Very interesting story...can't believe I just stumbled onto it after all these years.
Couple thoughts after reading about it for a few days. I feel like with all the sketchy accounts and reporting around this case, there may well never be a definitive answer. I think the best that we might ever get is a theorized explanation that actually sounds plausible. My gut feeling on this is that a LOT of the speculation/reporting is leading people down a path toward extremely wild conclusions. I feel like the vast majority of the time the solution, if not the simplest solution, is something that when you hear it at least makes sense in the historical world we live in...in this case lived in in 1945. Most things that happen, no matter how bizarre or unusual or shocking, do not happen just one time...they've happened before, or since. How can we look at this case and come up with a scenario that is actually consistent with human nature and society and psychology and history as we know it.
For example...retribution for anti-Mussolini statements. This happened in 1945. Mussolini had been dead since April. He had been deposed from power two years earlier. By the time of the fire, Germany had declared war on Italy, and Italian American boys were fighting the Nazis in Italy. The idea that I keep reading that somehow Mussolini's long reach extended to West Virginia beyond the grave and snuffed out some mouthy small town businessman just doesn't hold water. It's true that Mussolini had supporters among U.S. Italians early in his rise to power, but he had support among all Americans for some time, thanks to his anti-communist successes. But by 1945, Mussolini's support in the U.S. was long over, thanks to the war, even among most Italian Americans. Now, could George have made some enemies with his early outburst against Mussolini? Possibly, but by the time of the fire, it would have been personal, not political. The actual issue of supporting Mussolini was a dead issue by that point.
And speaking of the mafia...semi-relevantly, the mafia also opposed Mussolini, with American and Italian mobsters actually helping the U.S. war effort in Sicily. So George wouldn't have gotten on the bad side of the mafia due to anti-Mussolini rhetoric. If he did cross the mafia, it would have been for other reasons.
Could he have gotten in bad with the Mafia? Now that is plausible. Any businessman ran the risk of crossing or alienating the mafia if he didn't play ball, and there are a half dozen scenarios at least where somebody like George could have gotten himself in a bad spot. And there was mafia in West Virginia.
So let's think through the Mafia issue and how that might have played a part in the story. I can't think of an incident in the history of the American mafia where they set a house on fire and kidnapped children under the guise of a fire. It just doesn't fit any standard mode of operation. Under almost any likely circumstance, a mafia reprisal would have been:
1) Beat George
2) Kill George
3) Attack the business
We've never heard that they did #1. We know they didn't do #2. Because his office was in his home, #3 is a possible fit.
From everything we know of the mafia though, the most likely approach would have been a "warning." In this scenario, the mafia response expected would have most likely been firebombing or possibly stealing one or both trucks. There are other ways of course that they could attack the business, but you'd at least expect attacking the trucks to be the most obvious. For the mafia to go straight to burning the house with 9 kids inside...that's way, way out of character, the kind of thing that only comes up (in the U.S.) in the most demented and sociopathic mafia guys, who are actually pretty rare and short-lived, considering their excesses are "bad for business." At this time, the mob was actually ascending towards it's apex into respectability and organization, when it was generally run (even with violence) like a business. Most of the true sociopathic elements came later, as drugs corrupted the members, and as law enforcement successes began pulling the best and brightest out of the organization.
But, I'm not totally unwilling to count the mafia out as a player in the fire. To be fair, we don't KNOW what Sodder's beef might have been. We don't know if he'd already faced reprisals, attacks on himself or his business. Especially if the nature of the beef was one of collaboration, and then disagreement, he would be loathe for those to be public. Most likely it was as simple as resisting extortion. But even if Sodder was completely innocent...you don't go to the police or the media. So it's not out of the possibility that firebombing the house WAS actually the last resort to bring Sodder into line.
Now, we don't even know if a Mafia beef was in play at all, but let's play it out anyway based on what we know from thousands of conflicts between the mafia and small businessmen. In extreme cases, they might be killed for resistance, but that's usually not ideal. The mafia want to make money...what they want is a guy in their pocket and paying tribute. A dead George Sodder doesn't put money in their pockets, at least like a live George Sodder could. But it definitely has happened. However, it is very rare for the mafia to go after the family, especially burning down a house full of kids. It would have been so much easier, and much more foolproof, to just take him out with a bullet to the head. So if the mafia did start the blaze, most likely:
1. It was believed the Sodders would not be home that night
2. It was not supposed to burn the house down, but just give them a scare...for example, it would not be unusual for the mafia to maybe throw an unlit malatov coctail, or plant an unarmed bomb as a warning to say "This is how easy it would be." Maybe something like that was planned, but it was poorly done or badly communicated, resulting in a true fire.
That stuff does happen. It's not uncommon for these things to get screwed up.
Now, even if the mafia DID start it...it doesn't change the question of what happened to the kids? There is really no history of the mafia kidnapping/selling kids, or even killing kids, as punishment, in the U.S. mafia. Not unheard of in Italy, but its not really a thing in the U.S. Now, kidnapping people for ransom, that's possible. But did George have the means to be kind of target? Doesn't seem so. Could they have been kidnapped possibly to extort cooperation, maybe. But if that was the case, then George would have known right away by getting the demand.
The only way that makes any sense that the mafia would actually be responsible for the disappearance of the kids is that something breaks bad (think Lindbergh kidnapping) and the kids are killed. Meaning George never gets a demand, and the mafia just tries to get as much distance from the whole incident as possible. Even so, if that had been the plan, to kidnap some of his kids to extort money or cooperation...is that the best way to do it? It seems like a horrible plan, in which they could have been killed by the fire, it could have been interrupted by do-gooders drawn to the fire, it just seems like a terrible terrible plan.
So while I could concede a scenario where the mafia was responsible for the fire, it seems very hard to make a case that they were responsible for the disappearance of the kids based on anything we know about how the mafia operates.
If we dismiss the Mussolini retribution, which I think we can, and we credit the mafia as either not involved or only involved up until setting the fire...what reasonable explanations are left of...what happened to the kids?
