The billboard finally came down. [8] The local newspaper contradicted itself, stating that all the bodies had been found, but then later in the same story reporting that only part of one body was recovered. Exaggeration-prone outsiders. An unfamiliar female voice asked for an unfamiliar name. An employee of a local crematorium she contacted told her that human bones remain even after bodies are burned at 2,000F (1,090C) for two hours, far longer and hotter than the house fire could have been. She knew that remnants of various household appliances had been found in the burned-out basement, still identifiable. She and her father often stayed up late, talking about what might have happened. On the back was written: The family hired another private detective to go to Central City and look into the missive, but he never reported back to the Sodders and they were unable to locate him afterwards. [9], Some accounts have suggested the wrong-number phone call to the Sodder house might have also somehow been connected to the fire. Police first thought theyd found her, but the DNA was not a match. [7], At 1a.m., Jennie was again awakened by the sound of an object hitting the house's roof with a loud bang, then a rolling noise. [1], The last of the Sodder children, Sylvia, was born in 1942. Their house was destroyed in 45 minutes. Hickory, NC: Hometown Memories Publishing, 2011. Annita Prices children have not seen their beloved mother in 42 years. [8], The telephone rang at 12:30a.m. Jennie woke and went downstairs to answer it. An hour later she was roused once again, this time by heavy smoke curling into her room. It is difficult to move on when you lose a loved one, but even harder when you dont know what happened to them or who hurt them. Ive never told anyone this before, he confided as our interview drew to a close. In 1968 the family received a photograph in the mail that they believed was a photo of their missing son Louis. Fayetteville was and is a small town, with a main street that doesnt run longer than a hundred yards, and rumors always played a larger role in the case than evidence; no one even agreed on whether the children were dead or alive. Thus, given this age range, it was not very likely that these bones were from any of the five missing children, since the oldest, Maurice, had been 14 at the time (although the report allowed that vertebrae of a boy his age sometimes were advanced enough to appear to be at the lower end of the range). They took what they found inside the box to a local funeral director, who after examining it told them it was in reality fresh beef liver that had never been exposed to fire. The Sodder Children. . Picture a person in Maine profiling a case that occurred in California, he said. For nearly four decades, anyone driving down Route 16 near Fayetteville, West Virginia, could see a billboard bearing the grainy images of five children, all dark-haired and solemn-eyed, their names and agesMaurice, 14; Martha 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; Betty, 5stenciled beneath, along with speculation about what happened to them. The Fairlake Mill is an abandoned mill in Fairlake, it appears in Wrong Turn 2: Dead End. George traveled the country to investigate each lead, always returning home without any answers. It is when this boorish and brash moron is taken into custody that proceedings here (apparently) heat up. This time however the feral deformed trio of teen-munchers has a handler with the power of speech! Her very first memories are of that night in 1945, when she was 2 years old. [8], A telephone repairman told the Sodders that the house's phone line had not been burned through in the fire, as they had initially thought, but cut by someone who had been willing and able to climb 14 feet (4.3m) up the pole and reach 2 feet (61cm) away from it to do so. [1] After hearing nothing further, she went back to sleep. Required fields are marked *. by, Jack Swint . Every cop does half of those things actually one manages both and every cannibal snuffles, shuffles and chomps away with precious few repercussions. [1], Morris told George to leave the site undisturbed so that the state fire marshal's office could conduct a more thorough investigation. In August 1949, the Sodders decided to mount a new search at the fire scene and brought in a Washington, D.C. pathologist named Oscar B. During the fire, George, Jennie, and four of the nine children escaped. :)But to get to the point of all these terribly tragic stories, is it not the exact way all these animals in crime "work"? Lita enters the motel and checks in with her boyfriend and her friends. It is however possible, although not probable, for a boy 14 years old to show 16-17 maturation. However, after four days, George and his wife could not bear the sight anymore, so he bulldozed 5 feet (1.5m) of dirt over the site with