Criminal - The Portrait

Episode Date: August 28, 2015

More than eighty years ago, a North Carolina family of nine posed for a Christmas portrait. Two weeks later, all but one of them had been shot dead. (See the portrait here.) Today, we bring you the story of the Lawson family of Stokes County. Thanks to Elephant Micah and Sarah Bryan for collaborating with us this month. Download Elephant Micah's version of "Lawson Family" (along with their version of "Pearl Bryan") on iTunes or Bandcamp. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. Today's story may be disturbing to some listeners, so please use discretion. He bought all his family new clothes, bought toys for the children, and they went to a photographer's studio and had a group portrait made, which would have been a really big deal in those days. Many families would never have had a photograph of themselves. And just getting everyone together and bring them into town, you know, some miles was quite an undertaking. This is folklorist Sarah Bryan. You might remember her from our last episode about the murder of Pearl Bryan.

She's talking about a tobacco farmer named Charlie Lawson from Stokes County, North Carolina. He took his family shopping and to see the photographer just before Christmas 1929. That family photograph of the Lawsons has survived all these years. They're looking fairly uncomfortable. It does not look like a happy outing, although they do have beautiful new clothes. They look like they're not entirely at ease with each other. One person in the photograph stands out, the Lawsons' oldest daughter, Marie. She was 16 at the time. What's interesting about that picture is this, what looks to be, looking at this picture, it makes you think thank god i'm not a farmer and thank god i'm not doing this because it's a horrible hard life but marie it seems to

have this light on her like she has escaped this all for some reason she looks beautiful and different than the rest she does she looks like uh a flapper. She's quite pretty, has her hair bobbed and waved. She's wearing a necklace and a very nice 1920s-style dress with a lacy collar. And the light falls more on her than on anybody in the family. And she's attractive. Very attractive. Two weeks later, on Christmas Day 1929, the Lawson family got dressed in their new clothes. Fanny Lawson, the mother, baked a Christmas cake, and the oldest son, Arthur, went into town to buy shotgun shells.

I believe that he wanted to go rabbit hunting and didn't have shells himself. It's strange to think he must have asked his father, do you have any shells? And his dad must have said no. Or he can't spare them. Can't spare them, exactly. By the time Arthur returned home, his entire family was dead, shot, and in many cases also beaten. Charlie Lawson murdered six of his children and his wife, starting with daughters, Carrie and Mabel.

They were outside. He killed them and put their bodies in the barn, then went into his house, shot his wife Fanny and their little baby, shot Marie, who was the 16-year-old daughter, and killed the two little boys who were also in the house at the time. And so when you look at this portrait that was taken with these new clothes, I mean, maybe the father snapped, but it seems like it was rather planned out. It has this odd quality. It's a very funereal-looking 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 funerary posture. He put the baby in her crib, but each of the other victims he laid out with their hands crossed over their chest like a body in a coffin and put rocks 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 he'd killed everyone and kind of set them all up. Yes, yes, set them all up. Yes, yeah, set them all up. I mean, strange to say, but it sounds like very lovingly, which, you know, of course, shows how deranged he was at the time that he would murder them and then do such 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 of people gathered on the Lawsons tobacco farm as the police tried to figure out what had happened. Family members started charging admission to their house, leading people on a tour of the crime scene. There were some people who were there, years later remembered seeing 20 cars parked outside the house. People, just morbid curiosity, taking tours of the crime scene. The crime scene tour cost 25 cents and was advertised in newspapers across the state. Everything in the house was left intact,

even that Christmas cake that Fanny had made. And I don't think that it had even been cut into yet. I don't think they'd eaten any. But it was sitting there in the house, you know, sort of a poignant reminder of this having been a family with children at Christmas. So the cake was left there, and it was a star attraction during the tours. We'd planned today's story to be kind of a companion to our last episode,

which was about the murder of Pearl Bryan and the strange way in which she became the subject of murder ballads. And yes, in both cases, a very bloody crime scene became a tourist attraction. In both cases, gruesome murders were set to string band music and became very popular. In 1930, The Murder of the Lawson Family by the Carolina Buddies was one of the most popular songs in the country. His name was Charlie Lawson, and he had a loving wife. But the Nelva know what caused him to take his family's life. But then we actually went to Stokes County and ended up learning that the Lawson family murder

is not exactly in the past for its residents. There are ghost stories, conspiracy theories, all kinds of gossip and superstition. And most of all, people are still trying to understand why Charlie Lawson did it. Because it's so sad. It happened on Christmas. A whole family. to understand why Charlie Lawson did it. Because it's so sad. It happened on Christmas.

