Christmas Eve. A house fire. Five children who vanished without a trace.

In the early morning hours of December 25, 1945, the Sodder family home in Fayetteville, West Virginia, erupted in flames. George and Jennie Sodder and four of their children escaped, but five children remained unaccounted for: Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty.

The official conclusion was that the children died in the fire.

But there was one enormous problem: their bodies were never found.

What followed was a decades-long search for answers. The Sodders questioned the cause of the fire, pointed to a series of strange circumstances surrounding that night, and pursued reports that their children had been seen alive after the fire. There were claims of suspicious activity, a missing ladder, a severed telephone line, vehicles that mysteriously wouldn't start, alleged sightings, and even a photograph that the family believed showed Louis Sodder as an adult.

Were the five children victims of a tragic Christmas Eve fire—or were they taken from their home before the flames ever reached them?

For decades, the Sodder family refused to stop asking the same question:
What really happened to the five children?

This week on Chillworthy, we're diving into one of America's most enduring missing-person mysteries: The Sodder Children.

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