Ep. 21 - Lawson Family Murders

Familicide is impossible to understand. How does a family member kill their entire family? There is a traditional folk ballad with a very macabre subject. That subject is the massacre of a North Carolina family by the name of Lawson. This song details the gruesome events that took place on Christmas Day in 1929. The ballad is titled "The Murder of the Lawson Family" and was written by Walter “Kid” Smith of Virginia in 1930 and recorded by the Carolina Buddies for Columbia. It begins:

"Twas on last Christmas evening.
 The snow was on the ground.
 At his home in North Carolina
 The murderer was found."

Charlie Lawson was born in 1886 in Lawsonville, North Carolina. In 1911, at the age of 25, Charlie married the love of his life, Miss Fannie Manring, who was nineteen. The couple would eventually have eight children: Marie, James whom they called Arthur, William, Carrie, Lucinda whom they called Maybell, James, Raymond and Mary Lou. Charlie had followed his brother to the town of Germanton, in rural Stokes County, North Carolina. The options for income in the area were fairly limited and Charlie became a tenant farmer growing tobacco with a goal of eventually buying his own farm. Hard work paid off and Lawson purchased land on Brook Cove Road in 1927. The family moved in minus one of their members as the Lawson's son William had died of an illness in 1920.

Charlie, Fannie and their seven remaining children seemed to live happily on their farm for the next two years. Neighbors described Charlie as being hard working, a non-drinker and good to his wife and children. The family appeared to be fairly prosperous. But nobody really knows what goes on inside their neighbor's home. Just a few weeks before Christmas 1929, Charlie took his whole family into town to get new outfits. The plan was to wear them for a family portrait that was taken that same day. This seemed odd to folks in town, as the Lawsons were not wealthy and rarely spent what money they had on non-necessities. This seemingly innocuous activity would later lead people to believe that later events were premeditated. At the time of the portrait, Marie was 17, Arthur was 16, Carrie was 12, Maybell was 7, James was 4, Raymond was 2 and Mary Lou was 4 months. The family appeared happy in their portrait, but something was seriously wrong with Charlie in his mind. He was going to snap and murder nearly his entire family.

The circumstances of the familicide indicate that this was not only premeditated, but there was plenty of time for Charlie to grasp what he was doing and stop because not all members of the family were killed at the same time time and in the same location. It is believed that Charlie began the killings with two of his daughters, Carrie and Maybell. The two were on their way to an aunt and uncles house, but sadly, never made it. Charlie was laying in wait behind the tobacco barn for the two girls with a rifle and a shotgun. As the girls approached the barn, Charlie opened fire. He hit one of the girls with a bullet from the rifle and one with buckshot from the shotgun. To ensure they were dead, he bludgeoned them with the stock of the rifle and hid their bodies in the barn. After that, he returned to the house and shot his wife Fanny who was on the porch. Marie screamed from inside the house when she heard the shotgun blast. Charlie entered the house and shot Marie. Her two younger brothers had tried to find a hiding place, but Charlie found them and bludgeoned them to death with the stock of the double-barreled shotgun. He then shot the baby in her crib. The only child that survived was Arthur, the couple's 16 year old son, who was visiting Henry Ashby's home, located off Germanton-Danbury Highway, about two miles away. When Arthur returned to the farm with his cousin, they found the bodies of his family. Fannie and all of the children, except the baby, were found in the front room with their arms across their chests and pillows or rocks under their heads. The baby was wrapped up in her cradle with her arms across her chest.

The police arrived shortly thereafter and began their investigation. Charlie was nowhere to be found. Suddenly, a shot rang out from the woods that were close to the house. One officer raced toward the shot and found Charlie lying on the ground. He had committed suicide. A path had been worn around a tree leading to the assumption that he had paced for a time after committing the murders. A note in Charlies pocket read, "Blame no one but I." The investigation revealed a chilling scene. The Statesville Record & Landmark wrote of the scene in an article published December 30, 1929, "Immersed in the clotted blood on the living room floor, where the five bodies were found, was a little Christmas poem. Most of its words had been blotted out by the red stain oozing over it but the large number of curiosity seekers who passed through the death chamber today could plainly make out the words 'Santa Claus'." 

Because of wounds to the wrist of Fannie from the gunshot blast, it is believed that she was holding baby Mary Lou on the porch when she was killed. The baby also was covered in more blood than what could have come from her brutalized body. Christmas had been good to the children as toys were scattered all over near the tree. A pair of curlers warming near the fireplace indicated that someone was getting ready to curl their hair. The coroner's jury, directed by Dr. C. J. Helsabeck, concluded that Charlie had committed all the murders and then killed himself. A doctor from John Hopkins joined Dr, Helsabeck to conduct an autopsy on Charlie and they removed his brain. They found what looked like low grade degeneration and sent the brain to Baltimore for further testing at John Hopkins. Dr. Helsabeck had been the family physician and he reported that Charlie had been suffering from some kind of nervous disorder and Charlie's sister-in-law Mrs. Henry Ashby said that the nervous issue had been so bad recently that he was unable to work or rest comfortably.

Murders back during the early part of the last century always brought gawkers and neighbors trampling through crime scenes looking for souvenirs. The Lawson Murders were no different. A jar was filled with Fannie's blood and kept in the family as a souvenir for years. The dogwood tree Charlie was slumped against had been stripped bare of its bark within hours of his suicide. Other collector's items were Charlie's guns, the bricks from his demolished cabin's old chimney and raisins from a cake that Marie had baked that morning even found their way into people's collections.

