Mysterious Robin Barefield

Episode 24: A Terrible Christmas Tragedy -- Or Was It Murder?

 







The Jon Benet Ramsey case pops into most of our minds when we are asked to relay the most terrible Christmas story we know, but seventy-eight years ago in 1945 in Fayetteville, West Virginia, the Sodder family lost five of their ten children in a house fire on Christmas Eve. Was it a tragedy, a murder, or a kidnapping? Until their deaths, George and Jennie Sodder believed their five children survived the fire, but if so, where did they go?



 



Photo Resembling Louis

Sources:

Abbott, Karen. “The children who went up in smoke.” December 25, 2012. Smithsonian Magazine.



History’s Greatest Mysteries. Season 3, episode 9. “The Sodder children disappearance.”



Horn, Stacy. “Mystery of missing children haunts W.Va. Town. All Things Considered. NPR.



Newton, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes. 2009. New York, NY: Checkmark Books.



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This podcast is sponsored by Author Masterminds and the Readers and Writers Book Club. 

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Meet Robin Barefield, your host for Episode 24:

Robin Barefield is the author of five Alaska wilderness mystery novels, Big Game, Murder Over Kodiak, The Fisherman’s Daughter, Karluk Bones, and Massacre at Bear Creek Lodge. She has written two nonfiction books, Kodiak Island Wildlife and Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier. Sign up to subscribe to her free monthly newsletter on true murder and mystery in Alaska and check out her podcast: Murder and Mystery in the Last Frontier.  Read more about Robin's books at Author Masterminds.





Now Available: 29 True Stories about Murder and Mystery in Alaska



 

Episode 23: The Mystery of The Way to Go, Nassau, Buster Brown

This is the story of a gorgeous Thoroughbred horse. If he could talk, it would be interesting to listen to him talk about the many miles he put on American roads and highways. We know he crossed the entire continent twice and went halfway one additional time.



 



 



 



 



 



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This podcast is sponsored by Author Masterminds and the Readers and Writers Book Club. 

Check out the Author Masterminds Website





Get to know the authors at The Readers and Writers Book Club



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Meet Victoria Hardesty, your host for Episode 23:

Victoria Hardesty has owned, bred and shown Arabian Horses for more than 30 years. She and her husband operated their own training facility serving many young people that loved and showed their own horses. She is the author of numerous articles in horse magazines, was the editor of two Arabian Horse Club newsletters, one of which was given the Communications Award of the Year by the Arabian Horse Association at their national convention. An avid reader from childhood, she read every horse story she could get her hands on. Victoria and her writing partner, Nancy Perez have written seven novels about Arabian horses. Check out their website at http://www.wonderhorsebooks.com/author-bio and see their books at Victoria Hardesty and Nancy Perez | Bookshelf (authormasterminds.com).

Episode 22: The Mothman of Point Pleasant



Welcome to a journey through one of America’s most haunting enigmas—the Mothman of Point Pleasant.





Plus -- The Phantom Dogsled.





 



 



 



 



 



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New Release by Mary Ann Poll



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This podcast is sponsored by Author Masterminds and the Readers and Writers Book Club. 

Check out the Author Masterminds Website





Get to know the authors at The Readers and Writers Book Club



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Meet Mary Ann Poll, your host for Episode 22: The Mothman of Point Pleasant

Mary Ann Poll is the author of five Supernatural Thriller novels, Ravens Cove, Ingress, Gorgon, Dullahan, and Andalusia Forest.



Sign up to subscribe for free information about upcoming events at www.maryannpoll.com and check out her podcast Real Ghost Chatter.



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The Phantom Dog Sled was written and performed by Steve Levi. Check out his books at Author Masterminds.

 



 

Episode 21: What Happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald?



The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down



of the big lake they called Gitchee Gumee



The lake it is said never gives up her dead



when the skies of November turn gloomy



Gordon Lightfoot's lyrics memorialize the tragedy of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, but the mystery remains - what sunk the great ship?

Sources:

Stonehouse, Frederick. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Avery Color Studios, Inc. Gwinn, Michigan. 1977.



Charles River Editors. The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald: The Loss of the Largest Ship on the Great Lakes. Kindle



Schumacher, Michael. The Trial of the Edmund Fitzgerald: Eyewitness Accounts from the U.S. Coast Guard Hearings. University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis, MN. 2019.



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This podcast is sponsored by Author Masterminds and the Readers and Writers Book Club. 

Check out the Author Masterminds Website





Get to know the authors at The Readers and Writers Book Club



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Meet Valerie Winans, your host for Episode 21: What Happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald?

Valerie Winans is a graduate of Northwestern Michigan College, a retired state government manager, and a former campground host in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Valerie is the author of three books: Alaska’s Savage River: Inside Denali National Park and Preserve, Road Trip with Remington Beagle: Michigan to Alaska and Back, and A Hero’s Journey: Life Lessons From A Dog And His Friends. A writer of both fiction and non-fiction, her books are written to inform and entertain readers of all ages. She currently resides with her husband in Traverse City, Michigan. More information can be found at www.valeriewinans.com.

