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The Sodder Children: Burned or not? · Lost: True Crime and Mystery.

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Lost, the podcast where we pull back
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  Speaker 1: the curtain on the world's most haunting cold cases, unexplained vanishments,
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  Speaker 1: and historical riddles that defy time itself. I'm your host, Sookie. Today,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: in episode four, we are traveling back to Christmas Eve, 1945,
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  Speaker 1: into the quiet, snow-dusted coal town of Fayetteville, West Virginia.
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  Speaker 1: It was a night when millions across America were celebrating
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  Speaker 1: the first Christmas of peace after World War II. Families
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  Speaker 1: were reuniting, tree lights were flickering, and children were falling
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  Speaker 1: asleep dreaming of morning gifts. For the Sauter family, however,
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  Speaker 1: Christmas Eve of 1945 brought a terrifying nightmare that consumed
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  Speaker 1: their home, splintered their lives, and birthed one of the
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  Speaker 1: most agonizing mysteries in modern history. It's the story of
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  Speaker 1: five children who disappeared into the night, five children whose
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  Speaker 1: bodies were never found in the ashes. Did they perish
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  Speaker 1: in a tragic inferno? Or were they stolen from their
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  Speaker 1: beds before the flames ever touched the house? This is
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  Speaker 1: the story of Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jenny, and Betty Sauter.
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  Speaker 1: Let's set the scene. George Sauter was an Italian immigrant
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  Speaker 1: who came to America as a teenager. Hardworking and fiercely independent,
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  Speaker 1: George built a comfortable life for his family in Fayetteville.
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  Speaker 1: He owned a successful trucking business, hauling dirt and coal.
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  Speaker 1: and together with his wife Jenny, he raised nine children
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  Speaker 1: in a spacious, two-story timber frame home along Route 16.
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  Speaker 1: A tenth son, Joe, was overseas serving in the military.
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  Speaker 1: George was well-regarded, but he wasn't without friction. He was outspoken,
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  Speaker 1: particularly about his disdain for Benito Mussolini and the fascist
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  Speaker 1: regime in Italy. In a tight-knit immigrant community, those political
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  Speaker 1: views earned him enemies. Months before the fire, strange warning
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  Speaker 1: signs began to surface, crumbs of a sinister puzzle that
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  Speaker 1: the family wouldn't fully piece together until it was far
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  Speaker 1: too late. In the autumn of 1945, a traveling insurance
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  Speaker 1: salesman came by the Sauter home. When George turned down
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  Speaker 1: a life insurance policy, the salesman flew into an unexpected rage.
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  Speaker 1: Looking George in the eye, he gestured toward the house
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  Speaker 1: and spat out a chilling threat. Your house is going
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  Speaker 1: up in smoke. and your children are going to be destroyed.
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  Speaker 1: You are going to pay for the dirty remarks you've
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  Speaker 1: made about Mussolini. George dismissed it as the bitter rambling
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  Speaker 1: of a failed salesman. Shortly after, another stranger visited the
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  Speaker 1: property under the guise of looking for work. Walking around
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  Speaker 1: the back, he pointed up at the electric fuse box
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  Speaker 1: and remarked, this is going to cause a fire someday.
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  Speaker 1: George was puzzled. He had recently had the house rewired,
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  Speaker 1: and the power company had declared the electrical system completely safe.
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  Speaker 1: Then came Christmas Eve. The atmosphere in the house was
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  Speaker 1: bright and energetic. 17-year-old Marion, the eldest daughter at home,
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  Speaker 1: had bought toys for her younger siblings. The children were
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  Speaker 1: so thrilled that they begged their mother to let them
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  Speaker 1: stay up past their usual bedtime. Jenny agreed, but with conditions.
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  Speaker 1: She told the older boys, 14-year-old Maurice and 9-year-old Louis,
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  Speaker 1: that they could stay up with 12-year-old Martha, 8-year-old Jenny,
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  Speaker 1: and 5-year-old Betty as long as they locked up the
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  Speaker 1: house together. fed the chickens, and put the cows away
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  Speaker 1: before going to sleep in their upstairs attic bedroom. Around
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  Speaker 1: 10 p.m., Jenny took her youngest daughter, three-year-old Sylvia, and
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  Speaker 1: went to bed upstairs with George. Older sons John and
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  Speaker 1: George Jr. were already sound asleep after a long day
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  Speaker 1: working alongside their father. The house fell quiet. But around 12.30 a.m.,
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  Speaker 1: the peaceful darkness was broken by the sharp metallic ring
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  Speaker 1: of the telephone downstairs. Jenny hurried down to answer it.
