Latest / Crime Night / The Sodder Children: Vanished in the Night

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The Sodder Children: Vanished in the Night · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want you to picture a scene and really
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: try to place yourself inside it. It is Christmas Eve, 1945,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: in the small, icy town of Fayetteville, West Virginia.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, and the winter cold out there is biting. It's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: sharp enough to just crack your brain.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But inside the home of George and Jenny Sauter,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: it is radiating warmth. They're Italian immigrants who have built
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: this really beautiful, bustling, prosperous life from the ground up.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Right. And nine of their ten children are home for
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: the holidays. Yeah.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: The house is just humming with energy. It's late, way
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: past a normal bedtime. But the younger kids are begging
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to stay up just a little longer, playing with their
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: new toys. And Jenny, smiling, she finally relents.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Like any mom on Christmas Eve.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Right. She just tells them to remember to lock the
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: doors and turn off the lights before they go to bed.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It is this perfect picture of absolute happiness. ordinary domestic peace.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: But within hours, that entire reality is going to be
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: violently erased. That warm, happy house will be reduced to
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: a smoldering pit of ash in the dark, and five
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: of those children are going to vanish without a trace.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: It's horrifying. So today we are stepping into the ashes
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: of one of the most chilling, enduring locked room mysteries
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: in American history.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Our mission on this deep dive is to sift through
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the remnants of a tragedy that was hastily slept under
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the rug 80 years ago. We are looking at a
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: newly unearthed stack of archival case files, coroner's inquest records,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and modern fire science data.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: We really need to peel back the layers of a
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: small town's darkest secrets here.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: We do. We're going to examine the deeply bizarre and
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: honestly theatrical behavior of its local officials and try to
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: piece together what actually happened to Maurice, Martha, Louie, Jenny,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and Betty Sauter.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: And to understand the absolute terror of what happened to
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: this family, we have to walk through the exact sequence
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: of events that night. The timeline is, well, it's critical.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Take us through it.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Let's go to 1230 a.m. The house is completely dark.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Suddenly the phone rings. Jenny gets out of bed, walks
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: down the hall to the office, and answers it. It's
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: a woman she doesn't know asking for a name she's
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: never heard. But in the background, Jenny hears glasses clinking
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: and this strange, unsettling laugh.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Ah, that's so creepy.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Right. So she tells the woman she has the wrong number.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: But just as she hangs up, she hears a sudden
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: sound above her, a heavy thud on the roof. Yeah,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: followed by a distinct rolling noise, like a heavy tree
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: branch bouncing down the shingles.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, imagine standing alone in a dark house and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: hearing that. But she brushes it off, probably assuming it's
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: just the winter wind throwing debris around, right?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she notices the kids had forgotten to lock the
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: front door, so she secures it. turns off the remaining lights,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: and goes back to sleep.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: But then, 30 minutes later, at 1 a.m., she wakes
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: up again.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: And this time, it's not a noise.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: No, it is the suffocating, acrid smell of smoke. She
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: jumps out of bed, throws open her bedroom door, and
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: sees that the office, the very room she was just
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: standing in, is completely ablaze.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: And we are not talking about a fire slowly catching
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: onto the curtains here.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Not at all.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: The heat is already blistering. The flames have aggressively spread
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: to the staircase. creating this massive impenetrable wall of fire
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: that completely blocks the only path up to the kids'
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: bedrooms on the second floor.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: The panic that sets in at that moment, it's just unimaginable.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: She is screaming for George and the older boys.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: They had to get out.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, George, Jenny, and four of the kids barely make
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: it out the front door. The fire is moving with
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: such unnatural, ferocious speed that the older boys' hair and
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: eyebrows are literally singed off by the radiating heat as
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: they sprint past the doorway. Wow. They burst out into
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the freezing night, gasping for air in the snow. They
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: do a frantic head count in the dark, and the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: most horrifying realization drops on them.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Five kids are missing.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jenny, and Betty aren't there. They're still
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: trapped upstairs.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, the instinct of any parent is to run
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: straight back into the inferno. Jenny tries to force her
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: way back through the front door, but the physical wall
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: of heat physically throws her backward.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It's just too hot.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: So George pivots. He sprints to the side of the
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: house to grab the heavy extension ladder that is literally
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: always leaning against the siding. His plan is to climb
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: up to the second story window and pull him out.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: But when he gets to the side of the house,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: the ladder is just, it's gone.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Gone.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Completely missing.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: And without missing a beat, George runs to a ground
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: floor window. He smashes his bare hands through the glass,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: trying to carve out a path to the stairs, slicing
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: his arm open all the way down to the bone. Oh, man.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Blood is pouring down his arm, but he doesn't care.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Doesn't enter, though, because the fire inside is entirely consuming
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the structure. So he tries his last desperate option.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: The trucks. Yes.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: George owns a highly successful coal trucking business. He and
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: his sons run to the family's massive coal trucks parked nearby.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: The strategy is to back one of these heavy trucks
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: right up against the house and use it as a
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: platform to climb onto the roof.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Which is brilliant under the circumstances. So he jumps into
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: the cab of the first truck, turns the key, and
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: the engine just grinds. It's completely flooded. It won't turn over.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: So he jumps into the second truck. He turns the key.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Same exact thing. The engine is flooded.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Wait, both of them?