the intention of converting it to a memorial garden for the lost children. They tried to extort money from him and he refused. Immediately, the whole party stopped talking to me". [1], Death certificates for the five children were issued December 30. On its flip side a cryptic handwritten note read: Louis Sodder. In the weeks before Christmas that year, George's older sons had also noticed a strange car parked along the main highway through town, its occupants watching the younger Sodder children as they returned from school. Annita was last seen leaving the Flamingo Club in Benwood, where she worked, on May 30, 1974. [1], In August 1949, George was able to persuade Oscar Hunter, a Washington, D.C. pathologist, to supervise a new search through the dirt at the house site. [7], Jennie also had trouble accepting Morris's belief that all traces of the children's bodies had been burned completely in the fire. [2] Chief F.J. Morris said the next day that the already slow response was further hampered by his inability to drive the fire truck, requiring that he wait until someone who could drive was available. 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 some years before. He tried to scoop water from a rain barrel but found it frozen solid. There was a stranger who appeared at the home a few months earlier, back in the fall, asking about hauling work. Are there REALLY inbred cannibals in the woods of west VA? They married and had 10 children between 1923 and 1943, and settled in Fayetteville, West Virginia, an Appalachian town with a small but active Italian immigrant community. Are you grouping these three murders together because they may be the result of the same murderer and you are looking for a serial killer?Is there any way to tell how old the mother was by the birth of that newborn child? But we only want to know. I tried to talk to the children in a friendly manner, but the men appeared hostile and refused to allow me to talk to these children. Courtesy of Jennie Henthorn. McCrackens goal with Mysterious WV is to bring answers to grieving friends and family. The report concluded that the vertebrae had, instead, most likely come from the dirt that George had used to bulldoze the site. Oh my god, for 40 years theyve been starting in the wrong place!. Jennie recalled hearing the hard thud on the roof, the rolling sound. Well now less than 6 months later we find Wrong Turn 5 already available. For nearly four decades, anyone driving down Route 16 near Fayetteville, West Virginia, could see a billboard bearing the grainy images of five children, all dark-haired and solemn-eyed, their . When McCracken films his own drive using Edelmans purported treasure map, you see just how much and how little the area has changed. He needs to pay for this act, no matter his age. If you can show material from the area at the time, youre halfway to sending a persons mind back to the time period where you want them, McCracken explained. A California missing woman's body was found along the Ohio River in West Virginia on Feb. 22. George was puzzled by the observation, since he had just had the house rewired when an electric stove was installed,[7] and the local electric company had said afterwards it was safe. Hunter. The mother, father, two oldest sons, and the youngest daughter survived the blaze. 5124 Fairlake Ln, Glen Allen, VA 23060 is a 4 bed, 2 bath, home in Reids Pointe, Glen Allen Virginia and last sold for. 5 Heartbreaking Unsolved Mysteries In West Virginia - OnlyInYourState Her death was a means to an end (dead men tell no tales) due to the fact he that he probably had raped before. I was brutaly raped right outside of morgantown heading into PA. i was only 14 it was 1978 . Virginia [8], The firefighters, one of whom was a brother of Jennie's,[10] could do little but look through the ashes that were left in the Sodders' basement. Your goddamn house is going up in smoke, he warned, and your children are going to be destroyed. The family erected a giant billboard near where there house once stood with the missing childrens photos on it. Courtesy of www.mywvhome.com. They never heard from him again. Undeterred, George and Jennie erected the billboard along Route 16 and passed out flyers offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of their children. I know the filmmakers want to establish the cannibals as Freddy Kreuger, Jason Vorhees type antiheroes but they simply lack the pizzazz and traits required to allow anyone to root for them. The mountains themselves are mysterious, because, half the time, you never know whats around the next corner.. The five middle children disappeared without a trace. For the rest of his life George, as he came to be known, would not talk much about why he had left his homeland. They wondered why, if it had been caused by an electrical problem, the family's Christmas lights had remained on throughout the fire's early stages, when the power should have gone out. Back 1945, on Christmas Eve, a family home belonging to the Sodders caught fire while the family slept. 