Original subtitles

- As World War II finally ends,

an infamous cold case begins.

Five siblings vanish...

in an instant.

- They didn't find any traces of these bodies.

No bones. Not even a piece of a tooth.

Where could these kids have gone?

- Now we uncover the top theories

surrounding every parent's worst fear.

♪ ♪

- Not only do we have an arson and a kidnapping,

but a possible cover-up.

- Were they brainwashed?

Or did they just not want to be found?

- Can new evidence finally reveal answers?

What really happened

to the notorious Sodder children?

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[music fades]

[dramatic orchestral music]

Just four months after World War II ends,

American troops head home

to spend their first post-war holiday with family.

One exception: Joseph Sodder,

who won't be back in time to celebrate in his hometown

of Fayetteville, West Virginia.

- So who was the Sodder family?

The parents were George and Jennie.

They had 10 kids.

Their oldest son was in the army,

but nine of their children were home, living with them.

[somber music]

- Kids are celebrating Christmas Eve.

They're allowed to stay up well past their bedtime.

Unbeknownst to them, all of their lives

are going to change within a matter of hours.

[foreboding music]

Fishburne: At 1:00 a.m., Jennie wakes up suddenly.

She smells smoke.

- She's startled awake,

runs down to her husband's study

where she sees one wall on fire.

[suspenseful music]

We have to remember that back in the 1940s,

smoke detectors had not yet been invented.

So by the time that Jennie discovers the fire,

there is not much time to get out of the house,

'cause the fire's already roaring in the study.

- First thing they do

is get the four children out of the house

that are on the first floor.

And George and Jennie's bedroom is on the first floor,

so this is very easy for them to do.

Get them out of the house right away.

[flames crackling]

Fishburne: Within minutes, George, Jennie,

and four of their children run outside.

But as far as they know...

♪ ♪

The remaining five are trapped upstairs.

- When they tried to gain entry to the second floor,

the staircase was fully engulfed,

and they were unable to save the children

that were sleeping upstairs.

And within 45 minutes, the house burned down.

[somber music]

Fishburne: The heartbroken parents

assume the remaining five siblings,

14-year old Maurice, 12-year-old Martha,

10-year-old Louis, 8-year-old Jennie,

and 6-year-old Betty are dead.

♪ ♪

But could there be more to the story?

♪ ♪

- Here's why it's such a mystery.

None of the remains of the five children

were ever found in the debris of the fire.

- No trace.

[dramatic music]

No bones.

No nothing.

Fishburne: Despite this,

authorities quickly jump to the simplest conclusion.

♪ ♪

- The official word was that the children died

in the fire caused by an electrical issue.

But we have an investigation that was questionable,

at best.

- As part of their investigation

after they arrived on the scene,

they interviewed Jennie and George as to what happened.

Fishburne: When Jennie first sees the fire

in George's office, she reports it's burning

near an electrical box on the wall.

The fire department believes the blaze accelerated

up through the wall.

♪ ♪

- The fire appeared to have burned

very quickly.

One of the theories out there is that the construction

of the house was what is called "balloon construction."

That is to say that it had vertical rafters

from the basement

running directly up to the second floor,

creating a void space,

which, if the fire started inside the walls,

it would've created the perfect chimney effect

and very quickly burned up through to the roof area.

Fishburne: George tells authorities

that after evacuating the four children downstairs,

he next tried repeatedly to rescue

the siblings upstairs.

[suspenseful music]

- Five of the children were upstairs

on the second floor.

And they were unable to get out.

And the fire is out of control.

There's too much smoke and he's unable

to go to the second floor,

where the five children are sleeping.

Fishburne: George screams to the kids

from the bottom of the stairs...

but hears nothing.

- He goes back out to the barrel of water

he has outside to put out the fire.

♪ ♪

But he finds the barrel's frozen solid.

- He runs, looking for the ladder

that was on the side of the building.

The ladder that normally is there is no longer there,

and he doesn't know where it was or who took it.

- So then he thinks he's gonna use his trucks

and he had two trucks.

He was gonna pull those trucks up to the house,

get on the roof to try to access the second floor.

But unfortunately, neither truck would start that night.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Jennie has a similar experience.

