This House In North Carolina Has A Dark And Evil History That Will Never Be Forgotten

For a working class tobacco farmer, it was a bit odd Charlie Lawson took his entire family to nearby Winston-Salem a few days before Christmas for family portraits. Yet, hindsight is 20/20 and many simply looked past this detail until it was too late.

On Christmas morning, Marie, Lawson's oldest daughter, rose early to make her famous Christmas cake. For five years following, that cake would sit in a glass display case as people paid to enter the house and tour where such a shocking atrocity happened.

Charlie Lawson's motive for murder of his entire family (besides his eldest son Arthur who was sent to run errands) still remains relatively unknown. Even the youngest children, four year old James and a 4-month old infant were not spared. Charlie killed his family with a shotgun, the bodies were found with rocks placed beneath their heads and their arms crossed.

By the time word of the murders got out, police and townspeople had flocked to Lawson's property...only to hear a gunshot in the woods as Charlie then took his own life.

It shocked the town, people speculated and gossiped, but that also didn't stop Charlie's brother from profiting off this atrocity - he opened up the house for tours charging a 25-cent admission fee.

Through the years, different motives arose - the first that Charlie had witnessed an organized crime and he and his family were silenced to death. Second, was that Charlie suffered from a head injury that left him prone to violent, uncontrollable bouts of rage. The third, and one that was whispered among family members and eventually uncovered in the 90s a day before White Christmas, Bloody Christmas was published. The author received an anonymous call reporting Lawson had impregnated his oldest daughter. In another book about the Christmas murders, Ella May, Marie Lawson's best friend, claimed Marie confided in her this secret. While many years since 1929, the motive is still fully unknown, but people will surely never forget what happened on that fateful day outside of Germanton.