Missing Sodder Children /// Part 2 /// 893

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The Sauter house fire and the subsequent disappearance of five of their children is one of America's most enduring unsolved mysteries, the events of which unfolded rapidly on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.

On Christmas Eve, of course, we have the Sodder family of Fayetteville, West Virginia, preparing for Christmas.

Around 10 to 11 p.m., the parents and some some of the children go to bed, go to sleep, but some of the other kids stay up to play with new toys and listen to the radio.

Around 12:30 a.m., approximately early Christmas morning, the phone rings, waking up mother and wife, Jenny Sauter.

She does not recognize the voice on the other end of the line. She hangs up.
She also notices that the front door is unlocked. The lights are still on, and she corrects this before going to bed.

And shortly after, time uncertain, Jenny hears a noise, a loud bang on the roof, followed by some rolling.

And then the next time when Jenny wakes up, this time it's to the smell of smoke, and there is fire. The house is on fire.

Some of the family is able to make it outside. Some are believed by others to have been trapped inside of the home.
The

fire department experienced delays for one reason or another. They are late to get to the fire, and by the time they get there, the house has been burned to the ground.

And they are now searching through the ruins looking for the missing Sodder family members.

On Christmas Day, Firefighters search the wreckage, but find no human remains, not even a single bone fragment. The fire chief suggests that the children were completely incinerated.

We went through the events of the fire as they've been reported over the years, and we went through the emergency services arriving on the scene, and then later the determination by the inquest that the kids had perished in the fire, completely incinerated, as the fire chief had suggested,

and death certificates signed for each one of these five solder children so now what

okay where do we go from here we have a mess on our hands if you fill the garage with with the people in this

true crime story we have half of the room saying it's so obvious these poor

little five kids perished in the fire the other half of this room captain saying shout out to the great league horso not so fast not not so fast my friend i want to give my children a proper burial where are they where are the remains where yeah i think there's two ways to look at this if you're the father okay i can either accept that they died in the fire now i want to figure out how the fire started was it truly an accident or just faulty electrical work and if so then what happened to my what happened to my ladder that was always leaning against the house what happened to my cars that night i mean i'd be interested to know how cold it was outside because if they couldn't get the vehicles to start it could just be simply that they were too cold sometimes that happens and that will it will stop your car from turning over but you would think that within a week or so

George would have been able to figure out if something actually happened.

And I've I've never seen anybody talk about, oh, yeah, well, they later learned that somebody tampered with these engines or whatever to get them not to start. Yeah, one online article, and

you know, when we talk about where are the kids, because that to me and to everyone, I think that is the, the, the biggest part of this mystery, right?

And one online article, and it was a good one, forgive me for not recalling the name of the publication, but the article was titled, What Happened to the Sodder Children, The Siblings Who Went Up in Smoke.

I like the title.

Not sure if it was supposed to be a little tongue-in-cheek, maybe a throwback reference to Cheech and Chong, but regardless, it's a tit bit brilliant as it's quick to the point and haunting.

The children who went up in smoke. When the flames were extinguished and the smoke cleared, where are the children? Where are they? We got a lot to get to.

But while mentioning that article, it now occurs to me that I should add to the New York Times article that I referenced at the top of the show of episode one with the title 11 Children Die in Four Home Fires, the December 26, 1945 article.

That was across the country. That previous day or two, the five solder kids in West Virginia are a part of that 11 counts.
Three kids in Pennsylvania and a fire there.

Two in Kansas and one in New York. But this is the only one in that story where we don't have remains.
We have several items to get to.

Some that you could say is evidence that the children did in fact perish in the fire, and some that is suggestive that maybe they were taken, whisked away just before the fire even started.

So we have a statement. made that the five kids were definitely in the house after the fire started.
We have the ladder that the captain has brought up. We have a phone line.

We have a witness, an excavation, some bones, a heart,

and a mysterious photo, perhaps, of one of the children. But in the photo, that child is now a grown man.

I think one thing here that I want to leapfrog over the items I just listed would be the layout of the home. As we mentioned, this is a two-story home with a basement.

This is helpful and necessary, but hardly ever reported.

Many, many articles out there describing the events as they happened so quickly of the family trying to flee a burning house and details of how they're attempting to flee and what happened, what they observed once outside, but no details as to the layout of the house.

So I'll do my best to describe it to the good folks out there in listener land. We have a front porch.
This is as if I'm walking in the front of the house, right, Captain?

