The Curious Case of the Sodder Children

December 24th, 1945. Fayetteville, West Virginia. The Sutter Family. George and Ginny and nine of their ten children were celebrating Christmas Eve. Some of the youngest children asked to stay up late and it being Christmas. Their mother approved around 1:30 a.m.. Ginny would wake from the smell of smoke. She got out of bed and found a fire spreading quickly through the house. George and Jenny and only four of their children made it out alive.

Five of the Sutter children had been stuck upstairs and drastic efforts were taken to save them, but all failed after the fire. The Sutter family was stricken with grief, but it wasn't long before the starters began to notice that certain details didn't add up. From missing remains cut. Telephone wires contradicting reports from authorities and rumors of the children being seen alive after the fire.

The Sutter family believed the kids were not in the house during the fire and could still be alive today. This is a study of strange. All right. You ready? Yep. Welcome to the show. I'm Michael May. With me tonight is Mr. Matt Glass, who met. Hi. You are the first person to be on two episodes. Yes, I did it. Yeah. Yeah. Just for myself. Yeah. You told a story on. Ah, 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 of in every episode, if you're true. It is true. You are part of every episode. Well, thank you for being on. I've been wanting to find an episode for you, and this one wasn't particularly like, Oh, I've got to have Matt on this one, but just scheduling wise, it just kind of worked out. So I hope you I hope you enjoy it. It's no idea what's coming. It's great.

Nice. Nice. So real quick, I just want to say a couple of things to listeners out there. First, I still have COVID. If you listen to last episode and my throat is not doing great, I'm feeling fine besides that, but just my my a warning in case I lose my voice or start to sound really funny tonight. And also, I've just been tired and delirious. So this is either going to be the 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.

Now, this is going to be fun. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. If you enjoy the show, make sure to subscribe. Great. And leave little comment, a little review. You can even just say, hey, you don't even have to say good or bad. But leaving a review is very, very important for podcast. So please do that also on Patreon. I'm going to have a new episode of News of Strangeness next week, and then I'm going to try something new for Patreon members in December.

A thing called strange but true. It's yeah, it's a good title. I don't I don't even know what's going to be it, but it's going to be something fun. So you just came up with the title and that's it? No. I'm actually joking. I actually do have an idea for it, but it's going to be some fun stuff for Patron listeners, so check that out. You can find information for that on our website. A Steve Strange Scam. All right.

So Matt, who's with us today, I've already mentioned he composed the theme music, but you are also a film maker, a composer, an artist. You do a lot of cool stuff. I do, yeah. Yeah. Do you? I mean, I usually ask people this the end of the episode, but now I feel like I should ask now, where can people find your work? You want to. You want to give yourself a plug? Yeah. So my, my production company website would be a dot media. That's the whole URL. You can find stuff about movies.

We've done what we're working on next or just strange little things on our Instagram account, which is also I think it's dot media or just my stuff is either at glass brain icon which is, you know, has all my music and weird old photos and stuff or matte glass dot net. You have a dot net. Oh yeah. I couldn't get the dot com for Matt Glass so I just I got the done that. Oh well, well look at that. I haven't heard of dot net in a long time. I think I got the only one left.

Do you remember the net was Sandra Bullock? You remember that? Course, yeah. Yeah, it was. Mozart's Ghost was the name of the program she used to have the secret code. You pressed a little pi symbol in the corner? Yeah. Yeah, because that was when all those movies that had to do with the Internet used things like pi or equals Square. I remember would flash on the screen, went in hackers and they were hacking because of course, that is how you hack it's Martians.

Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, see, I am delirious tonight. So tonight, Matt, we're going to be covering a tale that I've been reading about for probably, like, 15 years. There's a lot of blogs about this. There's some books and articles and sayings, and it's this mystery from 1945 about the Solder children, the Solder family. And they had ten kids, five of them. There was a house fire and five of them were not found. They were presumed dead.

And then years later, people started to suspect that those kids were still alive. And where were they and why did the fire get started? And a lot of people out there that follow these kind of weird stories probably have read about this and it's so much so it's kind of so popular that I didn't know if I wanted to cover it. But then when I started to research it, I started to find clarifications or details on things that were never given before.

And like the main common story, and that's my favorite thing is to find like the common story and then compare that to actually like some research and things that you can, you can confirm. And it, it made the mystery more of a mystery when I found more information. So, yeah, it's it's a good one.

There's it's sad, but it is definitely a story ripe with mystery that still needs people to look into to figure it out because I don't want to want to give away the ending, but some people suspect that there could be foul play involved or it would be nice to find answers to that. Yeah, I'll just jump in to the story here. So this takes place in 1945 and the family it's George and Jenny are the parents George cider and Jenny cider. And like I said, they they had ten kids.

They were Italian immigrants, and they lived in West Virginia in a town called Fayetteville, Georgia, and emigrated 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 emigrated to Italy, I think, when he was 13, if I remember that correctly, and he came over from Sardinia with his brother, his older brother, and as soon as they got through Ellis Island, his brother turned around.

It was like going back home. See you. And. Yeah. Yep. Nat, I'm out of here. Look at that. Statue of Liberty saw it. All right. Go back home. No one. No, there actually is a bit of a mystery, like a people that follow this story. There's never really a clarification of why the brother left to return home. And I'm not sure there's really much to read into that, but it's definitely one of the many strange things that happened in this story.

And George Sartor famously didn't talk much about why he left Sardinia, although if he's 13, I don't know if he had much of a choice in the matter. I'm sure it was a family thing. So in in the United States, in the West Virginia area, I did not know this, but apparently in the early 1900s, there was a it was there was a big group of Italian immigrants in West Virginia.

And looking into it a little bit, it's because a lot of the miners, they were considered union busters to hire Italians because they weren't part of unions. And they would come in and they would work cheap or work hard. So West Virginia had what was the number I found in my notes 1910 in 1910, there were 1700 Italian immigrants in West Virginia, which is a lot. So that's a lot in West Virginia, in my opinion. Yeah, probably even now in West Virginia, I realized, oh.

They are still yeah, there's there's definitely like a culture there that built up. Actually, this is interesting. West Virginian miners, Italian miners popularized pepperoni because they would bake it into bread to take it as their lunch. They would, like pack it away and take it for lunch down in the mines. And a big pepperoni fan. So, no, I know who to thank. This episode brought to you by Pepper. So when George and Jenny met, it was after George had. He had been working as a trucker.

