Thinking Sideways: The Sodder Children

another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve as always, of course, joined by Devon, Joe and once again, actually I guess this week we are what is This is the third week of Thinking Sideways. Most wanted something like that, so this is the third most second runner up. However, Devon calls it it's the third most requesting episode. Yeah, and it's this is actually a big one that's been actually got a big, huge write up in Smithsonian magazine. It does, it does well. We're gonna talk about is

the Solder children. Yeah, mysterious missing Sodder children. Yes, um, and I gotta I gotta tell you right from the outside, I never really thought there was a whole lot to this story. I think that's one of the reasons that I was never inclined to do it. But once you get into it, you find some details. But I think part of my problem with the story is it's got a lot of what we here in this room would

call shoddy retellings or very edited retellings for sensation. And unfortunately, the one of the protagonists of the father in this case was I think Sicilian, and so a lot of people automatically assumed the mafia connection. Yeah, there's a very bunch of stuff that went on, and so it's kind of, in my mind, inflated the story. And because of that, anybody needs to listen to the show for amount of time knows that when I get a story like this, I love to tell the fantastic version and then pull

in reality after the fact. But I want to do that today. I kind of instead want to take the track of here's what happened. These are the bits that you're gonna get told, and then we're going to bring in reality as we stepped through each piece of the story. We're just gonna leave out this stuff that is obviously not true. Well, yeah, when there's there are going to be things that are gonna get left out in this telling because I cannot in any way, shape or form

validated can't. I can't say, well that really happened, because I don't know when that was introduced to the story. Was that there in the beginning or not? So what about the UFOs? I I have to leave those out, but I do want to tell folks who are really really interested in the story, you've done a lot of reading on it, there are going to be parts that aren't in there, and that's because I've left them out

because I can't prove that they actually have. Yeah, we do that a lot, and we don't usually add this disclaimer, but I think they on some of the feedback that we've been getting, we're going to start letting people know when we're doing that, because it's it's not as you know, but we've seen it and we just don't think it

is it really worthwhile to add it to the story. Well, when you see it written exactly the same every time over the entire course of the Internet, it makes me start to question if it wasn't just a continual copy paste, especially when it happens to also be missing from like the more reputable sources. But it's in all of the like black background, white text. You starts to be a kind of an indicator. Yeah, okay, started in wonder some

of these unsolved mystery pages are just bots. When they're not even people go on grab that grab the text from another page's I think, so all right, Well, I think we've had you know, enough of a disclamer. Probably get into the story yet. Okay. Our story begins on Christmas Eve in Fayetteville, West Virginia. We are at the home of George and Jeanie Sauder, who have ten children, huge family of kids. Nine of the kids were home, the tenth was away in the army. It's Christmas Eve.

Mom and dad have let some of the kids open some presents. Those kids say, hey, can we stay up late and play with some presents? And they say, well, yeah, that's fine, as long as you block up and shut everything down tonight before you go to bed. Yeah, totally. It's Christmas Eve? Why not? Yeah? Man? About midnight, the phone rings and missus Sauder gets up and answers it,

and somebody said, is your refrigerator running? No? No, they asked for somebody that didn't live at the house, and so she of course said, no, you got the wrong number. Person said okay and hung up. That's creepy and mysterious and when she when she was done on the phone, she realized that the kids, being kids, hadn't done what they were supposed to. The lights were on and the door was unlocked, and her old one of her daughters, Marian, was asleep on the couch. She goes, shuts everything down,

locks it up, goes to bed, she says. She remembers as she was in bed falling asleep again, she heard something hit the roof or sounded like it hit the roof and rolled off, and then she would sleep, yeah somewhere. Sorry, I guess, I just I'm not totally sure why the door would have been unlocked anyway, Like, why wouldn't she just say, okay, make sure to turn. It's not like the kids were playing outside with their toys, just locked the door. When you put up as your as a parent,

that's that's a good point. But these are back in old times. I used to live in a small town and when I was a kid, and we didn't lock our door, we would go away. Yeah, I mean, so, I guess since she asked them to lock the door and it later, why did she lock it? It might have been a key lock situation. I grew up in a house where the only way to lock the doors

from inside or out was with a skeleton key. The house was sold, so you couldn't act the lock it from the inside without the key, so it might not have been just so easy to shut the door and just flip locks around one thirty in the morning, ballpark is And by the way, their bedroom, I believe it was on the ground floor of the house, right, the bedroom was the parents bedroom was on the ground floor. There was a entire story above them. We don't know, I don't know that we'll we'll get into some of

the spatial weirdness of this house. Yeah, I'm just wondering because of the thing that we a little bit glassed over that she heard something fall on the roof, so if she were a few stories down. So yeah, let's let's let me describe the house briefly as best as I can tell. Okay, there's a lot of questions in this story, and one of them is how is this

house laid out? Yeah, because because there's my photoswings. But mom and dad Mr and Mrs Solder their bedroom is on the ground floor, and apparently they also had a home office in the house that was on the ground floor. On floor, and then the children were upstairs. And what I don't know is if upstairs was a true second story or or a story and a half house, or story and a half where it was just the attic, and you know that's where the because all the kids

slept upstairs in two rooms. So I don't know where the staircases in the house. I don't know where anything in the house is related, because we never get any description of the home. So I don't know exactly how she would have heard if it is a true two story house, I'm not quite sure how she heard something hit and I'm using air quotes here and rolled down the roof. I don't know answer. It could have been something big and loud enough that it would care you

would hear it throughout the house. Could have been but you would think that people upstairs would have heard it. Do you think that also could have been a toy, It could have been a lot, It could have been something in the second story or in the attic space. Yeah, I don't chunk of ice. It is Christmas and it is freezing cold, and it was it was because we're in West Virginia, freaking gold there in the winter. Well, and sometimes squirrels will landing here with the big thump

and just sort of scamper off. Not at midnight, though, squirrels don't do that. Squirrels hibernate. Joe, Yes, but we're way off anyway, Stop talking about squirrels. So about one thirty in the morning, she wakes up, missus Sauer wakes up again and realizes that their smoke and the house is on fire. And as you briefly mentioned earlier, I think it was Joe actually talked about there was a home office, and she figured out that there was a fire and it was all the smoke was coming from

the home office. Husband and wife wake up, scream at the kids to get out, and they run outside. Totally makes sense, let's get out of a burning building in retrospect, and maybe they should have gone upstairs and grab the kids. Well, actually I don't agree with that because here's here's the

thing is that the kids that were upstairs. I told you Marian was on the couch, she fall asleep downstairs, and then mom and dad were downstairs and the youngest, the three year old child, was also on the ground floor. The others were upstairs, and the ones that were upstairs there was John he's twenty three, George Jr. Sixteen. We have Marian who was downstairs. She was seventeen. I'll just give everybody's ages here because it kind of is important

