The Curious Case Of The Sodder Children REDUX

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Warning.
This episode contains detailsthat some listeners may find disturbing.
Welcome back to the show today.
This episode is a rereleaseof an old episode.
I'm very excited to saywe have a lot of new listeners recently,
And I mainly wanted to do thiswith The Case of The Sadder Children,
because I've gotten multiple messagesover the last month.

(00:23):
Multiple two.
It's not likeI've gotten dozens or anything,
but I've gotten two messages saying,you should cover this on your show.
And guess what? I have.
This is a popular story.
It's covered in a lot of contentin this genre, and I'm proud to say,
I think we go into more detailthan a lot of other content presents.
So without further ado, hereyou are, a rerelease with some minor edits

(00:47):
of The Curious Case of the Other Children.
Enjoy!
December 24th, 1945.
Fayetteville, West Virginiathe solder family, George and Jennie,
and nine of their ten childrenwere celebrating Christmas Eve.
Some of the youngest childrenasked to stay up late
and it being Christmas,their mother approved.

(01:09):
Around 1:30 a.m.,Jennie would wake from the smell of smoke.
She got out of bed and found a firespreading quickly through the house.
George and Jennie and only fourof their children made it out alive.
Five of the other childrenhad been stuck upstairs
and drastic effortswere taken to save them, but all failed.
After the fire, the Sadr family wasstricken with grief, but it wasn't long

(01:33):
before the sadr's began to noticethat certain details didn't add up.
From missing remains, cut telephone
wires, contradicting reportsfrom authorities,
and rumors of the childrenbeing seen alive after the fire,
the Sadr family believedthe kids were not in the house
during the fireand could still be alive today.

(01:57):
This is a study of strange.

(02:18):
All right.
You ready?
Yep. Welcome to the show.
I'm Michael May.
With me tonight is Mr.
Matt Glass.
Who? Matt. Hello.
Thank,
you are the first personto be on two episodes.
Yes, I did it. Yeah. Yeah. You?
See, for myself.

(02:39):
Yeah.
You told a story on our scary stories.
Terrifying Tales, part one.
And, And now you're on an episode,so you're the first to do two.
And you composed the
theme music for the show,so you're part in every episode if you're.
True.
It is true.
You are part of every episode. Well,thank you for being on.

(02:59):
I've been wanting to find an episodefor you, It's no idea what's coming.
It's great a nice nice.
So real quick I just want to say a coupleof things to listeners out there first.
I still have Covid.
If you listen to the last episode
and my throat is not doing great,I'm feeling fine besides that, but,
just my my, a warningin case I lose my voice or start to sound

(03:19):
really funny tonight.
And also,I've just been tired and delirious,
so this is either going to bethe best episode ever or the worst.
We're going to find out.
I don't have Covid,and I'm tired and delirious.
So nice.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
Well, thank you everybody for listening.
If you enjoy the show,make sure to subscribe, rate
and leave a little comment.You leave a little review.
You can even just say, hey,you don't even have to say good or bad.

(03:42):
But leaving a review
is very, very important for podcast,so please do that All right.
So, Matt, who's with us today?
I've already mentionedhe composed the theme music,
but you are also a film maker,a composer and artist.
You do a lot of cool stuff.
I do some, yeah, yeah.
Do you,
I mean, I usually ask people this

(04:03):
at the end of the episode,but now I feel like I should ask now,
where where can people find you? Work.You want to.
You want to give yourself a plug?
Yeah.
So my my production companywebsite would be HCT Dot media.
That's the whole URL.
You can find stuff about movieswe've done, what
we're working on next, or just strangelittle things on our Instagram account,
which is also,I think it's Cptpp media or just

(04:25):
my stuff is either at Glass brain.com,which is, you know,
has all my music and weird old photos andstuff, or Matt Glass dot net
or you have a dot net.
Oh yeah, I couldn't get the.com for MattGlass, so I just I've got the dot net.
Oh wow. Wow.
Look at that.I haven't heard a dot net in a long time.
I think I got the only one left.

(04:46):
Do you remember the netwith Sandra Bullock?
You remember that? Of course. Yeah. Yeah.
And Mozart'sghost was the name of the program.
She used to have the secret code.
You pressthe little pi symbol in the corner.
Yeah, yeah.
Because, that was when all those moviesI had to do with the internet used things
like pi or E equals MC square, I rememberwould flashing the screen when in hackers
and they were hacking because of coursethat is, how you hack it's man.

(05:11):
Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, let's see, I am delirious tonight.
So tonight, Matt,we're going to be covering a tale
that I've been reading aboutfor probably like 15 years.
There's a lot of blogs about this.
There's some books and articlesand sayings, and it's this mystery
from 1945, about the solder children,the solder family.

(05:31):
And they had ten kids, five of them.
There was a house fireand five of them were not found.
They were presumed dead.
And then years later, people started tosuspect that those kids were still alive.
And where were they and And itit made the mystery
more of a mysterywhen I found more information.
this takes place in 1945.

(05:51):
And the family, it's Georgeand Jenny are the parents.
George Saturn, Jenny daughter.
And like I said, they they had ten kids.
They were Italian immigrants.
And they lived in West Virginiain a town of Fayetteville.
George had immigrated from Italy,but so did so did Jenny.
They both were immigrants,but they didn't meet each other
until they were in the States.
George and emigrated to Italy,

(06:12):
I think, when he was 13,if I remember that correctly.
And he came over from Sardiniawith his brother, his older brother,
and as soon as they got throughEllis Island,
his brother turned aroundand was like, going back home.
See you. And. Yeah.
Yep. I'm out of here.
Look at that. Statue of Liberty. Saw it.
All right, go back home.
No one. No.

(06:32):
There actually is a bit of a mystery.
Like, people that follow the story.
There's never really a clarificationof why the brother left to return home.
And I'm not sure there's really muchto read into that, but it's definitely
one of the many strange thingsthat happened in this story.
And George Souder famously didn'ttalk much about why he left Sardinia,
although if he's 13, I don't knowif he had much of a choice in the matter.

(06:54):
I'm sure it was a family thing.
So in in the United States, in the WestVirginia area, I did not know this.
But apparently in the early 1900sthere was a
it was there is a big groupof Italian immigrants in West Virginia.
And looking into a little bit, it'sbecause a lot of the miners,
they were considered union bustersto hire Italians because they weren't

(07:14):
part of unions, and they would come inand they would work cheap of work hard.
So West Virginia hadwhat was the number I found in my notes?
1910.
In 1910, there were 1700Italian immigrants in West Virginia,
which is a lot.
That's a that's a lot in WestVirginia, in my opinion.
Yeah, probably even now in West Virginia.Not realized.

(07:35):
Oh, they are still.
Yeah, there's there's definitelylike a culture there that built up
actually this is interesting.
West Virginia miners, Italian minerspopularized
pepperoni because they would bake itinto bread to take it as their lunch.
They would, like, pack it awayand take it for lunch down in the mines.
I'm a big pepperoni fan,so know I know who to thank.

(07:55):
This episode brought to you by pepperoni.
So when George and Jennie met,it was after George.
Had he had been working as a trucker.
And he decided,you know, living the American dream
as they get older and saved enough money,he started his own business.
And there's some kind of misinformationout there about what kind of business

(08:16):
he had.A lot of people think he hauled coal.
That is true.
He later did that,
but he was mainly he would he had trucksthat would go to the train, stop,
load on things onto his trucksand then take the the materials
from the train into town.
So it wasn't necessarily coal right away.
So yeah, he started his owntrucking company after a while.
This is how he met his wife.

(08:36):
It was like on the road, stopped at a shopsomewhere that her family owned.
And like I said,she was also an Italian immigrant.
They had ten kids Sylvia, Marion,John, George,
Joe, Louis, Jenny, Betty, Martha, Morris.
I think that's everybody.
I feel like some of those kidshave the same name.
Yeah, probably hear Jenny twice. And then,

(08:57):
I just think, well, Jenny's also the mom'sname, so.
Yeah, that's my.
Yeah. There you go.
Good call.
You're listening. Matt.
Good job.
Better than most my guests.
I'm not supposed to memorize those names,right?
Because. No.
Don't worry.I mean, I can always refer to them.
I always forget their names, too,so I will have to refer to notes.
So in 1945, I don't knowif you've heard of this, Matt, but

(09:17):
this thing called World War Two was goingon, and he said, ring a bell?
I see I'm not.
I didn't read the first one,so maybe I'd be lost.
What?
I mean, I mean, you can, maybe they'llrecap it at the beginning of the book.
Do a little.
Previously on.
So, yes, World War two is going on.
Mussolini and Italy. Bad dude.

