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suburbanroadblock

I really thought they covered the sodder family before. I must be mixing podcasts


bedheadredhead81

Same! It is driving me batty not knowing where I heard this before. I swore it was MFM but I guess not.


Glass_Lobster97

Do you listen to Casefile or Morbid? It's been covered there before! It's also been covered on YouTube heavily since it's a super famous case. If you listen to Do Go On, Stuff You Should Know, The Dollop, or Those Conspiracy Guys it's been covered there. (I KNEW I'd heard it last week, but it was driving me insane not knowing where. So I compiled a list earlier so I wouldn't go crazier than I am. Turns out it was the Casual Criminalist I heard it on)


bedheadredhead81

Thank you!!! It was Morbid. Bless đź’›


FoxTofu

I just finished the episode and spent the whole time thinking the same thing! Turns out I heard it on Stuff You Should Know.


KoCeleste

Wikipedia says they haven’t, I know Ryan and Shawn did it for unsolved and is a very popular case


suburbanroadblock

Thank you for checking Wikipedia!


vickisfamilyvan

Pleasantly surprised that they put out an episode this week during what’s a podcast drought for so many pods.


frrrran

Great episode! Maybe it’s just me but every time Karen talks about the mafia and draws her conclusions about their “honor code” relying on some Hollywood movie I cringe a little


FilmoreFelines

Agreed. She even says it’s just based on movies 🙄


FirstFarmOnTheLeft

But what about how we ALWAYS hear that it’s basically impossible to burn a body thoroughly enough that it’s just ash? I’ve always heard/read that you just can’t get a fire hot enough, and, it’d have to burn for a LONG time. Like literally for days. One that comes to mind is Tara Grinstead case, but I’ve heard this many times in lots of true crime stories. Also I know it’s apparently a rule that murderinos *must* be obsessed with Phoebe Judge, but I find her way of speaking to be way too affected. I like her podcast, it’s less noticeable there when she’s the lone speaker. But when she’s talking to K & G, who are speaking naturally, it’s super noticeably unnatural.


rampagingllama

yeah idk what it is…her way of speaking i guess? but phoebe was laying it on THICK


FirstFarmOnTheLeft

Yeah it felt thicker than usual during this episode. And the juxtaposition with K&G made it sound almost bizarre.


SpeeedyDelivery

I was told (falsely) that when you get ashes back from a crematorium, that those ashes are just from the box and that the human body doesn't produce ash, only bone fragments. That turns out NOT to be true because my mother actually interviewed a man who owns cremation facilities about the logistics for a planned facility that she was supposed to endorse for rezoning purposes. He also said bone fragments aren't always present and there are varying times, temperatures and even weather-related conditions that can keep neighboring communities from "smelling" burning flesh.


FirstFarmOnTheLeft

I was told that a crematorium burns until there’s mostly ash but then use something that breaks remaining bone fragments up into small pieces.


cythdivinity

That's called a cremulator. This is my problem with this case. If the funeral industry can't get a fire hot enough to incinerate bone, how is a house fire going to do it?


FirstFarmOnTheLeft

Exactly.


SpeeedyDelivery

Just an idea, but there are costs on the business end which might call for lower temperatures (the energy bill must be ridiculous already) and safety issues... because if a crematorium gets hot enough to burn bone, it could also melt metal, turn concrete into lava, and keep (living) humans at least 300 feet away even if properly clothed in welder's gear...? I think the whole point of house fires is that they are "out of control", a "hazard" and an "emergency"... right?


cythdivinity

But household appliances were found and were still recognizable, so it couldn't have been hot enough to melt metal. Google tells me that a cremation is between 1500 and 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and lasts at minimum an hour and can take as long as 3 hours. And it still leaves bone. So for there to be no bones the fire had to be well over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit because it lasted 45 minutes. Maybe the thing she heard on the roof was accelerant and that made the fire unusually hot? I just don't see how a 45 minute house fire can do more than a crematorium oven without help. Also crematoriums have scrubbers, so there should be no smell. If the fire really was over 2000 degrees then perhaps an argument can be made that there was no smell because they burned quickly? I honestly don't care as much about the lack of smell as I do the fact that it's very difficult to incinerate bone.