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  Speaker 1: On the line was a woman's voice she didn't recognize,
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  Speaker 1: asking for an unfamiliar name. In the background, Jenny heard
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  Speaker 1: the loud clinking of glasses and strange artificial laughter. Jenny
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  Speaker 1: informed the caller she had the wrong number. The woman
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  Speaker 1: responded with a bizarre laugh, and Jenny hung up. Before
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  Speaker 1: heading back upstairs, Jenny noticed something off. The downstairs lights
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  Speaker 1: were still on, and the front door was unlocked. The
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  Speaker 1: curtains were drawn open. Marion was asleep on the living
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  Speaker 1: room couch. Jenny assumed the other children had finished their
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  Speaker 1: chores and gone up to their attic bedrooms. She locked
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  Speaker 1: the door, switched off the lights, pulled the drapes, and
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  Speaker 1: walked back up to her bedroom. At 1 a.m., Jenny
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  Speaker 1: was awakened again by a heavy thudding sound, something hard
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  Speaker 1: slamming onto the roof above their heads, followed by a rolling,
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  Speaker 1: scraping noise along the shingles. When no further sound followed,
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  Speaker 1: Jenny drifted back to sleep. Half an hour later... At 1.30 a.m.,
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  Speaker 1: Jenny woke up suffocating. The air was thick with acrid smoke.
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  Speaker 1: She screamed for George. He bolted upright and opened the
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  Speaker 1: bedroom door to a terrifying sight. His office downstairs was
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  Speaker 1: already engulfed in roaring flames, curling furiously around the telephone
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  Speaker 1: line and fuse box. Panic erupted. George and Jenny rushed
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  Speaker 1: out of the room, shouting for the children. George, Jenny, Marion, John,
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  Speaker 1: and George Jr. managed to scramble out of the ground
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  Speaker 1: floor into the freezing winter night. Outside, George looked up
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  Speaker 1: at the top floor. The attic windows where Maurice, Louis, Martha,
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  Speaker 1: young Jenny, and Betty slept were shrouded in smoke. George
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  Speaker 1: screamed their names into the night sky, but there was
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  Speaker 1: no answer. The staircase inside was already eaten away by fire. Desperate,
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  Speaker 1: George ran to the side of the home to grab
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  Speaker 1: the heavy wooden ladder he kept leaning against the exterior wall,
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  Speaker 1: the ladder he intended to use to climb to the
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  Speaker 1: attic window. It was gone. It wasn't lying nearby. It
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  Speaker 1: was completely missing. Bleeding heavily from slicing his arm open
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  Speaker 1: on a broken window pane, George raced toward his two
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  Speaker 1: large coal trucks parked in the driveway. He planned to
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  Speaker 1: jump in, start one up, and pull it directly under
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  Speaker 1: the attic window to climb atop the cab. Both trucks
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  Speaker 1: had been running perfectly earlier that day. He turned the
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  Speaker 1: ignition on the first. Nothing. The engine refused to turn over.
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  Speaker 1: He ran to the second truck. It failed to start
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  Speaker 1: as well. In a frantic bid to douse the growing fire,
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  Speaker 1: Marion ran to the rain barrels to grab water, only
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  Speaker 1: to find the water inside frozen solid. John ran to
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  Speaker 1: a neighbor's house to call the local fire department, but
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  Speaker 1: the telephone line was dead. Another neighbor had to drive
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  Speaker 1: into town to alert Fire Chief F.J. Morris. Fayetteville's volunteer
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  Speaker 1: fire department was small. but what followed was an astounding
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  Speaker 1: failure of emergency response. Despite being only two and a
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  Speaker 1: half miles away, the fire department did not arrive until
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  Speaker 1: 8 a.m., nearly seven hours after the inferno broke out.
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  Speaker 1: By the time Chief Morris and his men pulled up,
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  Speaker 1: the Sodder family home was nothing more than a smoking,
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  Speaker 1: blackened crater of ash. The house had burned to the
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  Speaker 1: ground in 45 minutes. George, Jenny, and their four surviving
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  Speaker 1: children stood in the snow, broken and bleeding, watching the
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  Speaker 1: embers die down. They braced themselves for the grimmest task
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  Speaker 1: of all, recovering the remains of the five young souls
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  Speaker 1: who hadn't escaped. Chief Morris told the family that his
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  Speaker 1: men would search the rubble. But the search lasted only
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  Speaker 1: a short while. The firefighters poked around the basement debris.
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  Speaker 1: They found charred remnants of household appliances and furniture frames.
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  Speaker 1: But they found no bodies. No skeletons, no skulls, and
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  Speaker 1: no teeth. Chief Morris offered an explanation that felt convenient,
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  Speaker 1: if biologically absurd. He claimed the fire had been so
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  Speaker 1: intensely hot that it had completely cremated the children, incinerating
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  Speaker 1: their bodies into dust. Just days after the tragedy, state
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  Speaker 1: investigators briefly glanced at the site and officially ruled the
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  Speaker 1: fire an accident, citing faulty wiring as the cause. Devastated
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  Speaker 1: and unable to endure looking at the burned footprint of
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  Speaker 1: his home, George leveled the basement site with a bulldozer,
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  Speaker 1: covering the ruin with four feet of topsoil. intending to
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  Speaker 1: transform the space into a memorial garden for his children.
