Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - True Crime This Week: Christmas Disappearances

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

In 2002, Laci Peterson, eight months pregnant, vanished from her home in Modesto, California. Her husband, Scott Peterson, claimed he’d gone fishing—but as investigators dug deeper, they uncovered a web of lies, infidelity, and murder that captivated the world.Then, we travel back to 1945, when five children from the Sodder family vanished after a mysterious house fire in West Virginia. Decades later, their disappearance remains unsolved—fueling rumors of arson, kidnapping, and conspiracy.Join Vanessa Richardson as she unwraps two haunting stories of love, loss, and unanswered questions—reminders that even during the season of joy, darkness can linger beneath the tinsel. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Scams, Money and Murder to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Scams, Money and Murder is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Crime House Daily, Killer Minds, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, Crime House community. It's Vanessa Richardson. Looking for another Crime House original podcast to add to your rotation, you will love Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelin Moore. Every Wednesday, Morgan and Kaelin dig into the world's most notorious crimes, clue by clue, from serial killers to shocking murders. They follow the trail of clues, break down the evidence, and debate the theories. It's like hanging out with your smart and true crime-obsessed friends. Listen to Clues on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This week in crime history, we're looking at two suspicious disappearances that happened at the height of the holiday season. On December 24, 2002, 27-year-old Lacey Peterson was first reported missing in Modesto, California.

57 years earlier on December 24, 1945, five members of the Sotter family in Fayetteville, West Virginia, disappeared after a devastating house fire. Their whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. Welcome to True Crime This Week. I'm Vanessa Richardson. Every Sunday, we'll be revisiting notorious crimes from the coming week in history. From serial killers to mysterious disappearances or murders, every episode will explore stories that share a common theme.

Each week will cover two stories, one further in the past, and one more rooted in the present. Here at Crime House, we know none of this would be possible without you, our community. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following, Crime House Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. And for ad-free and early access to Crimehouse Daily, plus exciting bonus content, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. This week's theme is Christmas Disappearances. First, we'll start on Christmas Eve 2002 when Lacey Peterson went missing. Her husband, Scott, claimed he had no idea what happened to Lacey, but as the investigation dragged on, it became clear that he wasn't telling the authorities everything.

And before long, Scott was the prime suspect in his wife's disappearance. Then we'll wind the clock back to 1945 when the Sauter family home went up in flames. Four of the ten children made it out safely, but it seemed like the rest had vanished into thin air, and to this day no one can agree on what happened to them, or if they really perished that fateful night. We'll unwrap both of these cases coming up. At 9.30 a.m. on December 24, 2002, 30-year-old Scott Peterson left his home in Modesto, California to go fishing. According to Scott, his wife, 27-year-old Lacey, was just getting ready to take their golden retriever for a walk. Even though Lacey was heaven,

pregnant, Scott apparently didn't try to stop her. Instead, he rushed out the door, eager to get some time out on the water. An hour later, one of the Peterson's neighbors found their dog wandering the streets, still wearing his leash. The neighbor returned the Golden Retriever to the Peterson's backyard, but saw no sign of Lacey. When Scott returned, several hours later, he noticed Lacey's car in the driveway, but didn't see her either. He didn't panic right away though. Scott took the time to shower and throw his clothes in the washing machine. Then he called Lacey's mother, Sharon, to ask if Lacey was with her. Sharon said no. She hadn't heard from Lacey since the night before, which was strange.

Sharon and Lacey were incredibly close. Not only that, but the whole family was supposed to get together for Christmas dinner that night. If Lacey's plans had changed, she would have told her mom. Right away, Sharon could tell something was wrong. So as soon as she got off the phone with Scott, she got in her car and raced over to Lacey's house. Before heading out the door, she asked her husband to call 911 and report her daughter missing.

Sharon had no idea. That phone call was the beginning of a winding investigation that would end in tragedy. Long before she was one of the most famous, missing people in America. Lacey Peterson was Lacey Rocha. Born in 1975, Lacey grew up in Modesto, a small city in central California, and spent most of her time working on her father's dairy farm. Her down-to-earth and bubbly attitude made her lots of friends at school. Plus, it didn't hurt that she was beautiful and on the cheer team. After graduating in 1993, Lacey went

onto college at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. After spending so much time on her stepdad's farm, Lacey loved flowers and nature. So she decided to major in ornamental horticulture, the study of growing, arranging, and tending to decorative plants. Her dream was to open her own flower shop one day. But then life got in the way. In the spring of 1994, during her freshman year at Cal Poly, Lacey developed a major crush on a handsome waiter at a restaurant she and her friends frequented. They flirted whenever she came in, and Lacey even told her mother that she'd met the man she was going to marry. Eventually, she worked up the courage to have one of her friends give him her number. That man was Scott Peterson, and not long after, he called and asked Lacey out.

