Mountain State Mysteries contains adult content that may not be suitable for all audiences.
Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host Mark and I'm Courtney and this is Mountain State Mysteries.
Today we want to tell you about one of West Virginia's most infamous cases, a case that has left
everyone around the world scratching their head. This is the story of the Sotter children. George
Sotter was born with the name Giorgio Sardu in Sardinia, Italy in 1895. He immigrated to the
United States 13 years later with one older brother who were going to call Leo who went back home as
soon as both of the boys cleared customs at Ellis Island. For the rest of George's life,
as he came to be known, he would not talk much about why he left his homeland. George would
eventually find work on the railroads in Pennsylvania, carrying water and other supplies to workers in
1912. When George was 22, he registered for the Selective Service for the First World War,
listing Michigan as his home. This record shows him working as a plumber's helper in Detroit.
His draft record also documented that he would send money back to his family in Italy. After a few
years in the 1920s, he would move to West Virginia where he took a more permanent job as a driver in
Smithers, West Virginia. He then started his own trucking company, initially hauling field dirt to
construction sites and later hauling coal mined in the region. Ginny Lourdesse Sipriani was born
on March 2, 1903 in Foggia, Italy. The second child of Joseph Giuseppe and Martha Martini Sipriani,
the family migrated to the United States in 1904. They also ended up spending some time in Pennsylvania
before in Incap in West Virginia. George and Ginny first met when he came into her father's
store for some supplies in Smithers, West Virginia on November 4, 1922. They married in Charleston
and lived in Smithers. There are some reports that Ginny was supposed to marry someone else
as a part of a deal among Italian families, but the details of the story are very slim to none.
The Sotters would settle in Fayetteville, West Virginia, an Appalachian town which had a small
but active population of Italian immigrants in a two-story timber frame house two miles north
of town. In 1923, they had the first of their 10 children. George's business prospered and they
became one of the most respected middle-class families around in the words of one of the
local official. However, George had strong opinions about many subjects and he was not shy about
expressing them. Sometimes alienating people, in particular his strident opposition to Italian
dictator Benito Mussolini, had led to some strong arguments with other members of the immigrant community.
The last of the Sotter Children's Sylvia was born in 1942. By then, their second oldest son Joe,
who was 21, had left to serve in the military during World War II. The following year Mussolini
was deposed and executed. However, George's criticism of the late dictator had left some
hard feelings in town. There was a stranger who appeared at the home a few months before the fire.
Back in the fall, asking George if he had any hauling work, George would tell him to hold on
and he noticed that the man followed him to the back of the house. Pointed to two separate
fused boxes and said this is going to cause a fire someday. George thought that that was very strange,
especially since he had just had the wiring checked by the local power company, which said it was in
fine condition. Around the same time, there was a knock at the door and there was another man trying
to sell the family life insurance and he became irate when George declined. Quote, your damn house
is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed. You are going to be paid for the
dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini. End quote. George brushed this off at the time and
really didn't think anything about it. According to the Smithsonian magazine, one of the last
strange things that happened before the fire is that one of the solders' older sons recalled
something weird. Just before Christmas, they noticed a man parked along US Highway 21,
intently watching the younger soldered kids as they came home from school. Christmas of 1945
was going to be the first time the soldered family would be together since World War II. John Soder
arrived back in Fayetteville the week before. However, Joe was held up at an army base in
North Carolina and ended up missing Christmas. The oldest daughter, Mary Ann, had been working at the
Walsdam store in downtown Fayetteville and she surprised the younger soldered kids with new
toys she had bought for them as Christmas gifts. The younger soldered kids were so excited that
they begged their mother to stay up past their bedtime and play with them. Around 10pm, Jenny
told them that they could stay up a little later. As long as 14-year-old Maurice and 9-year-old Louis
remembered to put the cows in and feed their chickens before going to bed. George and the
oldest boys, John and George Jr., were already in bed because they had been working all day.
After the kids told her they would take care of everything, Jenny took 3-year-old Sylvia to bed with her.