(09:38):
And a lot of the Italian immigrantsin West Virginia area
supported him,even though they were American. No.
And this caused
some issues in town with George
because George was an outspokenMussolini critic.
So he did not havethe best of friends in town.
There were sort of hardcoreMussolini fans,

(10:01):
at the time of the the fire that the firethat we're going to talk about tonight,
I think Mussolini was already dead,but there were still feelings of like
ill will towards George because he didn'tlike Mussolini and talked a lot about it.
There's two
popular stories on all the blogsand Reddit posts and stuff about this tale
that happened before the fire that people

(10:23):
put emphasis on, and rightly so, honestly,
the first one is that this man,we don't know who.
Or at least I couldn't find out who.
Someone out there probably knows
was coming around the property,George's house, looking for work,
and I think he was in my personal theoryas he was trying to invent reasons
to get hired as a handymanbecause he saw the like fuze box

(10:46):
and was like,oh, that's going to start a fire.
You got to hire me to replace all that.
Oh, the wiring is going, Eddie'swhole house is going to catch on fire.
And George, was like,no, this is this is all new wiring.
We just had a stove put in,and the power company had to come out
and rewire, and everything's up to code,and he was apparently it still put him on.
Oh, off is it'sprobably not a figure of speech, but

(11:09):
I have Covid,so I'm just going to blame it.
I like it, it is. Yeah. Yeah.
So a George actuallycalled the Power company
and they were like, no,everything's you're totally safe.
You're totally fine. And, yeah.
So it's just an it's an interesting,interesting precursor to what may happen.
And let me back up a little bit the,the house that they lived in.
And George built it, it was a two story.

(11:32):
It also had a basement timber frame houseand it was not particularly large.
The master bedroom was downstairsas well as like a living area,
an office and then upstairs.
And a lot of the stories you read,they call it the attic,
but it's just upstairs that were two roomsand those were the kids bedrooms.
The boys had one room,the girls had the other.
The other popular story that happenedas a precursor to the fire is a story

(11:57):
of an insurance salesman that comes byand got into an argument with George.
This story is one of the reasonswhy I wanted to see if I could
research more, because this storyseems to be like it's a local rumor,
and I did find more information about it.
I am going to save the detailsfor this story

(12:18):
until the end of the episode,but we're going to do a scene.
This is our first scene.
Did you getyou got that email, right? Yeah.
Let me see here.
You and I are going to do a dramatization.
This is
not what happened.
This is the common storyof what people say happened.
And a lot of the linesin this actually are true.
But there are some details.

(12:38):
Again, I'm going to save itfor the end of the episode
or towards the end of the episode.
Do you want to read a George Solderor the insurance salesman?
Man, I got to be insurance.
Dude, I think that's a good castingfor you, right?
All right,so again, dramatization of something
that people say happened before the fire.

(12:59):
So it is the solder house during
a I'm just going to call it a lovely day,I don't know.
And the doorbell rings. Yeah.
And George Solder opens the front door
to his house to an ambiguous insurancesalesman smiling back at him.
Hello,
Mr. Solder, I presume?
Yes, and you are, George
notices the salesman has a nametagpinned on his left lapel.

(13:21):
The nametag reads name with a blank spacebelow it.
I sell insurance, Mr. Solder.
All kinds,you name it, and I provide best deals.
And all of West Virginia need coverage.
Forget trucks, barn, cattle, chickens.
We're fine. Thank you.
What about your house, Mr. Sarah?
Oh, your children,you have ten of them right now.
How do you know?

(13:42):
We're running a special right nowon life insurance?
You have a pleasant day, sir.
George begins to close the door. Wait.
What about home insurance?Anything could happen.
Timber frame house like this.
George is about to close the dooron the salesman's foot suddenly blocks it.
I'm trying to help.
I'm not interested. Get off my property!
Listen to me, Mr. Sada. Please leave.

(14:03):
Your damn house is going up in smokeand your children will be destroyed.
Go get back!
Because of your remarks about Mussolini,
George manages to kick the footout of the door and slams it shut.
The salesman walks awayfrom the house, laughing.
There we go.
There we go.
Is thatis that thing about the name and actual,

(14:27):
thing that, you know,so the the the reason I did that,
it was just a little quirky, dorky thingI wrote in.
So all the stories when you when you readblogs that, you know, the story
pops up in blog post and articlesand things going back again.
I've been reading about thisfor like 15 years,
and I think the first time I read aboutit was in some magazine.
And the story always is,is that an insurance

(14:48):
salesman came by the houseand got into an argument,
and he said those thingsto very specifically,
the house is going up in smoke,your children be destroyed.
I'll beat outall of your remarks about Mussolini.
All of that is true.
But I love how it was always an insurancesalesman, and I was just like that.
Something about this story doesn't ringtrue to me just because there's no
there's no details around it.

(15:09):
It's not like Joe,the insurance salesman from down
the block that always try to get himthere is there's missing stuff
to that story that always intrigued me,that I was either like, this is all fake.
It's just like local rumorthat's like spread over time
or there's something more to it.
And again, I did find more to this story.
So I will get to get to the factsabout the little cliffhanger.
Gotta wait a little later inthe episode, everybody. Yeah.

(15:32):
All right.
So that was, I think that was roughly60 days before the infamous fire event
and the night of the fire.
It was actually Christmas Eve 1945.
And the Sutter family,they they were the type of family
that open presents on Christmas Eve.
My family always do Christmas morning,
other people do Christmas Eveor maybe a little combo of both.

(15:55):
So they had opened uppresents earlier in the day.
They had had a big dinner,they had a fun day
and two of the two oldest boyswho were living at home because they had
another older boy, I think Joe,who was fighting in World War Two,
and John had fought in WorldWar Two but was now living back home.
They were both they were the two oldest.They were in their 20s.

(16:16):
So the two oldest, were asleep
by ten, 1030 because they had workedhard with their their father all day.
And the younger children kept askingJenny, the mom,
if they could stay up lateChristmas Eve to play with toys.
Also, I found out, in a book.
Oh, I was going to say this uptop and a little, little,

(16:36):
little side note.
What is it? Transcript.
Something a little notationfor the end of the page.
This is great radio.
I'm going to cut most of that out. Never.
I wanted to tell people my main sourcefor information tonight.
I read two books and one that I came up.
I came across kind of late in my researchand I'm so glad I did.

(16:57):
And he has a great websitewith a lot of information.
And a guy named Bob Bragg wrote a bookwhose the title,
the book is not in front of me,but I have links in the show notes to it.
He did a ton of research and dug up
a ton of very specific informationfor this case.
And he actually mentioned the kidsbecause I never read this in
anything I read about it.
The kids wanted to stay up latebecause they were listening to the radio.

(17:18):
Because they were radiowould do like Santa has been seen
flying over the Cascade Mountain,you know, like those kind of things.
So they wanted to stay upand listen to the radio for those
kind of like Santa like stories.
And it being Christmas, the mom was like,yes, you can stay up, but
when you go to bed,make sure to turn off the lights,
close the curtains, lock the door.
You know,all that kind of like tour type stuff.

(17:39):
The parents make kids do it in the night.
I just saw something weird.
Yeah. Why?
So they got all their presents already?What do they care where Santa is going?
He's not going to come visit them.We already.
They already gave him all they stuff.
Don't ruin the magic of Christmas, Matt.
People have come to see Santa, ghost,everybody else's house.
But why do you want to go to their house?
Maybe there's a combo of, like, they opensome the night before and they open,

(18:00):
I guess.
Yeah.
I say is actually a goodthat is a good question that there's
very good question.
So anyway, the yeah, the kids stayed up,
except for the two oldest boys,and the parents went to bed.
And around 1230, Jenny was woken up
by the phone ringingand she went downstairs to the phone.
It was in the office on the ground floor.
Or. Excuse me.She didn't have to go downstairs.

(18:22):
Master bedroom is downstairs.
But she went into the office roomto answer the phone.
And an unfamiliar woman,someone she didn't know, asked for some.
A name that she never remembered,but it was obviously like a wrong number.
But what was odd about it is it soundedlike there was a party going on.
People are laughing in the background,and the woman, when she was told
that like, you have the wrong number,she laughed in a very odd way.

(18:44):
That just kind of made Jenny feel weird.
She hung up the phoneand this is when Jenny noticed
that the lights were still on downstairs,
and she saw that her her daughterMarianne was asleep on the couch
and all the other kids weren't there,so they had forgotten to do their chores.
They didn't close the curtains, turnoff the lights, all that kind of stuff.

(19:05):
So Jenny goes back upstairs.
After she notices this, she tries to sleep
and she assumes around one130 somewhere in there,
but she hears the sound of what she callsa rock hitting the roof
and then kind of rolling offthe roof. It's like sudden.
And again, she was like, okay,that's weird, but there was a storm.

(19:27):
There was a stormthat had a lot of crazy winds that night.
So I think she kind of just assumed it'sthe storm.
Went back to sleepand a little while later
we're a little unsureof exactly how long later.
But a little while later,she's woken up again, by smoke,
and she got up and the house was on fire.
So she woke up her husband,she's screaming, she runs downstairs.

