Murder: True Crime Stories - MYSTERY: The Sodder Family

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy investigates the disappearance of the Sodder children, who vanished after a fire destroyed their West Virginia home on Christmas Eve in 1945. George and Jennie Sodder escaped with four of their children, but five were believed to have died inside. No remains were ever recovered, raising immediate doubts about the official ruling of accidental fire. As questions mounted, troubling details surfaced, including a cut phone line, a missing ladder, and reports of strangers near the home before the blaze. Convinced their children had been abducted, possibly linked to George Sodder’s outspoken views, the family spent decades searching for answers. This episode explores the fire, the inconsistencies, and the mystery that refuses to fade. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder True Crime Stories to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios YouTube: @murdertruecrimestories 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

Hey, it's Carter. If you're enjoying murder, true crime stories, there's a new crime house show for you to check out. It's called The Final Hours hosted by Sarah Turney and Courtney Nicole. Sarah is an advocate for missing and murdered victims whose own sister disappeared in 2001. And Courtney is a true crime storyteller who has seen firsthand how crime can change a family forever. Together, they bring lived experience to every case, examining the moment. moments just before a person disappears, the routines, the timelines, the small details that often get overlooked, because every disappearance has a moment where everything still feels normal until it doesn't. Listen to and follow the final hours on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday. This is Crime House.

A strange phone call, a missing ladder, a box of organs, and five children that seem to vanish into thin air. It's human nature to crave information, to make sense of the unexplainable. Sometimes a quick Google search or a visit to the library can give us the answers we're looking for. But more often than not, uncovering the truth takes a lot. more work. Even then, there might be details that don't add up. Over half a century ago, the Sauter family found themselves in this very situation. On Christmas Eve, 1945, 50-year-old George Soder and two of his sons hurried home after a long day's work. And by then, the icy streets of Fayetteville, West Virginia, were almost empty, so they made it back in record time.

inside their house a gaggle of laughing children greeted them five-year-old betty tugged on her father's arm to show him a new toy fourteen-year-old maurice handed out steaming cups of cocoa four others helped set the table and serve a late-night feast afterward the family shuffled off to bed but only a few hours later their happy holiday turned into a disaster george and his wife jenny woke up to the smell of smoke. The house was on fire. In a panic, they grabbed their youngest daughter and rushed outside. The Sauter family huddled together, watching as flames streaked across their roof.

That's when George and Jenny realized there were only four children with them. They assumed the other five must still be inside. But when the dust settled and the blaze died out, there was nothing left of the kids, not even bones, which left George and Jenny wondering what really happened to their children. This is the Sauter family mystery. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on.

Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories, a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thank you for being part of the crimehouse community. Please rate, review, and follow the show, and for early, add free access to every episode. Subscribe to Crimehouse Plus on Apple. podcasts. Welcome back to another episode of Murder Mystery Fridays, where I'm covering unsolved cases with questions that I can't get out of my head. The ones where the evidence points in

multiple directions and every theory feels like a possibility. Today, I'm talking about a case that still has tons of question marks over a half a century later, the Sauter family mystery. On Christmas Christmas Eve, 1945, George and Jenny Sauter started the night with a house full of children. Just a few hours later, a terrible fire engulfed their home, and somehow five of their children went missing during the blaze. Their remains were never found, and in the years since, the mystery has only deepened. Some believe the Sotter kids perished in the blaze. Others think it was arson, and that someone planned the attack in order to kidnap the children. There are countless theories out there,

and no matter which side you're on, after you hear this story, I think you'll agree, something sinister was at play that fateful Christmas Eve, and unfortunately for the Sauter family, it was a holiday they would never forget. All that and more coming up. An eight-episode series, now streaming on Disney Plus. A superhero remake.

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Marvel Television's Wonder Man. All eight episodes now streaming. Only on Disney Plus. On Christmas Eve, 1945. George and Jenny Sauter had a lot to celebrate. World War II had ended four months earlier. That meant one of their oldest sons, Joe, would be returning home from his deployment soon. After three years overseas, the 21-year-old was finally headed back to Fayetteville, West Virginia.

