The Christmas Mystery

On today’s episode, Paul and Kate take us to 1945 West Virginia where a family of 12 is awoken on Christmas Eve by a fire in their home. An investigation of the scene reveals much more than simply what could have started the blaze. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
True crimes, and I weigh in using modern forensic techniques
to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Hey, Kate, how are you today?

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm well, Paul, how about you?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
I am?

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I am doing good. In fact, I'm looking forward to
the Christmas break. I'm going to be in Hawaii for
part of that.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Hawaii? Really, how do I get that gig? Can I
come to Do you want to do a show? And
I'm sure I can find a Hawaii story we can do.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh yeah, no, Go visit my parents who live out there,
and quick trip out, quick trip back. It's been a
couple of years since I've been out there, so it'll
be fun.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Do you go over Christmas Eve Christmas Day? Or are
you kind of going around it?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Go around for sure, try to avoid, you know, the
real crush of the of the travel. But it's still
going to be tough, you know, anytime during that period
is a tough travel.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, I'm going to really try to muster up some
sympathy for you. Wi You're lying on a beach somewhere
seeing your parents on the holidays while I'm in Texas
freezing with the definition of freezing in Texas being probably
about fifty degrees.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Well, I'll be thinking about you at least. How's that?

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Well, thank you. I appreciate that this is our kind
of holiday Christmas ye episode, and I have a Christmas
story for you. But as you know, we are a
true crime show, so this is definitely not about Santa Claus.
This is definitely a story about the Christmas holidays and
some of the good and bad that comes with I
think investigating around the holidays. Did you work on Christmas? Ever?

Speaker 2 (02:26):
You know, I don't recall being called out on Christmas Day,
though I'm not entirely sure about that. I definitely was
called out New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, you know,
over the course of my career when I was actively
on call.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
This is a busy time.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, families get together, family strife rears its ugly head,
somebody ends up dead.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well, I mean, I see it. There's economics involved. I mean,
there's financial strain, there's right stressful families, all that kind
of stuff happening, and then you have to think that
you have investigators, you know, like in journalism. We had
definitely had people on call, and I worked several Christmases,
many Christmas Is actually, but we had less people than
we we normally would have, and I imagine that has

(03:09):
to be the same for police at least that was
the case in what we're about to deal with.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Of course, within the department there's mandatory staffing aspects. However,
many people were granted time off as long as you know,
the fundamental services were covered. I know what we would do,
because this is what I was on call for CSI
work while I was with the lab is. We would
try to rotate the holidays across the staff so the

(03:37):
same person wasn't on call the next year for Christmas
and or New Year's you know, we are always trying
to at least spread that pain out, but we did
not increase our staffing during that time, even though it's
a busy time historically.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Well, this I think has in some ways the disadvantage
of this happening on Christmas. Let's do a couple of
things before we jump in. Number One, this is a
case suggested by a listener. Love that. Number two, my
friend who's a fantastic author, Abbot Taylor, who has been
on my show a couple of times now. She's also
known as Karen Abbott. She's a wonderful author. She wrote

(04:14):
about this in her blog, which is how I found it.
I was reading something that she had written, and I thought,
oh my gosh, this would be a great Buried Bones
episode because it is a Christmas mystery, big mystery mixed
in with some conspiracy, which I like a good conspiracy sometimes,
and we certainly have that here. So I would buckle
up and get ready because you know, we are going
to be heading into I think, a time period that's

(04:37):
really going to be interesting and also a family. There's
a lot of stuff happening where we have to figure
out what happened.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
All right, Well, ho ho ho, I'm ready for you.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
Here we go. Let's set the scene. In my family,
Christmas Eve is the big thing, big big deal. That's
where we have dinner at my mom's house. Traditional. Everybody
gets stressed up relatively, We have a nice dinner that night,
and then Christmas Day is a lot more laid back.
I think we've probably talked about this before. You know.
The kids are up at five inexplicably and open presence,

(05:10):
and then we're kind of done. We talked up later
that day and sometimes we'll have a good dinner afterwards.
But Christmas Eve is a really big deal in our family.
And is that that big of a deal for you
too or no.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
We sort of have a tradition and it comes from
my wife's side where she has to watch Christmas Story.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Doll she try out kid.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, so that's that's kind of the big event. And
then the kids get to pick a present from out
of the tree that they want to open on Christmas Eve.
You know, that's kind of it, which I we never
did that in my when I was growing up for Christmas,
and so for.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Me, I'm like, no, no, no, they need to wait
until the morning.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
It's like, oh, come on, let them have you know,
the kids are older now, they actually sleep in on
Christmas Morning, which is nice.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
It sounds really nice. Yeah, so so fantastic.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
But I wouldn't say that we make a real big
deal out of Christmas Eve.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
All right, well, this is a Christmas story. I would
say only in the idea that I think we are
undermanned here with investigators, which is never good news for
you and I. When the people you know in our
stories don't have enough either forensic experience or forensic tools
or just like manpower, things tend to go wrong here.
And I feel like this is kind of where we're

(06:23):
heading a little bit with this story, which is still
a mystery and I can't wait to tell you about it. Okay,
So this is Christmas of nineteen forty five. World War
Two has just ended. Things are not settled obviously in
the United States, and we're focusing in on a family
that immigrated from Italy. And so the patriarch of this

(06:44):
family is a guy named George Sadu, and he was
born in Italy in eighteen ninety five. He came to
the United States at the age of thirteen. So we're
actually going to West Virginia for this story. So the
main character, as I said right now, is his name
is George, and he finds employment on the Pennsylvania railroads.