(19:48):
She has her baby.
Because I think it's Sylviawho's the youngest.
Was only two.
So she slept with the baby.She carried the baby downstairs.
She handed it to Marianne,who was asleep on the couch
and told her to get the get thebaby out of the house. And
the. I think what is missing froma lot of the things I've read about this
until I researched it more, is how fast

(20:08):
and crazy dramatic this fire was.
Like.
She smells the smoke, but the fireis already enveloping the entire house.
This.
There's a story that, like her,her oldest sons got up
and when they came downstairs,they were already burnt
like they were already like, searedand their hair was on fire
and stuff like this happened.

(20:29):
So in it's a timber frame house, too.
So it just it went up super fast.
It was very, also very windy outside,which also helps the fire spread. Me.
And John says in statements,
I think the next daywhen he gives statements, he says that
he woke his younger brothers upwho were in the same bedroom with them,

(20:50):
shook them, told him to get up,and then he ran out of the room
to try to go help put out the fire.
The family makes it outside
and they notice that the younger kidsaren't aren't outside.
So in sort of the panic and the adrenalineand the, you know,
the chaos of this event,George tries to go back inside to hot.
He tries to break in through a windowto get to the stairs, to get upstairs

(21:13):
to get the kids like cutshis arm really terribly,
breaking up in the window,but it's too hot.
So he decides to get his trucks.
He has two of his hauling trucks,sort of in the barn there on the property,
and he couldn't get his truck started.
And because he was goingto pull them up to the window
and climb on top of the truckto get in, to get in the bedroom.
So it's too late.

(21:35):
They can't get the trucks.
Oh, the one thing, and I'm also forgettingto say that always comes up is a ladder.
There's a ladder
that George specifically said it's alwaysin the same place in the ladder was gone.
Didn't know where it was.So it's very odd.
Suffice to say, very quicklythey realize there's nothing
they can do to save five of their childrenthat are inside.

(21:56):
And it's the five youngest,except for the baby.
It's Morris who's 14.
Yes. Or question no.
It's that's the weirdest part right now.
Yeah. It's all the youngest kidsbecause they're not it's all the youngest.
And they were the ones.
They werethe ones that asked to stay up late,
which I that that's somethingthat occurs to me a lot in this story.
So it's the five kidsthat asked to stay up late.

(22:17):
Yeah.Because it's not a room for young kids.
In a room for old kids. Yeah.
For boys, the room for girls.
So, yeah,since they'd be up there. Exactly.
So Morris 14, Martha 12.
Lewis or Lewis,nine, Jenny, eight, and Betty, five.
Yeah.
There was nothing they could do.
The house went up in smoke.

(22:37):
So Marianne, the daughterthere, was asleep in the couch that saved
the baby, took the baby out.
She had run to a neighbor's houseto call the fire department
the operator,because at this time in this area,
you basically call the operator,like operator,
give me the fire department,that kind of thing.
Also, most houses backthen this is come up in like three of
the storiesI've now done on the, on the podcast,

(22:58):
and I haven't kind a chanceto talk about it.
They're on party lines.
Do you know what party lines are?
Yeah, I think my mom had a party linewhen she was younger, which is crazy.
Yeah.
So you shareyou basically share the same phone
line with other people that maybeyour neighbors on the street or wherever.
So literally where the line is,that is your phone line.
So you could pick up the phoneand find, you know,
your your neighbor Bobnext door is on line.

(23:21):
You're not on line, but on the phone.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
So anyway, thethe operator didn't answer the phone.
Marianne runs to another neighbor's house,and that neighbor
also couldn'tget Ahold of the fire department.
There's a couple different stories herethat happened.
Some say that that neighborthen ran to the fire department.

(23:42):
Other stories sayif someone finally got through
to the fire department on the phone,
both may be true,because I think enough people knew
that this was going on the like.
Everybody'strying to get the fire department.
The the fire chief was a guynamed F Morris,
and he was the only one that I can tellwas actually at the fire department
that night, because it was primarilya volunteer fire department.

(24:04):
A lot of people are offfighting in the war, so a lot of small
town fire departmentsdon't really have people on staff.
Now, the fire department is two
and a half miles away from the house,but they didn't get there.
And again, this is like 130 in the morningwhen the fire starts.
They didn't get there until 8 a.m..
And there's a lot of issues with this.

(24:27):
There's a lot of excuses by the chiefgave a lot of different excuses
why it took so long.
One ishe was already told that like he said,
people said the house was already gone,so there was no reason to rush.
It's like the house burned so quick.
The houseapparently burnt down in about 30 minutes.
So it did. It did happen very fast.

(24:48):
But still, it's not an excuse to not goto get to the other one is fine now.
Yeah. Space prohibits fire.
There's just fire.
The other thing is the way this volunteer
fire department workedis one person's there.
If there's a call that comes in that fireperson calls another fireman,
and that fireman calls another fireman,and that fireman calls another fireman

(25:11):
they don't like.
It's not one guy calling everybody out,like, works out a line.
And so when there's issueswith the operator,
when there's issueswith weather and Christmas Eve,
I just don't think he had enoughpeople to go.
He also claimedhe didn't know how to drive the truck
or couldn't drive the truck,
so he had to wait till someone showed upthat could drive the truck.
There's just athere's a lot of weird things

(25:33):
with the fire department,and some people read into that and claim
it's like foul play,and they wanted the house to burn.
And we'll get into some of those thingsa little bit later on.
So the, yeah, the houseburnt down in about 30 to 45 minutes.
And because there was a basement,most of the ash
and debris kind of fell into the basement

(25:53):
and nothing of the house survived.
So when the fire department did show up,they show up around 8 a.m..
They do search through the rubble.
There are people,I think 7 to 9 people somewhere in there
actually start sifting through the rubbleand the ash until 10 a.m..
So only about an hour, hourand a half somewhere in there

(26:15):
that they're actuallysearching for remains.
And they never found remains
for any of the five kids.
I will point out very quickly,we're going to get into
some of the weird things about this.
They only search for about an hourto an hour and a half.
They said they searchedwith a fine tooth comb.
There is an article that will bein my show notes, a link to it

(26:37):
that's from like 2003with a woman who investigated this case
and she interviewed like a firemarshal or,
you know,some someone that knows this world
and they're like,if there was a fire today and we were,
we would have to go through to investigatethe fire, like all the ash and debris.
We would do it in like three days.
We wouldn'tdo it in an hour, hour and a half. Yeah.

(26:58):
So there's not a lot of timethey did spend.
However, even in the shortamount of time, they did not find remains.
So after the fire, the investigation,
as you can tell, with kind of a short,short excavation, I'll call it,
it was a very quick investigation.

(27:18):
The fire marshal, the chief guy Morris,
basically was like,there's there's nothing here.
They've they've burned the house,burnt down.
Kids are in it.
It's really sad.
But like, that's the only explanation.
So I think they're dead.
And everybody kind of went along with thatbecause, yeah, that was a terrible fire.
And you had to get out of thereinstantaneously and it's

(27:42):
these these things happen.
It's very sad these things happen.
A county could just
I don't think I could trust a fire chiefwho can't drive his own truck.
That's true.
That is true.
I don't know why you have the fire chief
that never learnedhow to drive the track in the first place.
The county commission.
I think it's a county commissioner.
There may be a wrong title there.
I wrote down in my notes.

(28:04):
But, this guy showed up the day,
the day of the fire,and he basically convened again.
It's it's freezing outside again.
There was, like,a windstorm and ice storm, and it's cold.
It's Christmas.
Now, at this point, people don't wantto be there and there are people there.
So he convened kind of like a hey guys,we're going to do a little inquest
right here and just nip this in the bud,get rid of all the bureaucracy

(28:28):
and kind of do this quick.
He convened a jury of peoplethat were there to be like, all right,
so no, nobody's.
But like, they're down there like the kidsdied, rights, fire, accident,
blah, blah, blah.And everybody's like, yeah.
And so they, they, they,they just kind of quickly were like, yep.
Yeah. A fire accident, dead kids.
And that's what everybody assumed it was.

(28:49):
Fayetteville did issue death certificates.
There was just to be,
formal or correct.
They actually did reconveneand do days or months or weeks later.
They actually did do another inquest,but they still said kids died in the fire.
And that's how they left it.
The family bought into that.

(29:10):
At first they
the parents were so devastated by thisand I cannot imagine.
So I completely believe thiswholeheartedly.
They were
too upset to even go to the funeralslike some of the kids, the kids
that were survived to go to the funerals,but like the parents just couldn't do it.
George Sartor ended up,

(29:32):
bringing in dirt to,
like, spill land and cover up the ash
because he wanted to make it basically,like, almost like a grave site.
Like he wanted to make ita memorial situation
and covered it with dirtand wanted to remember the kids.
And and also, I think that was his way ofgrieving is just to like, quickly
kind of put something on top of like,I don't want to see the ash every day.