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Both of them. These are commercial vehicles used daily for
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: heavy labor. And suddenly, simultaneously, both refuse to start.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: And while George is desperately fighting with the trucks, their
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: oldest daughter, Marion, is sprinting through the biting snow in
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: the pitch black to a neighbor's house to call the
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: fire department.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: She bangs on their door, picks up their telephone receiver,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and the line is completely dead. There's no dial tone. None.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: She runs to another neighbor who has to physically get
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: in their car, drive into town, track down a working phone,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and finally get hold of the fire chief.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: And this is where the sheer apathy of the town's
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: officials really begins to show. When this neighbor finally reaches
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: the fire chief to report a massive structure fire with
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: children trapped inside, the chief's response is completely devoid of urgency.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: He essentially says, well, we already know about it. Unbelievable.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: But he doesn't mobilize immediately. The fire department is only
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: two and a half miles away from the Sauter home.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: It takes them seven hours to arrive.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Seven hours for two and a half miles?
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: They don't pull into the driveway until eight in the morning.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's just unpack the mechanics of what happened here
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: in the span of 30 minutes. If one truck doesn't
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: start on a cold winter night, sure, that's bad luck.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: But a missing heavy ladder, dead phone lines... two entirely
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: separate flooded engines, and a fire chief who actively delays
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: a rescue response. This isn't just a string.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Of bad luck. No, the math on this being a
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: coincidence just doesn't add up.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: It is like someone built a mousetrap around this house
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, waited for the family
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: to go to sleep, and systematically snapped every single exit shut.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what it looks like. The physical evidence at
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: the scene entirely supports the idea of a premeditated, coordinated
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: isolation of that family. Whoever was outside in the dark
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: that night knew exactly what they were doing.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: They really did.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: They were dismantling the family's ability to fight back piece
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: by piece, ensuring that once that fire started, it would
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: finish the job without interference.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the dawn. The aftermath of this
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: fire defies all known laws of physics. The house burned
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: to the ground incredibly fast. We're talking 30 to 45
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: minutes total.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: George, bleeding from his arm, and Jenny are forced to
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: stand there in the freezing cold, utterly helpless, staring at
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: a smoking, glowing hole in the ground where their basement
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: used to be. But when the fire finally dies down
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: and the ash is cool enough to search, there are
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: zero human remains found. None.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Not a skull fragment, not a piece of a femur,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: not a single tooth.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: How is that possible?
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Well, to put the impossibility of this into perspective, we
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: have to look at the sheer science of cremation. A
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: house fire in 1945 simply does not generate the sustained
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: thermal energy required to vaporize five human skeletons.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And what makes this even more baffling is what they
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: actually did find in the rubble. They found loose coins.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: They found the internal mechanisms of household appliances.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the crazy part.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: They even found a paper dictionary and recognizable pieces of
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Jenny's winter coat. I mean, think about that. Items that
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: are infinitely more fragile and flammable than human bones survived
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the blaze. Yet five entire children seemingly vanished into literal
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: thin air.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Jenny Sautter intuitively knew this was scientifically impossible. In fact,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: she became so fixated on the lack of remains that
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: she started conducting her own desperate forensic experiments right there
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: in her backyard. Really?
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: What did she do?