Like Lacey, Scott was a California native. He was born in San Diego in 1972 and showed an interest in sports from an early age, especially golf. As he got older, he continued to hone his abilities. In high school, he was one of the top players on his team. He was good enough that he got accepted to Arizona State University on a partial golf scholarship in 1990. But it seemed like keeping his spot wasn't a top priority. After just one semester, Scott was kicked off the team for taking him. a high school age recruit out drinking. After this setback, Scott eventually gave up on his golf

career and transferred to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where he majored in agricultural business. Not long after arriving on campus, he met Lacey Rocha. The two hit it off on their first date, and their relationship quickly got serious. By late 1994, the young couple had moved in together after just a few months of dating. That Christmas, Lacey surprised Scott with a golden retriever puppy. Two years later, Scott surprised Lacey with an engagement ring. They were married in August of 1997 just a few months before Lacey graduated. At the time, Scott was 24 and Lacey was 22. After getting her degree, Lacey took a job with a wine distributor in the town of Prunedale, two hours north. But Scott still had to finish some classes before he could graduate, which meant they were long distance for a few

months. Without Lacey around, Scott was free to live like a bachelor. He moved into a house with three other guys. He partied and barbecued, and even though he was newly married, he went out and found a girlfriend. Janet Ilsa was a 20-year-old sophomore at Cal Poly when she met Scott in one of her classes in early 1998. The suave, confident 25-year-old swept her off her feet right away. After flirting a few times in class, he asked her out on a date. When he came to pick her up, he arrived with 12 bouquets of a dozen roses each. He took Janet to a fancy restaurant and peppered her with questions about herself, revealing very little about his own life. The next five months together were a whirlwind. Scott lavished Janet with expensive gifts, a black

designer dress or a gemstone necklace. When he found out Janet was a vegetarian, Scott quit eating meat too. Soon, Janet became friends with his three roommates and fell in love with his golden retriever. Things seemed perfect, and Janet was head over heels. But in the spring of In 1998, Janet learned that Scott really was too good to be true. Late one night, Janet arrived at Scott's apartment unannounced, hoping to surprise him. One of his roommates let her in, and she crept down the hallway and into his bedroom. But once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Janet was the one who was surprised. Scott was in bed with another woman.

Furious, Janet started shouting at Scott. He just stared as she lashed out until finally his roommates intervened and took Janet outside. That's when they broke the news to Janet. Scott was married, and the woman in bed with him was his wife. Janet was shocked, and apparently so were his roommates. He'd kept Lacey a secret from them, too. They only found out she existed recently when she called the apartment looking for him. A week later, Scott showed up on Janet's doorstep, trying to avoid.

apologize, but she wasn't interested. She told Scott never to contact her again. Their relationship was over. As for Lacey, she found a way to forgive him, but she wasn't taking any more chances. Not long after this incident, she moved back down to San Luis Obispo. After Scott graduated in June of 1998, he and Lacey stayed in the area and went into business together. With help from family, the two opened a sports bar called the shack near the college campus. But they didn't stay in the restaurant industry for long. In the year 2000, they sold the business and bought a three-bedroom house in Lacey's hometown of Modesto. Once they were settled, Scott found work as a salesman for an agricultural supply company, while Lacey got a job as a substitute

teacher. She was glad to be close to her family again, and looking forward to starting a family of her own. Sure enough, in the spring of 2002, Lacey learned she was pregnant. It was a huge deal for her. Because of some medical issues she'd had as a child, she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to get pregnant naturally. So for her, this was a dream come true. In public, Scott seemed to share her excitement, but privately, he seemed to be having second thoughts.