And he decided, you know, living the American dream. As he got older and saved enough money. He started his own business. And there's some kind of misinformation out there about what kind of business 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 trucks that would go to the train, stop load on things onto his trucks, and then take the the materials from the train into town. So it wasn't necessarily coal right away.

So, yeah, he started his own trucking company after a while. This is how he met his wife. It was like on the road, stopped at a shop somewhere 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 kids have the same name. They hear Jenny twice and they just. Well, Jenny's also the mom's name, so that's radio.

You could 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 know if you've heard of this, Matt, but this thing called World War Two was going on. I mean, that ring. About 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'll recap it at the beginning of the book, do a little. Previously on. So, yes, World War Two is going on. Mussolini in Italy, bad dude. And a lot of the Italian immigrants in West Virginia area supported him, even though they were American now. And this caused some issues in town with George because George was an outspoken Mussolini critic. So he he did not have the best of friends in town that were sort of hardcore Mussolini fans at the time of the fire.

The fire that 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't like Mussolini and talked a lot about it. There's two popular stories on all the blogs and Reddit posts and stuff about this tale that happened before the fire that people 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 theory as he was trying to invent reasons to get hired as a handyman because he saw the Fuze box and was like, Oh, that's going to start a fire. Are you going to hire me to replace all that? All the wiring is going into the whole 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's still put him off. He's probably not a figure of speech, but I have COVID, so I'm just going to blame. Him like it. Know. Yeah. So George actually called 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.

Let me back up a little bit. The the house that they lived in and George built it, it was a two storey it also had a basement timber frame house, and it was not particularly large. The master bedroom was downstairs as well as like a living area, an office in an upstairs. And a lot of the stories you read, they call it the attic, but it's just upstairs. There were two rooms and those were the kids bedrooms. The boys had one room. The girls had the other.

The other popular story that happened as a precursor to the fire is a story of an insurance salesman that comes by and got into an argument with George. This story is one of the reasons why I wanted to see if I could research more because the story seems to be like it's local rumor and I did find more information about it. I am going to save the details for this story until the end of the episode, but we're going to do a scene this is our first scene. Did you get that? You 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 story of what people say happened. And a lot of the lines in this actually are true. But there are some details. Again, I'm going to save it for the end of the episode or towards the end of the episode. Do you want to read a George Solder or the insurance salesman? That I got to be insurance, dude. I think that's a good casting for you. All right.

So again, dramatization of something that people say happened before the fire. 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 insurance salesman, smiling back at him. Hello. Mr. Solder, I presume? Yes. And you are? George notices. The salesman has a nametag pinned on his left lapel. The name tag reads name with a blank space below it.

I sell insurance, Mr. Sardo. All kinds, you name it. And I provide best deals. And all the West Virginia need coverage for good trucks, bon cattle, chickens. We're fine, thank you. What about your house, Mr. Sada? Or your children? You have ten of them right now. How do you know? We're running a special right now on life insurance. Do 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 door and the salesman's foot suddenly blocks it. I'm trying to help. I'm not interested. Get off my property. Listen to me, Mr. Sarda, please leave. Your damn house is going up in smoke and your children will be destroyed. Go get back. Because of your remarks about Mussolini. George manages to kick the foot out of the door and slams it shut. The salesman walks away from the house, laughing. There we go. There we. Is that is that thing about the name?

An actual thing that is, you. Know, so the the reason I did that, it was just a little quirky, dorky thing I wrote in. So I'll tell the stories when you when you read blogs that, you know, the story pops up in blog post and articles and things going back again. I've been reading about this for like 15 years, and I think the first time I read about it was in some magazine.

And the story always is, is that an insurance salesman came by the house and got into an argument and he said those things too. Very specifically, the house is going up in smoke. Your children be destroyed. I'll be out of all of your remarks about Mussolini. All of that is true. But I love how it was always an insurance salesman and I was just like that. Something about this story doesn't ring true to me just because there's no there's no details around it.

It's not like Joe, the insurance salesman from down the block that always tried to get him. There 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 a local rumor that'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 facts. But a little cliffhanger, get away a little later in the episode, everybody. Yeah. All right.

So that was I think there was roughly 60 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 opened presents on Christmas Eve. My family always knew Christmas morning. Other people do Christmas Eve, or maybe a little combo of both. So they had opened up presents earlier in the day. They had had a big dinner, they had a fun day.

And two of the two oldest boys who 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 World War Two but was now living back home. They were both they were the two oldest. They were in their twenties. So the two oldest were asleep by ten, 1030, because they had worked hard with their their father all day. And the younger children kept asking Jenny, the mom, if they could stay up late Christmas Eve.

They're playing with toys. Also, I found out in a book, oh, I was going to say this up top and little, little, little side note What is it? Transcript Something a little notation for 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 source for information. Tonight I read two books and one that I came came across kind of late in my research. I'm so glad I did. And he has a great website with a lot of information.

A guy named Bob Bragg wrote a book whose 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 information for this case. And he actually mentioned the kids because I never read this in anything. I read about it.

The kids wanted to stay up late because they were listening to the radio because they were radio would do like Santa has been seen flying over the Cascade Mountain, you know, like those kind of things.

So they wanted to stay up and 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 that parents make kids do it in the night. It is so weird. Yeah. Why? So they got all their presents already. What do they care where Santas go and he's not going to come visit them.

He already gave them all their stuff. Don't ruin the magic of Christmas met people have. Have to understand it goes to everybody else's house. But why didn't he go to their house? Maybe there's a combo of like they opened some the night before and they like, I guess I saying this is actually a good. That is a good question. That is very good question.

So anyway, 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 ringing and she went downstairs to the phone. It was in the office and the ground floor. Excuse me. She didn't have to go downstairs. Master bedroom is downstairs, but she went into the office room to 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 sounded like there was a party going on. People are laughing in the background. And the woman, when she was told that, like you had the wrong number, she laughed in a very odd way. They just kind of made Jenny feel weird. She hung up the phone, and this is when Jenny noticed that the lights were still on downstairs, and she saw that her her daughter, Marianne, was asleep on the couch and all the other kids were there.

So they had forgotten to do their chores and close the curtains, turn off lights, all that kind of stuff. So Jenny goes back upstairs after she notices this, she tries to sleep and she assumes around one 130. Somewhere in there, she hears the sound of what she calls a rock hitting the roof and then kind of rolling off the roof. It's like so. And again, she was like, okay, that's weird. But there was a storm. There was a storm that had a lot of crazy winds that night.

