White Christmas, bloody Christmas (6 page)

He picked up his last working gun, the single barreled 12-gauge shotgun, and left the house by the back entrance. He had already decided where he would go. There was a secluded pine thicket a hundred yards or so behind the tobacco barn. He made his way toward the spot, carefully avoiding the usual route down the old road that ran through the property. His two beagles, Sam and Queen, fell in along side of him as he sprinted along. His route took him parallel to the creek behind the house, but he couldn't risk stopping there long enough to wash the blood from his hands. Instead, he scooped a handful of stinging snow from the ground and rubbed his hands together to rid them of some of the sticky, half-dried blood. He wiped his hands on his heavy overcoat as he hurried along. Soon, he reached his destination.

He had done it. Everything was under control. Now the family would be together, all problems would be behind him now—all he had to do was finish the job and join them. He used his pocket knife to slice a twig from a nearby branch, carefully choosing one about eighteen inches long that forked at the end. After testing it for size and strength to be sure it would engage the trigger, he held the gun between his feet and pointed it directly at his heart. But something happened that he had not expected. He was unable to pull the trigger. It was supposed to be a simple thing—killing himself. But pulling the trigger on himself would be much harder for Charlie than killing his family had been.

He began to second guess what he had done. The faces of the children appeared over and over in his mind's eye. Suddenly, he began to feel very cold and very alone. He reached into the pocket of his overalls and brought out a little

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stubby pencil. He needed some paper, but the only thing he had was some old receipts from last year's tobacco market that he had carried ever since in the pocket of his old overcoat. He turned one of the pieces of paper over and scrawled, Troubles can cause... He hesitated. He began again. This time he wrote, No one to blame but... It was no use. There was no way to write an explanation of why he had done what he had. There was nothing that he was willing to explain to anyone. He stuffed the papers back into his pocket. He brought the gun back up to his chest and tried once more to push the twig against the trigger. He simply couldn't. Tears swelled up in his eyes and he began to walk a large circle in the snow. The bitter realization of what he had actually done weighed more and more heavily upon him. And...there was no going back, no going back. They were all dead and nothing could be done to change it. The minutes turned to hours as he continued to walk his endless circle and try time after time to push downward on that twig...

While Charlie agonized in the lonely pine thicket, people through out the area were learning of what had happened. Elijah, Claude, and Fred had returned, bringing some of the neighbors with them. They entered the house briefly and were horrified by what they found. The authorities had been called but with the prevailing condition of the roads, they knew it would take one half to one hour for them to arrive. They closed the house back up and waited—barring entry to anyone who was curious and wanted to look inside. They knew the murder scene should be left undisturbed until the authorities could look at it.

As the minutes ticked by and the news spread, more and more people began arriving...

Because it was only a fifteen minute walk into Germanton by the railroad tracks, Arthur and Sanders had only just arrived at the general store when Rufus burst in and told Arthur that something terrible had happened back at his house. Arthur was sick with fear. So many fights with his

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father, so many threats. Surely, it couldn't be what he so dreaded it would be. After all, today was Christmas. Surely, it had been safe to leave today.

Several people were already at the scene by the time Arthur and Sanders arrived. He frantically pushed his way through the onlookers and onto the front porch. He tried to open the door but it only came against his mother's shoes with an impersonal scrape. Arthur collapsed in tears with his hands on his mother's feet. The shock and the pain of it was more than he could bear. He had to be physically helped from the porch.

The air seemed to grow even colder as the afternoon wore on, and a roaring bonfire was built in the front yard of the home. The crowd was unwilling to leave and they were cold, but most important was everyone's concern for Arthur. They brought a rocking chair from the house for him to sit in. They placed him in front of the warm fire and wrapped him in heavy quilts. He continued to shake. He sat there in front of the fire, rocking back and forth, shivering and sobbing quietly to himself. Everyone tried to comfort him, but Arthur simply could not be comforted.