(07:05):
He's like toting supplies to laborers. That's a job. And
he eventually lands in West Virginia. He gets a job
in trucking. He falls in love with a woman named
Jenny Cipriani. George and Jenny eventually marry and they settle
in a small Appalachian town called Fayettesville, West Virginia, where
they connect with other Italian Americans in the community. So

(07:26):
here's where things get complicated. You know, I told you
this is a little got some conspiracy elements to it.
So George Sado is very well respected. The problem is,
you know, when they moved to West Virginia, within those
few years before nineteen forty five, before what happened happens,
he becomes very outspoken about Mussolini before Mussolini is killed, okay,

(07:51):
and it causes a lot of tension. He has gotten
into arguments with other people of Italian heritage in Fayetteville
over these political different pferences. We have not done a
ton of stories on political conspiracies. This is very much
something we need to think about. We have talked about
the black Glove Oh yeah, you know, society. We've talked
about that a couple of times, and we've talked about

(08:13):
the Cuban mob in New York in that one case
of the restaurant here who was killed. But we really
haven't gotten too much into it otherwise, and this is
going to be, I think, a pretty big part of
the story. So George is very outspoken, he's very political.
He hates Mussolini. There are people in this small town
who love Mussolini or you know, have reverence to him,

(08:34):
and so already there's sort of tension there to begin with.
So I just want to set the scene by saying,
George seems like a great guy. They end up with
ten kids. Cool, wow, great guy, ten kids, seems like
a happy home life. But he is making some pretty
big enemies over a very controversial figure for sure. So

(08:54):
that said, they welcome their first child, John, in nineteen
twenty three. They have ten kids, as I said, by
nineteen forty three, and George goes on to establish his
own trucking company and they have like a comfy, middle
class lifestyle, which is great coming from a guy who
was an immigrant at the age of thirteen, who you know,
was delivering goods to or delivering supplies to railroad workers

(09:17):
to then starting his own trucking company. So things are
going really well in late nineteen forty five. So this
is after World War Two, after Mussolini has died, but
George is still i'm sure, spouting off about you know,
Italy and fascism and everything that's happening. A few bizarre
things start to happen that George and his wife talked

(09:38):
to investigators about. The first thing occurs in the fall
a guy shows up looking for work. Okay, so during
this visit, the man points to two fuse boxes outside
of George's house and reportedly tells him this is going
to cause a fire someday. And George thinks this is
a weird observation because someone from the power company had

(10:00):
checked the wiring and said, your boxes look great, no problem,
you don't need to upgrade or do anything. This might
not be anything, but it upsets him and kind of
creeps him out that some stranger he doesn't even know
is making a comment about there being a fire. So
somebody who was outspoken politically in such a tense atmosphere,
I think is probably picking up on all sorts of

(10:21):
things that could be innocuous when you think, and.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
I'm wondering, is George perceiving this statement by the man
as being sort of a threat. Yes, So this man
shows up says I need a job, and oh, by
the way, those two fuse boxes could cause a fire.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Yeah, he's saying, what are you talking about? These are
in great condition. And it sounds like the guy was like, well,
I'm just telling you, you know, this is what I see.
I think it made him nervous. But I'm betting if
you're spouting out about Mussolini in an Italian American community
that is probably pretty pro Mussolini. A lot of stuff
makes you nervous.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
And it may also be the body language that this
man used, and he made that statement which set George
off you and I was like, okay, this guy is
he's threatening me.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
There's another man that shows up not long after. So
based on reporting, we don't have a ton of information
on this Paul. But based on reporting, it sounds like
the family knows this guy, but he's not often identified,
you know, by name and source material. He's described as
a local insurance salesman and he is hoping to sell
the family life insurance policies. The context here is a

(11:30):
bit unclear, but it seems like there's an argument that
breaks out between the salesman and George, perhaps because of
the execution of Mussolini earlier that year. I mean, this
is just something that George harped on. So before the
salesman leaves, they're in this fight. He starts to leave
and he says, according to George, your goddamn house is

(11:51):
going to go up in smoke and your children are
going to be destroyed. You are going to be paid
for the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussoline.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
The second man is aware of George's stances on Mussolini
over time. So obviously, now, okay, this wasn't just this
guy showing up and then there's a spontaneous argument over Mussolini.
This guy already has a bias against George because of
Georgia's stances against Mussolini.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
I think that's right. So later in an afternoon, shortly
before Christmas, So what happens happens on Christmas Eve into
Christmas Day. Later, on an afternoon before Christmas, George's kids
notice there's a man sitting inside a parked car, on
the highway near their home. I think they must mean
like pulled over on the shoulder or something. They think

(12:41):
this man is watching them as they walk from school
to home. But we don't know a lot about it.
It's just that the kids are saying, this guy was
watching us, and we don't know what the intentions were.
They didn't know who it was, They couldn't describe the car.
And these are all little kids. He has a ton
of little kids.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Right, so you know, and this is where it now.
If you're sitting in a car and you see a
few kids walking, you know, sometimes you'll glance over and
notice the kids, or you know, you got your predators. Right,
they're sitting in the car, they see the kids, and
now they're tunnel visioned on the kids, and now that
creep factor comes out. These kids are at least sensing

(13:20):
some sort of creep factor. Now in the context of
this story, it sounds like they're thinking it's more in
line with the like the two previous men, who are
you know, one indirectly is indicating that George's house is
going to burn down. The second man explicitly states his

(13:40):
house is going to burn down because of the Mussolini
political aspects. So these kids are in tune that, oh,
something is going on, you know, with dad and the family,
and they're going, this guy isn't right.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Who's sitting in the.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Car, And this must have just set George and Jenny
around the holidays on edge. I mean, as if they're
not on edge already from World War Two and Mussolini
and the execution. This is not good. It's Christmas Eve.
It's a little after midnight, so technically Christmas Day. Everyone
is asleep. And here's the list. I haven't told you

(14:17):
about the ages of the kids. So you've got George Senior,
and you've got Jenny. You've got John, their son who
is twenty three. They have a twenty one year old
son named Joe, but he's in the military. So they've
got John's twenty three, Marion seventeen. These are all people
in the house. George who is sixteen, Maurice who is
fourteen or fifteen, Martha's twelve, Lewis's nine, and Jenny Junior

(14:40):
is eight, Betty is five or six, and Sylvia's two.
And then of course I said, you know there's a
son who's out the military. They're all at home. Okay,
so you're with me so far packed house? Yes, twelve
thirty am. Christmas Day just became Christmas Day. The phone rings,
and this is where the trouble starts. Jenny and George
have a bedroom on the ground floor. She gets out

(15:00):
of bed, she heads into another room to answer it.
The caller is a woman. Jenny does not recognize the voice,
so the woman asks for an unfamiliar name, somebody who
doesn't live there. Jenny can hear laughter and glasses clinking
in the background. Sounds like she's at a party. Jenny,
I mean basically just says I think this is a
wrong number and hangs up the phone. Then as she