- So while George is trying to rescue the children

on the second floor, Jennie tries

to call the fire department using their home phone.

But the line is dead.

♪ ♪

So then Jennie sends her daughter Marion

to a neighbor's house to try to call the fire department.

But Marion is unable to get through.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Eventually,

a passing motorist offers to drive into town

and alert the fire chief.

- During this time in 1945,

most of the fire departments in that part of the country

were volunteer fire departments.

So when a fire would come in, it was up to the fire chief

to start calling everybody to come to the firehouse,

pick up their equipment,

and then rush over to the scene.

[bell ringing] So as a result of that,

the response time was quite lengthy.

[siren wailing]

Fishburne: Seven hours after the blaze first ignites,

fire trucks finally arrive.

- When the fire department finally shows up,

they spend, at most, a couple of hours

and they make a determination

that the fire was caused by an electrical issue

and that the five children who were sleeping

on the second floor all perished in the fire.

Within five days,

even though there were no remains,

the coroner's inquest ruled

that these children died in the fire

as a result of an accident.

Even going so far as to issuing death certificates.

♪ ♪

- The fire marshal tells Jennie

he believes that as a result of the fire burning so hot,

it consumed the bones, the organs, and everything else

associated with the human body.

Fishburne: But without concrete physical evidence

of death, George and Jennie hold out hope

that their children somehow escaped.

- Jennie doesn't end up believing

the fire chief's explanation that the kids died in the fire

and that they're gone.

They didn't find any traces of these bodies.

No bones. Not even a piece of a tooth.

Jennie starts to feel like

there's something else going on.

- She goes and speaks to a local crematorium

and they tell her

that bones--at least the fragments of bones--

usually survive all fires.

When you cremate a body at a crematorium,

you're exposing it to temperatures

of approximately 2,000 degrees for several hours.

And even after that type of temperature,

they have to be grounded up to make 'em into dust

when they're given to their loved ones

in the urns.

Fishburne: And George has his own reason

to doubt the fire department's conclusion.

- George keeps falling back on two pieces of evidence

that, in his mind, this fire's not accidental.

One is that during the fire,

he noticed that there were still lights remaining

in certain parts of the house

while the building was burning.

So in his mind is how can this be an electrical fire

if you still have lights on in the building?

- But also just a few months prior,

he had actually brought in an electrician

to check the wiring of the house.

The electrician gave it a passing grade

and George starts wondering

if there's something else going on.

Now it is possible

that the electrician might've missed something.

You know, he is human after all.

Or it's possible that between the time

of the electrician showing up and Christmas Eve

something else went on in that house.

Fishburne: Authorities soon discover

what that something else might be.

- So if you remember, Jennie actually tried

to contact the fire chief the night of the fire,

but her phone wasn't working.

So the police investigate that a few days later,

and what they find could alter the entire course

of the investigation, because they find

the phone lines have been cut.

[foreboding music]

Fishburne: When five siblings seemingly perish

in a devastating house fire,

investigators initially see nothing suspicious.

They quickly rule that an electrical fire

caused their deaths.

But then they make a startling discovery.

Telephone lines outside the house have been severed.

Is it possible the fire was no accident?

- It is my opinion

that this fire was intentionally set.

[sinister music]

♪ ♪

Classifying a fire as an arson instead of an accidental fire

has a lot of implications, because an arson connotates

that there is a crime that's been committed,

and if they would've found the remains of the children,

it'd be classified as a homicide.

♪ ♪

- But it's interesting because the police just kind of

brushed this off, and they don't really look into that.

Fishburne: But maybe they should've.

Because as it turns out,

George was far from well-liked in Fayetteville.

- I think authorities are missing the background story.

What was going on prior to the fire?

George had a lot of enemies, we've learned,

and he had conflict

with other Italian immigrants in that area.

- George Sodder, actually born Giorgio Soddu,

in Sardinia, Italy, in 1895,

emigrated to the United States when he was only 13 years old.

Years later, George moves to Smithers, West Virginia.

He finds work as a truck driver

and eventually gets to start his own company.

And he meets his future wife, Jennie,

who's a fellow Italian emigrant.

Fishburne: The new couple moves

to Fayetteville, West Virginia,

a small town with a large population

of Italian Americans.