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: She would go to the local butcher, get animal bones,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: and put them in a coal-burning stove. She would pour
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: accelerants on them, stoking the fire, keeping it blazing at
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: maximum heat, For hours. Just trying to see if she
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: could reduce bone to pure ash.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: She couldn't do it. The bones would char and crack,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: but they stubbornly remained intact.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense. Her homemade experiments perfectly align with modern
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: fire science. We have data from a modern 2026 fire
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: investigator looking at this exact case.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: What did they find?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: He breaks down the math. To completely cremate a human body,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: you need roughly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit of direct concentrated flame
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: for two solid hours.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Two hours at 2,000 degrees. Yeah.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Even in a professional crematorium today, fragments of the skull
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: and major joints survive and have to be mechanically ground down.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: A 45-minute wood frame house fire from the 1940s, burning
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: perhaps at 1,200 degrees at its absolute peak, wouldn't even
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: come close.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Not even close.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: This modern investigator states unequivocally, you cannot declare that someone
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: died in a fire and not have human remains. So wait,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: if the fire physics make it literally impossible for five
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: skeletons to turn to dust in 45 minutes, How did
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: the authorities legally declare them dead? Did no one on
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: that jury push back?
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: That glaring physical impossibility forces us to look at how
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the authorities manage the crime scene. You would think the
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: lack of bodies would trigger a massive state investigation. Right. Instead,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: just four days after the fire, the local fire chief
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: approached George and Jenny. While they're deep in shock, grieving
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: the loss of their home and their children, He tells
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: them to just stop looking. What? Just stop looking? Yes.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: He instructed them to scoop up a handful of ashes,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: bury them, and bulldoze five feet of dirt over the
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: entire site to make a memorial garden.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Put yourself in George and Jenny's shoes. You're exhausted, traumatized,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: and the highest authority in town is telling you to
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: put dirt over your children's grave. So, they comply.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: They didn't know what else to do.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Her brother uses a bulldozer to fill in the basement.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: And the second that dirt is pushed over the foundation,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the local authorities throw their hands up. They claim the
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: scene is now officially compromised.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: It's so convenient.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: They use the very bulldozing that the chief himself suggested
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: as a legal excuse to shut down the entire investigation.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. A coroner's inquest was swiftly convened, and they ruled
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: the tragedy an accidental wiring fire. Death certificates were issued
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: without a single ounce of physical proof. They essentially buried
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: the investigation in that basement under five feet of West
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Virginia clay.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: But they thought that would be the end of it.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: They thought the solders would just quietly fade away. The
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: problem is guilt or arrogance makes people sloppy.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Very sloppy.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: The cover-up didn't stay buried for long because the logistical
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: details of the sabotage started coming to light. Remember the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: cut phone line? A local man was actually caught having
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: stolen that heavy extension ladder and severing the phone line.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: And his defense was completely absurd. He claimed he saw
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: the fire. and climbed up a pole in the pitch
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: black to cut what he thought was the power line
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: to stop the electrical fire.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: That makes no sense.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: None. He climbed 14 feet into the air and specifically
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: snipped the telephone wire instead.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: And let's not forget the ladder itself. That massive ladder
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: George was looking for. It wasn't just moved a few feet.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: It was discovered much later, tossed down a steep embankment
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: 75 feet away from the house. Wow. This man was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: literally caught red-handed. having dismantled a family's lifeline during a
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: fatal fire. His punishment, a $ 25 fine for petty theft.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: $ 25.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: He was never charged with arson, manslaughter, or reckless endangerment.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: He was never even officially questioned about his location when
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: the fire started.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Adding to the mechanical sabotage, investigators later realized that heavy
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: chain hoists were missing from the basement.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: George used these massive block-and-tackle hoists to lift heavy truck engines.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: These are industrial tools made of thick iron chains, heavily
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: bolted into the structural timber of the ceiling.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't just casually grab an iron chain hoist
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: while a house is actively collapsing around you.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: No, unbolting those requires heavy wrenches, physical leverage, and significant time.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: That means someone was inside the solder basement, methodically unbolting
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: industrial equipment long before that fire ever started.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to 1947, when the behavior of the
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: authorities transitions from quiet suppression to outright theatrical deception.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: This part is wild.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: It really is. The fire chief, the same man who
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: delayed the trucks and ordered the bulldozing, starts spreading a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: rumor around town. He tells locals that on the morning
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: of the fire, he actually did find a human heart
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: in the ashes.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: A human heart?
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He claims he secretly placed it in a dynamite
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: box and buried it on the solder property.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: When Jenny hears this rumor... She is furious. I mean,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: can you imagine the emotional whiplash? You've spent two years
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: agonizing over the lack of remains, and the chief casually
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: claims he buried a piece of your child in your
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: yard and just forgot to tell you.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: It's monstrous.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: So she demands he show them where it is. The
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: family hires a private investigator. They force the chief back
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: to the property, and they dig down six feet.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: And what do they find?
