Disappearances

You’ve seen the headlines: People here one day and gone the next. But no one just vanishes into thin air. The answers are out there... waiting to be found. Every Thursday, join Sarah Turney for an exploration into history’s most gripping missing persons cases. From prison breaks and child abductions to second chances and even murder, journey through the many reasons people disappear. Disappearances is a Spotify Original from Parcast.

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Around 3pm on a February afternoon in 2017, Derrick German drove to a trailhead in Delphi, Indiana. He was there to pick up his 14-year-old daughter Libby and her best friend, Abby Williams, after their hike. But the girls never showed. This is a two-part episode from your host Sarah Turney’s other podcast, Voices for Justice. Listen to part 1 here, then find part 2 on Voices for Justice. We’ll be back with a new episode of Disappearances next week.

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It’s the summer of 1992, Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall have just graduated high school. They spend the night celebrating and make plans to go to a water park with a third friend the next day. But when tomorrow comes, Suzie and Stacy are nowhere to be found. And Suzie’s mother, Sherrill Levitt, is gone too. Foul play is suspected immediately. But despite no shortage of suspects — and thousands of tips — their disappearance remains unsolved. This is an episode from Sarah Turney’s other podcast, Voices for Justice. We’ll be back with new episodes of Disappearances in two weeks.

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Hi listeners! This week we’re sharing an episode from Sarah’s podcast Voices for Justice. We’ll be back next week with a new episode of Disappearances.

At around 1:00 am on December 25, 1945, Jennie Sodder woke up to smoke pouring into her bedroom. She woke up her husband, George, and they started evacuating the house of their nine children.

By the time the fire took over the Sodder residence, only Jennie, George, and four of their children made it outside safely.

George and two of his sons frantically tried to get into the house to save the remaining children, but they couldn’t. When George went to fill up a bucket with water to start extinguishing the flames, the water was frozen, when he went to grab their ladder to get his children from the top story, the ladder was missing; when he went to drive his trucks to the second story window, neither would start despite having worked just the day before. And when they tried to call the fire department for help, no one responded for hours.

The only thing the family could do was watch as their burned to the ground.

Hours later, after the smoldering ashes were put out, a group of people began searching for the children’s remains, but nothing was found. Not a single bone was found in the ashes.

The fire was quickly ruled an accident, and investigators told the family the children’s bodies had burned up completely in the fire, leaving nothing of them behind, not even their bones.

But between the mishaps, while trying to put out the fire, threats made against the family before the fire, and the strange behavior of authorities throughout the investigation, Jennie and George Sodder refused to believe five of their children were killed in the home. They were convinced their children didn’t die in the fire, and they spent the rest of their lives trying to prove it.

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20-year-old pilot Fred Valentich disappears during a flight over Australia’s Bass Strait in 1978 — in the midst of a radio transmission. Effectively narrating the moment of his disappearance, Fred says he sees something flying over him at great speeds...something he believes is no ordinary aircraft.

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