Murder or Kidnapping in a Gateway Town: New River Gorge National Park

Fayetteville, West Virginia sits on the edge of the New River Gorge, a small Appalachian town now known as a gateway to one of America’s newest national parks. But on Christmas Eve in 1945, it became the setting for one of the most haunting unsolved mysteries in American history. After a house fire destroyed the home of George and Jennie Sodder, five of their children vanished without a trace, leaving behind conflicting investigations, reported sightings, unsettling clues, and a decades-long search for answers. For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodesFor the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to the week’s partners! Cash App: Download Cash App Today: [https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/ejy661fu] #CashAppPod. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. See terms and conditions at https://cash.app/legal/us/en-us/card-agreement. Direct Deposit, Overdraft Coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. Rocket Money: Use our link to get started saving. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  There are towns that never fully escape their past. Places where a single unanswered tragedy becomes woven into everyday life. Passed down through generations as rumor, cautionary tales, and quiet unease. Long after investigations stall and headlines fade, the questions remain, shaping how a community understands itself and why some places feel permanently unsettled. Felicia, Iowa, is defined by the 1912 Axe murders that wiped out an entire family and two visiting children. Despite suspects, confessions, and decades of investigation, the case remains officially unsolved. In Pennsylvania, the town of Centralia was slowly erased by an underground coal fire

• 1:47Cassandra Yahnian?

  that ignited in 1962 and still burns today. Families were forced to leave, streets were abandoned, and debate over how the fire truly started has never fully gone away. In Caddie, California, a quiet mountain town, became infamous after the brutal 1981 Cabin 28 murders, where three people were killed and a child was abducted. A case riddled with evidence mishandling and unanswered questions that continue to haunt the community. There are places where loss without answers becomes a kind of haunting. Where tragedy is not confined to the past, but woven into the identity of the town itself.

• 2:26Danielle LaRock?

  And then there's Fayetteville, West Virginia, the gateway town of New River Gorge National Park, a place that still cannot shake the questions surrounding a suspicious fire that left five children unaccounted for.

• 2:40Danielle LaRock?

  Welcome to National Park After Dark.

• 3:04Danielle LaRock?

  Hello, everyone, and welcome to National Park After Dark. My name is Danielle. I'm Cassie. Welcome. It's almost Christmas. It is. Yeah. And I'm so thankful that, well, I don't know if I'm thankful if you're doing this story because I know it's going to be a tough one, but your intro just perfectly aligns with a bone that I have to pick with our audience. Ah, okay. And this rarely happens, but I'm upset and I need to voice it.

• 3:32Danielle LaRock?

  So you mentioned a gateway town, so which I'm guessing your story is going to center around today. Yes. And I was recently at a gateway town for my birthday.

• 3:45Danielle LaRock?

  I don't know what happened to me there. No one warned me that Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee, are a completely different realm of existence. And there's Where am I? Where am I? So my gripe really has to do with all of the people. There are so many people who love Great Smoky Mountains National Park, adore it, just can't say enough good things about it. And I'm sure that that's valid because the minimal experience I had in the park, I only had a few hours, but it was really pretty and it was awesome. And I know I went during probably the quote unquote ugliest time of year to experience that park. You know, I was there last week.

• 4:29Danielle LaRock?

  But no one, even a breath of, hey, just a warning, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, if you go in that entrance, it's, there's a lot of weird shit around there and I just need you to be warned. No one said anything about those towns and I texted you immediately. I was like, I can't even describe where I am right now. If I had to put it into words, probably the mini golf capital of the world. No one said anything about that.

• 4:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, that seems like a really big portion that should have been told.

• 4:59Danielle LaRock?

  Should have been noted.

• 5:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  We've covered Great Smoky Mountain many times on the podcast.

• 5:04Danielle LaRock?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 5:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  Even brought it up.

• 5:06Danielle LaRock?

  No one said anything, not even like, hey, girl, hey, girly, just, uh, just so I, you know, it feels like it might not be your thing. No one said that.

• 5:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  What other secrets are you keeping from us?

• 5:18Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Now I, the trust has been shattered a little bit. Um, not only, and it's not even like the mini golf thing. If it was just that, I would never say anything because I happen to know a lot of people who love mini golf and that's fine. But everything was like, it was like the biggest tourist trap you could ever fall into, like for miles. Everything was just like, every building was like built to be this weird, like, okay, perfect example. The whole reason I went there is because I wanted to see the Titanic museum. The museum is shaped like the ship. I thought it was so unique and cute and fun and like, wow, this is so, it's never been done before.

• 6:00Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Well, apparently every single building in both of those towns are shaped to be what they're advertising.

• 6:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Whatever the theme is inside.

• 6:08Danielle LaRock?

  It's crazy. It's so crazy. I felt like I was in this like weird, wonky, like Willy Wonka type.

• 6:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  Amusement park.

• 6:17Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. It was, and I, I feel unsettled a little bit.

• 6:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  I've never experienced it, so I can't bring my own opinion. And I also wasn't keeping anything from you because I didn't know.

• 6:28Danielle LaRock?

  I would have, we would have fought immediately. Um, but you know,

• 6:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Enjoy your time.

• 6:34Danielle LaRock?

  Maybe people who are all for Great Smoky Mountains National Park are going into a different, through a different entrance.

• 6:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Or maybe they're not spending time there. Maybe they're just straight going into the park and experiencing the park.

• 6:46Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Just kind of like busting right through. It just, it feels like two very different worlds that are literally side by side. Which makes it even more jarring, I feel like. Um, so anyway.

• 7:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  In retrospect, I'm not super shocked just because it is the most visited national park that we have. So it makes sense that they would have a huge resource for people to like, things for people to do in hotels and restaurants and things like that to accommodate all of those people who are visiting, but it does feel very not national park like.

• 7:23Danielle LaRock?

  I hear you and I agree with you. If it was diverse in any way, like everything is just kind of carbon copies of each other for miles in like slightly different forms. Like I get you need lodging and food and entertainment, but it's all very centered around like, it felt like Disney World in the mountains of Tennessee and I was not prepared. And nothing again, if you want to bring your family there, it's def- I will say, perfect for families, young families. Like, it's a kid's paradise, kid's paradise there. Um, but yeah, anyway, so I don't want to get too hung up on that. I just felt like I had to say something because I felt

• 8:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  roll out.

• 8:06Danielle LaRock?

  A little betrayed, a little. I don't know. Like I'm just like, I would like to go back to that park, but in a different way.

• 8:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  Maybe everyone has had the same experience when they go, but they're like, you know what? We're keeping it low. We're keeping it on the down low because I think everyone should be this shocked every time they go for the first time.

• 8:26Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I'm not going to warn anyone.

• 8:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  Maybe it's a run joke. Maybe now you're in the club.

• 8:31Danielle LaRock?

  Maybe. Well, uh, yeah, I don't know.

• 8:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  Someone tells you they're going to Great Smoky Mountain, just be like, have a nice time.

• 8:36Danielle LaRock?

  Enjoy. Oh, you're going through the Tennessee entrance? Perfect. Excellent. You're gonna love it.

• 8:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Have a nice time. I've been there too. You're gonna love it.

• 8:46Danielle LaRock?

  And I don't know, I maybe I I run the risk of I kind of feel a little scared saying this also because kind of like the Taylor Swift army of like, you don't talk bad about her girl, K Swift.

• 8:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, don't do that.

• 8:59Danielle LaRock?

  You can't talk bad about Gatlinburg. What's wrong with you?

• 9:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  I feel like there's not.

• 9:04Danielle LaRock?

  I don't know.

• 9:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  They're not.

• 9:05Danielle LaRock?

  They're proud.

• 9:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  They have a K Swift following.

• 9:08Danielle LaRock?

  They're proud folk down there. Okay. And I don't want to upset anybody.

• 9:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  I'm sure a lot of people make their living in that town. Um, but.

• 9:16Danielle LaRock?

  But anyway, uh, yeah, the actual park itself, what I got to experience was quite lovely. The drive was nice. We went to the trail where Glenda and Bradley was mauled to death by a black bear.

• 9:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Fun.

• 9:33Danielle LaRock?

  But that was great.

• 9:36Cassandra Yahnian?

  Town out of town recommend.

• 9:38Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. But anyway, so that's my roundabout like connection to a gateway town experience. Hopefully yours is better.

• 9:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  I've never been to this town, uh, personally, but from what I've read, it sounds like a cool, cool spot to be. So we are going to be going to Fayetteville, West Virginia, which I think whenever I hear Fayetteville, I always think of North Carolina right away. Just because that's the military base. Whenever I hear Fayetteville, but it's West Virginia, Fayetteville, West Virginia. It is gateway town to New River Gorge National Park, which of course is one of our newer parks. And we're going to be diving into kind of a mysterious happening. It's a suspicious fire. Whether we think it was an accident, arson, kidnapping, murder, whatever. Uh, I'm going to go deep into the story and then we can kind of talk at the end, but what you think might have happened.

• 10:31Danielle LaRock?

  Okay.

