July 11, 2025 • 29 mins
On Christmas eve 1945 a mysterious fire struck the home of George and Jennie Sodder. The parents escaped with 4 of their children, but 5 more were trapped inside, and they perished in the flames. That's what the official investigation would have you believe anyway. The Sodder's believe something much more sinister occurred and that their kids had been kidnapped. Join is as we look into this bizarre mystery.
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- Sodder children
- Sodder family mystery
- True crime
- Unsolved disappearance
- Missing children
- 1945 house fire
- Fayetteville West Virginia
- Cold case
- Conspiracy theories
- FBI unsolved cases
- True crime podcast
- Mysterious fire
- Child abduction theories
- Christmas Eve fire
- Unsolved mystery
- Historic true crime
- Vanished children
- Suspicious disappearance
- Family tragedy
- Fire investigation
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beyond-the-shadows--6218555/support.
https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beyond-the-shadows--6218555/support Link for commercial free listening
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, join us as we delve into our favorite
dark tales and paranormal mysteries. Venture with us beyond the
safe places that exist in daylight. As we go Beyond
the Shadows, true crime, paranormal hauntings, UFOs, cryptids and unsolved mysteries,
conspiracy theories, past lives, reincarnation and all the like are
(00:23):
just a few of the topics that we will tackle.
If it haunts your fucking dreams, then it will be
on our show.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Do you know what the most in the world is?
On the shuttles where you found me at You can't
see me in the deepest blacks when your heart starbusts
and then you see their cracks, all these creepy things
that you wind at track for the defense be where
the actions at. So this enough you want it, UFOs,
all the ghosts. We got everything that you want. It
(00:56):
won't do you know what the thing in the world is?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Hello, Shadow Army and welcome back to episode one hundred
and forty eight or Beyond the Shadows. So I am
actually a solo act this week, which is a first
for us. Scott had some stuff he had to take
care of out of town. He should be back with
us next week. And this has just been one of
those summers, you know, it's one thing after another. But
(01:28):
we're on the air with you guys and should be
back to normal next week. So we have a new
Apple review from Yuri zero eight eight nine, which is great.
We appreciate that. If you guys haven't had a chance
to hop over there and give us a review, we
would appreciate that. That's awesome. It just helps us. We
say it every week, but it does really help us
(01:50):
get out there a lot more people. So first up
this week's news, we have James Shannon Fothing well, along
with his mother and girlfriend, one Kentucky's largest ever lottery
jackpot back in April, totaling one hundred and sixty seven
point three million dollars. Prior to his financial windfall, Farthing
had spent thirty of his fifty years on Earth in jail.
(02:14):
He has a sixteen page rap sheet, but after striking
it rich, he would sail off to brighter sunsets right. Nope.
Only three days after collecting his massive winnings, he was
arrested for assaulting someone in Florida. He then kicked the
arresting officer and he hadn't even informed the Kentucky Parole
Board that he would be leaving the state, so he
(02:36):
was jailed in Kentucky. It was just freed a few
days back, but he's now facing up to five years
in prison in Florida for his assault chargers. So big
bucks does not equal big brains. Next up, we have
an elephant in Thailand who walked into the front door
of a grocery store on Monday and proceeded to shop
for his favorite snacks. The thirty year old massive elephant
(02:59):
lives in a nearby national park and is named Ply
Beyond Lek, Ply Beyond Leck. He somehow, after getting his
massive frame inside the shop, backed out without doing major damage,
leaving only mudprints on the floor on the ceilings. He
stole nine bags of sweet rice crackers, a sandwich, and
(03:23):
some dried bananas. Lastly, we have fifty seven year old
Jonathan Patrick Winslow of Big Torch Key, Florida. So he
celebrated his birthday this past Fourth of July by smoking
meth and then stealing the conk train. Winslow pulled up
to the train depot, leaving his Kia running outside, went
(03:43):
inside and told the staff that he used to work
there and he wanted to tour the train. He instead
drove off with the train. The employee thought that maybe
he had permission to take the train, but he didn't.
He stole it, but still actually stopped to pick up
the pass. Police tracked him down and found a pipe
(04:04):
in his possession. It's a weed pipe, he exclaimed, but
it wasn't. It was a meth biton. Winslow now faces
charges of burglary, grand theft, auto and possession. So happy birthday, brother,
h So that's it for the news this week. Obviously
there's not as much laughing and shit with me by
(04:25):
myself as amusing as I find myself. So we are
gonna do the case of the Solder Children this week.
It's been covered a lot. You guys might know this
one again. I hope I bring something new to the table.
But if you haven't heard of this one, it's it's
it's a strange and fascinating case. So hopefully you guys
like it and I will be right back with that one.
(04:50):
Do you know what the world is? George Soudo was
born in Tula, Sardinia in eighteen ninety five under the
name Giorgio Sidou. He emigrated to the United States in
nineteen oh eight along with his brother, who then turned
around not long after reaching Ellis Island and left George alone.
(05:14):
He americanized his name and found work on the Pennsylvania Railroads,
supplying the laborers. He eventually moved to Smithers, West Virginia,
where he first found work as a driver before starting
his own trucking company called the Dempsey Transfer Company, which
hauled dirt for construction as well as freight and coal.
(05:35):
He also entered a local music store around this time,
where he met the owner's daughter, Jenny Cipriani. Jenny was
seven years younger than he was, and she had also
emigrated from Italy. They got married and over the years
why George's business grew, so did their family. Between nineteen
twenty three and nineteen forty three, they had ten children.
(05:58):
The family settled in in Fayetteville, West Virginia, a small
town with a largely Italian immigrant population. They lived in
a large, two story home approximately two miles north of town.
