The Sodder Children Part 2

Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries, Tales from Appalachia. Welcome back.

Hello everybody. Hailey, it's been a week of you miss me. I have. You miss me?

No, of course I have. I couldn't get through the day. Let me tell you, it was a journey getting to your house this week. A lot of traffic.

Oh my gosh, there were two wrecks that happened right before I got there. So you didn't cause them. I didn't cause a wrecker. Then it was still the traffic back up of nobody anywhere to go because there was no one directing traffic.

Also, then both lanes being completely clogged with emergency vehicles trying to get through them. And I was in the fire when people see sirens, like coming up behind them. There's an immediate panic of they don't know where to go, they don't know what to do. And this was one of the fire trucks, like pick up trucks.

Oh my gosh. Which is one of those, like, I don't know what are you doing in your pickup truck. Yeah. Same.

You fight in the fire with your motor, what are you doing? It's like a fire chief, though, probably. I think on the back of it, because I looked at the back of the bumper because I was an idiot in front of me who couldn't figure out how to get out of the way. It said like a emergency response management or something on it.

I was on the night because he's the traffic guy. or even like organizer of all the people over there. So. Kind of a little higher in rank, get to that point where you can finally drive the pickup truck.

I know, I feel like that's like the old firefighters out there, let us know. What do the people in the pickup trucks, and like the, like the Suburbins. Yeah. The fire truck, the fire Suburbins.

Yeah, I feel like those are like the fire marshals or something, I don't know. I know. You're like, do you roll up with the fire extinguisher? One day in my role, I wanna just roll up in some Suburbin and be like, I'm the therapy goddess.

Right, I got that. I'm delegating. Exactly, like you, you go give CBT, you, EMDR. No.

No. I don't know, I don't know what it was, but that was a. Well, I am glad you're here. I am glad I made it here.

And we're gonna dive into this episode because this is our part two. I'm excited. Excuse me. I'm like taking a real dupe breath.

I didn't have to pause the cough. I had some chest junk going on. It's okay. But you know.

We just had a cut out. We're rolling. Okay. All right, you all.

So last week we talked about the Sodder children. This story is so weird. Again, takes place in 1945, Fayetteville, West Virginia on Christmas Eve. This was the, and I'm gonna recap just really quickly for you before we dive in.

So it makes sense if you do catch part one. Basically the Sodder family, the head of the family, Mr. George Sodder and Italian immigrant and his wife, Jenny, they had 10 children altogether. So that's a lot.

And nine of whom were living at the house at that point. Five of the kids were upstairs and four were downstairs in bedrooms along with Mr. and Mrs. Sodder.

So around one o'clock in the morning, fire breaks out at their house. The Sodder, half the Sodder children, the one who lives on the bottom, got out. And Mr. and Mrs.

Sodder got out. The older children did not. Mr. Sodder and the rest of his children tried very hard to get the other kids out, but they weren't able to.

And it was assumed that they had perished. Oh, but here's the thing. They didn't find any remains. Now something to note here is that Mr.

Sodder had some enemies. Mr. Sodder was very open about his views on Benito Mussolini, who at that point had been the dictator in Italy. Similar to Hitler.

Not a great guy. Not a great guy, no. And a lot of Italian immigrants in the town disagreed with Mr. Sodder.

So he kind of made himself an enemy. And this led Mr. Sodder and his wife to believe that the children were actually kidnapped and not killed in the fire. And you and I both use science to support this.

When a body burns, typically you are left with something. Usually bones, bone fragments, that kind of thing. That even when you are cremated, you have to go into something called a cremeleta that breaks down your bones and grinds them into an ashes up sense. So this wouldn't be possible in a house fire.

Right. That should have been something. Exactly. So that leads to many questions and few answers.

But let's go ahead and open this part two up and dive right in. OK. So within a few weeks of the fire, the Sodder's grew very suspicious of this faulty wiring because that's what the Fire Marshal said. It was just faulty wiring that caused the fire.

Right. Because he had his wiring checked, right? Exactly. Recently.

Right before. And everything was working ship shape. So remember how I told you that Mrs. Sodder saw all the Christmas lights through the smoke?

