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returns from Alcatraz on a mission to reclaim Harlem and then american dream by any necessary, godfather of airing Sundays only on ethics get the channel or get the app. Criminal is a proud member of radiotopia from prx. The story may be disturbing to some listeners, so please use discretion. He bought all his family new clothes up toys- For the children and they went to a foot for studio and had a group portrait made, which would have been a really big deal in those days. Many families- ever had a photograph of of themselves and just getting everyone together and bring them into town you know some miles was quite an undertaking. This is folklorist Sarah Brian you, I remember her from our last episode about the murder of Pearl Brian she's, talking about,

tobacco farmer named Charlie Lawson from Stokes County North Carolina, he took his family shopping and to see the tagra just before Christmas, one thousand nine hundred and twenty nine that, family photograph of the lawsons, has survived all these years. They're, looking fairly uncomfortable, it doesn't It look like a happy outing. Although they do have beautiful new clothes. They they look like they're, not entirely at ease with each other one person in the phone graph stands out. The lawsons oldest daughter, Marie. She was sixteen at the time what interest about that picture. Is this what to be looking at this picture makes you think, thank God, the farmer, and they got a man doing this because the the the horrible hard life but movie, it seems to have this late on her, like she has a ski. This all for some reason she looks full and did and then the rest she does. She looks like a of

I she she's quite pretty, has her hair, bobbed and waved she's wearing a necklace and a very nice night, in twenty style dress with a the caller and the light falls more on her than on anybody in the family and she's, attractive very attractive to later on Christmas day, one thousand nine hundred and twenty nine, the Lawson family got dressed in their new clothes Van Elasa. The mother baked a Christmas cake, The oldest son Arthur went into town to buy shotgun shells, at least that he wanted to go rabbit hunting, and didn't have shells himself? It's strange to think he must've asked his father. Do you have any shells and his dad must have said no, but I can spare them can't spare them exactly. By the time or the returned home. His entire family was dead, shot and many cases also beaten, Charlie Lawson murdered six of his children and his wife, starting with daughters, Carrie made now they.

Outside he Killed them and put their bodies in the barn then went in to his house, shot his wife Annie and their little baby. Shop Marie, who was a sixteen year old daughter and killed the two little boys, who were also in the house at the time until we You look at this. This portrait that was taken with new clothes. I mean the I mean, maybe the father snapped, but it seems like this. It was planned out it's it. Has this odd qualities like a burial portrait It is it's a very funereal look in picture, and it makes you think of how they were laid out at the crime scene, which was very strange. He carefully took each body and placed it in a few. Posture he put the baby in her crib, but each of the other

victims he laid out with their hands crossed their chest like a body in a coffin and put rock under their heads for pillows. So when people came to the crime scene. The bodies were very carefully arranged, so he had gone back after it killed everyone and kind of set the mall up. Yes, yes, at the mall up, I mean stranger So but it sounds like a very lovingly which you know of course shows how deranged because at the time that he would murder someone and do such a a caring act as setting out the bodies the way he did and what happens to him he went into the woods after he finished killing his family and shot himself. Many neighbors heard that last shot and soon there was a huge crowd. People gathered on the Lawson's tobacco farm as the police

try to figure out what had happened. Family members started charging admission to their house leading people. On a tour of the crime scene. There are some all who were there years later remembered seeing twenty cars parked outside the house the people just morbid curiosity, taking tours of the crime scene, the crime scene for cost. Zero dollars and twenty five cents and was advertised in newspapers across the state Everything in the house was left intact even that Christmas cake that Fannie had made an. I don't think that It had even been cut into yet I don't think they'd eaten any, but it It was sitting there in the house, you know sort of a a reminder of the seven been a family with children, Christmas, so the cake was left there and it was. A star attraction during the tours we play today's story to be kind of a companion to our last episode, which was about the murder of Pearl bra,

and the strange way in which she became the subject of murder, ballads and yes, in both cases of very bloody crime scene became a tourist attraction in both cases, Gruesome murders were set to string band music and became very popular in nineteen thirty, the murder of the Lawson family by the Carolina buddies was one of the most popular songs in the country, is name was God Annie had a loving my We actually went to Stokes county and up learning that the law and family murder is not exactly in the past for its residents there go, stories. Conspiracy theories, all kinds of God,