So I think she kind of just assumed it's the storm went back to sleep. And a little while later, we're a little unsure of 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, she has her baby. Because I think it's Sylvia who'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 the baby out of the house and the I think what is missing from a lot of the things I've read about this until I researched it more, is how fast and crazy dramatic this fire was like. She smells the smoke, but the fire is already enveloping the entire house. There's a story that, like her, her oldest son's got up, and when they came downstairs, they were already burnt.

I like they were already, like, seared in their hair was on fire and stuff like this happened so and it's a timber frame house to so it just it went up super fast. It was also very windy outside, which also helps the fire spread. And John says in statements, I think the next day when he gives statements, he says that he woke his younger brothers up who were in the same bedroom with him, 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 kids are aren't outside. So in sort of the panic and the adrenaline and the, you know, the chaos of this event, George tries to go back inside too hot. He tries to break in through a window to get to the stairs, to get upstairs, to get the kids, like cuts his arm really terribly breaking up in the window. But it's too hot. So he decides to get his trucks. He is two of his hauling trucks sort of in the barn. They're on the property.

And he couldn't get his truck started. And because he was going to pull them up to the window and climb on top of the truck to get and get in the bedroom. So it's too late. They can't get the trucks. Oh, the one thing and I'm also forgetting to say that always comes up as a ladder. There's a ladder that George specifically said it's always in the same place. In the ladder was gone, didn't know where it was.

It's very odd, suffice to say, very quickly, they realize there's nothing they can do to save five of their children that are inside. And it's the five youngest except for the baby. It's Morris. He's 14. So, yes, their question. No, that's the weirdest part right now. Yeah. It's all the youngest kids because it's all the youngest. And they were the ones they were the ones that asked to stay up late, which I agree that that's something that occurs to me a lot in this story.

So it's the five kids that asked to stay up late. Yeah, because there's not a room for young kids in a room for old kids or for boys. Seven for girls. So there's a sense that they'd be up there. Exactly. So. Morris 14. Martha 12. Lewis or Lewis nine. Jenny, eight and Betty five. Yet there was nothing they could do. The house went up in smoke. So Marion, the daughter that was asleep on the couch that saved the baby, took the baby out.

She had run to a neighbor's house to 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 back then, this has come up in like three of the stories I've now done on the on the podcast and I haven't had a chance to talk about it. They're on party lines. Do you know what party lines are? Yeah, I think my mom had a party line when she was younger, which is crazy.

Yeah. So you you basically share the same phone line with other people that maybe your neighbors on the street or wherever. So literally where the line is, that is your phone line. So you could pick up the phone and find, you know, your neighbor Bob, next door is on line. Not on line, but on the phone. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. So anyway, the the operator didn't answer the phone, Mary, and runs to another neighbor's house and that neighbor also couldn't get a hold of the fire department.

There's a couple different stories here that happen. Some say that that neighbor then ran to the fire department.

Other stories say if 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, that like everybody's trying to get the fire department, the the fire chief was a guy named Jay Morris, and he was the only one that I can tell was actually at the fire department that night because it was primarily a volunteer fire department.

A lot of people are fighting in the war, so a lot of small town fire departments don'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 morning when the fire starts. They didn't get there until 8 a.m.. And there is a lot of issues with this. There's a lot of excuses by the chief gave a lot of different excuses why it took so long.

One is he 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 house apparently burnt down in about 30 minutes. So it did it. It happened very fast. But still, it's not an excuse to not go to the other one. Fine. That is best practice. It's just tired. It's just fire. The other thing is the way this volunteer fire department worked is one person's there.

If there's a call that comes in, that fire person calls another fireman and that fireman calls another fireman and that fireman calls another fireman they don't like. It's not one guy calling everybody like works at a line. And so when there's issues with the operator, when there's issues with weather and Christmas Eve, I just don't think he had enough people to go.

He also claimed he didn't know how to drive the truck or couldn't drive the truck, so he had to wait until someone showed up that could drive the truck. There's just a there's a lot of weird things 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 things a little bit later on.

So the yeah, the house burnt 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 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 rubble in the ash until 10 a.m..

So only about an hour, hour and a half, somewhere in there that they're actually searching 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 hour to an hour and a half. They said they searched it with a fine tooth comb. There is an article that will be in my show notes, a link to it.

That's from like 2003 with a woman who investigated this case and she interviewed like a fire marshal or 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 investigate the fire like all the ash and debris. We would do it in like three days. We wouldn't do it in an hour, an hour and a half year. So there's not a lot of time they did spend. However, even in the short amount 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. The fire marshal, the chief guy Morris, basically was like, there's there's nothing here. They've they burned the house, burned 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 that because yeah, that was a terrible fire and you had to get out of there instantaneously. And it's these these things happen. It's very savvy. These things happen. A county like could just I don't think I could trust a fire chief who can't drive his own truck. That's true. That is true. I don't know why you have a fire chief that never learned how to drive the truck 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, but this guy showed up the day, the day of the fire, and he basically convened it's freezing outside again. There was like a windstorm, an ice storm, and it's cold. It's Christmas. Now, at this point, people don't want to be there and there are people there.

So he convened kind of like, 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 and kind of do this quick. He convened a jury of people that were there to be like, All right, so no, nobody's but like they're down there like kids died, right? Fire, accident, blah, blah, blah. And everybody's like, yeah. And so they, they, they, they just kind of quickly were like, yeah, fire accident, dead kids.

And that's what everybody assumed it was. Fayetteville did issue death certificates. There was just to be a formal or correct. They actually did reconvene and 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. At first, they the parents were so devastated by this and I cannot imagine so I completely believe this wholeheartedly.

They were too upset to even go to the funerals like 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 bringing in dirt to like fill in and cover up the ash because he wanted to make it basically like almost like a grave site, like he wanted to make it a memorial situation and covered it with dirt and wanted to remember the kids.

And and also I think that was his way of grieving is just to like quickly kind of put something on top of like, I don't want to see the ash every day. 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, George and Jenny started to doubt that their kids died in the fire because of some very strange things. They, I guess over time they just started to notice even Matt just put his finger up like he's thinking.

And there are two predominant strange. I'm going to list out other ones, but there are two predominant strange things that stood out to them. The first one is that Jenny learned about Bones like this, intrigued her that there were no bones or anything that were found in the ash. 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 bare bones, you have to burn them at roughly 900 degrees Celsius or more for 2 hours. I should have written down what that is in Fahrenheit, because it's hard for my brain as an American to figure out. It's a lot, but it's a lot. It's very hot and it needs to burn for at least 2 hours at that temperature for like the bone to really crumble down. And the fire was too fast for that. It was too fast.