Around 12.30am, Christmas morning, Jenny woke up to the telephone ringing. She rushed into the
office to answer it. There are a few different accounts of this call but it is usually said
that the caller was a woman who the solders did not know. The other account is that the woman
asked for someone who had no reason whatsoever to be there, implying that the solders may have known
this person. Jenny told the woman that she had the wrong number. The woman who called and apologized
for disrupting them. Jenny accepted her apology and went to hang up. Just before she did, she
heard a man let out a peculiar laugh or sound. Other accounts said that the woman laughed.
Others will say that she heard a party in the background with glasses clinking. She hung up
and was returning to bed. She noticed all the downstairs lights were turned on and all the
curtains were open. The front door was unlocked. She saw Mary Ann asleep on the couch in the living
room and assumed that the other kids were upstairs in bed. She turned off the lights, closed the curtain
and locked the front door and returned to bed. As Jenny started to dose off around 1 a.m. she heard
one loud bang on the roof and then a rolling noise. An hour later she was awoke again this time
by the heavy smoke coming into her room. When she woke up and saw Georgia's office on fire
around the telephone line and fuse box, the lights were still on when both parents ordered
their children to leave the house and then ran out the front door. Mary Ann woke up and ran to
her parents room where she found three-year-old Sylvia and picked her up. They made it outside
and met their parents. At this point, John and George Jr woke up and realized what was going on.
Both parents and four of their children, Mary Ann, Sylvia, John and George Jr, escaped the house.
They tried to yell for the younger children upstairs but heard no response. They tried to
reach them in the stairwell but it was impassable. John said in his first police interview after the
fire that he went upstairs to alert his brothers and sisters sleeping there. Though later he changed
his story and said that he only called up there and did not actually see them. In efforts to save
the rest of the soldered children, George climbed up the wall of the house and broke open a window
cutting his arm in the process. He and his sons intended to use a ladder to get upstairs to rescue
the other children but for some reason the ladder was not in its normal spot and they couldn't find
it. They noticed a barrel of water and wanted to use it to try to extinguish the fire but the water
was frozen solid. George then tried to pull both of his trucks that he used for his business up to
the house so he could climb upstairs but neither of the trucks would start even though they worked
perfectly fine the day before. They ran back inside to use a phone however this time the phone would
not work so Mary Ann ran to a neighbor's house to call the fire department. She ran to the house of
Mr. and Mrs. Garfield Davis. Ms. Davis attempted to call the Fayetteville fire department but she
couldn't get the switchboard operator to respond. Around 1 a.m. Thomas E. Smith of Beckwith was
driving from Beckley and drove past the solder home while it was burning. Smith drove by around the
same time Jenny smelled smoke. Smith drove on searching for her phone to call the fire department.
He stopped at a local place called Crassus Park and attempted to call but he was told the phone was
out of order. During the fire someone noticed Lonnie Johnson in their garage which was separate
from the house. He was stealing a set of chain hoist from the ceiling of the building. It was
later said that Johnson had assistance from Dave Atkins. Johnson would later admit to taking the
hoist and tossing them over an embankment so he could return to pick them up later. A few days
after the fire, George obtained warrants for the Johnson and Atkins accusing them of larency.
Johnson failed to appear for his hearing and was later arrested. He played guilty to the
charges and paid a $25 fine. Atkins fled the area and shortly joined the army to avoid criminal
charges. He spent two years in the army just so he wouldn't have to pay the $25 fine.
The Sotters had no choice but to watch the house burn down and collapse over the next 30 to 45
minutes. They assumed the other five children had perished in the fire. Some reports say that at least
five different vehicles drove past the Sotters home while it was on fire. There honestly could have
been more. The reason we were telling you this, that it plays a big factor in the story later on.
Many of Fayetteville's volunteer firemen were still away at war. Others was out of town because
of the holiday. The firemen who were in town were asleep so it was hard to get a hold of them.
Once they were finally reached, the fire department took eight hours to get to the Sotter home.