because you see the range of the kids. Uh. Sylvia was the little one, the three year old. She was the one that sleeping downstairs as well. So the people who got out were John, George Jr. Marian, Sylvia, and then Mr and Mrs Saulder. They got out of the house. The rest of the children, we've got Maurice he who was fourteen, Martha twelve, Lewis ten, Genie eight, and Betty six didn't get out of the house. John the oldest son, the twenty three year old. He said that he shook

the other kids awake before he left. I think John and George were in a separate room, right, there are five kids in one room and then on a George in the other room. I think so. I'm not sure though, again, no descriptions are really good of who was where in that upper story I do. I have read that it was two rooms, but I'm not really positive who was in what. But it does sound like the younger children

were in the room together. The five young ones, because it would make more sense if you'd be all boys, all the boys in one room and all the girls in the other. You know, maybe I don't you know, they may not have had that that luxury rooms. It's a lot of boys of creaming in one room. Though. Yeah, that's true. Boys. You're boys are terrible. Yeah, yeah, so terrible, pun Joe. Okay, So houses on fire, several kids get out,

five of them are not out. Mr Sawder tries to get back into the house, but he can't because the fire is so intense. He runs through the rain barrel to get water to throw on the fire. But we already talked about it's Christmas Eve. It's once or an in the morning. The bucket is fro or the barrel is frozen solid. Can't do anything there. He runs to get his ladder from where he normally keeps it so he can get to the second the window where the

kid's room is at. His ladder is missing, runs to his truck to start one of his trucks because he's got a freight business. He hall's freight and he halds coal. Trucks won't start, which is mysterious because his plan was to back up to the house and then get on the top of the truck. Sabotage. Sabotage obviously, but yeah, they wouldn't start Marian to try and get the fire department. She runs to a neighbor's house. And this ferries from

the version you read. But she either couldn't get ahold of the operator, because this is back in the day when you didn't dial a number, you called the operator, who then connected you either couldn't get ahold of the operator, or did get ahold of the operator and was connected to the chief of the volunteer fire department. The other

version is she couldn't get through. Somebody else saw the fire tried to call the operator, also couldn't get through, and then that person drove to either the operator's house or the chief's house, not sure which. And that's all they had was a volunteer volunteer fire departments all they had. Yeah, they would seem like they probably drove to the chief's house. Why bothered with the operator, I don't know. Yeah, it's weird.

I don't know. Here's something that everybody wigs out about is when the fire department showed up eight o'clock in the morning. It does seem like a long time. Yeah, it does unless you understand how the fire department worked, its volunteer fire department, so they would just stand out a group tax i assume. Of course, they used what was called the phone tree system. So person one calls person to and says, hey, there's a fire, get to the station. Okay, I will. Person one hangs up, goes

to the station. Person to calls person three, Hey there's a fire, Get to the station, and the process repeats, and you it's the tree to get ahold of everybody. In my experience that it had always been more like we used phone trees when I was in elementary, Should you call two people? That's probably more like what he probably was. I'm just keeping it as simple as possible here, because it took me a while to remember what a

phone tree was, because it's such an old concept. You can't just send out a mass email no, no, do you know what they don't miss is the mass text messages anyway, So people wig out about this, But that's the system they had. They didn't have a a siren at the firehouse, so they couldn't just ring that and get everybody's attention. One of the things that you will see when you come across this story, and this is about the fire, is that it lasted for about forty

five minutes, which is wrong. Really, it's absolutely wrong. You know, a lot of house fires do when I last that long, but that's when the fire department shows up and puts it out. The house burned for days. Forty five minutes to an hour is the length of time the house was on fire before the roof collapsed. The roof collapsed, the house continued to burn. It was so hot that when the fire department showed up they still had to hose it down to get in. So this is six

and a half hours of fire. So this is all those things that you read that is incorrect. Yeah, by the time they got there, it was probably just mostly smoldering ashes and sitting in the basement. Well, I see, that's the thing is I I don't know that because if it is a two story house, and that's that's a good thing to bring up as the basement. But if it's a two story house, that's a lot of

material and that's all your possessions. Joe talks about the basement, which is important here because the house had a basement. We don't know how big. I'm guessing it's about a five feet to eight feet deep basements and normal size basement, but we don't know that. But there's a reason I say that, and you know, come up shortly. Wouldn't be like a normal size No, but this is you know, this is the forties and you just dug a basement. There wasn't a standard for how deep. Yeah, it would

be to be like a cross base, a large space. Yes, you couldn't stand up I mean deep. If you have a five ft deep basement, that could be below grade and then you got like a foot and let me a couple of feet above. That's about standards. Yeah, that that could absolutely be it. Well, the obviously everything that was on fire fell into the basement and everything was contained and it would have kept burning. So that's where all that fire is and that's what they where they

would have had to put everything out. Something I came across and I hadn't really thought about, and you never really see list in this story, is that homes in that area at that time we're heated with coal. Yeah, which means that there's a coal shoot, which means there's piles of coal sitting in the basement to heat the home with which when house catch on fire, it's going to also catch all that coal on fire. And didn't

Mr run a cold business. He hauled coal. So that's another that's another bit to say, well they probably he did with living in coal country Western exactly my house. My house is ninety years old. Originally it had a coal burning furnace in it, and we're not even living in coal country. Yeah, so yeah, I'm so here's something there that I that I want to bring up about that is if people don't realize is that coal can burn extremely hot in two thousand degrees fahrenheit, depending on

the conditions, type of coal, how much airflow. There's a lot of things that it can influence that temperature. But it's gonna burn easily a thousand degrees. That's pretty damn hot. Keep that in mind. Now we get back to the fire department. They arrive, they hosed the place down, they start combing through the scene. It's a bunch of volunteer firefighters. They don't know how to look for bodies. And let's be honest, at this point, everybody's expecting to find skeletal remains.

Because it's been hours and hours and hours of the houses on fire, they expect to probably find full intact bodies, but full attack skeletons. Yes, they don't know what they're doing, and they're combing through. In their search, which according to the lore, was only about two hours long, they a identified the source of the fire, which was a faulty

fuse box, and be they found no remains. They then after two hours, because it was Christmas morning, told Mr Sowder, Listen, we're gonna go home and we're gonna come back and we will finish the search. Just give us some time. Yeah, because the fact of the matter is is like, you know, what's the point of spoiling your Christmas? When there's five dead bodies in there? They're not going to go anywhere, sadly, brutally. That's the truth that really is. That's that's a harsh

way to put it, but it's it's absolutely right. But here's a problem that's also not correct in terms of the report that they found nothing. Oh, there's reports that they did find things. The volunteer firefighters UM, along with a priest who was there and Mrs Sauder's brother, one of her brothers all said that they saw remains in the basement. Soe bone and we're talking, we're talking like in the basement, as in the house has collapsed into

