Ashes and Highways: Two True Crimes from the Heart of Appalachia by James Fouty

Unsolved Crimes, Lost Lives, and the Search for Justice in the Shadows of Appalachia On a cold Christmas Eve in 1945, a fire consumed the Sodder family home in rural West Virginia. Five children vanished without a trace. What followed was not just a tragedy—but a mystery that refused to die. From the smoldering ruins of that night to the blood-stained back roads of the 1980s Redhead Murders, Names for the Nameless journeys through some of America’s most haunting unsolved cases. In the heart of Appalachia, victims were silenced, erased, and buried without names—but not forgotten. This is more than a true crime book. It’s a reckoning. Blending investigative rigor with the chilling intimacy of personal loss, Al Fouty unearths the stories of the missing and the murdered—women cast aside by systems, by killers, by time itself. But they were daughters, sisters, friends. And many of them are still waiting to be found. From forensic breakthroughs to grassroots movements, from anonymous letters to spectral folklore, Names for the Nameless is a haunting tribute to those who vanished—and the people who refuse to let them be forgotten. Read more