High Sheriff John Taylor from Danbury finally arrived and joined Dr. Helsabeck who was the official coroner for the area. The house was roped off and the crowd made to stand clear while the murder scene was investigated.

The neighborhood men had brought their guns along with them and a quick decision was made to station some men around the immediate area of the house and barns as a safety measure. After all, the murderer had not been found and Charlie Lawson was still missing too.

Two or three hours had now passed since the murders had been discovered. The bodies were still lying silent in the house. Where was Charlie Lawson? Little did they know that Charlie Lawson was still alive—still on the property. He was still walking his circle deep in the snowy pine thicket...

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One of the men who was stationed around the farm was Wesley Linville. H e was positioned about thirty to fifty yards from the house at a corn crib near the main barn.

He glanced nervously around him. Everything was very quiet. As the minutes ticked by, and nothing happened, he began to breathe a little easier.

Suddenly, there was a movement in the top of the corn crib. Cobs of corn began to rumble noisily down through the crib. Stricken with the fear that the murderer had hidden himself in the corn crib, Linville lunged sideways pleading, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

The last ear of corn tumbled to the bottom of the crib, and again, everything was silent. It had only been a normal shifting in the corn, causing a small avalanche of cobs to spill down through the crib.

His heart racing, Mr. Linville cautiously crept back toward the corn crib. There had been no one rising up from beneath the cobs of corn, but he continued to keep a careful watch in all directions.

Later, Mr. Linville would retell the incident many times saying that, "it nearly scared the life out of him." He insisted that he must have jumped a full six feet sideways! Much later, he would see a great deal of humor in his actions. That day, however, there was nothing funny about it at all.

BackattheLawson house, the sheriff and other authorities were still going over the murder scene. The bodies of Carrie and Mae Bell were brought to the house and laid inside with the other victims. To spare him the sight of the bodies being moved, Arthur was taken to another home in the area.

The Lawson's large, black male cat made his way gingerly through the deep snow toward one of the A-Models belonging to a family who had gome that evening to see what had happened at the Lawson farm. When the family came back and opened the car door to go home, the cat bounded up onto the seat and looked at them. They started to shoo him out, but then realized that the cat would no longer have anyone to care

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for him now that no one would be living at the Lawson farm. They took him home with them where he lived out the remainder of his life.

Deep in the lonely pine thicket, Charlie Lawson continued to walk his endless circle. He had to do it. He pulled out his pocket watch and noted the time—it was nearly five o'clock in the afternoon. They would find him soon. Gritting his teeth, he positioned the shotgun one last time against the red, sore spot on his chest and pushed downward on the little twig...

The crowd jumped as a shot rang out in the distance. They looked at each other. For one long moment, no one said a word. Mr. S.C. Hampton, Hill Hampton's father, was the first one to start out toward the sound. As he traveled farther away from the house, he noticed the footprints of a lone person in the deep snow. Following this trail, he found that it bypassed the generally-used road that ran through the Lawson farm. It led him into a large thicket of scraggly looking young pine trees.

Cautiously, he advanced into the edge of the thicket, still anxious that he might encounter the murderer lurking there somewhere among the scrubby pines. Mr. Hampton hesitated momentarily. The white quietness of the late evening air was broken by the sorrowful baying of Charlie's two beagles. The sound was coming from only a short distance away. He quickened his pace. In a brief moment or two, the sounds of the dogs had led him to the spot where Charlie Lawson had fallen on his back in the snow. The steam was still rising from the warm, coagulating blood that had flowed from the gaping wound in his chest. On either side of Charlie's body lay his two dogs, Sam and Queen. They had faithfully remained by their master's side until the very end. The snow had melted around the circle where the dogs had lain while Charlie had packed the icy snow. Mr. Hampton stooped to check to see if Charlie was alive. In a moment, he stood up and shouted out one of his hunting yells and a loud,

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"I've found him!" to signal the others who had begun to venture out in his direction. Within a few minutes, a large group of men were standing over Charlie Lawson's body.

