VERY bizarre cold case....

[crystaldawn]

This has to be one of the strangest I've seen and is still unsolved after 56 years.

http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/2106dfwv.html

http://www.rootsweb.com/%7Ewvrcbiog/WhatReallyHappenedToChildrena.html

Any thoughts to whether they died in the fire or were abducted?

[nohwheregirl]

That is really bizarre. It doesn't sound to me like they died in the fire. Once upon a time when I was an anthropology student, I saw a lecture (and slideshow...yikes!) given by a forensic anthropologist. One thing he talked about was the fact that it is very difficult to completely incinerate or destroy a human body with fire (as was alluded to in the doenetwork profile). If the children were in the house, they would have found the remains, without question.

So, where did they go? If they were kidnapped, what was the motive?? Also, it's kind of hard to hide 5 kids. Were they killed? Were some of them kept alive? If so, they would be adults by now, and haven't come forward.

[ferrariboy]

why was he not allowed to see the kid in New York?

[ferrariboy]

That is really bizarre. It doesn't sound to me like they died in the fire. Once upon a time when I was an anthropology student, I saw a lecture (and slideshow...yikes!) given by a forensic anthropologist. One thing he talked about was the fact that it is very difficult to completely incinerate or destroy a human body with fire (as was alluded to in the doenetwork profile). If the children were in the house, they would have found the remains, without question.

So, where did they go? If they were kidnapped, what was the motive?? Also, it's kind of hard to hide 5 kids. Were they killed? Were some of them kept alive? If so, they would be adults by now, and haven't come forward.
"Others believe the children were taken and are still alive somewhere, believing the fire killed their parents and siblings. "

Sad story, though.

[cuba_libre]

When I read that on the Doe Network, didn't know quite what to think! And still don't! Five kids, siblings, missing like that! Truly strange!!

[crystaldawn]

It will be 60 years this Christmas since the Sodder family fire. I did come across a recent article about the case. Its nice to see at least one of the siblings is still alive and continues to try and find out what happened to her family.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5067563

[mozartpc27]

Wow, I never heard about this case. I hate to say it, but I think most if not all of those eyewitnesses sightings of the children were so much dust of one sort or another --- either well-meaning but overzealous people trying to help, or private investigators simply trying to bily the Sodders for all they were worth, or perhaps something else.

But it does seem unlikely the children died in the fire. In reading the newspaper account, the first thing that came to my mind was some kind of mistaken identity. Mrs. Sodder says she got a phone call from a woman whose voice she did not recognize, asking for a man whose name she did not recognize. Perhaps a woman who was sitting around waiting for a husband to return who was instead off with a mistress, a mistress the woman thought she knew? That would explain the laugh the woman gave when Mrs. Sodder explained there was no such person by that name at her number: imagine if a depressed, perhaps slightly drunk, woman who has a husband who has failed to return home on Christmas Eve calls the house of the person she thinks is his mistress. A woman answers the phone, and says that there is no one here by that name. I could imagine the dry, ironic laugh that this might draw from the jilted wife; now imagine that this wife has simply called the wrong number, or gotten the wrong woman in her head as the person having an affair with her husband. That would explain the phone call and the weird laugh.

Just a thought. Would this woman have had army-grade napalm bombs at hand to destroy the home? I'm thinking not.

[Tao]

Old thread, I know. But I wonder if the answer is simple - the father plowed over the property and planted flowers soon after against the fire chief's wishes.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/sodder_jennie.html

Later when they dug it up, they did find bones consistent with a teenager that could have been the oldest child. I wonder if the other remains were simply lost somehow.

[TracyLynnS]

Old thread, I know. But I wonder if the answer is simple - the father plowed over the property and planted flowers soon after against the fire chief's wishes.

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/sodder_jennie.html

Later when they dug it up, they did find bones consistent with a teenager that could have been the oldest child. I wonder if the other remains were simply lost somehow.


http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=293816

This thread has an article and link to the blog of the author with even more info that she didn't have time to include, plus there are links to discussions over at websleuths.

IMO, the kids likely died in the fire. I learned that children's bones don't take as much heat or time to be destroyed in a fire or cremated.

Normally, house fires don't burn long enough or hot enough to destroy bodies completely, but I read an article that the Sodder home was heated with two coal stoves. The house caught on fire about midnight and burned all night long, with the entire house collapsing into the basement.

If there was a pile of coal stored in the basement to keep the stoves working, I can see where the remains could be destroyed, since coal burns hot enough to do that and the fire lasted for about 8 hours. The authorities ignored the family. After almost a week of being open to the winter elements, the father bulldozed over the basement and made it into a grave/shrine for the kids.

IMO, it was an arson, set by the man who cut the Sodder's phone line at the top of the pole, then proceeded to steal some very large tools (a couple of chain falls or chain hoist type set ups, iirc) from their garage while the survivors were running around the outside of the house trying to get to the upstairs and get the kids out of their room.

I feel like the sightings of the kids were false leads. They were all reported by people who had never met the family and were just going by photos shown in the news.