The Christmas Familicide Masarce of the Lawson Family

On Christmas Day, Charles Lawson took a 12-gauge shotgun and shot his wife and six of seven children before bludgeoning them just to make sure they were gone.

Going left to right: [Top] Arthur (19), Marie (17), Charles (43), Fannie (37) holding Mary Lou (4 months). [Bottom] James (4), Maybell (7), Raymond (2), Carrie (12)

Ninety-four years ago, in 1929, the Lawson Family consisted of Charles (43), his wife Fannie (37) and their seven surviving children: Arthur (19), Marie (17), Carrie (12), Maybell (7), James (4) Raymond (2), and Mary Lou (4-months). Together, the nine of them travelled from their farm on Christmas Eve into town to buy new clothes and have a family portrait taken.

It was an unusual act for a working-class family at the time, but the newspapers speaking of the massacre that would soon follow described Charles Lawson as a “well-to-do farmer” who had purchased his own farm the two years prior. These two bits about Lawson make the pre-Christmas shopping spree slightly more sense. Some people claim the new clothes and the portrait are signs of premeditation for what Lawson will do the following day.

On Christmas Day, the 25th of December 1929, Lawson sent his eldest son away on an errand to ensure he wasn’t near the farm for the horrendous plot he had planned.

With Arthur out of the way, Lawson took a 12-gauge shotgun and hid near the tobacco barn, waiting for his daughters Carrie and Maybell to approach. The second they were in range, Lawson shot them both before bludgeoning them to make sure that they were dead. He took their bodies inside the barn, leaving them in there while he stalked towards the family home.

Fannie was on the porch when Lawson approached; she couldn’t question what she had heard because she, too, was shot with the 12-gauge shotgun. The loud noise caused Marie to scream inside the house while James and Raymond scrambled to find somewhere in the home to hide from the terrifying sound. Marie was shot and killed next before Lawson hunted the four-year-old and two-year-old who tried hiding from him, brutally murdering them with the same gun.

Mary Lou, the four-month-old who couldn’t even try and escape or defend herself, was bludgeoned to death by her father inside her bassinet.

People heard the gunshots and rushed to the home, bringing the police with them. They had narrowly missed Lawson fleeing into the nearby woods. As the hours passed with the crowd growing at the house, Lawson remained in the woods, circling one tree for hours, determined by the tracks around the trunk.

Arthur returned to the home and was standing with a police officer when a lone gunshot rang out from the woods. He and the officer ran out in search of the noise, finding Lawson slumped against the trunk after committing suicide. He left notes to his parents beside him.

There was no reason given towards why he murdered his family in the letters, leaving space for speculations to arise, trying to provide answers and explanation behind the massacre of a seemingly ordinary family committed by a seemingly normal father.

In 1990, the publishing of the book White Christmas, Bloody Christmas by Trudy J. Smith brought forward the claim that Marie had been impregnated by her father and that keeping it a secret was the motive behind the massacre.

An anonymous source spoke of a rumour they had heard while on a tour of the Lawson home shortly after the murders took place. Which is an entirely different can of worms to get into, but the short and simple part is a relative opened the home to the public soon after the murders took place and began giving tours of the house where their family members were savagely taken from the world.

The day before the book was published, Trudy was called by Stella Lawson, another relative interviewed for the book. Stella remembered overhearing a conversation between the women in the family discussing what Fannie had revealed to them about an incestuous relationship between Charles and Maire. This conversation occurred before May 1928 because it included Stella’s mother, who passed away on the 1st of May. The date also means Fannie had been suspicious of the abuse for a while and leads to the belief that it had been happening for a decent amount of time before being brought up to the family.

More support for the theory came when Trudy’s book The Meaning of Our Tears was published in 2006. A close friend of Marie’s, Ella May, came forward and disclosed that a few weeks before the murders, Marie revealed she was pregnant with her father’s child and that both he and Fannie knew about it. A neighbour and family friend, Hill Hampton, claimed something serious had been happening within the family but refused to elaborate.

Another theory was that a head injury Lawson sustained months before the Christmas attack caused Lawson’s mental state to be drastically altered, but an autopsy and analysis of his brain found no abnormalities to support this theory.

Arthur Lawson survived the attack because he was sent on an errand; he lived until 1945, when he was killed in a motor accident, leaving behind a wife and four children.

That’s all for this case. Thank you for reading about the tragedy of the Lawson family massacre.