• 10:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  So before we dive into the story, let's talk about the gateway town. Fayetteville, West Virginia has been named one of the coolest towns in America. A title that feels unsurprising, given that it's the gateway town to one of the newest national parks we have, New River Gorge. With a population of roughly 2,800 people, Fayetteville is small, but packs a punch because of its location and because of its history. The town is made up of people from many different backgrounds, longtime Appalachian families, transplants drawn by mountains and rivers, artists, guides, and small business owners who have chosen to build their lives there. What defines Fayetteville more than anything is its relationship with the New River Gorge.

• 11:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  The town sits right on the rim of this vast canyon, placing it quite literally at the doorstep of one of the most dramatic landscapes in the eastern United States. The New River, considered one of the oldest rivers in the world, cuts a deep path through the Appalachian Plateau, carving sandstone cliffs and forested slopes that are some of the oldest in America. For obvious reasons, Fayetteville is synonymous with outdoor recreation. The surrounding area offers some of the nation's best hiking trails and world-class rock climbing routes. Climbers travel from across the country to test themselves on the gorgeous sheer sandstone walls. The New and Golly Rivers are legendary in the whitewater community, known for powerful rapids that range from approachable to extreme.

• 11:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Rafters and kayakers pass through Fayetteville, turning the town into a seasonal hub of river culture. I remember actually when I worked with a bunch of rafting, rafting guides and whitewater kayakers, they actually went up, they do, I don't know if it's yearly, I believe it is, but they have something called Golly Fest, where whitewater kayakers go up for a long weekend and they run the river and party, listen to music, and it's a whole, it's a whole vibe. But that's not the only outdoor sport that gets their spotlight here. Every October, and this is something I think we should go to sometime, I think we've said this before, but Fayetteville becomes the focus of national attention during Bridge Day. On the third Saturday of the month, the New River Gorge Bridge is closed to traffic and

• 12:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  opened to base jumpers from around the world.

• 12:45Danielle LaRock?

  I feel like you've talked about this before. Am I hallucinating?

• 12:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  I think I did in a past New River Gorge episode, because we've been here twice.

• 12:53Danielle LaRock?

  Wait, oh, you know what, it's the, the one I think I'm recalling, which I randomly thought of the other day, when I was thinking of just some of the bonus episodes and topics we've done. Didn't you do one about the woman who faked her own death?

• 13:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Danielle LaRock?

  Was that here?

• 13:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, it was in New River Gorge, yeah.

• 13:10Danielle LaRock?

  I think that's.

• 13:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  That might have been where I talked about it, yeah. And that's an outsider's only story, right?

• 13:17Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 13:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Yeah, that one was interesting. If you're not on Patreon or Apple subscriptions, I covered a story in New River Gorge about this woman who faked her death. She faked falling off a cliff in New River Gorge and she was caught.

• 13:32Danielle LaRock?

  And she did it so badly.

• 13:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  She did it so badly. You should listen to the episode. It's so crazy.

• 13:37Danielle LaRock?

  Funny, actually.

• 13:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  She gets caught in, like spoiler alert, but she gets caught hiding in her closet. Like, it's, it's crazy. This, this whole story is wild.

• 13:45Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Cassandra Yahnian?

  But yeah, and I think we did talk about that then, but I was rereading this. I was like, oh, this sounds like such a fun, it just seems like such a cool vibe here. And I think going for a base jumping, the bridge day, seeing base jumpers would be really cool.

• 14:00Danielle LaRock?

  It's one of my states I still have to go. I know you've tackled all 50 states now as of 2025. Congratulations.

• 14:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Thank you.

• 14:07Danielle LaRock?

  Um, but West Virginia is still one of the states I have to check off the list.

• 14:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  October 2026, here we come.

• 14:15Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Our schedule's free as of right now.

• 14:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Danielle LaRock?

  It's true.

• 14:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  For the second, what is it?

• 14:23Danielle LaRock?

  We're going to Bridge Day.

• 14:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, we're going to Bridge Day. Be there.

• 14:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  But to give you a little bit more context of Bridge Day, one by one, these base jumpers step off the bridge and drop nearly 900 feet towards the river below, while thousands of spectators gather along the gorge rim. The town is filled with vendors, artisans, music, food, and crowds drawn by a spectacle that exists nowhere else in the whole country. Just minutes from town, New River Gorge National Park and Preserve stretches across more than 70,000 acres of protected land. The park offers countless scenic overlooks and opportunities for hiking, biking, whitewater rafting, and climbing. Towering above it all is, of course, the New River Gorge Bridge, which, when it opened in 1977, was one of

• 15:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  the longest single-span arch bridges in the whole world. For visitors willing to brave the height, the bridge walk provides a guided catwalk tour beneath the bridge, offering a straight down view into the gorge below. I would personally love to do that. I would totally walk across that bridge and it looks like it's a pretty safe, it's a walkway.

• 15:29Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, that's what they all say.

• 15:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, that's true. That is what they all say.

• 15:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  But Fayetteville's identity was not always defined by adventure tourism or national park signage. Its history reaches much farther back.

• 15:49Danielle LaRock?

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• 16:34Danielle LaRock?

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• 17:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  Originally known as Vandalia, the town was renamed Fayetteville in 1873. It was named for Marquis de Lafayette, whose statue still stands on the lawn of the Fayette County courthouse. During the Civil War, Fayetteville's strategic position made it a contested place held by both Union and Confederate forces at different points. The town's historic district today includes roughly 75 preserved homes, buildings, and sites tied to that era. Today, the town hosts historic walking tours to learn all about their layered history, including ghost walking tours. Hmm, which I thought was fun.

• 17:47Danielle LaRock?

  I just did one in Knoxville.

• 17:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  Did you? How was it?

• 17:51Danielle LaRock?

  It was good. Um, we... So I was with Jeff, and he was a very good sport, uh, cuz it was pretty cold, and we were the only people on the tour. So it was very one-on-one history talk for like...

• 18:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Danielle LaRock?

  And of course, I did the 90-minute one. I did the extended. So for 90 minutes, it was a lot of direct conversation about history. And similarly, I think to what you're explaining, it's Knoxville is very, a lot of the history they were talking about was Civil War based. So it was, yeah. It was light ghost, I think, like lightly paranormal, more historic based. So I thought it was great.

• 18:38Danielle LaRock?

  I had a great time. Both of us loved it.

• 18:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  For sure.

• 18:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. So basically, there's a lot going on here with outdoor tourism and then historic tours and a lot of history here. It is within this layered place shaped by ancient rivers, hard history, and the pull of wild landscapes that one of West Virginia's most enduring and unsettling mysteries unfolded. And of course, because it's Christmas this week, I had to tell a really dark Christmas story. So on Christmas Eve in 1945, long before Fayetteville was known as a gateway town to a national park, five children disappeared here under very odd and suspicious circumstances. George and Jenny Soder gathered at home with nine of their 10 children to celebrate the holiday. That poor woman, 10 children.

• 19:30Danielle LaRock?

  It's a lot.

• 19:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  That is a lot. I think there's something about fun. There's something fun about big families, though. And in this time, people had a lot more children.

• 19:38Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I just, every time I think of a big number of children, I translate that into how many years of that woman's life that she was either pregnant, recovering from childbirth, breastfeeding, et cetera.

• 19:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I always think great of the mom. I'm like, you are a superhuman.

• 19:58Danielle LaRock?

  Hero.

• 19:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  Hero to be able to do that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, so nine of their 10 children were home for the holiday. One son was not in the house that night, but the rest of the family filled the two-story wood frame home with the familiar sounds of Christmas. Presents were open, new toys were passed from hand to hand. The house felt warm, busy, and alive. As the night wore on, five of the Sodder children asked their parents for permission to stay up a little longer. Maurice, who was 14, along with Martha, 12, Louis, who was nine, Jenny, who was eight, and five-year-old Buddy, wanted to keep playing with their Christmas toys after the rest of the family went to bed. They promised they would finish their chores before going to sleep, so George and Jenny agreed, unaware that the decision would haunt them for the rest of their lives.

• 20:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  Sometime shortly after midnight, Jennie Sodder was awoken by their house phone ringing. When she answered, a woman on the other end asked to speak to someone Jenny did not recognize. Jenny told her that she had the wrong number. Then the caller laughed, and Jenny could hear the sounds of glasses clinking and voices in the background before the line went dead. Jenny assumed it was a prank call and thought little of it. Before returning to bed, Jenny noticed that the lights inside the house were still on, the curtains were open, and the front door was unlocked. She saw Marion asleep on the living room sofa, which made her assume the rest of the children had gone to their rooms to go to sleep. Believing everyone was safely inside the house, Jenny turned off the lights she passed, closed the curtains, locked the door for the night, and returned to her bedroom.

• 21:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  Not long after, Jenny was awoken again, this time by a sharp, loud bang on the roof, followed by a rolling sound. She got up, looked outside, and saw nothing out of the ordinary, so she returned to bed. Around 1:30 a.m., she was awoken for a third time, now by the smell of smoke coming into their room. When Jenny opened the bedroom door, she saw flames already spreading through the house. She screamed for George and began calling for the children to get out. Smoke thickened quickly, and the fire moved fast. Two of their sons managed to escape through an upstairs window with the flames so close that they singed their hair as they fled. Their daughter Marion made it outside, carrying the baby Sylvia, whose crib had been in her parents' bedroom.

