On Christmas Eve 1945 a fire destroyed the Sodder family home in Fayetteville, West Virginia. Five of the nine children who had been in the house that night were never seen again: Maurice, 14; Martha, 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; and Betty, 5. George and Jennie Sodder and four other children escaped, but the five upstairs children disappeared and no remains of them were recovered from the rubble.

The official finding blamed faulty wiring and death certificates citing fire or suffocation were issued, yet several unusual facts feed ongoing doubts. The family’s phone line had been cut, the ladder was missing and later found down an embankment, both trucks wouldn’t start, the local fire department arrived hours later, and bone fragments recovered in 1949 were judged to be from a 16- or 17-year-old. In the years after the fire the Sodders reported sightings, put up a roadside billboard, excavated the site, and in 1968 received a photograph of a young man they believed resembled Louis with a cryptic note on the back.

What new information might finally resolve whether the five children died in the blaze or were taken?