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: They pull up a metal box. Inside is a fleshy,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: organ-like mass. And then the chief does something so brazen
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: it's hard to believe. He demands that George sign a
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: physical receipt acknowledging he was given the heart.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting and, frankly, disturbing. The
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: fire chief planting this thing isn't just a cover-up that's
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: theatrical villainy. It is like something out of a pulp
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: detective novel. Why go to such bizarre lengths if there's
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: nothing to hide?
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Well, it was a performance. The chief was trying to
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: manufacture a paper trail to finalize the case. But the
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Sodders didn't trust anyone in Fayetteville anymore. They took this
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: box directly to an out-of-town funeral director for examination.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Good for them.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: The director opened it, analyzed the tissue, and quickly determined.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: It was absolutely not a human heart. It was a fresh,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: completely unburned beef liver.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Wait. A beef liver?
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: A beef liver. It had never been exposed to high heat.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: It was just raw meat from a butcher, shoved in
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: a box, and buried in the dirt.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Oh my god.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: The fire chief planted a literal piece of beef to
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: masquerade as a dead child's heart. just to get a
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: signature on a receipt.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: That is incredibly morbid and desperate.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: And incredibly, before this liver could be sent to a
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: state hospital for forensic testing, the funeral home inexplicably left it,
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: sitting out on a back porch. It was accidentally thrown
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: away by the garbage man the next morning. How convenient. Right.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: The only physical evidence of the chief's elaborate deception vanished
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: into the local landfill.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't until 1949 that an actual professional excavation
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: was done. A Smithsonian pathologist dug up the site and
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: finally found something for human vertebrae.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: But there's a catch, right?
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. The bones belonged to someone aged 14 to 22,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and they were completely unburned. The pathologist determined they had
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: likely just been tossed into the dirt that was used
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: to fill the basement from the graveyard down the street.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: It wasn't the children. Wow.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: So the chief was willing to plant a piece of
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: meat and call it a child's heart. And the dirt
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: was contaminated. Just to close the book on this family,
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: you have to ask yourself, whose book was he balancing?
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And that trail leads straight to the shadow looming
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: over this entire town, a man named Fiorenzo Gianottulo. Right.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Fiorenzo Gianottulo was an incredibly wealthy, powerful man in Fayetteville.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: For years, George Sodder worked under him. They had a close,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: profitable relationship.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Till they didn't.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly. In 1943, George broke away. He bought his own trucks.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: and started his own highly successful competing trucking company. Fiorenzo
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: viewed this not just as business competition, but as profound disrespect.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: And the timeline of escalation is chilling. About 60 days
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: before the fire, Fiorenzo sent an associate to George's property
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: to aggressively try and sell him life insurance for his family.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Which is already weird.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, George politely, but firmly, refused. A short time later,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Fiorenzo himself showed up at the property. The confrontation was explosive.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: He didn't speak in veiled terms. He looked George in
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the eye and explicitly threatened him, stating, your goddamn house
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: is going up in smoke and your children are going
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: to be destroyed.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering, specific threat to make two months
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: before that exact scenario plays out.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: And the financial maneuvers happening in the background make it
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: even worse.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Sometime right before Christmas, the insurance policy on the Sauter
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: home was quietly increased without George or Jenny's knowledge or consent.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: You're kidding?
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: No. And when the house ultimately burned down, the family
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: never saw a dime of that payout. The money was
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: routed directly to Firenzo Gianottola.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Now, a logical person looks at this and wonders, how
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: does a man threaten to burn your house down? The
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: house burns down, he collects the insurance money, and he
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: isn't instantly arrested. How does that happen?