• 22:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  George and Jenny escaped the house and immediately realized the downstairs rooms, including the living room, dining room, kitchen, office, and the bedroom they shared, were engulfed in flames. But five of their children were still missing. Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jenny, and Buddy.

• 22:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  Who they assumed were trapped on the second floor. George raced to reach them through the upstairs windows. When he went to grab the ladder, he always kept propped up against the house and had seen the previous day. He found it was mysteriously missing. Thinking quickly, he tried to start one of his two coal trucks, planning to drive it up to the house and climb onto the roof. But neither vehicle would start despite having worked perfectly the day before. In a desperate attempt to put out the fire, he tried to scoop water from a rain barrel, only to find it frozen solid. Inside the house, the smoke and fire churned through the stairwell, cutting off the access to the second floor, where George believed his children were trapped. He broke a window in an attempt to re-enter the house, slicing a deep gash in his arm.

• 23:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  Blood slicked his skin, but in a frantic attempt to save his children, he barely noticed. He could see nothing through the smoke and the heat forced him back out of the house. Marion ran to a neighbor's house to call the fire department, but there was no operator response. Another neighbor saw the blaze and tried calling from a nearby tavern, again without success. Finally, a neighbor drove into town and tracked down Fire Chief FJ Morris, who initiated Fayetteville's fire alert system, which was basically a phone cascade in which one volunteer firefighter would call another one to alert them. Because at this time, there was only volunteer fire departments. It wasn't like, call 911 and you'll reach everyone.

• 23:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  It was like, kind of a game of telephone where you would slowly reach everybody.

• 23:59Danielle LaRock?

  And this is the 1950s?

• 24:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  1945.

• 24:02Danielle LaRock?

  Okay.

• 24:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  Although the fire department was only two and a half miles away, the crew did not arrive until around 8:00 AM, nearly seven hours after the fire had broken out.

• 24:13Danielle LaRock?

  Seven hours?

• 24:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Seven hours was the response time.

• 24:17Danielle LaRock?

  Okay.

• 24:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  By then, the solder home had been reduced to mostly just a smoking pile of ash with structure, pieces of the house here and there. Back in 1945, I think it's important to mention again that firefighting in Fayetteville was entirely volunteer-based with little training and very limited equipment. So in short, there was simply not the resources or coordination that modern departments today rely on. So the seven-hour response time was not entirely unheard of. On Christmas Day, George and Jenny assumed that five of their children were dead. A brief search of the property turned up no human remains, but Fire Chief Morris suggested that the fire had been hot enough to completely cremate their bodies.

• 24:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  However, I do want to note that a fire needs to reach 1400 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, or 760 degrees Celsius to 982 degrees Celsius, to cremate a body and remain at that temperature for several hours. This intense heat typically from natural gas or propane is far hotter and more controlled than a typical house fire, which usually burns around 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. So to assume that right off the bat, it's, it's pretty unlikely that-

• 25:31Danielle LaRock?

  Especially for five individuals.

• 25:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  Five children, yeah.

• 25:35Danielle LaRock?

  And I mean, we kind of learned a little bit about that when I covered Graham Parsons' story in Joshua Tree, because his friends attempted to cremate him by lighting him on fire.

• 25:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  As the friends do.

• 25:46Danielle LaRock?

  As friends would, I hope you would do for me. Um, but yeah, no, so-

• 25:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  If you wanted to be cremated that way, I would.

• 25:53Danielle LaRock?

  Thank you. Um, but yeah, no, I immediately find that difficult to believe, especially for five individuals who were assuming, even at this point, I know you kind of prefaced this saying that it's mysterious. So there's got to be other elements in here going on. But even if we were just taking it at face value, like they, I'm assuming they're in different parts of the house, or in different positions, or in different places, that they're not all in the same exact conditions where this is going to be possible, that they're all going to be cremated to, and reduced to ash, or cremains, I should say.

• 26:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, with nothing, with no, I mean, to cremate bones is, like I just mentioned, it takes, it's a long process and to have nothing, I think is weird. But we'll get into that more. A state police inspector attributed the fire to faulty wiring, and the coroner's office issued five death certificates just before the new year, despite finding no evidence of their bodies, listing the cause as fire or suffocation. Against the advice of the fire marshal, George covered the basement with five feet of dirt and planted flowers over the site, intending to preserve the space as a memorial for his children. But as the days passed, doubt began to take root. Marian would later recall that during the fire,

• 27:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  she never once saw her siblings at the window, which she thought, you know, if they were trying to escape, wouldn't we have seen them try, wouldn't we have seen their faces in the window? Or trying to open the window? Or like, why did we never see any evidence of them? She also never smelled burning flesh, something people often say is an unmistakable smell. The family struggled to understand how five children could perish in a fire and leave no trace behind, especially when identifiable remains of household objects were still found in the rubble. Slowly, the Sodders began stitching together moments that now, in retrospect, felt unsettling. Months before the fire, a stranger appeared at the Sodder home, asking George for hauling work,

• 28:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  hoping to be hired for trucking jobs hauling dirt, coal, or freight through George's business. It wasn't uncommon for people to stop by looking for work, so at the time, George didn't question it. But now, some of his behavior felt odd. He wandered to the back of the house, pointed at the fuse boxes, and casually remarked that they would cause a fire someday, despite the wire having been recently inspected and approved by the local power company. Around the same time, a life insurance salesman became angry when George declined a policy warning him that his house would go up in smoke and his children would be destroyed as punishment for his outspoken criticism of Italy's dictator, Benito Mussolini.

• 28:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  So now, let's get into a little bit of George's history.

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• 30:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  George Soder was born in Italy and immigrated to the United States in 1908 at just 13 years old. He found work on the Pennsylvania railroads hauling water and supplies to laborers, and after several years, moved south to West Virginia. Intelligent and driven, George worked first as a driver before launching his own trucking and hauling business, moving dirt for construction projects, and later hauling freight and coal. By the 1940s, the Sodders were considered a stable, middle-class family, well-known in Fayette County. George was also outspoken about politics, particularly his deep opposition to Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator who ruled Italy for more than two decades

• 31:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  and led the country into World War II alongside Nazi Germany. In immigrant communities like Fayetteville's, opinions about Mussolini often ran hot, and criticism could be taken personally. Because of that, the salesman's angry response was off-putting, but hadn't felt overly concerning at the time. It was kind of a regular, he's like, "I know I put my, my voice out here. I know I..." I voiced my political views. It's not, it's not uncommon for someone to get pissed about it.

• 31:28Danielle LaRock?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  So it's just kind of a thought. It's like, okay, him and I don't get along. Other family members recalled seeing a man sitting in a parked car near the house shortly before Christmas, watching the younger children as they came home. A telephone repairman later told the Sodders that their phone line appeared to have been cut, not burned. If the fire had been electrical, George reasoned, the power should have failed and the lights should have gone out. Instead, while the fire was ablaze, some of the house's lights had remained on during the whole period. So he thought, you know, if this was an electrical thing, wouldn't, why were the upstairs lights on? Why were things on during this fire?

• 32:07Danielle LaRock?

  Right. And the telephone wire was cut.

• 32:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 32:11Danielle LaRock?

  And they found that after.

• 32:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, so they couldn't call.

• 32:14Danielle LaRock?

  Right.

• 32:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Which was also, I mean, it from the story, it seems like, and then the ladder's gone and the car's not working?

• 32:22Danielle LaRock?

  Both cars also.

• 32:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  Both cars.

• 32:24Danielle LaRock?

  And it's not some bizarre cold snap where everything is deemed.

• 32:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  No, it's just a typical winter in West Virginia.

• 32:32Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 32:34Danielle LaRock?

  Okay.

• 32:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  Within months, George and Jenny began to believe the unthinkable. Perhaps their children had not died in the fire after all. Perhaps they had been kidnapped. As the days following the fire stretched into weeks, the Sodder family found themselves caught between official explanations and their own growing sense that something was deeply wrong. Jenny could not reconcile the official explanation with what she knew to be true. She knew how much of the house had remained identifiable afterwards. Household appliances, metal objects, and fragments of furniture were still visible in the debris. If those things had survived, how could five children have vanished without a trace? And she wanted to answer this question on her own, so she kind of did her own morbid experiment.

• 33:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  She began burning animal bones and controlled fires behind the house. She would use chicken bones, pork chop bones, beef joints, and each time she was left with charred but recognizable remains. Later, an employee at a crematorium told her that even after two hours at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees, bones still remained. And with the Sodder family home, they couldn't, they never measured. The amount of heat, but again, with a house fire, it's not going to exceed 2,000 degrees. And even though it was burning throughout the night, the house wouldn't have burning, been burning that hot.

• 33:55Danielle LaRock?

  Right.

• 33:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  Throughout every portion of the house. Exactly.

• 34:00Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. And not to be, it's super morbid here, but uh, as someone who has handled cremains of people.

• 34:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:08Danielle LaRock?

  There are, it's not all just nice cremain, like fine dust. Like there are fragments of bone sometimes in there. Uh, and that's in a controlled, like, you know what I mean? It's just, I don't know. That I feel like we can throw away right away. And I feel like that's now accepted. Maybe when people reflect on this case with retrospect and more knowledge, and even the mom right away. She's like, this is not.