In one conversation with Lacey's sister, Amy, he confessed that he'd secretly hoped that Lacey was in. infertile. In another conversation, he told Sharon, Lacey's mom, that he felt like he was having a midlife crisis at the age of 30. At the time, Sharon thought he was joking, but he wasn't. And just a few months later, Scott started pursuing another affair. In November 2002, a co-worker set Scott up with a woman named Amber Fry. She was an attractive 27-year-old massage therapist, neither Amber nor Scott's coworker knew he was married. He and Amber met up for their first date on November 20th

at a trendy Japanese restaurant in Fresno. He wooed her with champagne, compliments, and glamorous stories about his frequent business trips to Europe and Africa. These stories weren't true. While Scott did travel a lot for business, it was mainly between different cities in central California, but Amber found him very convincing and very charming. They ended the night at his hotel room, and in the morning they made plans to get together again as soon as his schedule allowed.

On December 3rd, he went over to Amber's house, where he met her two-year-old daughter. Scott took them both Christmas tree shopping and made dinner for everybody. Even though she'd only known Scott for a little while, Amber felt like she was falling for him. At the same time, Scott's double life was falling apart. Four days later, on December 6th, the co-worker who had introduced Scott and Amber learned the truth about Scott's love life. When she called to confront him, Scott broke down in tears and begged her not to tell Amber, promising that he would break the news to her himself. Three days later, on December 9th, Scott showed up at Amber's house. Somberly, he told her that he'd lied to her.

Early in their relationship, he said he'd never been married. now he told her that wasn't true. Through tears, he confessed that he had been married, but he'd, quote, lost his wife. The upcoming holiday would be his first Christmas without her. He begged Amber to forgive him. Amber felt terrible. She was happy to give Scott another chance and a shoulder to cry on.

At the time, she had no idea that Scott was lying once again. He hadn't lost his wife, but he planned to. In December 2002, Scott and Lacey Peterson appeared to be living the American dream, but below the surface, things weren't as perfect as they seemed. 30-year-old Scott had already had one affair, and weeks earlier, he'd started another one with a massage therapist named Amber Fry. Scott told her that he'd been married, but his wife had recently died. In reality, 27-year-old Lacey was hard at work preparing for the holidays and the upcoming birth of their son, who was due in February. On Monday, December 23rd,

Scott took Lacey to an OB-GYN checkup, where they learned about their son's heart rate and looked at ultrasound images. That evening, they went to a local salon where Lacey's sister worked so Scott could get a haircut, then grabbed a pizza and went home to watch a movie. The following morning, Scott left the house at 9.30 to go fishing at the Berkeley Marina about an hour and a half away. When he got back to the house at 4.45 p.m., Lacey's car was in the driver. but she was nowhere to be found. Scott called Lacey's mother, Sharon, to see if Lacey was with her, but she wasn't. Scott went on to explain that when he left that morning, Lacey was planning to take the dog for a walk in nearby Dry Creek Park. Fearing that something had happened to her, Sharon told her husband to call 911, then jumped in the car to help Scott search the park.

By 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, police had arrived at the Peterson House. But as the search for Lacey got underway, investigators immediately found something suspicious. Her husband. For a man whose heavily pregnant wife had just vanished, Scott Peterson was remarkably calm. He was more worried that a police car might ding his pickup truck than he was that his wife was missing,

and he seemed almost irritated to have to answer so many questions about where he'd been that day. And Scott's answers to those questions, didn't always add up. When police found a wet mop and bucket in the house, Scott explained that Lacey had been mopping the floor when he left, but at eight months pregnant, it would have been extremely difficult for her to repeatedly bend over and wring out a wet mop. In another instance, Scott claimed that she was planning to take their dog for a walk, even though her doctors had told her not to go for long walks anymore. Scott's alibi was also suspicious. He told

police he'd been fishing all day. Then he handed them a time-stamped receipt from the Berkeley Marina, even though they hadn't asked for proof. It already seemed strange that he would leave his pregnant wife alone on Christmas Eve to go fishing 85 miles away. And it only got stranger when one of the detectives, an experienced fisherman, started asking Scott basic questions. When the detective wanted to know what fish Scott was looking for and what kind of lures he used, used, Scott couldn't answer. Scott claimed he was still learning. He said he'd only bought the fishing boat two weeks earlier, which was a surprise for Lacey's mom and stepdad. They didn't even know he owned a boat, and they hadn't known that Scott used it that day. Apparently, he

