Fire: The Case For The Sodder Family

hristmas usually begins with excited children ripping open gifts while their parents watch on happily, however this was not the case for the Sodder family. On December 25, 1945 in the early hours of the morning, in Fayetteville, West Virginia, the Sodder family house caught fire, leaving five of the ten children trapped inside. By the time the fire department reached the house, all that was left were ashes filling what was once the basement. The children, Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty were all declared dead due to fire or suffocation. Despite the legal report there is ample forensic evidence, eye witness accounts and suspicious behavior to conclude that the children did not die in the fire. The amount of loose ends in this case

If faulty wiring had been the actually cause of the fire, it wouldn’t make sense that the lights were still functioning. Furthermore, the phone line had been cut fourteen feet above the ground and two feet from the nearest pole. Neighbors made a statement that they saw a man stealing from the house the night of the fire. The man, Lonnie Johnston later admitted to cutting the phone line when his mistook it for the powerline. The fire was supposedly hot enough to cremate bodies and yet a man was able to steal from the house without sustaining any injuries. Another witness, a bus driver, stated he saw people throwing 'balls of fire' onto the Sodder's roof (Elise). The bus drivers account explains how the flames jumped to the second floor unlike the flue fire theory. Another key point in this case is that on the night of the fire, Mr. Sodder attempted to reenter the house with the ladder normally kept by the house but it was nowhere to be found. It only later was found in a local embankment. Mr. Sodder made another attempt to save his children by using to coal truck, but neither truck would start even though they had worked the day before (Newton). It is odd that in a dire moment that the two vehicles that could be used to save his children mysteriously stop working. The obvious answer is the trucks were likely sabotaged to ensure that Mr. Sodder would not be able to reenter the