The Sawdas were well respected in the neighborhood. George was
known as a man with strong opinions on many topics,
including business politics, and current events. George was a very
(06:24):
outspoken critic of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and the subject
had gotten him into many arguments over the years. The
one topic he genuinely refused to talk about, however, was
his life before arriving in America. He rarely spoke about
those years, and no one really knew where he came
(06:44):
from or why he came to America to begin with.
So Christmas Eve of nineteen forty five showed all signs
that it was to be a happy holiday season at
the Sowder home. The kids were excited for Christmas, and
when Marion, the oldest daughter, got home from work, she
had presents for all the kids. George and Jenny allowed
the kids to say it later than usual to play
(07:07):
with their new toys and listen to the radio. This
was agreed to under the understanding the two oldest boys,
who were still awake, fourteen year old Maurice and nine
year old Lewis, would put the cows in and feed
the chickens before going to bed themselves. George and the
two older boys, twenty two year old John and sixteen
year old George Junior, were already in bed after a
(07:29):
long day of farm work. Their second oldest child, twenty
one year old Joe, was away serving in World War II,
and was thus the only Sauder child not home on
that fateful night. Jenny then said good night to the
kids and brought the youngest, two year old Sylvia upstairs
to bed. At around twelve thirty that night, Jenny was
(07:51):
awoken too the sound of the telephone ringing. She went
downstairs to answer it and found herself speaking to a
woman whose voice she did not recognize. The woman asked
to speak to someone whom Jenny did not know, and
when Jenny told her as much, she heard the sound
of laughter and clinking glasses in the background. As Jenny
(08:11):
hung up and prepared to go back to sleep, she
had noticed that the downstairs lights were still on. She
then found the door unlocked and saw that the curtains
were still open. Those were things the children should have
taken care of before bed. She found daughter Marrying asleep
on the downstairs couch, so she assumed that the other
children had gone upstairs to sleep. She shut off the lights,
(08:32):
locked the door, and drew the curtains before going back
upstairs to go to bed. About a half hour later,
at roughly one a m. Jenny was awakened by a
large bang on the roof and the sound of something
rolling down. She sat up for a few moments and
listened intently, but when she didn't hear anything further, she
fell back asleep. Somewhere about a half hour later, she
(08:56):
was awoken yet again, this time to the smell of smoke.
The room that George used as his office was on fire,
with the flames seeming to center around the fuse box
and the telephone wise wires. Jenny woke her husband, who
in turn woke the older boys. George, Jenny, Marian, Sylvia, John,
(09:18):
and George Junior all managed to escape the house. George
and Jenny frantically yelled to the five younger children upstairs,
but they heard no response. George tried desperately to reach them,
but they only set of stairs to get up to them,
were now engulfed in flames. He then tried to reach
them from the outside, but he found that the latter
(09:40):
he always kept leaned up against the side of the house,
was mysteriously missing. He then thought that he could drive
one of his two work trucks over and stand on
the roof of that to reach the children's window, but
despite having been in perfect working order earlier in the day,
neither truck would start now. George also tried to use
(10:03):
a nearby water barrel to extinguish the flames, but the
contents were frozen solid. The house phone was found to
no longer be working, so to try and summon help,
Merriingan ran to a neighboring house to call. These were
the days of the old fashioned switchboards, where you needed
to talk to an operator first, who would then connect
(10:24):
your call. But no operator answered the call. A passing
motorists saw the flames and stopped at a phone to
call it in. The motorists also received no answer, so
the motorists then drove into town and personally found Fire
Chief F. J. Morris. Morris then began the slow and
crude system, by which he would call one fireman, who
(10:45):
would then in turn call the next and so on.
Despite being located only two and a half miles away
from the Solder home, the fire department didn't arrive for
over six excruciating hours. One reason for the delay fire
Chief Morris was not able to drive the fire truck,
so he had to wait for a driver, so to me.
(11:07):
This detail is just beyond comprehension, not only for someone
to be the fire chief despite not knowing how to
operate their own equipment, but the fact that, despite knowing
kids were burning only a few miles away, he just
sat on his ass and waited for a driver. Figure
it out. Just grab a bucket of water and walk
your ass up there. Just do something. But he didn't.
(11:31):
He waited. Six hours passed, but by the time the
fire department finally arrived, any chance to help the salder
children was long passed, and the house was a pile
of charred rubble. One of the firemen who finally did
respond was Jenny's brother, but by then they could do
little more than pick through the ashes. Not much more
(11:52):
than a cursory investigation was done, and no trace of
the five missing kids was found. There were nobodies, no bone, nothing.
It was as though fourteen year old Maurice, twelve year
old Matha Lee, ten year old Lewis, eight year old
Jenny Irene, and six year old Betty Dolly had completely vanished.
(12:14):
Chief Morris said he believed the bodies had been completely
destroyed in the fire. A state police inspector attributed the
blaze to faulty wiring. Modern fire inspectors admit that the
work done then was both cruded and shoddy even by
the standards of that day, but five death certificates were issued,
(12:37):
and George chose to fill in the basement with five
feet of dirt to preserve the site as a memorial
to his lost children. The Sauters chose not to rebuild
the house, but as they struggle to rebuild their lives,
that began to doubt the fates of their children. That night,
a lot of the facts did not add up. A
(12:57):
worker from the telephone company was able to determine that
the phone line was not burned through but deliberately cut,
and if faulty wiring had caused the fire, then the
electrical to the house should have been out. George and
Jenny both reported, however, that the Christmas lights had stayed
on throughout much of the early stages of the fire.
