fuck around with this and say they know something when they don't I believe that the lady in the hotel with the five

kids is doing the exact same thing that's why she won't become a witness there are there are tons and tons and tons of people who want to be a part of this kind of news story thing and they always make up bullshit that is very possible because it did get a lot of national attention

so it is entirely possible Look, look, look, I put all this stuff in a name generator. Look what I did. I put a random, bunch of random letters and things on the back, and they're all scrambling for it. They have no clue what's happening. I don't believe for a second. I think a lot of times you have to, you can't remove the concept of malice for some people who just really want to get it.

Because once it's national news, then you're opening yourself up to all kinds of people wanting to do shit. Yep, that's Pandora's box. You have clearly opened it. but the picture, they really believe that picture. Like I said, they updated the billboard and put that new picture up. They were sure that was Louis.

They were sure. Could just be some fucking guy. It's just like, what the hell? I mean, if you're someone that's just looking to be a fucker and this thing has made national news, they've probably shown the billboard

and the flyers all over the place, wouldn't be too hard to find an Italian guy in his 30s that sort of looked like what Louis would have looked like. So could be, could just be some people fucking around, but nothing's ever been confirmed. Remains were never found. To their dying day, they didn't know what happened to their kids, for sure. So, there you go. That is the Sotter children disappearance.

I am in full belief that there is no fucking way. in hell that that the house burned down as an accident and there's no and I don't believe almost anything that happened after five years after five to ten years anything past that I chalk up to just people excited to make their name somewhere

yep people just trying to make get their 15 minutes of fame and just fuck around literally just that yeah I don't believe I don't believe in it whatsoever and with the knowledge of how they act nah nah nah nah nah

it's crazy my opinion on what happened to these kids has flip-flopped so many times since like looking up stuff on this initially I was like oh shit this is the mafia like there's no fucking way that there are no remains left at all in this house

there's no chance there's no the fucking mafia got him and then I saw reports from some firefighters that we're like, no, it's totally possible. And, you know, and then there's the extra, but it's like, oh, yeah, this isn't, this isn't what the mafia does. And I was convinced that it was like, oh, okay, they died in the fire.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then after today, you fill in my head with like, oh, yeah, the mafia could have just kidnapped them and killed them. I'm like, shit, maybe it was the mafia. So I don't know what to think, man. It's an option. It is a possibility. Yeah.

I don't know what the hell to think anymore. So, uh, that's all I've got on the solid. daughter children disappearance. So that's, that's, that's, that's the schick. Hope you enjoyed. That's the schick. That's the schick.

That's our detective ridiculous episode today. I guess, yeah. Detective ridiculous. I, I, I'm telling you, uh, Jimmy Tortolini went out there, you know, first chaplain of the word bears,

Erebus came by, grabbed the kids and was like, just like sacrificing them to a dark gods or some crap. I don't, Like, I, I would, I would be fucking shocked if any of these kids are alive. I know, well, right now they certainly are because was the youngest one just died in 2021. Yeah, and she was, she was still a toddler in her crib when this happened. So yeah, even if they had survived somehow, they probably would have died of just old age and natural causes by now.

Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's no. Nah, no, no, no, no, no, I don't believe it. Also, I am so proud of you. You made it this whole way. We had been talking about Italian people, Italian families, the mafia, and only now are you bringing the word bears in. Round of applause for Brickie's restraint. Round of applause.

Round of applause or Brickie's restraint. Really well done. I'm so proud of you. You were in the middle of your story. I was. I was. I was. But yeah.

So I have no idea what we're doing next time. Shyle probably hit me with like, hey, here's some topics. What do you want to do? and I'll pick one out of a hat and we'll let you know when it happens next. Yeah, Bricky, take us home, man. There is only one thing I can say about this entire situation that I feel perfectly comfortable stating. Nothing good ever happens in West Virginia.