Although he wasn't supposed to arrive until after the holidays, the Sotters hurried to get things ready for him. but finding extra room in their house was easier said than done. Joe was one of ten children, and all of them lived at home. John, the oldest, was 22, while the youngest, Sylvia, was just three. So even though the sodders had a nice two-story house on the edge of town, things were still pretty crowded. There was a master bedroom downstairs and three bedrooms upstairs with the kids sharing room. It wasn't anything huge, but the wooden home meant a lot to George. After immigrating to the U.S. from Italy, 37 years earlier, he'd spent decades working

until he started his own trucking company. Now, business was booming. George and Jenny had instilled the same work ethic in their children. Two of their sons, 22-year-old John and 16-year-old George Jr., helped their dad out almost every day, even on Christmas Eve. Their 19-year-old sister, Marion, had a shift around the same time at the local dime store. So when the four of them got home that night, they were exhausted, but they stayed up long enough to enjoy a home-cooked meal. Marion passed out some toys to her younger siblings, 12-year-old Martha, 8-year-old Jenny, and 5-year-old Betty.

George and the oldest boys went to bed early, but the little kids. kids were so excited about the presents that they begged their mom to stay up late. Jenny agreed, as long as their brothers, Maurice and Lewis, stayed up to watch them. The kids cheered and kept playing with their toys in the living room, while Jenny took three-year-old baby Sylvia to sleep with her and George on the first floor. She smiled and wished the family a Merry Christmas before she shut the door and drifted off to sleep. but she wasn't out for long. Just after midnight,

the phone started ringing in George's office on the same floor. And bleary-eyed and still half asleep, Jenny climbed out of bed to answer it. She could hear laughter and glasses clinking on the other end of the line. It sounded like a Christmas party. The female caller asked Jenny if they could speak with someone whose name she didn't recognize. And Jenny groaned, told her.

told her she had the wrong number and hung up without waiting for a response. As she shuffled back to bed, she noticed the downstairs lights were on and the front door was unlocked. Marion had fallen asleep on the couch, probably while watching the younger kids, Jenny flipped off the lights, locked the door, and tucked her daughter in. Finally, around 12.30 a.m., Jenny slipped back into her room, but the moment her head had the pillow, she heard a deafening bang from above. It sounded like something hit the roof. A dry, rolling sound followed as if the object had tumbled to the ground. But by that point, Jenny was done getting out of bed, and she figured it was nothing. She turned over,

wrapped her arms around her husband and Sylvia, then went back to sleep. sleep. Half an hour later, she woke up yet again. This time, she could smell smoke seeping in through the crack under the door. She rolled over, coughed, then staggered to her feet and shook George awake. The two of them carried Sylvia out of the bedroom and ran into Marion. Jenny thrust Sylvia into Marion's arms and told her to get outside. Then she ran to the phone to call for help. She came to a stop outside of George's office. A raging fire had already engulfed the room, forming a glowing ring around one of two fuse boxes and the only telephone line.

At that point, Jenny ran back into the hallway where George was already waiting. They watched as their oldest sons, John and George Jr. made it downstairs with their hair smoking. seconds later the entire stairway was swallowed in flames and impossible to get through. It seemed the boys had just made it in the nick of time. Their bedroom was right near the stairs, but the other rooms were further back. John said he'd yelled for his siblings as he ran out of his bedroom and thought he heard them respond. George waited for them to rush down. But they didn't appear.

That meant four of the nine children were safe, but the other five were still stuck upstairs. There was no time to think. George and his sons ran outside in their bare feet. They grabbed a bucket and carried it over to a barrel they used to store rainwater, only to find it was frozen solid. Meanwhile, Jenny rushed out to the yard and watched as the fire devoured the home, She kept her eyes on the second-story windows, watching carefully for any sign of movement. Though the lights were on, she couldn't see any of her kids.