So I'm up on the front porch. I go into the home.
Now, out front of the house, looking to my right, will be Mr. and Mrs.
Sautter's bedroom. This is on the ground level.

So in part, that makes sense that they would make it out of the home. And some of the kids that may have been upstairs did not.
Right. So to the right, you have their bedroom.

To the left, you have the living room. One key detail that's important about that living room is remember Marion was sleeping on the couch.
Again, she's on the ground level. She made it out.

If you continue past these two rooms, you will now be in front of the stairwell, right? These stairs, they go up, there's a landing, they go up again.

And on that second floor, it's separated into two rooms. You have a large boy's room and you have a large girl's room.
Those are the only rooms upstairs in the second floor of this home.

If you go back to the ground level, past the stairs, to your right, you have the office, to the left, you have a dining room. Okay.
What's key about that office is a couple of things.

This is where the phone, the house phone, was.

This was the phone that Mrs. Sauter says that once she wakes up in the middle of the night because the phone was ringing, answers it, doesn't recognize the voice.
Call ends.

And then later, when she wakes up again, smelling smoke, realizing there's a fire,

her first instinct is to run to this phone to call for help. That's when she's met with the fire.
According to her statement, I think this is fascinating.

According to her statement, this is where the first time the fire is seen, really by anybody.

So if you want to try to figure out where this fire started, this would be to me where one would be looking. Right.

Now, past the, on the left there, past the dining room, you have the kitchen, and then I guess you would say past the the office, but on the exterior of the home, you have another porch.

So you have a back porch. And remember, we talked about the landing on the stairway having that window that we know Mr.

Sauter broke in an attempt to get to his children, but was unable to do so because by the time he busted out that window, the

stairs were completely engulfed in flame. Let's talk about this statement here.
Okay, so this is from an official report of the investigation by the Department of Public Safety.

It says that this report was taken the day of the fire, but officially reported on January 21st, 1946. So less than a month later, is the, I guess it's officially reported.

And this document states that we have the five kids who were killed.

This official document document states the cause of the fire stated as undetermined, but it is believed that the fire started either from defective wiring or from spontaneous igniting of combustibles in the basement.

It is mentioned that the basement was used as a workshop for their trucks, but there is no mention of gasoline being in the basement. Okay, so

I believe the family denies that there was materials, combustible materials left in the basement. Correct.
From what what we've reviewed,

the family is stating there was an engine, maybe two engines that were down in the basement, but no gasoline. I do want to not gloss over the obvious here.
Defective wiring,

I would really like to know the date of when this electric stove was installed, and then it required the second fuse box, the one that some guy pointed to and said, that's going to start a a fire someday.

Because we know, according to those statements, that was weeks before the fire. We don't, I don't have an exact date, but it's interesting to me on two fronts, right?

That's a recent addition to the home. It would make sense that something went wrong with it, but they appear to have had that for night after night for however many nights.

Now, it was considerably colder this night. So the statement here that is troubling is as follows from this report.

John Sauter, so this is one of the older boys, stated he heard his mother yelling, woke up his brother George, goes by Ted, and then went into the other room and shook the kids awake.

Note, we should note here that John later denies this and changes his statement to that he was yelling up to the kids after he himself had already fled downstairs.

Of course, this is going to to be a huge point of contention in this case. And one of the factors that leads many to believe that they did, in fact, die in the fire.

Because if his original statement is factual and true, that places the missing kids inside the home after the fire had started. And obviously,

if the parents are questioning whether or not those kids were in the house, they're going to do the best shakedown to get the truthful information out of their son.

He then went outside to try to put the fire out, then ran back in to bring the rest of the kids down. But by that point, the stairs had been engulfed in flames.

He also tried to start one of the trucks, but could not. And he states that the wind was blowing from the direction of the corner of the house where the fire started, the southeast corner.

He also states that they repaired motors in the basement, and to his knowledge, there were two motors down there at the time of the fire.

I guess trying to crawl and decide inside of this dude's head here, I mean, what level of guilt does he have, a massive amount of guilt, that they died in the fire, right? And keep in mind,

this report, this official report is stated that it was taken the day of,

but not reported officially until January 21st.

So here's what I'm getting at. Bear with me here, Captain.
I know that a lot of times all we have to go off of is someone's words, right?