failed to mention that on his call with Sharon. Within hours of Lacey being reported missing, police believed Scott had something to do with it. And as the search for Lacey Peterson ramped up over the next few days, another group became suspicious of Scott's behavior, Lacey's family. Lacey's mother and stepfather, Sharon and Dennis Rocha, were desperate to find their daughter. They organized and led search parties through Dry Creek Park and went door to door, handing out missing persons flyers with Lacey's picture, and they were in regular contact with local and national media conducting interviews and hosting press conferences to get the word out about their missing daughter. But the rochas, who had always gotten along with Scott, were confused by their son-in-law's

behavior. He often seemed vacant and uninterested in the search, as though he'd already given up on finding his pregnant wife. Even stranger, he avoided all contact with reporters, refusing to give interviews, appear at press conferences, or even allow Lacey's family to circulate pictures with him in them. Scott claimed he didn't want to distract from the search, but in reality, his motivations weren't so selfless. He was more concerned about making sure his girlfriend didn't see him on TV. Scott kept up his relationship with Amber Fry throughout the early days of the investigation. He chatted with her twice on Christmas, claiming to be be at a hunting lodge in Maine with his father. Over the following days, he called her several more

times, claiming to be on a post-holiday trip to Paris. He even reached out on New Year's Eve. He said he was still in Paris when he was actually at a candlelight vigil for Lacey. But as Amber chatted with Scott about his New Year's resolutions and the future of their relationship, she was keeping a few secrets of her own. She knew that Scott. Scott's pregnant wife was missing. A friend had recognized Scott's name on the news and tipped her off two days earlier. Now, Amber was recording their phone calls and she was sharing the tapes with detectives at the Modesto Police Department. Thanks to Amber, the police knew everything that she did, including the fact that he'd tearfully claimed to have lost his wife just 15 days before Lacey went missing.

For the next week, detectives coached Amber through several more phone calls with Scott, hoping she could coax him into giving up incriminating information. In the meantime, police began conducting round-the-clock surveillance of Scott, putting a GPS tracker in his truck and assigning undercover officers to follow him. Scott repeatedly made the 90-minute drive to the Berkeley Marina, where divers were searching for Lacey's body in the area he'd been fishing. On every trip, he sat in the parking lot and watched the divers for just a few minutes before driving home. At the same time, the media firestorm surrounding his wife's disappearance had gotten too big to control.

Now, Lacey's parents were doing interviews with national journalists like Nancy Grace. These journalists often asked them why Scott wasn't appearing in front of the press. At this point, it seemed like Scott knew the walls were closing in. So on January 6, 2003, he called Amber and confessed to everything. He told her that he hadn't been in Europe, that he had a wife, and that she was missing. When Amber picked up the phone, she was sitting in a police interview room with two detectives. They listened as she grilled Scott for the next 90 minutes. She demanded to know what else he was lying about and asked him again and again why he

said he'd lost his wife two weeks before his actual wife disappeared. Scott was evasive, repeatedly telling her that he couldn't explain why he'd said it, but he insisted that he had nothing to do with Lacey's disappearance. By the time the call ended, the police had more than enough circumstantial evidence to use against Scott, and soon he would suffer another damaging blow in the Court of Public Opinion. On January 24th, one month after Lacey disappeared, Amber Fry held a press conference at the Modesto Police Department. She told reporters that she had been in a romantic relationship with Scott Peterson

immediately before and after his wife's disappearance. She made it clear that he'd never told her he was married and expressed her deep sympathy for Lacey's parents. The media and the general public had already been suspicious of Scott, but when news broke that he'd been cheating on his pregnant wife, Scott became the most hated man in America. Even Lacey's parents, who had remained publicly supportive of Scott throughout the search, changed their tune. During an appearance on Good Morning America, Sharon told interviewers that Scott's secrecy about the affair had given her, quote, a lot of doubt about her soul. son-in-law. Growing desperate to try and control the narrative, Scott decided to break his media silence. On January 28th, he sat down for an interview with Diane Sawyer. It was a disaster. Scott lied