And it may not have even gotten that hot from some of the things that I've read now. The ash was still smoldering when the fire department showed up at eight. Like they still had to water down because it was still hot, but it still wouldn't have been that hot. Yeah. So there is some doubt that remains would have just gone poof.

The other thing is that other stuff was found that would have also burnt in those kind of temperatures like books and pieces of furniture and things like that did survive and were in the ashes. So you would expect stuff like that to be along with remains of bodies. Now, some say to this day there are some that said that George kept gas or oil in the basement because he would work on engines 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 work on engines and stuff in the basement. But that doesn't mean they they stored gas. Like that's not a good place to keep gas, 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 I think the gas. Out before you take that out or. Whatever.

And I think, you know, if they're working on engines in the basement, it's probably because of weather and stuff like you're not taking everything down there. It's just more comfortable at night if you're working on engine stuff. Yeah, I imagine you want it to be as light as you can to get it in the basement so you're not going to have a full tank full of gas. Yeah. Exactly.

So then the second kind of predominant strange thing besides the remains not being found is that John, their son who woke up his testimony that like first day, is that he kind of shook his siblings awake, but he later changed that and said he just called to them and he couldn't see them through the smoke. And that's an important distinction to make. And I'm actually going to read a quote of his that he gave in one of his interviews or testimonies or something.

So this is John Solder, who is the the oldest kid on in the house that that evening, mother and father went to bed about 10:30 p.m.. We went to sleep upstairs about 1115 or 11:30 p.m.. We had everything ready for Christmas. There was a set of Christmas lights in the window of Mother's bedroom. George Junior woke me up and I came down expecting to help put out the fire. When I got to the door, flames were already there and I couldn't get back.

Fire had swept from the place where the desk was to the front door. George had started trying to wake the others, but I guess they either didn't wake or didn't move fast enough. I think somebody set the fire so he's not saying anything there about like missing kids, but he also isn't saying that he saw them.

And he also says very specifically, I think somebody, set the fire, the the two connected but separate mysteries of this whole case are, was the fire set on purpose and were the five missing children dead or were they taken out of the house before the fire? And, yeah, there's a lot of details this some have kind of skipped over, but I will kind of I'll try to circle back to most of them here as we go into more of the details. But that's kind of the.

Oh, sorry. I think about the the chores not being done that you mentioned like yeah, there's that possibility. They were gone before after she before she had woken up that first time or whatever. Yeah. You're picking up on good details, Matt. I'm good details. That's why there's this one. Yeah, this one's tough. This one's tough. So let me let me also mention two other. This might literally be in the list I'm about to read in my notes, but just in case I forget and it's not run down.

The trucks wouldn't start the two trucks that he wanted to climb on top of. They wouldn't start. Also, after the fire, it is found that the phone line was cut from the house. They also the the investigation that happened way too quickly. They just assumed it was a it was because of the Fuze box. They thought it started in the office on the other side of the wall where this fuzes are with that one guy was like, Oh, it's going to start a fire one day. That's what assumed happened.

But there are some strange things outside of even the kid stuff. There's some strange things around the fire itself and the wires, there's there's just a lot of strange things. The family, even the descendants still to this day claim that they're there. Their siblings are nowadays. They're, you know, great uncles or whatever you would call them. They never died in that fire. The family is full.

Harding full heartedly believes that those kids survived, were kidnaped, were taken, something like that, and they even put up a a billboard on the property that was there for decades and decades and decades that had pictures of all the kids. And the billboard had had words and information about eye contact and was with with details or if you know who did it. And it also claimed a cover up by 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 divert it. So the kids that didn't down were the same five that asked to stay up late, which you've already you've already commented on. Magistrate Chief Moore. Again, these are a little out of order. I just sort of wrote down strange things as I was thinking about Chief Morris.

The fire fire chief claimed he didn't know how to drive the truck. He claimed the house was out of his jurisdiction at one point and basically kept making excuses on why it took so long to get there. Two sons of the solders saw a man watching their house and watching the kids before the fire, like weeks before the fire. Sometimes you read this as like a man in a van watching the kids. I could not confirm a van or not, but definitely. Have vans back then. That's that's a good question.

That's what makes me kind of doubt that. But anyway, it's a creepy man watching the family and watching the house that apparently some of the kids saw the man that came by looking for work. They claim the house is going to catch on fire with wires. The life insurance salesman that got into the arguments to the house is going to go up in smoke. There's the strange call at 1230. That was the wrong number. Yeah. So there's there's a couple of contradicting reports here.

Jenny, the mom said when she got up with the fire, she said the lights were not on anymore, which actually means maybe 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 fire with with faulty because of the wiring. So that that's interesting that they both have sort of contradictory things, although it is a highly dramatic, intense moment. So you're noticing different things.

The phone line was cut to the house, not burned, but cut. And that ties into something. I'm also going to like leave a cliffhanger that it ties in. There's something else I found out about this case and I'm super excited about that. I will share later on too. After the fire, Silvia, the youngest daughter, ended up finding the strange object in the yard, and George thought it was a napalm hand grenade saying something they call a pineapple.

So it's sort of like a hand grenade, but it's like, you know, it creates fire right away instead of explodes. During the fire, witnesses saw a man into the garage and steal things. While this was while the fire was going on, they Also think that he may be responsible for the ladder being moved. I was going to ask about the ladder if they ever found it. I guess that. Yeah, they did. They they actually did find it.

It was sort of like nearby, but it was down a ravine and that ties in to the cut phone line that I'll talk about later too. Yeah. Also too, like I forget what they're called, but it's basically like chains and hooks that lift engines and things that were in the garage. Those were stolen from the garage.

Authorities say the fire started on the ground floor because of wiring, but a witness that night who was driving by saw somebody throwing what he called balls of fire onto the house, which, if you remember, Jenny heard that like rock sound. And rolled off the roof. Right before the fire. This thing sounds like a pineapple falling off the roof. Exactly. So no one saw or heard the children trying to get out of the house that night? I actually don't think just my own personal opinions about it.

Yeah, that is weird. But also the house, as 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 me as being too odd. But a lot of people do mention that no bones, no remains found the kids here's one of the weirdest parts of this word got out about town that the family started to doubt that the kids died in the fire. 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. So. So George Heard that was like, what? All Yeah, yeah. And George was like, what? I would never we never heard any of that. It was very bewildering and confusing.