And, but we both agree that this case has been reported on a lot of different ways over the eight decades. I don't know.

I just could see a situation where in the moment, right, your brothers and sisters died in this house fire.

And in his grief and in the moment and just reacting to the unimaginable, he says, I tried to, I woke them up. They didn't get out of the house.

And then later, with a clear head and a clear view of what he remembers states i i didn't wake them up i ran downstairs and i was yelling for them to get up yeah i can't remember who said it but because i'd love to give him credit for this thought but the thought was that his initial statement is what he should have done

and the later statement was the truth because of eventually as the as there's questions are they in the house or not these little details then matter.

And once this individual knows that these details matter, he just tells the truth. Exactly.
I could see that. I mean, again, in the moment, reacting to the unimaginable, what did he say?

And is that a reflection of the truth or not?

Or more of his feelings. The latter is an interesting part of this story.
I think it's one that's talked about at length, but you and I agree on the general statements regarding this ladder.

We have multiple members of the Soder family saying the ladder was always here in this position. We always kept it here.

And then when we went to go and get it, when we needed it the most during the middle of this fire, all of a sudden it wasn't there. Now,

the ladder is stored outside of the home. Any person could get to it.
Anybody could take it. Somebody could do something with the ladder.

What we do know, and this is in every report, distance varies, but the general statement is always the same. The ladder was later found over an embankment.

And some take it a step further and say, you know, it appears somebody had thrown it over an embankment.

And the report I have in front of me here, Captain, states that it was approximately 70 feet from the hole. Yeah.

So this would be an implication that if the fire was arson, somebody got rid of the ladder,

thinking that that would slow people to get out of the house, or maybe even slow extinguishing the flames.

Yeah, it's also a very good possibility because you have so many kids that at some point, maybe one of the kids moved this ladder.

And obviously, we have five missing kids, so we have five kids that could have moved the ladder before the fire took place.

They can't, they're not around to confess to it. Yes, that

could very well be true. And that doesn't necessarily mean that it was an accidental fire or an arson.
It kind of leaves it

still in the gray area.

We've mentioned the trucks several times.

I appreciate the candor here because I found later reports.

Look, it's often been speculated and often been reported that the trucks were possibly messed with or disturbed.

We have in a later article, one of the family members who was attempting to start the truck that night admitting that we probably choked them too hard as we were panicked and in a hurry, and we probably prevented them from starting.

Now, that's not scientifically conclusive information, but I find that interesting that the folks that are in the camp, the family members that are in the camp of someone stole our loved ones and set our house on fire, are openly saying years later, we think the truck part of this was just us rushing to rescue and we failed.

Yeah, I really wish they would have brought out some kind of scent dogs because

you have another scenario, too, where you have kids that are saying, hey, we want to stay up and play. Is there any

do we have any cause for concern that they left the property like on their own? Very cold that night. It was snowing at some point.
It was a white Christmas

that night.

Here's another interesting, and this is fact.

After the fire, remember we had the one-time boss, the one-time business partner, the co-signer on the home, Forenzo Gianutello, the man who was encouraging George to increase the insurance on the house and take out insurance on family members of the Sodder family.

It was learned after the fire that Gianatello did it on his own, raised the insurance anyways on the home without telling George Sodder from 1500 to 1750. Gianatello was paid out after the fire.

Remember, he was the beneficiary of this insurance. Well, that could be a motive.
Yes, it very well could have. So

that would have been

a little over $30,000 today,

which

can be. And we've seen, unfortunately, we've seen people killed or bad things done to people for a lot less, a lot, lot less, unfortunately.

But to me, it does seem like a rather small amount to nine children. Not saying it's impossible.
Yeah, but see, but again,

that's the difficult thing here because you could go,

his plan could have been, well, screw this George guy. I'm going to burn down the house, but they'll get out.
Nobody will get killed.

And we've seen plenty of times where somebody holds a grudge, some weird, crazy grudge, and

all reasoning tossed aside, right? Just,

it's about getting even and nothing else. Yeah, but I'd also say desperate times cause for desperate measures.
And I think, again, we don't know what was going on in his world.

One of the things that people talk about is because

that they were from

Italy, and we don't, we don't really know why he left. Like there's not like a complete story of why, why did George decide to come to America and start a new life?

So then there's some thoughts that maybe he was tied to some bad or shady businesses back there.