repeatedly, at one point claiming that he'd told Lacey that he was having an affair and that she wasn't angry about it. The interview only made people more upset. Reporters began hounding Scott everywhere he went, asking if he'd killed his wife. By early February, Scott quit assisting investigators altogether. It would take another two months before the next break in the case, and it would be a tragic one. On April 13, 2003, a couple was walking their dog in Point Isabel State Park, which runs alongside the San Francisco Bay near Berkeley, when they made a shocking discovery. Washed up on the rocky beach was the decomposing body of a full-term male fetus. As police worked to identify the remains, another body was discovered in the same park the following day. This time, a jogger

spotted a decomposing torso in the surf along the beach. Police rushed to the scene to recover the body, which was missing its head, hands, and feet. It was a woman's body, still wearing a pair of deteriorating maternity pants, and it had washed up on shore directly across from the area where Scott told police he'd been fishing on Christmas Eve. Four days later, DNA tests confirmed the Rocha family's worst fears. The bodies were Lacey Peterson and her unborn son, Connor. Because of how long she'd been in the water, investigators weren't able to determine Lacey's cause of death.

However, forensic evidence suggested her body had been intact when it went into the water. Detectives believed that weights had been attached to her hands, feet, and head, which had eventually separated as her body decomposed at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay. As soon as the remains were identified, police went looking for Scott Peterson. They tracked him down in suburban San Diego, where he'd been staying with relatives. After a car chase, Scott was placed under arrest outside a golf course at the edge of the city. He'd changed a lot since his last encounter with police. His hair, eyebrows, and beard were now all dyed blonde.

And it seemed like he had big plans. When police searched Scott's car, they found $15,000 in cash and Mexican pesos, four cell phones, camping supplies, and 12 Viagra tablets. 13 months later, in June of 2004, 31-year-old Scott Peterson went on trial for the murder of Lacey Peterson and his unborn son, Connor. Prosecutors argued that Scott had strangled Lacey at their home in Modesto, motivated by a desire to continue his affair with Amber Fry. They believed that once Lacey was dead, he let their dog loose to make it look like something had happened to her while she was on a walk. Then he dumped her body into the San Francisco Bay, weighed down with several anchors made out of concrete he'd purchased earlier in December. It was a compelling story, but prosecutors only had one piece of physical evidence, a strand of Lacey's hair found in Scott's boat to tie it all together.

Most of their case hinged on Scott's suspicious behavior before, during, and after Lacey's disappearance. Scott hired celebrity defense attorney Mark Garagos to represent him in court, but the experienced lawyer still struggled to explain Scott's actions to the jury. Instead, Garagos downplayed Scott's affairs and suggested that Lacey had been kidnapped, possibly by a homeless man, who killed her after she'd given birth to Connor. This version of events turned out to be unconvincing. On November 12, 2004, the jury found Scott Peterson guilty of murdering his wife and unborn child. He was sentenced to death.

But after a lengthy appeals process, the California Supreme Court overturned his death sentence in 2020, commuting it to life in prison. Today, Scott Peterson is still locked up, though he continues to file appeal after appeal. Unless something changes, he'll remain behind bars for the rest of his life. It's plenty of time for him to reflect on how he turned the holiday season into a lasting nightmare for the Rocha family. Up next, another mysterious disappearance that changed Christmas forever. You all saw the heiress tour. Now it's time to go backstage. Discover the story behind the phenomenal heirs tour in Taylor Swift, The End of an Era, on Disney Plus.

This illuminating docu-series lifts the curtain on Taylor's life as her tour made headlines and thrilled bands around the world. Experience never-before-seen footage in this streaming event for the eras, including the final show in Vancouver. Taylor Swift, the end of an era. Streaming now only on Disney Plus. It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at White House Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong. I know there's going to be a twist, won't they, a massive twist. At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In The Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In-the-Dark podcast feed. Fifty-seven years before Lacey Peterson was reported missing, another family experienced a tragic loss on Christmas Eve. But in this case, there were five disappearances and countless potential suspects. On December 24, 1945, George and Jenny Soder had a full house. The two Italian immigrants had 10 children, ranging in age from 10.