And the story is and I saw this in an interview with Bob Wragg, who wrote the book that I mentioned earlier, links, links and units, apparently, the fire marshal had to come by the house and just kind of like stuck a stick in the ground. It was like it was about there that I found it. There's the box and like left and didn't really talk to the family or just like if you were to find it, it's down there.

So they dug it up and there's sure enough there's a box and there was some sort of tissue and they sent it off to 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 anywhere near fire, heat or smoke. So yeah. Weird. I don't even understand the. I don't even the thinking of like I put it in a box and put it in the ground. But yeah, very strange.

I think it just found beef in the fridge and he's like, I'm going to save this for later and take the stuff when everybody's gone and just forgot. There's kind of two thoughts that I had when I first heard this. And one is that he's just trying to cover his ass for being like, Oh, they died in the fire. And like, just trying to be like, Oh, yes, yeah, I found something. And even like keeping it in the box is kind of like, yeah, just in case they need to, like, prove that we found it.

I'll keep it down there. It's that's one. Another way to put it is there's suspicion of like he knows the kids aren't down there, so he's trying to put evidence to grandmother. I feel like him actually having put something in the ground at all, it's like way more suspicious than. Yes, I don't know. It's just the weirdest thing I've ever heard he had. Yes, it is very, very, very strange.

So on top of all these strange things, when George and Jenny began to question if their five kids had died in the fire, it took a couple of years for their suspicion to grow, and they weren't without merit because there are witnesses that claim to have seen the children after the fire. I feel like I just set up a commercial break. Hey, everyone, I wanted to take a second to let you know about Audible. This is an advertisement.

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All you have to do is visit audible trail dot com slash strange again it's audible childcare com slash strange or see our show notes 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, in my own COVID tiredness, I'm just going to list a few of these. You can look these up. They are in various books and things online. Again, links in the show notes. Everybody.

A woman saw the children in a car that night going away from the house during the fire 50 miles away. Another woman saw the children the morning after the fire. She served them breakfast and she saw them get out of or get into a car with Florida license plates. 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 women and two men.

She claims they were all of Italian dissenter, Italian immigrants and she was trying to be nice and have fun with kids and she was trying to talk to the kids. And one of the men saw her trying to communicate with the children. And he got really aggressive and like pulled the kids away and pushed her away and 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 before. Anybody had a chance to talk to them more.

George Sartor, the father, he began doing kind of like his own amateur investigation every tip that came in and there were lots of them for many, many, many decades. He would follow. He would actually travel and go meet people and find a call. And he hired two different private investigators. At times, he investigated all of them. None of them ever led to any solid proof that the children were alive or any of the people that were claiming to be the Sutter children were not her children.

An example of this is he saw a picture of 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 trying to find the kid and talk to the parents. And it ended up not being them. The solders actually asked the FBI for help. In 1947, J. Edgar Hoover himself replied that it wasn't his jurisdiction. But if the local law enforcement asked for FBI's help, he will provide it.

Local law enforcement declined the help from the FBI, which is also kind of weird. The FBI actually did get involved with this case two years later, but it was more in the the like, oh, if it was kidnaping. And they went across state lines and it's FBI jurisdiction. So they looked into it, but they never found any evidence of anything. So it wasn't a very long investigation.

So one of the private investigators that was hired, a man named Tinsley, he found that a member of the coroner's jury that said the children died in the fire was the same man that threatened George Sutter at the doorway. The man that you played this evening, Matt. The insurance man was a coroner the whole time. Not a coroner. He was on the jury. That was like he was like part of the group that was like, yeah, there's the kids are dead.

He was like on the jury, they kind of have to have to sign off on. Oh, I see. That things of that nature that is all so crazy that C.C. Tinsley, the private investigator, I think he's the one that actually heard the rumor that the chief found this thing and put it in a box and buried in the ground. So I think he's the one that that uncovered that whole story in 1949, the family paid to excavate the ground where the fire was to look for remains again.

This time they actually spent, I think, two days still not long enough, according to the to the expert on how long it should take. Like it should be like a week or more to actually investigate this. But they did take one or two days, dug up the ground, and they found bones. They found very few, but it's pieces of vertebrae. And so they sent that off. And a pathologist named Oscar Hunter with the Smithsonian, I think he was the one with the Smithsonian. They could have my notes backwards there.

But anyway, a pathologist looked at these things and he claims they 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 this is that when that dirt was brought in to dump on top of the property, it was actually brought in from somewhere else. And that's kind of contaminated the scene. So there's bones are probably from that.

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 few and also a lot of other people that investigate situations like this have claimed if you find pieces of vertebrae, you would find other bones, too. The fact they didn't find them, I think it's from the dirt being brought in. But it's still interesting.

Yeah, they actually sent the bones back 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. So A It's where they like. I feel like, Oh, you can keep these bone. They're human bones, but you can have them back. I mean, they're, they're going to deal. With it, but 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 lends to any sort of investigating any of it, but I thought this was really interesting. In November 1949, there's a newspaper story in the Charleston Gazette that says that five people were about to be arrested in connection with the disappearance of the starter children. And a similar story appeared again four months later, but no one was ever arrested.

So I don't know if that was just writers listening to like a local gossip in a bar and be like, Yeah, that's a good story and like doing that kind of thing. So there was, there are some really interesting things the stories found over the years and I'll just do two of them. They weren't they, they received a letter from someone that actually claimed to be Morris, their son. 20 years later. And of course, George, following them all with tips, followed up and followed up.

And the guy ended up saying, no, I'm not, Morris, what are you talking about? 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 one you 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 Kentucky and there was a man on it who had the very same features as Louis, who was the youngest. I think it was the youngest boy that 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 as an adult like this, this guy who's probably around 30 and on the back of the picture, it says Louis Solder, I love brother Frankie Ill boys. 8901, three, two or 35. There was no we don't know what that means, but that's what's on the back. It's like a great rap group name at least. Yeah, maybe. Maybe it was someone trying to come up with a cover for the rap album of 19. And I. Sent it. I just. Think. The things that keep popping out to me is weird and it feels weird.

It's like, you know, I'm sure some of these people are still alive, like they're living children. But it seems weird that right afterwards the family buried the house, basically, and then maybe a couple of months, I think maybe you said after they started to doubt it, but then they waited two years to unburied it. It just they waited longer that to unburied 1949. Oh, that's right. It was four years later. But they started investigating before that. But it was 1949. Yeah. They like dug it up.

That seems like if 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, 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 decompose before you go and toss them back in the hole in the grounds.

