A festive family photograph taken just before a massacre on Christmas Day contains a chilling hint behind why the killing took place.
Tobacco farmer Charles Davis Lawson thought it may be nice to head into town for a studio portrait during the 1929 Christmas period in Germanton, North Carolina. The working class farmer bought new clothes for his family to wear in the photo, including his wife, Fannie, four daughters and three sons.
But there was a sinister motive behind the family photo after Lawson murdered his entire family in order to hide a family secret. No one other than Lawson truly knew why he was splashing out on the photo.
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In the back of the photo are Lawson’s children, Arthur, 16, and Marie, 17, along with the two parents. As Marie stares straight down the camera, Charlie peers off to the left with a chilling smile, and Fannie looks away while holding their youngest, four-month-old Mary Lou. The younger Lawsons sit in front, including James, 4, Maybell, 7, Raymond, 2, and Carrie, 12.
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Thousands of people attended the funeral for the Lawsons (WFMY 2)It was on Christmas Day 1929 that the twisted family-killer struck. Marie had started baking a Christmas cake in the morning on their family farm northwest of the North Carolina capital of Raleigh. Later in the morning, Carrie and Maybell left the house to go and visit their aunt and uncle.
But Charles was waiting behind the barn with a loaded shotgun. He shot and bludgeoned his daughters before dumping their corpses inside the barn. He went back to the family house and shot 37-year-old Fannie, before moving in to kill Marie and two of his sons, James and Raymond. He finally bludgeoned Mary Lou the baby to death, leaving her with a fractured skull.
The seven bodies were later found with arms crossed over their chests and rocks underneath their head - but there was one family member who survived. Arthur, the eldest son, had been sent on an errand by his father the night before the killing, before he returned home and raised the alarm.
A hunt for Lawson ensued, before a gunshot was heard from a nearby woods and his body was found along with letters he had written. With footprints circling a tree at the scene of his death, it appeared Lawson had been pacing before he killed himself.
The family home became a tourist attraction after the horrific killings, with Marie's cake still intact (WFMY 2)There was a truly sinister explanation behind the horrific massacre committed by Charlie Lawson. In 1990, a cousin of the Lawson children told a 60-year-old family secret that had never before been told.
Stella Lawson Boles said she had heard her mother and other women in the Lawson family discussing something Fannie had discovered not long before Christmas. Fannie had found out that there had been incest between her husband, Lawson, and her 17-year-old daughter Marie.
Things got worse. Weeks before Christmas, Marie shared a secret with her friend, Ella May Johnson, that she was pregnant with her father’s baby and that both parents were aware of the pregnancy. The Lawson family’s neighbour, Sam Hill, alleged that Lawson had forced himself on his daughter and warned her that if she told anyone there would be “some killing done”. In the chilling photo, you see Marie staring ahead stony-faced as she stands beside her sick father, who appears almost to be smirking.
The family home became a tourist attraction after the massacre, with people flocking down even to see the Christmas cake Marie had been baking at the time of the murders - which was kept under glass after some visitors stole its raisins. In 1945, the remaining survivor Arthur Lawson was killed in a motor accident, leaving behind his wife and four kids.
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