Reports state that when the fire department got there, they hooked a pump up to a nearby creek
and extinguished the remaining parts of the embers in the basement until the fire was fully put out.
After this, Mr. Sotter was taken to the local hospital so they could tend to the cut on his arm.
Mary Ann wrote an account of the night stating that the fire had completely burned out hours
before and stated that some of the firemen did not arrive until 9am. Chief Morris told George to
leave the site undisturbed so that the state fire marshal's office could conduct a more thorough
investigation. However, just four days after the fire, George and his wife could not bear the
site anymore. So George bulldozed 5 feet of dirt over the site where the fire happened,
covering it so they could put a memorial garden for the lost children. The local coroner conveyed
an inquest the next day, which hailed that the fire was an accident caused by faulty wiring.
Among the jurors was a man who had threatened George that his house would burn down and his
children would be destroyed in retribution for his anti-Musselemie remarks.
Death certificate for the five children were issued on December 30th. The local newspaper
contradicted itself, stating that all of the bodies had been found, but then later on in the same
story that only one part of the body was recovered. On January 2nd, 1946, the Sotters held a funeral
for the five children. George and Jenny were too grief-stricken to attend the funeral, although
they're surviving children yet. In the spring of 1946, a few months after the fire, while Sylvia
was playing outside, she found a small object that was green and described as possibly being a rubber
or plastic with an end on it that seemed to be burned. The object was found on part of the property
where it could have been rolled off the roof. If this is true, it matches up to some eyewitness
reports of fireballs being thrown onto the roof. The object was shown to local military officials
according to them. The object looked like it could possibly be a pineapple or napalm device.
A pineapple or napalm device. One question that came to mind while doing the research on this case
is that could this have been the loud noise on the roof that Jenny heard? Another theory that came
to light throughout the years is that the rubber object could have been a part of one of the toys
Mary Ann purchased for the kids as a Christmas present. The Sotters hired a private investigator
named C. C. Tinsley from the town of Gully Bridge to look into the case. Tinsley informed the family
that the insurance salesman who had threatened George over his anti-miscellaneous remarks
had been on the coroner's jury that rolled the fire an accident. He also learned rumors around
Fayetteville that despite his report to the Sotters that never remains have been found in the ashes.
Morris had found a heart in which he later put into a metal box and buried it. Morris apparently
confessed to his local minister who in turn confirmed to George. George and Tinsley went to Morris
and confronted him with the news. Morris agreed to show the where he buried the box.
They took what they found to a local funeral director who after examining it told them that
it was just a fresh beef liver that had never been exposed to fire. Morris said that he did this
in hopes that the Sotters would find it and be satisfied that the missing children had died in
the fire. One year later Ginny Sotter was reading about a fire where seven people had died including
small children. What caught her attention is that the bodies were burned severely. There were still
skeletal remains of everyone including a three-month-old infant. Ginny shared the story to George
and this is when he decided that the children did not die in the fire. Around this time Ginny would
start doing some tests of her own. She began placing animal bones and meats in her kitchen stove
to see if they would burn. She was always left with questions because the bones returned to ashes
but there would still be remains left in the pile. In June of 1947 George and Ginny's oldest son
John married 18 year old Margaret Meadows from High Cove. Later that year Joe Sotter married Clarice
Louise Buckland from Harewood. Now we know you probably have questions on the fire. Some people
believe that the children never went to bed. They were still on the first floor. They may have been
lured out of the house by someone who entered the house through the unlocked doors perhaps
promising them with the Christmas present or possibly telling them that the house was on fire.
In the book No Direct Evidence the story of the missing Sotter children by author Bob Bragg
created a modified theory that could explain this. One, Miss Sotter said none of the children's chores
were completed. Two, the same five who stayed up playing were the same five who disappeared.
Three, that only a few remains were found if there were actually any remains. Four, the bones that
were found in the 1949 excavation were found on the opposite end of the house to the boy's bedroom.