He could have been, but we need to keep in mind he was 13 years old when he came from Italy to the United States. Right.
And then I just wonder, because,

and again, this is probably because I'm really late to the party, but

I just finished the Sopranos a little bit ago.

And you see in that situation where they're like yeah well if we're gonna mess with if this guy owes us money or this guy is uh dead to us the actions of terror or the actions of uh violence is towards that individual they normally stay away from children and and wives and stuff and so but that that gets brought up often in this case.

Well, and the witness that we have is quite interesting because we talked about where did the fire start? That's always been something that is heavily debated.

And we do know that, based off of the statements given by Mrs. Sauter, that she first,

she appears to be the first one in the family to see the flames, and she sees them in the office, already inside of the home.

But it's later learned that a witness come comes forward saying that I'm driving past the house.

He states that he saw what looked like balls of fire in the air and the sky being thrown onto the roof or thrown at the house. Yeah, and didn't they find some weird cocktail bomb?

Yeah, so that's what when I read that statement, I immediately went to Molotov Cocktail, thinking that that's what may have been thrown.

There is a report, a statement in one of the reports that later they found what they described as either a pineapple bomb or a grenade type device. But

and some reports state that they were like little green balls. But I don't know.

I would like to, you would think that that would be something that would be photographed and well documented and not kind of like a oh, by the way.

Again, because this case is so bizarre and mysterious, it lends itself to some wacky rumors.

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My name is Special Agent Rebecca Henderson. Thursday, January 8th on NBC.

There was an explosion at a top-secret prison. Some of the most infamous killers broke free.
The hunting party is back. We're going in loud.

The stakes have never been higher. The longer they're out there, the more dangerous they're going to become.
And the killers. You ever seen anything like this before? Not even close.

Have never been more twisted. This is next level.
The Hunting Party. The thrilling season premiere.
Thursday, January 8th on NBC.

All right, we are back, you filthy animals. Talk hands in the air.
Cheers to you, Colonel. Cheers to you, Captain.

Little shiner, holiday cheer. Beer with an eggnog sidecar.

Everybody out there wishing you you the very best and happiest of holidays.

The phone line is something that should be discussed as well because there were reports that the phone line, and this makes sense, simply melted, was destroyed in the fire.

Some of the reports state that Jenny Sautters picked up the phone and the phone didn't work. Right.

The report I gave and chose to use here for the telling of this true crime story is that she didn't make it to the phone because of the flames. The office space was already

engulfed in flames and she couldn't make it to the phone. Yeah.

Either way, the result is the same. No phone call for help came from inside the solder home.
Yeah. And again, I'm not an electrician, but this is,

we get into this weird gray area because you have some eyewitnesses saying, well, yeah, we saw a fire, but the lights were still on. And then you go, well, they have this separate fuse box.

So is that two separate systems? So could

hypothetically, could you have the one system have faulty electronics? It goes up in flame and it has really zero effect on the other electricity to the house until the fire gets big enough. I agree.

I'm no Al Borlin or Bob Vila, but I would, it would stand to reason that one could operate while the other has is not. Yeah, I'm no Bob Vila, but I got a whole trunk of duct tape.

It was later, so later when it came time to restore the phone line. So we should point out something here that is unique about this story as well.

When they came time to rebuild their home or build a new home, they didn't build it over top of where the old one once stood. No.

They basically built it next to there. Yeah, he ended up basically,

George, that's what I'm talking about, the father, ended up just burying the whole old building. And it was basically like a little hill in their yard that was a burial to his children.

And, you know, I should say a memorial to the children because

I don't think the family had a gut feeling that their loved ones were gone. I think their gut feeling was telling them, no, they're still alive.
They're out there somewhere. Gut feeling.

I mean, mean, they fought till they,

for the rest of their lives to try to find these children.

And what I find interesting too, and this goes back to something that was said that we said on the show many, many moons ago in the first season of our show that, you know, I had said, I'm always suspicious when

a kid disappears, goes missing, and then later the family moves away.

I always find that very strange. Here you have the exact opposite.

You would have what I would expect a grieving family, grieving parents, parents that are convinced that their child could be alive out there somewhere. They never move.

They never change their phone number. Why? Because

God forbid that kid gets the chance to, you know, not God forbid. Let's hope that that kid gets the opportunity to get to a phone and can call home.
We can't change the phone number.

We should never move because what if they try to come back? And the solders didn't move. They built their home right next to the old one.

