Mistaken Contract (Sebastian Michaelis)

sodder case (×)

On, December 24, 1945, a fire destroyed the Sodder residence in , , United States. At the time, it was occupied by George Sodder, his wife Jennie, and nine of their ten children. During the fire, George, Jennie, and four of the nine children escaped. The bodies of the other five children have never been found. The surviving Sodder family believed for the rest of their lives that the five missing children survived.

The Sodders never rebuilt the house, instead converting the site into a memorial garden to the lost children. In the 1950s, as they came to doubt that the children had perished, the family put up a billboard at the site along with pictures of the five, offering a reward for information that would bring closure to the case. It remained standing until shortly after Jennie Sodder's death in 1989.

In support of their belief that the children survived, the Sodders had pointed to a number of unusual circumstances before and during the fire. George disputed the Fayetteville fire department's finding that the blaze was electrical in origin, noting that he had recently had the house rewired and inspected. George and his wife suspected, leading to theories that the children had been taken by the, perhaps in retaliation for George's outspoken criticism of the of his native Italy.

State and federal efforts to investigate the case further in the early 1950s yielded no new information. The family did, however, later receive what may have been a picture of one of the boys as an adult during the 1960s. The last surviving daughter, along with their grandchildren, continued to publicize the case in the 21st century in the media and online.

George Sodder was born with the name Giorgio Soddu in , , , in 1895. He 13 years later, with an older brother who went back home as soon as both boys had cleared customs at . For the rest of his life George, as he came to be known, would not talk much about why he had left his homeland.

Sodder eventually found work on the railroads in , carrying water and other supplies to workers. After a few years he took more permanent work as a driver in , . He then started his own trucking company, initially hauling to construction sites and later hauling coal mined in the region. Jennie Cipriani, a storekeeper's daughter in Smithers who had also immigrated from Italy in her childhood, became George's wife.

The Sodders settled outside nearby , which had a large population of Italian immigrants, in a two-story house two miles (3.2 km) north of town. In 1923, they had the first of their 10 children. George's business prospered, and they became "one of the most respected middle-class families around" in the words of one local official. However, George had strong opinions about many subjects and was not shy about expressing them, sometimes alienating people. In particular, his strident opposition to Italian dictator had led to some strong arguments with other members of the immigrant community.

The last of the Sodder children, Sylvia, was born in 1943. By then, their second-oldest son Joe had left home to serve in the military during . The following year, Mussolini was deposed and . However, George's criticism of the late dictator had left some hard feelings. In October 1945, a visiting salesman, after being rebuffed, warned George that his house "[would go] up in smoke ... and your children are going to be destroyed", attributing this all to "the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini." Another visitor to the house, ostensibly seeking work, took the occasion to go around to the back and warned George that a pair of would "cause a fire someday." George was puzzled by the observation, since he had just had the house rewired when an electric stove was installed, and the local electric company had said afterwards it was safe. In the weeks before that year, George's older sons had also noticed a strange car parked along the main highway through town, its occupants watching the younger Sodder children as they returned from school.

Christmas Eve 1945 house fire[]

The Sodder family celebrated on 1945. Marion, the oldest daughter, had been working at a in downtown Fayetteville, and she surprised three of her younger sisters—Martha (12), Jennie (8), and Betty (5)—with new toys she had bought for them as gifts. The younger children were so excited that they asked their mother if they could stay up past what would have been their usual bedtime.