the basement. Not correct, Okay, it's clarify. Everything burns, everything's burned and fallen in and it's a hole in the ground that's holding all of that burned stuff. Okay, cool. I just wanted to clarify because when I first was reading through this and they're seeing the term in the basement, I was like, what, that doesn't make sense. That would they be in the basement. Okay, yep. So the thing is though they didn't tell Mr. And Mrs Suder what

they had seen. Okay, they still have to finish with their their their search, but they don't say anything because again, it's Christmas morning and you've just lost five children. You don't say, hey, you saw a couple of bones and they're just so you know, but hey, like, well, yeah, they're totally totally barbecued. Man. So yeah, the terrible thing to say, and that's not what they were going to do,

and which I get. Yeah, you want to say Merry Christmas more, you want to like, you know, suck them up. Which I don't know how you would in the situation. They saw remains like of what I don't ask, don't I mean, was it We don't know, but it's got to be skeletal remains. After that much time, there would

be very little flesh left. I saw some claims that they found some internal organs, which that's later on, Yeah, which I find hard to believe because I mean, because after all that time and it was really high temperatures, you would think all that stuff would be just charred, just charred ashes, one of the last bits of the human body aside from bones, flesh, just to flesh that's left over in the fire, believe it or not, as you're intestines because they're so dense and full of moisture

and waste, so they don't burn as fast as everything else. But those would be one of the few things that would be left before then it's just bone and charred bone. Charred bone blends in with the rest of the charred stuff. Yes, okay, that is absolutely true. Mr Sadder, being a grieving father, several days later, decides against the advice of everybody because, by the way, the volunteer fire Department hadn't had a chance to come back. Yet it's the holidays. They got

things to do. I guess they don't come back. Yet. He decides that he's going to make the what remains of the house and memorial to his children, and he fills in the basement with dirt, five vertical feet of dirt the bulldozer and packs it in there, and then they plant flowers on top. Now, I yet, planting flowers on top that is totally a memorial thing. To get

the bulldozing bit is weird to me. But one of the things that I never find when you read about the fact that he filled in the sight, you never hear if they cleaned out the basement first. We don't know did did somebody come along and pull out all the stuff? Did he just say to hell with it

and bury it all? I think, yeah, I kind of get the feeling that they left all the stuff in there, and he pushed the dirt in on top because it's his he was sure at that point that his kids remains were still in there, and I'm going to fill it in. I absolutely feel the same way. But we don't how anything says one way or the other. And however horrible this is are. Is there a theory that he was trying to cover something up. No, actually, that's never in any of the theories. It's never that mom

and dad are directly responsible. Okay, I don't never. I don't think that if he had actually, say, murdered his kids and was trying to cover it up, I don't think it would have called so much attention to the case, because they really they kept this case alive for sure. I just wanted to make sure that wasn't going to come up. So everybody believes that this was just the really ill fated actions of a grieving father, the filling in, yes,

as a lot of grieving parents will do. Of course, Mr ms Sutter tried to go on with their lives, but eventually, because they don't get all the details of the case, they start to disbelieve what they're told, to the point that they don't believe that their children were actually in the fire, which I guess is weird. It's kind of a normal to have accepted it in the beginning.

He did. But there's a lot of parents who child commits suicide and they believe at first that it was suicide, and then suddenly year two years later they staunchly believe that their child was murdered and that it's to cover up of some kind some kind of diabolical scheme. It's a lot easier to believe that, oh helly something you would rather believe. Yeah, they want to believe they are

and and that's exactly what happened. I think the thing that really planted the seed for Mr. Sawder was, uh, you know, not too long after, he sees a picture in the newspaper of a girl who he's pretty sure is one of his children, and he goes to try and see her. She's in New York by the way. There in West Virginia, no shocker. The child's parents tell him to buzz off, get away from us, crazy man. But he's sure at that point that his kids, that his kids didn't actually die, and they continue to to

follow that. They eventually get the case into the destruction of their home and potential murder or theft, abduction, kidnapping, thank you of their children reopened. It was reopened, it was reinvestigated. Nothing ever comes of it of an actually the site of the home was excavated. It was in There's a pathologist by the name of Oscar Hunter. He

excavated the site. By his own admission, though he didn't do what's called screening, and if you don't know what that is, it's literally running the dirt that you dig up across the screen to get the large particulate out of it. He didn't do larger. He didn't do that because he was expecting to find full solid bone, so he didn't. He didn't find it. Why was he expecting that? Because he expected to be the bodies of five children in a house that had burned, and that their bones

would not have broken down. So there was no no like briefing on the case of like, hey, this house burned for like a million hours, and I don't I don't know why he thought that, but I will be like, if he was qualified to look for it, he should have also known. But I will bring up the fact that it's kind of common knowledge how cremation works. I think, you know, I don't know if at the time it was, but he's a pathologist, so I would think he would

understand this. And we'll talk about this now. Is that if you don't know how cremation works, they put a body in a furnace for about two hours, they burn all of the flesh. The bones, however, don't burn entirely and they have to be ground up, so it's not as if we just completely turned to ash. I think he was expecting a situation like that because the process of cremation it takes about an hour two. Yeah, but that's it, and then there's just solid bone left. But

the thing about it is is these kids. First of all, they were small, lighter skeletons and full on adult skeletons absolutely, and they were in the middle of the house that collapsed on top of them, so they would have been all crunched up. And then a bunch of volunteer firefighters came along trooped through the site while they hosted down number one with high pressure hose which would have a

polarizing effect. And then number two they trooped through the site, stopping on the bones, and then five of dirt were poured on top of the thing. I mean, it just it just seems silly that he would have expected in any way to have found full bones there. I I personally, I think that at the time there was a certain professional arrogance in a lot of fields, and I think that he might have suffered from that Okay, so, of course no bones are discovered when this guy excavates the site. Actually,

that's a lie. Two sets of bones were found, some vertebrae and the hand of a boy. Well okay, so except that those bones were never in a fire, so they didn't actually belong to any of the children. So they were introduced as part of the fielder. Either they were introduced as part of the fielder or there was a grave that was opened up not too far away, and by opened up, I mean robbed, and people think that somebody might have dug it up and buried the

bones so that the family had something to find. When this guy showed up to then give them some sort of closure, I was going to say, it's it's weird to me that unidentified boy's hand and vertebrae showed up in this and everyone was like, well, it wasn't the kids we were looking for, so it doesn't matter who it belonged to. We don't care where the hand of a boy showed up. What you put it on a p B on a kid that's missing some vertebrae in

a hand. Yeah, I don't know why they didn't do that. No, I mean, it's you know that's I guess that I would. I would guess it had to have come from that that great then, or else there would have been a huge outcry, Yes, where did this come from? Because where he got the fieldert? Like, if you just managed to happen to get some remains of that's a huge problem. Yeah, it really is. It is entirely possible, though, that that he did just get it along with his fieldert. I

mean I found bones, and I just randomly digging. I found bones, like human bones. I don't know what they were, human or animal bones. Probably animal bones probably well, yeah, probably carried by dogs. Yeah, probably. I mean it's like, not like you can call at the police department every time he's stumped across the bone, you know, oh man, I mean you could, but eventually they would get they would get a little angry with you. So we're gonna say it was probably from the open up grave, probably

from the opening pie. Yes, now, I said that we thought that they think that somebody put that there for the family to find. Wasn't the only thing that was put on the site for the family to find. People were really trying to help the family along. Yeah. The police chief of the volunteer fire department. Yeah, not the Plice chief. The fire chief me no more better English.

