The Mysterious Disappearance Of The Sodder Children

This week on BuzzFeed in solve we covered the

mysterious

disappearance

of the child soldiers you look enslaved but you look very excited I can't wait I think your jaw is about to drop we'll see okay let's start the year. It was the night before Christmas 1945 in Fayetteville, West Virginia, George and Jenny Solder were asleep along with nine of their

children

when a house fire started around 1:00 AM. m. George Jenny and four of her

children

escaped, Sylvia Mary and John and George Jr, the children who remained in the house were Maurice Martha Lewis, Jenny and Betty, and the five shared two rooms between the two upstairs rooms.

George broke into the house to save the rest of the children, but the staircase was on fire when he entered. Outside to retrieve his ladder, he was missing from his normal spot and his two coal trucks that he wanted to use to park outside and get on were strangely not starting. Don't park your coal truck next to a fire, that's a bad idea, yes. I mean I can't imagine there was coal in the truck oh hi ok Cherie was empty dan: well I don't know that's a coal truck you climb on top of. I love calling him.

It is very covered in flammable coal to jump into a house, bad idea. Marion, one of the children who escaped the fire, ran to the neighbor's house to call the fire department, but the operator did not answer and when a different neighbor tried to call, she also got no answer from the operator; That same neighbor drove into town and found Fire Chief FJ Morris in person, but even though the fire department was only located 2.5 miles from the house, the firefighters strangely did not arrive at the slaughterhouse until 8: 00 a.m. m., seven hours after the fire started and when they arrived at the house it was literally ash time to reevaluate their staff there, really see what their tax money is going to there, that's not like, oh boy, We really dropped the ball on that, it's like the Florida firefighters could have been brought there and to their defense.

It was Christmas Eve, it's okay if people feel like they tried to knock. I'm not saying I forgive them for being seven hours late to a fire that was 2.5 miles away. It's just not that it's not cool, in fact I'm pretty sure. I could run that probably in about an hour at least. I could spit fire. Laugh at me so you spit on the fire resistance. The Authority searched through the ashes of the fire looking for the remains of the five missing child soldiers, but nothing was found and they were presumed dead due to the fire, the fire chief, FG Morris, suggested that the fire may have been so hot that completely cremated the children's bodies, including their bones, although that theory seems reasonable, it is not entirely accurate because when the flesh is burned, the bones are probably still in fragmented form, furthermore, no smell of burning flesh was reported during or after the fire, the cause of the fire was considered to be poor wiring in the house and in the week after the Fayetteville coroner's office issued the death certificates for the five child soldiers, the basement of the house still remained and George would later use a bulldozer to cover it with five feet of dirt to create a memorial to his children shortly after the fire.

George and Jenny began to suspect that their children were not dead but had been kidnapped, believing the fire was started deliberately as a distraction and not as a result of faulty wiring; In fact, George had had the wiring in his house checked earlier that fall by the power company, which had deemed the wiring to be in good working condition and said the wiring was defective. Someone at the coroner's office will see why they might have done this later, but anyway, before we delve into the theory that the children were kidnapped, let's look at George's personal history to provide context for who George Solder had immigrated to. of Italy and Fayetteville, where Saunders lived in a small but committed community of Italian immigrants, a community in which George was very vocal, especially about his disdain for Mussolini, sparking heated debates in the community.

George reportedly never revealed why he left Italy, leading some to speculate that he may have been involved in some shady business in Italy; many believe that any of these reasons may have led to the kidnapping of George's children. George. Let's examine some curious events that support a possible kidnapping in the fall, just before the house fire, a life insurance salesman came to the house and when he saw that his sale was not going to be successful he became angry and yelled at George: "your damn house is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed, you will be paid for the dirty comments you have been making." about Mussolini end of quote, okay, I will set this house on fire and your children will die.

Could I have done it? This seems a bit exaggerated to me. He simply listed each aspect of the case in a nice, simple presentation. The Fire House kids are going there, yeah, it was like the third act of a student film when they had to wrap everything up like an exposition. He is everything we wanted to do tomorrow in the days before the fire, two of the sons of the surviving soldiers. I witnessed a man watching the younger child soldiers walk home from school on Highway 21. Another suspicious event occurred that night on the night of the fire, around 12:30 AM. m., the phone rang and Jenny got out of bed to answer it.