With tears running down her face, she hugged Sylvia and told Marion to go for help. Although the Sauter's nearest neighbors were reportedly just a few hundred feet away, the area was surrounded by thick woods, which meant getting over to the neighbors would be easier said than done. Still, Marion rushed through the dark fields in her nightgown. As she disappeared into the darkness, George tried to climb one of the walls to get to a second story window, but he couldn't get enough leverage. He shouted for John to go get the ladder, which they always kept leaning against the back of the house. John went to retrieve it, but a couple of minutes later, he shouted that the ladder was gone. There was no

sign of it anywhere. That was strange, but George didn't have time to dwell on it. There had to be another way up. That's when he remembered his trucks parked out front. Maybe he could climb on top of one and reach the second-story window. He and his sons hurried over to one of the vehicles, and George hopped in the driver's seat. His hands shook as he turned the key. The truck rumbled and rattled under the hood, then began to shriek, but it was.

wouldn't start. George hit the gas and the engine flooded. Next to him, John tried to start their second truck. It wouldn't cooperate either. George pounded on the dashboard. Both of the vehicles were working fine just hours earlier. Around this time, Marion reached the neighbors. After pounding on the door, they waved her inside and dialed the Fayetteville Fire Department. Marion stood by, shaking from the terror in the cold. Every second that ticked by was agonizing. The neighbors spent what felt like an eternity on the line, but they couldn't get an operator to pick up.

Marion collapsed in a puddle of tears. By that point, it was around 1 a.m., and the fire was raging out of control. It was so bright that another neighbor spotted it from the, the road while driving by. He raced to a nearby tavern, burst through the doors, and demanded to use the phone. The bartender said their line was out of order. Without saying another word, the neighbor spun around and hopped back in his car. This time he drove full speed into town and finally got the fire chief on the phone. Unfortunately, there was more bad news. The fire department was still short staff since the war had only just ended,

and most of the young men in town weren't back from deployment yet. The chief, F.J. Morris, confessed 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. It seemed like the universe had conspired against the solder family by around 1.30 a.m. The timber-framed house had reportedly burned two ashes. George, Jenny, and their four surviving children knelt by the smoldering heap and wept.

Five kids, three boys, and two girls were gone. The oldest, Maurice, was 14. Then there was Martha Lee, who was 12. Lewis was nine and eight-year-old Jenny. The youngest little Betty was only five. It took until sunrise on Christmas morning, sometime around 7 a.m., for the fire truck to finally roll down the frosty roads. In the bleak winter light, the firefighters joined the sodders and a group of neighbors to sift through the rubble.

For hours, the crowd piled up. charred wood and ash looking for the children's bodies. The sodders didn't think they had survived, but the least they could do was lay their remains to rest. At around 10 a.m., fire chief Morris made a grim announcement. It looked like the flames had consumed the bodies completely. There was nothing left, not even bones George wasn't sure that was possible though he nodded and kept quiet suspicion clouded his heart

as he hugged his wife and surviving children he thought about everything that had gone wrong the night before there was the mysterious phone call Jenny answered before the blaze the missing ladder the broken trucks something didn't feel right. He knew deep down that the fire hadn't been an accident. And George was determined to find whoever was responsible.

Someone would pay for destroying his family. At Desjardin, our business is helping yours. We are here to support your business through every stage of growth. first pitch to your first acquisition. Whether it's improving cash flow or exploring investment banking solutions, with Desjardin business, it's all under one roof. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk. Business. On Christmas morning in 1945 a fire ravaged the Sodder family home in Fayetteville, West Virginia.

George and Jenny, along with four of their children, made it out safely, but the other five kids never emerged. The oldest was 14-year-old Maurice, followed by 12-year-old Martha Lee, 9-year-old Lewis, 8-year-old Jenny, and 5-year-old Betty. At the time, all of them were presumed dead, but there were still plenty of questions, namely what had caused the blaze. From the beginning, the authorities doubted it was arson. When George and Jenny told them about the woman who called half an hour before the fire started, and the police reluctantly tracked her down. It turned out she really had just dialed the wrong number.