The family hired a private investigator, actually several of them, and one of them was talking to the chief, and the chief let it slip that he had found internal organs at the site and had buried them in a box on the site. After the fact. Is that air quotes let a slip. Yes, I think that that's air quotes. Let it slip. Well, of course Mr Solder wants to know the p I and he get the chief to take him to the site show where he buried it.

They dig up this box which they immediately run to the corner who immediately opens it up and says, oh, yeah, this is a beef liver and it's never been through a fire, and it's kind of fresh, and this is quite This is at least a year later. I'm not sure that I believe any of this, because, I mean, the chief can't be that dumb as to think that as to think that and he could have just put it through a fire and then buried it. I you know what, I I don't know, man. That's this is

one of those things in this story. And there's a number of them that we've already talked about. I just don't know where that came from. I can tell you that this part that we just talked about has spurred a lot of conspiracy theories and put the chief at the heart of that, along with some other people. I don't we're not going to go into that particular theory, but it's a whole theory. Is like you know, I mean, he's from Cis, Mr Solders from Sicily, so there's a

mob connection. Of course, that the latter was missing. The truck wouldn't start, just like the parents of the child who commits suicide. Suddenly things don't add up, so it's got to be a plot. Yes. The investigation by the police eventually was closed and continued to have the same ruling that it was an accidental fire and that the children died in the fire. Like the cops. Never nobody

ever changed the ruling. They humored the family and they looked into it again, but they closed it and then they refused to look at it any further, despite the objections of the family. They had made their decision. And that also is something that fuels people to say, oh my gosh, there's something going on. On. They ignored it on purpose, which I personally don't believe. There were some things that the solders did that really helped keep the

story alive. The billboard, the billboard is exactly what I was going. If you looked at this case on the THEWS, the billboard is no longer there. No, No, it's not twenty year or something like that. Yeah, it was a billboard and it was only a couple of feet off the ground. It wasn't you know. The giant tall women see on the side of the freeway had the pictures of their five children who had disappeared in before the fire, not what I said, disappeared before the fire, because that's

the way the family sees it. And the story asking for anyone to come forward with information, and several people did. Shocking, shocking and always I'm gonna give you a couple of them. And these again, these are ones that you'll see in the lower and I just don't get why they're hung on too with so strongly, because the first one I want to talk about is woman named Ida crutch Field.

Ida says she saw the children hung the night of the fire, and that they were at her hotel being supervised by two Italian males at this hotel where she was staying at it. She worked at the hotel she worked there. Um, as we talked, as Joe's talked about, you know, the family was Italian. They were actually immigrants. I think Mrs Sauder came over when she was three. Mr Sawder came over when he was like fourteen or fifteen, something like that. But they were they were natively from

their native Italians. Um. But anyway, back to Ida. What she says is that the children, she tried to talk to them, the adults gave her the stink eye. They then brusquely talked to the children, who then clammed up and wouldn't talk to her anymore. They talked to the kids in Italian, and they talked to the kids in Italian. Didder children speak Italian? I don't know. You know, who else I don't know spoke Italian or even knew what Italian sounded like? Yes, how did I even know that? Well?

Actually it's possible, because I I sure that Fatville actually has a pretty decent sized Italian immigrant population, or did at that time. I'll give you that. Yeah, I've heard this, But here's here's some other problems with her with Ida. She never saw the pictures of the daughter children until two years after the fire. She then waited another five years to come forward with her story, for a total of seven years from the date of the fire. Yeah,

that does sort of reduce your credibility. Yeah, I think, to be nice, I'm going to say that she was trying to help and really just wanted to be involved. You want because actually, yeah, if you showed me pictures of five children and I had seen them five years before, I doubt that I would remember them exactly. Yeah. Did Sorry, I don't know if you know the answer. Did Mr Mr and Mrs Sauder? Did they come over with their families like their parents brought them over? Right? They must have.

Mrs Sauder came over with her family. She was much too young come on her own. Mr. Sauder came over with his older brother who basically hit American soil, turned around and went whole. So he was on his own. That I'm just because, you know, my grandfather came over and they spoke Italian to him. He was older than this, obviously, but that was you know, the family still spoke Italian.

So I don't know if the grandparents were involved in the Solder children's raising, they may have spoken Italian to them. Just to address that question, Yeah, I know, it's entirely possible. A lot of children of immigrants wind up bilingual. So yeah, partially, yeah, you know enough to understand somebody sternly talking to you, because that's how Nona did it. And you mean no, no, your grandma, Oh I've never heard. It was not okay, my family, it was non no, okay, okay. So we've

got some more reports of the children. Yeah, there were reports that the children were seeing on the night of the fire across the street in a taxi. That's a great getaway vehicle, it really is. I mean, well, you know they were spotted, of course, because locals came to watch the house burn, because what else are you going

to do on Christmas Eve? You know. It turned out there was some other locals who were at a bar who heard about the fire and wanted to see it and hired a taxi to haul them to it, and then had the taxi haul them away. And that's who was spotted. And it just happened to look like children age ranged from Have you ever seen a bunch of drunks in a car. They looked like kids. They really

do look like yeah, exactly. That's kind of the where the story sat, you know, Like I said, it was looked into, reported locally, and then it just kind of sat there for a while. And it wasn't until the sixties when a magazine re ran the story and spread it to the world that it really kind of gained traction. And that's probably one of the only reasons that we know about it is because it got so publicized, and that that of course is going to attract cranks to

the story. It's gonna attract a lot of people. I mean, the Sadders, they tracked down every lead they got. They went after him. In eight they got a really weird lead, which is Mrs Souder went to the mailbox and she found a letter with no return address, but it was postmark from Kentucky. Inside of the envelope was a picture of a young man that sort of kind of maybe looked like their son, Louis. He was ten when he disappeared.

This is twenty three years later, so that means he's a fertile, looks like a man and his young his early twenties, but at that point he would have been in his thirties. It's an odd bit that they immediately said it must be him. But they say that well on the back of the photo. I think this is probably why. If this is true, it says Louis Sauder, I love brother Frankie. Is it ill? Little boys? Bill boys? Yeah?