This would result in an important observation then she noticed that the lights were still on downstairs now she started to fall back asleep she heard a loud bang on the ceiling followed by the sound of something rolling and an hour later she woke up to the smell of smoke coming into his room downstairs the interesting detail is the fact that the lights were still on if the fire had been caused by faulty wiring as had been suggested, that meant there would have been no power in the house, meaning the lights should not have been working, but Jenny saw them on about an hour before the smoke and the Sauters would later claim that they saw the lights on while the fire was occurring and, furthermore, a witness to the fire claimed that they saw a man removing a block and tackle that is typically used for removing car engines, perhaps explaining why the two Georgia trucks were not running that night, in their autopsy did they look in the cars to see if Was there any detail in them?

No, no, I mean, look, I don't think so. He removed the engines completely because it's not like he likes riding around with really heavy engines. I think he maybe he just manipulated them. You know, he just throws a couple of wires here and there. Okay, all of this is possible. It was probably after the fire when the family. She visited the monument George had installed. Sylvia found a hard rubber object in the yard, an object that Jenny believed may have caused the loud explosion that would occur that night, but even more interesting was the fact that upon closer inspection by George, he believed that the object It was a napalm and pineapple bomb similar to those used in the war at the time.

I mean, it sounds like someone set the house on fire, yes, it clearly does. I think we have enough here to say that yes, someone probably set the house on fire. Oh, it was a faulty pump. Wired with all these strange occurrences and not believing that the fire could have burned her children's bones to ashes, Jenny began the experiment by burning different types of animal bones, all of which left remains. She spoke to a crematorium employee who told her there were bones of information. behind even after the bodies burned at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours and the welding house only burned for about 45 minutes.

Also noteworthy is the fact that remains of household appliances were found among the rubble, which means that it was not all ash, so clearly bones should have remained. should have been bones sightings of the children have also been reported one occurred that night while the fire was still burning a woman claimed to have seen the children in a car that passed while the fire was still burning 50 miles west of Fayetteville a woman who operated a tourist stop and told police he saw the children the morning after the fire. I served them breakfast. There was a car with Florida plates in the tourist court.

And I saw her, yes, yes. I mean, she's just dead. Breakfast is okay, good. I mean, yeah, I agree, brush, this is good, I really enjoy the bacon, cool, what are we doing in a hotel in nearby Charleston? If a woman reported seeing four of the five children about a week after the fire, here is her statement to police. Quote that the children were accompanied by two women and two men all of Italian origin I did not remember the exact date I tried to talk to the children in a friendly manner the man was hostile and refused to allow me to speak to these children I felt like they were freezing me I left and I didn't say anything else.

They left early the next morning. A few years later, George saw a photo of New York City schoolchildren in a newspaper and one of the children looked like his missing daughter. Betty George drove to New York to investigate. but once she located the boy's parents, they refused to speak to him in 1947, two years after the fire. George and Jenny tried to involve the FBI, who offered to help, but in a curious turn of events, the Fayetteville police and fire department denied their offer. What do you gain by refusing to help the FBI? All you have to do is give a couple of interviews, maybe like, yeah, there's a lot of paperwork, how busy is this fire department, they're probably not that busy, but that's probably how they liked it.

I think there's something shady there, but this is my opinion. George and Jenny turned to a private investigator named Cece Tinsley, yeah, Cece Tinsley, yeah, what did you say, bluntly, uh, mmm sounds like a case you see, Tinsley, apparently they got a time machine investigator oh yeah, that doesn't mean that, yeah, that's how they talked. A suspicious revelation occurred when Tinsley discovered that a member of the coroner's jury who decided the welding house fire was an accident was the same life insurance salesman who had threatened George earlier in the fall, oh who formed this jury. , the coroner, we are forming a jury to investigate this crime, can you, can you, Renne, GLE, raise everything, maybe, some lunatic sales money, by the way, he did what he was, there is no police officer that I know The crime works like how do they not interview this seller of lives? like I don't know what I'm telling you no one knows how to do their job in this city it's amazing like oh so you're telling me he yelled in your face that he's going to murder your family interesting he sounds like a good guy to me I don't know what you're on about speaking to that jury another interesting finding occurred when Tinsley interviewed townspeople about the fire Tesla heard a rumor from the town minister that the fire chief had been telling people that he had not actually found a heart or the remains of the welding hoe and that he had hidden it in a box of dynamite and buried it where the house would be, it was Mr.

Chompers Tinsley persuaded the fire chief to show him where he was burying it, but what he dug up the heart was actually beef liver and he had never been to a fire. Oh damn it's a sandwich, no wonder the sandwich tastes so bad the other day I mixed them together. I guess you could say it's a sincere gesture, Khayyam, see you later, let's not sit around In August 1949, the Saunders hired a pathologist called Oscar B Hunter, who excavated the earth covering the welding cellar and the remains of the home, found four fragments of human vertebrae and sent them to the Smithsonian for analysis.