(13:18):
The ladder that had always been kept leaned against the
house but could be found when it was desperately needed,
was located at the bottom of the bottom of an
embankment seventy five feet away. A neighbor then reported seeing
a man stealing a block and tackle from the Prosaure's property.
That night, he was identified and arrested. He admitted to
(13:41):
the theft and to the cutting of the phone lines,
but flatly denied having anything to do with the fire.
He said he believed he was cutting the power lines,
but it's unclear what purpose this was supposed to have
served in his theft. Could he have moved the ladder
as well as tampered with the trucks seems pretty met.
(14:01):
Then there's the question of the bodies being entirely missing.
A local crematorium owner told Jenny that even after burning
for two hours at over two thousand degrees, bodies were
not completely destroyed. This is the temperature much higher in
for a longer duration than occurred at the Sawderholme. Jenny
then referenced a newspaper article about a similar house fire
(14:24):
that killed seven family members, but their remains could be
found on all of them. So to prove her theories
that bodies could not have been completely destroyed, Jenny repeatedly
tried to burn animal bones on their farm, and she
always found herself unable to completely destroy them. So the
(14:44):
night of the fire, a bus driver heading through Fayetville
said that he saw people throwing fireballs at the Sawderholme.
Days after the fire, daughter Sylvia found a small, hard,
rubber green object in the nearby bushes. George then remembered
his wife's account of the thumping and rolling noises on
(15:04):
the roof, and he now believed it to be a
pineapple bomb or a crude grenade. So the Sawters then
remembered back to a few strange incidents that actually occurred
before the fire. So a few months earlier, a man
had showed up asking about hauling work for George's business.
He inexplicably wandered around to the back of the house,
(15:25):
where George followed him. He then pointed to two fuse
boxes and said that's going to start a fire someday.
George had just had a new electrical stove installed. The
electrical company had checked all the wiring at that time
and found everything to be in good working order. Such
a random comment from a stranger, let alone one trying
(15:47):
to earn your business, that's just for me as a
big red flag. Around that same time, a totally different man,
this time an insurance man, showed up to try and
make a sale. George rebuffed his sales attempt. He became
irate and said, your goddamn house is going to go
up and smoke, and your children are going to be destroyed.
(16:09):
You were going to be paid for your dirty remarks
you have been making about Mussolini. George's frequent arguments about
the Italian dictator caused him to dismiss the remark. At
the time, the older Sawder boys recalled that leading up
to Christmas, they had seen a man in a car
parked on Highway twenty one intently watching the younger children
(16:33):
as they returned from school. Sauters began to believe that
their children were not dead at all, and that they
had not been in the house at the time of
the fire. A woman claimed that during the time of
the fire, she had seen the missing Solder children peeping
out of a car that drove past. The sighting was brief,
but she was absolutely sure. Another woman, who ran a
(16:56):
shop in between Fayettevilla and Charleston, about fifty miles away
from the Sawter home, said she saw the kids the
morning after the fire. She believed that she had served
them breakfast and that they had come in a car
with Florida license plates. Another woman at a Charleston hotel
saw the children's pictures in the newspapers and recalled that
(17:17):
she had seen four of the five the week after
the fire. She said the kids were accompanied by two
men and two women of Italian descent, but then reported
that the men got hostile when she tried to speak
to the kids. The following morning, the group was gone,
so the Sawters then sent a letter to FBI Director
(17:38):
Ja Jadea Hoover requesting their help locating the children. Hoover
responded that the case lay outside of the investigative jurisdiction
of his bureau, but that he would be happy to
help if the local police and fire departments simply requested it. Strangely,
both departments declined to ask for his health help. The
(18:02):
Sauders next hired a private investigator named C. C. Tinsley
to help them out. Tinsley was able to determine that
the irate insurance salesman who had threatened George and his
family was actually a member of the coroner's board that
had ruled the fire was accidental, just talked about a
major major conflict of interest. Tinsley was also told a
(18:27):
strange story by a local minister about fire Chief Morris.
Morris had said all along that no remains had been found,
he secretly confided to the minister that some remains had
in fact been found. He had apparently discovered a heart
at the sea of the fire, and he had reburied
(18:48):
it in a dynamite box. Tinsley convinced Morris to show
him the spot, and together they dug up the box.
They took it to a local funeral director quickly determined
that it was not a human harn or a heart
at all, but it was rather a beef liver, and
it had definitely never been on a fire. Morse had
(19:11):
told a few people that the contents of the box
hadn't been found at the scene at all, but that
he had buried them there in hopes that they may
be dug up and that it may help convince the
sawders that their kids had perished on the fire. Now,
how he intended to convince them that their child's heart
had made its way from their body into a dynamite
(19:34):
box before then being buried during the fire is not explained.
But then again, this is the same clown who could
not drive his own fire truck in nineteen forty nine,
George brought in a renowned Washington d c. Pathologist, Oscar Hunter,
to do a new search at the site. This time,
(19:56):
both the investigation and the search were thorough, and coins,
a burned up dictionary, and a few vertebrae bones were
even found. Hunter doubted that the bones belonged to any
of the Swter children, as the bones were likely those
of someone from sixteen to twenty two. The oldest missing
Slder child was fourteen, and while it could not be
(20:19):
said conclusively that the bones were not his, the bones
showed no signs of being fire damaged. Hunter said that
it was very unlikely the fire could have destroyed the
children's remains entirely, and he determined that the bones he
found were likely already in the dirt that George used
to fill in the basement. The Sawters were told by
(20:46):
both the governor and the state police superintendent that their
search was hopeless and that the case was officially closed.
