The Case
Five Children. No Remains.
In the early hours of Christmas Day 1945, fire destroyed the Sodder family home near Fayetteville, West Virginia. Six people got out. Five children did not. The house burned to its basement in about forty-five minutes, and .
Every way of reaching them failed. The ladder was missing. The trucks wouldn't start. The phone line was dead. Their parents never believed the children died that night — and for decades asked the world where they were.
The full account — every anomaly, every sighting, every theory weighed against the record — is in The Sodder Children, Book Eight of The Unlucky Thirteen.
Inside The Dossier
What you get, free, on joining
The case file
Five children, one fire, no remains in eighty years.
Five routes closed
The ladder, the trucks, the barrel, the phone — all in forty-five minutes.
Four vertebrae
The 1949 dig, and the bones that fit none of the five.
The property, mapped
House, ladder, phone line, trucks and the billboard. View the case board ↓
Exhibit 04 — Case Board
The case, by location
Tap a pin. Not to scale — a working case board of the Sodder property, not a survey.
Near Fayetteville, West Virginia — schematic case board of the property, Christmas 1945.
Select a pin to open its file.