(29:55):
I want to just put something on top of it.
Now that's the way it stood for a while.
Over the next two years, Georgeand Jenny started to doubt that their kids
died in the firebecause of some very strange things.
So they, I guessover time they just started to notice.
Even Mattjust put his finger up like he's thinking

(30:16):
and there are two predominant strange.
I'm going to list out other ones,
but there are two predominantstrange things that stood out to them.
The first one is that
Jenny learned about bones like this
intrigued her that there were no bonesor anything that were found in the ash,

(30:37):
so she started doing her own testing,like she would burn animal
bones in the yard and stuff.
So she started talking to people.
And it turns out that to disintegrate,burn up bones,
you have to burn them at roughly 900°Cor more for two hours.
I should have written downwhat that is in Fahrenheit,
because it's hard for my brainas an American to figure out.

(30:59):
It's a lot, but it's like it's very hotand it needs to burn
for at least two hours at that temperaturefor like, the bone to really
crumble downand the fire was too fast for that.
It was too fast.
And it may not have even gottenthat hot from
some of the things that I've read now.
The ash was still smoldering
when the fire departmentshowed up at eight, like they still had a
water it down because it was still hot,but it still wouldn't have been that hot.

(31:23):
Yeah.
So there is some doubtthat remains would have just gone poof.
The other thing is that other stuffwas found that would have also burnt.
And those kind of temperatures,like books and pieces of furniture
and things like that did surviveand were in the ashes.
You would expect stuff like thatto be along with remains of bodies.

(31:45):
Now, some say to this day
there are somethat say that George kept gas or oil
in the basement because he would work onengines down there.
He denies that he was.
He was like,I never kept that stuff in the basement.
According to his son, John, they did workon engines and stuff in the basement,
but that doesn't mean they they stored
get like,that's not a good place to keep gas,

(32:06):
not even for the danger of it,but like the fumes and stuff.
They had a barn with the truck.
So I would imagine that's where gas was.
That's where I take the gas outbefore you take the engine.
Yeah, or whatever.
And I think, you know,if they're working on engines
in the basement,it's probably because of weather
and stuff, likeyou're not taking everything down there.
It's just it's more comfortable at nightif you're working on engine stuff.
Yeah. I imagine you want it to be as lightas you can to get it in the basement.

(32:27):
So you're not going to have a whole tankfull of gas.
Yeah, exactly.
So then the second kindof predominant strange thing,
besides the remains not being found,is that John, their son,
who woke up his testimonythat like first day
is that he kind of shookhis siblings awake,
but he later changed that and said

(32:48):
he just called to them and he couldn'tsee them through the smoke.
And that's an important distinctionto make.
And I'm actuallygoing to read a quote of his
that he gave in one of his interviewsor testimonies or something.
So this is John Solder, who is the
the oldest kid on in the housethat that evening,

(33:13):
motherand father went to bed about 10:30 p.m.
we went to sleep upstairsabout 1115 or 11:30 p.m.
we had everything ready for Christmas.
There was a set of Christmas lightsin the window of mother's bedroom.
George Junior woke me up and I came downexpecting to help put out the fire.
When I got to the door,flames were already there and I couldn't
get back.

(33:33):
Fire had swept from the placewhere the desk was to the front door.
George had startedtrying to wake the others,
but I guess they eitherdidn't wake or didn't move fast enough.
I think somebody set the fire.
So he's not
saying anything thereabout like, missing kids.
But he also isn't saying that he saw them.

(33:55):
And he also says very specifically,I think somebody set the fire.
The the two connected
but separate mysteries of this whole caseare was the fire set on purpose,
and were the five missing children dead,
or were they taken out of the housebefore the fire?
And yeah,there's a lot of details to this.

(34:18):
Some have kind of skipped over,but I will kind of I'll try to circle back
to most of them hereas we go into more of the details, but
that just kind of the oh, sorry,I forgot about the,
the chores not being donethat you mentioned.
Like, yeah, there's that possibilitythey were gone before.
After she before she had woken upthat first time or whatever.
Yeah.

(34:38):
You're picking up on good details, Matt.
You think I'm good? Details.
That's why, there's this one.
Yeah, this one's tough.
This one's tough, so I.
Oh, let me, let me also mention two other.
This might literally be in the listI'm about to read in my notes,
but just in case I forget and it's notwritten down, the trucks wouldn't start.
The two trucks that he wantedto climb on top of, they wouldn't start.

(35:01):
Also, after the fire, it is found
that the phoneline was cut from the house.
They also the the investigationthat happened way too quickly.
They just assumed it was ait was because of the fuze box.
They thought it started in the office
on the other side of the wallwhere the fuzes are.
With that one guy was like,oh, it's going to start a fire one day.

(35:22):
That's what assumed happened.
But there are some strange thingsoutside of even the kid stuff.
There's some strange thingsaround the fire itself in the wires.
There'sthere's just a lot of strange things.
The family,even the descendants still to this day
claim that they're they'retheir siblings are nowadays they're,
you know, great uncles or whateveryou would call them.

(35:43):
They never died in that fire.
The family is full.
Hardy, full heartedly believesthat those kids survived,
were kidnaped, were takensomething like that,
and they even put up a
a billboard on the propertythat was there for decades and decades
and decades, that had picturesof all the kids, and the billboard had

(36:03):
had words and information about, had
contact, and was blessed with detailsor if you know who did it.
And it also claimed a cover upby local authorities.
And that was on the property
up until I want to say like 1990,maybe even later than that.
So it was up there a long time.
So anyway,my list of strange things I diverted so
the kids that didn't come downwere the same five that asked

(36:27):
to stay up late, which you've alreadyyou've already commented on, man.
Strange.
Chief Moore again,these are a little out of order.
Just sort of wrote downstrange things as I was thinking about,
Chief Moore as the fire fire chief claimedhe didn't know how to drive the truck.
He claimed the housewas out of his jurisdiction at one point,
and basically kept making excuses onwhy it took him so long to get there.

(36:50):
Two sons of the surveyorssaw a man watching their house
and watching the kids before the fire,like weeks before the fire.
Sometimes you read thisas like a man in a van watching the kids.
I could not confirm a van or not,but definitely the vans back then.
That's that's a good question.
That's what makes me kind of doubt that.

(37:10):
But anyway, it's a creepy manwatching the family
and watching the house,but apparently some of the kids stopped.
The man that came by looking for work.
They claim the house is going to catch onfire with wires.
The life insurance salesmanthat got into the argument.
The house is going to go up in smoke.
There's the strange call at 1230.
That was the wrong number there. Yeah.

(37:33):
So there's there's a couple
of contradicting reportshere, Jenny, the mom said
when she got up with the fire,she said the lights were not on anymore,
which actually meansmaybe there was faulty wiring.
George Solder, the dad, when he got up,he said the lights were still on,
which means it wouldn't be a firewith with faulty because of the wiring.

(37:55):
So that's interesting that they bothhave sort of contradictory things,
although it is a highly dramatic,intense moment.
So you're you'renoticing different things.
The phone line
was cut to the house, not burned, but cut.
And that ties into somethingI'm also going
to, like, leave a cliffhangerthat that ties into something else.

(38:16):
I found out about this caseand I'm super excited about that.
I will share later on to, after the fire.
Sylvia, the youngest daughter, ended upfinding this strange object in the yard,
and George thought it was a napalm handgrenade saying something
they call a pineapple.
So it's literally like a hand grenade,but it's like,
you know, creates fire right awayinstead of explodes during the fire,

(38:38):
witnesses saw a man enterthe garage and steal things.
While this waswhile the fire was going on,
they also think that he may be responsiblefor the latter being moved.
I was going to ask about the latterif they ever found it, I guess.
Yeah, they did, they did.I actually did find it.
It was sort of like nearby,but it was down a ravine
and then ties into the cut phone linethat I'll talk about later, too.

(39:00):
Yeah.
Also two
like I forget what they're called,but it's basically like chains and hooks
that help lift enginesand things that were in the garage.
Those were stolen from the garage.
Authorities say the fire startedon the ground for a because of wiring.
But a witness that nightwho was driving by saw somebody
throwing what he calledballs of fire onto the house,

(39:24):
which, if you remember, Jenny heard that,like, rock sound
that rolled off the roofright before the fire thing.
Sounds like a pineapplefalling off the roof.
Exactly.
So no one,
saw or heard the childrentrying to get out of the house that night.
I actually don't thinkjust my own personal opinions about it.

(39:45):
Yeah, that is weird. But also,the house is.
The house went up so fast.
It's so smoky.
It's so hot. It's noisy like that.
Doesn't that doesn't ring out to meas being too odd, but a lot of people do
mention that,
no bones, no remains found for the kids.
Here's one of the weirdest parts of thisword got out about town.
That, the family started to doubtthat the kids died in the fire.