And at the coroner's inquest the day after Christmas, a jury determined the solder children did, in fact, die in the fire. The blaze itself was officially ruled an accident caused by faulty wiring. But that didn't make any sense to George and Jenny. Not long before the blaze, they had the house rewired and thoroughly inspected. The electrical system should have been perfectly fine, and by all accounts, it was. And the night of the fire, the upstairs lights were on the entire time. If the wiring had been damaged, the power would have gone out in the whole house,

when the blaze started. Well, that said, someone had warned George about the wiring. It wasn't the electrician, though. A few months before the fire, a stranger showed up at the house looking for a trucking job. When George turned him away, the man pointed at the fuse boxes and warned that they were going to cause a fire someday. Since the comments came right after the electrical inspections,

the sodders dismissed them, but that wasn't the only odd encounter they had before the tragedy. Around the same time, George got in a fight with a door-to-door insurance salesman, who was a fellow Italian immigrant. When George refused to buy insurance, the salesman suddenly freaked out. He erupted with rage,

screaming in George's face and warning that his house, was going up in smoke. Though the two weren't friends, they ran in the same circles. And the salesman knew George wasn't a fan of the recently deceased Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. The salesman threatened George telling him he would pay for his dirty remarks about Mussolini. Then he stomped off and drove away. George was outspoken and didn't think much of the shouting match at the time.

He was used to arguing about politics. But after the fire, he saw the interaction in a new light. Especially when he realized that the salesman happened to be a member of the coroner's jury. He was one of the people who ruled that the fire was an accident. Too many things. weren't adding up and within days of the tragedy George and Jenny felt like they were losing their minds suspicion fear and grief were taking over every time George looked at the scorched patch of earth where his house used to stand his heart broke all over again the family

planned to build a new home on the same property they didn't want to do it in the same spot but they did want to honor everything they had lost. That's when they decided to plant a memorial garden on the site. Even though the state fire marshal hadn't shown up to inspect it yet, George rented a bulldozer and got to work. On December 29th, four days after the fire, he leveled the area. The burnt-out basement was packed with five feet of dirt and tamped down. Jenny made plans to fence it off and cover it in flowers.

As she made preparations for the garden and five funerals, she turned the details of the case over in her head. Searching for a way out of her sorrow, she fixated on her children's empty caskets. She couldn't understand how there wasn't even a trace of their remains. Some of the solder's household appliances were found scorched in the basement, and while they were destroyed, they were still standing. Based on that, it seemed like there should have been some bones at the very least.

One day, she hauled a wheelbarrow full of butchered meat to the edge of the woods in secret. To test her theory, she started a controlled fire and tossed the meats onto the ember. rib eyes, chicken bones, and pork chops. The blaze sizzled and popped as she watched. By the time it burned out, the only things left were the bones. Though they were charred, they were still solid and intact. Jenny repeated her experiment again and again, each time getting the same result. Just to be sure, she drove out to the nearest crematorium.

to get a professional opinion. An employee told her, human bones are hard to burn, even after two hours at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Not only was it unlikely that the house fire had reached those temperatures, but the entire thing was over in about an hour. Jenny left the crematorium full of doubts, and her suspicions only grew as the months were on.

on. And when a telephone repair guy came out to fix their line, he told them it looked like their wires had been cut, not burned. A few days later, a neighbor said he spotted something suspicious during the fire. There was a man stealing hauling equipment George used for his trucking business. Based on this testimony, the thief was caught. While he admitted to stealing a few, bundles of rope and a pulley, he insisted he had no idea what caused the blaze. After more questioning, he also confessed to cutting the telephone wire, which he apparently thought was the power line. His account only made things more confusing. The telephone line was cut 14 feet off the ground, about two feet away from the nearest utility pole. It would have taken a lot of effort.

to get up there. No one could explain why a thief would go to so much trouble just to steal some rope and a pulley. And he didn't offer an explanation. The questions continued to pile up, but the local police weren't interested in answering them. The fire had already been ruled in accidents, and they wanted to leave it at that. They refused to change their minds, even after the family's ladder was found at the bottom of a slope around 75 feet from the house. The sodders believed it was dumped there by the arsonists,

but the authorities thought the sodders had probably misplaced it or that it accidentally slid down the hill. At that point, the sodders felt like they had no allies in the police department, so they took matters into their own hands. They asked around and eventually spoke to a late-night bus driver who saw something interesting. He saw someone throw, quote, balls of fire onto the roof of the house before it burned down. That could explain the loud noise, Jenny heard about 30 minutes before the blaze. And around three months after the fire, the family seemed to get proof.