Maurice may have been taken into another room and killed away from the other four so they would not
panic and wake the others in the house. But this is countered by the fact that the bones found in
1949 showed no evidence to ever being exposed to fire. Five, a woman in Fayetteville told Miss Sotter
that four of the children were taken. Six, Miss Ina Crutchfield operator of the Alderson Hotel
in Trilfton said only four of the children were in her hotel on Christmas morning. Seven, if the
children went to bed why would they have not awakened Mary Ann from the sofa so she could have
gone to bed as well. Eight, if someone came into the house they either lured the children
out of the house or killed them in their beds then carried them out. How could that have been done
if the children were upstairs and they had to walk past Mary Ann who was asleep downstairs on the sofa.
One woman who had been watching the fire from the road said she has seen some of the
impairment of a passing car while the house was burning. Another woman at a rest stop between
Fayetteville and Charleston said she has served them breakfast the next morning and noted the
presence of a car with a Florida license plate in the rest stops parking lot. In 1949 George Sala
magazine photo of a group of young ballet dancers in New York City. One of them looked like his
missing daughter Betty. Ginny saw the photo and said that's sis you can see the photo on our website
MountStateMysteriesPodcast.com. It took us it looks like the girl they thought was Betty
is in the front to the right. George drove all the way to New York where he asked to see the girl
himself but his demands were refused. George also tried to get the FBI involved while he considered
to be a kidnapping. FBI Director J Edgar Hoover personally responded to his letter quote although
I would like to be of service the matter related appears to be local character and does not come
within investigate it and does not come within investigative jurisdiction bureau in quote if
the local authorities requested the bureau's assistant he added he would of course direct agents
but the Fayetteville police and fire departments refused to do so during the spring of 1949
several citizens wrote to the Charleston Gazette expressing their feelings towards the case and
making small contributions Courtney do you care to read them quote let's solve this mystery by
starting a fund for the solders to raise approximately fifteen hundred dollars which in 2023 would be
nineteen thousand two hundred sixty six dollars and twenty four cents to finance a thorough
investigation of the case by Thomas P. Brophy of New York City providing these children are living
and can be found this idea is certainly worth a little consideration just try to imagine the joy
which would be experienced this Christmas which has been missing for the past three if their children
are recovered in quote Lawrence R. Smith quote I believe with all in my heart they need a helping
hand from every citizen of West Virginia we don't have much at this world's good but we have our
children that we love and we sympathize with the solder family so much that I'm sitting our contribution
to the fund for the service of an able man like Mr. Brophy in quote Mr. and Mrs. W. M. Price
quote I think that anyone in a position to help should do so I say that the anxious hearts of
the solders might be relieved it is a burden hard for them to bear it is a fate worse than death and
only hope and pray that everyone will help every donor will receive his reward from God
in quote Mrs. George D. Miller by May 1949 the solder fund had only raised about 51 dollars
the rest of the summer was spent by trying to raise additional funds but by August contributions
had all but stopped in August of 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 after a third search artifacts
including a dictionary that belonged to the children and some coins were found several small
bone fragments were unearthed determined to have been human vertebrae often the same person
quote since the transverse recesses refuse the age of the individual adept should have been
14 to 15 years in quote Nimmin's report said quote conclusions from studying these phones it can be
unequivocally stated that these bones are identical with known human bones of the age 14 to 15 years
and is probable with room for very little doubt that they belong to a child of this age
the bones shoe the bones show no evidence of the actual charring which would indicate that
they were not free within the fire and subject to high temperature they of course could have been in
the fire covered by flesh and consequently insulated from the higher temperatures associated with the
fire the question immediately arises as to why these bones should be found without the associated
bones of the remaining portions of the skeleton and consequently it would lead one to believe
that the remaining portion of the skeletal necessitates the conclusion that they were
forcibly removed from the remaining portion of the skeleton such a forceful dismemberment
during life or even after a body has been subject to the fire of the intensity described would
necessitate a considerable amount of force and dexterity on the part of an individual
planting such a dismemberment it was seen more reasonable that the remaining bones have been
removed from the skeleton subsequent to the death of the individual at a time that interlacing
