AI Summary
5 min readOn Christmas morning 1945, five children vanished from a burning house in Fayetteville, West Virginia. The fire consumed the Sodder family home in 30 to 45 minutes, but when firefighters finally arrived—seven hours after the blaze began—they found no bodies, no bones, no teeth. Just a hole in the ground where the basement had been. For 80 years, this case has been a staple of cold case forums and true crime speculation. But in 2024, Miranda Weeks, the great-great-granddaughter of one of the older Sodder children, decided she was tired of waiting for answers. She spent two years talking to family members, chasing records, and digging through archives. Then she contacted Crime Junkie with dozens of pages of case records that had never been published before.
The fire that left nothing behind
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:31) **Cold Case Reopened by a Descendant** - Britt introduces the 1945 Sodder children disappearance and explains that descendant Miranda Weeks has unearthed never-before-published case records.
- 2 (03:14) **Christmas Eve 1945: The Night Before the Fire** - The Sodder family's normal Christmas Eve routine is established, including a mysterious wrong-number phone call and a strange noise on the roof.
- 3 (05:12) **The Fire Breaks Out** - Jenny wakes to smoke at 1 AM; the office is on fire, blocking the stairs to the children's bedrooms.
- 4 (06:58) **The Delayed Fire Department Response** - A witness, Mr. Smith, tries to call the fire department but gets an odd, unurgent response from the chief.
- 5 (08:25) **No Bodies Found; The Site Is Destroyed** - The search yields no human remains, and the family fills in the basement on advice from officials.
- 6 (10:47) **The Case for Foul Play Begins** - George and Jenny reject the "accidental fire" ruling due to the complete lack of human remains and surviving flammable items.
- 7 (12:06) **The Man Who Cut the Phone Line** - A witness admits to cutting the phone line the night of the fire, claiming he thought it was a power line.
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Show Notes
In 2019, we covered the Sodder children, five siblings who vanished after their family’s home burned down on Christmas morning in 1945. Officials said they died in the fire, but no bodies were ever found. And now, with new information from a family descendant, we’re taking another look at what happened when their parents started asking questions, and why the family spent decades believing the children may have survived.
- If you have information that you believe could be related to the disappearance of the Sodder children, please contact us at [email protected] or Miranda Weeks at [email protected].
Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/update-the-sodder-children/
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Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat.