The mysterious case of Charlie and the Lawson family and how their tragedy became a tourist attraction.
Take a look at the family photograph above. Do you notice anything strange about it? What if I told you that two weeks after it was taken, this man, Charlie Lawson murdered his family, wife and six of his kids?
The murder of the Lawson family by Charlie Lawson is one of the more enigmatic cases I’ve ever come across.
Not only because of the mysterious circumstances that would lead a father to murder his entire family on Christmas day but also because of the public’s bizarre reaction to it.
The Lawsons History
The Lawsons were tobacco farmers who lived in Germanton, North Carolina. They worked hard and saved enough money to buy their own farm on Book Cove Road.
Charlie Lawson had married Fannie Manring in 1911, and she had borne him eight children. One of the kids, 6-year-old William, died of an illness in 1920.
This wasn’t uncommon at the time, as the odds of a child surviving past the age of 5 was only 67%, compared to around 96% today.
Two weeks before Christmas in 1929, Charlie took his family out shopping. They got new clothes and visited a photographer’s studio where they took a family portrait.
In the portrait, they don’t look too happy to be there, but it’s hard to say if it’s because they were unhappy or because they just weren’t used to having their picture taken.
Portrait photography would have been a rare luxury for a rural family in North Carolina.
Christmas Day
On Christmas day, 1929, the family was gathered together and Fannie baked a Christmas cake.
Their 16-year-old son Arthur was the only member who was not in the house because he had gone into town to buy shotgun shells in order to go hunting for rabbits.
While Arthur was out, Charlie began his killing spree. He started with his daughters, Carrie and Maybell. They were outside when he shot and bludgeoned them to death.
He then shot his wife while she was on the porch. He then went into the house where he shot his two young sons and his teenage daughter Marie.
Finally, he bludgeoned the baby and placed her in the crib. After he killed them, he arranged their bodies so that their hands were crossed over their chest and put rocks under their heads to act as pillows.
He then went into the forest and several hours later, he shot himself.
The Spectacle
The murders became the talk of the town, so much so, that Charlie’s brother Marion turned the crime scene into a kind of macabre attraction.
He charged people 25 cents to tour the house. People showed up in droves to look at the blood stains and at Fannie’s cake, which had been left untouched by the family.
The cake had raisins on it, and some people took it upon themselves to steal raisins to keep as mementos. So the people running the tours were forced to encase the cake in glass where it remained for several years.
The crime even inspired a very popular murder ballad, that is still sung to this day. The question on everyone’s mind through all this is why Charlie killed his family in the first place.
Theories
One theory is that Charlie had become deranged due to a head injury he had incurred a couple of months earlier when he hit himself in the head with a mattock while digging a ditch on the farm.
Charlie’s brain was removed after his death and analyzed at Johns Hopkins Hospital but no abnormalities were found.
Still, I think it’s very likely that the injury could have caused a drastic change in his personality. Head injuries leading to violent behavior aren’t exactly rare.
Another popular theory, first chronicled in the book White Christmas, Bloody Christmas alleges that Charlie had been having an incestuous affair with his daughter Marie that had resulted in her pregnancy.
Family members and a close friend of Marie corroborated this claim and said that Fannie even knew about the pregnancy.
When Charlie was found dead in the woods he had two unfinished notes in his pocket. The first one read “Troubles can cause…” and the other one read, “No one to blame but…”
Conclusion
It’s possible that Charlie’s shame over having impregnated his daughter led him to the murders. You may think that it’s an extreme reaction but I think Charlie’s head injury also played a part.
The fact that he took the time to take the family for a portrait shortly before he killed them and then arranged their bodies after their deaths show that there was more going on than just a man who killed the family on a random violent impulse.
There’s also the matter of why Arthur wasn’t killed but I think the answer is pretty simple. Arthur would have probably been the only family member capable of defending himself.
Charlie knew he had to act when Arthur was out of the house. So what do you guys think?
Why did Charlie Lawson murder his family and do you think that he had already planned it out when the photograph was taken?