(15:21):
walks back to her bed, she notices that some of
the lights are still on around the house, and the
home's curtains are open, and the front door is unlocked.
All of this is happening, so, you know, they went
to bed and everything seemed to have been secured, and
then Jenny wakes up at twelve thirty and there's all
sorts of you know, there's lights and all sorts of

(15:42):
things happening, and she can see that her daughter, Marian
is asleep on the couch. So she figures the other
kids are upstairs in their bedrooms. She closes the house
and turns off the lights, and then she climbs into bed,
and then things start to happen. So are we thinking,
if something bad happens here, that this phone call is
a way to confirm that somebody's home. Do you think

(16:03):
if it's connected, well, it.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Could be the culture in our country with the landline phones.
I go back, you know, all the way to the
you know, the early seventies is probably my earliest memories
related to the phones in the house.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
But this is, you know, nineteen forty five.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
You know, this is well before there were there was
voicemail or voice recorders, you know, so if the phone
rang in your house, you answered it. And in fact,
burglars would take advantage of that. They would call houses
during the day to figure out when, you know, people
were home or not, and then they could start planning
which houses they were going to burglarize based on that

(16:43):
type of information. So this female calling at twelve thirty
am Christmas, you know, that's rude first, you know, but
I would not eliminate the possibility this was somebody trying
to check are they actually home or was it just
a random phone call. You know, maybe something like that happens.
She's drinking dials a number. But right now with kind

(17:08):
of the lead up with these strange men, sounds like
something bad's about to happen inside this house. That yeah,
I think that that is a distinct possibility that she
is checking making sure people are at the house before
whatever bad thing is going to happen.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Okay, Well, Jenny tries to blow this off. As I said,
She closes up the house, she turns out the lights.
Marian's on the sofa asleep. She gets back into bed.
She starts to doze off, and she hears a bang
on the roof and then the sound of something rolling.
She doesn't do anything about it. She goes back to sleep,

(17:45):
and when she wakes up about twenty minutes later, the
bedroom is filled with smoke and the house is on fire.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
Sounds like a Molotov cocktail.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
I mean, I've seen plenty of war movies, So how
does this work? Somebody? Is this like a grenade where
somebody's pulling a pen and throwing it or what.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
There could be a wide variety of different types of
incendiary devices that could have been used. When I use
the term Molotov cocktail. You know, there's different ways that
these can be constructed, but you just think of having
a bottle filled with a flammable liquid and you've got
a wick like some torn T shirt stuffed in.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
There, rag or something.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Okay, you light that, you throw it.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
The idea is is that you know, when the glass
bottle breaks with this flammable fluid and you have the wick,
it catches fire. All that flammable fluid catches fire, and
of course the structure that it's on or thrown in
catches fire as well.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
I'm not saying for sure.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
That this is the device that was used, but that
you know, when you hear this bang, it sounds like,
you know, you have a heavy object that hits the
roof and then when it starts rolling, well, yeah, that
sounds like something that would be akin to a Molotov cocktail.
But there could be, you know, a military raid device
that is being used to who knows mm.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
And so this is happening. Within a half an hour
of this mysterious woman calling and asking for a stranger's name,
the room is filling up with smoke. I will tell
you that this of course is a fire of course,
this is scary for the entire family. In some ways,
I think the fire is the least interesting part of
this story. So just hang in there, because this is

(19:24):
not all about the fire. I'm telling you. The bedroom
is filled with smoke. She and her husband wake up.
George grabs the toddler, who is Sylvia, who's sleeping with them,
and they rush out of the room. As they move
through the smoky house, this is a big place, George
and Jenny yell to Marian, who's on the couch. They
also called all the kids upstairs. I mean, so now

(19:45):
we're talking about I think like seven kids who were upstairs,
two are downstairs, and ones away with the military. They
call the kids upstairs. But this blaze is going really
quickly and the stairwell going up becomes impassable. Only two
children can make it out down the stairs, so it's
George Junior and John. Let me go back up to

(20:06):
their ages. George Junior is sixteen and John is twenty three,
and Marian is seventeen. And then they grabbed Sylvia. So
we are talking about five of the ten kids. Because
Joe's at the military. Five of the ten kids are safe.
George Junior gets out, Jenny, John, Mary and George Senior

(20:27):
and Sylvia, and there are five kids that are still inside.
And these are the relatively middle younger ones, right, So
there's a fifteen year old, a twelve year old, a
nine year old, an eight year old, and a five
or six year old who are still trapped. Then we've
got George who's trying to get to them. So he
busts out a window, cuts himself pretty badly in the process.

(20:51):
He tries to climb back into the house, but there's
too much smoke and the flames are just going really quickly.
It's immediately clear he's not able to do this. He runs.
Now here's the conspiracy part. Boy. He runs to the
back of the property. He has a huge ladder that
is propped up against his house, but he just keeps
it there. But it's not there and it'll later be
found seventy five feet away from where he always has it.

(21:14):
So the ladder's gone. He runs to his two work trucks.
Remember he's a trucker, hoping he can drive one toward
the house and park it so that he could get
up to the kids on the second floor window. Neither
of these trucks will turn over, which is not normal.
So you have a sad, concerned look on your face
here with all of this.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Well, obviously as a parent, one of the biggest fears
was a fire happening in the middle of the night,
you know, with where the kids are relative to where
my bedroom was at and having you know, seen the
ramifications of what happens in fires to people, you know,
this is a horrific in terms of the situation with

(21:54):
the ladder and the two trucks, you know, most certainly
sounds like whoever set the house on fire wanted to
limit the rescue aspect. That's showing intent. That's showing Okay,
we want somebody to die, somebody to get burned up.
It's interesting how quickly the flames are spreading. And I

(22:18):
don't have a good sense you know, from ginny hearing
the bang and the rolling to you know, waking up
and the house is filled with smoke. I don't have
any sense in terms of the time frame, but we
have that observation of the front door being unlocked, lights
being on, flames are spreading very quickly, you know, did
somebody come in and pour an accelerant throughout the house