The Sawters erected a billboard along Route sixteen and passed
out flyers offering five thousand dollars later increased to ten
thousand dollars for information leading to their children's whereabouts. That
(21:08):
was no small sum in the nineteen forties, it would
equate to roughly one hundred and eighty thousand dollars today's money.
They were told that their youngest girl, Martha, was in
a convent in Saint Louis, that the kids were with
distant family in Florida, that someone in West Virginia had
confessed starting the fire while drinking in a local bar, etc.
(21:30):
There were all kinds of stories, but George traveled all
over the country and checked into every league, and he
always came home empty handed. One time, he saw a
newspaper photo of school kids in New York City, he
became convinced that one of them was his daughter Betty.
He traveled to New York City, but the girl's parents
refused to allow him to meet her. In nineteen sixty eight,
(21:56):
twenty three years after the fire, Jenny received a letter
at dressed only to her. It was postmarked from Kentucky
but had no return address. It contained a photo of
a man who appeared to be in his mid twenties.
The backside contained a note that read Lewis Sawder I
love brother Frankie Lott boys A nine zero, one three
(22:19):
two or one three five. The code was not deciphered,
but the photo appeared to the Sauders to strongly resemble
their son Louis, who would now be about thirty three.
They hired an investigator and sent him to Kentucky, and
he promptly disappeared. So they didn't publish the letter or
(22:40):
the postmark address because they thought it would endanger their son.
They did publish the photo, however, and they hoped to
provide the lead that they desperately needed. It didn't. George
died the next year. Jenny wore black the rest of
her life after the fire, and she continued to tend
the garden they had erected over the charred remains of
(23:01):
their former home. She died in nineteen eighty nine, and
the billboard finally came down after forty years. None of
the five Sawder kids who escaped the flames that night
remain alive. The next generations continue to hope for a
resolution and some closure on this extremely strange case. Nothing
(23:23):
stands today on the side of the fire. If they
still lived, the five Sawder kids would range from eighty
five to ninety three. And that is the sad tale
of the Solder children. Okay, so, firstly, for me. I
agree with George and Jenny. I do not think their
kids were in the house that night of the fire.
(23:45):
Whoever took them clearly planted ahead of time. They then
set the fire and made sure that there was no
way for anybody to get upstairs or to summon help.
They caught the phone line, they met, they sold the latter.
The witnesses saw people throwing fireballs at the house, and
that matches up exactly with the sounds that Jenny heard
(24:07):
on the roof that night and the smoke not long afterwards.
And I think the likelihood that the dude they caught
stealing from the house that night wasn't involved with the
other two guys that Georgian encountered outside of the house
with really sketchy motives, I think that's about zero. And
you couple that with a really sketchy fire chief who
(24:28):
is definitely in or the very least complete sketch ball,
I think you definitely have a deep rooted conspiracy and
know what the purpose was and what happened to the
Solder children. I don't know, but there was definitely a conspiracy,
and the Solder children, in my opinion, were one hundred
(24:49):
percent not in the house that night. We always love
hearing from you guys. I would love to know what
you guys think. Drop us a note, let me know
what you think happened to the Solder children that night
eighty years ago. Definitely a short episode, guys, but we're
(25:09):
on a kind of a different week, which is kind
of working on the fly. We're gonna head over to
the fire pit. If you guys have a firepit. We
want to hear from you as always, be on the
Shadows two o seven at gmail dot com or send
them to any of our socials. We'll catch you over there.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I gets to go, what's tom is?
Speaker 1 (25:30):
You can't try to have voun me. My name is
Kimberly and I'm in Kentucky. I love your podcast. I
have my own cleaning business, and I work alone all day.
While cleaning, I have earbuds in and I listen to podcasts.
(25:52):
If my clients have cameras up anywhere, they will think
I have lost my mind because while I'm cleaning, I
will randomly start laughing while listening to you. You guys,
You guys are my favorite. Thank you very much, Kimberly.
That's really nice. We appreciate that so on my story.
My husband and I bought a double wide twelve years
ago when we got married, and we had it set
(26:14):
up on his property that he had already owned for
about fifteen years. At that point. He had a small
house on the land, but I was coming into this
marriage with two kids already and we needed a beggar house.
Within months of moving into our new house, I started
seeing a shadow of a teenage boy in our hallway.
He had dark hair, white dress shirt, black dress pants,
(26:36):
and shiny black dress shoes. I couldn't see any facial features,
though I never mentioned it. Not long after that, my daughter,
who was about thirteen at that time, told me that
she didn't want me to think she was crazy, but
that she was seeing a shadow of a teenage boy
in the hallway and in her bedroom. She described him
exactly how was how I had been seeing him. I
(26:59):
told her she wasn't crazy, and that I saw him too.
I told my husband and son, who was about nine
at the time, but they hadn't seen him at all.
My daughter and I started seeing him more and more.
One night, he came to her in a dream and
he said his name was John Taylor. Immediately the next day,
(27:20):
I started doing some research. Come to find out there
was a house down the road from us, which is
no longer there, and a family lived there with their
teenage son, none other than John Taylor. It was back
in the sixties and John took his girlfriend to prom,
but at the prom she broke up with him. He
was devastated and went out to his car and killed himself.
(27:43):
It made sense at that point why we would see
him dressed up. We think that maybe he was still
attached to the property where he used to live and
saw my daughter out riding her bike like she did often,
and followed her home because she reminded him of his girlfriend.
That's our theory. Anyway, we had a ghost investigating team
(28:04):
here all night long not long after that, and they
got to see him too. It's been twelve years and
my daughter has moved out. My husband finally started experiencing
him as well. My husband and I have two boys,
ages ten and eight, and they have always known about
him and see him too. We told him he could stay,
(28:25):
so he's just kind of a part of the family.