Well, if there had really been faulty wiring, and the phones didn't work, why wasn't the power out? Like why was she still seeing the Christmas lights? That doesn't make sense. And according to the family, they continued to see the Christmas lights throughout the varying stages of the fire.

It's festive. Yeah. Oh. So also remember that the missing ladder that the family always kept in the same place, always by the side of the house?

It was actually found by George. It was 75 feet away from the house down in embankment. So somebody came to the house and checked the ladder out of the way. Purposely.

Someone's like, yep. We're not going to give them this. So we shut it down the embankment. Yeah.

And in addition to that, a local telephone repair man told Mr. Saudder that the house's phone line had not been burned at all. Rather, it had been cut. So the phone not working had nothing to do with a fire.

The phone line was cut. That's not great. And it wasn't cut in the house. So it wasn't while someone was in the house.

The line was cut on the pole that stretched 14 feet high. How did they get up there with the ladder? That is someone who is very determined. I would be terrified of being electrocuted.

I mean, you and I may not always agree sometimes, but I don't climb up your phone pole. Of course, that would be difficult because you don't have phones with the nowadays. Right. But I mean, squirrels can do it.

Just bite through it. No, but like squirrels can be on the line. I'm still electrocution. Like, how do they do that?

Not going to electrocuted. But I would think they would have to like bite through it. Right. I mean, it's live wire, but you would have to like.

I guess I mean, the linemen get up there, and they don't get electrocuted. So that begs the question. Like, whomever did this was willing and physically able to climb up a 14 foot telephone pole and stretch two feet above that to cut the wire. I'd have to know which wire it was.

Exactly. Because I feel like there's a lot of, I don't know, ones around our house. There's a lot of different wires. Well, and I wonder here, this speaks to my ignorance, but are there different ones that are just for phone poles?

Hey, there's a line man. Let us know. Hit us up and let us know how phone poles work. How do telephones work?

Some telephones. Some telephones work. Phone lines operate. Something I could probably Google, will I?

No. That's something for two AM when you can't sleep. Right. That's what it was like.

I had to get up and, you know. I just had to Google that. I just needed that information. Some people do.

Some people do. So there was also a report from neighbors who saw a strange man that night on the Stodders property. Apparently, he stole a block and tackle from their property. Police found and arrested him, and he admitted to the theft.

He also claimed that he was the one who climbed up the pole and cut the telephone wire, thinking that it was the power line. He did, however, state that he had nothing to do with causing the fire. What? What an art coincidence.

I mean, is it just they're really having a lot of bad luck on the holiday? On the Christmas Eve night. Someone just out of the blue decides to come and steal from them and says, you know what? I'm going to cut their power line?

I mean, just take. Just for fun. Take damn block and tackle and be out of there. Just for fun.

I'm going to cut the phone line. Also, it's going to take the fire department 14 hours or something insane to get their to put your house out. Yeah. I don't know.

But he said he didn't start the fire. He was. He didn't start the fire. I don't get it.

And but maybe it wasn't burning when he was on the property. These coincidences are weird. There's just some things that don't exist. I think it's as full of crap.

So this could be because maybe he was scared. Maybe he was scared that he would be charged with murder since it was believed that the kids died. So he was like, I had nothing to do with the fire. But get this.

OK. There is no record identifying this suspect or that he ever existed. Why would there be? Exactly.

I mean, I don't. I'm. Yeah. I mean, it was reported to local newspapers, but no one really knows where the information came from.

And also, if you were stealing something like a block and tackle, why would you care about cutting the power lines? Like I said, like who cares? Just take it and go. And Mrs.

Sauter actually herself said in 1968 that if he had cut the power line that she and her husband, along with their four of their children, would have never been able to have made it out of the house. If he had cut a power line. Right. I mean, clearly you didn't cut a power line because the Christmas lights were on.

Exactly. But she's saying like if you had not cut the phone, but he'd cut the power. And that was his goal, right? So he was like, I'm going to cut the power line.

And you and I are ignorant. And we don't know what's the phone line that's the power line. I mean, I assume the big one that runs across, but there's multiple that run across. I don't know.

I mean, yeah. So who really is to say? But it's so sweet. This makes sense.

This seems to me like the police made this up. This random guy? This random guy. Yeah, but he didn't exist.