• 34:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like something's wrong.

• 34:40Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  And I think this is why the story, it's part of why the story has remained such a mystery. So of course, after doing all these experiments and getting all this knowledge, the doubts for this only deepened. And then reports of sightings began to trickle in at first tentative, then persistent. A woman claimed she had seen the missing children peering from a passing car while the fire was still in progress. Another woman who operated a tourist stop between Fayetteville and Charleston, roughly 50 miles away, said she saw the children the following morning and served them breakfast. She recalled that a car with Florida license plates was parked outside.

• 35:20Danielle LaRock?

  All five together?

• 35:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes.

• 35:23Danielle LaRock?

  Okay.

• 35:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  A woman working at a hotel in Charleston later came forward after seeing the photos of the missing children in a newspaper. She told authorities she had seen four of the five children roughly a week after the fire. According to her statement, the children were traveling with two men and two women, all of whom appeared to be of Italian descent. While she tried to speak to the children, the adults became hostile, speaking, speaking rapidly in Italian and refusing to let her interact with them. She said the group stayed only one night and left early the next morning and that the interaction left her with a strong sense of unease. George and Jenny did not know what to make of these reports, but they could not ignore them and more witnesses continued to come forward.

• 36:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  One came forward claiming he had seen a man at the scene of the fire, removing a block and tackle, a device commonly used for pulling car engines. George wondered if this explained why his truck, which had worked perfectly fine the day before, would not start when he tries, tried to use either of them to rescue his children. The man was later arrested and pleaded guilty to stealing the block and tackle, though he denied any involvement in the fire itself.

• 36:36Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, I need clarification on this, just because I don't understand the workings of automobiles, really. Um, why did I just call them automobiles? Cars?

• 36:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  Sorry.

• 36:49Danielle LaRock?

  Uh, yeah.

• 36:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  They were automobiles in 1945.

• 36:52Danielle LaRock?

  True, yes. Uh, so both of their vehicles had something removed from them?

• 37:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, and someone saw this guy doing it and he later was arrested.

• 37:07Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, my follow-up question is, was it just their two vehicles? Or was it, was this guy just taking this stuff from everybody's cars in the neighborhood?

• 37:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  It seems like from this instance, from what I could find, it was just their, it was just their house that he was prosecuted for.

• 37:24Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, because what was the thing? I mean, I think it's still very much an issue, but that people are going around taking from people's cars?

• 37:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, um, not their, is it their alternator? Not their alternators? Is it their alternator? No.

• 37:40Danielle LaRock?

  No.

• 37:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, there's something.

• 37:43Danielle LaRock?

  There's something.

• 37:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  There's something people take, because they're worth a lot of money.

• 37:47Danielle LaRock?

  Yes, and your car doesn't run without it, I don't think.

• 37:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, if we knew what that thing was, it would be super helpful.

• 37:54Danielle LaRock?

  I feel like you know what I'm saying, so that's all that matters.

• 37:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I do.

• 37:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  It'll come to me.

• 38:00Danielle LaRock?

  But also, it's funny because my stepdad Robert, he'll, I remember vividly, especially when I lived in Colorado. He, it was, that's when we were on high alert for it. And he's like, you gotta be on the lookout. Like, okay, first of all, I don't even know what they're after. Second of all, what am I to do? I have to park my car. I can't just stand guard.

• 38:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Danielle LaRock?

  What am I?

• 38:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  If they're taking it, they're taking it.

• 38:25Danielle LaRock?

  Cause it's not inside, you can access it from just

• 38:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  underneath.

• 38:28Danielle LaRock?

  underneath. Like, what am I supposed to do? And now I'm worried, but I don't know how to protect my car from somebody taking this thing. Which I feel hasn't been taken. What the hell is it called?

• 38:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, we gotta know. Uh, hold on.

• 38:45Danielle LaRock?

  It's not the alternator.

• 38:47Cassandra Yahnian?

  No.

• 38:47Danielle LaRock?

  Which I also don't know what that is. But I know the word is wrong.

• 38:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Cadillac converters.

• 38:53Danielle LaRock?

  Oh.

• 38:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's what it is, whatever those things are. Whatever those were valuable.

• 38:59Danielle LaRock?

  They convert things to other things.

• 39:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  Really important.

• 39:06Danielle LaRock?

  They're super important.

• 39:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Money.

• 39:09Danielle LaRock?

  But yeah, so anyway, going back to this guy, you know, like if he was on the hunt for Cadillac converters and he was just taking them from everybody's car or whatever, this block and turn. What?

• 39:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, it's a removing a block and tackle, which I don't know, it's like nineteen forty-five, I don't know. Cars are, I don't really know what that is, but.

• 39:27Danielle LaRock?

  But you know what I'm saying? Like if he was, yeah, but it's interesting if he was just.

• 39:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  I don't know, do we believe in coincidences? I mean, all of this happened that same night and someone saw them removing it like around the same time of the

• 39:41Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  fire. Who robs a house that's on fire?

• 39:45Danielle LaRock?

  I don't know. I think a lot of people actually.

• 39:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  But if you see a house on fire, you're gonna go steal from their car?

• 39:52Danielle LaRock?

  Not me personally, but I feel like it's, I mean, when cities are looted and things are on fire and all that, I mean, people are, go crazy for stealing stuff.

• 40:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's different though. This is just someone's neighborhood and their home is on fire.

• 40:05Danielle LaRock?

  True.

• 40:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  And your first thought is not to

• 40:07Danielle LaRock?

  I gotta get that tackle box. Or whatever.

• 40:12Danielle LaRock?

  I know that's for fishing, okay?

• 40:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh.

• 40:16Danielle LaRock?

  Anyway.

• 40:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  Uh, well, he denied any involvement in the fire itself, but I think it could or could not be sketchy. It could totally be a coincidence if we believed in those.

• 40:26Danielle LaRock?

  Well, just mounted with everything else. It feels not.

• 40:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  Fishy.

• 40:29Danielle LaRock?

  Right, yeah.

• 40:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Officially, investigators maintained that the fire began downstairs near the office where the telephone and wiring were located and quickly spread through the first floor before racing up the stairwell. But for the Sodders, another detail never fit cleanly into that explanation. On the night of the fire, Jenny had been awakened by a sharp thud on the roof, followed by the sound of something rolling across it, long before she smelled smoke or saw flames. Days later, when Sylvia found a small, hard, rubber object in the yard, Jenny immediately thought back to that sound. George became convinced that the object could have been related to a wartime,

• 41:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  uh, a wartime device, which was something, um, it's a wartime incen- I meant to look up the pronunciation.

• 41:18Danielle LaRock?

  Incinerator?

• 41:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Incendiary? Incendiary. Is that how you say it?

• 41:23Danielle LaRock?

  I've heard that word before, like a grenade, kind of? Or like a fire thrower or something?

• 41:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  War time incendiary device. Yeah, it's basically like a, it's an explosive that was used in wars and he thought that this could be.

• 41:39Danielle LaRock?

  Sorry.

• 41:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  We know a lot of things, details about things.

• 41:48Danielle LaRock?

  I feel, yeah, I don't know if it's like we haven't recorded in a week, so I just feel silly, but, and it's not funny. It's just, you're saying, you're throwing a lot of things at me that I have to.

• 42:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  Try to understand what they are.

• 42:04Danielle LaRock?

  Yes.

• 42:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 42:05Danielle LaRock?

  I think of it as a grenade.

• 42:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  That yeah.

• 42:09Danielle LaRock?

  I don't know.

• 42:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  Similar, I guess. Yeah, it's just some type of explosive.

• 42:13Danielle LaRock?

  It's a wartime incendiary, obviously.

• 42:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Obviously. And that's what he thinks it is, especially when they find this rubber, this weird rubber thing that she thinks could have been what hit the roof. Authorities never accepted this theory, but to the Sodders, it became another reason to question whether the blaze had truly been accidental. And the list of oddities continued to grow. In 1947, George and Jenny wrote directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, hoping federal involvement might bring clarity. The response came from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself. While Hoover expressed sympathy, he explained that the case appeared to be a local matter and fell outside the Bureau's jurisdiction.

• 42:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  FBI agents offered assistance only if local authorities requested it, and Fayetteville Police and Fire officials declined. The Sodders were left once again on their own. They next hired a private investigator named C.C. Tinsley, whose findings only deepened their mistrust of the official story. Tinsley discovered that the insurance salesman who had threatened George months before the fire was a member of the coroner's jury that ruled the deaths accidental. The man had once worked for George and was a co-signer on the family's home insurance policy, which he had increased shortly before the fire without the Sodders' knowledge or approval.

• 43:37Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, there it is.

• 43:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  Tinsley also learned troubling information about Fire Chief Morris. Though Morris publicly claimed no remains had been found, he reportedly told others he had discovered a human organ in the ashes. According to the story, he placed it in a dynamite box and buried it at the site. When the Sodders dug up the box and took it to a local funeral director, the supposed organ was examined and identified as beef liver untouched by the fire. So this fire chief just like buried this weird shit on there. To be like, yeah, look, there's proof of a kid or something. I like some, I don't know.

• 44:17Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, a few no notes.