(22:39):
or in select locations in order to be able to
causes fire to spread much faster than maybe normal. You know,
I don't know, yeh, but that's I mean, this is sounding.
It's sounding very sinister up front, for sure.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Okay, well let me keep going here. So later on
a witness will say that they have seen a man
on site during the fire, like a neighbor or something
during this fire, you know, and it could have been
four in the morning, We don't know. It could have
been a neighbor who came out and looked. He had
what's called a block and tackle. Do you know what
that is? A block and tackle? No, I had to

(23:19):
look it up. It's a mechanism consisting of ropes and
one or more more pulley blocks that you use for
lifting or pulling heavy objects. And my friend Abbott Taylor
says that it could be used to remove car engines.
But we don't know if this guy tampered with Georgia's
cars or who he is. And you know, I haven't
seen anything about whether the engines had been removed from

(23:41):
these two work trucks of his, just that there was
a guy there who you know, nobody really knew it
could have been a neighbor they didn't know. I guess
there's just suspiciousness kind of throughout this entire story.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah, I know we're dealing with vehicles from nineteen forty five,
but I would have a hard time that in the
middle of the night that two engine blocks were removed
out of these trucks. Yeah, that's that's way over the
top to disable the trucks. There's so many different ways,
you know, So that we're further into the investigation, I
would imagine that there is some some mechanical expert looking

(24:15):
at these trucks to determine why they did not turn over,
you know, were they intentionally sabotaged.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
We eventually are going to learn, and I might as
well tell you this now, because we are now convinced,
I think you and I that this certainly was somebody
who is sabotaging them. The family's telephone wires were cut.
They found evidence of that. Marion, who is the fourteen
or fifteen year old, rushes to a neighbor's house to
use their phone because their phone is not working. She

(24:43):
tries to get the operator, but there's no one on
the line. Because it's Christmas Day, you know, and it's
one thirty at this point, so it sounds like this
phone call happened at twelve thirty. Marian heard the thud
I would bet twelve forty five. She said she was
just dozing. It probably took her ten or fifteen minutes
to kind of around answer the phone, look around, shut
everything down, and then the fire I mean it was quick,

(25:05):
you know, and smoking and blazing by one o'clock. You know,
Marian is having absolutely no luck finding somebody an operator,
but luckily George flags down a neighbor who is driving
by during this blaze. He's able to get a hold
of the fire chief, who's a guy named F. J. Morris.
Morris is not particularly helpful. This will go also into

(25:26):
our conspiracy, which drive me crazy. The conspiracies are going
to drive me crazy. He's not helpful. He says he
can't drive the fire truck himself, even though he's the
fire chief. He has to wait for other crew members
to arrive. And Morris gets this in motion by starting
the department's phone tree system, So you know where they're
getting a hold of all the firefighters, but they won't

(25:47):
get there until eight am. This madness started at one am.
And so this is disturbing already to George, and his
mind has already been churning about people out to get
him to begin with. And this is not helpful that
the fire chief is not responding to a fire when
his little children are all trapped up on the upper floor.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, you know, I know it's Christmas. But generally, you know,
for emergency response, this is you know, part of your
critical staffing. You always maintain a level of critical staff
in order to be able to respond to emergencies. And
for this fire chief, for this fire department to take
seven hours to respond to a structure fire with occupants,

(26:34):
I would want to know, well, what is their normal response,
what is their normal staffing level?

Speaker 3 (26:38):
What is their staffing level?

Speaker 2 (26:39):
That night when you said that, the fire chief said,
I can't drive the truck myself.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Well, that might be very accurate.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
I don't know what kind of truck this is, you know,
does it require multiple people to drive or to get
set up?

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Who knows?

Speaker 2 (26:53):
But a seven hour delay for this type of fire,
something's wrong. And it's either just sheer negligence in terms
of ensuring that you had people to respond, or there's
a purposeful act in terms of delaying the response. That

(27:13):
does sound crazy to me.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
It does to me too. I mean, you have to say,
we've got to throw in there that this is right
after World War Two, and you know, I think their
supply of local men have been depleted to a certain
extent and Christmas. But at the same time, seven hours
just seems not feasible to me.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
Yep, it's absurd as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
I don't know if this makes sense, So you tell
me if this makes sense. The Times West Virginia says
that the house was completely burned down to the ground
in under forty five minutes. Does that seem if we're
thinking Molotov cocktail? Does that tally with you?

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Not with a single point of ignition, you know from
the outside. This is where I think this further supports
that possibly an accelerant had been distributed inside the house.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
That would be my guess.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Now I am not an expert, you know, this is
where I would be looking at, you know, my Arson
investigators and saying, hey, you know, and of course they
would be able to take a look at the remnants
of the house and maybe see that there's multiple points
of origin to the fire, which is one of the things,
one of the diagnostic features of well, yes, this is

(28:25):
a you know, this was a purposeful fire. This is
an arson, even though you're talking nineteen forty five, there
could be visual indicators that an accelerant had been applied
the way that the fire possibly spread. And this is
where your arson investigators. They're highly trained and they can see.
It's so interesting is that, of course, you know, the

(28:46):
inside of a house after it's been burned, it is
such a surreal environment. Everything looks different. But these guys
can see. They know what let's say, an old style
TV looks like after it's been melted down down, you know,
into the carpet, you know, they say, that's a TV.
This is this, this is this, And I'm going in
going okay, okay, you know, show me where the body is,

(29:08):
you know, that's that's my focus. But forty five minutes
for what sounds like a fairly large house. You know,
obviously this must be entirely a wood structure. I am
leaning towards. This seems like it is a very hot
fire and it's spread very quickly, and this was possibly
aided by an accelerant.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
Let me know, if you think this is going to
make a difference. I'm pretty sure it does. Police, after
talking to George, find out that he kept a fifty
five gallon drum of gasoline in the basement. When'd you
think that makes a difference.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Well, obviously that's a huge fuel source for the fire,
but you'd have to get access into the basement. If
you're the arsonist, either you're going into the basement or
you are able from the outside to start a fire
down there, and that would indicate you have knowledge that

(30:04):
that fuel source is down there for the fire. Let's
say the fire starts upstairs, and yes, I mean eventually
it could make its way down, but generally fires move
faster up than down. Maybe this open door that Jenny saw,
you know, was an arsenist or a member of a

(30:25):
team of arsenists that went down into the basement to
take advantage of this massive fuel source. And I would
imagine you're just not keeping that gasoline in that fifty
five gallon drum. You are possibly puncturing the side of
it or laying it down on its side with the
little tab open, so this gas is now spreading across

(30:48):
the floor, and that's when you're throwing your ignition source
at that fuel, and then that would explain how rapidly
this fire spread and possibly help speed up the time
frame it took to completely burn this house down.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Well, let me ask a very cryptic question. Which section
of a house is better to start a fire in
with an accelerant to ensure that it burns as fast
as possible. The lowest point or the highest point?