- Once George and Jennie settle down,

they moved to a little wood-framed house

about two miles outside of town,

and they have their first son, Joe, in 1923

and really kind of start making their way

as a well-respected middle-class family,

at least at first.

Fishburne: But George's outspoken political beliefs

alienate some neighbors.

- It is very common for people that come to America

from another country to wanna live

in the same type of community that they're used to,

because it's familiar to them.

[tense music]

So George has a lot in common

with these other people in his community,

but politically, he does not favor

the ruling of Benito Mussolini

and makes it known to the public.

- At the time, Mussolini's incredibly popular,

both with Italians at home and abroad,

and especially in Fayetteville, West Virginia,

which kind of leaves George as the odd man out.

- George is telling everybody,

"I don't like what Mussolini's doing."

And he makes it known to one person in particular,

Cleante Gros Janutolo.

During that time, Cleante Gros, C.G.,

is a local banker, and a local businessman,

and has fingers in just about everything

in the local community.

Fishburne: Janutolo has many unusual connections

to George Sodder.

- C.G. Janutolo is the director

of the Fayette County Bank.

He also is the employer of George Sodder.

And George Sodder has a mortgage

that is written by the Fayette County Bank,

which has an insurance provision

that Mr. Janutolo will benefit if there's a fire at the home.

♪ ♪

- Yeah, this is where I have a real problem with this case,

because the person that is the benefactor of this home,

should it be destroyed by fire

or any other type of natural disaster,

is this C.G. Janutolo.

Most banks don't do that.

Most banks have the bank be the benefactor,

not an officer within the bank.

♪ ♪

- In today's times,

it would be not only a conflict of interest,

but it would be illegal for Mr. Janutolo

to hold a financial interest

in the property of George Sodder.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Just two months before the fire

and without Sodder's knowledge,

Janutolo increases the insurance payout amount

to $1,750, almost $27,000 today.

- Janutolo's greed didn't stop there.

So about 60 days before the fire,

he ends up sending one of his good friends,

Russell Long, an insurance broker,

to George's house.

And at George's house, Russell Long attempts

to sell him life insurance for his kids.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: When George refuses the extra insurance,

Janutolo allegedly makes a chilling threat.

- Janutolo gets very angry and threatens him.

He says his house is gonna go up in smoke

and his children are gonna be destroyed.

And he also says that George will pay

for the dirty things that he had been saying

about Mussolini.

- Let's put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Janutolo shows up at the house,

threatens George, the very individual

who was set to collect money

if and when the house was destroyed.

The house does, in fact, burn down.

And this starts putting everything together

that this was, in fact, an arson,

and not an accidental fire

as claimed by the local authorities.

Fishburne: But what about the cut phone lines?

- If Janutolo would've also cut the phone line

that was found cut the day after the fire,

he would be the prime suspect.

But, in fact, he isn't. [siren wailing]

There is another suspect that comes to surface.

Several days after the fire, an individual is arrested

in possession of a block and tackle.

A block and tackle is used to lift a heavy object.

This block and tackle, as it turns out,

belongs to George.

The thief, while he's being interviewed,

admits that yes, he did steal the block and tackle.

But he insists that he did not start the fire.

He was just present when the fire was burning

and used that as a distraction to steal the block and tackle.

♪ ♪

- Do we believe the thief's story?

Sure, he could have just been there

to steal the block and tackle,

but why would somebody go all the way out

to George's property just to steal that one small thing?

He could have been there to start the fire

and used the block-and-tackle theft

as a red herring to lead the investigation astray.

And it's very plausible

that this thief was actually sent

by somebody like Janutolo himself.

- It appears that the authorities

believed what the thief told them.

And also they don't bring in Janutolo

to question him further about his possible involvement

in this fire.

But in my profession,

as an investigator for 33 years,

I have found that there is no coincidences.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Whether the cause is arson

or electrical, another question remains:

did the five children die in the fire?

To answer that,

George starts his own investigation,

and in 1949, makes a shocking find.

- A few years after the fire,

George had an excavation done of the site

and they did recover what they believed might be human bones.