Because there's no evidence. I believe it. Yeah, I think so. So I guess the Christmas lights helped to guide them through the thick smoke.

So had the power gone out, they wouldn't have gone out. So similarly to her husband, Mrs. Saudder did not buy the idea that the children's bodies were burned to ash, especially since their refrigerator and their other household appliances were found fairly intact. Yeah, that doesn't track.

Nope. And they also found pieces of the tin roof. So again, this goes back to the idea of breaking down metal and bones. So even when you create, you're at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, you would still have to break down the bone and material, like I said, in the cremulator.

And it would have to be crushed, not just burned to be ash. So Mrs. Saudder became an investigator of sorts. She put on her little hat.

And she found an article in the paper that addressed a house fire in their community several months earlier that killed a family of seven. Similarly, the house burned to the ground. And in this fire, however, there were bones and bone fragments of the individuals. Mrs.

Saudder didn't experiment. I love her. That's kind of fun. I don't know.

I feel like that would be me. I'm kind of where was she burning? Well, wait for it. Didn't experiment.

So she took some animal bones. Not quite sure where she got that. Maybe it was like a chicken carcass or something. It could be.

Yeah. And she burned them. And still intact. Yeah.

Mrs. Saudder consulted with a mortician who explained that bodies being cremated at 2,000 degrees, even still, bones don't break down. The average house fire doesn't get that hot due to the air, and particularly because the air the night of the fire was very cold. Yeah, it was Christmassy.

Yeah. In West Virginia. And much of the surroundings had frost on them. Yeah, you're not getting 2,000 degrees out of that.

Remember their barrel of water was frozen. Yeah. So clearly, it was way too cold. Plus, a fire would have to burn a long time to be that hot.

And this fire apparently burned the house down within 45 minutes. Right. So Mr. Saudder was suspicious that perhaps the same thief who stole his block and tackle tried to steal his work trucks and mess them up.

Again, I don't think this person is real, but I think there's somebody who was doing this. Yeah. This is clearly our son. Yeah, I agree.

So years later, in 2013, Mr. Saudder's elderly son-in-law, so we're jumping way ahead here. It's the same. Yeah.

commented that he felt that Mr. Saudder and his sons flooded the engines in their desperate attempts to save the children. Probably. So just trying to get it to go.

And do you know when you're nervous? Yeah, when you're pan-acting, you can ever commit. And you just let that engine. Exactly.

Exactly. And he has a point. But all the trucks? I think there are two or three trucks.

That's a lot. Yeah, that's kind of odd. I mean, that it would happen to all three. So that to me doesn't seem like a likely theory.

But remember that mysterious phone call that Mrs. Saudder answered 30 minutes before the fire? Some woman had called. She was drunk, it sounded like.

So the drunk woman on the other end of the phone, police found out who she was and confirmed that it was just merely a wrong number. Yeah. She had missed dial because obviously she's buzzing it up. Right.

Four Christmas, having a nosh with some friends and was looking for someone else, not Mrs. Saudder. But again, coincidences. Weird.

Kind of weird. Yeah. You're all right. She's got it.

So time goes on. And by the spring of 46, the Sauddars had planted a garden on the soil where their house once stood, a memorial to their lost children. Mrs. Saudder would tend to this garden for the rest of her life.

Around the same time, more evidence began to emerge that may have led to the belief that the fire was purposely set. Yeah, I'm kind of already there. Oh, I have been. A bus driver was driving through Fayetteville, the city they lived in, on Christmas Eve, and saw several people throwing what he referred to as fireballs at a house.

To add to this theory, Sylvia, the Saudder's daughter, found a hard green rubber ball looking object in the bushes right near where the house once stood. That's so weird. Mr. Saudder thought the noise his wife heard on the roof could have been this, what they called, a pineapple bomb.

And the family fully believed that the fire started on the roof and not the office downstairs, like it was said. So this would make sense, especially since the family downstairs had the ability to get out, and the stairway and the upstairs was fully engulfed in flames. That makes sense. So let's talk about sightings of the so-called deceased Saudder children.

Yeah. One neighbor claimed to have seen the children peering out of a moving car driving away from the burning house. A waitress working at a truck stop between Fayetteville and Charleston claimed to have seen the children and even served them breakfast the day after the fire. That's odd.