They assumed the bones were from a 16 to 17 year old person, however, the oldest missing welding boy was a 14 year old, making it unlikely that the bones belonged to him, they also stated that there was no evidence that the bones belonged to him. bones would have been exposed to the fire and that the bones probably originated from the dirt that George Solder used to build a basement rather than the remains of the house, this was before DNA research came into play and, according to the Smithsonian, The bones were returned to George Solder, but their current whereabouts remain a mystery exactly, no one knows a great tragedy that we cannot analyze the DNA of those bones to see if they belong. to child soldiers after the Smithsonian revealed its findings.

West Virginia Governor Okie L. Patterson convened a hearing at the state capitol building in Charleston, West Virginia, where he officially declared the soldier case closed and told George and Jennie that their raise was, quote, unquote, desperate. He led George and Jenny to place a sign on Route 16 announcing his missing children, where he remained for almost 40 years.40 years his tenacity I want to be fair, if they were my children I wouldn't stop and yes, I guess if five of his children have disappeared, oh, and also a salesman shouted in my face, I'm going to burn down his house, his honor, his family, yeah yeah, I think I'd probably keep looking at Billboard that kept the story alive and mentioned details like how the kids were kidnapped the fact that faulty wiring didn't cause the fire the fact that no bones or debris were found and lastly he accused the law enforcement officers involved in a cover up cite what was the motive of the law enforcement officers involved what did they have to win by making us suffer all these years of injustice, why did they lie to force us to accept those lives?

Citing the town's people had several theories, some believed the mafia had been involved, others believed the children were now in Italy or that they had been sold to an orphanage the family received a letter from a woman in st. Louis saying that the missing eldest daughter, Martha, was in a convent there in st. Louis, someone in Florida, also said that the missing children lived with a distant relative of Jenny and that the always diligent George Solder investigated all of these tips, but each one came up empty, another hopeful tip came in 1968, 23 years after the fire, in form of a photograph sent to Jenny addressed specifically to her, not the family, there was no return address on the letter, but it was postmarked from Kentucky, the photo was of a man in his 20s George and Jenny believed this could be their son Lewis, who was nine years old at the time of the fire.

The man in the photo had the same dark brown eyes, dark curly hair, a strong straight nose, and an upward slanted left eyebrow. back had a handwritten quote Lewis solder I loved my brother Frankie little guys at 9:01 32 or 35 end of quote they hired a private detective to go to Kentucky and find him, but strangely the detective was never heard from again, I think That's the first The only time I've heard of a detective disappearing is like a drowning fish. Do you know what's strange about this on the Internet? No one seems to really care at this point where a detective goes missing.

You've got some pretty powerful adversaries, I'd say. It's time to quit the game. Some on the Internet have theorized that the detective took the money and left, but no one knows for sure what happened to him. I don't think the detective would have taken the money and run, because if you're a private. Mind you, unless he was enough to survive for the rest of his life, oh that's right, yeah, why would you build a good customer base? It's not forever rolodex, it's not like they gave him a million dollars, it was probably like 5,000 sandwiches, yeah, that's a lot, I mean, that's some big sandwiches, but yeah, period, George Solder passed away shortly after, in 1969, at the age of 74, and Jenny Solder passed away in 1989, at the age of 85, Sylvia, who was two years old at the time.

She is the last child soldier left alive. She maintains that her brothers did not die in the fire that night. Jenny Henthorn's daughter Sylvia told the Times West Virginian to post any information on the web. Quiet quote from Sluis. My mother promised my grandmother that she would never let the story be told. die, that's what my brother and I are doing now and after all these years the question remains what really happened to the child soldiers, that one fateful night was this really the result of a tragic house fire or was it the kids really kidnapped, hopefully, for the sake of good. of the remaining family, all of these questions will be answered, but for now the case remains unsolved.

I think there was some foul play here. Something is happening, so someone took those children. You think they are still alive today, maybe because "They are still out there. I guess I believe they are happening. They would have to be right if you have a parent who ever told you that they were stolen in a fire and that the next day they were given a wonderful breakfast. Let us know. I'm glad you didn't blame the aliens. There are no ghosts here. There are no aliens. I mean, can you drool because they were kidnapped? No, that's what I wanted to hear.

It kills you. Look at it, look at your face. I can not stand it. Kenya. I can see your jaws clenching