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Oh well, the lowest point the basement. And you know,
typically basements because they're built underground. You know, they have
a retaining wall aspect. Structurally, they're made out of concrete
or cinder block, something that's relatively non flammable. But once
you get to the first floor, the second floor, whatever,
that's going to be your wood structure that's above ground.

(31:39):
And so you think about this fire that's fueled by
this fifty five gallons of gas. You know, once you
know that fire heats up the ceiling to the basement,
that's going to be probably wood. Now you start getting
the fire moving very quickly up, you know, and if

(32:00):
you have stairwells where you have oxygen sources, you know,
the fire likes to.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Go to where it can breathe.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
So yes, I would say that if the point of
origin to this fire was in the basement and the
arsonists utilize the existing gasoline down there. Then this is
showing pre planning, This is showing intent. This is wanting
this fire in essence to kill as many people in
this house as possible.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Okay, well, let me tell you who is left in
this house that has been burned down to the ground.
So Maurice, Martha, Lewis, Jinny Junior, and Betty. These kids
are let's see, Maurice is fourteen or fifteen, Martha's twelve,
Lewis is nine, Genny is eight. I don't know if
I said Betty she's five. These are the kids who

(32:50):
were still trapped this house, they said, burned to the ground.
Their parents, of course, are completely devastated and trying to
figure out what happened, and they couldn't get to their kids.
They're sort of tortured over this. And then we get
to trying to figure out in the aftermath of this fire,
who caused it. This was murder, except there is no

(33:13):
evidence of any of these kids left. There's no teeth,
not one tiny bit of anything from any of the kids.
And this is very alarming to the locals.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Well, I've seen.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
In fact, I just consulted on a case in which,
again a very hot fire as well as the body
had been probably within a structure as it burned for
quite some time, and in essence, there was hardly anything
left body completely cremated. In essence, it was like this

(33:46):
congealed mass that was there that was tiny. So on
one hand, I'm wondering if these kids had burned up
so much that now what I would expect to be
relatively naive and ignorant fire investigators would never have recognized

(34:09):
their bodies. On the other hand, were the kids even
in the house right when the fire happened? Had they
been taken out, kidnapped or something else going on? So
I think those are the two competing theories I have
right now. I'll leave it at that. I'm sure you
are going to be giving me a curve ball here
pretty soon.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff happening, and there's evidence
on both sides of that. So don't conclude they were
burned up just yet, because we have some experts who
came in and they said that there was days and
days of searching. There was at least one firefire who
had extensive experience responding to house fires and doing searches
like this, who had been great at finding the most

(34:53):
minute pieces. The quote was, they searched through the ashes
for the five children's remains. They did not find as
much as one single tooth. The police said, well, he's
got that fifty five gallon drum, and of course the
fire chief immediately says, it burns so hot it was
an incinerator. Essentially, the fire chief is on board with
all the children died. George and Jenny are not saying

(35:15):
anything just yet. But tell me if you think that
this is weird, because this is the beginning of my
own conspiracy in my head about this story. A few
days later. So this happens on December twenty fifth. Four
days later, on December twenty ninth, George and Jenny bulldoze
the property to create a memorial for the kids. Four

(35:36):
days later, would you not think we need to investigate? Like,
why would you if this is a I don't get it.
I don't understand why they would be allowed to do that.
It's weird to me. Four days Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Typically with arson investigations, you know, those can take some time,
and the burned up structure is usually left in place
for a period of time because the arson investigators need
sometimes need to kind of continuously come back as they
find out more information. This does seem quick to decompletely

(36:10):
destroy this crime scene, especially being done by George and Jenny.
But right now I have no I guess I have
no opinion on this at this point in time, It's
just okay. This does seem odd. It starts to open
up the door. Though in my head that George's paranoia

(36:31):
and his reporting of these men is that staging. Is
he trying to set something up? And is there any
benefit to him or Jenny to have five of their
kids either disappear or die interesting.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
I will make a note with no judgment towards George
or you know, saying that this is what I think happened.
I will say that the kids that were in the
fire are the youngest, with the exception of the toddler
that they grabbed. When I read that he had bulldozed
down the site, what I thought was he so freaked
out and paranoid that he faked their debts sent them off.

(37:13):
He was that scared and he thought maybe he and
Jenny could take care of the toddler. And then the
other ones were old enough. But we have a lot more.
I mean, I have several more pages of stuff to
get through. There's a lot more happening with this. You know,
this fire happens on Christmas Day. Four days later they
bulldozed down the rest of the house. Then the next

(37:33):
day after that, the corner issues at death certificates based
on the corner's inquest, which was that it was an accident,
the result of faulty wiring.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
From those fuseboxes.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, which is weird because the utility company had come
out and said everything is fine. Now this is where
I go back to being confused, because at first I
was thinking George is doing weird stuff. But George and
Jenny are sounding alarms about this from now until the
end of time. They're saying, we think that something nefarious

(38:05):
was happening. We don't think this was an accident. This
is not bad wiring, and most of the people in
the town don't think it was bad wiring. They said
that Ginny had seen these lights on. You know, they're
explaining the power company had come out. It just doesn't
make any sense that it was an electrical wire malfunction.
They also said, you know, of course, this is when
we found out that their telephone wires had been cut

(38:27):
and that the latter had been moved. So eventually it's
determined that the telephone wires were cut by a man
named Lonnie Johnson, who happened to be robbing the property
of tools because he was a trucker. You know, George
had all of these tools the night the fire began.
He pled guilty to theft, and of course the timing
is really suspicious, but Lonnie is adamant he didn't have