(40:08):
So good old fire chief Morris,who can't drive a truck,
heard this, and he goes,what are you talking about?
We did find remains.
I found, like,some sort of, like, human thing,
and I put it in the box and, like,buried it in the ground.
So it's still there?
Yeah.
And so, so Georgeheard that and was like, what?

(40:29):
Yeah, yeah.
And George is like, what?
I would never we never heard any of that.
It was very bewildering and confusing.
And the story is and I saw thisin an interview with Bob Bragg,
who wrote the book that I mentionedearlier, links, links and show notes.
Apparently the fire marshal
had to come by the house and just kind of,like, stuck a stick in the ground.
It was likeit was about there that I found it.

(40:49):
There's the box and like, leftand didn't really talk to the family.
It was just like,if you want to find it, it's down there.
So they dug it up
and there's sure enough there's a boxand there was some sort of tissue.
And then they sent it offto be studied, by professionals.
And it was a beef liver.
Not only was it a beef liver, it was a raw
beef liver that had never been anywherenear fire or heat or smoke.

(41:13):
So, yeah, so weird.
I don't even know if it's Dan theI don't even the thinking of, like,
I put it in a boxand put it in the ground.
A but yeah, it's very strange.
I think he just found beef in the fridgeand he's like,
I'm going to save this for laterand take this off one. Everybody's gone.
I just forgot

(41:35):
there's kind of two thoughts that I hadwhen I first heard this.
And one isthat he's just trying to cover his ass
for being like,yeah, they died in the fire.
And like, just trying to be like,oh yeah, see, I found something.
And even, like, keeping it inthe box is kind of like, yeah,
just in case they needto, like, prove that we found out.
Just keep it down there. It's that one.
Another way to put itis there's suspicion of like

(41:56):
he knows the kids aren't down there.
So he's trying to put evidence.
Yeah. Grandmother.
I feel like himactually having put something
in the ground at allis, like, way more suspicious than.
Yes. I don't know, it's justthe weirdest thing I've ever heard it.
Yes, it is very, very, very strange.
So on top of all these strange things,when George and Jenny began to question

(42:20):
if their five kids had died in the fire,
it took a couple of yearsfor their suspicion to grow.
And they weren't
without merit, because there are witnessesthat claim to have seen the children
after the fire, craving chillsand thrills that keep you up at night.
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(42:40):
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(44:03):
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or see our shownotes for a link. Thank you.
There's there's
actually a lot more witnesses
that I'm even going to talk about,but there's just for the sake of time
and flow of the show and my own Covidtiredness.

(44:27):
I'm just going to list a few of these.
You can look these up.
They are in various books and thingsonline.
Again, links in the show notes. Everybody.
A woman saw the children in a car
that nightgoing away from the house during the fire,
50 miles away.
Another woman saw the childrenthe morning after the fire.
She served them breakfast and she saw themget out of

(44:49):
or get into a car with Florida licenseplates.
Always Florida man.
Always Florida. Never trust it.
In Charleston, West Virginia,a woman saw the kids.
This is about a week later.
She saw the kids with two womenand two men.
She claims they were all of Italiandescent or Italian immigrants,
and she was trying to be niceand have fun with kids.

(45:10):
And she was trying to talk to the kids.
And one of the men saw hertrying to communicate with the children,
and he got really aggressive and like,pulled the kids away and pushed her away.
I was like, don't talk blah blah blah.
And this was at a hotel, by the way,and that family had left
very early the next morning beforeanybody had a chance to talk to them more.
George Saunders, a father,

(45:31):
he began doing kind of like his ownamateur investigation.
Every tip that camein, and there were lots of them
for many, many, many decadeshe would follow.
He would actually traveland go meet people and finally call.
And he hired two differentprivate investigators at times,
he investigated all of them.

(45:52):
None of them ever led to any solid proofthat the children were alive,
or any of the people that were claimingto be the children with other children.
An example of this is he saw a pictureof a kid in a New York newspaper
that he thought was one of his children,and he ended up
going up to New York and like, tryingto find the kid and talk to the parents.

(46:12):
And it ended up not being them.
The solder is actually asked the FBIfor help.
In 1947, J.
Edgar Hoover himselfreplied that it wasn't his jurisdiction.
But if the local law enforcementasked for FBI's help, he will provide it.
Local law enforcement declined the helpfrom the FBI, which is also kind of weird.

(46:37):
The FBI actually did get involvedwith this case years later,
but it was more in the the like, oh,if it was kidnaping and they went across
state lines, then it's FBI's jurisdiction.
So they looked into it, butthey never found any evidence of anything.
So it wasn't a very long investigation.
So one of the private investigators,I was hired, a man named C.C.
Tinsley.
He found that a member of the coroner'sjury that said the children died in
the fire was the same man that threatenedGeorge Sartor at the doorway.

(47:02):
The man that you played this evening metthe insurance man was a coroner
the whole time. Now, the coroner,he was on the jury.
That was likehe was like part of the group
that was like,yeah, there's the kids are dead.
He was like, on the jurythat kind of have to have to sign off on.
Oh, I see, but things of thatnature that is also crazy.
The C.C.
Tinsley, the private investigator,
I think he's the one that actually heardthe rumor that the chief found this thing

(47:25):
and put it in a boxand buried in the ground.
So I think he's the one thatthat uncovered that whole story.
In 1949, the family paid
to excavate the ground where the firewas to look for remains again.
This time they actually spent,I think, two days.
Still not long enough.
According to the to the experton how long it should take.
Like it should be like a weekor more to actually investigate this.

(47:48):
But they did take 1 or 2days, dug up the ground
and they found bones.
They found very few,but it's pieces of vertebrae.
And so they set that off.
And a pathologistnamed Oscar Hunter with the Smithsonian,
I think he was the onewith the Smithsonian.
It could have my notes backwards there.
But anyway,a pathologist looked at these things,

(48:09):
and he claimsthey were from a 16 to 17 year old person.
The oldest kid that was dead was 14.
That is kind of close enough.You want to think about it.
However, the bones weren't near fire.
They were not burnt.
What people deduce from thisis that when that dirt
was brought into dump on top of the property,
it was actually broughtin from somewhere else. And

(48:33):
that kind of contaminated the scene.
So there's bones are probablyfrom that dirt.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah.
And also a lot of people in West Virginia,I think still to this day, in certain
parts of West Virginia,they bury people like in the backyard,
like that's the family grave, you know, so
so it's not that odd to find a fewand also a lot of other people
that investigate situationslike this have claimed

(48:56):
if you find pieces of vertebrae,you would find other bones, too.
And the fact that I didn't find them,
I think it's from the dirt being broughtin, but it's still interesting.
Yeah.
They actually sent the bonesback to George Sutter, but,
no one knows where they are now,so we can't run DNA on them, too.
That's.
I mean, that's still a worthwhile cause,I would think, but
no one knows where they are,

(49:17):
so a it's weird.
I feel like how you can keep these bones.
They're human bones,but you can have them back.
I mean,what are they going to do with the put?
I don't know how that works.
Yeah, it is weird. It is weird.
I found these interesting.
I don't know how much this actually lendsto any sort of investigating any of it,
but I thought this was really interesting.
In November 1949,there's a newspaper story

(49:39):
in the Charleston Gazettethat says that five people
were about to be arrested in connectionwith the disappearance of the Sutter
children, and a similar storyappeared again four months later.
But no one was ever arrested.
So I don't know if that was just writerslistening to,
like, a local gossip in a bar and be like,yeah, that's a good story.
And like, doing that kind of thing.

(50:00):
So there wasthere are some really interesting things
that Sutter's found over the years,and I'll just do two of them.
They want they they received a letterfrom someone that actually
claimed to be Maurice,their son, 20 years later.
And of course, George, followingall the tips, followed up and followed up.
And the guy ended up saying,no, I'm not Maurice.
What are you talking about?

(50:20):
So we don't know what that is about.
We don't know if the guy got cold feet,
or if he was playing a prank,or someone was playing a prank on him.
That kind of situation. 1968.
This is the big one.
This is the oneyou read all the time about with this case
is they received the family,received a photograph in the mail,
no return address,but it was postmarked from Kentucky.

(50:42):
And there was a man on itwho had the very same features as,
Louis, who was the youngest.
I think it was the youngest boythat passed away that evening or allegedly
passed away that evening,who was nine at the time of the fire.
So it's a picture of him.
But like as an adult like this,this guy who's probably around 30
and on the back of the picture, it saysLouis Solder, I love brother Frankie.

(51:07):
Ill boys 89013 2 or 35.
There was nowe don't know what that means, but
that's what's on the back of this.
Like a great rap group name at least.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe it was someone trying to come upwith a cover for the rap album in 1970.
I sent it.