And they sent those bones to the Smithsonian,

and an expert there said it was, in fact, human vertebrae

potentially from a young man

between the ages of 16 and 24 years old.

Fishburne: If the bones were indeed

from one of the children,

the only possible match could be Maurice...

14 years old at the time of the fire.

- Despite the fact that the report says

that these were vertebrae from a male

between the ages of 16 and 24,

there's still enough uncertainty

that a 14-year-old could have been within that range.

However, what is interesting

is that the report also notes that there didn't appear

to be any evidence of charring on the bones.

That would be very unexpected for someone who was cremated

in a fire.

So we have to ask whose bones are these?

Were they already there before the fire started?

Or were they part of the dirt

that was used to bulldoze over the site?

Unfortunately, we'll never know.

Fishburne: Even though the Sodders were disappointed

with the excavation results, it reinforces their hope

that their children still could be alive.

[mysterious music]

- It's clear that the fire happened

and burnt down the house.

And it's clear that the investigation

that was done after the fire was incomplete, at best.

And it's also clear that the remains

of the children were never found.

So in George's and Jennie's mind,

their children are not dead.

- George and Jennie,

because they're not getting answers,

seek the public's help and they ask for anybody

knowing what happened to their children

to contact them.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: When their home burned down early

on Christmas morning, 1945,

did five Sodder children die in the blaze?

[dramatic music]

That's what fire investigators believe.

But the Sodder parents are not convinced.

♪ ♪

- Over time, understanding that no remains were found

and that the fire was most likely caused by arson,

Jennie and George wanted to get some answers.

♪ ♪

- If law enforcement are not gonna step up to the plate,

who else is gonna do it?

Nobody else has more on the line than you do.

- So as parents would do,

they get desperate to try and find their children.

So seven years after the fire,

they erect a billboard in their area.

George and Jennie offer a reward

for any information about their children.

The offer is at $5,000 in the beginning

and eventually increases to $10,000.

♪ ♪

Which is a lot of money back then.

Fishburne: Eventually, that investment pays off.

- A woman comes forward named Ida Crutchfield,

and she has information about the children.

Fishburne: Crutchfield runs a motel

in Charleston, West Virginia,

about 60 miles away from George and Jennie's home.

- According to Ida,

about a week after the fire, four children

who matched the description of George and Jennie's children

were at her hotel that she managed.

And they were accompanied by two men and two women.

She describes the men and the women

as being of Italian descent.

- Ida actually tried to have a conversation

with the children, but she was quickly shut out

by the Italian-speaking adults.

Fishburne: The group rents multiple rooms for the night.

But the next morning, they're gone.

- So Ida Crutchfield really didn't know about

the missing Sodder children at the time.

She just saw a situation

that she thought was very unusual--

the children with a large number of adults.

Only later did she realize

that she was a potential witness to a kidnapping.

[sinister music]

♪ ♪

- This is good news and bad news

for the Sodder family.

- On one hand, there was actually

a possibility the children are alive

and they've been taken under unknown circumstances.

But on the other hand...

can we recover them?

Is there any way to possibly get them back?

So knowing that they're alive is not enough.

Unless you can actually recover them

and bring 'em back to your family.

It's a known fact that George had enemies.

It's one thing to destroy his property,

but it's quite another thing to actually take his children.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Perhaps the most heartbreaking part

of Crutchfield's account is its timing.

- It took her seven years to come forward

after she saw the children at her motel.

And even if it's true,

seven years later, how could you follow it up,

understanding that long period of time that has passed.

Fishburne: But Ida isn't the only witness

to eventually come forward.

- Over the years, the Sodder family

are contacted with a lot of tips and different stories

about what happened to their children.

- In that time period,

there were no security cameras.

It was eyewitnesses.

It was people that thought they saw something.

And you had to rely

on their very often blurry memories.

Fishburne: Sifting through various leads,

there are two accounts

that catch the Sodders' attention.

- One of the tips that comes forward is a woman who says,

"I saw all the children in a car being driven

by somebody leaving the house."

Another woman comes forward

who operates a diner between Fayetteville and Charleston

and she says, "The night after that fire,

"there was children in that restaurant

with a stranger."

Fishburne: Combining these accounts

with Ida Crutchfield's story helps the Sodder family

form a potential time line.