Episode 20: The Most Lovable Conman of the Alaska Gold Rush





One of the most scandalous persons to be associated with Nome was Wilson Mizner, a loveable scoundrel. Mizner was involved with gambling and prize fighting in Nome, and it was said he was probably the only man with the reputation of being able to "borrow money from a lamppost and is said to be the only man who ever hired the Nome brass band on credit." In addition to these northern distinctions, in the course of Mizner’s life, he was also a mining engineer, actor, playwright, Fifth Avenue art dealer, husband of the "second richest woman in the world," proprietor of the legendary Brown Derby in Los Angeles and, with his brother Addison, a founder and promoter of Boca Raton, Florida.



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This podcast is sponsored by Author Masterminds and the Readers and Writers Book Club. 

Check out the Author Masterminds Website





Get to know the authors at The Readers and Writers Book Club



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Meet Steve Levi, your host for Episode 20: The Most Lovable Conman of the Alaska Gold Rush





Steve Levi is a 70-something writer in Alaska. He specializes in the impossible crime and the Alaska Gold Rush.  An impossible crime is one in which the detective must figure out HOW the crime was committed before he can go after the perpetrators.  As an example, in THE MATTER OF THE VANISHING GREYHOUND, the detective must figure out how a Greyhound bus with four bank robbers, a dozen hostages, and  $10 million can vanish off the Golden Gate Bridge. Steve’s books can be seen at www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi and www.steverlevibooks.com. He also does two historical uploads a week.  Send Steve your email, and he will include it in the mailings.

Now Available:



 



The historical key to understanding the Alaska Railroad is that it started as a Socialist dream.  It was a profit-making instrument owned by the government. By the time the railroad finished, the dream of socialism as a governmental form had died.  The Russian Revolution showed how flawed socialism by a national government was, the hard-core socialist, anarchist, and syndicalist radicals had been deported on the BUFORD, and the end of World War I flooded American stores with consumer goods. The Roaring Twenties had started, and everyone was making money, and there was no longer a need to have a ‘socialist’ government.



 

Episode 19: Mysterious Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia





Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia was born into the most elite segment of Russian society on June 18, 1901 as the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. Anastasia was the younger sister of Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, and was the elder sister of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia.



During WWI, Anastasia--like her sisters--volunteered as a nurse right in the royal palace at Tsarskoye Selo.  Many of its rooms had been turned into hospital wards. In 1917, the February Revolution in Russia forced Czar Nicholas II to abdicate the throne. After the Revolution of 1917 and Nicholas’s abdication, Nicholas and his family (including Anastasia) were taken as prisoners to Tobolsk, then to Yekaterinburg, where on June 18, 1918, Anastasia celebrated her last birthday.



Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and their four girls and one son, were held at Czarskoye Selo palace and then taken to Ekaterinburg in the Urals after the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution. Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children—including 14-year-old Anastasia--were shot and bayoneted to death by Bolshevik revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky on the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 16-17, 1918. Also murdered that night were members of the imperial entourage who had accompanied them: court physician Eugene Botkin; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and head cook Ivan Kharitonov.



The executioners then took the bodies to the Four Brothers mine [an abandoned mine shaft some 14 miles from Ekaterinburg, in the Koptyaki forest],



Anna Anderson



where they were stripped, buried, burned in a gasoline-fueled bonfire, and the bones doused with sulfuric acid to disguise the remains further and mutilated with grenades to prevent identification. Finally, what was left was thrown into the mine pit, which was covered with dirt. After 300 years of imperial rule, the Romanov empire ended in a chaos of gunfire and bayonets.



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This podcast is sponsored by Author Masterminds and the Readers and Writers Book Club. 

Check out the Author Masterminds Website





Get to know the authors at The Readers and Writers Book Club



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Meet Carl Douglas, your host for Episode 19:

Mysterious Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia







 



My pseudonym as an author is Carl Douglass, adopted as a means of telling stories with gripping realism—the truth of which would not bring trouble to my door. My writing of gripping, realistic fiction began after I was obligated to retire from the private practice of neurosurgery due to sudden blindness in my left eye from a retinal detachment which caused loss of stereoscopic vision. I carried with me decades-long knowledge of doctors, hospitals, and institutions of higher learning, including some less than laudatory information. My military experience during the years of the recent unpleasantness in Viet Nam also gave me considerable insight. Both of those lengthy experiences provided true grist for the mill of my writing, but neither of them need to connect the stories to the lives of the real people and places where the stories took place. In that sense, I know too much and have no wish to incriminate or to bring harm or embarrassment to real individuals or institutions. My rich and varied life has provided even more fodder to feed my mind and contribute realism to my written work. In my time,