Hope you enjoyed my story. I've had a lot of
ghostly experiences throughout my life, so I will send in more.
Thank you for your awesome podcast, see you all at
the firepit. Thank you very much, Kimberly. That was an
amazing story, like a really good one. If you guys
(28:46):
have any firepit stories, send him in to be on
the Shadows two o seven at gmail dot com or
send him into any of our socials. Thank you guys
very much and we will see you next week. Kitch
a little, guys,
Hey, everybody, join us as we delve into our favorite
dark tales and paranormal mysteries. Venture with us beyond the
safe places that exist in daylight. As we go Beyond
the Shadows, true crime, paranormal hauntings, UFOs, cryptids and unsolved mysteries,
conspiracy theories, past lives, reincarnation and all the like are
(00:23):
just a few of the topics that we will tackle.
If it haunts your fucking dreams, then it will be
on our show.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Do you know what the most in the world is?
On the shuttles where you found me at You can't
see me in the deepest blacks when your heart starbusts
and then you see their cracks, all these creepy things
that you wind at track for the defense be where
the actions at. So this enough you want it, UFOs,
all the ghosts. We got everything that you want. It
(00:56):
won't do you know what the thing in the world is?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Hello, Shadow Army and welcome back to episode one hundred
and forty eight or Beyond the Shadows. So I am
actually a solo act this week, which is a first
for us. Scott had some stuff he had to take
care of out of town. He should be back with
us next week. And this has just been one of
those summers, you know, it's one thing after another. But
(01:28):
we're on the air with you guys and should be
back to normal next week. So we have a new
Apple review from Yuri zero eight eight nine, which is great.
We appreciate that. If you guys haven't had a chance
to hop over there and give us a review, we
would appreciate that. That's awesome. It just helps us. We
say it every week, but it does really help us
(01:50):
get out there a lot more people. So first up
this week's news, we have James Shannon Fothing well, along
with his mother and girlfriend, one Kentucky's largest ever lottery
jackpot back in April, totaling one hundred and sixty seven
point three million dollars. Prior to his financial windfall, Farthing
had spent thirty of his fifty years on Earth in jail.
(02:14):
He has a sixteen page rap sheet, but after striking
it rich, he would sail off to brighter sunsets right. Nope.
Only three days after collecting his massive winnings, he was
arrested for assaulting someone in Florida. He then kicked the
arresting officer and he hadn't even informed the Kentucky Parole
Board that he would be leaving the state, so he
(02:36):
was jailed in Kentucky. It was just freed a few
days back, but he's now facing up to five years
in prison in Florida for his assault chargers. So big
bucks does not equal big brains. Next up, we have
an elephant in Thailand who walked into the front door
of a grocery store on Monday and proceeded to shop
for his favorite snacks. The thirty year old massive elephant
(02:59):
lives in a nearby national park and is named Ply
Beyond Lek, Ply Beyond Leck. He somehow, after getting his
massive frame inside the shop, backed out without doing major damage,
leaving only mudprints on the floor on the ceilings. He
stole nine bags of sweet rice crackers, a sandwich, and
(03:23):
some dried bananas. Lastly, we have fifty seven year old
Jonathan Patrick Winslow of Big Torch Key, Florida. So he
celebrated his birthday this past Fourth of July by smoking
meth and then stealing the conk train. Winslow pulled up
to the train depot, leaving his Kia running outside, went
(03:43):
inside and told the staff that he used to work
there and he wanted to tour the train. He instead
drove off with the train. The employee thought that maybe
he had permission to take the train, but he didn't.
He stole it, but still actually stopped to pick up
the pass. Police tracked him down and found a pipe
(04:04):
in his possession. It's a weed pipe, he exclaimed, but
it wasn't. It was a meth biton. Winslow now faces
charges of burglary, grand theft, auto and possession. So happy birthday, brother,
h So that's it for the news this week. Obviously
there's not as much laughing and shit with me by
(04:25):
myself as amusing as I find myself. So we are
gonna do the case of the Solder Children this week.
It's been covered a lot. You guys might know this
one again. I hope I bring something new to the table.
But if you haven't heard of this one, it's it's
it's a strange and fascinating case. So hopefully you guys
like it and I will be right back with that one.
(04:50):
Do you know what the world is? George Soudo was
born in Tula, Sardinia in eighteen ninety five under the
name Giorgio Sidou. He emigrated to the United States in
nineteen oh eight along with his brother, who then turned
around not long after reaching Ellis Island and left George alone.
(05:14):
He americanized his name and found work on the Pennsylvania Railroads,
supplying the laborers. He eventually moved to Smithers, West Virginia,
where he first found work as a driver before starting
his own trucking company called the Dempsey Transfer Company, which
hauled dirt for construction as well as freight and coal.
(05:35):
He also entered a local music store around this time,
where he met the owner's daughter, Jenny Cipriani. Jenny was
seven years younger than he was, and she had also
emigrated from Italy. They got married and over the years
why George's business grew, so did their family. Between nineteen
twenty three and nineteen forty three, they had ten children.
(05:58):
The family settled in in Fayetteville, West Virginia, a small
town with a largely Italian immigrant population. They lived in
a large, two story home approximately two miles north of town.
The Sawdas were well respected in the neighborhood. George was
known as a man with strong opinions on many topics,
including business politics, and current events. George was a very
(06:24):
outspoken critic of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and the subject
had gotten him into many arguments over the years. The
one topic he genuinely refused to talk about, however, was
his life before arriving in America. He rarely spoke about
those years, and no one really knew where he came
(06:44):
from or why he came to America to begin with.