A whole family. And you just would, you know, I would just really like to know why. Just why. This is Tonya Hewitt. 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 was going to be the crime story behind an old murder ballad turned out to be a little more interesting. This loss and family murder has cast a very long shadow in Stokes County. And people here still love to tell the story to one

another, over and over again. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Come home, come home, my little ones To the land of peace and love My father was very interested in this story all of his life. He was eight years old when the murders happened. He remembered the day his sisters toured the house, but his family, his mother and father, deemed him too young to go see it when it was an active tourist attraction. So he was always upset that they wouldn't let him go, but his sisters came back telling about seeing the bloody pillows and everything.

This is Trudy Smith. Her father was obsessed with finding out what happened, and he wasn't the only one. You know, it's intensely important to the people here that they just want to keep this story alive. And just today, I came to the conclusion, I think they love these people. They even forgive Charlie Lawson. But I think there's a love for all these characters and these people that were real and lived in their community. Trudy Smith's father took it upon himself to track down people who'd known the Lawson family and ask questions. He happened to be able to speak to a gentleman by the name of Hill Hampton. And Hill Hampton had been the murderer's best friend and really close neighbor. And Hill told him some things about the murders, about Charlie Lawson himself. And also, one of the things that we were puzzled about is Hill Hampton said,

I know what was going on in the family, but I'm not going to talk about it. When Trudy graduated from college, she agreed to help her father compile all of his research into a true crime book. In 1990, they self-published 2,500 copies of White Christmas, Bloody Christmas. Those sold out in three weeks. Then they had 5,000 more books printed. Gone. Then 5,000 more. Now you can't find a copy unless you're willing to spend a few hundred dollars on eBay.

Or you can read it at one of the libraries in Stokes County. But you have to physically sit in the library to read it. You can't check it out because you can't be trusted not to steal it. Trudy Smith wrote a follow-up book, The Meaning of Our Tears. Even though that one's still in print, if you want to check it out from a library around here, you'll have to leave a $50 deposit. I'm Sandra Tetterton, and we're in Madison, North Carolina at Madison Dry Goods. Madison Dry Goods was our first stop in Stokes County. Back in 1929, the building housed a funeral parlor,

and this is where the Lawsons were embalmed. Some people think the building is still inhabited by their ghosts. One little girl, she was in here with her dad one day. It was probably a Saturday. They're standing there at the bottom of the steps, and she said, look, Dad, there's a girl up there in a white dress, a long white dress. And he looked up and he went, right.

I said, she very well could have seen something. Now, I myself have never experienced anything. But there have been people in here who have come in and said, yeah, I kind of sensed something upstairs. On the first floor, they have clothes, an old-fashioned candy, biscuit mix, a table with salted peanuts and bottles of Coke. On the second floor, there's a small museum, mostly about the town of Madison. And at the end of the hall, there's a very small dark room with something like a casket. Next to the casket is a little table with a flickering red light and a framed copy of that portrait of the family.

I just don't get it. Just wish someone could do the research on it. Can we figure this out? Hey, y'all. I'm John Blenhill, and I'm hosting a new podcast at Vox called Explain It To Me. Here's how it works. You call our hotline with questions you can't quite answer on your own. We'll investigate and call you back to tell you what we found.

We'll bring you the answers you need every Wednesday starting September 18th. So follow Explain It to Me, presented by Klaviyo. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home.