In March, 1946, four-year-old Sylvia found a hard rubber object in the new memorial garden. George believed it was the remnant of a used hand grenade and could have been one of the balls of fire spotted by the passerby. These discoveries convinced the family they were on the right track. Over the next few months, they chased down every rumor they could. and slowly but surely a new theory emerged. George and Jenny had a sneaking suspicion that maybe the kids were still alive. One local woman claimed she spotted the missing children in the back of a car during the fire. Another said she saw them the next morning at the truck stop where she worked 50 miles north of the solder home.

According to the second woman, they pulled up in a vehicle with Florida license plates, and she made them breakfast. In Charleston, West Virginia, the state capital, a third woman contacted the authorities after she saw pictures of the children than the local paper. She claimed that a week after the fire, four of the five kids checked into the hotel where she worked. They were accompanied by two women and two men, all Italians. The woman said the men glared at her and wouldn't let her talk to the kids. They only stayed a night.

In an attempt to comfort the sodders, the police tried to corroborate these stories, but they never managed to find any hard evidence. In the end, and they determined the witnesses weren't very credible. The lack of progress frustrated the sodders to no end. Finally, around two years after the fire in 19. They wrote a letter to the FBI. The head of the agency at the time, J. Edgar Hoover, replied that he couldn't get involved. Because there was no clear evidence of a federal crime or kidnapping across state lines,

the Bureau didn't have any jurisdiction. Hoover did say he would send some agents down if the Fayetteville police made an official request for help. Even then, the local cops refused to reopen the case. Once again, the family was left to fend for themselves, but they weren't giving up. Next, they reached out to a local private investigator named C.C. Tinsley. He took another look at the insurance salesman who'd threatened George before the fire and served on the coroner's jury. Tinsley discovered that prior to the blaze, the salesman had increased the family's home insurance from 1500 to 1750 without getting their permission.

Though the sodders likely collected on the policy after the fire, it's unclear whether the salesman got a small commission from raising the price. Other way, the move was suspicious and potentially illegal, since he did this without their consent. In the end, it wasn't enough to justify criminal charges, but that wasn't all Tinsley found. The PI also heard a rumor that the fire chief, F.J. Morris, had secretly discovered some human remains after the fire.

Apparently, Morris told a friend that he stuffed what he found in a box and buried it. The PI had no idea why the chief wouldn't show the solder family the remains right away, but he did figure out where Morris hid the box. The PI told George, who dug it up and uncovered what looked like some kind of organ inside. He took it to the local funeral director who said it wasn't human at all. It was a beef liver and it hadn't been burned. in the slightest. When George confronted Morris, the fire chief admitted the whole story was part of a convoluted

scheme to get the family to move on. He buried the liver in the rebel, hoping the family would find it and stopped their fruitless search for the missing children. That didn't really explain why he put it in a box, but then again, nothing about the case made any sense. the family was starting to believe there was some kind of cover-up going on and that the fire chief had been paid to scuttle the investigation the problem was no one was willing to take another look at the case even so the family refused to give up and four years after the fire in 1949 they finally found

someone who was willing to listen in august a forensic medical medical examiner agreed to help dig up the memorial garden and perform a second search for the children's remains. And what he found changed everything. Are you ready to dive into the unknown? Join me, Peyton Moreland, on Into the Dark, the true crime podcast from Ono Media with a hint of horror and mystery. Each week, I dive into a different case, breaking down the facts and pondering the age old question. Why do people do what they do? Now, sometimes the answer isn't so clear, and that's why I'll also explore conspiracy theories, hauntings, and all things spooky. From the Green River Killer to the Mothman incident, we will unravel all of the questions that keep us up at night. So don't