So the phone company has to come out and put up a new restore phone service now to the new house, right? The phone company informs the solders that, hey, the old phone line,

it didn't melt in the fire.

We found that it was cut. And it was cut 14 feet in the air and two feet away from the pole.

This, many people saying, and rightfully so, meaning that a ladder would have to have been needed to reach it. Makes sense.
So think about this for the moment. You manage to set the house ablaze.

You're attempting an arson. Either prior to or shortly after, you want to cut the phone line.
You borrow the ladder. Maybe the ladder wasn't, you didn't, maybe the perpetrator or whoever set the fire.

walked down this road with me and pretend for a moment.

Maybe they didn't move the ladder and throw it down the embankment because they were hoping that it would deter people from getting outside or extinguishing the flames.

It was simply they moved it to cut the phone line at some point and tossed the ladder after doing so. Yeah, I always wondered, too, did they use the ladder to remove the children from the house?

That's a strong possibility. I always wondered if the kids never went back upstairs.

If they were removed from the ground level,

right near the front porch. But then why wasn't the littlest one removed? The one that was on the couch.
You're right. So, I failed to report that in our timeline.

She went to bed with the mother, right?

So, that makes sense. We don't want to try to wake the mother.
She went to bed with the littlest one in the parents' room, from my understanding.

This part is odd because it's not reported in a lot of the reports on this. But again, the captain was right.

A lot of times near Christmas time, you get the retelling of the story and you kind of get the 10-minute version. So you're not going to have every fine detail that is involved in the story.

But what was learned and reported on that at some point, either prior to or after the fire had been set, we don't know, Lonnie Johnson and Jeff Adkins, remember, these are the two that owned that Casses place, the beer place that was Cass's Park that we had mentioned.

Lonnie Johnson and Jeff Adkins entered the Sodders' barn, stole a pair of chain hoists, and threw them over an embankment to retrieve at a later time.

Now, stealing these chain hoists would not have been an easy task as they were connected to the ceiling in the barn and would take a fair amount of time and assistance to remove them.

Now, when George Sodder found out after the fire, he finds out about this, reports it. Jeff Atkins, he around the same time enrolls in the Army and he goes off and he is gone for about two years.

Jeff Atkins, the other guy, was, as this report goes, never questioned or charged for this theft. However,

Lonnie Johnson was ordered to appear in court, but never did, and was eventually fined $25

for this, and nothing else was done.

Part of this chain hoist story includes the telephone line.

Lonnie Johnson also admitted to cutting the telephone lines because, quote, he thought it was the power line and thought cutting the power line would stop the fire.

And we know based off of the other reports that Lonnie Johnson and Jeff Atkins were persons that showed up to the fire that morning. So his statement is, yeah,

I cut the phone line, but I didn't know that it was the phone line. I thought there's faulty wiring.
It's an electrical fire. If I cut the

power to running to the house, that that would

help put out this fire.

Which would have probably killed him. Yeah.

Well, he's probably your criminal because what have we learned in the last 10 years? A lot of these criminals are dumb. Well, and

okay, when the latter part is a big part of the story, again,

that what he thought was the power line, but turns out to be the telephone line. And they say, well, a ladder would have had to have been used to cut it at that point.
Yeah.

Where's the follow-up of, okay, well, how did you get up there, sir?

And, oh, you used the family's ladder?

Because

here's the part that matters with this. If it was cut before the fire,

And he used that ladder, he moved the ladder. If it was cut after the fire, which we don't have, we don't have that marker on our timeline.
It's not known. But

it goes back to, well, did he bring his own ladder to the situation to cut it to try to save the day? Or did he, did he move the ladder after the fire had started?

Because if he was the one to move the ladder, then the ladder was still in its position. when he found it.

Yeah, then it makes you wonder if George the father is telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Or, again, it's a very chaotic scene.

So, the fact that some of these individuals are going to report things that might not have been true because there's this chaos, that's a very good likelihood.

So, then if you can explain the cutting of the phone line and you can explain the ladder, you can explain the cars. Oh, we just probably choked them out too quickly.
Okay, that's great.

And maybe it was just an accident.

But where are the children?

And I think that's what's very difficult, too, because

I'm not a scientist. I can't tell you when somebody's cremated, how much is left behind? How big are the bone fragments? Because these were smaller children,

would that play a role? Is there a difference in the bone density of smaller children? Would that affect how,

and it's no easy way to say that, but it's like there could be all these reasons that would affect if we find their remains or not.