(51:27):
I just think the thingsthat that keep popping out to me is weird,
and it feels weird because, like,you know, I'm
sure some of these people are still alive,like they're living children,
but it seems weirdthat right afterward, the family
buried the house, basically.
And then maybe a couple months,I think maybe you said after

(51:48):
and they started to doubt it, butthen they waited two years to unburied it.
It just they waited longerthat to unburied it.
1949. Oh, that's right,it was four years later.
But they started investigatingbefore that.
But it was 1949. Before that.
They like, dug it up.
That seems likeif you were starting to question,
that would be the first thing you do.
That's a good point.
I had.
I also think like if, if, say,perhaps this is,

(52:11):
you know, a random thought,but if, say, perhaps a child
or one of the children or something,or all of them were
killed in some other way
and buried somewhere else,not in a fire, you wait however long
you think it takes for bones to decomposebefore you go and toss them back in the,
in the grounds.

(52:32):
I don't know, itdoesn't really make any sense.
Oh, that's that's devious. It's.
It just seems like maybe.
Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting.
Yeah.
I mean, look, there's there'sso many interesting things about it.
This has all the right ingredientsto be one of those.
And there's a reason why people have beentalking about this for 80 years now.
You know, like there'sa lot of weird things to it.
And even the picture they get of this kid,her kid, an adult

(52:55):
man that is writtenLouie Solder on the back.
They follow up with that.
They hired a private investigatorto try to figure out who it was.
They never heardfrom the private investigator again.
They like, sent him off to go find it,and then he just never heard from them.
That to me, I
because I haven't read anythinglike they filed a missing persons report.

(53:15):
They bugged them.
They tried
to found the private investigator,his girlfriend in question, where he went.
There's none of that.
So I think he just didn't find anything.
So he just never had anything to report.
But it it's it's another little,you know, piece of spice to the story
that just makes itall the more interesting and mysterious.
Yeah.
They never found out who that picture was,who sent it, anything like that.

(53:36):
And again, they were getting a lot of likefake reports too.
So it may have been one of those things,but it it's a very interesting thing.
The billboardthey put up on their property
that had information,they had a reward on it for $5,000.
I saw pictures of it.
That must be two years later.
It was up to $10,000.
It may have even gotten higherthan that, I don't know.

(53:57):
Now remember, the main two
questions about this case are
does it gets down on the fireand was it set intentionally?
There's like there's two
they're connected,but there's there's two kind of questions.
And what I'm going to do now.
What am I going to do now?

(54:19):
That's the end of the show,ladies and gentlemen.
No, there's a I have a little section
written here, like fact versus fiction,because this is where I like.
I was able to actually find some clarity
on some thingsthat are typically reported.
But maybe before I do that,
there's kind of like general theoriesthat you see a lot,
and maybe I'll just give those real quickbecause you may have comments or thoughts

(54:41):
on, yeah, I want to hear thisbecause I have my own theories.
Now, if the fire was set intentionally,
there's people that believe
the kids were kidnaped and there's peoplethat say the kids went to
an orphanage, orphanagesor different orphanage, there we go.
That's the word orphanage in Italy.
Some people say the kidsgrew up in Florida.

(55:01):
Oh, I forgot to say that story.
Jenny Solder, the mom.
She had relatives in Florida, and Georgeat one point saw pictures of the kids
of that family in Floridaand thought they were hits.
So they actually wentand had to go to this, this,
the relatives and be like,you have my kids.
And I'm like, no, they're not your kids,they're our kids.
So that was a that had to bea very awkward in this family situation.

(55:27):
Jenny, sadr's brother, was also
one of the firemen that investigatedand, like, came in like,
like actually look for remains,which I just found interesting.
I forgot to mention earlier.
So anyway,
yes, the kids kidnaped, sentto an orphanage in Italy.
No evidence to that.
It's just people. Local stalking.
Same thingwith like they lived in Florida.

(55:49):
Some people think they died in the fire,and they think
whoever the thief was that took the chainsand the hooks and stuff
and potentially the latter,that that thief set the fire
and just did like as a distractionto steal things and ended up the kids.
The kids died. Other theories.
And this one's a big onebecause it ties into my theory.
But some people say the Mafiavery involved.

(56:12):
And, I actually had to research thisbecause I was like, wait, Mafia West
Virginia.
So a lot of Italian immigrants,I know that's a stereotype, but it is.
It is a real thing.
There was a thing called the.
And maybe they're still around,I don't know, don't come after me.
But there was a groupcalled the Familia Vagabonds,
otherwise known as a Black Hand,which was a crime organization

(56:33):
in West Virginiaprimarily 1900 through 1930s sometime.
But they probably, you know, there'sstill vestiges of it that mid 1940s,
they typically operatedwith, like brothels and alcohol
and drugs, extortion, that kind of stuff.
But they're around like there's a big partof that, that culture in that community.

(56:54):
And I actually do thinkthere's some validity to this.
And I fit my own personal theory,which I'll get to a little bit later.
George was a business owner, you know,so there could have been some retaliation
against either him as a businessmanor even him talking out against Mussolini.
Remember, apparentlya lot of people were offended by that.
And you even have the threat againstthat as well.
So yeah, a lot of people thinkthe Mafia was involved.

(57:16):
And then a lot of the theories aroundthat don't necessarily specify
they took the kids, they killed the kids,they killed the like, there's, there's
everybody kind of has their own thoughtsabout how the kids fit into that.
But yeah, the the mafiaor a crime organization, I, I should say,
is involved.
Yeah.
So those are, those are kind of the,the little floaty,

(57:37):
floaty out there theories.
You typically read a little bit about.
So now it's my section of fact or fictionwhich we can kind of blend
with our own theories here. Good.
My own personal
theory.
How about it keeps changing.
It maybe just changed again. Well,
I, I think the kids

(57:58):
died in the fire,
but super twist.
Yeah,I think the fire was intentionally set.
And the only thing that makes me doubtthat is the thing that you're, you're
already thinking about, which is it'sthe five kids that stayed up late
and no one really saw them after the fire.

(58:20):
That's the one thingthat I keep changing my mind on,
and I'll probably change it againby the end of the night,
because it doesn't even make sense.If they did go to sleep,
it just the odds of itactually being the youngest kids.
Yeah. Doesn't make sense.
Like, logically,unless they were all in the one place.
Yeah.
And some of them were in the bedroomwith the two older brothers or
or exactly what it would have been,so that's what.

(58:40):
Yeah.
See, now I'm changing my mind againbecause the theory I have
if they actually weren't in the houseis that the fire was set intentionally.
Whoever was getting ready to set it sawthe kids up because they stayed up late.
And either was like,I don't hurt kids that little.
I'm going to get them out of the houseor something along those lines

(59:00):
and then set the house on fire,because obviously there's a
there's a chance they die in that house.So they got them out.
And then either to keep them quiet,they either
then killed the kids somewhere else,which then doesn't really tie.
That's why I question it,because it doesn't really tie in with it,
or they just sent them away somewhereto never, never, maybe maybe they did go
to an orphanage in Italy,because that's far enough away

(59:21):
that they can'treally talk to anybody local.
The reason I think
they died, the thingthat I circled back around on again
is no one ever came forwardand the kids were old enough
to rememberwhere they came from, in my opinion.
So that's the that's the thing that makesme think they may have passed away.
But anyway, to go backas I went on my little side topic, there,

(59:43):
the reason why I thinkthey could have been killed in the fire,
that's a better way to sayit could have been killed in the fire is
John Sadr's initial statement.
Then morning of the fire.
He said he shook his brothersto get them up,
even though he kind of changed that later
because that that was the first thinghe said.

(01:00:04):
And I do think statementsright after something
are really important when you look at truecrime and stuff like this.
But I just think that's an interesting,interesting statement,
which means the kids were in the house,if that is true.
The excavations, they never found remains,
but we already establishedthey didn't take enough time to do that.
And then the whole site contaminated.

(01:00:25):
When they dug it up again in 1949, theyalready brought in all this other shit
that mixes in with it.
So you can't even fullydo a proper excavation at that point.
It's probably not called an excavation,but I'm going to go with it.
Jenny said that the the lights were out,
which means it actually literallycould have been a fire started by wiring.

(01:00:47):
Also, Christmas lightsare horrendously dangerous,
even though theythey were much worse back then.
So there could have beenjust something natural to happen.
I actually think the house
I think the fire was set on purpose,but I do think it's worth noting that
there is a possibilitythat it could have been something.
Yeah.
Have you seen those videos where like,this is
how fast your house,a line of fire with a Christmas tree.

(01:01:07):
That's super.
Yeah. And you'll see that. Yeah.
And it's just it just goes crazy.
Oh, the other thing that
kind of feeds into the kidsmay have perished in the house,
even though no one heard on themor necessarily saw them.
Is there were comments from Johnthat it was super smoky.
There's comments from the familyabout how bad the fire was,
and it was burned like there were burns on

(01:01:27):
some of these peoplefor the rest of their lives.
Like it.
It just envelop that house.
And George, the father, couldn'teven go upstairs to check the bedroom
before he left the house
the first time, because it was too so hotand smoky and fire and everything.
That's why he tried to go outand go through the window,
which he still couldn't go throughbecause it was still so hot.