miss out. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform. New episodes drop every Wednesday. into the dark where true crime meets the eerie unknown. In August of 1949, nearly four years after the solder house fire, the family got a pathologist from Washington, D.C., to search the site a second time. By that point, the case was an enduring local mystery that had snagged headlines across the country. And the people of Fayetteville, West Virginia hoped a more thorough sweep would turn up the missing children's remains, and finally provide the family with some closure. Since the blaze, George and Jenny Sauter had tried their best to move on, but it was hard

to let go when so many things didn't add up. Every morning they stared at the memorial garden where their home once stood and wondered about their missing kids. If there was the slightest chance they were still out there, the sodders had to keep looking. So with the help of the pathologist, a man named Oscar Hunter, a team of diggers uprooted the garden and sifted through the dirt. It took days, but by the end of the search, they'd found a few pieces of human vertebrae. When the discovery led to major news coverage that reignited interest in the story, many in the community believed Hunter's discovery would

finally closed the case. But after the bones were sent to the Smithsonian for analysis, things only became more suspicious. A specialist determined that while the vertebrae were human, they had never been exposed to fire. On top of that, they seemed to belong to someone who is between the ages of 16 and 22. That should have been impossible. The oldest missing solder child, Maurice, was only 14 at the time of the blaze. The specialist acknowledged that the vertebrae could belong to a 14-year-old with an unusually mature skeleton, but it was unlikely. All in all, the Smithsonian's report theorized that these bones had been buried in the dirt that George used to fill in the basement after the

tragedy. They probably belonged to someone else who had died on the land long before the fire took place. Still, it was a shocking twist, one that got the attention of West Virginia's governor. He held two hearings at the state capital to examine the evidence and consider whether any of it justified reopening the case and looking for the kids. The issue was, no witnesses reported. seeing the children escape the house. And while there had been scattered sightings of the kids since the fire, none of those stories could be corroborated. There was nothing to go on.

By that point, it had been five years since the tragedy. If the children were out there, they could be anywhere. In the end, the governor and the head of the state police told the Sautters, their search was hopeless. It was another disappointment. But no matter what the cop said, George and Jenny weren't abandoning their kids. Unfortunately, by that point,

they had spent quite a lot of their own money, around $15,000, which would be over $200,000 today, funding their search. And they didn't have any idea where to look next. After the failed hearings, all they could do was pass out flyers in the surrounding communities. They hoped that spreading the word might convince a new witness to come forward. When that didn't get any results, the family put up a billboard on the side of the highway. It featured pictures of the missing children and offered a $5,000 reward for information that led to their safe return.

Eventually, they up the reward to $10,000. And the money did prompt some new tips. A letter from St. Louis claimed one of the missing girls Martha was staying at a convent in the area. George drove to Missouri to investigate, but it was a case of mistaken identity. Then someone in Florida told the sodders that the kids were living with one of Jenny's relatives there. This tip seemed especially far-fetched, since there was no reason for Jenny's family to hide the children from her. Even so, George was determined to follow any lead.

Once again, he traveled hundreds of miles and came back empty-handed. For decades, the family remained in the same holding pattern, chasing sporadic leads as they came in without much hope. Their oldest son, John, worried that spending so much time reliving the tragedy, preventing them from processing their grief. Jenny was still wearing all black to signify her mourning all those years later. However, other members of the family joined George and Jenny in their quest for answers. Sylvia, the youngest satir, had always believed her siblings survived the blaze.

She encouraged her parents to keep the billboards up, to keep their hope alive. but as years turned into decades, that became more difficult to do. By 1967, it had been more than 20 years since the fire. George was in his early 70s and starting to slow down. Just when he was on the verge of giving up, something pulled him back in. That year out of the blue, an anonymous sender made, mailed the Sotters a photograph from somewhere in Kentucky. On the back, someone had written,

Lewis Sotter, I love brother Frankie. George and Jenny examined the photo with watery eyes. It showed a man who looked to be about 30 years old, handsome with dark curls that matched his eyes. He had the same straight nose and cocked eyebrow as their missing son, Lewis. They weren't sure who Frankie was. None of their sons were named that,

but Lewis had been nine years old at the time of the fire. If there was any chance that he'd survived, he would have been 31 years old now, and the Sautars were determined to learn the truth once and for all. George hired a second private detective and sent him to Kentucky to find whoever sent them the photo. The PI took their money and disappeared without reporting back. The sodders took it as an ominous warning. Even though they'd spent their lives trying to find their kids, they worried

that pushing any harder might somehow put Lewis in danger. After all, they still had no idea why the children were kidnapped in the first place. In some ways, no one. knowing he was safe was enough. So instead of investigating further, they added the new photograph to their highway billboard and hoped for the best. Two years later, in 1969, George passed away. Jenny followed him 20 years later.