There was little doubt in anyone's mind that they had found the murderer. Charlie Lawson had taken the lives of his family and then killed himself. Everyone wondered why. Why would he do such a thing? Why, indeed.

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Even after the authorities arrived, the bodies were left pretty much as they were in the house. Everyone was concerned about where Charlie Lawson might be. The growing crowd of people milled cautiously around the outskirts of the area around the home looking for signs of either Charlie or his body. Whoever had committed the crime, whether Charlie or some unknown murderer, could certainly still be in the area. They were careful not to venture far.

By around 4:30 in the evening, the examinations and evidence gathering tasks were complete. Plans were made for a way that the bodies could be removed from the house. Mr. Hill Hampton took a flat-edged shovel and scooped the thick pools of blood from the floors and placed it in a metal wash tub and carried it down behind the Lawson house and buried it. (It was not poured out on the ground as was reported in many news articles.)

His wife, Mrs. Sadie Hampton, brought her personal bedsheets from her home to be used as coverings for the bodies of her friends.

Hearses had arrived and were waiting at the bottom of the hill, unable to pull up the snowy incline to the murder scene. They had a definite problem in deciding how to gracefully get all the bodies down the hill to the waiting vehicles. Finally, a make-shift sled was created and arranged so that one of the mules could pull the bodies down the hill.

As the sled was being prepared to carry its horrible burden, the crowd heard a shot ring out in the distance. This was the shot that ended Charlie Lawson's life. It was around five o'clock now and the light was fading in the evening sky. By the time the men made it back to the Lawson home with the body of Charlie Lawson, it was dark.

They had carried Charlie's body all the way back from the pine thicket by hand. Four men carried his body. One man for each arm and leg. Charlie was a pitiful sight. They could barely hold his midsection up and keep it from dragging in the snow. His head was thrown back, eyes open, and mouth

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gaping. They placed him inside the house beside the bodies of his family.

When it came time to bring the bodies out of the house and down to the waiting hearses, Deputy Burrows (Lawson's hunting partner on Thanksgiving Day), went in the house with some of the others to help bring out the bodies. The sickening odor of death was strong...

Someone said, "Has anyone got a match on them so we can light a lamp? I can't see a thing in here."

"I've got one," Burrows answered, pulling a penny box of matches from his pocket. He pulled a match across the rough wooden floor and, in the resulting flare of light, saw he was standing between the blood-soaked and battered bodies of Carrie and Mae Bell. He rose, and stepped over the bodies so that he could lift the globe of the lamp and light the wick. The glow of the Kerosene lamp made it an erie, ghastly scene. They hardly knew how to go about handling the bodies to get them out to the sled. After covering the bodies with Sadie's white sheets, they carried them as best they could to the sled. Some of the bystanders made an effort to help carry the bodies, but most were so repulsed that they were unable or unwilling to continue.

One of the undertakers asked Mr. Sherman Voss if he could lend a hand but he refused saying, "I just can't do it. I've already seen more than I can stand..."

In the ghostly glow of lanterns and torches, the bodies were placed one or two at a time on the make-shift sled. All were pulled down the hill in this manner except for the body of the infant girl, Mary Lou. Mr. Boley Tuttle volunteered to carry her little body in his arms down the hill. The heavy smell of death surrounding the child was sickening. The body had lain in front of the dying fireplace fire in it's soiled diapers for so many hours that it was absolutely rancid by the time the bodies were to be removed. He barely made it to the hearse. After he had placed the little body inside, he lost the contents of his stomach. Shivering, he sat down on a nearby stump and

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broke into tears. He remained nauseated for the rest of the evening.

Before Charlie Lawson's body was prepared for burial, his skull was opened and his brain was removed for examination.

Dr. Spotswood Taylor, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, was in the area visiting his brother, Sheriff John Taylor. He assisted Dr. Helsabeck in the examination.