23 to just three. That night, nine of them had gathered at the family's five-bedroom home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, to celebrate the holidays. Fifty-year-old George owned a successful trucking company that hauled coal from nearby mines, and several of his older children had day jobs, so there was plenty of money to buy presents that year. After dinner, the sodders went to the living room to open some gifts, leaving the rest for Christmas morning. But 12-year-old Martha, eight-year-old Jenny Jr. and five-year-old Betty were so excited about the new toys that they begged their mom to stay up late to keep playing. Even though it was already 10 p.m., Jenny agreed. 19-year-old Marion and 14-year-old Maurice were still awake, so Jenny asked them to keep an eye on

the younger kids while the rest of the family went to bed. She also instructed them to turn off the lights, lock the front door, and close the downstairs curtains before they went to sleep. With that, Jenny grabbed her three-year-old daughter, Sylvia, got into bed next to George and fell asleep. But she wasn't out for long. Two and a half hours later, at around 12.30 a.m., Jenny jolted awake to the sound of the telephone ringing. She hurried to answer the phone in her husband's ground floor office, but she didn't recognize the caller's voice. It was a woman asking to speak with someone whose name Jenny didn't recognize.

Whoever the mystery caller was, it sounded like she was at a party because Jenny could hear laughter and clinking glasses in the background. Jenny told the caller she had the wrong number. In response, the caller gave an odd laugh, then hung up. As she tried to make sense of the strange call, Jenny realized the front door was unlocked. the curtains were open, and all of the downstairs lights were still on. Marion was asleep on the couch, and Jenny assumed she'd simply forgotten to close up the house,

so Jenny took care of everything and returned to her bedroom. Half an hour later, Jenny had only just fallen back asleep when she was awakened by a loud banging noise on the roof of the house, followed by the sound of something rolling. She shrugged off the interruption and closed her eyes again. The next time she woke up at around 1.30 a.m., thick black smoke was filling the bedroom. The house was on fire. George and Jenny ran out of their bedroom to find Flames had engulfed George's office where the phone was located,

which meant they couldn't call the fire department. There was nothing left to do but round up as many kids as they could find and rush onto the front lawn. Standing outside, George counted four children, 23-year-old John, 19-year-old Marion, 16-year-old George Jr., and 3-year-old Sylvia. That left five children unaccounted for. 14-year-old Maurice, 12-year-old Martha, 10-year-old Lewis, 8-year-old Jenny Jr., and 5-year-old Betty. George could see the fire had spread up to the second floor by now, where the kids' bedrooms were. He was terrified that the kids were trapped up there, but there was no way to

rush back inside without killing himself. Thinking quickly, George asked his son to get a ladder that he kept stored on the property, hoping to climb through a second-story window to rescue the remaining children. But when they reached the spot beside where they always kept it, the ladder was missing. Instead, his sons, John and George Jr. hatched a plan to back the two big coal trucks up to the side of the house, climb on top, and enter the second story that way. But even though the trucks had run just fine the day before, now neither of them would start. While the family tried to figure out what to do, Marion sprinted down the dark country road to wake the neighbors and call the fire department. But when the neighbors tried to place the call, nobody at the fire department

picked up. Luckily, another neighbor had spotted the blaze by then and sped into town to find fire chief F.J. Morris. They told him about the inferno, but Morris said he couldn't do it. anything at the moment. Morris confessed that he couldn't drive the fire truck on his own. They would have to wait until the morning for someone else to show up and help him get it out to the solder's place. The fire had begun just after 1.30 a.m. The fire department finally arrived at around 8 a.m. By then, the solder house was a pile of smoldering ashes, and George and Jenny were distraught by the loss of five of their children. On Christmas Day, fire department officials conducted a brief search of the smoking debris of the solder's house.

But as they sifted through the wreckage, searchers found no body parts, bone fragments, or other human remains. Chief Morris suggested that the fire had burned so hot that it completely cremated the children's bodies. Morris told George to leave the wreckage undisturbed until the state fire marshal could conduct a full investigation. But the sodders were so upset that George bulldozed the wreckage a few days later and covered the whole area with five feet of dirt. He and Jenny wanted to plant a memorial garden on the site. Local authorities were also in a hurry to put the tragedy behind them. Just before the end of the year, the county coroner held an inquest

where officials determined the fire was caused by faulty wiring. Death certificates were issued for Maurice, Maris, Lewis, Jenny Jr., and Betty, listing their cause of death as fire or suffocation. With that, the Fayetteville community tried to move on, but not everyone was able to let it go. The more Jenny thought about the fire, the harder it was for her to believe that her children died without leaving behind any remains whatsoever. She tested this theory by buying animal bones and setting them on fire to see if they completely burned up.

