Episode 24: A Terrible Christmas Tragedy -- Or Was It Murder?
 

The Jon Benet Ramsey case pops into most of our minds when we are asked to relay the most terrible Christmas story we know, but seventy-eight years ago in 1945 in Fayetteville, West Virginia, the Sodder family lost five of their ten children in a house fire on Christmas Eve. Was it a tragedy, a murder, or a kidnapping? Until their deaths, George and Jennie Sodder believed their five children survived the fire, but if so, where did they go?

 

Photo Resembling Louis
Sources:
Abbott, Karen. “The children who went up in smoke.” December 25, 2012. Smithsonian Magazine.

History’s Greatest Mysteries. Season 3, episode 9. “The Sodder children disappearance.”

Horn, Stacy. “Mystery of missing children haunts W.Va. Town. All Things Considered. NPR.

Newton, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes. 2009. New York, NY: Checkmark Books.

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Meet Robin Barefield, your host for Episode 24:
Robin Barefield is the author of five Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, The Fisherman’s Daughter, Karluk Bones, and Massacre at Bear Creek Lodge. She has written two nonfiction books, Kodiak Island Wildlife and Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier. Sign up to subscribe to her free monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska and check out her podcast: Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.  Read more about Robin's books at Author Masterminds.

Now Available: 29 True Stories about Murder and Mystery in Alaska