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Authors: M. Bruce Jones,Trudy J Smith

Tags: #Lawson family, #Murder

White Christmas, bloody Christmas (10 page)

BOOK: White Christmas, bloody Christmas
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would have taken time to put on hats and coats if they were running for their very lives. They would have fled without them. Obviously, the killing began with the two sisters, far away from the house at the tobacco barn. Fannie and Marie would have believed the shots that killed the girls to have been those of hunters in the area if they heard them at all.

There has always been a great deal of speculation about the fact that the mantle clock stopped exactly at 1:25 that Christmas Day. It has been widely believed that either Charlie reached up and stopped it in order to record the time of the murders or it somehow stopped on its own as a result of some cosmic phenomenon associated with the murders. Neither of these ideas could be true. First, no blood was found on the door of the clock and Charlie would definitely have left his bloody finger prints on the clock if he had touched it. The smeared marks of his hands were found in various places in the house. This will also come as a disappointment to those who prefer to believe that this was due to some strange and ghostly phenomenon. It was not.

As a watch and clock repairman for more than thirty years, I am quite knowledgeable about the workings of this type of clock. The time appearing on the face of the clock (see page 1H) most assuredly recorded the time of Marie's death. The sound waves initiated by a shotgun blast confined inside of a closed room would generate more than enough vibration or 'jar' to break the momentum of the timing escapement of the clock and cause it to stop. The timing escapement is what keeps the pendulum swinging.

After Fannie was killed on the front porch, the first victim shot in the house (possibly the last one to be shot) was Marie. Hence, the time the clock stopped records the moment that Marie was shot.

Another aspect of this murder which has baffled everyone interviewed is the fact that there was no evidence of a Christmas celebration in the Lawson household. There were no decorations, Christmas tree, or evidence that gifts had

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been exchanged between family members. Perhaps Fannie was too discouraged to create much of a festive atmosphere for her family due to the frequent arguments. Perhaps the clothing purchased only a week to ten days before was to be 'Christmas.' Perhaps Charlie had forbade the celebration of Christmas that year. But if things were this tense in the Lawson household, it does seem strange that a cousin would have been allowed to stay over on Christmas Eve night. It seems this will be a question that may never be satisfactorily answered.

Another question often asked is how could Charlie have possibly been able, not only to shoot his children in cold blood, but also bludgeon their heads. We believe that he did this not as an act of hatred, but of a cold compassion. We forget that we do not have to deal with the dirty task of killing animals for our own food today, but Charlie Lawson had slaughtered many. The most humane thing to do, especially in killing larger animals, was to deliver quick blows to the head directly after shooting it. This put the animal out of his misery quickly. Charlie Lawson was determined to die and take his family with him. He was not interested in making them suffer more. He was probably trying to insure that they suffer less. For a man of his past experiences, the manner in which he killed his family was probably the most likely to have expected.

All of this brings us to the heart of the Lawson mystery. Much can be said about what Charlie did and how he did it but the question remaining has survived a full sixty years of probing. Why did Charlie Lawson murder his family?

At the time her family came for their tour of the murder scene, they lived in Virginia. They made their trip to Stokes County in July of 1930.

They were guided over the property by an elderly gentleman wearing farmer's overalls and a straw hat. He wore a long, white beard and walked with a cane. He was accompanied by an older woman who wore a black dress topped with a crisp, white apron.

The tour took them over the entire farm—through the log cabin home, to the tobacco barn, and on to the spot where Lawson's body had been found.

As they walked along, some of the members of her family inquired of the old man if he knew the reason why Charlie Lawson had killed his family.

The old man told them that Charlie Lawson had found out that his daughter Marie was pregnant. Surprisingly enough, he also told them that Charlie Lawson had, himself, been the father of the baby.

The old man had gone on to say that Charlie Lawson had warned his daughter that if she told her mother or anyone else about the pregnancy that "there would be some killing done." He continued by saying that, as would probably be expected, Fannie became aware of her daughter's problem as she entered her third or fourth month of pregnancy and would not let the issue of the name of the father of the baby rest. She continually questioned her daughter about the father's name and the circumstances under which she had become pregnant. Sometime, (possibly a month before or perhaps a week before) she finally broke and answered her mother's question. The old man said that Marie told her mother, "Well, Moma, if you must know, it's Papa's baby!"

BOOK: White Christmas, bloody Christmas
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