I have looked into this. I just don't believe it. At all. The dad looked and searched and kept his kids in the public eye. Posting their photos on a huge billboard. If he wanted his kids to disappear, he did an awful job by keeping the story going for forever. I believe, if he truly wanted them to disappear, he would have been crying hysterically in photos in the newspaper, and the caption would read "Family loses 5 kids on Christmas Eve in large fire, parents devastated".
Instead, he kept that story going and kept perfect strangers searching for his children.
If this was about protecting them, he would NOT keep their faces in the news. He would not keep looking.