And so you could have a situation where, yeah,

and that's where I go back to with like the insurance man when he goes, oh, well, your house is going to burn down and your kids are going to suffer and blah, blah, blah. Did he do an inspection?

Because

I was watching the show the other day. You might have heard of it.
It's called the Gilmore Girls. And she had a bed and breakfast, basically, in.

And she thought she was getting screwed on her insurance. So she had an agent come out, but the agent had to do an inspection on the house.
So this is information that George would have been privy to.

When the agent came to the house, did he just, was he making threats? Or did he go around the house and look at things and go, hey,

yeah, your

electrician told you this stuff is correct, but it's not. And you need to do something about this.
And so then when George says, well, no, I'm not going to do anything.

I'm not raising the insurance on this house because I wouldn't benefit from it anyways. And the agent's like, yeah, but I just

inspected your house and you have some problems. So if you don't do this, your whole house is going to burn down.
Your children are going to die. Like, where's trying to talk some sense into him?

So, that's where it's like, did this individual threaten him, or was the individual trying to say, What are you doing? Like,

you have things that you need to fix, or bad things can happen. Well, later, we have bones that are found.
We have an excavation that takes place, and it yields some findings.

Those findings are some bones. Okay, so this report

report on examination of bones by Oscar B. Hunter.
The items that are being tested were received on August 19th, 1949. The report is from August 25th, 1949.

We have eight fragments of bone that were found in the northeast corner and were determined to be animal bones.

Six bones, two of which are fragments, were found in the southeast corner. Two fragments were determined to be chicken femurs, but the other four definitely consisted of a lumbar vertebrae.
Okay.

So eight fragments of bone were determined to be animal bones. And then we have six bones.

Two of those fragments were determined to be chicken femurs, but the other four definitely consisted of lumbar vertebrae. These vertebrae show no evidence of being burned.

However, the approximate age of this vertebrae,

14 to 15-year-old child. Now, here's the problem.
You don't find the rest of the skeleton.

What this report states is that this vertebrae would have had to have been forcibly removed from the rest of the skeleton,

suggesting that these bones were separated from the remaining portion of the skeleton at a later time, and that the skeleton was the vertebrae, too, have no evidence of being burned.

This is very strange. So while it may tell some people that this could be one of the kids,

remains of one of the kids, it's also saying these remains weren't burned at any time. So there's a shipping invoice to the Smithsonian Institute that took place on September 20th, 1949.

Inside of it were those human and animal bones. And the human bones consisted of four

lumbar vertebrae belonging to one individual. The age of that individual is anywhere from 16 to 22 years of age

at the time of death. So this is a different report by a different agency.
It is possible, but not probable that these bones would belong to a 14 and a half year old boy. So that would be Maurice.

Again, this report too states vertebrae showed no evidence of being exposed to fire. This report also states that it is very strange that no other bones were found.

Also states that since the house was estimated to have burned for only

this report, says half an hour, but I'm with the captain. I've seen reports 45 minutes to an hour.
That they would expect to have found full skeletons of the children, not just fragments.

And then, did you hear the story about the heart? You saved the best for last. We have a heart

that was found. All right.
Bear with me on this because it's complicated. It stated that a heart was found and that it was buried at the scene.

Now, when the solder parents catch wind of this, they want to know

where was this heart?

We want to retrieve it. Where was it buried?

And they were told that it was a stake was used to mark where it was buried. The problem with that portion of the story is there's no stake.
The family remained on the property.

They lived on that property. No stake.

So eventually they're shown where this air quotes heart was buried, to which, when they retrieve this item, it is sent off for testing, and it's determined to be a beef liver.

So, not a heart at all, and not human.

And some reports state that it is fresh. So, keep in mind,

this is quite a bit of time later. So, this is saying that somebody went back to the location of the fire, the house fire, and planted this item in hopes that

whoever found it would buy what this person was selling, that it was, in fact, a heart. Now, later, this person admitted that, hey, I went there and I put this item there.

I was hoping that the family would find it, and then in turn, they would accept what happened to their children.

That they clearly needed some strong evidence to tell them that their kids perished in that fire. They don't have the mental, emotional capacity to accept that.

And so I placed this item there

because I was hoping to help them. I was hoping to help them.
So stupid. And then we also have

town. So all these people are connected.
You know, the old boss is connected to the fire department. The fire department people are connected to the coroner.