I I never know what that means, followed by the often America of a nine zero one, three two or maybe it ends in three five, not sure, But he didn't have a brother named Frankie, right, No, that's the weird thing. Yeah, that's the really odd thing about this photo. I know what I was about to say something about. Um Okay, so sawders, like I said, they chase everything down. They didn't tell anybody what town in Kentucky this postmark was from, but they sent a p I to that

town to look for the center of it. Sadly they chose a really bad p I because that p I took their money and never came back, which sucks. Yeah, it seems like if you, if you're an ethical private investigator, would tell these people not to waste their money. Well, I'm sorry, but twenty some odd years later, you're looking into this case, you probably just want to get a cup bucks. Probably sit around on your delf and do nothing.

Mr sawder Um he died in so not but about the actually would have been the same year that they sent the p I off. He died that same year. Mrs sawder she died in nine. Both of them died believing that their children had been taken and that they didn't die in the fire, but were taken. The whole family, because there are generations that have lived on all seemed to believe this. It's all of them, all of them,

almost all of them. There is I think there's one member of the family who won't, who never talked about it. And I think that's the one family member who didn't believe that they got out. Which one was that? That was the older brother John, Well, yeah, I think about it is is John shook the kids awake before he fled down the stairs. If John is telling the family doesn't necessarily believe him. They think that he's just been

feeling guilty of over fleeing the fire and so. But but if John he said that on the night that had happened, like evidently with one of the investigators asked him that night, or somebody asked him, and he said, no, I shook him awake. And I've actually read stuff from cops and say, the first statements that somebody makes right away, those are usually the true ones. After that they start getting regrets and remorse and doubts, and they'll massage and

change their story. But he said that on the first night. Yeah, and and so John has to know that the kids were in the house, and so there's no way they could have been kidnapped, and he's probably got regrets of I should have just shaken him and run. I should have grabbed the little boogers and hauled him out with me. I can't exactly grab five kids, but they could have at least grabbed a couple of a little yea one under each arm, and said come with me. The other

two Yeah, I mean three. He could have six year old and eight year old him pretty quickly. Oh yeah, so he probably should have. But also he was twenty three. He was not really thinking about it. Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of guilt on everybody's part. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Normally this is where we would stop, because this is kind of where our story ends. Normally we would jump

right into theories. But we're not going to what why, Because I remember in the beginning I said that there was a lot of bad retellings, and there were things about the story that get just hammered on, and then people just figured that they must be part of it, and that's why something else happened. Well, I found some of the answers to some of these things, and I want to kind of put some of it to be well, not necessarily debunking, as taking some of the wind out

of the sales. All right, Okay, remember that funny phone call that the Sauders got, Yeah, the refrigerator phone call. You will hear said that there was laughing in the background and the woman giggled when she was talking to her. Well, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's true. And actually they tracked down the phone call and it was a woman who lived in the area, and she did totally called the wrong number. Well, and she could have been giggling.

I mean, she could have been drunk. She could have been drunk. It's it's Christmas Eve at midnight. She accidentally dialed the wrong number because she was drunk, giggled and said, oh sorry, we'll see now. But the thing is their theories out there to say that that phone call was a warning to the family, waking them up so that they could wake up and get out of the house

before I know, I know. But the point is they figured out who the lady was, and she really was trying to call somebody else, and she really did she really did. She remembered Miss Dyling evidently, yes, or the operator missconnector one of the two. I guess that was an operator, was an operator system but it was a wrong number. Um, we maybe the operator was drunk. Okay, we're gonna do a bunch of members in here. Remember when Mr Sauder couldn't find his ladder, Yeah, somebody stole it.

They did. It was down in embankment. Turns out there was. This is the weird thing. It was some guy on their property either pre or post the fire, trying to steal things, and one of the things he was trying to steal was their ladder. It had to have been before well I don't know if he was trying to steal things before the fire, because he was caught after the fact on the property trying to steal stuff, so

he didn't care that the property was on fire. He was trying to steal things, which is just the dumbest thing in the world. It sounds to me like he because the ladder was gone right after the family back. The ladder was gone, so he was there before the

fire started. He said he stole the ladder to cut the phone line, and admittedly the phone company said that, yeah, the phone line looked like it was cut, but it was also cut at the top of the pole, which nobody believed that this guy would have could have climbed all the way up there with the ladder and cut the line. Also, why the hell would he cut the line? Why did it look like it was cut? Then, according

to the phone I'm guessing that it wasn't. It wasn't pulled by pressure and snapped or cut with a knife. It looked like it was actually cut with ply or snips, is the impression I got, but right, But the question still stands, why was the phone line cut if the guy couldn't have gotten up there with the ladder. I to be honest, the house was on fire and the walls were falling in, and I'm betting that the walls fell over and pulled the wire and it snapped and

looked like it was cut. That's my personal opinion, totally totally the way that I would explain Nash. But nobody believed this guy that he cut the line he did. Eventually he got arrested for I'm not sure whether it was the attempt or the actual success in stealing things from the property. He was stealing block and tackle, which, if you don't know, block and tackle is it's pullies and hooks and ropes used to pick up heavy things. Mr Sauder hauled freight. He had to pick up heavy

things by himself. He had a police Stone's weird that that would be what you would say, just try and steal, but sure, well, kind of untraceable, totally totally useful in an area where a lot of manual labor takes place. Um oh okay, yeah, here's the other thing we talked about John a little bit, uh and the fact that

he had shaken the children awake. What I don't think we've talked about, and you don't always see, is that George Jr. And John, both of them their hair was singed when they got out of the house, which means the flames were big enough and hot enough that it was burning hair when they ran out, So it's very possible that those children woke up and tried to run down the stairs and just wasn't too hot, couldn't get out, yeah,

the window, and like gone out that way. Well, and that's one of the things that we're going to cover is that people talk about, well, why weren't the children at the windows screening for their parents to save them. And we're going to talk about the reasons why that might not have happened, because we're going to do that in the theories section. But we're still not done with

Steve's question section, which is what we're in. Remember Mr Sauder said that he tried to start the truck and back it up to to get into the window, and neither of the trucks started, which must have been a sabotage job. Yeah, no, they were probably diesel trucks, was the main thing. And I don't know if anybody has tried to start a diesel truck when it's cold, but it's a pain in the butt, especially in nineteen forties

era truck which is does not like cold weather. That's the reason they made things like starter fluid, which is um ether. You know, you spray ether into the carburetor and it it sparks it to life. That's why his trucks probably didn't start. It was freezing cold, cold enough

to freeze the water. And plus uh, nobody ever found any evidence of sabotage because somebody had, say, stolen his distributor cap or something like that, that would have been discovered and he would have said something about it, but there was no evidence of it. He was also I mean obviously he was also panicked, right, so you you know, when you're in that kind of panic mode, you try something like twice and you're like, I'm not it's ruined.