5 Unsolved Mysteries In West Virginia That Will Leave - OnlyInYourState Fairlake, West Virginia, USA | Wrong Turn Wiki | Fandom George and Jennie Sodder believed the fire was set to cover up the abduction of the five children. After another half hour she woke up again, smelling smoke. [7] Marion had fallen asleep on the living room couch, so Jennie assumed the other children who had stayed up later had gone back up to the attic where they slept. Karen Abbott [1], The Sodder family celebrated on Christmas Eve 1945. Jennie told the caller she had reached a wrong number, later recalling the woman's "weird laugh". However, no record identifying the suspect exists, and why he would have wanted to cut any utility lines to the Sodder house while stealing the block and tackle has never been explained. He and his sons intended to use a ladder to the attic to rescue the other children, but it was not in its usual spot resting against the house and could not be found anywhere nearby. Scary but I can see it happening. Fairlake is a small town in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, USA and is home to The Odet Family, a family of inbred deformed cannibals. A letter arrived from a woman in St. Louis saying the oldest girl, Martha, was in a convent there. It was obviously the mother of the newborn as three 5 pound dumb bells are pretty easy to carry along with the infant. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover personally responded to his letters: "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." After a very thorough search, artifacts including a dictionary that had belonged to the children and some coins were found. What everyone knew for certain was this: On the night before Christmas 1945, George and Jennie Sodder and nine of their 10 children went to sleep (one son was away in the Army). West Virginia has its fair share of unsolved mysteries. Terms of Use A baby!Fry them all. Part One.. Like every other state in the country, WV has its own share of violent crimes, including murders and missing persons believed to be dead, that date back as far as this states birth in 1863. [9], Efforts to find aid and rescue the children were unexpectedly complicated. John was born August 20, 1934 in Williams, IA to Florence (Steele) and Chester Beall. He also heard a curious story from a Fayetteville minister about F.J. Morris, the fire chief. Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines (Review) | One Guy Rambling Like a Good Unsolved Mystery? This West Virginian Is Bringing the It's the last one you'll ever take. The five middle children disappeared without a trace. However, the entire party did register at the hotel and stayed in a large room with several beds. Its that local knowledge that ultimately convinced him to start the channel. [1], The surviving Sodder children, joined by their own children, continued to publicize the case and investigate leads. Final Rating 4.5 / 10. The fire department was only two and a half miles away but the crew didnt arrive until 8 a.m., by which point the Sodders home had been reduced to a smoking pile of ash. An employee at a crematorium informed her that bones remain after bodies are burned for two hours at 2,000 degrees. Your email address will not be published. On this basis, the bones show greater skeletal maturation than one would expect for a 14-year-old boy (the oldest missing Sodder child). He admitted to the theft,[7] and claimed he had been the one who cut the phone line, thinking it was a power line, but denied having anything to do with the fire. The population was 1,747 at the 2010 census. I agree with all the comments. [5] By then, their second-oldest son Joe (21) had left home to serve in the military during World War II. How accurate can they actually be? Anyone can film on location with todays technology, but McCracken brings his deep-rooted knowledge of the area along with his Sony Handycam. The man was estimated to be in his 70s wearing only a pajama top. The Sodders planted flowers across the space where their house had stood and began to stitch together a series of odd moments leading up to the fire. They might not have survived the night. Whether or not the treasure itself is real, the story of Moishe Edelman is a rich tale of the difficulties but also the underappreciated diversity of early 20th century Appalachia. George and Tinsley went to Morris and confronted him with this news. One of the men looked at me in a hostile manner; he turned around and began talking rapidly in Italian. The Sodders spent their entire life savings on detectives, who they hired to search for their children.
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