Oh, yeah. Who's working in Fayetteville on Christmas day? I guess someone who works at a truck stop. I guess at a truck stop, I guess at a stop still be after thinking most businesses are probably closed.

Most are, but you know. I guess not the truck stop. No, you got to get gas. You got to eat.

Yeah. Stop diners still operating. Yeah, they are. Just like back in the day, Denny's.

Just go to Denny's. That's 24-7. All right, P. Denny's.

Are all of them closed? I don't know. I don't know. But it's not that natural.

That's closed. Yeah, that one's closed. I haven't been to. In that area.

Just a second. I digress. Anyway, so she said that she fed them breakfast. She served them.

And she noticed them getting into a car with a Florida license plate. Does this almost seem like the children plan to get away or leave? This almost reads that way. It almost sounds like...

Like, unless a kidnapping. I don't know. Like, this was planned by someone. Yeah.

Don't know about who. I mean, really well planned out. Like, we're going to have an escaped car. It's going to have a different tag.

I don't know. A lot of this feels weird. So feeling desperate for answers and getting no support from local law enforcement. That's funny.

The Saunders hired a private detective to investigate all these claims. They hired a man named CC Tenzley who lived in a nearby town. CC Tenzley. CC?

Hello, good day. I am CC Tenzley and I am here to help you solve this crime. I like him. Oh, I like him too.

That's a lovely name. Thank you. CC Tenzley. Tenzley discovered and reported to the family that one of the inquiry jurors, remember, they had decided, oh yeah, they had that big inquiry and the jurors were like, oh, okay.

Oh yeah, yeah, I definitely started because of the faulty wiring with the telephone in the office. Wasn't the insurance salesman on the house correct? The insurance salesman who had threatened George several months before he had said, I will burn down your house basically with your children in it. He happened to be one of the jurors.

He was like, you know what, I think it was telephone. Of course. That's what it was. The death tracks.

He also revealed that word going around town was that the fire chief had found a heart at the scene of the fire and took it. Just a... Wait for this. It's just so weird.

Okay, so found a heart at the scene of the fire, took it, put it in a metal box and buried it, but she was not to mention it to the family. What kind of heart? Like a human heart? That is what they're going on.

Okay, so we have found a human heart. Was it burned? Or was it just a rain to the forest? Was it?

Like, was this some, um, a Krallen Poe, like, whatever that part is. They heard. They saw. I don't know.

Like, so, okay, this is a fire chief? Correct. So fire chief rolls up like this guy in the pickup truck. He's got his fire pickup truck.

The fire's a bourbon. Correct. The fire's a bourbon roll up. Not back then, but sure.

The roll up, I'm going with it. Fire's a bourbon comes up. He's poking around. He's like, oh man, a heart.

What should I do with this? I should put it in a box. Should I alert the family that there's a random heart here? Should not.

Should not do that. Will not do that. We'll put it in this metal box. What should I do with this metal box?

I'm a variant. Where am I going to bury it? I don't know. Where are the mood strikes?

What? But like, so many questions about this heart. What's it burn? Actually, and you just find one heart and the heart is the only thing that didn't, you know, totally turned to ash, the femur owed as ash.

But your heart. That kind of milky fleshy thing didn't go up in flames. That makes no sense. That's bull crap.

I got launched out of the chest and then fell back down. I don't know. I see the mask. Have you seen that movie with Jim Carrey where he actually reaches in and pulls out the beating heart?

Oh no, no, that's not the mask. It's another one word, yeah. It just makes no sense. Anyway, but all right.

So the fire chief had apparently confessed to a local minister who in turn confirmed it to George, saying that yes he said that he found a heart and he buried it. George and Sisi Tensley went to the fire chief and confronted him with the news. The fire chief agreed to show the two where he had buried the metal box and so they could pick it up. Well, they found it and dug it up, you know, okay, what's inside the box?

They took it to a local funeral director who examined it and said this was a fresh beef flitter, liver. So it wasn't even a heart? No, it was fresh, so it was recent and also it had never been exposed to a fire. So why did he...

What? I couldn't. How fresh? Like, like, what?

Excuse me, butcher, I'm going to need something because my pastor just told on me. And I didn't actually take this heart in a box. Or maybe he has multiple heart in a box. Oh, that sounds like a trendy like 90s teeny bobber songs heart in a box.