I gotta go do something else, instead of you know, saying, Okay, well it's cold, I just keep trying and I'll probably eventually get or let it sit and let the globe plugs heat up before you started, because you have to do with these things. You can't just turn them on. You can at first, but they tend not to work very long when you do that. So there's there's a bunch of questions. I mean, we've already talked about the spatial layout of the house. I'm very curious how that

house was laid out. I think we already said this, but one of the things that was the cause of the fires is attributed to the fuse box being bad. The family has said that that can't be which we'll get into, but I would like to know where the fuse box was in relation to that, Like that office space that they say caught on fire, it was probably an older houses. Typically there it's in the basement the

fuse box. Yeah, typically see Now in this case, I'm pretty sure it's outside because they're there are stories of people wandering around outside of the house before the fire and looking at the fuse box. So it was an exterior fuse box, wasn't an interior It's actually it's an old style thing to do. They're on the outside. I my family has a house where we had to build a little faux building around at exterior fuse box because

it gets wet. Yeah, you don't want to get in wet is electricity my house, My house is from the nine twenties and it's got a fuse box inside. So but it's in the basement. It's like when the stairs between the main house and the basement. That's where it is in my house too. And it maybe that's a retrofit. You never know. That's that's possible. Yeah, but I mean, regardless,

I don't know. The only thing about fuse boxes is that even if it was in good shape, something a lot of people used to do back in the other days, which was stupid, but they did it anyway, is if they were having trouble with fuses burning out, they would bypass the fuse by putting a any in the socket. You know, that's possible. Sad said something like that. Yeah. Mr Sauders said that he had recently had the fuse box service by the electric company, so he was positive

that there was no problem with it. I don't know how long ago it was service. I don't know. Whenever I think of Christmas in like that kind of time, I think of a Christmas story right where they're like, now, which fuse is it? That? That one? And they, you know, blow it because there's like twenty different strings of lights attached to everything and all that stuff there, and there were not that many plugs necessarily, and I don't think that there was. They would have had gads and cads

of Christmas lights like we do these days. Maybe not, but it's still possible that, say, if you've got a fifty nap circuit and you put a much much beef your fuse into that. It was also freezing cold. Yeah, they may have been doing things. Maybe a kid, one of the kids got an electric toy that he plugged in. I mean, good call, thought about a toy. There's always stuff. Yeah, that doesn't bother me that it could have been a fusepot.

But yeah, I think maybe it was outside. Yeah, yeah, it supposedly was outside, but it could have been on the outside of the office. Yes, it could have. That's the thing I just want to I just want to have this freaking house was laid out. I really I can't find it. We're moving on. It's hard to say where it started too, because I've read a couch and firefighters and experts on if it started at the basement, they can travel up through the walls and be all you clear up to the top floor of the house

and no time at all. Yeah. No, fire doesn't just move vertically horizontally and it'll it'll race away and then go up. Yeah. Yeah, it's yeah, that one. When they opened the front door to flu, they probably gave it a boost and with a lot of air into the house. Yeah. Well, and that's why I was looking at you like when you're crazy. When you were like, they should open the window, I was like, why would they open the window? No?

I mean I for escape, Yes, of course us. But it might well and they might have they might have tried to do that. The thing about it is is, again, my old house, it's got you. It's got double paint windows, and some of them are not easy to open. Yeah, especially especially if they've been painted shut. Maybe that happens to you paint them a couple of times, then you're done. Yeah, you paint them and then you close the window, not realizing you've sealed it, or you just don't even open

the window while you're painting. Yeah, that awesome idea. Okay Ogi, shall we get into theories. Yes, there are not a lot of theories here. We have three. Basically. That is the first theory that we have, and it's, as I said before, the family's favorite theory. Okay, mainly I know this is their's because it means that their kids are alive and they didn't get hard. This is like you liking a lot of the theories that we have. It, I don't know. This is not my theory. This is

not the one that I think is right. Yeah, but this is the one they like. Yep. Well, people have said that, Yeah, I know, the children were totally abducted, were not in the house. They were taken before the fire. And there's a number of different ways that that goes. One of them is that it was Mrs Sauder's family members who stole the children before the house was set fire. Okay, they were taken from the house and then they were

split up and sent to different relatives. And this could be I'm sorry, it could have been Mrs Sder's relatives, it could have been somebody else. It's because of the they call it the Old World network. Mr Sauder was very vocal about his opinions, and it's thought that people were not too excited about his opinions. He uh, he didn't like Mussolini. He thought Mussolini was a nut job. And yeah, because Mussolini wasn't job, was already dead by this point, I know, I know. Don't don't get ahead

of me here, Joe. You don't take the wind out of my sales on this one, damnit. But they say that it was or that he was bad mouthing things about the Old Country, and maybe people in the Old Country, and that news got back to the Old country, said person found out and said, do this as retribution. That's the simple version of the body of the abduction theory.

Because you know, as you both know, the Italians are nothing if not the most horrible, vindictive and because somebody is kind of running their mouth a little bit in America, you hear about it in the Old world. And what you do is say, all right, burn their freaking house down and steal their kids and separate them two relatives. But because you know you want them to like stay in the family, but also those relatives, they will never say anything, of course, not ever, because they're on our side,

that whole thing. She's absolutely right. Yeah, you know, that's how I was raised by my second on because my mom started mad nothing everything. How it happened in my family, I don't know, Yeah, I know. And sooner or later, of course, you know, the kids, uh, the kids get older and they might want to re establish contact with the well. But like I mean, none of them were so young that they wouldn't remember. I mean, they were all older. Fourteen was the oldest one, yeah, and youngest

was six. They would have all remembered their childhood and that they had this thing happened and they were taken away. And you know, especially at fourteen, you start feeding a kid alie like, they're probably gonna think twice about that. Six maybe six year olds you can get away with it,

probably get away with it, even eight year old. But a fourteen year old you're gonna have You're gonna have to have him under lock and key because he's going to like get away and re established contact with his family, right, Yeah, so that's crazy, yes, but sorry. The only tie that I've ever found to the old world family connection thing, and this is really weak tie, is that that photo that was Lewis, you know, that had the stuff written on the back of it, the A nine zero, one,

three two or three five? Um. I guess that was supposedly a postal code in Palermo, Sicily. Now is that now? Or was that correct? I don't know. I didn't bother to look it up because I don't actually think that there's anything too that I actually feel like that has been inserted the story, and that was the I don't know there were zip codes. I have no idea when

it's Italy started the zip code system. I don't know why you don't look this stuff up because it takes like a two second Google search while you two are back and forth do a thing about it had a time, Okay, So, um, Palermo Sicily. Uh, there's zip code, their postal code. Their zip codes look like United States zip codes. There's there's not an A or anything like that, Okay, but Palermo does. It's the ranges um from nine zero zero one zero

to nine zero one one. It's within that range. There was something there without the A. I don't know what. I guess it's a P. A is there like code right, like we have o R for Oregon. So maybe Palermo. So it could have just meant A. I mean, I could have they meant that. I don't know. And it was it was where either one of the Stauds from Sicily. I'm not sure if there was a question off top of my head and I remember, but I don't think it's worth taking the time to dig into because I

still think that this is just a convenient thing. Yeah, the photograph I think was just the work of a crank because you know, again the brother Frankie reference. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't make sense. Yeah, let's move on to the next theory. Oh yeah, this is the one that UFOs damn it um. So what is uh that they did die in the fire, and this is the one that actually is probably right. Here's here's what's the

reason that I think about that. When you read about the reactions of people in fires and in house fires from firefighters, there's a break in how people react, and it's based on their age at around the teen. So thirteen fourteen, you run, you run away from a fire. But if anyone younger than that is in that situation, they hide, They try to hide from the fire. Kids naturally hide from things. But you would expect that the twelve and the fourteen yeard at least we have tried

to get out of there. Well, the age doesn't mean that that's gonna happen. It's kind of an age range.