(38:50):
anything to do with the fire at all. And you know,
we don't know if this is the guy who had
the block and tackle I told you about. But you know,
essentially the police are not a him. He's never arrested.
He's arrested for theft. He confessed to that that there's
nothing else and he's not somebody who's been making a threat,
and you know, he's just a thief essentially.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Well, I know, coincidences can happen, but Lonnie is at
the house cutting the telephone lines the night that fire
breaks out.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
He's a trucker.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
You have two trucks that have been disabled somehow, some way, right,
did they find any stolen property with Lonnie to be
able to verify that he did in fact steal something.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
I do think they found some tools, yes on him.
He was kind of known as the local like thief,
you know, small town thief. And actually it kind of
makes sense. I mean, you're guaranteed people were going to
be in bed Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I know,
it's weird and there are coincidences. They don't think there's
enough there to charge him with anything, but that doesn't
mean he wasn't involved certainly.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Right, I mean, though one person could be involved in
the arson to think about, Okay, the ladder's been moved,
two trucks disabled, possibly an intrusion into the house, as
well as maybe an incentiary device being thrown on top
of the house.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
Seems like it's more than one person doing this.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Well, likely a woman at least as part of the conspiracy,
the woman who called, And that would make sense if
this is politically motivated. Let me give you some more information.
Three months after the tragedy, they're no closer to figuring
out what happened. George and Jenny are poking around the
property and they find something which is a dark green
hard rubber object, and according to the Smithsonian magazine, who

(40:41):
has covered this story, George thinks it looks like a
military style napalm pineapple bomb, and they wonder, of course,
is this the device that Genny heard banging and then
rolling off of the roof that night. I will tell you, Paul,
I find it hard to believe that nobody found this
before that. I mean, you've got somebody looking for teeth

(41:01):
and they didn't find this thing. And we're at the
end of World War two and people don't know that
this looks like a pineapple bomb.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
No, this is where your fire investigators are. Some investigators
they would recognize that.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, so what happened?

Speaker 2 (41:17):
Well, if if that was truly missed in the search,
then that tells me that they easily would have missed
these kids as remains.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
You know, they did not search very good.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
I don't buy this, but I don't know why that
they just happened to come across this with all of
these people trapesing across this property, and you have to
know they're luki lose going over there too after sundown.
I mean, just this is the freakiest thing that's really
happened in this area. I'm not saying they planted it.
I just think it's weird. Do you have any idea
how big this would have been. It's not tiny, right,

(41:50):
it would have been fist sized maybe.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
If it's something that's handheld and thrown, it wouldn't have
been very big.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
I'm gonna look it up. Okay, here's the length. If
this is the same same thing, and that it probably is,
it's about four inches long, diameter is almost three inches,
weight is about not even two pounds.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, I mean this sounds like your handheld grenade type
of device, but its intent is to start a fire.
It's an incendiary device. This is a type of evidence
that fire investigators are some investigators are looking for, you know,
when they are looking at a case like this, and
so to miss something like that again, it just it

(42:30):
underscores that this was not a very well searched arson.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Scene or somebody planted that for some reason. And you
have to think it's close to the house. If Genny's
right and you hear it rolling off the roof, it's
going to be landing right there, right.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Well, if it's planted after the fact, then that is
a form of staging, Yeah, you know, and why plant
this military device to try to make it think that
it was somebody that's a soldier? You know, that seems
odd to me. I'm not sure what benefit there would
be in this scenario to plant something like that.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Well, let's talk about people running experiments they probably shouldn't
be running. Jenny is beside herself over these kids. She
starts running her own experiments to test the theory that
a children might have been completely incinerated. She starts burning
animal bones to see what's left after the fire, and
Abbott Kaylor, my friend, says that each time she was

(43:26):
left with a heap of charred bones. She knew that
the remnants of various household appliances had been found in
the burned out basement that were still totally identifiable, and
an employee at at crematorium that she talked to said
that bones remain after the bodies are burned for two
hours at two thousand degrees, and this house was destroyed
in forty five minutes. So you know, there should have

(43:49):
been stuff, is what everybody's pointed. With five kids, there
should have been stuff.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
I don't know, I'm unconvinced, Okay, Jenny's experiments are faulty completely,
you know, I know, you know, you start talking about
like a crematorium, Well, that's a static environment. You're just
dealing with the heat that the body is being subjected
to when you were dealing with a structural fire. And
there's a lot of variables, you know, and I can't

(44:14):
speak to how much hotter. You know, the house fire
in this situation would be than a crematorium or less
than a crematorium.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
But you think about a house.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
You got objects that are now collapsing, you have the
house itself collapsing. You know, if you have these even
if there's some long bones, some recognizable long bones from
the children, there's mechanical forces that are possibly being applied
that is going to disrupt all of that. I would
think that remnants from some of the kids would have

(44:48):
been able to persist after this fire. I do think
it's possible that these children's remains were burned up to
an extent where they would have been unrecognizable, possibly congealed
with other substances that had melted inside the house. And

(45:09):
people that were investigating this fire may not have the
expertise to have recognized the child's remains.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
All right, Well, let's keep going because now we're coming
to your favorite part, the maddening world of witnesses who
are spotting people and not spotting people. It's a big smile, Okay,
George and Jenny are going out of their minds because
the amount of witness statements coming in. So we have
one person who says that they saw a tiny face
among the flames in an upstairs window, which of course

(45:40):
supports the idea that the kids died in the fire.
But someone else says that they saw the kids in
a car passing by while the fire was still burning.
And then in the days and weeks that followed, there
are more tips. Someone in Charleston, West Virginia reported that
the four youngest of the missing children were with four
Italians speaking. It's a week after the fire. And then

(46:02):
a motel employee says that the missing kids were just
hours after the fire, like right around you know, in
between Charleston and Fayetteville. So people are seeing these kids,
specifically four or five kids here. So what do you
think about that? I mean, we've talked about witnesses.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Before, well, and I imagine this is a fairly high
profile case, right mm. Hmmm, yeah, you know, it's it's
so hard to put a lot of credibility on these
witness statements. Can't dismiss them either, you know. That's that's
probably the maddening aspect of this aspect of the investigation.