But what if, what if, fire chief has multiple hearts in boxes, buried, scattered throughout the property and he was like, oh shit. I don't know where I buried this heart in a box. And now I got to find another box and put something in it. And he was like, don't have any more hearts.

So he went and got some beef flitter. And he buried that real fast. Why is this guy not putting out fires? Why is he just burying one in the box as a bourbon?

He's a drive-to-fire truck. He drives a fire super. What else is he going to do? I mean, I get it.

You've done your time putting out fires and it's time for you to rest a little bit. Trying to find livers and hearts to put in boxes and all the things. I just have to go over it. I don't get to fight the fires for real anymore.

So now I got to find something to do. So he's putting hearts in boxes. Volunteerism. Volunteerism.

We don't question it. It just let him. It's just what he does. It's so scary.

It's the parts and boxes. But maybe not human hearts. And they may not even be hearts at all. It might just be parts of gals.

Hey girl, I'll put your heart in the box. I'll put your heart in the box. That's the box. I'm telling you, that's a 90s bop.

It's the new bop. It's the new bop. The kids are going to love it. You're like, oh, I'm G.

Have you heard? Hard to bop. Oh, please. We talked about it on the podcast.

All right. Try not to kill him. Okay. Fresh beef liver.

Yeah. Later, more rumors circulated around Fayetteville that more as the fire chief had afterwards admitted that the box with a liver had indeed not come from the fire originally. Really? I wasn't.

Unless there was just a random cow passing through and lofted liver. Yeah. He had supposedly placed it there in hopes that the solders would find it and be satisfied that the missing children were indeed dead from the fire. But it's a beef liver.

And that they wouldn't question it. Like, you know what? This liver doesn't look like a heart and it doesn't look human. This guy does not need to be driving the fire.

He needs to be out of there. He needs to be out of there. He's going to be a seat in the back. No, he's the one left at the station to mop the floors.

Like, you don't even get to go to the fire anymore. He has to be a plunk. He has to be a plunk. Yeah, you don't get to go to the fire anymore.

You got to go to the fire anymore. Yep, that's your job now. Yep. Yeah.

I just want to get diarrhea. Get out of here. Exactly. So why is there so much cover up going on here?

It's a constant. Like, this fire chief is covering shit up. Like, the police are covering stuff up. Like, what is this?

You know, like, what is the town? How against this family? So the starters still believed their children were alive and out there somewhere. I believe that too.

Yeah. I mean, I don't think they might be dead. I'm sure now they're dead. Right.

I mean, I don't think they died in that fire though. I agree. I don't think so either. On one occasion, George saw a magazine photo of a group of young ballet dancers who were living at the time in New York City and one of whom looked like his missing daughter, Betty.

He actually ended up driving all the way to New York where he went to the girl school and he repeatedly demanded to see the girl, but they refused him. I mean, I get it. That's a real creeper move. That's a real, that's a, you know, I saw your picture in the newspaper and I just had to come by.

But I think he might be my missing child that might have died in fire. Yeah. That's just one of those like, I don't think he should. But I mean, I think that also calls for desperation that you're so desperate to find your family that you would do anything.

Right. He also tried to talk to the FBI about it. He really wanted them to investigate and he wanted them to like think like, this is a kid having like, he wanted to get his point across, but the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, in response to his letters stating, although I would like to be of service, the matter related appears to be of local character and does not come within the investigative jurisdiction of this bureau.

End quote. If the local authorities requested that the bureau help them, he said like, yeah, you know, we can aid them in this, but really this has to do with the fire department and the faith police. And they themselves were like, no, we got this. We don't need the FBI.

Thanks. Right. Because they were involved. Exactly.

I think so too. 49. So we're talking three and a half years, almost four years after the fire, George was able to persuade Oscar Hunter, a Washington DC pathologist, to supervise a new search through the dirt at the house site. That's pretty impressive.

That's a lot. Yeah. He was must have been really just consistent with his please. After a very thorough search, artifacts, including a dictionary that along to the children and some coins were found several small bone fragments were unearthed and determined to have been human vertebrae.

