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On Christmas Eve nineteen forty five, in the rural outskirts
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of Fayetteville, West Virginia, George and Jenny Sotter tucked their
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children into bed for the night with the anticipation of
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spending Christmas together the next morning. Tragically, a fire quickly
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engulfed the home, forcing the family to leave, but five
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of the children were presumably still inside. What would unfold
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that evening is still one of the greatest mysteries in
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the true crime world today, leaving us to wonder what
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happened to the Solder children. Hello, and welcome to another
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episode of Truly Twisted. As always, I'm your host, Alicia Watson,
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and every Thursday, I will be bringing you a story
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that is always victim focused and fact based. If you
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like the show, please rate me five stars wherever you
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are listening. It really is the best way to help
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me find new audiences and I really appreciate it. But
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let's get into this week's episode. We're jumping right in
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with another holiday related story and it's an absolute doozy,
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the disappearance of disolder children. So let's get into it. Parents,
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George and Jenny Sotter, were born in Italy, moving to
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the US at young ages. George had come from Tula,
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Sardinia in nineteen oh eight when he was thirteen years old,
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along with his older brother, but his brother wasn't a
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fan of the US and quickly left to go back
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to Italy, leaving young George there alone in a new
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At just thirteen, George found a job at the Pennsylvania
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Railroads carrying water and supplies to the laborers, and he
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did this for a few years before moving to West Virginia,
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where he found a job as a driver. This would
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eventually evolve into his very own trucking company, and it
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was then that he met Jenny, a storekeeper's daughter. Jenny
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Capriani moved to Italy when she was just three years
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old with her parents. The couple met at her family's
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store called the Music Box, which honestly is quite beautiful,
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and the two would get married in nineteen twenty two
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move into a two story timber frame home in Fayeteville.
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It was a small and quiet town in West Virginia
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with a population of about thirteen hundred people at the time.
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Their main street wasn't even a mile long. Throughout their marriage,
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George and Jenny would have ten children together between nineteen
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twenty three and nineteen forty three, Joe, John, Marion, George Junior, Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jenny,
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Betty and Sylvia. They were, by all accounts, a very
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happy Italian family and at the timeline of our story,
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their children ranged from twenty five to two years old.
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So now that we have set the scene, let's get
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into the events of Christmas Eve. Also, please note that
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the oldest Sawder child was not home that evening, Joe
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was serving in the army overseas at the time, but
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all other nine children were there. The house was full
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of holiday cheer until about ten thirty pm, when George
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and Jenny went to bed with their two year old
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daughter Sylvia. Five of the younger children, Betty, Jenny, Lewis,
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Martha and Maurice, who were six, eight, ten, twelve and
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fourteen at the time, had asked if they could stay
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up later given that it was a holiday, and they
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were allowed provided that they finished their chores and locked
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up the house, which meant closing all the curtains, making
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sure everything was turned off and locked up, beating all
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the farm animals, and making sure, you know, everything was
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just secure for the night. At twelve thirty am, a
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strange phone call woke Jenny. An unfamiliar woman asked for
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a name that she didn't recognize, laughed oddly, and then
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hung up. In the background, glasses clinked and it sounded
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like maybe there was a holiday party going on, and
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Jenny was about to tell the woman that she had
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the wrong number, so she didn't think anything of it.
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While awake, Jenny noticed that the downstairs lights were still
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on and the curtains were open. The front door was
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also still unlocked. She assumed that the children were up
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in the attic playing, so she secured the house and
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went back to bed. Moments later, she heard a loud
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thud followed by a rolling noise coming from the roof,
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but she eventually drifted back to sleep. At one thirty am,
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roughly an hour later, and Jenny awoke to smoke filling
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her room and flames engulfing the family home. She heard
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screaming and coughing, and yelled for her kids to get
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out of the house. The family rushed out, but five
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of them were still missing. George desperately tried to re
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enter the house, but the stairs were already engulfed in flames.
