The Trail Went Cold - Episode 23 - The Sodder Children

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.5 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2016

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Christmas Eve 1945. Fayetteville, West Virginia. George and Jenny Sodder are preparing to celebrate the holidays with nine of their children, but shortly after they go to bed, their home burns completely to the ground. When the smoke clears, five of the Sodder children – whose ages range from five to fourteen years old – are nowhere to be found and a search of the rubble fails to turn up any trace of their remains. Due to a number of suspicious events surrounding the fire, the Sodders begin to suspect their five missing children were the victims of a bizarre kidnapping. Did the Sodder children really die in the fire that night or did they somehow survive and remain hidden from their family for the rest of their lives? And if the children did perish in the fire, who was responsible for starting it? In this week’s special holiday-themed episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we chronicle one of the most infamous Christmas mysteries of all time. Additional Reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodder_children_disappearance http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-children-who-went-up-in-smoke-172429802/ http://charleyproject.org/case/jennie-irene-sodder http://charleyproject.org/case/maurice-antonio-sodder http://charleyproject.org/case/louis-erico-sodder http://charleyproject.org/case/betty-dolly-sodder http://charleyproject.org/case/martha-lee-sodder The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote. All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Christmas Eve, 1945.
0:03.0	Fayetteville, West Virginia.
0:06.0	George and Jenny Soddar are preparing to celebrate the holidays with nine of their children,
0:11.0	but shortly after they go to bed, their home burns completely to the ground.
0:15.0	When the smoke clears, five of the solder children are nowhere to be found,
0:20.0	and a search of the rubble fails to turn up any trace of their remains.
0:24.0	Due to a number of suspicious events surrounding the fire,
0:27.2	the soders begin to suspect that their five missing children were kidnapped,
0:31.4	and over 20 years later, they would receive a mysterious photo of a man
0:35.3	whom they believed to be their now adult son.
0:38.6	After that, the trail went cold. Oh, uh, I'm not.
0:53.0	Oh, uh, uh, but uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, care.
1:07.0	Oh, uh, uh, Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of the Trail went cold.
1:20.0	I'm your host Robin Warder and since Christmas is right around the corner I will be
1:25.0	presenting a special holiday themed mystery today the bizarre 1945
1:29.8	disappearance of the solder children in case you're not familiar with it, this is a
1:34.5	story of five children who vanished after their family home burned down on Christmas
1:38.6	Eve and the whole thing is a lot more complex than you'd expect.
1:42.8	Other than the John Biney Ramsey case, this might be the most famous unsolved mystery
1:46.9	which has ever taken place at Christmas time.
1:49.8	I've already covered quite a few stories on this podcast which took place around the holidays,
1:54.8	such as the Fort Worth 3 disappearance, the death of Rhonda Hinson, and the Tommy Ziegler case, but this may
	...

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