The eight bodies from the Lawson family were taken to T.B. Knight Funeral Parlor in Madison for embalming. The funeral was big with not only those who knew and loved the Lawson family attending, but as many as 5,000 outsiders who had become curious about this case that filled the newspapers. The Winston-Salem Journal reported, "From hillside and valley, from hamlet and city they gathered. For three miles along the road, cars were parked, while men and women, many with babies in their arms, made their way through the mud to the cemetery. There they crammed and jammed to get a glimpse of the seven caskets and tuned their ears to hear the tributes paid." The Lawson Family was buried in a large grave, with the six children and Fannie being buried in white caskets and Charlie in a gray one. The tombstone over the grave is inscribed with, "Not now, but in the coming years it will be in a better land, We'll read the meaning of our tears, and then sometime, we'll understand." 

There have been theories presented over the years. One is that Charlie had money in the stock market and that after it crashed, he feared he would lose the farm. People also claim that Charlie had sustained a head injury while working on a fence a year earlier and that it had changed his demeanor. This has some credence in that in modern times, it has been found that many serial killers have sustained some kind of severe head injury at some point in their life. Others think that Charlie witnessed a crime and that he didn't murder his family at all. The gang whom he witnessed committing this crime are said to have killed the family and him and set it up to look like a murder/suicide. The most widely accepted theory; however, is set out in the 1990 book "White Christmas, Bloody Christmas," which claims that Charlie had been in an incestuous relationship with his eldest daughter Marie. The day before the book released, the author was contacted by a member of the Lawson family who had already been interviewed for the book. She told the author that it was accepted in the family that this was the reason Charlie had killed the family. There were even whispers of it from Charlie's wife Fanny in the months leading up to the massacre. The book "The Meaning of Our Tears," takes this theory one step further, revealing that Marie had shared with a friend some time before the Christmas massacre that she was pregnant with her father's baby.

After the murders, the house was opened to the public by Charlie's brother, Marion, and people could pay a quarter to see the murder scene. They could even see and touch the cake, which Marie had baked that morning. He had come up with the idea to help Arthur keep up the mortgage on the property. Arthur would himself meet his own tragic end at the age of thirty-one when he was killed in a car accident in 1945, leaving behind his wife and four kids. With all of the tragedy surrounding the Lawson family murders, it is no wonder people report strange goings on at the Lawson farm.

When the house was open to the public, many visitors reported feelings of dread and an incredible sadness that surrounded them when they walked in the door. The house was eventually closed, but that didn't stop people from sneaking in to attempt to witness something paranormal happening in the house. Many people reported seeing the apparitions of two small children playing in the Lawson home. When these witnesses were later shown the family portrait taken weeks before the murders, they  would point out two of the Lawson children as those they had seen. It was always the same children: 7 year old Maybell and 2 year old Raymond Lawson.

The house no longer stands. Right near the old Lawson property is the Squires Inn Bed and Breakfast. The innkeeper is Bonnie Snyder and she has kept a Christmas tradition every year since 1988 in which she puts up a children’s Christmas tree that is decorated with antique toys and ornaments. Snyder claims that the Lawson children come to visit every Christmas. The tree had actually been put up originally for Bonnie's daughter when she was little and that first year, they heard a little girl’s voice say, “Oh look.” They also heard a little boy’s reply of “Come on, let’s go.” When they looked in the direction of the voices they saw the children looking in the window at the tree. It's not just at Christmas though. The children are also heard and seen in the summer months. Many times they are laughing and giggling. They believe these children are Maybell and Raymond. Guests have also reported hearing children singing, laughing, and cheering as well as seeing two children playing on the grounds.

Following the closing of the house, the floorboards were removed and used to make a bridge on the property over a creek. Once they finished construction on the bridge, strange things started happening. People have claimed that a fog envelopes the car and shuts it off once it is driven on the bridge. As we so often hear with these bridge stories, tiny hand prints appear all over the windshield and the windows of cars as they are driven across. These have been attributed to the Lawson children. Multiple people have also reported that a 1930s style car has appeared out of the darkness and followed them slowly and erratically, until the drivers cross the county line. Once the car crosses the county line, the other car vanishes just as quickly as it appeared.

And then there is the funeral home where the bodies were taken. This location is today Madison Dry Goods and Country Store at 104 W. Murphy St. The building was built in 1908 and housed several businesses with the funeral parlor on the second floor. Over the decades, more businesses came and went like Penn Hardware Store. And then in 1998, Richard and Kathy Miller bought the building and opened up the dry goods store on the first floor and a museum dedicated to the Lawson Family Murders on the second floor. Netflix produced a hokey paranormal program in 2022 named "28 Days Haunted" and this is one of the locations featured on the program. Many visitors and employees have reported seeing the spirit of a little girl wearing a white dress in the building. Richard Miller said, "I've never seen her, but four people have seen her. One was a man. I was in here years ago and apparently she was looking out the window because the man wanted to know if my daughter was in here working with me. There's been three kids. One kids about three years ago grabbed his dad's arm and said, 'I"m not going up there. There's a little girl standing there.' I've had a couple kids who won't go down the hallway." The Millers also claim that pictures and objects have moved on their own. Many people who visit the museum are overcome with the eerie feeling that they are not alone.

So what happened to make Charlie Lawson murder his entire family? Do his children still seek to have the playtime that was so tragically stolen from them.? Was the Lawson Family Farm haunted? Are the properties connected to the murder haunted? That is for you to decide.