His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Sandra Tederton 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 explain the story to anyone who might not know it. As she talked to us, another customer piped up and asked if the graves were still open to the public. There's a mass grave over there with the whole family. 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 if you would go, and you go in the fall when the leaves are falling, the leaves fall on everybody's grave but Charlie's. Or it snows on everybody's grave but Charlie's. Well, you blame it. But then people go, well, why did he not kill his son too? And I had a lady come in one day who apparently had a dog. This is what intrigued us. People around here still want to know what Charlie Lawson was thinking.

Why did he kill a three-month-old baby? So I think it's just a lot of whys. I mean, everybody who would have known why is gone. So a lot of it may be speculation, like based on the lady who wrote the book. And all she's getting is from people who knew him. So I think that's what it is. Everybody's trying to solve the mystery. And the mystery is top of mind this summer because the Stokes County Arts Center commissioned a 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 first posted about auditions, 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 Bala. I grew up in this county, so the story's been passed down from every family around the county to generation and generation. I think if you grow up in Stokes County, you know this story. The script for the play is adapted from Trudy Smith's books and was performed at South Stokes High School, just a few miles from where the murders happened.

There was popcorn for sale and a man in the lobby claiming to have the original portrait of the Lawsons. That's the original picture taken two weeks before the shooting in 1929. I got it from a family, a member of the family, yes. That stays at my house locked up in a safe. The Arts Council asked us not to record any of the actual performance, but we can tell you that it's done with a Greek chorus. People from the town tell the story together, which feels appropriate. My name is Perry Fry, and my mama went to the funeral back in 1929.

A little bit akin to the Lawson's, distantly related. And a lot of people said they thought the play was well done. But 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 Bryan. He had been cutting a ditch on his property and hit himself in the back of the head with a matic,

which is like a pickaxe. Had a very bad head injury. And after that, he behaved erratically. He was volatile, sometimes violent, and was just not himself, people said. Now, after he died, his doctor, Chester Helsebeck, who was my cousin... In real life? In real life was my cousin. 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 explain the behavior. As for the second theory. He had gotten the oldest daughter pregnant, Marie. She was 16. This didn't come out until many, many years later when some researchers were writing about the case.

And just as their book was going to press, a cousin of the Lawson family called up and said, there's something you ought to know. These researchers were Trudy Smith and her father, who we heard from earlier. They also interviewed Marie Lawson's best friend, who said that Marie had told her that she was pregnant. By some accounts, Charlie Lawson had even told his wife Fanny what was going on.

And then there were two notes found in his pockets once they found him out in the woods after he killed himself. Both of them were incomplete. One of them said, troubles can cause. And the other one said, no one to blame but. And he didn't finish either of the notes, but they were found on his body. One wonders if that was a 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 a very frightening man, it sounds like, after his head injury, and this may have been part of it. piano plays softly It was on one Christmas morning A snow was on the ground At home in North Carolina The murderer was found

His name was Charlie Lawson He had a loving wife We'll never know what caused him to take his family's lives they say he killed his wife

at first And the little ones did cry Please, Father, won't you spare our lives For we are too young to die But the raging man could not be stopped He would not heed their calls And he kept on firing fatal shots until he killed them all. And when the dreadful news was heard It was a great surprise

He killed six children and his wife And then he closed their eyes Farewell, farewell, kind friends and home I'll see you all no more Into my breast I'll fire a shout And my troubles will be worth They did not carry him to jail

No lawyers did he pay He'll have his trial in another world On the final judgment day day they were buried in a crowded grave while the angels watched above

come home come home my little ones to the land of peace and love. Thank you to Elephant Micah for collaborating with us this month. You can download their arrangements of The Murder of the Lawson Family or Pearl Bryan on iTunes or Bandcamp, or you can see them perform the ballads live. They're on tour in September.

We've got information on our site, thisiscriminal.com. Criminal is produced by Lauren Sporer and me, with audio engineering help from Rob Byers. Julianne Alexander creates original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. She also designed brand new t-shirts and coffee mugs. You can check them out on our site. Just a quick note, we're excited to announce that we're planning four Criminal live shows this fall. We'll start here in Durham, North Carolina, and then head west to Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Tickets are on sale now. We'd love to see you. Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the 13 best podcasts around. Radiotopia is made possible with

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