So Christmas Eve of nineteen forty five showed all signs
that it was to be a happy holiday season at
the Sowder home. The kids were excited for Christmas, and
when Marion, the oldest daughter, got home from work, she
had presents for all the kids. George and Jenny allowed
the kids to say it later than usual to play
(07:07):
with their new toys and listen to the radio. This
was agreed to under the understanding the two oldest boys,
who were still awake, fourteen year old Maurice and nine
year old Lewis, would put the cows in and feed
the chickens before going to bed themselves. George and the
two older boys, twenty two year old John and sixteen
year old George Junior, were already in bed after a
(07:29):
long day of farm work. Their second oldest child, twenty
one year old Joe, was away serving in World War II,
and was thus the only Sauder child not home on
that fateful night. Jenny then said good night to the
kids and brought the youngest, two year old Sylvia upstairs
to bed. At around twelve thirty that night, Jenny was
(07:51):
awoken too the sound of the telephone ringing. She went
downstairs to answer it and found herself speaking to a
woman whose voice she did not recognize. The woman asked
to speak to someone whom Jenny did not know, and
when Jenny told her as much, she heard the sound
of laughter and clinking glasses in the background. As Jenny
(08:11):
hung up and prepared to go back to sleep, she
had noticed that the downstairs lights were still on. She
then found the door unlocked and saw that the curtains
were still open. Those were things the children should have
taken care of before bed. She found daughter Marrying asleep
on the downstairs couch, so she assumed that the other
children had gone upstairs to sleep. She shut off the lights,
(08:32):
locked the door, and drew the curtains before going back
upstairs to go to bed. About a half hour later,
at roughly one a m. Jenny was awakened by a
large bang on the roof and the sound of something
rolling down. She sat up for a few moments and
listened intently, but when she didn't hear anything further, she
fell back asleep. Somewhere about a half hour later, she
(08:56):
was awoken yet again, this time to the smell of smoke.
The room that George used as his office was on fire,
with the flames seeming to center around the fuse box
and the telephone wise wires. Jenny woke her husband, who
in turn woke the older boys. George, Jenny, Marian, Sylvia, John,
(09:18):
and George Junior all managed to escape the house. George
and Jenny frantically yelled to the five younger children upstairs,
but they heard no response. George tried desperately to reach them,
but they only set of stairs to get up to them,
were now engulfed in flames. He then tried to reach
them from the outside, but he found that the latter
(09:40):
he always kept leaned up against the side of the house,
was mysteriously missing. He then thought that he could drive
one of his two work trucks over and stand on
the roof of that to reach the children's window, but
despite having been in perfect working order earlier in the day,
neither truck would start now. George also tried to use
(10:03):
a nearby water barrel to extinguish the flames, but the
contents were frozen solid. The house phone was found to
no longer be working, so to try and summon help,
Merriingan ran to a neighboring house to call. These were
the days of the old fashioned switchboards, where you needed
to talk to an operator first, who would then connect
(10:24):
your call. But no operator answered the call. A passing
motorists saw the flames and stopped at a phone to
call it in. The motorists also received no answer, so
the motorists then drove into town and personally found Fire
Chief F. J. Morris. Morris then began the slow and
crude system, by which he would call one fireman, who
(10:45):
would then in turn call the next and so on.
Despite being located only two and a half miles away
from the Solder home, the fire department didn't arrive for
over six excruciating hours. One reason for the delay fire
Chief Morris was not able to drive the fire truck,
so he had to wait for a driver, so to me.
(11:07):
This detail is just beyond comprehension, not only for someone
to be the fire chief despite not knowing how to
operate their own equipment, but the fact that, despite knowing
kids were burning only a few miles away, he just
sat on his ass and waited for a driver. Figure
it out. Just grab a bucket of water and walk
your ass up there. Just do something. But he didn't.
(11:31):
He waited. Six hours passed, but by the time the
fire department finally arrived, any chance to help the salder
children was long passed, and the house was a pile
of charred rubble. One of the firemen who finally did
respond was Jenny's brother, but by then they could do
little more than pick through the ashes. Not much more
(11:52):
than a cursory investigation was done, and no trace of
the five missing kids was found. There were nobodies, no bone, nothing.
It was as though fourteen year old Maurice, twelve year
old Matha Lee, ten year old Lewis, eight year old
Jenny Irene, and six year old Betty Dolly had completely vanished.
(12:14):
Chief Morris said he believed the bodies had been completely
destroyed in the fire. A state police inspector attributed the
blaze to faulty wiring. Modern fire inspectors admit that the
work done then was both cruded and shoddy even by
the standards of that day, but five death certificates were issued,
(12:37):
and George chose to fill in the basement with five
feet of dirt to preserve the site as a memorial
to his lost children. The Sauters chose not to rebuild
the house, but as they struggle to rebuild their lives,
that began to doubt the fates of their children. That night,
a lot of the facts did not add up. A
(12:57):
worker from the telephone company was able to determine that
the phone line was not burned through but deliberately cut,
and if faulty wiring had caused the fire, then the
electrical to the house should have been out. George and
Jenny both reported, however, that the Christmas lights had stayed
on throughout much of the early stages of the fire.
(13:18):
The ladder that had always been kept leaned against the
house but could be found when it was desperately needed,
was located at the bottom of the bottom of an
embankment seventy five feet away. A neighbor then reported seeing
a man stealing a block and tackle from the Prosaure's property.
That night, he was identified and arrested. He admitted to
(13:41):
the theft and to the cutting of the phone lines,
but flatly denied having anything to do with the fire.
He said he believed he was cutting the power lines,
but it's unclear what purpose this was supposed to have
served in his theft. Could he have moved the ladder
as well as tampered with the trucks seems pretty met.