• 44:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  Why would it be in a dynamite box?

• 44:22Danielle LaRock?

  First of all, why do you have a beef liver on hand and a dynamite box? Those two things feel weird to just have immediately. But also, it just goes against their official story that there, there's no remains at all because they were, what, your liver's gonna survive, but your femur bone isn't? That's so crazy.

• 44:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, it's like, what are you trying to do here? It doesn't make sense. Rumors followed that Morris had admitted to others that the liver had not come from the fire at all. And, but he had buried it deliberately in an attempt to placate the family and bring the investigation to an end.

• 44:56Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, what do you think? They're stupid? Like, what, that's so insulting to their intelligence and to a grieving family.

• 45:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  These are children. These are their children.

• 45:07Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  That you're talking about.

• 45:08Danielle LaRock?

  It's just so, yeah, it's an insult to their intelligence. It's, it doesn't make any sense at all. I don't understand that line of thinking, but.

• 45:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  At all. So of course, by this point, George and Jenny no longer trusted any official explanation or the people in charge. They wondered if the fire had been an act of arson meant to cover a kidnapping, possibly connected to organized crime or retaliation for George's outspoken criticism of Mussolini.

• 45:35Danielle LaRock?

  So this is all going back to Mussolini?

• 45:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  They're thinking potentially, but the other thing is they're thinking that maybe it could have been part of a human trafficking ring that had been watching their children because someone had seen a man watching their house and watching their children come home from school.

• 45:52Danielle LaRock?

  Right.

• 45:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  So that was another explanation. But they're kind of just pulling at straws here. They're like, we don't have any enemies. The only, the only enemies we do have are our political beliefs against Mussolini right now, who people are, it is a really hot topic and people do feel really strongly about it. And of course, they were receiving threats. So that's kind of the only bridge they have, except for maybe possibly a human trafficking ring that they were unaware of. And they never claimed to like, they knew what was happening. They were just trying to figure it out.

• 46:28Danielle LaRock?

  Right.

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• 47:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Over the years, leads continued to surface. George once saw a newspaper photograph of schoolchildren in New York City and became convinced one of them was his daughter Betty. He traveled to Manhattan in search of her, only to be turned away by the child's parents, who refused to speak with him. In August of 1949, nearly four years after the fire, the Sodders organized a new excavation of the site of their former home. This time, they brought in a pathologist from Washington DC, Dr. Oscar B. Hunter. The search uncovered damaged coins, a partially burned dictionary, and several small shards of bone, including four vertebrae. Hunter sent the bones to the Smithsonian Institution for Analysis. The

• 47:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  report concluded that the bones belonged to a single individual whose skeletal development suggested an age between 16 and 17, with a possible upper limit of 22. This was older than Maurice, the eldest missing Sodder child, who had been 14 at the time of the fire. And, get this, the report also noted that the bones showed no sign of exposure to fire.

• 48:16Danielle LaRock?

  What in the wor- okay. The age determination, I would have accepted as, I mean, it's a range, right? Like, a couple years off.

• 48:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, you know, like, he could have gone through puberty earlier than normal, you know, like, it could-

• 48:32Danielle LaRock?

  And it's not an exact science, like, you know-

• 48:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's just an estimation.

• 48:37Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, if this, if they were like, hey, yeah, this is the vertebrae of somebody who's showing significant signs of either disease or age that's clearly not matching-

• 48:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, they're upwards of 70?

• 48:48Danielle LaRock?

  Right. But the fire thing is wild.

• 48:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. So later, other people theorized that when he brought in a bunch of

• 48:58Danielle LaRock?

  Beef liver.

• 48:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  He brought not beef liver. When George brought in all of the dirt to make the garden memorial for his children over the base, the remains of the basement there.

• 49:10Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 49:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  They think that maybe the dirt he brought in had the remains of someone in it. And that's where these bones are found. That's why they found these bones is like the the theory for that, because there was no sign of that they were affected by fire.

• 49:24Danielle LaRock?

  That makes sense to me, but where did he get the dirt? Should we look into that?

• 49:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  I don't know.

• 49:29Danielle LaRock?

  That feels like another thing that we should pursue.

• 49:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  They're, they were busy.

• 49:33Danielle LaRock?

  They're like, I, I mean, that feels like that. I hope they did some sort of follow up on that because

• 49:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I'm not sure.

• 49:40Danielle LaRock?

  Now that is indicating another young person who

• 49:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  This is also the 40s too. So like, who knows where he got?

• 49:49Danielle LaRock?

  Yes.

• 49:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  You know, like, who knows? Who knows what's going on here?

• 49:52Danielle LaRock?

  Okay. I mean, all right.

• 49:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Danielle LaRock?

  I guess I'll let that go.

• 49:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  But, but sketchy for sure. The findings prompted hearings at the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston. Afterwards, Governor Oki L. Patterson and State Police Superintendent W. E. Burstchut told the Sodders that their search was hopeless and declared the case closed. So he brought it back to their attention was like, hey, look at that. There's still nothing. I've had other people come in and they're like, no, this case is closed. Your kids died here. End of story. It seems like they were just brushing them off from every, every angle. But the Sodders refused to accept that verdict. They erected a large billboard along Route 16 near Fayetteville, displaying photographs of the missing children and offering a war,

• 50:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  a reward for information leading to their recovery. Flyers were distributed. The reward was raised from $5,000 to $10,000 and tips poured in from across the country. And this wasn't just a small billboard. This was a massive billboard with all of their faces on it. It clearly stated missing reward. And it was very obvious that this family was not saying, my children died. We're actively, they were actively looking for them. A woman from St. Louis wrote to say Martha, one of their children, was living in a convent. A man in Texas claimed to have overheard a conversation in a bar about a Christmas Eve fire in West Virginia.

• 51:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  Someone in Florida suggested the children were living with one of Jenny's distant relatives. George traveled tirelessly to follow each lead, always returning home without answers. In the late 1960s, more than 20 years after the fire, Jenny received an envelope postmarked from Kentucky. Inside was a photograph of a young man in his mid-20s. Written on the back were the words Louis Sodder, "I love Brother Frankie," and a string of letters and numbers. Brother Frankie was a reference to Franklin Sodder, one of the siblings who had survived the fire. The use of his nickname immediately stood out to Jenny and George because it suggested

• 52:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  that the writer knew the family personally, not just from newspaper accounts. Because, I guess, in all, all the newspapers, they had always referred to him as Franklin. So to call him Frankie was, was odd. And the photograph's resemblance to Louis Sodder was striking. The same dark curly hair, the same deep-set eyes, the same strong nose and slight tilt of an eyebrow. And once again, the Sodders hired a private investigator and sent him to Kentucky. But following that, they never heard from the investigator again. This investigator, whatever he found, he either just ghosted, he either just took

• 52:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  their money and ghosted them, or he found something in Kentucky and then either something happened to him, or he was paid off to never speak to them again.

• 52:52Danielle LaRock?

  Wow.

• 52:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  Is what they're assuming.

• 52:54Danielle LaRock?

  I mean, it's awful either way, but I would hope that, just for his safety, that he just was a dick and took their money and... Yeah.

• 53:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Fearing after this, of course, fearing they might put their son in danger if he was truly alive. The Sodders chose not to publicize the message or the postmark. Instead, they updated the billboard to include the photograph. So they were like, we'll put a new photo of you, but we don't want to say like how we got it in case you're you're in danger. George said in an interview not long before his death. It's hard sometimes to get sleep at night just wondering about them. After all, if someone wanted to get me, why did they get my family too? Unfortunately, he would never get answers. George Sodder died in nineteen sixty-nine, still holding out hope for a break in the case. Jenny retreated further into mourning, wearing black for the rest of her life.

• 53:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  She died in nineteen eighty-nine, and with her death, the weathered billboard finally came down. The surviving children and grandchildren continued searching, forming theories of their own. Some believe the children had been taken by someone they knew, coaxed from the house under the promise of safety. Others believe the children were victims of organized crime or retaliation connected to George politics. Some believed they may not have survived long after the fire, even if they had escaped it. Sylvia, the youngest Sodder child, and the baby carried from the house that night, remain convinced her siblings had escaped the flames. She died in two thousand and twenty-one at the age of seventy-nine, still believing the truth had never been uncovered.

• 54:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Today, opinions remain divided. Some believe the children perished in the fire and that the grief led the family to search endlessly for signs of life. Others believe the sheer number of inconsistencies point to something far darker. What everyone agrees on is this. On Christmas Eve in nineteen forty-five, in a small Appalachian town now known as the gateway to wild places, a family celebrated the holiday together. Around 1:00 in the morning, a fire broke out. George and Jenny Soder and four of their children escaped. The other five were never seen again. And in Fayetteville, West Virginia, a town shaped by ancient rivers and long memory, the question of what happened to the Soder children still lingers unanswered.

• 55:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Today, the Soder story is part of Fayetteville's collective memory. Mentions found in gift shops, shared among locals, and passed along to visitors curious about the town's history. As Fayetteville continues to draw attention for the landscape and recreation, it also carries the legacy of a family that never abandoned hope. The Sodders' land was sold long ago, and the small memorial garden George built on the house's remains is no longer there. Today, a small white house now stands on the property where the Soder home once burned. And lastly, if you or someone you know has information related to the disappearance of the five Soder children, even something that may seem small or long-forgotten, it could still matter.