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, you don't
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: need a massive mob conspiracy to make people disappear. In 1945,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: if one man controls the fire chief, the jury... the bank,
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: and the local businesses, he controls reality in that town.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Corruption doesn't always look like mobsters breaking kneecaps. Sometimes it
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: looks like a single man signing the paychecks and funding
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: the local campaigns. People simply know not to look too
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: closely at his affairs.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Look at the coroner's jury that swiftly ruled the
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: fire an accidental wiring issue, completely ignoring the cut phone
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: lines and flooded trucks. It was made up of six men.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Five of those six men had direct financial or personal
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: ties to Fiorenzo. The jury foreman was literally his cousin
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: and business partner. Wow. Another juror was a bank employee
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: who relied on his company's accounts. And the fire chief,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the man who delayed the fire trucks, who mandated the bulldozing,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: who planted a beef liver to fake a death that
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: fire chief, was Fiorenzo Ginocchio's personal private bookkeeper.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Wow. Ginocchio essentially controlled reality in that town. He insulated
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: himself so thoroughly that the Sodder family couldn't even find
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: a local lawyer willing to take their civil case against him.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Everyone was too afraid of the financial repercussions.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: So we have a scientifically impossible fire, a thoroughly corrupted
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: local government, and a powerful enemy who specifically promised to
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: destroy George's children.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Which brings us back to the most haunting question of
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: this entire investigation. If Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jenny, and Betty
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: did not burn to ash in that basement, where did
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: they go?
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Well, in 1952, a compelling, sworn piece of testimony emerged.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: A woman running a hotel a little over an hour
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: away from Fayetteville came forward.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: What did she say?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: She signed an affidavit stating that just days after the fire,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: four children matching the exact descriptions and ages of the
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: missing Sauter kids checked into her hotel.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: They were accompanied by two men and two women who
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: spoke fluent Italian. The adults were highly hostile and aggressive.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: When the hotel owner tried to speak to the children,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: the men physically blocked her, shut down the conversations, and
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: the entire group vanished from the hotel the next morning.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: This sighting aligns perfectly with the modern researcher's theory. This
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: wasn't just a business grudge resulting in an accidental fire.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Arson was just the camouflage. It was a targeted, vindictive kidnapping.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: The theory posits that the kids were quietly extracted from
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the home before the fire ever started and perhaps during
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: the commotion of that strange thud and rolling sound on
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the roof. The fire was then ignited purely as a chaotic,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: blinding diversion to cover their escape and destroy any evidence
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: of a struggle.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: And, you know, if this was just a business grudge
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: against George, why go through the massive logistical nightmare of
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: kidnapping five kids instead of just burning down his trucking business?
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: That's the question, isn't it?
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Taking the children is the ultimate unending form of psychological torture.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: If Fiorenzo had just burned down George's trucking business, he
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: would have ruined his finances. George could have rebuilt.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: But stealing a man's children, that destroys his soul. It
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: is a punishment that resets every single morning when the
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: parents wake up. It perfectly executes the specific cruelty of
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: the initial threat, not just that the house would burn,
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: but that the family would be utterly destroyed.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Some skeptics over the years have wondered if George and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Jenny orchestrated this themselves, you know, maybe for insurance money or...
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: To hide some dark family secret.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: Well, absolutely not.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Right. As you dig into the case files, their actions
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: over the next few decades completely obliterate that theory. They
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: never received a cent of the insurance. Instead, they spent
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: their entire lives and every penny of their savings desperately
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: searching for those five children.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: They really did. They traveled across the country chasing down rumors.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: They hired private investigators. They erected a massive haunting billboard
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: on Route 19 featuring the faces of their missing children,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: offering a massive reward for information.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of that billboard.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that billboard stood there for decades, weathering the seasons,
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: long after the town had moved on. You do not
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: bankrupt yourself emotionally and financially searching for a secret that
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: you buried yourself.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: You just don't. It is a devastating story of a
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: family fighting against an invisible machine. What was officially written
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: off as a tragic, unavoidable accident was almost certainly a
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: meticulously planned abduction, shielded by small-town corruption, fake physical evidence,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: and a fire that defied the very laws of physics.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: It forces you to consider the extreme fragility of truth.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: This story shows how easily the official narrative of history
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: can be manipulated when powerful people hold all the leverage
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: in a community. George and Jenny Sodder were left to
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: fight ghosts for their entire lives, simply because the people
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: in charge decided that the truth was inconvenient to their allegers.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: And as we close the files on this deep dive today,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with one final lingering thought. Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jenny,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and Betty were young when they were taken into the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: dark that night. If they survived, if they were shipped
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: far away, absorbed into a syndicate, and given new names
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: and new identities, they didn't just disappear from the earth.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: They would have grown up, they might have married, they
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: might have had children of their own, which means... There
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: could be people walking around today, maybe even someone listening
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: to this right now, whose true family tree doesn't start
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: where they think it does.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Their bloodline might trace back to a burning house in
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: West Virginia on a freezing Christmas Eve in 1945. Someone
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: out there might be holding the final oblivious piece to
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: an 80-year-old puzzle, walking around with the face of a
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: missing Sauter child, and they don't even know it.