The Children Who Went Up in Smoke

In 1945, the Sodder Family home went down in flames and five children were never seen again.

From the 1950s until the late 1980s, nearly four decades, anyone driving down Route 16 near Fayetteville, West Virginia, could see a billboard displaying the grainy images of five children, all dark-haired and solemn-eyed, their names and ages stenciled beneath-Maurice, 14; Martha, 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; Betty, 5.

Fayetteville was and is a small town, with a main street that runs no longer than a hundred yards. Rumors always played a larger role in the case than evidence could. To this day, no one can even agree what happened to the children…. whether they’d be dead or alive. What everyone did know for certain was this: On the night before Christmas in 1945, a fire broke out in the Sodder home, and 5 of their 10 children were never seen again.

George and Jennie Sodder were Italian immigrants who each came to the US separately as children. By adulthood, George started his own trucking company in Fayetteville, West Virginia and the two were a respected middle class family.

However, George had strong political opinions which the immigrant community did not appreciate. He was strongly opposed to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and faced a lot of criticism…