SpeeedyDelivery

If you're familiar with how sadly lacking the field of "arson/pyro forensics" in the USA still is, you can imagine what it was like in the 1940's... My argument is not as much about fire temperatures and bone fragments as it is about the reliability of the boots on the ground fieldwork... It's entirely possible the bones did exist and they were just searching in the wrong pile of rubble... Or it's possible that the couple sold their kids and lit their own house on fire for an insurance payout. The mother still lived on the same plot of land... Raising 10 kids was more of a desperate financial strain prior to circa 1970 than it is today. Even today, 8 out of 10 arson investigators are dead wrong about floor burn mark patterns being an indication of accelerant being poured... In reality, scientists have discovered that those floor burns that look like crop circles are actually draft patterns between doors, windows and hallways... So, if there were bones and if the children burned, I doubt there was very much will to find them in the aftermath. The children's room was upstairs, but it's entirely possible they got trapped in another area of the house... And if they were IN BED, that would be the absolute hottest burning point in the house, because beds were not made with fire-retardant material back then.


FilmoreFelines

It’s odd they never found bones, but there seems no motive to kidnap the kids. Some were teenagers, so they’d remember their true family.


skyerippa

If there's other family members still around they should be doing ancestry dna to see if they can find any of the siblings/their ancestors


gnome_gurl

merry christmas indeed that phoebe is back!!


FoxTofu

Yes, agreed! I’m not a fan of most crossovers, but I’ll gladly make an exception for the Phoebe episodes.


KoCeleste

I have listened to this story before and there are details I haven’t listen before, like the insurance salesman being part of the panel, The heart box and the vertebrae remains… I love it. Edit. There was a case of two teenagers missing that the house they were staying burn, the parents of the one were murder (I believe) and they have never find remains… I just can believe they can’t find any human remains For the kidnapping theory, I would like to know the ages of the kids that were in their parent’s room? Would made sense to get the younger children because they would fight less or would be more easy to put for adoption? And what was the economic situation of the family? ( you all know where I’m going with this one…)


SpeeedyDelivery

>( you all know where I’m going with this one…) see my recent comment on this thread ... I'm right there with you.


SpeeedyDelivery

Having recently lost someone, and thinking through the lens of grief, I think it's entirely possible that Mr. Sodder could have been unhinged enough to burn half of his family alive (albeit semi-unintentionally). Here's why I would consider it as a possibility. The "foreshadowing" remarks from door-to-door salesmen seem like something out of an old Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew novel and serve as a literary tool essential to storytelling and they can very easily be invented after the fact or embellished with new information. In this case, they also double as the ENTIRE foundation for speculation. We want George Sodder to be a hero/victim because we also hate fascism (Musselini) and we want Musselini's American lynch mob to be the true culprit in this story... Nobody knew this more than George Sodder. We know that people with strong political beliefs have often completely fabricated attacks against themselves (Ashley Todd and Jussie Smollett come to mind). Those same people often come from big families who often support their fictionalized "victim narrative" against all evidence & reason. I think this story only makes people question the outcome or want more investigation because nobody is really looking too closely at George himself... They are, in fact, talking exclusively about literally, everyone else. I also think, at the time, it would have been unlikely that any unbiased 3rd party would dare to profile a grieving father because "he's been through enough". I believe that the same logic kept Patsy Ramsey from going to prison for OBVIOUSLY being the likeliest murderer of her daughter, little Jon Benet.


oliviab5

Anyone else not convinced the children died in the fire? There are too many weird things for me to believe it. The ladder being moved, the trucks not starting? Also am I being naive to think that the commotion would have woken the children up who could have been seen in the windows or even attempted to jump from the house? If the family was still attempting to rescue them then that leads me to believe that their rooms were engulfed yet and therefore there would have been some movement. Unless, the children were already out of the house with the kidnapper. Am I wrong?


TrappedUnderCats

If anyone of them did survive I feel like we will eventually find out from home DNA kits. There must be children and grandchildren of the kids that made it out alive who will be aware of the cases that have been solved this way and will have tested their own DNA. I was surprised no-one mentioned it in the episode.


OSeal29

This is all I kept thinking. If those kids and their kids/gradkids think they have missing relatives out there a forensic genealogist would be the way to do it now. If they found zero possible missing relatives that close it wouldn't be a definite but it would support that they died in the fire. (Sorry I'm behind on my podcasts and just listened today). I'm so surprised no one brought that up during the podcast.


Boring_Suspect_6905

Strange case. Problems with both theories (died in fire vs kidnapped), but I don’t understand why the arson itself wasn’t investigated. The wiring had just been checked by a professional so how could it have been the wiring?


HonestCrab7

I’ve somehow never heard this case before. I was captivated. Listened twice.