• 56:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  Because this case has never been resolved and includes the possibility of kidnapping, tips can be submitted to the FBI using their online tip form at tips.fbi.gov or by contacting a local FBI field office. Information can also be reported directly to Fay County Sheriff's Office in West Virginia, where the fire occurred and where the original investigation was conducted. In cases like this, new details can surface decades later, and every lead deserves careful consideration. And that is my story of the Soder family.

• 56:36Danielle LaRock?

  Wow, it's nuts for obvious reasons, but also because I can't help but think, you know, five kids, assuming that they were kidnapped, because it feels like that, it feels like that's the most logical explanation, given everything that you have laid out. To have five kids together...

• 56:58Danielle LaRock?

  Especially under strange circumstances or if they're acting strange or seem out of place. That's something that people will notice. And unless they were broken up from one another shortly thereafter, like I doubt that they were all kept together. Because that seems like a risky decision to be made from a kidnapper's perspective. To keep everybody together, but also like the oldest one was what 14, you said?

• 57:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 57:27Danielle LaRock?

  A teenager who, something must have happened where, I guess my question to you is, do you think that they were kept alive?

• 57:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  I, I think it's really hard to know because what we've seen in other cases is that eyewitness. Eyewitness accounts aren't always real. And you know, I think a lot of place, a lot of people get tips that just don't lead anywhere. So I don't know if any of these tips really are valid or not. You know, when you talk about the woman who saw an Italian family with five children. It could have just been an Italian family with five children who were having a bad day. You know, or it could have been something, you know, she, she saw the pictures and she thought it could be those children. So it could certainly.

• 58:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  I think, I, I don't know, I don't see why you would kidnap children. And if you're trying to get back at him, I don't know why you would. I don't know, it's just, it's such a dark place to do that to children. I think that it's possible that either they were, they had weapons and they subdued the children and got them to leave the house. Or that it could have been someone they knew, which was why they went willingly. Cause I mean, there was no sounds, they didn't wake up to kids screaming, they didn't wake up. Like, you know, there was no evidence for the parents of them leaving the house.

• 58:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  If they were kept alive or not, I don't know, because I just don't know why they would take the children in the first place.

• 59:03Danielle LaRock?

  Correct, yeah, I also, I'm curious about that, but.

• 59:09Danielle LaRock?

  Just for me, I feel like it would be, and of course, there's a lot of, anything can happen, especially with a child. I mean, whether you're 14 or you're still a kid, you know, with brainwashing and whatever other manipulation tactics there or threats of violence that could have been, you know, could have been done. But for me, it's like that 14 year old child has memories of their family and their siblings and their life. And then to just think that they've never, unless that one picture was the one effort that they made, you know, snuck it out.

• 59:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Be like I'm alive.

• 59:47Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, but to like not say anything to literally anyone or attempt to make contact with your family again, or run away or whatever. And I'm not trying to feel like be like victim blaming of like, why didn't you do that? It's just suspicious to me that none of the children at any point in time, to our knowledge, tried to do anything like that. But as far as like out of the house and not causing commotion or whatever, maybe they had all stayed up later, like they said they were gonna do, hung out together. And they were all in the same area and then all eventually, you know, fell asleep or whatever, without going to their beds. You know, Christmas Eve, you kind of just conk out, especially if you're kids and you're up laying

• 1:00:30Danielle LaRock?

  and you just like pass out. But if someone got into the house and like chloroformed them or something or drug, you know, like

• 1:00:36Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:37Danielle LaRock?

  They didn't have to wake them and drag them out of the house. They could have done it in a different way that I don't know.

• 1:00:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I feel like whatever, I am with this hotter family where I think, I don't know what, but I feel like something darker was at play here. I think that if all five of their children had died in the fire, I think that there would have been a lot more evidence of that. I think, I mean, especially with accounts saying that the fire started downstairs and if the children were upstairs, you would think you would see them in the windows or you would, unless smoke inhalation or, I don't know, there's just so many inconsistencies and just the fact that there's no. Evidence of their deaths.

• 1:01:23Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  I think is the part that makes me feel like something else happened.

• 1:01:29Danielle LaRock?

  I agree.

• 1:01:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  I just don't know. I do think that that photo later on, I think that it could have been a joke. It could have been a really bad prank that someone sent them.

• 1:01:40Danielle LaRock?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  But the fact that they saw the photo and thought it resembled their son makes me not think that.

• 1:01:47Danielle LaRock?

  Do you know anything about, you said there was like numbers and letters and stuff? What was that about?

• 1:01:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  Not sure.

• 1:01:52Danielle LaRock?

  Hmm. I didn't know if it was some sort of attempt at a code.

• 1:01:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like a code or something. Yeah, I'm not sure.

• 1:01:58Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. I don't know. I feel like just with everything that you said, I feel like they were kidnapped.

• 1:02:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Danielle LaRock?

  And in my opinion, I would love to hear from people like listeners who work in fire or have any sort of professional insight into if that seems suspicious to you as well and not to just two people who learned about me, who learned about it in, you know, the last hour. You know, but just people who have experience with whether or not that circumstance is as far fetched as it actually appears to us and seems to us. Or if there's something that we're missing or that is like, oh, this actually could happen. You know, I would just, I would love to know that, but.

• 1:02:47Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Danielle LaRock?

  I don't know. I feel like it's an enduring mystery for a reason. And it's because of all these little things that are all, when you look at it and zoom out, taking into account everything, it feels very suspicious.

• 1:03:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  It does. And my first thoughts, thinking of, well, why would they, why would they kidnap the kids and burn the house down? My thought is that they were trying to kidnap the kids and then kill the rest of the family. So there was a bunch of remains and it was like, oh, they all died to avoid suspicion. And I feel like the plan didn't go as they wanted when half of the family escaped.

• 1:03:24Danielle LaRock?

  Right. And not, not only the. You know, there's a bunch of other in their plan that there would be a lot of other victims and kind of maybe investigators would just write it off at that and just kind of count everyone as deceased, but so that there's no follow like there's nobody left to look into a kidnapping. Yeah.

• 1:03:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. No one's going to care about where these children are because their parents aren't alive and their family is not around to ask.

• 1:03:51Danielle LaRock?

  The only person who would have been alive still is the one brother who wasn't even in the home.

• 1:03:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes.

• 1:03:57Danielle LaRock?

  By God, yeah. What a regardless of what happened or not, like to those, whether it was a kidnapping or they did like, that's just so devastatingly awful for that family. The parents and the siblings included.

• 1:04:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  And to die not knowing, ever knowing what happened to your children.

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• 1:04:54Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, because I was such a rough Christmas episode and dark, I wanted to end it with, I have a bunch of Patreon questions.

• 1:05:06Danielle LaRock?

  Oh.

• 1:05:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  And I added some holiday themed ones in here for us to answer and be a little bit more fun at the end. If you like the dark and you're good ending there, then we'll see you next time. But if you want to listen to some Patreon questions, I thought I'd bring up the mood a little bit.

• 1:05:23Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, that's helpful.

• 1:05:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay. First Patreon question is favorite Christmas or holiday memory?

• 1:05:32Danielle LaRock?

  Can you go first?

• 1:05:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Danielle LaRock?

  Okay.

• 1:05:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  So mine, it's not actually a memory that I had. It's a video of me. Um, and I didn't know that I did this, but now I think it's really funny. I don't know if it's my favorite memory ever, but it's just at the top of my mind. But I watched a VHS video of me as a kid opening presents on Christmas. And it was so funny and kind of like innocent and endearing because it's me and my brother opening presents. And my brother is like going crazy. He's just like ripping everything apart, like trying to get his next thing. And I, each time I get a present, I pick it up and I open it. And I'm like, thank you so much. I always wanted this. And then for some of it, I'm like, what is it?

• 1:06:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  And every single present I open, it's the same thing. I'm like, thank you so much. I always wanted this. What is it? And it can be the smallest thing. It's like, it's like a pair of gloves. I'm like, thank you. I always, always wanted this. This is the best. And I'm just like so happy. And I just think it's really cute.

• 1:06:39Danielle LaRock?

  That is cute and it feels very you.

• 1:06:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like haven't changed.

• 1:06:44Danielle LaRock?

  Nope.

• 1:06:47Danielle LaRock?

  Um, mine would probably be, I don't know if it's like, it's something that comes to mind as very memorable. I was, I don't know how old I was. I must've been in middle school. Uh, or like freshman in high school. Like I was young, but my mom and my stepdad got me a, or got me and my sister. It was the most surprised I think I've ever been at a gift. And it was, they had packed suitcases, uh, with like different things. And it was basically a way of giving us a gift of a trip to Key West.

• 1:07:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, fun.

• 1:07:23Danielle LaRock?

  And I was just really surprised by that and taken aback by that. Yeah. So that was a cool holiday memory. And that was, I loved that trip to Key. It's funny too, because. It just seemed like a very, I don't know what the motivation behind going to Key West was. There must have been something that maybe I was unaware of, but it just felt like very a random place for us to go. It's not like we're like Florida people, like we don't. Yeah, you know.