ligaments and fibrous tissue had undergone degeneration this feature therefore suggests
that the bones were separated from the remaining portions of the skeleton at some time later and
perhaps these bones were overlooked at the time of the removal end quote reported oscar b hunter
junior md pathologist the investigation and its findings attracted nation attention
and the west virginia legislator held two hearings on the case in 1950 afterwards however
governor okey l patterson and state police superintendent w e birchett ruled the solder's
case was hopeless and closed it at the state level the fbi decided it has jurisdiction
as a possible interstate kidnapping but dropped the case after two years of following fruitless
leads with all official efforts to solve the case coming to an end the solder family did not
give up hope they have flyers printed with pictures of the children offering a $5,000 reward for any
information that would solve the case in 1952 the solders put up a billboard at the site of the house
that read what was their fate kidnapped murdered or are they still alive $5,000 reward and another
along us route 60 near endstead with the same information it would end up becoming a landmark
for traffic through fayetteville on us route 19 known as today state route 16 now we know we dropped
a bombshell siding of the kids earlier in the episode don't worry we are going to tell you about
ita crutchfield siding of the children with the billboards being put up ita crutchfield came forward
with her reported siding ita was working at the alderson hotel in troesson west virginia she
claimed to have seen the children approximately a week after the fire in her statement she said quote
i did see four of the soldered children in my hotel the immediate week following december 25th
1945 the children were accompanied by two women and two men all of italian extraction to the best
of my knowledge i do not remember the exact date however the entire party did register at the hotel
and stay in room 25 which is a large room with several beds
they registered between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. i tried to talk to the children in a friendly manner but
the man appeared hostile and refused to allow me to talk to the children after registering the people
i made a friendly remark to the small boy he answered me and one of the older women began
to talk to me one of the men looked at me in a hostile manner he turned around and began talking
rapidly in italian immediately the whole party stopped talking to me i sensed that i was being
frozen out so i said nothing else they left early the next morning at the time i had not heard of
the solder fire in august of 1946 a young man who seemed to be of italian origin came to the
alderson hotel accompanied by a small boy whom he said was his ward he stayed in room eight for two
days and three nights the child was not allowed out of his sight a reflection i realized that this
was the same one that had been here in winter before i still did not connect those occurrences
with the solder case until i saw the pictures in the paper i did see three solder girls and the
young solder boy lewis once and i did see the youngest boy a second time i do not remember seeing
the older boy end quote investigators still to this day do not consider her story credible
as she had only first seen the photo of the children two years after the fire five years
before she came forward seven months after ider crutchfield statement was taken jenny solder
wrote a letter to governor wc marlon asking for more help from the state police now that
superintendant birchett had resigned she said dear mr marlon after eight years of police service i see
that mr w e birchett resigned for all that he has done for me i wish he had resigned seven years ago
he said he wanted to stay on the job and stop crimes if he didn't stop crimes or investigate
them better than he did my case we gave him because of arson and a kidnap case here in fayette county
because some criminals set my house on fire then kidnapped five of my 10 children in the year 1945
we have a sign affidavit that the immediate week following december 1945 my children were accompanied
by two men and two women they stayed one night at a hotel in trostom west virginia in the month
of august 1946 a young man accompanied my small son who he said was his ward stay in the same hotel
the first time yes mr marlon the criminal sleep and rest right in our state capital three hearings
have been forced in mr birchett's office but what has mr birchett done nothing he did not even try to
investigate and as for mr paterson or our fire marshal mr rapor they have done no more than mr
birchett why are they hiding from the truth they know very well this crime has been committed
but we are not going to give up looking for them after all we should get some justice mr marlon
you and mrs marlon have children and i know you love them more than anything in the world
i hope you can understand how we feel there will be no rest until we find out what they did to my
children i appreciate hearing from you thank you mr george solder as usual the response was the same
dear mrs solder i have read your letter of february 13th in which you make charges relative
to an action of certain law enforcement officials sometime in 1945 i'm sorry to advise that there
is in no way in which i can help you in this matter but it is in my sincere hope that in time
you will be reunited with your children with best wishes i am sincerely william c marlon governor