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  Speaker 1: Death certificates were issued for the five missing kids. Case closed,
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  Speaker 1: or so the authorities thought. Because as the numbness of
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  Speaker 1: shock faded, the burning questions began to surface. For George
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  Speaker 1: and Jenny Sautter, the official story made no sense. Jenny
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  Speaker 1: Sautter began her own research. She spoke with a local
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  Speaker 1: crematorium worker, who told her that human bones, even those
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  Speaker 1: of young children, do not disappear in a house fire.
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  Speaker 1: To reduce human bones to ash requires temperatures of at
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  Speaker 1: least 1800 to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, maintained over two to
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  Speaker 1: three hours. The solder house was built of wood, and
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  Speaker 1: the entire structure collapsed within 45 minutes. Even if the
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  Speaker 1: wood and coal in the basement had smoldered, recognizable bone
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  Speaker 1: fragments and teeth, the hardest substance in the human body,
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  Speaker 1: should have remained intact. Jenny ran experiments in her yard.
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  Speaker 1: burning chicken, beef, and pork bones in open fires. Every
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  Speaker 1: single time, the charred bones remained. If the children had
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  Speaker 1: died in that attic, where were their remains? Then came
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  Speaker 1: the physical anomalies surrounding the house itself. When a telephone
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  Speaker 1: repairman came to check the line, he discovered that the
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  Speaker 1: Sauter family phone wire hadn't been burned through by the fire.
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  Speaker 1: It had been intentionally cut, high up the pole with
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  Speaker 1: sharp shears. The missing ladder? It was discovered tucked away
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  Speaker 1: at the bottom of an embankment, hundreds of feet from
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  Speaker 1: the home. The two trucks that mysteriously wouldn't start on
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  Speaker 1: the night of the fire, a mechanic inspected them later
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  Speaker 1: and found that their ignitions had been deliberately tampered with.
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  Speaker 1: And what about the electrical wiring? If the fire had
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  Speaker 1: been caused by faulty wiring, as inspectors claimed, the electricity
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  Speaker 1: in the house should have gone dead immediately. Yet Jenny
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  Speaker 1: recalled clearly that the electric lights were still burning downstairs
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  Speaker 1: when she woke up to answer the midnight call, and
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  Speaker 1: when she first smelt smoke. Then there was the object
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  Speaker 1: Jenny heard rolling across the roof. Months after the fire,
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  Speaker 1: five-year-old Sylvia was playing in the brush near the house
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  Speaker 1: site when she uncovered a strange, hard rubber object shaped
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  Speaker 1: like a small grenade or pineapple bomb. George remembered the
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  Speaker 1: military technology he had read about, incendiary napalm devices that
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  Speaker 1: could be thrown onto a roof to ignite an instant fire.
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  Speaker 1: The pieces were assembling into a picture of arson and abduction.
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  Speaker 1: Disturbing local rumors began to circulate, pointing toward Chief Morris.
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  Speaker 1: Bothered by the solder's relentless questioning, Morris reportedly made a
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  Speaker 1: bizarre confession to a family friend. He admitted that he
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  Speaker 1: had indeed found an organ in the ashes on the
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  Speaker 1: morning of the fire. He claimed he had buried it
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  Speaker 1: in a small box on the property to spare the
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  Speaker 1: family grief. George and Jenny immediately demanded he show them.
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  Speaker 1: They dug up the box and rushed the tissue inside
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  Speaker 1: to a local funeral director for analysis. His conclusion? It
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  Speaker 1: was a fresh, unburned beef liver that had never been
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  Speaker 1: exposed to fire. Chief Morris had planted it in the
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  Speaker 1: dirt to convince the family that the children had died,
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  Speaker 1: hoping they would drop the investigation. By 1949, four years
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  Speaker 1: after that fateful night, George and Jenny hired a prominent
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  Speaker 1: pathologist from Washington, D.C., Dr. Oscar B. Hunter, to conduct
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  Speaker 1: a professional excavation of the dirt George had bulldozed over
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  Speaker 1: the basement. Deep in the earth, Dr. Hunter's team uncovered
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  Speaker 1: small items, damaged coins, a half-burned dictionary, and four small
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  Speaker 1: bone fragments. The bones were sent straight to the Smithsonian Institution.
