The True Crime Hour

The murder of the Lawson family is referring to as a familicide. It took place on Christmas Day of 1929 in Germanton, North Carolina. Charles (known as “Charlie”) Davis Lawson murdered his wife and six of his seven children.

Background

Charlie Lawson married Fannie Manring in 1911. He had 8 children (Arthur, Marie, William, Carrie, Maybell, James, Raymond, and Mary Lou) with Fannie Manring. The third child, William, born in 1914, died of an illness in 1920.

Day of the Murder

In 1929, weeks prior to Christmas, Charlie took his wife Fannie and their seven children into town to buy new clothes and to have a family portrait taken.

On Christmas day, Lawson first shot his daughters, Carrie and Maybell as they were setting out to their uncle and aunt’s house. He then awaited for them by the tobacco barn until they were in span, shot them with a 12-gauge shotgun, then make certain that they were dead by bludgeoning them. He lay down their bodies in the tobacco barn.

Subsequently, Charlie came back to the house and shot Fannie, who was on the porch. As soon as the gun was fired, Marie (who was inside) screamed, while the two small boys (James and Raymond), seek out to find a hideout. Charlies shot Marie, and then locate and killed the two boys. Finally, he killed the baby, Mary Lou; it is ideation that she was bludgeoned to death. After the murders, he went into the adjacent woods and (few hours later) he shot himself.

The only survivor was his eldest son, Arthur (who was 19 years old at the time), whom he was appointed an errand just before committing the crime.

Friends and family found the grisly scene, the bodies lying with stones under their heads and their arms crossed, as Lawson walk back and forth in the woods in back of the farm. As people gathered at the crime scene, a shot echoed out from the woods as Lawson turned the shotgun on himself, a set of footprints and a meaningless note left behind.

Aftermath

Aftermath, Charlie Lawson’s brother turned the house into a tourist destination, charging interested admirers to tour the house.

This story leaves behind one of the most lasting and grisly mystery. The reason “why” of the Lawson family murder-suicide may never truly be known. There were theorizing that some blamed Charlie Lawson’s acts on a head injury he had suffered, though his autopsy allegedly didn’t hold up the theory. The rest said he had sexually abused and knocked up his eldest daughter and killed the family to avert the secret from being revealed to the public.