In every test, no matter what kind of bones she used, there was always a noticeable pile of fragments left behind. Jenny brought her suspicions to an employee at a local crematorium, who told her that human bones stay intact even after burning for two hours at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. the Sotter's house was only on fire for 45 minutes before it was destroyed. Marion also had her suspicions. As the house burned, she'd been staring at the upstairs windows, but she never saw any of the other children trying to escape or breathe fresh air.

And the coroner's verdict didn't sit straight with George either. The cause of the fire had been listed as faulty wiring. But months before the fire, he'd had the local power company inspect the house's wiring. and they'd told him it was in fine condition. Plus, he distinctly remembers that the upstairs lights had remained on during the fire. If the wires carrying electricity into the house had shorted out and burned up, then why was power still flowing to the house throughout the fire? That raised some other questions about the house's electrical appliances.

On the night of the fire, George had tried to call the fire department from the house phone, but it didn't work. At the time, he'd assumed it was because the phone line had already burned. But now, growing suspicious, he had a telephone repairman inspect the property. The repairman came back with disturbing news. The solder's phone line didn't burn. It had been cut. The surviving sodders started to wonder if the fire had really been an accident

and whether the kids had even been in the house when it burned. But that only raised more questions. Where were the children and who would try to burn a family to death in their home on Christmas Eve? There were plenty of options because, as it turned out, George Soder had a lot of enemies. Early on Christmas morning, 1945, George and Jenny Soder woke up to find that their five-bedroom house outside Fayetteville West Virginia was on fire. George and Jenny managed to get four of their nine children out of the house. The other five seemingly perished in the blaze. But in the aftermath, the surviving sodders began to question the official report. A search didn't uncover any human remains,

and while local officials claimed the fire had been caused by faulty wiring, that didn't explain how the light stayed on even as the house burned to the ground. The more than the fire, the more the sodders thought about that night, the more it seemed like someone had intentionally targeted the home. Sometime after 12.30 a.m., when Jenny received that strange phone call, the phone lines were cut, preventing them from calling the fire department. During the blaze, when they had tried to grab the ladder to rescue the children from the second floor, it was missing from the side of the house where they always kept it. Instead, they found it days later, lying at the bottom of a embankment 75 feet away from the house. On another occasion, the sodders were inspecting their

property after the blaze when three-year-old Sylvia found a hard rubber ball in the yard. Jenny recalled waking up to a loud bang and rolling sound from the roof of the house about half an hour before the fire broke out. George suspected that this rubber ball had been filled with napalm ignited and thrown onto the roof to start the blaze. But why, target the Sotters, a normal middle-class family? The answer may have had roots in George's native Italy. George Soder was born Giorgio Sadoo on the Italian island of Sardinia in 1895. In 1908, at the age of 13, he traveled to America, where he changed his name to the more American-sounding George Soder at Ellis Island. For the rest of his life, George never talked

about what happened in Italy to make him want to leave his entire family behind. But George made the best of his life in his new home, finding work on railroads in Pennsylvania before getting into the trucking business in West Virginia. West Virginia had a small but vibrant Italian-American community. That's how George met Jenny, a fellow immigrant, and made a lot of his other friends. But he made some enemies, too. George was outspoken and opinions. about politics and current events, both at home and back in Italy. He was especially critical of Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator who had taken over Italy in 1922 and forged an alliance with Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

This didn't sit well with other members of Fayettezville Italian community who did support Mussolini. It wasn't unusual for George to get into arguments with them about it. George never put too much stock in these political disagreements, but there were signs that others in town took it much more personally. A few months before the fire, a local insurance salesman showed up at the Sauter's house and tried to sell George a life insurance policy. When he said he wasn't interested, the salesman got angry and shouted,

quote, Your goddamn house is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed. There had been other strange encounters at the house in the months before the fire, too. Around the same time as George's run-in with the angry insurance salesman, a stranger had shown up, looking for work at George's company. While he and George talked, the man pointed to a pair of fuse boxes on the back of the house and commented, quote, this is going to cause a fire someday.