(14:01):
Then there's the question of the bodies being entirely missing.
A local crematorium owner told Jenny that even after burning
for two hours at over two thousand degrees, bodies were
not completely destroyed. This is the temperature much higher in
for a longer duration than occurred at the Sawderholme. Jenny
then referenced a newspaper article about a similar house fire
(14:24):
that killed seven family members, but their remains could be
found on all of them. So to prove her theories
that bodies could not have been completely destroyed, Jenny repeatedly
tried to burn animal bones on their farm, and she
always found herself unable to completely destroy them. So the
(14:44):
night of the fire, a bus driver heading through Fayetville
said that he saw people throwing fireballs at the Sawderholme.
Days after the fire, daughter Sylvia found a small, hard,
rubber green object in the nearby bushes. George then remembered
his wife's account of the thumping and rolling noises on
(15:04):
the roof, and he now believed it to be a
pineapple bomb or a crude grenade. So the Sawters then
remembered back to a few strange incidents that actually occurred
before the fire. So a few months earlier, a man
had showed up asking about hauling work for George's business.
He inexplicably wandered around to the back of the house,
(15:25):
where George followed him. He then pointed to two fuse
boxes and said that's going to start a fire someday.
George had just had a new electrical stove installed. The
electrical company had checked all the wiring at that time
and found everything to be in good working order. Such
a random comment from a stranger, let alone one trying
(15:47):
to earn your business, that's just for me as a
big red flag. Around that same time, a totally different man,
this time an insurance man, showed up to try and
make a sale. George rebuffed his sales attempt. He became
irate and said, your goddamn house is going to go
up and smoke, and your children are going to be destroyed.
(16:09):
You were going to be paid for your dirty remarks
you have been making about Mussolini. George's frequent arguments about
the Italian dictator caused him to dismiss the remark. At
the time, the older Sawder boys recalled that leading up
to Christmas, they had seen a man in a car
parked on Highway twenty one intently watching the younger children
(16:33):
as they returned from school. Sauters began to believe that
their children were not dead at all, and that they
had not been in the house at the time of
the fire. A woman claimed that during the time of
the fire, she had seen the missing Solder children peeping
out of a car that drove past. The sighting was brief,
but she was absolutely sure. Another woman, who ran a
(16:56):
shop in between Fayettevilla and Charleston, about fifty miles away
from the Sawter home, said she saw the kids the
morning after the fire. She believed that she had served
them breakfast and that they had come in a car
with Florida license plates. Another woman at a Charleston hotel
saw the children's pictures in the newspapers and recalled that
(17:17):
she had seen four of the five the week after
the fire. She said the kids were accompanied by two
men and two women of Italian descent, but then reported
that the men got hostile when she tried to speak
to the kids. The following morning, the group was gone,
so the Sawters then sent a letter to FBI Director
(17:38):
Ja Jadea Hoover requesting their help locating the children. Hoover
responded that the case lay outside of the investigative jurisdiction
of his bureau, but that he would be happy to
help if the local police and fire departments simply requested it. Strangely,
both departments declined to ask for his health help. The
(18:02):
Sauders next hired a private investigator named C. C. Tinsley
to help them out. Tinsley was able to determine that
the irate insurance salesman who had threatened George and his
family was actually a member of the coroner's board that
had ruled the fire was accidental, just talked about a
major major conflict of interest. Tinsley was also told a
(18:27):
strange story by a local minister about fire Chief Morris.
Morris had said all along that no remains had been found,
he secretly confided to the minister that some remains had
in fact been found. He had apparently discovered a heart
at the sea of the fire, and he had reburied
(18:48):
it in a dynamite box. Tinsley convinced Morris to show
him the spot, and together they dug up the box.
They took it to a local funeral director quickly determined
that it was not a human harn or a heart
at all, but it was rather a beef liver, and
it had definitely never been on a fire. Morse had
(19:11):
told a few people that the contents of the box
hadn't been found at the scene at all, but that
he had buried them there in hopes that they may
be dug up and that it may help convince the
sawders that their kids had perished on the fire. Now,
how he intended to convince them that their child's heart
had made its way from their body into a dynamite
(19:34):
box before then being buried during the fire is not explained.
But then again, this is the same clown who could
not drive his own fire truck in nineteen forty nine,
George brought in a renowned Washington d c. Pathologist, Oscar Hunter,
to do a new search at the site. This time,
(19:56):
both the investigation and the search were thorough, and coins,
a burned up dictionary, and a few vertebrae bones were
even found. Hunter doubted that the bones belonged to any
of the Swter children, as the bones were likely those
of someone from sixteen to twenty two. The oldest missing
Slder child was fourteen, and while it could not be
(20:19):
said conclusively that the bones were not his, the bones
showed no signs of being fire damaged. Hunter said that
it was very unlikely the fire could have destroyed the
children's remains entirely, and he determined that the bones he
found were likely already in the dirt that George used
to fill in the basement. The Sawters were told by
(20:46):
both the governor and the state police superintendent that their
search was hopeless and that the case was officially closed.
The Sawters erected a billboard along Route sixteen and passed
out flyers offering five thousand dollars later increased to ten
thousand dollars for information leading to their children's whereabouts. That
(21:08):
was no small sum in the nineteen forties, it would
equate to roughly one hundred and eighty thousand dollars today's money.
They were told that their youngest girl, Martha, was in
a convent in Saint Louis, that the kids were with
distant family in Florida, that someone in West Virginia had
confessed starting the fire while drinking in a local bar, etc.