with this letter i'll hope for the final chance at reopening the case for a formal investigation
was over george solder never gave up hope on finding his children he would travel to wherever
a lead would come from traveling to st louis missouri where a woman claimed martha was being held
in a convient to texas where a bar patron claimed to have ever heard two other people making
incriminating statements about a fire that happened on christmas eve in west virginia some years before
george even traveled to florida where he heard that a relative at jenny's had children that looked
similar to his the relative had to prove that the children were his own before george was satisfied
in 1967 george traveled to the houston area to investigate another tip a woman there had
written a letter to the solders saying that louis had revealed his true identity to her one night
after having too much to drink she believed that he and morris were both living somewhere in texas
however george and his son-in-law graver paxton were unable to speak to the woman police in the
houston area were able to help them find these two men she had indicated but they denied being
missing sons paxton said years later that the doubts about the denial lingered in george's mind
for the rest of his life another letter that they received that year brought the solders to
believe the most credible evidence that at least louis was still alive one day jenny found a letter
in the mail addressed to her postmarked in central kentucky with no return address inside was a picture
of a young man around 30 with features strongly resembling louis who would have been in his 30s
if he had survived on the back was written louis solder i love brother frankie little boys a none
zero one three two or three five two six three to us and everyone else the picture of the man
in his 30s does look like the grown version of louis you can see the images on our website to make
your own decision the family hired another private investigator to go to central city and look into
this but he never reported back to the solders and they were unable to locate him afterwards
george told the charleston gazette mail late the next year quote that the lack of information
had been like hitting a rock wall we can't go any further in quote he said in another
interview around the same time quote but we only want to know if they did die on the fire
we want to be convinced otherwise we want to know what happened to them in quote
on august 16th 1969 george solder passed away jenny and her surviving children except john
who never talked about that night of the fire except to say that the family should accept
what happened and move on with their lives continued to seek answers to their questions
about the missing children after george's death jenny stayed in the family home putting up a fence
around it and adding additional rooms for the rest of her life she wore black in mourning
intended to the garden at the site of the former home on february 15th 1989 jenny solder passed away
after her death the family finally took down the weathered warren billboards
their surviving solder children joined by their own children continued to publicize the case and
investigate leads along with older residents of feyville they theorize that the cecilia mafia
was trying to extort money from george and the children may have been taken by someone who knew
about the planned arson and said that they would be safe if they left the house they could have
possibly been taken back to italy if the children did survive all those years and were aware that
their parents and family were looking for them they may have avoided contact to keep the family safe
in 2021 silvia solder paxton the youngest of their surviving solder children
passed away she was in the house the night of the fire which she said is her earliest memory
quote i was the last one of the kids to leave home in quote she said in an interview with the
gazette male in 2013 that her and her father would often stay up late talking about what might have
happened quote i experienced their grief for a long time in quote she believed that her siblings
survived that night and assisted with efforts to find them and publicize the case her daughter janey
said in 2006 quote she promised my grandparents she wouldn't let the story die though she would
do everything she could in quote if you visit george and jenny's grave at the high lawn memorial
park in oka west virginia you will notice another name on the grave in 1950 jenny had a stillborn
birth to michael solder on the grave you will also see quote who believes injustice for everyone
but was did not justice by the law when his five children were kidnapped christmas eve 1945
at feville west virginia in 2023 the story of the solders has not faded out for anyone in west
virginia or the world everyone still has their own theories some of those theories go to the mafia
the tennessee children's home society which we will be doing a future episode on human trafficking
the bubble theory the list can go on and on no matter who you talk to everyone knows the case
of the soldered children if you have any information on the case of the soldered children
email us at mountain state mysteries 304 at gmail.com next time on mountain state mysteries
we're going to tell you the story of a woman who went missing in trofton west virginia in 1979
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