and superstition and most of all people still trying to understand why hi, Charlie Lawson, did it is so sad that on Christmas for a family and you just I would just really like to know why just why this is Tony my mom used to sing to me the old story and my aunt had been to the old home place. I think when she was a child. She went to the funeral. So what we thought is going to be the crime story behind an old murder, ballad turned to be a little more interesting. This loss, family murder, has cast a very long shadow in stokes, county and people. Here, still love tell the story to one another: over over again I'm Phoebe judge. This is common.

Mom. No, my I was very interested in story of his life. He was eight years old when the murders happened. He remembered the day. His sisters toward the house, but his family oh his mother and father, deemed him too young to go, see it when it was an active tourist attraction so He was. He was always upset that they would let him go, but his sister came back telling about seeing the bloody pillows and everything this is Trudy Smith. Her father was upset list with finding out what happened.

And he wasn't. The only one you know is intensely important to the people here that and they just They just want to keep the story alive and I anan it just just today I to the conclusion? I think they loved these people, they even forgive Charlie Lawson, but I think there's a love for all these characters in these people that were real and lived in their community treasonous father. Took it upon himself to track down? people who know the Lawson family and ask questions. He happened to be able to speak to a gentleman by the name of heel. Hampton and he'll have and had been the murders best friend in really close neighbor and He told him some things about the murders about Charlie, the new self and also he one of the things we we're puzzled. About is hill. Hampton said on, I know of what was going on in the family, but I'm not going to talk about it went

he graduated from college. She agreed to help her father, compile all of his research into a true crime book in One thousand nine hundred and ninety they self published two thousand five hundred copies of white Christmas. Bloody Christmas, though sold out in three, two weeks, then they had five thousand more books printed gone though Five thousand more now you, can't find a copy and less you're willing to spend a few one hundred dollars on Ebay or you can beat it at one of the libraries and Stokes county, but you have to exactly sit in the library to read it. You can check it out because you can't be trusted not to steal it. Trudy Smith wrote a follow up book, the meaning of tears even though that one still in print, if you want check it out from a library around here, you'll have to leave a fifty dollars deposit I

I'm Saver Tetterton and we're in Madison North Carolina at Madison Dry goods Madison dry goods, was our first stop in Stokes county back in now. One thousand and twenty nine. The building has a funeral parlor, and this is where the lost were involved. Some people think the thing is still inhabited by their ghosts: one little girl, she was in here with their dad one day is probably a Saturday. They stand in there at bottom of the steps- and she said she Said- look and there's a girl up there in a white dress along my dress and he went out. He looked up and he went right. I said not she very well. Could you sing something now? I myself have never experienced anything so but there have been people in here who come in and said yeah kind of sense, something upstairs on the first floor. They have clothes and old fashion, candy biscuit mix a table with salted, peanuts and bottles of coke. On the say, can floor. There's a small museum, mostly about the town of Madison and at the end of the hall

well. There's a very small dark room was something like a casket. Next to the casket is a little tail but with the flickering red light and a framed copy of that portrait of the family Sandra Chatterton said people come through all the time asking about the lawsons she's a copy of the photograph right behind the register, so she can the story to anyone who might not know it as she talked to us another customer piped up and asked if the grades were still open to the top there's a mass grave in there with them, but the whole family and and I've heard different things. I've heard you have access to it, and I've heard whoever has the property now has cut off access to it, but they said You would go and you go in the fall when the leaves are falling, leaves fall and everybody. Sorry, but Charlie's, Or it snows on everybody's grave at Charlie's, blame it. But then, I'll go well. Why did they not kill his son too, and I had