- So in Fayetteville, we have a lady that believes

that she saw the children in a car

the night of the fire.

Then we have a lady that thinks she sees the children

in a diner between Charleston and Fayetteville.

And then we have Ida Crutchfield that believes

that she saw the children in Charleston.

- If these tips are true, it paints a picture

of these children that were kidnapped that night

and they're on the move,

traveling with somebody against their will.

Fishburne: After they leave the Charleston motel,

there are no further sightings of the children.

And while it seems like a dead end

for the kidnapping theory, it won't be.

♪ ♪

- The search for the missing Sodder children

becomes more difficult with each passing year,

but their parents never give up.

Then, in 1967,

two decades after the fire, a mysterious letter arrives.

George and Jennie are convinced it's proof one son, Louis,

is alive.

[dramatic music]

[music fades]

[foreboding music]

- George wanted to find his children

and there's no doubt about it.

He would follow every tip, no matter what the cost.

He would go anywhere, to the ends of the earth

to find resolution.

Fishburne: George Sodder spends incredible time

and resources scouring the country.

- Decades go by, and he's tired.

And he's about ready to give up.

But then, in 1967,

George and Jennie receive a strange letter

addressed to them at their home

and it contains a photograph.

♪ ♪

- The photo was mailed from Central City, Kentucky.

This photo was the first piece of physical evidence ever

to be presented in this case.

And I must say, it was substantial.

- It was of a man in his 30s

that could be one of the children.

It was what appeared to be a photo of Louis Sodder.

[mysterious music]

- I can't even imagine.

This has gotta be huge for them.

They finally see a picture of one of their children

after all these years.

- When the Sodders turned this photo over,

they are dumbstruck.

Fishburne: On the back of the photo

are three handwritten lines

starting with a name, "Louis Sodder."

But unfortunately,

the rest of the writing on the photo is a mystery.

- Next to his name is written "I love brother Frankie."

And then underneath is "Ilil boys."

And finally, there are two numbers,

"A90132 or 35."

Fishburne: The desperate parents

struggle to decipher the message.

- No one knows who Frankie is.

No one in the family's named Frankie.

None of the friends of the family are named Frankie.

So who could Frankie be?

Could be the name of the kidnapper.

Or it could be the name of a person

that is harboring the children or Louis.

- The little boy comment is disturbing.

We don't know what that means.

Does that imply, you know,

something nefarious has happened with a child molester

or is this someone,

you know, talking about their little brothers?

We don't know.

- And it appears that all the useful clues

that are left are possibly those numbers

at the end of that photo.

Fishburne: A90132 or 35.

It's a sequence that looks familiar.

♪ ♪

- When the photo comes in,

it's actually only four years after

the U.S. postal zip code system had actually been implemented

in the United States.

So it's fresh in everybody's minds

and that's actually the first thing

that George and Jennie think when they see those numbers

printed on the back of the photograph.

Could be zip codes.

90132 and 90135.

Are they actually in the United States?

Well, they go to check it out, and it turns out

that neither one of those numbers

applies to any zip code in America.

[ominous music]

Fishburne: But the United States

isn't the only country to use five-digit postal codes.

♪ ♪

- We have to look a bit further.

George is of Italian descent and is from Italy.

Those zip codes match Palermo, Sicily.

And Palermo is the capital of Sicily

and also is the home base

of the reputed organized crime organization,

La Cosa Nostra.

I do think that there is a distinct possibility

there could be some Sicilian Mafia involved

in this case.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: Could this be the break

the Sodders are looking for?

- For one, George is from Italy.

For two, the views of George really weren't that endearing

to the Italian government.

And third, because of the organization

of the fire and the events thereafter.

♪ ♪

- I think that the zip codes are a pretty telling sign

that even if they're not where Louis was

or if Louis was alive, it just adds to this idea

that these children did not die in this fire.

That they might be out there.

Fishburne: Initially, George and Jennie

are reluctant to share this information.

- George and Jennie don't say anything

about this possible Sicilian connection

because they don't want the kidnappers

to possibly do something to Louis

and/or the other children who may have survived.

- Eventually though, curiosity gets the best of both

Jennie and George and they can't lay low forever.