I don't know what that really means. Oh, that's. That's devious. It just seems like maybe. Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. Yeah. I mean, look, there's. There's so many interesting things about it. This has all the right ingredients to be one of those. And there's a reason why people have been talking about this for 80 years now. You know, like there's a lot of weird things to it.

And even the picture they get of this kid, poor kid, an adult man, that is Louis Solder on the back, they follow up with that. They hired a private investigator to try to figure out who it was. They never heard from the private investigator again. They like sent him off to go find it and then he just never heard from them. That to me because I haven't read anything. Like they filed a missing persons report. They bugged him. They tried to found the private investigators

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's it's another little piece of spice to the story that just makes it all the more interesting and mysterious. Yeah. They never found out who that picture was, who sent it, anything like that. And again, they were getting a lot of, like, fake reports, too. So it may have been one of those things, but it's a very interesting thing.

The billboard they put up on their property that had information, they had a reward on it for $5,000. I saw pictures of it. That must have been years later. It was up to $10,000. It may have even gotten higher than that. I don't know. Now, remember, the main two questions about this case are does it get to die in the fire? And was it set intentionally? It'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. Hmm. What am I going to do now?

That's the end of the show, ladies and gentlemen. No, there's 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 things that are typically reported. But maybe before I do that, there is kind of like general theories that you see a lot. And maybe I'll just give those real quick because you may have comments or thoughts on it. Yeah, I want to hear this because I have my own theories now.

If the fire was set intentionally, there's people that believe that kids were kidnaped and there's people that say the kids went to an orphanage. Orphanage or different orphanage. There know that's the word. Orphanage in Italy. Some people say the kids grew up in Florida. Oh, I forgot to say that story. Jenny Sartor, the mom, she had relatives in Florida and Georgia at one point saw pictures of the kids of that family in Florida and thought they were hits.

So they actually went and had to go to this this the relatives and be like, you have my kids. And they're like, no, they're not your kids. They're our kids. So that was that had to be a very awkward this family situation. Jenny Sadr's brother was also one of the firemen that investigated and like came and like like actually look for remains, which I just found interesting I forgot to mention earlier. So anyway. Yes, the kids kidnaped sent to an orphanage in Italy. No evidence to that.

They are just people, local stock and same thing with like they lived in Florida. Some people think they died in the fire and they think whoever the thief was that took the chains and the hooks and stuff and potentially ladder that that thief set the fire and just did like as a distraction to steal things and ended up the kids the kids died other theories and this one's a big one because it ties into my theory.

But some people say the Mafia were involved and I actually had to research this because I was like, wait, mafia, West Virginia? So a lot of Italian immigrants, I know that's a stereotype, but it is a it is a real thing. There is a thing called the and maybe there's around, I don't know, don't come after me. But there was a group called the Familia Vagabonds, otherwise known as the Black Hand, which was a crime organization in West Virginia, primarily 1900 through 1930s some time.

But they probably, you know, there's still vestiges of it. In the mid 1940s, they typically operated with like brothels and alcohol and drugs, extortion, that kind of stuff. But they're around like there's a big part of that, that culture in the community. And I actually do think there's some validity to this, and that feeds 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 businessman or even him talking out against Mussolini. Remember, apparently a lot of people were offended by that. And you even have the threat against that as well. So, yeah, a lot of people think the Mafia was involved and then a lot of the theories around that 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 thoughts about how the kids fit into that. But yeah, the Mafia or a crime organization, I should say, is, is involved. Yeah. So those are those are kind of the the little floaty floaty out there theories you typically read a little bit about. So now it's my section, a fact or fiction. We can kind of blend with our own theories here. Good. My own personal theory.

I mean, it keeps changing. It maybe just changed again. Well, I. I think the kids died in the fire. But I think. Yeah, I think the fire was intentionally set. And the only thing that makes me doubt that is the thing that you're you're already thinking about, which is it's the five kids that stayed up late and no one really saw them after the fire. That's the one thing that I keep changing my mind on, and I'll probably change it again by the end of the night because it.

Doesn't even make sense if they did go to sleep. It just the odds of it actually being the youngest kids. Yeah. Doesn't make sense. Like logically, unless they were all in the one place. And some of them were in the bedroom with the two older brothers or would have, would have been. So that's what has now changed my mind again, because the theory I have, if they actually weren't in the house, is that the fire was set intentionally.

Whoever was getting ready to set it saw the 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 house or something along those lines 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 kid 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 somewhere to never, never. Maybe, maybe they did go to an orphanage in Italy because that's far enough away that they can't really talk to anybody local. The reason I think they died, the thing that I circle back around on again is no one ever came forward and the kids were old enough to remember where they came from, in my opinion.

So that's the that's the thing that makes me think they may have passed away. But I wanted to go back because I went to my little side topic there. The reason why I think they could have been killed in the fire, that's a better way to say it could have been killed in the fire. Is John Sadr's initial statement the morning of the fire, he said he shook his brothers to get them up, even though he kind of changed that later because that that was the first thing he said.

And I do think statements right after something are really important. When you look at true crime 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 established they didn't take enough time to do that. And then the whole sika contaminated.

When they dug it up again in 1949, they already brought in all this other shit that mixes in with it, so you can't even fully do a proper excavation at that point. It's probably not called an excavation, but I'm going to call it in. Jenny said that the the lights were out, which means it actually literally could have been a fire started by wiring. Also, Christmas lights are horrendously dangerous. Even still, they they were much worse back then.

So there could have been just 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 possibility that it could have been something. Yeah. Have you seen those videos? We're like, this is how fast your house light on fire with a Christmas tree. That's super. Yeah, you'll see that. Yes, it's intense. Just. It just goes crazy.

Oh, the other thing that kind of feeds into the kids may have perished in the house, even though no one heard them or necessarily saw them is there were comments from John that it was super smoky. There's comments from the family about how bad the fire was and it was burnt, like there were burns on some of these people for the rest of their lives. Like it, it just enveloped that house.

And George, the father, couldn't even go upstairs to check the bedroom before he left the house the first time because it was too so hot and smoky and fire and everything. That's why he tried to go out and go through the window, which he's still going to go through because it was still so hot. So all those things to me led to they might have they might have perished in the fire. And also, you think about going through 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 pushed and crushed, buried and stuck. So it's not going to necessarily be to find. However, my primary question going into the whole story, like I've already said, is the insurance salesman. And now I'm circling back to that that little cliff hanger I mentioned earlier.

