Sometimes the simplest explanation can be the most compelling.
Police reports cited by the West Virginia Times indicate that George had kept 55-gallon drums of gasoline in the basement of his house for the coal trucking business.
Cruikshank, the firefighter interviewed by
the newspaper, believed this would have intensified the heat of the fire.
When the Sodders covered the embers with dirt less than a week after the blaze, he said they inadvertently created an oven that would advance the cremation process.
It may explain why the remains of the children were never found.
But for the Sodders, who experienced a devastating sense of loss that cold winter's day in 1945, it may have been easier to hold on to the hope that Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty were still out there.
"It's something that I think resonates with people, because it wasn't a single child. It was such a large part of the family, and it was at such a tragic time — Christmas," George and Jennie's granddaughter told the Independent
On Christmas Day in 1945, a fire consumed the home of George and Jennie Sodder, leaving five of the couple's 10 children presumed dead. But questions arose in the aftermath, placing the Sodder children at the centre of one of American history's most infamous unsolved cases.
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