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When he ran to get his ladder, it was missing
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from its usual spot at the side of the house,
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so he tried to start not just one, but both
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of his coal trucks that were parked at the house
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to use them as a platform to reach the attic windows,
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but neither of the trucks started. Despite working perfectly the
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day before, even the water well was frozen solid. Everything
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that they were trying to do put them at a standstill.
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This nightmare continued as the family tried to call for help.
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Their phone line was dead and a local volunteer fire
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department was severely understood due to the current war and
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the fact that it was Christmas Eve. It took seven
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hours for them to arrive, and by eight a m.
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The house was completely reduced to a pile of ash.
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The surviving family members were devastated by the loss of
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their home and the fact that five of their children
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were still missing and presumably died in that fire. I
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can't even imagine how helpless the Sawdters felt watching their home.
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The local corner ruled that the children had perished in
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the fire that was caused by quote unquote faulty wiring.
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And death certificates were issued on December thirtieth, nineteen forty five,
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for the five children, Betty, Jenny, Lewis, Martha, and Maurice.
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The remaining Sawders, however, were skeptical for one thing. The
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fire department wasn't able to find a single identifiable bone
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or human remain in the wreckage that could have belonged
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to any of the five missing children. That, in combination
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with their phone lines not working, their vans not working,
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and George's ladder being moved, it felt very suspicious. Too
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much had gone wrong all at once, and it felt intentional.
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Jenny later consulted a crematorium worker and conducted her own
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experiments with animal bones. She found that even the most
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intense heat left charred yet identifiable remains. Cremation of human
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remains doesn't fully destroy bones in the time or temperature
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of a typical house fire. Even prolonged and intense house
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fires usually leave traces of skeletal remains. The Smithsonian reported
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that bones remain even after two hours in a crematorium
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at two thousand degrees fahrenheit, whereas the solder house burnt
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at a far less time and lower intensity. If that
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was the case, where were the children? Four days after
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the fire, what remained of the home was bulldozed and
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a memorial garden was planted in the home's place. A
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funeral was held for the children on January Tewod, but
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Jenny and George were two griefs stricken to attend. Now.
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I know that hindsight is always twenty twenty, but looking
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at some of the events that led up to the date,
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all of this felt very strange. George and Jenny did
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not believe that their kids were dead. They believed that
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they had been taken from the home during the fire
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for starters. The months leading up to Christmas nineteen forty
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five were marked by several unsettling incidents. A life insurance
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salesman was enraged by George's refusal to buy a policy
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and reportedly threatened him, shouting, your goddamn house is going
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to go up in smoke and your children are going
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to be destroyed. He claimed that George would pay for
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his remarks about Mussolini. Later, a stranger looking for work
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wandered to the back of the house and pointed to
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two fuse boxes. He warned them that they were a
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fire hazard, and George found this really strange, considering that
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the home's electrics had recently been inspected and cleared. Additionally,
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one of the oldest sold children noticed two people parked
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in a car along Highway twenty one, intently watching the
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younger children get off the school bus. Not to mention
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everything that went wrong during the fire, the phone line
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was cut, it wasn't burnt. Following an inspection of the
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home and the surrounding electrical units, a telephone repairman reported
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that the line did not burn in the fire. It
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was cleanly cut beforehand, as if somebody had climbed up
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a pole or used a ladder and deliberately severed it.