Until her dying breath, she remained convinced that her missing children were alive. Sylvia and her own children honored Jenny's memory by keeping the billboard up for decades. Though leads were thin by that point, they continued investigating as best they could. Unlike George and Jenny, the next generation of sodders were more interested in nailing down a motive. Their primary theory was that the Sicilian mafia had tried to recruit George or extort money from him. When he refused, the children were kidnapped in retaliation. What happened to them after was anyone's guess, and they might have been taken back to Italy. Maybe the culprits intended to send a

ransom note, but some kind of accident prevented them from doing so. If the missing kids were alive, maybe they hadn't reached out to their parents out of fear for their safety. George had always been, tight-lipped about why he moved from Italy to the U.S. at age 13. Some relatives suspected there was something shady going on, but he never opened up before he passed away. So the mafia angle was one possibility, though it wasn't the only theory. Online forums have come up with all kinds of potential explanations. Some believe the missing children accidentally set the fire

then ran away in shame. Others think the crime could have been motivated by hate. During World War II, Italy sided with Hitler and the Nazis. After the war, anti-Italian sentiment in the U.S. was at an all-time high. A disgruntled veteran might have targeted the sodders because of their ancestry. Last but not least, there was the insurance salesman who threatened George a few months before. the fire. Out of everyone, he seemed to have the only documented feud with the family. Maybe he set the fire to get back at George for his anti-Musolini politics, or simply to commit

insurance fraud. Unfortunately, there was no way to know after so many years had passed. Many of the theories are compelling, but few of them addressed the potential kidnappings. It's hard to believe that anyone could sneak five young children out of the house without waking any of the older sodders up. Marion was sleeping on the couch and the oldest sons were in an adjoining room upstairs. It's possible the culprits used the ladder to take the kids through the window and then dumped it by the ridge, but it would be a tall order. The fact that there was never any ransom note only,

adds to the confusion. In recent years, these issues have prompted several investigators to return to the original conclusion that the kids really did die in the fire. If that's true, though, there has to be some explanation for the lack of human remains. A Stacey Horn, a reporter for NPR, offered some potential answers. Contemporary reporting stated that the Sauter Home burned down in less than an hour that night. But she found evidence to the contrary. According to Horn, the blaze continued well into Christmas morning.

She reported that when the fire department showed up at sunrise, the site was still hot. They had to dump water on the embers to cool them down before they performed their initial search. That may have been enough time to obliterate any bones left behind. and in 2016, a firefighter who looked into the case bolstered that idea with some theories of his own. He determined that the gasoline in George's garage could have fueled the fire and caused it to burn hotter. By bulldozing the site a few days later and filling the basement with dirt, George could have accidentally created an oven and effectively cremated the last of the remains. That being said, even skeptics acknowledge there's a lot about the case that remains uncertain.

The fire provides the simplest explanation, but it's not a sure thing. Despite the various theories, Sylvia Sotter never faltered in her beliefs. She swore to her parents she would keep the case alive after their passing, and she made good. on the promise. She was convinced her siblings made it out of the blaze that night and continued to pray for their safety until her death in 2021. With Sylvia's passing, the last known witness to the Christmas Eve fire is gone. In all likelihood, if the children did survive the tragedy, they would be dead by now. But that hasn't stopped people from trying to solve. of the mystery. Even 80 years later, people from all over the world have devoted their time trying to

crack the case. It makes sense. The search for answers, hope, and meaning in the face of tragedy is what makes us human. Sadly, the Sauter family never found the closure they were looking for, but one thing is for sure. Their loved ones have never been forgotten. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of another murder and all the people it affected.

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