• 1:07:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  It was like, it was something special.

• 1:07:53Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, that was the first time, first and only time I went to see Robert the Doll and like did a haunted Key West thing and yeah.

• 1:08:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  And here you are.

• 1:08:02Danielle LaRock?

  Here I am.

• 1:08:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  Influenced you years later. Okay, the next patient question is, what's your favorite holiday tradition you don't want to lose?

• 1:08:12Danielle LaRock?

  Oh my God, you've had time to think about these. I'm just.

• 1:08:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  I know I didn't tell you.

• 1:08:17Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, you're like, I have come prepared. A tradition I don't want to lose. Okay, I feel like this is kind of easy for me. And it's nothing like crazy, unique or anything, but my grandparents on my mom's side always had a family holiday party and my family, so it's like my mom, her sister, her brother and their children and like that was, you know, and just over the years, when I was growing up, it was like the thing. All our, the cousins were stoked to see each other and it was just like the adults would get drunk on hard eggnog and we would do.

• 1:08:59Danielle LaRock?

  Secret Santa and like, it was just a whole thing and it was super fun. It was something we, me and my cousin Molly are especially close, but even beyond just us, we were always really excited to see our extended family. We don't get together very much and that was just kind of the time to do that. And yeah, over the years, especially when I moved away and I was living out of state, I didn't always get to come back and my grandpa is no longer with us and my grandmother is quite sick and it's just changed, you know, and some people are like, oh, I can't make it this year and it's tough, you know, but I think that now that my cousins are having families of their own and small children

• 1:09:43Danielle LaRock?

  and like my sister has her child.

• 1:09:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's starting happening again.

• 1:09:47Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I think we're going to ramp it up again a little bit, you know, and kind of breathe some new life into it and a different version of it. And I don't want to lose that. And I hope that's something that we can continue in a, in a new way.

• 1:09:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. I love that. That actually made me think of my family for the past, I want to say past five, five or six years. It hasn't been a long time tradition that's been going on, but we've been doing Yankee swaps. I want to say for the past five or six years and it's really fun because we have been, my family's been really good about either finding something really funny. Or finding something that is very much their own niche because they made it. I have a lot of people in my family that are really creative. And artists, so they'll actually make their own, their own things for these Yankee swaps. And it's been, it's been really fun.

• 1:10:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  And also my family is really cutthroat at Yankee swap. Cause you know, you pick your number. If you, you'll take someone else's, there's no apologies. Like it's so cutthroat and funny.

• 1:10:50Danielle LaRock?

  Which by the way, for everyone, we call it Yankee swap here, but I think it goes by white elephant. Everywhere else.

• 1:10:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  What?

• 1:10:59Danielle LaRock?

  I know.

• 1:11:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  I've never heard white. What does that even mean?

• 1:11:02Danielle LaRock?

  It's the same, it's the same game.

• 1:11:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  White elephant?

• 1:11:06Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  I mean, I guess Yankee were in the north.

• 1:11:09Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. I'm telling you, because I remember someone explaining white elephant to me. I'm like, oh, you mean Yankee swap? And they're like, what is that? So I just want to.

• 1:11:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  So weird to me.

• 1:11:19Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. I just wanted to.

• 1:11:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  I'm glad you clarified for anyone listening who does white elephant.

• 1:11:27Danielle LaRock?

  Actually, there is, the last time I did Yankee swap, we did a theme. Cause it gets hard, especially when you have, I feel like you have, I know a lot of people are like, there's a $25 cap or like this is, it's amongst family. Or if there's coworker or whatever, it gets, it can kind of get hard, especially when you have people with varying interests, or you have children and then also somebody who's 75 years old. It's like, what do you get? You know, like what is the theme here?

• 1:11:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's the whole trading thing.

• 1:11:56Danielle LaRock?

  I know, but it's fun. Uh, actually there's an ornament behind me. It's like a little glass pane and it has an owl painted on it. That was one of my, uh, Yankee swap, uh, finds or wins. Um, cause we did an ornament themed one.

• 1:12:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, that's cool. I like that.

• 1:12:13Danielle LaRock?

  And so people went crazy, but they were all ornaments, you know?

• 1:12:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's really fun.

• 1:12:18Danielle LaRock?

  So just like different themes and stuff and.

• 1:12:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:21Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, anyway.

• 1:12:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, that's a good question. I like that question. Um, okay, veering slightly away from holidays. What is the most unhinged name you ever saw for a pet when you were working in vet med? Or the funniest?

• 1:12:36Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:12:39Danielle LaRock?

  Wow. Uh, bless. That's so crazy. You asked me about vet med right now. I had the most vivid dream last night of holding a cat for an IV catheter, like for somebody to be placing it. And I was the holder and I was like, I don't want to do this. They're gonna bite me. And I was like, I'm like, why am I doing this? I've done this enough. And I hated holding cats for IV catheters because you can't muzzle them.

• 1:13:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  No.

• 1:13:04Danielle LaRock?

  And I mean, there were cat muzzles, but they're, they don't really work. And

• 1:13:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Danielle LaRock?

  their claws are out. And if they're on drugs and they're freaking out and it's just, it's hard to.

• 1:13:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Danielle LaRock?

  You like can't scruff it. It's, it's, anyway. So anyway, uh, yeah, vet med. Happy memories.

• 1:13:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  Most unhinged name.

• 1:13:25Danielle LaRock?

  God, there's been so many. Uh, what was, what was?

• 1:13:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  There was one named Princess Geneva, I remember.

• 1:13:32Danielle LaRock?

  There was another, Her Royal Majesty, something.

• 1:13:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh.

• 1:13:37Danielle LaRock?

  She was a golden retriever and she was super old.

• 1:13:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Danielle LaRock?

  Her Royal Majesty.

• 1:13:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  It was like six. It was like six names.

• 1:13:46Danielle LaRock?

  I know. And I used to just call her Herm because it was always H R M. I just called her Herm.

• 1:13:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  Her Royal Majesty.

• 1:13:54Danielle LaRock?

  Uh, Princess Bubbles was one.

• 1:13:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  Bubbles. I really, this was not unhinged.

• 1:13:59Danielle LaRock?

  Tia Maria Bubbles. I'm sorry.

• 1:14:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, yeah. Tia Maria Bubbles. Um, I remember Wasabi. I just thought was a really cute name.

• 1:14:06Danielle LaRock?

  Well, you liked Wasabi as

• 1:14:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  I did.

• 1:14:09Danielle LaRock?

  the animal. Yeah.

• 1:14:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Danielle LaRock?

  God, this wasn't in vet med, but I remember one time there's a at the Bear Creek Dog Park in Colorado Springs. I'll never forget it. It's a huge off-leash dog park, like acres. Like people would sometimes tie bandanas to their dogs and be like, don't worry, my owner's here somewhere and just let them go. Because you don't there, they could be off like.

• 1:14:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:33Danielle LaRock?

  You know, but anyway, there was this person who was just yelling, trying to find their dog and its name, it was tuna. So they were just yelling tuna, super loud for so long. My tuna is not coming. Okay. Stop screaming like tuna. And eventually, uh, it was a little Boston, uh, black and white Boston terrier, terrier. And they came up like tuna. That's bad. I'm like, that's bad tuna.

• 1:15:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  I like, I like dogs with people names. I don't know. Something about a dog named Kevin, just. You're yelling for Kevin and a Yorkshire terrier comes around the corner. It's just, it's hilarious.

• 1:15:18Danielle LaRock?

  I had two foster puppies for literally like two days because Chaska hated them and I had to bring them back. Um, they were tiny and they were named after spaghetti or pastas and one was named, uh, Gemmeliney. And God Gemma Gemmeliney and something else, but they were pastas. They were really cute.

• 1:15:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  I like food names too.

• 1:15:41Danielle LaRock?

  Uh, I don't know. It's been a while. It's been so long since we were in vet med.

• 1:15:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  Been awhile. Yeah. Well, the next question was, do you like pugs?

• 1:15:51Danielle LaRock?

  Why would you ask me that? I, okay, here's the thing. There have been very, very few animals of any species that I have truly disliked as like an individual. You know, despite how I feel about their breed or whatever, like I could be like, oh, calico, calico cats suck. Like they're scary and mean, but like, I don't not like you.

• 1:16:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  I still like them.

• 1:16:18Danielle LaRock?

  I still like you. I just wouldn't want to. Be in a room with you, you know, or care for you.

• 1:16:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  Doing medical.

• 1:16:25Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, right. And that's kind of how I feel about pugs. Like, I've never met a pug that I dislike. I think that every animal, there's something to like about them unless there's only one that really comes to mind that I was like this. It was like, it should have been behaviorally euthanized immediately. It was that bad. And it eventually did get euthanized for behavior stuff after two years. It was only two years old.

• 1:16:49Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, my God, that's.

• 1:16:50Danielle LaRock?

  And it was rough. It was really, really rough.

• 1:16:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:53Danielle LaRock?

  I just don't. There's just so many medical, there's so many medically wrong things with pugs that I just feel really bad for them. And I don't want to ruffle any feathers with people who love pugs because people go hard for pugs. But it's just from, again, a medical standpoint and just all of the problems they have in their, like, people think it's cute that they snort and stuff. It's like, they can't fucking breathe.