It turns out the reality of the salesman situation is the thing that affected my personal beliefs about this story and it not being an accidental fire more than anything else. So it turns out the insurance salesman actually does have a name. His name was Mr. Long. I forget his. I should have written that his first name because I think it's like Lawler Long or Lassie Long. It's it's it's an alliteration, which I love. But I just wrote to Mr. Long in my notes.

He came by the house around 60 days before the fire. He was a well-known insurance salesman in the area, so the starters may have even known him. And he suggested that to George to take out life insurance on his kids. George declined. Then the salesman said that he should increase his homeowner's insurance and George declined. There was no argument. There was no threat. That is the story. The threat, though, was real. It just didn't happen from the insurance salesman.

It came from a man in a family called the Giannoulias and it's a it's there's actually a T in that name. I've heard it in a video called Junior Low, but it may be like Jenna to low, something like that. But I'm just going to call it Ginnie Logue is that's whatever people say in a video. So the Giannoulias family was a they were a prominent business family in West in this area of 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 companies still exist in that area. And the Giannoulias that their trucking company is the trucking company that George Sutter worked for before he left and started his own home. And they were close enough to when George bought the house, he actually either he either got a loan or the Giannoulias signed on to his bank loan or their associated with the purchase of the house.

They allowed him to buy the house. So the insurance policy for the home is for the Giannoulias, not for the senators. Hmm. So Mr. Janelle Lo finds out that George Sartor declined to increase the insurance for the House so that Giannoulias increased the insurance for the House. But right before the fire and it's there and they get the payout if the house some against it else so when the house burned down, the Giannoulias got the insurance payout.

I'm not saying this is like an insurance fraud thing. I think that is part of it, though, because the Giannoulias were pissed that George didn't get the insurance thing, so they were mad at him. And apparently Mr. Janela is the one 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. Giannoulias that said that to him.

I think because of the mafia tie and because Mr. Janela was literally, quote, quote unquote, called a local Italian leader, I think they were trying to send a message to George Sadr for reasons that we don't know about. There's more to this. One of the things that may be part of it is Jeni saw Ginnie Sartor, the wife. Her dad passed away recently and she had not signed the like closing of the estate and her siblings were trying to get her to sign. George let letter signed. We don't know why.

And the Giannoulias family was somehow involved with that because they were asked to convince Jenny Sadr to 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 about Italians, but there's there's a big pumpkin pie, pepperoni Thanksgiving next week with pepperoni on it. And and there's just all these little pieces and they're all connected to this giant low family. And I have no proof. Don't come after me, everybody.

But there's interesting little bits here that that just make me be like somebody was pissed at George Sutter. It could have been for all these different reasons and more. It could have been for other reasons that 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 person seeing like fire thrown on the house. I just I'm like, this was intentional. There is this was definitely intentional.

And I should stop there. I should stop rambling on about it because I want to get your thoughts now that you've heard some of these things. This is all good. Yeah, this is my theory, even though I mean, this is just based. I love your tone right now. That's all great. But you 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. Good work. So not like in any way to like offend actual people.

That went through a horrible thing. So it's the night of the fire and the kids who are wanted to wait up for Santa are downstairs. But the mom comes downstairs to tell them to whatever go to sleep because it's Christmas time. Maybe at this point, the this family that you have mentioned, 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. Yeah. About taking the kids maybe.

And she doesn't want him to. And there is some sort of fight that happens. One of the kids is killed in front of all the other kids and the mom as a as a like you do you want I can keep going and, 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 house or somewhere far away.

And then when they're as they're doing that, burying the house, the the you know, the house is lit on fire and there's a fire. All that stuff happens. She tells her brother not to investigate because, you know, the family will come back and take the rest of the kids because she knows that's going to happen.

So it gets all covered up and then the dad starts to have questions and she knows that if any more questions are asked, this the fact that these people are going to come after the rest of their kids. So she plants the dead liver in her yard telling her because they just call the guy. She tells her brother, who's also a fireman and says, tell him that you found body parts and you bury them in the yard for the family.

And because this police, this fire chief is so like full of himself, he says he's one who did it and he wants all the credit. It's just the mom, again, trying to make it. Her husband's stop investigating the fire. A couple more years go down. It keeps doing. It gets worse. She does the things she's never wanted to do, which is to go back to where this man made her bury the one child who was killed. She's digging it up. She's horrified.

She just grabbed the few pieces of the skeleton that's there that she can because she feels horrible. She goes back to the house and buries them in the thing and be like, This is enough. This should be enough to make him stop because 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 out and all that kind of stuff. And that's what I think I would assume would happen happened. Maybe she got to see the kids.

So my question then with that kind of theory is why spend decades claiming? All the kids are alive, putting up the billboard, following up on leads. Will you cut that part out of the movie so that no one. Oh, okay. In their. Yeah hey that's a good question. Yeah, that's. Good. Go. Yeah. Yeah.

There could have been a part of me has thought about this specifically with John one of the sons because he's the one that said he like shook his brother's awake and then later was like, oh, no, I couldn't see any of the smoke I just called you on. Part of me wonders if that John is just the 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 knows more than they are letting on and they kind of go along with the story of hope. The kids are alive because they're afraid of something. Yeah. That's when this feels like there's that kind of a thing to it, for sure. Well, it's funny that we say that because have to scroll down on my page. Let's see here where return to parent. There's a there's this. Oh yeah. Here we go.

So the the oldest daughter, I think it was Marion who was on the couch, she she has a quote. I'm just going to read this. I forget this is part of me being sick. Everybody, as I actually didn't write down what this quote is from, but it's from it's from something you can find and there will be links. Again, it is a column, that's for sure. Oh, it's a letter to the police. I did write it down.

So she was writing the police because they're trying to egg on the authorities over the years to investigate and they never do. So in one of her letters to the police, here's a quote. We asked the prosecuting attorney to call in some people who were considered suspects in the case. He said he could not question these people because they were personal friends of hits. At another time. He said today they burned your house, but tomorrow they may burn mine. And I have children too. Well. Boom.

There goes the dynamite. So, yeah, there's an even again, I'll link what I think is probably the best resource for this is Bob Bragg's book and his website and I'll link that, but he has copies, letters and testimonies and things like that that you can look up. And he has an interview that I found on his website that he actually talked like, yes, still to this day, there are people that will not talk about these things still to this day, 80 years later.

So I definitely think something was going on that I think has never come out. And all the stories and all the coverage of this, that somebody wanted something. It doesn't answer what happened to the children, but I definitely think foul play 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 lines. They could call anybody.

