WV - Sodder Family - 5 children, Christmas eve 1945 - #3

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I still think they may have been told by extended family or whoever took them that the mob killed the rest of the family. They could have said that they killed most of them in the fire and then also shot their brother who was not back yet from the war, or something similar. They could have said that you people are out tu kill all of you now, so you have to forget the Sodder name and take on new identities. If you ever tell anyone what happened, you'll be putting the lives of everyone you love in danger.

Any descendents may have been told some other story about their past. Sometimes records are burnt or destroyed, so they could have been told that they were born in some county that had a fire or flood that had destroyed their birth records.

I definitely think they were kidnapped that night because of other strange events, but who knows what happened next. Maybe they were killed soon after that. That would explain why they never came back. It just doesn't feel that way to me though. I may be optimistic in wanting that storybook ending, but I feel like some or all of them are still out there somewhere and will be reunited with their baby sister one day. I hope and pray it's not wishful thinking.
 
Shadow205, a few weeks ago you said there was a possibility, and you stressed just a possibility of a new lead. I know you can't get into specifics so I won't ask for that, but I just wondered if it was still a possibility or if it turned out to be a dead end. I understand if you can't answer.
 
So I have been thinking about the kids dying in the fire and the more I think the more farfetched it sounds to me. If you think of the events in order it just sounds very strange.

1. Kids claim a car is following them home from school, someone watching the kids.

2. Dad gets in a fight and is told, "your house will burn, your kids will pay"

3. kids are allowed to stay up late to play with toys which doesn't sound like a common occurance at all

4. Sister who always makes sure they go to bed falls asleep on the couch instead

5. Weird phone call

6. Mom gets up and sees kids who always do their chores have not done them

7. Instead of checking on them she does the locking of the doors and the pulling of the shades and turns out the lights and goes back to bed

8. Guy goes and steals their stuff

9. Guy takes their ladder and climbs a telephone pole and cuts the line

10. Loud sound on roof wakes mom

11. Mom awakens to fire

12. Everyone except for the five children who share a room get out

13. Ladder gone and cars won't start

----- Point is if you look at it this way it is a very long list of horrible and terrible coincidences which don't truly add up. Weird things do happen in this world, but this is a little too weird for me. How about you guys?

------ I still seriously wonder about a few things.
 
Anyone know if these five children had a hide-out? When I was a kid for instance, there was this old shed in a vacant lot that my friends and I used to go to and play in. We even decorated it, we would look around and if we found old pillows sitting somewhere, we would put them into the shed, we would sneak some of our toys and keep them there, we put up old pictures we found on the walls, because there was an old hammer and some nails sitting in there, we made it our place. Could the children have had such a place?

And if they did, could that place have been in say an old abandoned mine that they hadn't bothered to block the entranceway to? Here is what I wonder. If the children had some brand new toys to play with that their sister had given them, and they played for a while and sis fell asleep, could they have taken a lantern or something and decided to put their toys in their secret place that very night? If there was a cave in of some sort at an abandoned mine no one would have checked it out because it just would have saved someone the trouble of going out there and blasting it closed. And of course with everyone believing these children were dead anyway, no one would have searched the woods.

I was searching old cases and there was this one about two little twin girls who got lost in the woods in 1932, in Virginia. And both of them were found like three days later. It took a lot of people searching for them, they were both found dead due to frostbite, and it was very sad. So it's just a thought. Even if they didn't have a special place so to speak, but went into the forest nearby just to play, (as these twins had done), they could have lost their way in the dark especially. And with no one looking, (it took three days and over 250 men from the town to find the two little girls in the forest), odds are they never would have been found.
 
I don't see anything weird about the parents letting them stay up late to play with their new Christmas toys or with their sister falling asleep on the couch after a long evening at work. I wondered myself how good the kids were about doing their chores. I don't think it's that weird that their mom didn't check on them since she would have assumed they had been in bed a while. She probably would have expected them to be in the back room and might not have wanted to risk waking everyone else upstairs to get to them. I know my mom is the type who definitely would have checked on us through the night, but times were different and people wouldn't have expected something to happen out there in a more rural area.

I still say there were a lot of weird things happened, but not by the immediate family. I know I keep repeating myself, but I still don't see how it could be an accident with the kids wandering off and getting hurt since that doesn't explain all the other suspicious events. Also, if they had a secret hideout, there's a good chance that at least one of the other five kids would know where it was.
 
Teresa Larson said:
#155 was posted by granddaughter concerning the dig.

Quote...Mom remains convinced that the excavation done by Oscar Hunter, MD, was thorough and conclusive. He was an impressive man and a national leader in pathology. Anyone who would return to the site now would have no greater credentials than he did. Photos of the excavation are posted on the Sodder children website. http://www.sodderchildren.com.
Click to expand...