The coroner is connected to the insurance agent. They're all connected.

But it's weird because it's like, okay, if these five children, everything scientifically kind of points to that they're not in the house.

And then you go, cool, okay, so maybe the fire was a distraction for kidnapping these children or an attempt to cover up them being taken, right?

No, that's what I mean. Like, we're going to take the children and then we'll start this fire.
And then.

Everyone will think that they died in the fire. And as you pointed out, that was

unfortunately such a common thing, much more common back then than it is today. So it would seem conceivable, right?

Yeah, the and also I think it's like when winter time, especially back then, winter time and and

Christmas time was like

that was the house fire season, but then you also wonder too, like

well, I wonder too, like maybe it was more sinister than that. Maybe this ex-boss had this fondness for his children, but thought, you know what?

I'll burn down the house so I'll get the money, but I'll take the children because I want to make sure that they're safe. I don't want them to die,

but I can't get to all of them. Well, I'll just, you know, whoever's going to start the fire, you just tell, hey, start the fire, get as many of the kids you can.
And then the kids will go away.

We'll send them to somebody. to raise.
And then I get to see this,

the destruction that I caused. Like you said,

this would have to be somebody that was not just in it for the money, but in it for the revenge to watch George Sauter suffer for the rest of his life.

But then it's also, too, like some of these businesses were backed

by

organized crime.

And I think that's something.

Again, I don't think

George would have told anybody that, except for maybe his other family members. Well, this might have happened because I had some ties to some people I shouldn't have had ties to.

But I don't think anybody's reporting that he was a drunk or a gambler or whatever. And most people don't

steal your kids and add responsibility to their own plate because you owe somebody money. Well, years later, the Sodders receive a letter.

And

this,

many say, is believed to be possibly the most credible evidence that they were right, that the children were still alive. And in this specific scenario, at least Lewis was still alive.

Because as the story goes here, Captain, one day Jenny found in the mail a letter addressed to her, postmarked in Central City, Kentucky, with no return address.

Inside, Jenny finds a picture of a young man who appears to be in his late 20s, maybe 30 years old, with, she says,

features that strongly resembled Lewis, one of their missing kids, who would have been in his 30s if he had survived.

On the back of this was written, Lewis Sauter, I love brother Frankie, L L I L boys, and then this is handwritten too, so a little bit of speculation here.

A nine zero one three two or A90135 on the back of this, but we were, there was,

they were never able to determine if this was in fact

Lewis, where it came from, who sent it, or really any other information about this picture. Well, no, I believe they actually had the return address, and they, this is the one where they sent the

private investigator out to look for the individual, but the private investigator took their money, money and I don't think he ever returned. And so a lot of people make that a big deal of the story.

Well, a private investigator disappeared as well. Well, we don't know if he just took the money or not, right? Yeah.
So I think

that part of this is I think,

from my understanding, that was a story that came out of Houston, Texas.

That it was a tip that came into the family. With this one that we have with the picture of the unidentified person with the name Louis Sauter written on the back.

The reports I have say that it was postmarked in Central City, Kentucky with no return address.

Even if they had an address on it, they're probably not going to put their house address on it so you could come looking for them.

You wonder, too, like, okay, so if this kid, let's just go down a hypothetical road here.

If this child is alive, then the other ones got out of the fire as well, and they're living somewhere else. Now, are they all still alive? Who knows?

But that means all five got out

and they're alive somewhere. And it's probably somebody that just saw from a distance what was happening and felt like they had to do something

to give this family some answers or some type of closure. And then I guess you can also.

These stories get so big.

The amount of pictures I've received of people that go, hey don't you think this person looks like Mara Murray hey don't you think this person looks like Brian Schaefer

and it's like

I don't know did you go up and talk to him like you just took a picture from afar or or you found this picture on the internet so this story being as popular as it was and as talked about it as it was, even though it was a long, long time ago,

the story would have traveled slower, but it still would have traveled. So it could just be somebody that thought that this looked like one of the children all grown up.
Well,

and I think one part too that

is important to understand here, okay? So this story, when you review it and you just start to look at it from the 30,000 feet view, to me, I go,

the kids burned up in the house.

And

I'm terribly sorry that that happened,

but that seems to be the obvious explanation. Then, when you tell me that nothing was found, and then when stuff is found, it's not remains that can be identified as any of these

children.