• 1:17:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  It is cute, though.

• 1:17:20Danielle LaRock?

  It's not. Imagine that in your.

• 1:17:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  Their little snorts and they're making little noises and they're running around with their little curly tails.

• 1:17:29Danielle LaRock?

  I don't stand by that, but.

• 1:17:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  I like pugs.

• 1:17:33Danielle LaRock?

  Their eyes, we always have to do a nuculation.

• 1:17:36Cassandra Yahnian?

  Eyes fall out.

• 1:17:37Danielle LaRock?

  Eyes fall out.

• 1:17:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's crazy. Like, they should not be bred ethically.

• 1:17:42Danielle LaRock?

  From an ethical standpoint. No.

• 1:17:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  But from like a cute squishy point of view, yes, I like them.

• 1:17:50Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay. Danielle, I looked up a song you said you love, "Don't Fence Me In," and it's a song I'll always keep. Tell me more music you love.

• 1:17:59Danielle LaRock?

  So "Don't Fence Me In" is a song that, strangely enough, ties back to my grandparents that I was just talking about with the Christmas party. The first time I ever heard it was in a national park on the same national park trip that inspired this entire podcast.

• 1:18:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, look at that.

• 1:18:17Danielle LaRock?

  So it was a family trip to Yellowstone when I was in high school. And that's when I bought The Death in Yellowstone book and all that. And my grandparents were singing this song. And I'm like, what the heck is this? And it's titled "Don't Fence Me In." It's a very old timey song. It's been done a few times like by other artists, but they're all old timey artists. Like, that's how old the song is. So.

• 1:18:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Danielle LaRock?

  It's not like anybody. Within the last probably two decades have redone it. So just keep that, bear that in mind if you want to listen to it. But the lyrics are so, it just, it's all about like not being contained or fenced in by other people and they just want to be, you know, just strap me to my saddle and let me ride out west and be by myself and be free. And, you know, it's just, I love it. It hits hard. It's one of my favorite songs. My mom sends it to me on my birthday every single year, like a recording of it or whatever.

• 1:19:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  So what is your other music taste?

• 1:19:17Danielle LaRock?

  Kygo.

• 1:19:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Fenceman and Kygo.

• 1:19:21Danielle LaRock?

  Bing Crosby and Kygo. Thank you for that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't listen to a ton of music.

• 1:19:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  And Cardi B.

• 1:19:28Danielle LaRock?

  Oh.

• 1:19:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  Fenceman, Kygo and WAP.

• 1:19:30Danielle LaRock?

  I was. I contain multitudes.

• 1:19:35Danielle LaRock?

  I have become a Swiftie recently.

• 1:19:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  Me too.

• 1:19:39Danielle LaRock?

  Did you watch her documentary came out the other day? Did you watch?

• 1:19:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I watched it. Did you?

• 1:19:43Danielle LaRock?

  No, I'm saving it.

• 1:19:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Are you?

• 1:19:46Danielle LaRock?

  For like a cozy night in.

• 1:19:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's emotional. It's emotional. Yeah.

• 1:19:51Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, is it?

• 1:19:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  I liked it. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 1:19:54Danielle LaRock?

  Cool. Yeah, I've become more of a, I don't want to say I'm a Swiftie because I, I feel like I'm not that, like I don't know enough. Uh, and I haven't been around enough, but I like this album. I like her. I just, yeah.

• 1:20:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. I hope she, I feel sad because I feel like I missed out on a, on a tour that will never happen again and was like a once in a, truly a once in a lifetime tour unless she does something bigger, um, which I don't know how that would, but she might be able to.

• 1:20:26Danielle LaRock?

  Speaking of music, I'm waiting and this should be included in my very short list Eminem. I've been a diehard Eminem person for.

• 1:20:36Danielle LaRock?

  Ever.

• 1:20:36Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Danielle LaRock?

  My locker in eighth grade plastered with his pictures, just like that's all it was. Um, and I know he's been resurfacing lately, I think, cause he has some new music, but also because him and fifty are like really, you know, they're kind of like a package deal and fifty.

• 1:20:54Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, they're taking down Diddy right now together.

• 1:20:57Danielle LaRock?

  They're, yeah, going after Diddy and as they should. And I don't know, I just think that Eminem has, he's done some, I think everyone has, especially in that world, has done some things that are not great, but I think that I just, I really like him. I like his music. I think, uh, I just like it a lot. I'm just reflecting back to like, I'm like, yeah, he's so great. And then in my mind, the lyrics of I'mma kill you are in my brain, which aren't great.

• 1:21:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay. One more question. If national parks were cocktails, what would your favorite park taste like?

• 1:21:36Danielle LaRock?

  So what's our favorite cocktail? Is that the question essentially?

• 1:21:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, if national, what's your favorite national park and what would that cocktail taste like? I feel like mine would have like a cedar sage.

• 1:21:49Danielle LaRock?

  Gin.

• 1:21:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  I don't like gin though.

• 1:21:51Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, that's like more pine, right?

• 1:21:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Cedar, sage, cranberries.

• 1:21:57Danielle LaRock?

  Cranberries.

• 1:21:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Or may I'm just thinking of Christmas now.

• 1:22:00Danielle LaRock?

  You're thinking of your simmer pot right now.

• 1:22:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Sounds great in here.

• 1:22:07Danielle LaRock?

  Um, hmm, that's tough because my favorite cocktail, my go-to cocktail is a tequila sour, a true tequila sour. Not sour mix with tequila, which also is not quite a margarita, but it's not a true tequila sour. But if you ask for a tequila sour, a lot of times they'll serve you that, which is not the right thing.

• 1:22:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Peace go sours are really good.

• 1:22:31Danielle LaRock?

  Peace go sours are good.

• 1:22:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  Those were great.

• 1:22:34Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. I actually just went to a, um, speakeasy in Gatlinburg, which was actually really nice. That was like the one thing that I, we were both very surprised by, but it's a coffee shop during the day. And then they take you through this like fake freezer at night and it's a full blown speakeasy and it's super nice.

• 1:22:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  Fun.

• 1:22:55Danielle LaRock?

  But they sold me, or they gave me the tequila sour that wasn't quite a tequila sour. So I'm upset about that. But where you took me for my birthday, Yvonne's in Boston, they had really good drinks.

• 1:23:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Danielle LaRock?

  Their drinks were super good.

• 1:23:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, they were really good.

• 1:23:14Danielle LaRock?

  I feel like you don't drink enough to like have like a cocktail that you couldn't, neither do I. I was like, oh, it would definitely be this for this park.

• 1:23:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I just don't know them very much because I don't drink really.

• 1:23:27Danielle LaRock?

  Well, what's your favorite alcohol?

• 1:23:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Kahlua.

• 1:23:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Whatever doesn't taste like alcohol, Baileys, Kahlua.

• 1:23:35Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:36Cassandra Yahnian?

  I like espresso martinis.

• 1:23:38Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, espresso martini.

• 1:23:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  Martinis, which is funny because I don't drink coffee, really. I mean, occasionally I do, but not really.

• 1:23:44Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. So what park would you say that would go for? Like that would go with that espresso martini?

• 1:23:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  Espresso martini. I don't know, it feels a little fancy but cozy. Yeah, elevated but cozy, maybe like Denali.

• 1:24:00Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, like you can picture yourself like drinking an espresso martini like in a log cabin.

• 1:24:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  While looking at.

• 1:24:06Danielle LaRock?

  Wintery outside and.

• 1:24:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Denali, yeah, for sure.

• 1:24:09Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, there you go.

• 1:24:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  Where would you drink your?

• 1:24:14Danielle LaRock?

  Tequila sour. I'll drink a tequila sour anywhere.

• 1:24:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  Feels tropical to me.

• 1:24:19Danielle LaRock?

  Feels tropical. Maybe like the US Virgin Islands.

• 1:24:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  Hmm, okay.

• 1:24:27Danielle LaRock?

  Or.

• 1:24:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  For some reason, I was picturing you in Dry Tortugas. Oh, because there's history.

• 1:24:33Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, well, there's history.

• 1:24:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  There's so much history there and then you'd be with your tequila sour.

• 1:24:38Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, overlooking the old prison. Ah, yes, good times.

• 1:24:45Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, well, thanks for gathering those. That was a nice way to end because I felt like I was just going to walk away from this depressed.

• 1:24:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, well, happy holidays, everyone. If you are celebrating, whatever you're doing this Christmas, Hanukkah, every, all the holidays, whatever it is you celebrate, we hope you're having a wonderful time of year. We know this is kind of like a slowdown period, so we appreciate you hanging out with us still and we'll see you next time.

• 1:25:13Danielle LaRock?

  Well, until next time, enjoy the view.

• 1:25:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  But watch your back.

• 1:25:16Danielle LaRock?

  Bye, everyone.

• 1:25:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  Bye.

• 1:25:17Danielle LaRock?

  Thank you for joining us again this week. If you love National Park After Dark and want to hear exclusive bonus stories, join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Patreon subscribers have access to our National Park After Dark book club, live streams, Discord, and much more. If you prefer to watch our episodes, video episodes are now available on YouTube. If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform. And to follow along with all our adventures, you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X at National Park After Dark.

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