Thanks! I have been working on other threads and popped in and am happy to have this information.
 
I may have some good news. The 1912 school in Cortez is now a museum open to the public, and the class pictures from 1912 to 1961 are on display there. Even if the Sodder children lived there for a while, there's good chance they may not have been enrolled in school and just stayed for a while before being moved to Italy or another place, but it's worth a shot. I'll be visiting there in a couple of weeks.
 
LButler (now LisainWV) once posted (way back in the first forum I believe that her father worked for Janutolo and she thought that Fire Chief J F Morris was his bookkeeper. Morris went by the name Forest and I found him in the 1920 and 1930 census records. In both he's listed as a bookkeeper, and in 1930 he was a bookkeeper for a building supplies business. Some Janutolos are listed two households away, though not Fiorenza or Cleante. I'm not sure yet how they were related to the cousins.

It may not be the same building company, but I think it's likely he did work for Cleante.
 
OK, I found Chief Morris in the WWI and WWII draft card registrations, and his name was Forest Judson Morris, and in 1942 he worked for Janutolo and Co.
 
Excellent sleuthing Birdie74 and Catsy101. :clap: You're doing a terrific job in the search for these children. :blowkiss: I don't think the family did anything unusual either. In my experience the usual schedules fly out the window when there are excited children in the house at Christmastime. Adults are tired from all the preparations and children are too excited and overstimulated to sleep. The adults are usually also tired from dealing with overexcited children and its no wonder the mother just crashed. As well as caring for the children and all her normal chores she would have been exhausted from all the Christmas preparations. No one does what they normally do around Christmas.
 
Thanks. I'm sure this must have been a well known fact back then, but it's a shame it didn't make it into the media reports... at least not the ones I've read. It must have been so hard for Mr. and Mrs. Sodder who must have known this and known in their hearts that they had to have been involved, but just couldn't prove it.

Now that we know Morris worked for Janutolo, I really wish we could find out more about the dispute over Joseph Cipriani's estate and figure out how Janutolo is connected. I also wonder who the man was who was arrested for stealing from them that night and see if he can be connected to Janutolo, Morris, or Frank Cipriani. I know people have dug into the Fayette Co. records before, but is there anyone in WV who can try again to find out more? Joseph Cipriani died 22 Oct 1944, and I don't know how much would be available about his estate, but if any of his property was sold to Janutolo after the estate was settled, I would think there should be records of that. I don't know where arrest records from back then would be. I would think the police would have the records about the thief.

I'll be near Fayetteville in a few weeks and will at least go there to see if I can find anything, but if anyone lives nearby and can find something sooner and spend more time there, that would be even better.
 
I just got back from Cortez.

The school had pictures of some of the classes on display. The only one that was in the time frame I hoped for had one grade from 1946. Frank Jr. was in the class, but none that looked like the Sodder kids. There's a good chance that it was actually taken 1945 for the school year that ended in '46 though.

I talked to one gentleman who knew the family, but he was a little too young at that time to remember if they ever had relatives live with them.

Another lady has a relative who went to school with Frank Jr. and knows the family well, and she expects to see her this weekend at a family reunion, so she may know more in a few days. She hadn't heard of this case but is very interested in trying to help.

I found obits on all with that last name who passed away in the county, so that gives me a better idea of the family tree.

Also, I emailed Stacy Horn last night. She is the one who did the story on this for NPR's "All Things Considered" a couple of years ago, and she was also one of the main ones posting on the original WS thread about the case. After rereading her blog I some questions.

She said that Janutolo stood to gain financially from the fire. In what way? I know he owns a construction company, but I doubt he goes around starting fires just to drum up business in the rebuilding. There must be more to it.

Also, I read there and somewhere else that one of Mrs. Sodder's brothers claimed to have seen some remains the next morning, but didn't tell them at the time. Does anyone know which brother?
 
If you go to stacyhorn.com, then click on her personal blog, you can put the name Sodder in search. These were in the one titled "LONG, LONG, LONG Sodder Post". I think I'd read the part about Mrs. Sodder's brother finding remains somewhere else, too. There used to be a link on WS to another detective magazine article that had a lot of info I hadn't seen elsewhere, but it was taken down for some reason. That's probably where I'd read it.
 
I heard back from Stacy Horn. She doesn't remember much since it's been a few years since she researched her story, so she recommended I contact George Bragg. She said at time he was planning to write a book about it, so he probably knows more of the facts.
 
I read some detective mag articles a few months back, and I kept thinking recently that I had linked to them through WS, so the links must have been deleted. I forgot that it had actually been the sodder children website that had the articles to download. There is so much info in them!
 
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