Yeah. Okay. So a specialist at the Smithsonian Institute, they were confirmed to be the lumber lumbar vertebrae, all from the same person. And there's a quote that says, since the transverse recesses are fused, the age of the individual at death should be between 16 or 17 years old.

Newman's report also went on to state and I quote, the top limit of age would be 22 since the centra, which normally fuses at 23 are still unfused. You know, so. You were from 16 to 22. 16 to 22.

Yeah. So the age range wasn't likely that it was any of the five children because the oldest child was more recent. He was only 14. Wow.

That's fine. Yeah. And although the report, you know, allowed that the vertebrae could be, you know, maybe a boy of more advanced physical age, you know, could, could appear that he's older than he is physically, which I mean, people were working hard back in the day. So their body was probably showing up.

So there's potential for that. But if it's not one of the kids, who's vertebrae is just chilling over there. That's random. That's a lot of just some dead bodies there.

That's weird. Yeah. Who was vertebrae? It's just hearts and livers and vertebrae.

Oh my. This is a lot. This is very confusing to me. Further, he agreed that it was quote unquote very strange that the bones were the only ones found since a wood fire of such sort, such durations, excuse me, would have left full skeletons of all the kids behind.

I have said that repeatedly. The report concluded that the vertebrae had instead most likely come from the dirt that George had used to bulldoze the site. Okay. Oh, I'm ranted.

Well, I was just buried on this rubber. I don't know. But you know, all the time we talk about sites that are haunted are places because people are messing up burial grounds that they don't know are burial grounds. I think I'd be going back to where I got that dirt and trying to find the rest of his body.

You know, my son needs dirt a lot at school. I'm worried about that. I am now too. I'm thinking what dead person is he jumping on?

I don't advocate it, but he goes to a very major kind of oriented school. I'm not going to be in system. Yeah, that's right. It's so far so good.

Anyway, so this makes no sense. Later, Tinsley, CC-Tinsley, supposedly confirmed that the bone fragments had come from a cemetery in nearby Mount Hope. What could not explain how they'd been taken from there or how they came to be at the fireside. Again, this sounds so, somebody is doing this.

Do you think that in on his way to bury the heart or the liver that the fire marshals said, you know what, I'm going to stop by the cemetery and I'm going to move this vertebrae. I found some random vertebrae. Maybe in dig up somebody. Sure, why not?

But why not take their heart? Maybe he did. That's one of the ones in the box. Oh, well, he buried it and can find out something.

Exactly. Wait, we didn't dig up this guy's property. What else? Let's dig up this guy.

What's going on with him? I'm worried about this guy. I'm very concerned and for his family. So the Smithsonian returned the bone fragments to George in September of 1949 and according to its records, their current location is unknown.

Of course, sir. You probably checked the mechanism. That would too, though. I mean, that's weird.

The investigation and its findings attracted national attention. Go figure. It's crazy. Nobody has to go on.

And the West Virginia legislature held two hearings on the case in 1950. Afterwards, however, Governor Okey L. Patterson and state police superintendent W.E. Burchett told the Sauders that the case was quote unquote hopeless.

What'd you like to hear? They closed it at the state level. Wouldn't that be like you put on all this work and somebody just like slaps you in the face? Yeah, and it's like, well, you know.

After stolen vertebrae, after random hearts and boxes, it's a lot. It's a lot to go through. The FBI decided that come to find out they did have jurisdiction. And so they viewed it as a possible interstate kidnapping, kidnapping.

But after two years of many a fruitless lead, they too closed the case. All right. So even after all these dead ends and lack of a sport, the family pressed on and didn't give up hope. I mean, I wouldn't either if you feel like your kids are out there.

They put up flyers with the kids' pictures on it. They even offered a $5,000 reward, which later they even doubled, which is a lot of money in 1945 or of 1950. They were hoping for information that would like just give some kind of anality to this case in one way or another. So in 1952, they put up a billboard at the site where the house was and also won a long Route 60 and the same with, you know, same information that had been on the flyers about the kiddos.

So it would in time become a landmark for traffic through Fayetteville coming across Route 19. And the family's efforts soon brought another reported sighting of the children after the fire. Ida Crutchville, a woman who ran a Charleston hotel, claimed to have seen the children approximately a week afterwards out of the fire. She says, and I quote, I do not remember the exact date, she said in a statement, that children had come in around midnight with two men and two women, all of whom appeared to be of Italian extraction.