(46:43):
Maybe these people are telling the truth. These witnesses are
telling the truth, but they didn't interpret what they were seeing, right,
These were just other kids out there. Parents are taking
them home from Grandma's house to go and wake up
in the morning at their own house, you know, for
Christmas morning, or you know, they truly saw these victims.
And then now why these particular kids are purposely selected

(47:06):
to have been removed from the house. You know, what
was at something done with the knowledge of George and Jenny.
Was just something that was done to torment George and Jenny.
I mean, who knows, you know at this point. You know,
right now, you know the two competing theories either the
kids burned up in the fire or the kids were

(47:26):
abducted or given away. I don't know if you can
resolve those two competing theories with the information right now.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
So George hired a private investigator named C. C. Tinsley,
and Tinsley finds out from a Fayetteville minister that the
fire chief, remember him F. J. Morris, the guy who
delayed coming to the fire, had claimed to have found
a human heart among the fire debris, And obviously this
is freaking out George and Jenny. They approached the fire

(47:56):
chief and said, what what are you talking about? And
the chief didn't have a good answer, but he says,
you know, I'll kind of show you this box that
I found. And they unbury this box because I guess
he had buried it again. And it turned out that
it was beef liver that he had buried himself. And
his claim essentially was that he wanted to give the

(48:18):
family some kind of closure like they had definitely died
in this fire. It was. It's a bizarre circumstance and rumor,
but all it means to me is that the fire
chief can't be trusted for anything, including putting out a
fire effectively.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
No, that's true, you know, and I think you just
brought something to light if you will, talk about how
this house burned down in forty five minutes, but that
fire smoldered, the embers smoldered much longer. I mean, it
was seven hours before the fire department shows up.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Right.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
This further puts in my brain the fact that it
is possible that the kids remains were so decimated by
this fire that they just were unrecognizable.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Well, let's go on, there's more stuff. Of course, turns
out that the same insurance salesman who had threatened George,
remember your goddamn house is going to go up in
smoke and your children are going to be destroyed. Remember him,
He's never been arrested for it. Of course, he said
he didn't mean anything when I said it. This guy, Paul,
was a member of the Corner Stury who determined it

(49:27):
was an accidental death due to electrical wiring. Welcome to
a small town. So listen. Now things get a little sciencey.
So I definitely need your help because the story is
not over in nineteen forty nine, So this happens in
forty five. In nineteen forty nine, there's a DC pathologist
named Oscar B. Hunter, and he conducts a brand new
search of the property at George and Jenny's request. He

(49:51):
unearths a partly burned dictionary that had been kept in
the children's room. He also finds small pieces of human vertebrae.
So you're telling me that a dictionary doesn't burn all
the way, but these kids are burned. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
I can just say, and it's anecdotal. Fire does weird things. Yeah,
you know, So as odd as that might seem, I'm
not surprised by that. I've seen that type of thing
where things all around something is just completely charred and burned.
And then you have some you know, some object that
you would think would have gone up too, and it's
right there, the human vertebrae. I mean the fact that

(50:27):
you have a pathologists identifying this as a small human vertebrae,
which sounds consistent with child size.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Of course, in this day and age, we could potentially
get DNA off of that vertebrae to show it's one
of the kids.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Okay, well it's with the Smithsonian, I'm presuming. Let me
tell you the interesting findings here. Number one. I'm going
to start with the fact that the Smithsonian experts say
this has not been exposed to fire. They send it
to the Smithsonian. This is in nineteen forty nine. They
determined that this is these are quotes. This is so
sign see the human bones consist of four lumbar vertebrae

(51:03):
belonging to one individual. Since the transverse recesses are fused,
the age of this individual at death should have been
sixteen or seventeen years. The top age limit would have
been about twenty two, since the CenTra, which normally fuse
at twenty three, are still unfused. On this basis, the

(51:24):
bones show greater skeletal maturation than one would expect for
a fourteen year old boy who is the oldest one.
It is, however, possible, although not probable, that for a
boy fourteen and a half years old to show sixteen
to seventeen maturation. And then they say it is not
being exposed to fire. And the report the experts say,

(51:46):
and this is a lot of people at the Smithsonian,
they say, it is very strange that no other bones
were found in the allegedly careful excavation of the basement
of the house, and that if the house reportedly burned
for only half an hour or so, one would expect
the full skeletons of the five children rather than only
four vertebrae. And they don't even think this is of
a kid.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Well, there's I mean, there's there's so many variables we're
talking about here, You're talking about four years of time
after the fire, after the house was bulldozed, and then
they find this vertebrae from I would say, like, what
like a late teenage boy that has that wasn't exposed
to the fire, And at this point in time we
don't know whose vertebrae this is. You know, I'm just

(52:29):
now trying to wrap my head around, Well, what can
be said because of the you know, do you have
a completely unrelated dead body that is at this property
that was there either before or after the fire, but
wasn't in essence burned up in the fire. Is this
body even related to the family. I mean, there's too

(52:52):
many unknowns to draw any type of conclusion. It's just
that you have a crime scene in which five kids
disappeared from them, and now you find vertebrae. So I
think if you draw the assumption, well it's one of
the kids, I think that's a faulty assumption.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Yeah, I agree, And it gets more confusing because two things. One,
the Smithsonian report says that the experts believe that when
they talked to George and Jenny and they said this
was the basement area, this is kind of where you
were putting up a memorial where this was found. What
did you do to fill in some of the space here?

(53:29):
And they said, well, we used backfill like dirt. The
private investigator, there's one article that the researcher found. There's
a private investigator that they hired said that he was
essentially able to trace this vertebrae back to a body
at Mount Hope, West Virginia. The idea was that they
used dirt kind of close to this grave site.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
From the cemetery.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
Yeah, that it was transferred in when they built this memorial.
I don't even know what the memorial looks like. So
the Smithsonian said, that's to them, that's the only logical
thing here. Eras that whatever dirt was used had body parts. Yeah,
I think in this area, I mean, people were buried
all over the place here, So I thought that was
really interesting, not conclusive.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Yeah, it's a plausible explanation, you know for sure. Yeah,
it sounds like this. You know, based on the anthropological
assessment that expert is able to determine a lot that
these vertebrae are in good shape. So that's where kind
of to my point earlier to assume that these vertebrae

(54:29):
were present at the time of the fire. It could
have been there before, just not exposed to the fire
or after. In this scenario, it's come after and it's
in essence. It's just, you know, this is contamination of
the scene. Four years later, you do have that happen.

