True Crime Collection

The Disappearance Of The Sodder Children

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

George eventually found work on the railroads in Pennsylvania, carrying water and other supplies to workers. After a few years he took more permanent work in Smithers, West Virginia, as a driver. After a few more years, he started his own trucking company, at first hauling fill dirt to construction sites and later hauling coal that was mined in the region. Jennie Cipriani, a storekeeper's daughter there, who had also come to the U.S. from Italy in her childhood, became his wife.

The couple settled outside nearby Fayetteville, which had a large population of Italian immigrants, in a 2 storey timber frame house 2 miles 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, he had strong opinions about many subjects, and was not shy about expressing them, sometimes alienating people. In particular, his strident opposition to the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini 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 2nd oldest son, Joe, had left home to serve in the military during World War II. The following year, Benito Mussolini was deposed and executed. However, George Sodder's criticism of the late dictator had left some hard feelings. In October 1945, a visiting life insurance salesman, after being rebuffed, warned George that his house "would go up in smoke... and your children are going to be destroyed." He attributed this all to "the dirty remarks you have been making about Benito 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 fuse boxes 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 Christmas that year, his 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.

The Sodders celebrated on Christmas Eve 1945. Marion, the oldest daughter, had been working at a dime store in downtown Fayetteville, and she surprised 3 of her younger sisters - Martha, 12, Jennie, 8, and Betty, 5 - with new toys she had bought for them there 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.

At 10:00pm, Jennie told them they could stay up a little later, as long as the 2 oldest boys who were still awake, 14 year old Maurice and his 9 year old brother Louis, remembered to put the cows in and feed the chickens before going to bed themselves. Her husband and the 2 oldest boys, John, 23 and George Jr., 16, who had spent the day working with their father, were already asleep. After reminding the children of those remaining chores, she took Sylvia, 2, upstairs with her and went to bed together.

The telephone rang at 12:30am Jennie woke and went downstairs to answer it. It was a woman whose voice she did not recognise, asking for a name she was not familiar with, with the sound of laughter and clinking glassed in the background. She told the caller she had reached a wrong number, later recalling the woman's "weird laugh". She hung up and returned to bed. As she did, she noticed that the lights were still on and the curtains were not drawn, 2 things the children normally attended to when they stayed up later than their parents. Marion had fallen asleep on the living room couch, so Jennie assumed the other children who had stayed up later had gone back up to the attic where they slept. She closed the curtains, turned out the lights, and returned to bed.