Most of it not human at all. And then the remains that were human show no signs of being

part of a fire. That's when I start to go, you know what?

I have a difficult time wrapping my head around the idea that somebody took the kids and set the fire and managed to keep them away forever.

But

you don't have a body. You don't have any bodies.

And then there's also the science of it. Okay, we talked about items that were found that were recovered from the site of the fire, and some of those items were coins.

So up until 1982, pennies were made of 95% copper,

5% zinc. Copper burns, melts at

just

under 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Zinc burns, melts at just under 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
Nickels, up until 1942,

nickels were made of 25% nickel and 75% copper. Nickel burns, melts at 2,600

degrees Fahrenheit. Now, from 1942 to 1945, nickels were made from a three-part alloy that contains silver and copper because they were saving nickel supplies for the war effort.

So this alloy in particular burns, melts at 1630 degrees Fahrenheit. Bone is difficult.

Okay.

Bone turns to ash through a process where extreme heat removes water and burns organic material, mostly collagen, causing mineral crystals to change and fuse, requiring temperatures generally from

1292 degrees Fahrenheit to over 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, so that temperature certainly falls within the range of

nickels that may have melted, but we have things that are burning and or sorry, not burning and surviving at the scene that burn and melt at a much lower temperature than bone.

And then here's the problem, though, too.

If

you were to burn bone, So a cremation, right? Let's take cremation, for example.

Crematories reach around 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. So you're going to burn for one to two hours, 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.
1800 degrees Fahrenheit is

much higher than the zinc. Yeah.
And it has to burn for one to two hours. Now, let's say, let's pretend maybe that fire did burn for one hour.
This reducing the body to bone fragments.

They didn't find fragments. 1,800 degrees gets you to fragments.

If you were to get true ash, complete combustion to mineral ash requires a much higher heat and longer durations of that heat, making bone fully disappear.

And it's such a high heat and such a lengthy process that this isn't typically the standard in cremation.

You look at the science of it, and I don't want to sit here and pretend to say that, look, that definitively says what did or did not happen that day.

I think what it says is this is more reason to question

why they didn't find remains of five people, not of one person, of five people. And what are the odds of that? Slim to none.

And where I'm going when this is all said and done, I'm going to burn for a lot longer than that, my friend. For those that are saying, absolutely not, they died in the fire.
I just want you to

have this information because if it could happen once, it's very conceivable that it could have happened before.

Okay.

This is a story out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The headline is, a fire that authorities six years ago thought killed a 10-day-old girl was a ruse to kidnap the infant, Philadelphia police said.

And I'll just read you part of the story, and that is the baby, Delamar Vera,

was sleeping in an upstairs front bedroom when a fire broke out at her family's two-story row house in North Philadelphia. This took place December 15th, 1997.

Her mother runs upstairs, could not find Delamar, the baby,

when she ran into the room. She eventually ran out of the house, overcome by smoke.
She was burned herself. Her other two children survived, thank God.

The remains of the infant's body were never found, and police concluded that they had been incinerated in the flames.

The official cause of the fire was listed as an overheated extension cord attached to a space heater.

Six years later, the mother

sees a young girl and she says, I recognize the face. That's my daughter.

They do DNA tests and confirm that it was this woman's missing daughter.

So

just have the information that

when the officials

ruled on this house fire and a deceased completely incinerated body in the flames in 1997.

52 years after

the Christmas fire on 1945.

If they got it wrong in 97 using that technology, those resources, then

it's very conceivable that they may have gotten it wrong back in 1945.

I want to thank everybody so much for keeping us company in the garage all year long. Thanks for being our friends.
Thanks for listening to these true crime stories.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everybody. And happy holidays to you as well, my friend, Colonel.
Merry Christmas. Happy holidays to you as well, Captain.

And cheers to everybody out there listening to my voice right now. I hope you have the best of holidays for you and yours, and a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year.

My name is Special Agent Rebecca Henderson. Thursday, January 8th on NBC.

There was an explosion at a top-secret prison. Some of the most infamous killers broke free.
The hunting party is back. We're going in loud.

The stakes have never been higher. The longer they're out there, the more dangerous they're going to become.
And the killers. Never seen anything like this before.
Not even close.

Have never been more twisted. This is next level.
The Hunting Party. The thrilling season premiere.
Thursday, January 8th on NBC.