The Sodder children

The Sodder house at Fayetteville burned in the early hours of Christmas morning 1945. Six of the family got out. Five children, Maurice 14, Martha Lee 12, Louis 10, Jennie Irene 8 and Betty Dolly 5, did not, and no remains of them were ever found in the ashes. The fire chief said the bodies had burned completely, which does not hold: household objects came out of the same ash identifiable, and a Smithsonian pathologist later pointed out that human bone survives two hours at 2,000 degrees. Around it sit details nobody explained. The phone line had been cut, not burned. The ladder normally against the house was found 75 feet away. Two trucks that had been working would not start. A bus driver said he saw balls of fire thrown at the house, and an object resembling an incendiary device was found on the property. From 1952 the family kept a billboard up on Route 16 asking for information, and it stayed there until after Jennie Sodder died in 1989.