Speaker 1 (54:47):
The FBI is rocked, of course by the Smithsonian's report
and gets drawn into it and then gets nowhere and
drops it. And the surviving members of the family become
convinced that the kids did survive, and somebody took him
from the house, and they chase leads and they follow
up on tips, and you know, these things always peter out.
In sixty eight, so this is twenty three years later,

(55:11):
the family gets a photograph of a man in the mail.
On the back of the photograph, somebody has written Lewis
Sawdu and then it says, I love brother Frankie little boys,
and that's got some numbers or thirty five A nine zero, one, three,
two or thirty five. So one of the boys who

(55:32):
died was named Lewis. The family is convinced that this
is Lewis, but they never find out how to contact
the sender or the man in the photograph. They hand
it over to investigators, this photo, and they wonder what
the heck the stream of numbers and letters is. They
never decipher it. You know, Lewis doesn't have a brother
named Frank, but Jinny did have a brother named Frank.

(55:54):
The Huffington Post, of course, years years years later, reports
that at some point one of the family members accused
her brother, Jenny's brother, of kidnapping the children and raising
them himself in Florida. But we don't know what the
motive is. There's nothing ever comes of that. So it's just,
I mean, it is unreal what this family has gone through.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
Yeah, but this sounds kind of goofy to me.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
So you have one of the kids, now twenty three
years later, is reaching out with a photo of himself
saying he loved Frankie, one of the other kids that's missing,
and then there's this weird series of numbers. Yeah, why
would Lewis be so cryptic at this point? You know,

(56:40):
as now as an adult, I mean, Lewis was in
early teens at the time of the fire.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Yeah, and there's no brother Frank either. Lewis would have
been nine, he would have been nine during this.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Okay, so he's now in his early thirties at the
time this photo is sent. You know, this sounds more like,
you know, you have the eyes that escape from Alcatraz.
And then people are sending in photos of these guys,
you know, saying, hey, here I am living my life,
and its is like, no, you know, this is where
you have your your goofballs and your nut jobs out

(57:14):
there that are just trying to put themselves into this investigation.
You know, get a thrill out of the fact that
maybe they get something in the headlines.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
I'm not buying this photo at all. If these kids were.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Abducted by family and raised, assuming that they were allowed
to you know, grow up and start their own families
and everything else.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
You know.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
I think if I were to get involved in this
case today, if I had DNA from you know, the
other kids or their descendants, I'd be looking to see
if I could find siblings or you know, people at
the cousin level who pursued genealogy, you know, because then

(57:57):
it would say, oh, yeah, they did you know, they survived,
you know, they have their offspring, who have their offspring
several generations removed since nineteen forty five, it's not that
that far back in time. That would be the one
avenue I think I would pursue to try to answer
this question.

Speaker 3 (58:15):
You know, the vertebrae.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
I kind of buy the Smithsonian's assessment, but I think
we could do snip testing on that and figure out
who's vertebrae that was. But potentially, you know, so, yeah,
at least with what you're telling me, the missing five
kids are still the big mystery in this case, and
I think there are ways even what is that now,

(58:38):
that's fifty five, I mean you're talking eighty years later.
I mean, I think there's ways we could possibly solve
this mystery.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
I would love that. Ultimately, George and Jenny die not
knowing what happened. They famously put up a billboard offering
ten thousand dollars and there's a really sad photo that
will go on social media of the two of them,
and they're very old, and the billboard was up for decades.
Finally the family took it down after Ginny died, but
they never came up with anything. They never came up

(59:08):
with anything conclusive, but the children and the grandchildren, the
ones who survived and then their children had continued to
search and try, and that's the end of this Christmas mystery.
You know what happened to these children? And we really
do always seem to come back. Paul, I feel like
to how competent are our investigators at the time. How

(59:30):
much do you trust them? Do we trust that they
did a thorough search? If we do, then something happened
other than maybe them being burned up or you know,
they got destroyed and misinterpreted. I don't know. I mean,
you know, I just now we can always come back
to how much easier we haven't now than they did
in nineteen forty five. Gosh, well, you know.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
There's still incompetence and negligence that happens in investigations.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
In this case. I mean, you just take a look.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
At the seventh hour delay by the fire department to respond,
you know, I think that that's, you know, really underscores
there was a lack of competence and maybe even something
more sinister going on. Finding the pineapple incendiary device. I

(01:00:20):
forget exactly what it was called, but that's being found
days later, you know. It just to me there was
an incomplete search of this arson scene from the very beginning,
and I just do not have confidence that they would
have found these kids remains there, so I leaned towards

(01:00:42):
you know, the kids were killed in the fire, and
they are likely their remains are still at that location,
but from the mechanical disruption from the house fire and
everything going on, and then the bulldozing and everything else,
I think it'd be very tough to find anything after.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Well, this is not the traditional Christmas story that I enjoy,
but this was man an important story. I feel like,
I really, I feel like I learned a lot off
of this story. And we need a couple of weeks
off from this because this is tough. Losing kids is tough.
When we talk about that, it's really hard. But we
need a couple of weeks off and we're going to

(01:01:23):
hopefully have good holidays and enjoy our loved ones and
be grateful for what we have.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Well that sounds good, And like I said, I will
be on a beach in Waikiki and I will raise
a glass of bourbon thinking about you and looking forward
to when we get back together.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
You're gonna drink bourbon in Hawaii? Can't What about my tie?
Aren't you gonna expand your horizons a little bit? Paul, Oh,
come on, no reason to okay, no, no expanded horizons here. Okay,
We'll have a wonderful winter break and we will see
you in a couple of.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Weeks, all right, you two.

Speaker 1 (01:02:01):
Kate, this has been an exactly right production for.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Our sources and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones Sources.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Baried Bones pod.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's cold
Cases is also available now