So they actually hire a private investigator

to go down to Kentucky,

which is where the postal code had been printed

on the front of the envelope.

Fishburne: That investigator is never seen

or heard from again.

- It makes you question what this private investigator did.

Did he take the money and run?

Did he maybe find something out

he wasn't supposed to know?

And the people involved either kidnapped him

or took him out.

Fishburne: The investigator may have disappeared,

but the family hires another private detective

to investigate in Fayetteville.

His name is Oscar Tinsley.

- Tinsley keeps digging.

And the more he digs, the more that he finds evidence

that whatever happened to these kids,

it was not an accident.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: When private investigator

Oscar Tinsley begins looking

into the disappearance of the Sodder children,

he has no idea what he'll uncover.

- The official investigators,

they think that the Sodder family children

died in a house fire, whereas George and Jennie,

they believe that their kids were kidnapped.

- The investigator hired by George and Jennie,

Mr. Tinsley, uncovered something

that was breathtaking.

That the authorities, the police, fire department

may have been in on the kidnapping.

[sinister music]

♪ ♪

We have four things in this case

that are suspicious and are significant.

Number one, we have a fire that was not investigated.

Two, we have threats against George and his family

that people were not questioned or interrogated.

Three, we have a letter with a picture

with possible ties to the Sicilian Mafia

that was not followed up on.

And four, we have a conclusion

that the children died in the fire,

but yet, we don't have any remains.

[dramatic music]

Any one of these things, individually or collectively,

should have launched a major investigation.

But none resulted.

- Tinsley, he thinks he's uncovered evidence

that the authorities were in on it.

Fishburne: And soon enough, he uncovers potential proof.

♪ ♪

- Tinsley starts with the coroner's report

that came out of the inquest.

A coroner's inquest takes place after an incident has occurred.

The coroner selects 12 individuals

from the community to sit in a jury.

They're presented with the facts of the crime

or the incident, and then they determine

if there is enough there to classify this fire

as either accidental or as an arson.

Without finding the remains

of the five children, what could they have concluded?

- In the coroner's inquest,

evidence that they might have been considering,

in my opinion, was nonexistent.

They didn't recover any evidence.

They didn't even have time to recover any evidence.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: On the official record

declaring the fire an accident

is a familiar name.

- So do you remember C.G. Janutolo,

the man who had threatened George's life

and was the director of the bank?

He was also one of the members of the coroner's jury

who had ruled the Sodder family house fire

an accident.

- And his name is on all five

of those children's death certificates.

He signs under penalty of perjury

that those children died in a fire

and that they died of asphyxiation.

[ominous music]

How does he know that?

They never found the remains.

- I think Mr. Janutolo is trying to use his influence

in the community to cover up what really happened.

Did he make good on his promise to burn down the Sodder home?

And two, did he use his contacts

within the Sicilian Mafia

to have the children kidnapped?

♪ ♪

Fishburne: According to Tinsley,

the cover-up might go even higher.

- During his investigation, Tinsley discovers

that the fire chief spoke to the parish priest

and told him that he did find some remains,

but buried them at the fire scene.

[dramatic music]

- George confronts the fire chief

and they go back to the house,

and they dig up a tin box.

Fishburne: But what they find doesn't add up.

- In that tin box

is what appears to be some sort of old rotting organ

of some sort, and the fire chief says,

"These are human remains."

[suspenseful music]

So they take these remains to the local funeral director

and he tells them, "It's not human remains.

It's a beef liver."

- And the funeral director tells them

that not only are these remains not human,

they appear that they've never been burnt.

That it's just rotted because of it being buried

in the ground.

Fishburne: Why would Fire Chief F.J. Morris lie

about finding human remains?

- There are two ways you can look at this.

One is the sympathetic way,

that the fire chief is just trying

to give the family closure.

♪ ♪

The other way to look at it is that the fire chief

is involved in the conspiracy, and he's trying to keep George

and Jennie from continuing to look for their children.

So potentially, Chief Morris may have been

in on the conspiracy with Janutolo.

Fishburne: This isn't the only time the fire chief is accused

of working against the Sodders.

- It's important to remember that,

back at the night of the fire, it took over seven hours

for the fire department to show up to the Sodder family house.

