Shortly after midnight, their mother received a strange phone call from a woman who then laughed and hung up. Later, she noticed the house lights were on, shades up, and doors unlocked. A noise on the roof woke her again, and at 1:30 AM, the house caught fire.

While some children escaped, Jennie and four siblings were missing. The family’s ladder was gone, and the house quickly burned to the ground. Initial reports blamed faulty wiring, but the lack of children’s remains in the ashes raised suspicions. Some bone fragments were found, but one turned out to be beef liver. A coroner declared the children had died in the fire.

The parents, George and Jenny Sodder, believed their children had been kidnapped and the fire was a cover-up. They pointed to a cut phone line and witness sightings of the children after the fire. Despite their efforts, the police initially refused to investigate further.

A later search of the site yielded few remains, raising more questions. Years later, they received a photo of a young man with a message suggesting it was their son, Louis. The photo’s origin remains a mystery.

The Sodders spent their lives searching for their missing children, even posting a billboard offering a reward. George died in 1969 and Jenny in 1989, the mystery of their children’s disappearance unsolved. To this day, different theories exist: that the children died in the fire, or that they were abducted, possibly even taken to Italy. The youngest Sodder child, who survived the fire as a baby, continues to seek the truth about what happened to her siblings.