The cut phone line was cut by a guy named Lonnie Johnson, found his name here. He was also had a friend with him named normally reported as David Atkins. 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 Christmas Eve that night of the fire, and he was told about the fire at the Sadr's house. They go over there. I think he's just some stupid local guy that saw an opportunity.

He stole the chain, things like chain and the hook, the choices for the engines threw him over an embankment so that he could come later to get them. I also think he took the letter because that's where the letter was found. So I think he had the ladder to help get the hooks down through the ladder over. He cut the phone lines, in his words.

He kept the phone lines because he thought they were the power lines and thought the house would stop burning if he cut the power lines because he 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 in other testimony said he cut them with a knife. There's some weird shit with it, but I kind of believe him. He just seems kind of like a local idiot that saw an opportunity.

So we're going to have some fun here. The other Google. Oh, boy. Just did a thing on my microphone that made a fun sound. The thing I put in the email that I sent you. So this is is a a statement from Mr. Lonnie Johnson. Oh, nice. You want me to do it? Whatever you want. Yeah, I was. I thought you were going to do it, but I do it. 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 quarter mile south of George Saunders home U.S. route number one. We were having a party that night, my wife and I, Grover Atkins, who was staying there at my apartment with me at the time, Fanny Atkins, who and I believe but I'm not sure that alley Alan Janney was there, also a taxi cab driver whose name I don't remember from Bluefield, Virginia, West Virginia. Sometime that night, a couple of boys came to my apartment.

They wanted to use my telephone to call the fire department at Fayetteville, West Virginia, but they could not contact the department. They told us there at the time that George Saunders house is on fire and that was the first we'd heard of it. We immediately started for the fire and my taxicab, my wife and I and Grover Adkins, Fanny Adkins, Ali Janney and the cab driver. When we arrived at the fire, all of us tried to help in any way we could.

We pushed his truck out of the way and moved several things out of the way. But the building was too far gone for us to do anything about it. While we were moving some of the stuff out of the way, I got a set of chicken blocks in the garage building and brought them up to the road and threw them over an embankment. About a month after the fire, George Sanders got a warrant for me for stealing the chain blocks. I entered a plea of guilty and 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 I never had any feelings toward him one way or the other. Neither did my wife. Grover Atkins, Fannie Mae. Oregonian or the taxi cab driver who I don't remember the name of. Yeah. So, sir, Lonnie Johnson was the guy that took all that stuff. It was not some Mafioso, it was not some mad insurance salesman, it was not some alien. He was a local guy that saw an opportunity. There is one more thing.

I mean, there's so many details that I am not going to be able to cover, but one that I actually do think is important that I that I also forgot about because it feeds into people thinking of foul play. The Two trucks wouldn't start that night because they wanted to move them up by the house to climb into the window. And a lot of people, when you read this again on blogs and articles and read it Facebook post, people are like, oh, so someone cut cut the fuel lines to the trucks.

And they took the ladder and they and I'm always like, really you think somebody set fire to a house? And they thought ahead of like, oh, the children would be stuck upstairs, so they're going to need a ladder to move the ladder. Then they're going to then they're going to try to climb on top of the truck. So let's the trucks like that thinking never made sense to me. And sure enough, the latter being moved is actually Lonnie Johnson. And also the trucks.

There's a quote, George Sadr, I think the day after when he's first giving statements to the fire chief and everything where he says he flooded the truck because the adrenaline's pumping, you're trying to do things super fast or excite you. You know, you're trying to save your children. He flooded the truck. And then, John, I think try the next one. I think John did the same thing. So they actually have statements from the families as they flooded the truck. So there was no cutting.

There was no some crazy ninja assassin that came in and kept sealed. Everything. Yeah. That being said, my personal theory is I still think it was it was foul play. I think somebody set that house on fire for 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 up in Italy or Florida somewhere they should. The children that are left should take those DNA 23 and me test to see if anything pops up.

Yeah. You know, I wonder, because there are so many relatives that are still around, I bet you of them have done 23 and May. I'd be curious. Yeah. I'm not sure if we would have connection, I guess, but yeah. Yeah. It's a big enough case that I think we would have. But also who's looking at that though? Yeah, it may not have been connected because we may not know yet. That's true.

So there is if anybody knows a way to actually check those things, email a study of stranger danger, we'll make it happen. If we can break this case open, that would be amazing. If we could find some some Sadr 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 mystery with a lot of followers. But that is it. Anything else you want to add? Any other theories? And I think you're is I like what you're thinking.

I like 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, look, that was. It's because the way I feel right now, the way my brain is, 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 until luckily I did highlight a few things like, oh yeah, Lonnie Johnson. But it's it was really hard to follow my notes this evening.

It seemed normal from my person. Okay, good. This is I'm just always going to have blame covered from now on. And that way I just lower expectations and knock it out of the park. But no, this was my voice held up way better than I thought. But looking at my notes is definitely different. Have you had COVID? No, I haven't had yet. 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 me and I still can't kick it.

And I think the last three days it is I, I cannot. Well, 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 ramble on about the start of children. Thank you for rambling. Yeah. So you already mentioned glass brain and how 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, correct? Right now we got Squirrel on Toby, another film that. You're right. Yeah, that I'm in. I should always remember to say that. Cool. We did it. Well, thank you again. Matt and I will talk to you soon. Sounds good. See you around. Cue Mets music now. Sounds so good. That does it for tonight's show. Thank you all for listening to The Smarter Children episode.

If you're enjoying the content on this podcast, please subscribe, rate and review. You can also support us by visiting our Patreon page, which you can find through our website a study of strange rt.com. We have additional exclusive content on there that was going to be more episodes on Patriot in the coming weeks. Thanks to Matt Glass. Check out his work. Follow us on Instagram at a study of Strange. And lastly, I should mention just some scheduling stuff because it's the holiday season.

It is Thanksgiving. This week and this episode comes out happy Thanksgiving because of the the holidays and me being sick and my whole family being sick. Honestly, I may have to space out a few of the the upcoming episodes, so I'm not sure when our next episode will be out. I do believe I will have one ready next week, but just be aware that I may have to space out some of these just because of all the stuff going on. But I'm going to try to keep keep some stuff coming at you.

I do have a couple of serial killer episodes coming up next. So if you enjoy those kind of stories like I do, check them out. Make sure to follow us. Lastly, I am collecting UFO stories, personal UFO stories for a an episode TBD. So email, if you've ever seen any unidentified flying object in the sky, I want to hear about it. Email me a study of strange at dinner dot com. Thank you and good night.