And in the days before Christmas, some of the older kids noticed an unfamiliar man in his car watching as several of the younger solder children came home from school. The sodder started to wonder if whoever had set the fire had also kidnapped the missing children. Had someone come through the unlocked front door, taken the children, then left the rest of the family to burn? The idea seemed far-fetched. But soon, witnesses started to come forward

and report sightings of the missing children. One Fayetteville woman told police she'd seen, seen the kids in the back of a car on Christmas Eve while the fire was still burning. Another woman who ran a roadside restaurant 50 miles northwest near the state capital of Charleston claimed to have served the missing solder children breakfast on Christmas Day. They later drove off in a car with Florida license plates. A hotel employee in Charleston told the authorities, she spotted the children staying in her hotel a week after the fire.

In her statement, she claimed the children were accompanied by two men and two women, all of them Italian. When the employee tried to make conversation with the kids, the adults got angry and began speaking to one another in rapid-fire Italian. They hustled the children away, and the whole group checked out of the hotel early the following morning. Hearing these stories, George and Jenny came to believe that their children had been kidnapped by a criminal organization, possibly the Italian mafia. They begged the local authorities to launch a full investigation, but both local and state law enforcement were uninterested in taking up the case. Still, George and Jenny weren't taking no for an answer.

In 1947, they sent a letter to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover asking him to assist with the case. Hoover responded that because their case was local, he couldn't get involved without an invitation from the local police. And the Fayetteville Police Department refused to ask the FBI to join the investigation. Even then, George and Jenny didn't give up. If the authorities weren't willing to help, they'd just have to handle this on their own. In 1947, the same year they sent the letter to Hoover, the Sotters hired a private investigator, a man named C.C. Tinsley, to look at

into the case. He quickly discovered that local officials knew more than they were letting on. Tinsley learned that the fire chief, F.J. Morris, told friends he'd found a human organ at the site of the fire. For some reason, he'd put it in a box and buried it at the scene. The sodders started digging on their property and found the box which contained a decomposing piece of flesh. They rushed it to a local funeral director who confirmed the organ was a cow. liver. It turned out Chief Morris had buried the liver on the property in hopes that the sodders would find it and call off the search for their missing children. It was unethical and bizarre, but that wasn't the only suspicious piece of information Tinsley came across. The investigator

also looked into the insurance salesman who'd threatened George. Tinsley was surprised to discover that the salesman was part of the coroner's jury who ruled that the fire had been. accidental. The same salesman was also a co-signer on the solder family's home insurance policy and he'd increased their policy to $1,750 before the fire without telling them about it. Though the solder's likely collected on the policy after the fire, it's unclear whether the salesman got a small commission from raising the price and potentially illegal since he did this without their consent. In the end, though, it wasn't enough to justify criminal charges.

Following C.C. Tinsley's investigation, the Sotters had more questions than answers. Without any other leads to pursue, George and Jenny made one final effort to get their kids back. In 1952, they put a billboard along the site of the highway outside Fayetteville with their missing children's faces on it, offering a $5,000 reward for information, leading to their safe return. The billboard stayed up for the next four decades, but the children never returned. In the years to come,

George and Jenny never gave up hope that their children were out there somewhere. From time to time, they heard rumors. One of the daughters was at a convent in Missouri. One of the sons was living in Texas or Manhattan. George traveled to investigate each of these rumors and always came back empty-handed. But the most curious development in the case came 23 years after the fire in

1968 when Jenny received a letter. It was postmarked in Central City, Kentucky, and contained a picture of a young man in his early 30s who bore a strong resemblance to their son, Lewis. He was 10 years old on the night of the fire. Enclosed with the picture was a letter which read in part, quote, Lewis Soder, I love brother Frankie. The Sotters couldn't make sense of the cryptic message, but they were convinced the man in the photograph was their son. They hired another private investigator and sent him to Kentucky to try and figure out where the letter had come from.

Instead, the P.I. took their money and never contacted them. George Soder died one year after the mysterious letter in 1969. Jenny lived until 1989, wearing black every day in memory of the missing children. After she passed away, the worn-out billboard at the side of the road was finally taken down. But the mystery endures to this day. Looking back on this week in crime history, it's clear that the holidays aren't always happy. Unfortunately for the sodders and the rochas, Christmas became a dark reminder of the people they had lost. It's a bittersweet reminder to be thankful for the family members you do have this holiday season.

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We'll be back next Sunday. True Crime This Week is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the True Crime This Week team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pertzowski, Lori Maranelli, Sarah Camp, Truman Capps, Sheila Patterson and Carrie Murphy.

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