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Number two, the ladder had been moved. This ladder usually
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sat perched against the solderhouse and was crucial for accessing
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the upper floor. It was found far from its original
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position after the fire, as though somebody had removed it
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before the fire started. George's usually reliable work trucks mysteriously
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failed to start that night. They had run perfectly fine
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earlier that day, So what are the odds that not
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one but two would stop working right when you need
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them to. Number four, when the snow had finally melted,
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young baby, Sylvia, who was just two at the time,
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found a hard rubber sphere in the bush. George believed
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that it resembled a napalm, pineapple bomb, or incendiary device
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of some sort, but there was no way to test it. However,
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this could have been what Jenny had heard rolling on
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the roof, and later witnesses would speculate that they saw
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balls of fire being thrown at the Sawder House before
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their home went up in flames. Five that strange phone call,
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Some accounts have suggested that the wrong number phone call
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to the Solder house might somehow be connected to the fire,
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or was meant as some sort of distraction for somebody
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to go in and take the kids. However, investigators later
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contacted this woman who made the call, and she confirmed
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that it had been the wrong number on her part
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and that she didn't know anything about the family. A
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frequently discussed theory is that the kids were taken because
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of retaliation because George Sotterer had been quite outspoken about
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Mussolini and Italian fascism. About Mussolini and it being a
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prominent Italian community, some locals later claimed that maybe these
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threats made toward the family in the weeks before the
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fire were deliberate as a reason because this was a
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prominent Italian community, maybe George had pissed the wrong person off.
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Some locals later claimed that threats were made toward the
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family in the weeks before the fire, and witnesses would
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claim to see the missing Solder children themselves. One woman
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who had seen the fire from the road said that
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she had seen a couple of children peering out of
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a passing car while the house was burning. She said
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that they resembled the Solder children. Another woman at a
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rest stop between Fayetteville and Charleston said that she had
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served them breakfast the next morning. She noted that there
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was a Florida license plate car in the rest stop
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parking lot as well. The Sawters hired a private investigator
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named C. C. Tinsley from a nearby town to look
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into the case. He informed the family that the insurance
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salesman who had threatened George over his anti Mussolini sentiments
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had been on the corner's jury that ruled the fire
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in accident. He also learned of rumors around Fayetteville that,
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despite his report to the Swters that no remains had
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been found in the ashes, chief Morris, the fire chief,
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had found a heart, which he later packed into a
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small metal box and secretly buried. It was later found
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that this was actually a beef liver and it had
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not at all been affected by a fire, but he
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was hoping that this would help the family. Except their
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children had died in August of nineteen forty nine, the
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saughters decided to go on a whole new search of
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the scene. They brought in a Washington d c. Pathologist
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and the excavation was much more thorough than it had
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been the first time around. Then covered a small amount
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of objects, damaged coins, a partly burned dictionary, several shards
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of vertebrae, and a hunter sent the bones to the
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Smithsonian Institution. Basically, the takeaway was that the bones were human,
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that they belonged to one person, presumably between sixteen and
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seventeen years old, and this could have been a fourteen
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year old boy i e. The oldest missing solder child Morris,
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but it was not probable for a boy fourteen and
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a half years old to show that level of maturation.
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That and the vertebrae didn't appear to have any fire damage,
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lending speculation that they were potentially dug up in the
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dirt that the family used to plant the memorial garden, which,
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as a separate aside, I did not like that as
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an explanation that there's just vertebrae in your dirt, But
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I rest my case. It was nineteen forty five. They
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continued to look for their children and follow any leads
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that came their way. George would often personally drive across
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state lines to wherever possible sighting was until he was
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confident that his children weren't there. In nineteen fifty two,
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the family printed out flyers and handed them out all
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over the state. They also put up a billboard with
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the children's faces, offering a five thousand dollars reward for
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any information leading to the missing Sawters. They put up
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two billboards in fact, one along the highway and one
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where the home once stood. In nineteen sixty seven, George
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traveled to Houston to investigate a possible tip of somebody
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who had stated that Lewis had revealed his identity to
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her after having too much to drink one night. She
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thought that he and Maurice were potentially living in Texas.
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When she brought George to the two men that she
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believed to be his boys. They denied knowing anything about
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the Sotters or being these missing boys, but for whatever reason,
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this interaction weighed heavily on George until his death. The
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Sowter family later received a letter from Central City, Kentucky
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with no return address and a photo of a thirtyish
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year old male with a strong resemblance to Lewis. On
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the back, written in handwriting was Lewis Sotter, I love
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brother Frankie L L boys U A nine oh one,
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three two or three five. This would have been the