(21:30):
There were all kinds of stories, but George traveled all
over the country and checked into every league, and he
always came home empty handed. One time, he saw a
newspaper photo of school kids in New York City, he
became convinced that one of them was his daughter Betty.
He traveled to New York City, but the girl's parents
refused to allow him to meet her. In nineteen sixty eight,
(21:56):
twenty three years after the fire, Jenny received a letter
at dressed only to her. It was postmarked from Kentucky
but had no return address. It contained a photo of
a man who appeared to be in his mid twenties.
The backside contained a note that read Lewis Sawder I
love brother Frankie Lott boys A nine zero, one three
(22:19):
two or one three five. The code was not deciphered,
but the photo appeared to the Sauders to strongly resemble
their son Louis, who would now be about thirty three.
They hired an investigator and sent him to Kentucky, and
he promptly disappeared. So they didn't publish the letter or
(22:40):
the postmark address because they thought it would endanger their son.
They did publish the photo, however, and they hoped to
provide the lead that they desperately needed. It didn't. George
died the next year. Jenny wore black the rest of
her life after the fire, and she continued to tend
the garden they had erected over the charred remains of
(23:01):
their former home. She died in nineteen eighty nine, and
the billboard finally came down after forty years. None of
the five Sawder kids who escaped the flames that night
remain alive. The next generations continue to hope for a
resolution and some closure on this extremely strange case. Nothing
(23:23):
stands today on the side of the fire. If they
still lived, the five Sawder kids would range from eighty
five to ninety three. And that is the sad tale
of the Solder children. Okay, so, firstly, for me. I
agree with George and Jenny. I do not think their
kids were in the house that night of the fire.
(23:45):
Whoever took them clearly planted ahead of time. They then
set the fire and made sure that there was no
way for anybody to get upstairs or to summon help.
They caught the phone line, they met, they sold the latter.
The witnesses saw people throwing fireballs at the house, and
that matches up exactly with the sounds that Jenny heard
(24:07):
on the roof that night and the smoke not long afterwards.
And I think the likelihood that the dude they caught
stealing from the house that night wasn't involved with the
other two guys that Georgian encountered outside of the house
with really sketchy motives, I think that's about zero. And
you couple that with a really sketchy fire chief who
(24:28):
is definitely in or the very least complete sketch ball,
I think you definitely have a deep rooted conspiracy and
know what the purpose was and what happened to the
Solder children. I don't know, but there was definitely a conspiracy,
and the Solder children, in my opinion, were one hundred
(24:49):
percent not in the house that night. We always love
hearing from you guys. I would love to know what
you guys think. Drop us a note, let me know
what you think happened to the Solder children that night
eighty years ago. Definitely a short episode, guys, but we're
(25:09):
on a kind of a different week, which is kind
of working on the fly. We're gonna head over to
the fire pit. If you guys have a firepit. We
want to hear from you as always, be on the
Shadows two o seven at gmail dot com or send
them to any of our socials. We'll catch you over there.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I gets to go, what's tom is?
Speaker 1 (25:30):
You can't try to have voun me. My name is
Kimberly and I'm in Kentucky. I love your podcast. I
have my own cleaning business, and I work alone all day.
While cleaning, I have earbuds in and I listen to podcasts.
(25:52):
If my clients have cameras up anywhere, they will think
I have lost my mind because while I'm cleaning, I
will randomly start laughing while listening to you. You guys,
You guys are my favorite. Thank you very much, Kimberly.
That's really nice. We appreciate that so on my story.
My husband and I bought a double wide twelve years
ago when we got married, and we had it set
(26:14):
up on his property that he had already owned for
about fifteen years. At that point. He had a small
house on the land, but I was coming into this
marriage with two kids already and we needed a beggar house.
Within months of moving into our new house, I started
seeing a shadow of a teenage boy in our hallway.
He had dark hair, white dress shirt, black dress pants,
(26:36):
and shiny black dress shoes. I couldn't see any facial features,
though I never mentioned it. Not long after that, my daughter,
who was about thirteen at that time, told me that
she didn't want me to think she was crazy, but
that she was seeing a shadow of a teenage boy
in the hallway and in her bedroom. She described him
exactly how was how I had been seeing him. I
(26:59):
told her she wasn't crazy, and that I saw him too.
I told my husband and son, who was about nine
at the time, but they hadn't seen him at all.
My daughter and I started seeing him more and more.
One night, he came to her in a dream and
he said his name was John Taylor. Immediately the next day,
(27:20):
I started doing some research. Come to find out there
was a house down the road from us, which is
no longer there, and a family lived there with their
teenage son, none other than John Taylor. It was back
in the sixties and John took his girlfriend to prom,
but at the prom she broke up with him. He
was devastated and went out to his car and killed himself.
(27:43):
It made sense at that point why we would see
him dressed up. We think that maybe he was still
attached to the property where he used to live and
saw my daughter out riding her bike like she did often,
and followed her home because she reminded him of his girlfriend.
That's our theory. Anyway, we had a ghost investigating team
(28:04):
here all night long not long after that, and they
got to see him too. It's been twelve years and
my daughter has moved out. My husband finally started experiencing
him as well. My husband and I have two boys,
ages ten and eight, and they have always known about
him and see him too. We told him he could stay,
(28:25):
so he's just kind of a part of the family.
Hope you enjoyed my story. I've had a lot of
ghostly experiences throughout my life, so I will send in more.
Thank you for your awesome podcast, see you all at
the firepit. Thank you very much, Kimberly. That was an
amazing story, like a really good one. If you guys
(28:46):
have any firepit stories, send him in to be on
the Shadows two o seven at gmail dot com or
send him into any of our socials. Thank you guys
very much and we will see you next week. Kitch
a little, guys,
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