♪ ♪

- One of the reasons Morris came up with why he

and his crew took seven hours to arrive at the fire scene

was that he had no one available

to drive the fire truck.

They were away at World War II.

- Now, World War II's actually

kind of a convenient excuse.

Christmas Eve, 1945, this was over seven months

after the Allied victory in Europe,

and about three months after the Allied victory in Japan.

So while there could have been some volunteer firefighters

serving overseas, it wouldn't have been that many,

and there certainly wouldn't have been a complete

lack of manpower.

Whatever was going on at the time,

there were definitely people in that town

that did not want the truth to come out,

and they would have done anything

to make sure that it didn't.

♪ ♪

- I think any parent can understand George and Jennie

wanting to search for their children all of these years.

But should we also consider another theory,

as unpleasant as it may be:

what if the Sodder children disappeared on purpose?

Fishburne: In the decades after the five Sodder children

seemingly vanish, countless new questions arise,

and the case captures the public's attention.

♪ ♪

Sleuths focus on one mystery in particular.

- I often ask myself,

if the children survived the fire,

why didn't they ever present

themselves to their family?

Were they brainwashed?

Did they want to protect their families?

Or did they just not want to be found?

♪ ♪

- One of the theories is that

the children didn't die in the fire,

that they actually started the fire as a distraction

so they could escape and disappear forever.

Fishburne: In 1967, the same year the Sodders received

the mysterious alleged photo of their son, Louis,

something else happens.

- A woman from Houston, Texas sent a letter

to the Sodder family stating that she was in a bar

with Louis Sodder and Maurice Sodder,

and that Louis Sodder, in a drunken stupor,

confessed that he was

one of the missing Sodder children.

- So much for Louis Sodder being in Italy, right?

Either the photograph is fake,

or the lady in Texas is lying.

But what if there is more that might lead you

to think Louis is in Texas?

Remember those postal codes,

90132, 90135.

They're actually also found in Mexico,

which is in very close proximity to Texas.

Fishburne: Is it possible that Louis

has been living in Mexico,

and that he's now crossed back into the United States?

- George has no choice

but to follow up with the Houston, Texas lead.

It's either going to lead to the long list

of leads that led nowhere,

or it's gonna lead to finally finding his children.

Fishburne: George and his son-in-law, Grover Paxton,

take a road trip from West Virginia to Houston.

- So George travels to Texas and tries to find this woman,

and he cannot.

He is, however, able to contact

the two men described by this woman in the letter.

♪ ♪

- I'm sure possibly on the eve of meeting his children,

he's fraught with anxiety,

he's nervous.

He probably is on an emotional roller coaster

of finally being able to meet his children,

alive, in person.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: George meets with the two men

and asks if they're his long-lost children.

♪ ♪

- George asks,

and they deny that they are his sons.

No matter how much he presses them,

they still hold that they, indeed, are not his sons.

- As a parent myself,

I can imagine George actually approaching somebody

that he believed could have been his children,

and then they deny they're his children.

And he really has no way to know for sure.

You know, all he had was their word.

And that just wasn't good enough for him.

- I--I can't even imagine how that must have felt

for George on that long drive back to West Virginia.

You just met two potential sons

that you've been looking for all these years,

and they deny that they're your children.

But yet you think they are. They look like them.

You had information that they were telling people

that they were them.

Uh, I just--I can't imagine how he must have felt,

the disappointment.

- After that meeting,

George believed until the day he died

that the two young men that he talked to

in Houston, Texas were indeed his sons.

- On one hand,

I'm sure George was very happy and relieved

to believe that his children were still alive.

But it also must have been very heartbreaking

to think that they were denying that he was their father.

♪ ♪

Fishburne: George Sodder died in 1969,

two years after his trip to Texas.

When Jennie died in 1989,

the weathered billboard pleading for information

was finally taken down.

The youngest Sodder child, Sylvia,

died in April of 2021.

Sylvia's children have promised

to carry the torch and keep looking

for their aunts and uncles.

But time is running out.

The missing children would be

between 81 and 90 years old if there's any chance

they're still alive and waiting to be found.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching

"History's Greatest Mysteries."

♪ ♪