But also if they're in there with their younger siblings and they're trying to get them, you know, the kids are hiding and they're saying like, no, come on, we gotta go, and then coaxed out quick enough, and then suddenly either they're overcome by smoke or the stairway is impassable and the as we said, you know, the windows could have been painted shut or on them and gotten out the smoke hiding and smoke annilation would totally explain why they weren't in the windows because they were hiding,

and then they died because of the smoke travel upward too. So yeah, and it genuinely could be that the fourteen year old was the only one in the room saying you gotta go, like coax, You're not going to necessarily leave your three siblings, four siblings in there, you know, because if they're hiding, you're saying, Okay, come on, what what I don't know what their names were on Betty, like, let's go. Kind of got you know, John, the twenty three year old had enough sense to get out. The

next kid, the oldest one. At that age, you have these weird, you know, beliefs that your your totally gonna save everybody and I can totally make this happen, and then it totally turns out your wrong diet of smoke in elation, thinking that I can just get them out and then I can run them down the stairs and everything will be fine, and Mom and dadd'll hug us. I also don't think they did, Like we did a

lot of fire training. We learned, you know, it's the duck and the stop, drop and roll and they like you crawl under the smoke and all that stuff. And I don't think they used to do that then, So I don't know that, not as much. So they may not have just known, you know, since it's drilled into in a young age and in this day and age. But they could have been different jump you know. Yeah, the nation was not as safety crazy, I might say

conscious as crazy as we are today. Safety crazy. It's insane. Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to stay on track with the story. Let's do it. Another thing that I find interesting is the bones of the children. I had an idea and I'd read some of this online and I got ahold of I got a hold of our some of our experts and Nina, who I got ahold of huge help. So thank you to her. She really kind of helped me on. This is what she's what happens to bones in fire? What does the human bone do? Yep?

If you know, like we talked about with cremation, you know, they don't just completely disintegrate, at least not right away. There is a five level scale of how bones break down because your organic matter, the organic matter will eventually burn yes in in some fashion or another. Well, there's a scale that's called the cro Gasmin Scale CGS. It's you know, one through five, one being yep, totally a burn skeleton sitting right there too. That's a nice human

shaped ash, you have, nice human sand. Level five, Level one is yep, it's totally a skeleton all the way to level five, which is okay. If the fire had burned hot for almost seven hours, it's completely plausible that those bones had gotten to level three the CGS. Level three, that level, the description of that level is major portions of arms and legs missing, the head is present, but unrecognizable, widened area for disartake, disarticulated remains. Forensic anthropologists called for

identification process super broke down. They're still bones, but they're coming apart in places like you know, the skull is made up of several pieces. Guessing unrecognizable skull means it's not fused together anymore, and all the all the things that hold your bones together will have been burned away. It's all gonna fall apart. It's not gonna be a skeleton.

It's gonna be chunks of bone at this point. It's not gonna be solid bone, is the way that I understood, And that could be wrong because that's before the volunteer fire step all over or somebody chars a high pressure hose on your remains. Yep. There's also the fact that if you know anything about how bones develop, children's bones obviously aren't full grown, and they have the growth lines

or growth plates in them. Those those are actually made not from the same material as your bones, but they're actually made from cartilage. Cartilage burns easier than the bone, like super fast, which means that the things that are holding these different areas who bone together are cartilage, which would have burned up, which makes them breakdown and be even harder to recognize. So so the whole idea that

they burned in the fire is a little radical. I'm still liking the UFO abduction better, but I got this, that's a sensible theory. Oh my god, it's radicals from the man who turns oper all the time. Okay, So I personally think that this is this is kind of evidence that they were probably in the fire. But we're going to go onto our last theory, which is that the children were murdered. Were they murdered, were they abducted and murdered or just murdered in place? I don't know,

to be quite honest with you. It really kind of depends on the version of the theory that you get. I mean, there's there's the the who and the how. Who did it? And then how did they do it? And we're gonna tackle that in two parts, the who and then sort of maybe the how. Okay, we've got three groups that are pointed at. Joe brought up the first one, which is the mob. We also have the k k K and of course the Italian fascists. They're also pointed at as the ones who are responsible this.

Um well, the Fascist because to the fact that Mr Sauder was bad mouthing the Mussolini and everything that the Italians were doing in the war. Because he was definitely the only one, yeah, I mean, Solder, Yeah, he was definitely the only person bad mouthing Mussolini. And of course yeah, yeah, he's probably the only one in this country. Yeah no. Um, so that's the reason that the that the fascist did at the KKK. Well, the solders were Catholic, and the

kk doesn't like Catholics or Catholic immigrants. Yes, that is even worse sometimes to them. Um, And they were business owners, which seems to enrage the k k K even more. And the mob, well, it's the mob because Mr Solder had a business and the mob was trying to get into that area. And I mean there is some historic evidence of the mob having a problem with a lot of cold well they were they it was the shipping, yeah,

I mean, not like a small time business dude. And you know, the bomb thing is total garbage because the mob really wasn't in that area at the time. It's just an easy you were Italian obviously the mob. I think I made this that same statement in a recent episode, knowing how foolish it sounds, and intentionally yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's hard to believe they were in West Virginia.

I mean there are times on the you know, in certain other areas they'll ask they'll just basically demand protection money. They were in a protection racket and if you don't cooperate, then's something bad does happen. But even so, I think they would have probably choose chosen probably a less deadly way to send their message, I would think, so, yeah, and picked a more profitable family. Yeah yeah, yeah. And and the KKK. It's just that's such a stretch for me.

The one that just I can't understand this every time. It's the fascist. Okay, like Joe's talked about, Mussolini was killed in the Spring of the Italians were defeated by the Allies. In the early Mussolini had been you know, taken down as prime minister. I think it was three or something like that. Yeah, yeah, two years before he was killed. And he was killed by the resistance, the Italian resistance, and hung for everybody to see. His body was hung naked and upside down. Yes, a train station

or something something like that. So, I mean, why if the leader has obviously been taken down and the party's in disarray, why would this one family be targeted for saying bad things against Maybe maybe the family was actually fleet, maybe he was the son of someone really important in Italy and they had they had come because he was fleeing. Stop making that face. I'm trying to fill his heart.