Lady come in one day who, apparently this is what intrigued US people around here still want to know what Charlie Lawson was thinking. Why did why? Did he kill a three month old baby? So thank you for just a lot of wise. I mean every if would have known, why is gone so a lot It may be speculation like on the based on. Why did you write the book? and all she's getting is from people to that knew him. So I think that's what it is. Provide trying to solve the mystery and the mystery. Top of mind this summer, because the Stokes County Arts Center Commission play about the murder of the Lawson family. All of the shows completely sold out almost immediately. We were lucky to get a ticket when we posted about ditions people were posting. Resumes of Gore makeup that they could do? I mean lots of people and that's Not you see no blood, nothing like that. This is director Justin Bas

I grew up in this county. So it's the story been passed down from every family around the county to generation. Generation. I think, if you grow up in Stokes county, you know the story: the script for the play a day did from Trudy Smith's books and was performed at so stokes high school, just a few. House, for more the murders happened. There was popcorn for sale. And a man in the lobby claiming have the original portrait of the losses. That's the original picture taken two weeks before the shooting a one thousand eight hundred and twenty nine from a family member of the family that stays days, my it's locked up in a safe the arts until asked us not to record any of the actual performance, but we can tell you that it's done with a greek chorus from the town, tell the story together, which feels appropriate. My name Harry fry. And my mama went to

fuel back in nineteen. Twenty nine little bit of kinda lost distantly related in a lot of p well said they thought the play was well done. It doesn't answer why, which is actually What everyone is wondering- and we can't know- but there are two dominant theories. He several months before the murder sustained a serious head, injury again folklorist Sarah he had been cutting. Search on his property and hit himself in the back. Head with a mattock which is like a pick axe had a very bad head injury and after that he be Dave's erratically. He was volatile. Sometimes violence and was was not himself. People said now after he died. His doctor, Chester Hilsabeck, who was MIKE

person in real life in real life was my cozen. His doctor testified that the head. Injury would not have been enough to cause his behavior. Lawson's. Brain was actually removed and shipped off to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to be studied, and they said the same thing that the injury didn't playing the behavior as for the second theory, he had Gotten the oldest daughter, pregnant Marie she, Sixteen, this Don't come out until many. Many years later, when some researchers were were reading about the case and just as their book was going to press a cousin of the Lawson family, called up and said These research, Trudy Smith and her father we heard from earlier. They also reviewed Marie Lawson's best friend, who said that Marie had told her that she was pregnant bye,

some accounts, Charlie Lawson. It even told his wife Annie what was going on and then there were two notes found in his parkers once I and I'm out in the woods after he killed himself on one of 'em, both are more incomplete. One I've said troubles can calls and the other one said I want to blame, but- and he didn't either either is, but there were found on his body. One wonders if that was reason to him to kill the family if he felt that he had polluted the family with this or if. The alleged incest was actually part of his insanity. After this injury, he was very strange and to the frightening man. It sounds like after his his head injury in this

I have been part of it Christmas morning Earth Snow, was own the ground at home in no mood the mood was found His is Charlie thing. Was

for no costume, do you take his families loves

this we can do. It is well fit for her and stand cry. Please follow use to to Jane. Couldn't these stuff, he the and

You can have done furring face to shots into q them out. And when the dream phone Swiss there, it was great surprise, hey

six, he is and and moose him on June J,

no no yours did he pay You please try in their world. New Churchman day they were buried in crowded, grave well. The angels word stubble. Come home come home, my wants love peace and love.

Thank you for collaborating with us this month, download their arrangements of the murder of the Lawson family or Pearl Bryan on Itunes, or band camp, or you can see them form. The ballots live there on tour in September with information on our site, this. Criminal dot com criminal produced by Lawrenceport and me with audio engineering, help from Rob buyers, Julian Alexander, create original illustrations for each episode of Criminal she also designed brand new t, shirts and coffee mugs? You can check them on our site, just a quick note. We're excited to announce that we're planning for criminal live shows. This fall we'll here in Durham, North Carolina and then head West to Seattle, LOS Angeles and San Francisco tickets.

Until now we'd love to see you Chris now is a proud member of radiotopia from Prxa a collective of the thirteen bus. CASS, around Radio Toby made possible with support from the Knight Foundation and Mailchimp celebrating creativity, chaos and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge

This is common.

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