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  Speaker 1: The Smithsonian confirmed that the fragments were human lumbar vertebrae
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  Speaker 1: belonging to a single person between 16 and 22 years
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  Speaker 1: of age. The bones showed absolutely no signs of exposure
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  Speaker 1: to fire. The oldest missing solder child, Maurice, was only
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  Speaker 1: 14 at the time of the fire. The report concluded
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  Speaker 1: that the bones were likely already present in the dirt
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  Speaker 1: George had used to fill in the basement. Not a
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  Speaker 1: single piece of evidence proved that any of the five
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  Speaker 1: children were inside the house when it burned. If Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jenny,
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  Speaker 1: and Betty weren't in that house, where were they? Reports
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  Speaker 1: began pouring in from witnesses who swore they had seen
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  Speaker 1: the missing solder children. A woman running a tourist home
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  Speaker 1: in Charleston, West Virginia, claims she saw four of the
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  Speaker 1: five children a week after Christmas, accompanied by two men
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  Speaker 1: and two women of Italian descent, who acted hostily when
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  Speaker 1: she tried to speak to them. A woman at a
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  Speaker 1: diner outside Fayetteville reported seeing the children peering out of
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  Speaker 1: a moving car while the fire was still blazing early
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  Speaker 1: Christmas morning. Another witness at a hotel in Florida claimed
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  Speaker 1: to have seen the children months later, guarded by adults
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  Speaker 1: who refused to let them interact with anyone. George Sautter
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  Speaker 1: spent the rest of his life chasing these shadows. He
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: traveled across the country following every lead. He hired private investigators,
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  Speaker 1: spent thousands of dollars, and pleaded with the FBI to intervene.
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  Speaker 1: But local authorities in Fayetteville refused permission for federal agents
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  Speaker 1: to enter the case. Driven by an unshakable determination, George
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: and Jenny erected a massive billboard along Route 16, featuring
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: grainy black-and-white photos of their five missing children, a detailed
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  Speaker 1: timeline of events, and a massive reward. For decades, that
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  Speaker 1: billboard stood as an eerie monument along the West Virginia Highway. Then,
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  Speaker 1: in 1968, 23 years after the fire, came the most
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  Speaker 1: chilling turn in the entire case. Jenny Sautter opened her
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  Speaker 1: mailbox to find an envelope postmarked from Central City, Kentucky,
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  Speaker 1: with no return address. Inside was a photograph of a
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  Speaker 1: young man in his late 20s or early 30s. He
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: had dark, wavy hair, intense brown eyes. and a left
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  Speaker 1: eyebrow that arched upward in a striking curve, an uncanny
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  Speaker 1: resemblance to Louis Sauter. On the back, a cryptic message
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  Speaker 1: was handwritten in ink. Louis Sauter. I love brother Frankie.
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  Speaker 1: I little boys. A90132. Or 35. The family hired another
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  Speaker 1: private investigator to travel to Kentucky to trace the origin
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  Speaker 1: of the letter. but that investigator went to Kentucky and
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  Speaker 1: never reported back to the Sodders. He completely vanished, taking
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  Speaker 1: his findings with him. George Sodder died in 1969, his
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: heart broken, still searching for his children. Jenny wore black
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  Speaker 1: in mourning for the rest of her life until her
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  Speaker 1: death in 1989, tending to a memorial garden built over
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  Speaker 1: the fire site. The youngest child, Sylvia, carried the torch
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  Speaker 1: into the 21st century, maintaining until her death that her
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: siblings did not die in that fire. Decades later, researchers
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: and internet sleuths on Reddit remain divided into two major camps.
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  Speaker 1: Theory one, the mafia and abduction theory. Proponents believe the
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Sauter children were kidnapped before the fire was set due
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: to George's outspoken anti-fascist stance. Under this scenario, the midnight
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  Speaker 1: phone call was a distraction. An incendiary device was thrown
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: onto the roof, and the severed phone lines, missing ladder,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and disabled trucks point directly to deliberate sabotage. The children
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: may have been placed in black market adoption rings, which
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: were booming in the 1940s, or taken to Italy. Theory two,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: the tragic house fire. The opposing perspective argues that the
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: simplest explanation is often the truth. They believe the five
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: children succumbed to smoke inhalation early in the night. The
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: house had a basement filled with coal, which burned at
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: intense heat for hours. and bulldozing the site days later
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  Speaker 1: crushed or buried any remaining bone fragments beyond recovery during
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: initial searches. More than 80 years later, the mystery of
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the Sodder children remains frozen in time. Five dark-haired children
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  Speaker 1: who went upstairs to bed on Christmas Eve and vanished
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  Speaker 1: off the face of the earth. Thank you for listening
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: to Episode 4 of Lost. I'm your host, Sookie. Join
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: us next week as we dive into another unsolved mystery
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  Speaker 1: that time forgot. Until then... Keep looking for answers. And
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: stay safe.