There's no no, you're right, there's yeah. I mean, even even the solders themselves, I don't think I ever speculated about anything like that, they would have known. For the most part, Now, they didn't. They didn't think that that was although there are bits of the story that have left out because I can't corroborate that people always attribute to the fascist did it bit, But I don't. I

don't buy it. I don't. Yeah, I think they have, especially since they you know, they hired so many private investigators, and they would have known if if if any group we're going to do this as a terrorist act against the family, they would have made themselves known and they wouldn't have been this huge, big thing. How did it happen? Yeah. The thing about it is too, is that Mussolini in the forties was not not terribly popular in America, and so lots of people were bad mouthing him and their

houses didn't get burned. So uh yeah. So we talked about the who. Now let's talk about the how. The how according to that they were murdered is well, they were murdered in the house and the fire, right, it's pretty simple. Yeah, but how so do you remember the official the official description or cause of the fire was electrical. People say that the fuse box was sabotaged whether it be jamming a penny in it, as Joe had mentioned, or doing something out putting an inappropriate Yeah, something as

simple as that. Now, the Sauters say, there's no way that it was an electrical problem because there were lights on during the fire off, and she did. But I'm guessing that maybe some lights got hit on the way

out and turned on. You run by and you flip the switch that you can run through the wall and not fall over the But the point, as they said, there was no way it could have been electrical fire because there were lights on in the house, except I'm sorry, a circuit can go bad and cause a fire somewhere and the other circuits can still be working fine or a good amount of time. Well maybe their house only had one circuit. Yeah, I don't think that's And they

go back to Christmas lights. It was the Christmas lights that were on. But the last time I broke a fuse, you know, half the lights stayed on and half the lights were off, And exactly that's what a few system does. Also, let's be fair, if you're running for your life out of your house, you're not going to necessarily be like, oh, that one light fixture is out, and the other one I think this is they were observing it from outside

once they had escaped from them. Even then, how are you going to know necessarily, like which ones of those are on and which ones aren't. I don't know, honestly, I don't know the answer to that. And that's I mean, that's why I don't think that that that's not accurate. The other way that this that the house was set fire according to these theories is that it was firebombed. There was you remember, Miss Sutter said a midnight or so she heard something hit the rough and roll down. Yeah, okay.

When they came back to the house a day or so or a couple of days later to fill the hole in, yeah, I'm guessing that that right. But maybe it was after that. Their daughter Marian said she found a weird, heavy, melted rubber ball thing, which Mr Sodder was pretty sure and other people seemed to coral agree with. I don't know if this is right or not, that it was akin to a napalm bomb. Napalm bomb, Wow, that was hard to say. Yeah, a lot of ls in there. I didn't know they made those out of rubber.

I According to this theory, they do. I don't know that they did, but according to this, somebody threw a fireball on top of the house and that's what caught the house on fire. I guess I thought that would make more of an explosion noise. No, Actually, a napalm doesn't explode, melts through and then it burns, and so it would have taken an hour and a half from the time that it landed on the roof to catch the house on fire enough to wake people up exactly.

I mean, then I've got it outside. If you if you've got a fire by my house, you you want to chuck the bomb into the house, you want to go like walk up to say the basement and open or break a window. Yeah, and just open a coal shoot and drop it in. Yeah. I mean at the scene of the fire, you're gonna find all kinds of melted stuff. That was probably some of their own possessions. Yeah. It probably was like a weird toy that they were supposed to open the next morning, like a rubber ball. Yeah.

I don't think it was like a soccer ball. I think this was kind of thicker, but god knows what it was. It could have been anything melted in misshapen and just looked round dish, really just look round dish. Yeah, I don't. I just the whole napalm ball napalm you too, Yeah, yeah, I don't think that the house was fire bombed. I mean, this is one of those things again because it can't

corroborate it. We're not going to talk about the fact that somebody said they saw fireballs being thrown in the sky that night because I just think that that's something that was tacked on later. Yes, so that's our story. Those are all the facts that I can find on it, both proven and some unproven, and I don't really put a lot of stock in but that's all I've got. I mean, I sleeve sadly think that children perished in the fire on if you too have any different they

unfortunately died in the fire. Yeah, no, it's it's I think they did too. It's absolutely certain, but it's possible that it was arson. It's or possible more likely it just began accidentally. Maybe maybe the most house fires do. Yeah, yeah, electrical, the furnace maybe. I mean, there's all kinds of wors the time of your cat knock something over, because cats are diabolical creatures. Well, there's the whole the Christmas tree

fire problem. Right, You've got your Christmas tree and by that time of the year, it's actually probably much drier than it's going to be because you've had it for a couple of weeks and you have your one faulty plug and with your Christmas lights as wrapped around. This is the thing, this happens. I was just thinking, I've never heard of Christmas tree you never hear that. Assume they did, but I guess they might not have. Yeah,

I don't know. I mean because I've had Christmas lights that my family's had for thirty years and have plugged them in and then touch the plug and it was hot. All it'll send us spark out, you know or whatever. If the fuse blue, um, you know, sometimes that can send us spark out the plug and catches the whole thing on fire. That's that's It's just a million ways, yeah, a million, ten million ways. I don't know. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Well we're going to go ahead and stop here,

because it's all we really have. We can just keep talking about the millions of different No, I really I don't want to keep doing that. Speculations. If you want of the Sider kids get in touch with us, we'd like to hear from Yes, yes, well they can get in touch with us by sending us an email. How's that Okay? We do have an email address. It is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You're welcome to send story suggestions, comments, feedback, whatever whatever you feel like

you can send there. You can also put comments on our website. The website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com and we've got our links to research as well as the episode there. And like I said, you can leave comments. Um, I have noticed a funny thing lately, which is I think that everybody thinks that the internet is a free state, when whereas our website is actually well it's a little

more autocratic. We will trim comments, so people are welcome to leave comments, but don't mean people ever get their comments whatever you want. Yeah, but if you have like feedback and things like that, we love to have a conversation with you about that. So we can't explore that a little more. And the face or the website is not necessarily the best place for that. Probably the email address email is the best place. Yeah, just as a as I mentioned absolutely um no, Like I said on

the website, we've got the episodes. You can stream the episodes from the website. You can download them from the website. You can stream them from anywhere else you want to on the internet. You can also stream or download directly from iTunes. If you're on iTunes, please do leave us a comment and a rating. We do appreciate those. We also are going to be on social media, so we've got the Facebook group and the page. Lots of fun, lots of things going on there. It's been crazy busy lately.

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two years, got it down. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Well we're going to get out of here next week. We will be doing more of Thinking Sideways month wanted. We've got a special one for you. We're gonna tell you what it is because we're jerks that way, but you'll just have to wait. Yeah. Exciting, so exciting. Yeah, we'll talk to you guys next week. Everybody, Hi, guys,