(01:01:48):
So all those things to me lend to,
they might havethey might have perished in the fire.
And also you think about goingthrough the remains or the debris.
Everything's kind of falling,burning and falling into the basement.
That's deep.
I know they're on like the top floor,
but even then it can it can get mushedand crushed, buried and stuck.
So it's not going to necessarilybe easy to find.

(01:02:09):
However, my primary questiongoing into the whole story,
like I've already said,is the insurance salesman.
And now I'm circling back to that, thatlittle cliff hanger I mentioned earlier.
It turns out the reality of the salesmansituation
is the thing that affectedmy personal beliefs about this story,
and it not being an accidental firemore than anything else.

(01:02:33):
So it turns out the insurancesalesman actually does have a name.
His name was Mr. Long.
I forget, asI should have written down his first name,
because I think it's like Lawlerlong or Lassie Long.
It's it's an alliteration, which I love,but I just wrote down Mr.
Locke in my notes.
He came by
the house around 60 days before the fire.
He was a well known insurancesalesman in the area.

(01:02:55):
So the starters may have even known him.
And he suggested that to Georgeto take out life insurance on his kids.
George declined.
Then the salesman saidthat he should increase
his homeowner's insurance,and George declined.
There was no argument.There was no threat.
That is the story.

(01:03:15):
The threat, though, was real.
It just didn't happen from the insurancesalesman.
It came from a man in a familycalled the Giannoulias.
And it's a it'sthere's actually a T in that name.
I've heard it in
a video called Janet Lowe,but it may be like Janet to low
something like that,but I'm just going to call it genu logos.
That'swhat I've heard people say in a video.

(01:03:35):
So the Ginola family was athey were a prominent business
family in Westin this area, West Virginia.
They were also Italian immigrants.
They were in trucking. They were in it.
They were basically in everything.They owned a bunch of different companies.
I think one of their companiesstill exists in that area.
And, the new Lowes that they're truckingcompany is the trucking company

(01:03:58):
that George Sutter worked forbefore he left and started his own.
And they were close
enough to when George bought the house,
he actually either he either got a loan
or the Ginola signed on to his bankloan or something.
They're associatedwith the purchase of the house.
They allowed him to buy the house.

(01:04:18):
So the insurance policy forthe home is for the.
Ginola was not for the sadr's.
So, Mr.
Janet Lowe
finds out that George Stoddard declinedto increase the insurance for the house
so that Ginola increased the insurancefor the house right before the fire.

(01:04:39):
And it's there and they get the payoutif the house, I'm against it. House.
So when this house burned down,
the junior lows got the insurance payout.
I'm not saying this is like an insurancefraud
sayingI think that is part of it though, because
the Ginola was were pissedthat George didn't get the insurance.

(01:05:01):
They thought they were mad at him.
And apparently Mr.
Ginola was the one that showed up and said
the house is going up in smoke,your kids are going to get destroyed.
And something about Mussolini,apparently that's Mr.
Ginola that said that to him.
I think because of the Mafia tie in,because Mr.
Ginola was literally quote, but quoteunquote called a local Italian leader.

(01:05:23):
I think they were trying to send a message
to George Sadrfor reasons that we don't know about.
There's more to this.
One of the things that may be part of itis Jenny SA Jenny Sartor, the wife.
Her dad passed away recentlyand she had not signed the like
closing of the estate, and her siblingswere trying to get her to sign George.

(01:05:44):
What letter signed? We don't know why.
And the Ginola
family was somehow involved with that,because they were asked to convince
Jenny Sartorto sign the closing of her dad's estate.
So there's some, there's some.
There's a big pizza pie here.
Shouldn't use pizza
as a reference by Italians,but there's there's a big pumpkin pie.

(01:06:05):
Pepperoni.
Thanksgiving next weekwith pepperoni on it.
And, and there's justall these little pieces,
and they're all connected to thisGinola family.
And I have no proof.
Don't come after me. Everybody.
But there's interesting little bits herethat that just make me be like
somebody was pissed at George Souttar.

(01:06:25):
It could have beenfor all these different reasons and more.
It could have been for other reasonsthat we don't know about.
But I think because of the threats,
the person that literally said,your house is going up in smoke
because the witness of the personseeing like fire thrown on the house,
I just I'm like, this was intentional.
There is this was definitely intentional.

(01:06:47):
And I should stop there.
I should stop rambling on about itbecause I want to get your thoughts.
Now that you've heardsome of these things, this is all good.
Yeah, this is my theory.
Even though, I mean, this isjust based off of your tone right now.
That's all great. But listen to this.
This is what happened now.
This is what if I was, like,thinking of it as a movie?
This is what I feel like would work.
So not like in any wayto, like, offend actual people.

(01:07:08):
That went through a horrible thing.
So it's the night of the fire,
and the kids who are wanted to wake up forSanta are downstairs.
The mom comes downstairs to tell them to
whatever, go to sleepbecause it's Christmas time.
Maybe at this pointthe this family that you have mentioned,

(01:07:30):
the new lows that we said, yeah, yeah,one of those guys shows up at the house
and there's a threat of some kind about,you know,
I don't know, something about something,
about taking the kids, maybe.
And she doesn't want them to.
And there is some sort of fightthat happens.
One of the kids is killedin front of all the other kids,

(01:07:52):
and the mom as a as a like you.
Do you want I can keep going and I'll,you know, kill all the kids.
And it's like she says no or whatever.
He takes her out and makes her go.
And they cut the phone lines.
Obviously,they make her go and drag the body
and bury it in behind the houseor somewhere far away.
And then when they're, as they're doingthat, burying the house, the, the,

(01:08:14):
you know, the house is lit on fire.
And there's a fire.All that stuff happens.
She tells her brother not to investigatebecause, you know, the family will
come back and take the rest of the kidsbecause she knows that's going to happen.
So it gets all covered up.
And then the dad starts to have questions,
and she knows thatif any more questions are asked, these

(01:08:35):
the fact that these people are goingto come after the rest of their kids.
So she plants the, dead, liver in her yard
tellingbecause the guy just called the guy.
She tells her brother,who's also a fireman, and says,
tell him that you found body parts andyou bury them in the yard for the family.
And because this police there, this firechief is so, like, full of himself.

(01:08:57):
He says he's the one who did itand get all the credit.
And it's just the mom again,trying to make it her husband.
Stop,
investigating the fire.
A couple more years go down.It keeps doing, gets worse.
She does the things she's never wanted todo, which is to go back
to where this man made her burythe one child who was killed.
She's digging it up. She's horrified.
She just grabbeda few pieces of the skeleton

(01:09:18):
that's there that she canbecause she feels horrible.
She goes back to the houseand buries them in the thing.
Feel like this is enough?
This should be enough to make him stopbecause it's human bones.
He finds them. It's still not enough.
He sends it to the Smithsonian.She's like, oh God, you know,
they're going to find outand all that kind of stuff.
And that's what I think I wouldassume would happen.
Happened. Maybe she never saw the kids.

(01:09:39):
So my question
then with that kind of theory iswhy spend decades claiming
all the kids are alive,putting up the billboard,
following up on leads?
Well, you cut that part out of the movieso that no one.
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Anyway, that's a good question. Yeah.

(01:10:00):
That's gone good. Go.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's right.
There could have been a part of me
has thought about thisspecifically with John,
one of the sons,because he's the one that said he's
he like shook his brothers awake
and then later was like,oh no, I couldn't see under the smoke.
I just told you on.

(01:10:20):
Part of me wonders if that John is justthe one that made me think of it.
I'm not saying him specifically.
It could have been anybody in the family.
If someone in the family actually knowsmore than they are letting on.
And they kind of goalong with the story of hope
that the kids are alivebecause they're afraid of something.
Yeah.
I mean there's feels like there'sthat kind of a thing to it for sure.

(01:10:42):
Well it's funny that we say thatbecause I have to scroll down on my page.
Let's see here where Richard to parent,there's a, there's a oh yeah.
Here we go.
So the the oldest daughter, I think it wasMarion who was on the couch.
She, she has a quote.

(01:11:03):
I'm just going to read this.
I forget I this is part of me being sick.
Everybody I, I actually didn't write downwhat this quote is from, but it's from,
it's from something you can findand there will be links.
Again. It is a quote, that's for sure.
Oh, it's a letter to the police.I did write it down.
So she was writing the policebecause they're trying to egg
on the authorities over the yearsto investigate more, and they never do.

(01:11:23):
So. In one of her letters to the police,here's a quote.
We asked the prosecuting attorneyto call in
some peoplewho were considered suspects in the case.
He said he could not question these people
because they were personal friends of his.
At another time he said, todaythey burned your house, but tomorrow
they may burnmine. And I have children too.