When she attempted to speak with the children, one of the men looked at her in a hostile manner. He then turned around and began talking rapidly in Italian. Immediately the whole party stopped talking to her altogether. And she recalled that they left the hotel early the next morning.

Investigators today do not however consider her story as credible. As she had only first seen photos of the children two years after the fire or five years before she came forward. So they're thinking that maybe she's like, oh yeah, it could have been those children. That's so weird.

It is still weird. And two men and two women, which makes sense because you'd need a lot of people to kind of corral five kids, including a 14 year old boy. He's like, I don't want to do that. Get in line Maurice.

You know, right back. So George followed up on any and all leads. He actually would follow up in person. So he traveled all over when a tip would come in.

So a woman from St. Louis, Missouri claimed that Martha, one of the children, was being held in a convent. Even a bar patron in Texas claimed to have overheard two other people making incriminating statements about a fire that happened on Christmas Eve in West Virginia. Yeah.

None of those proved significant. And George heard later that a relative of Jenny's who lived in Florida had the children. And you know, we're raising them as their own. I mean, that one sounds more legit than any of them.

Sounds a little bit more, especially with New Think the Florida license plate. Okay. So George actually made the relative prove that the children were his, like the relatives, children, but they're not yours, George. They are actually mine.

I don't know how you'd do that when DNA wasn't really relevant. I mean, maybe some birth certificates. Yeah. So in 1967, George went to the Houston area to investigate another tip.

A woman there had written to the family stating that Louis had revealed his true identity to her one night after having too much to drink to this man named Louis. So she believed that he and Maurice were both living in Texas somewhere. However, George and his son in law, Grover Paxton were unable to speak with her. Police there were able to help them find two men she had indicated, but they both denied being the missing sons.

Paxton said years later that doubts about the denial lingered in George's mind for the rest of his life, always thinking that no, these probably were my sons. But again, you know, we're talking years later. This is 22 years later. And kids grow up and they change.

And also, some are really young. They may not have had memories. Right. Or have been told the same story.

Over and over. So they're like, no. Exactly. Another letter they received that year, so 1967, brought the solders what they believed the most credible evidence that their son Louis was still alive.

So one day, Jenny found in the mail a letter addressed to her in postmark from central city Kentucky with no return address. Inside was a picture of a young man around age 30. He had features that strongly resembled their son Louis. Who probably would have been around that same age in his 30s had he survived.

So on the back it was written, Louis sold her. I love brother Frankie, little boys, A90132 or 35. I don't know really what that means. Okay.

The family was like, you know what, we need another private detective. So they hired another one to go to central city and look into this, you know, whole situation. But he never reported back. He just gone.

Yeah. And they were unable to locate him afterwards. Like just gone. Detective is also gone.

They got hired detective to find the detective. Exactly. Maybe Mrs. Saunders.

She's really good at detective work. So the picture did give them hope and they added it to the billboard. But it's like, you hire someone to go investigate it. He disappears.

Right. This family, like the odds are so stacked against them continuously. Yeah. All right.

So they enlarged the photo and actually put it over their fireplace because they were like, no, this is this is. This is our son. Yeah. Georgia admitted to the Charleston Gazette late the next year that the lack of information had been like hitting a rock wall.

And we just can't go any further. He would say he never the less vowed to continue. He stated that time was running out for us because he admitted in another interview. Around that time, we only want to know if they died in the fire.

We want to know otherwise like what happened to them. And so sadly, George died in 1969. Jenny and her surviving children who never talked about that night of the fire except to say that the family should accept what happened and move on with their lives, continued to seek answers to their questions about the missing children's fate. After Georgia's death, Jenny stayed in the family's home putting up fencing around it and adding additional rooms.

For the rest of her life, she wore black in honor of her children and to show that she was always in mourning. She tended the garden at the site where the former house had been. And after her death in 1989, she was pretty old. The family finally took the weathered, worn billboard down.

I guess they were just waiting like, you know, maybe as the parents, you would always keep the hope alive. Yeah. And that would be devastating. But I'm hopeful if the children had passed at that point that they were able to reunite with them on a spiritual level and have some answers.