Vanished in the Flames: The Sodder Children and the Fire That Left No Trace
The Sodder house on the outskirts of Fayetteville, West Virginia, was full of light on Christmas Eve of 1945. George and Jennie Sodder were immigrants from Italy who had built a respected coal trucking business in the mining country of Fayette County. They had ten children, and nine of them were home that night. The younger ones had begged to stay up late with their new toys, and Jennie agreed, leaving the lamps and the Christmas lights burning when she went to bed.
Three small oddities had touched the household in the weeks and hours before. Some time after midnight, before she went to bed, Jennie answered the telephone. An unfamiliar woman's voice asked for a name she did not recognize. In the background she heard laughter and the clinking of glasses, and when she said the caller had the wrong number, the woman laughed oddly and hung up. Weeks earlier, a stranger had come to the house asking about hauling work, then walked around to the back of the property and remarked that the fuse boxes would cause a fire one day, although the power company had recently inspected the wiring and pronounced it sound. And one of the older sons had noticed a man parked along the highway, watching the younger children as they walked home from school.
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