(01:11:43):
Well,
boom,
there goes the dynamite.
So yeah, there's an even.
Again, I'll link what I thinkis probably the best resource
for this is Bob Bragg'sbook and his website.
And I'll link that, but he has
copies of letters and testimoniesand things like that that you can look up.

(01:12:05):
And he has an interviewthat I found on his website,
that he actually talked about, like,yeah, still to this day, there are people
that will not talk about these thingsstill to this day, 80 years later.
So I definitely think something was goingon that I think has never come out.
And all the stories and all the coverageof this, that somebody wanted something.

(01:12:29):
It doesn't answerwhat happened to the children,
but I definitely think foulplay was there.
I will clarify one thing here, too,because this is actually really fun.
The cut phone line.
Yes. Which everybody's like,
oh yeah, they cut the phone linesthat could call anybody.
The cut phone line was cutby a guy named Lonnie Johnson.

(01:12:49):
Found his name here.
He was also had a friend with him.
Name normally reported is David Adkins,but in some of his work, he got him
something else, which we're about to read.
Lonnie Johnson was a local guy,and he was hanging out, having fun.
It's Christmas Eve that night of the fire,
and he was told about the fireat the sadr's house.
They go over there
and I think he's just some stupidlocal guy that saw an opportunity.

(01:13:13):
He stole the chain things, the like chainand the hook.
The choices for the enginesthrew him over an embankment
so that he could come later to get them.
I also think he took the ladderbecause that's where ladder was found.
So I think he had the ladder to help getthe hooks down through the ladder over.
He cut the phone lines.
In his words,

(01:13:33):
he got the phone linesbecause he thought they were the
power linesand thought the house would stop burning
if he cut the power lines becausehe thought it was an electrical fire.
And there are some weird things with this,because he says he cut the lines
with wire cutters.
And then later on, another testimony saidhe cut them with a knife.
There's some weird shit with it,but I kind of believe them.
He just seems kind of like a local idiot.

(01:13:54):
That's all. An opportunity.
So we're going to have some fun here.
The other whoo hoo hoo!
Boy just hit a thing on my microphoneand made fun sound.
The thing I put in the email,
that I sent you.
So this is this is a,
a statement from Mr.
Lonnie Johnson. Oh, nice.

(01:14:15):
You want me to do it?
Whatever you want.
Yeah, I was I thoughtyou were going to do it, but I'll do it.
Yeah.
All right.
Okay, here I go.
Everybody, this is Lonnie Johnson.
I was at my apartment over the roof,the mood light.
And located about one quartermile south of George Saunders home. U.S.

(01:14:36):
route number 21.
We were having a party that night.
My wife and, Grover Adkins,who was staying there at my apartment
with me at the time,Fannie Atkins, who and I believe.
But I'm not sure that Ali Allen Janneywas there.
Also a taxi
cab driver whose name I don't rememberfrom Bluefield, Virginia, West Virginia.

(01:14:56):
Sometime
that night,a couple of boys came to my apartment.
They wanted to use my telephoneto call the fire department
at Fayetteville, West Virginia,but they could not contact the department.
They told us there at the timethat George Saunders
house was on fire,and that was the first we'd heard of it.
We immediately started for the fireand my taxicab, my wife and I and Grover

(01:15:17):
Adkins, Fanny Adkins,Ali Janney and the cab driver.
When we arrived at the fire, all of ustried to help in any way we could.
We pushed his truck out of the wayand moved several things out of the way,
but the building was too far gonefor us to do anything about it.
While we were moving some of the stuffout of the way,
I got a set of chicken blocksin the garage building
and brought them up to the roadand threw them over an embankment.

(01:15:39):
About a month after the fire,George Sanders got a warrant for me
for stealing the chain blocks.
I entered a plea guiltyand was placed on probation for one year.
Up until the night of the fire,I had never met George Sadr to speak to.
I had seen him, but that's all I.
I never had any feelings toward himone way or the other.

(01:15:59):
Neither did,
my wife, Grover Adkins, Fannie or Allegany
or the cab or the taxi cab driverwho I don't remember the name of.
Yeah. So.
So Lonnie Johnson was the guy that tookall that stuff.
It was not, some mafioso.
It was not some mad insurance salesman.
It was not some alien.

(01:16:21):
He was a local guythat saw an opportunity.
There is one more thing.
A I mean, there's so many detailsthat I am not going to be able to cover,
but one that I actually dothink is important that I,
that I also forgot about because it feedsinto people thinking of foul play.
The thetwo trucks wouldn't start that night
because he wanted to move them upby the house to climb into the window.

(01:16:44):
And a lot of people, when you read thisagain on blogs and articles and Reddit
and Facebook post, people are like, oh,so someone cut the cut
the fuel lines to the trucks,and they took the ladder and they looked.
And I'm always like, really?
You think somebody set fire to a houseand they thought ahead of like, oh,
the children would be stuck upstairs,so they're going to need a ladder

(01:17:04):
to move the ladder.
Then they're going to then they're goingto try to climb on top of the truck.
So let's move the trucks like that.
Thinking never made sense to me.
And sure enough, the ladder being movedis actually Lonnie Johnson.
And also the trucks.
There's a quote from George Sadr,I think the day after when he's
first giving statements to the fire chiefand everything,
where he says he flooded the truck,because, again, adrenaline's pumping.

(01:17:28):
You're trying to do thingssuper fast or excite.
You're, you know,you're trying to save your children.
He flooded the truck. And then John,I think, tried the next one.
I think John did the same thing.
So they actually have statementsfrom the family.
It says they flooded the truck.So there was no cutting.
There was no some crazy ninja assassinthat came in and cuts everything.
Yeah.
That being said, my personal theoryis I still think it was it was foul play.

(01:17:51):
I think somebody set that house on firefor reasons that we are unclear of.
Yeah.
And, I do think the children were inside,but I could also not be surprised
if we found out that they actually grew upin Italy or Florida somewhere.
They should.
The children that are left
should take those DNA 23and me tests to see if anything pops up.

(01:18:11):
Yeah.
You know, I wonder because there areso many relatives that are still around.
I bet you some of them have done 23 to me.
I'd be curious.
Yeah, I'm sure if we was connected,I guess.
But yeah, yeah, it's a big enough casethat I think we would have.
But also, who's looking at that though?
Yeah, it may not have been connectedbecause we may not know yet.
That's true.
So, there is if anybody knows a wayto actually check those things.

(01:18:34):
Email is study strangegmail.com. We'll make it happen.
If we can break this case open.
That would be amazing if we could find some some solder children around the world.
Because it is it's an
80 years long popular mystery.
Popular. Always sounds weird to say.
It's just a well known mysterywith a lot of followers.

(01:18:57):
But that is it.
Anything elseyou want to add? Any other theories?
And I think you're is.I like what you're thinking.
I like what's,what's going on in there. Cool.
Well,that's the only reason I have guest on.
Has to tell me they like what I'm saying.
Wow. Well, I look, that was,
it's because of the way I feel right now.
The way my brain is.

(01:19:17):
I've been looking at my notes all night,and they.
I don't think I'm registering any of them.
So most of this, I'm going by memory untilluckily, I did highlight a few things.
I'm like, oh, yeah, Lenny Johnson.
But it's it was really hardto follow my notes this evening.
Yeah, it seemed normal from my position.Okay, good.
This is I'm just always going to blameCovid from now on.

(01:19:38):
And that way I just lower expectations andand knock it out of the park.
But no, this was it.
My voiceheld up way better than I thought.
But, looking at my notesis definitely different.
Have you had Covid?
Nah, I haven't had it yet, obviously.
See, I haven't had it until now either.
But people talk about brain fog.
I didn't experience that.
This is like day 13 for meand I still can't kick it.

(01:19:59):
And I think the last three days it isI, I cannot focus.
I have trouble like completing things.
It's been weird.
It's been really weird.
I hope I'm through with it soon.
On that note, Matt Glass,thank you so much for for coming on
and listening to me ramble on and rambleon about the starter children,

(01:20:20):
thank you for rambling.
Yeah.
So you already mentioned, Glass Brain andhow to find you at the top of the show.
Check out also Goes to the Ozarks,which you co-directed, which is on
all the streaming platforms right now.
We got Squirrel on Tubi.
Another film that you're right. Yeah,that I'm in.
I should always rememberto say that. Cool.
We did it.

(01:20:40):
Well, thank you again.
Matt and I will talk to you soon.Sounds good.
See you around.
Cue Matt music now.
Yeah. Sounds so good.
Thank you for
listening to the rereleaseof The Curious Case of the Sadr Children.
Check out Matt's work.
He's one of the most talented peopleI have ever known in my life.
Hopefully I'll have him backon the show again soon as well.

(01:21:04):
Next week we'll have a brand new episodeand I think you'll really like it.
So make sure you're following the show.
Until then, thank you and good night.

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