STOKES COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — “Not now, but in the coming years, it will be in a better land. We’ll read the meaning of our tears and sometime we’ll understand.” Those words can be found carved into a gravestone that still stands in a private graveyard in the small Stokes County community of Brook Cove, the graves belonging to the victims of a horrible crime that unfolded on Christmas Day almost a century ago. In the weeks before Christmas, farmer Charlie Lawson took his family to Winston-Salem to get their holiday portraits done. While that isn't a particularly unusual family activity in 2024, it was quite an expense for a family of farmers in 1929. In hindsight, Lawson may have known what would happen to his family when he decided to immortalize them with portraits. The Lawson Family, captured at a Winston-Salem studio a few weeks before the murders. December, 1929. (Top Left to Right) Arthur (16), Marie (17), Charlie (43), Fannie (37), Mary Lou (3 months old). (Sitting Left to Right) James (4), Mae Bell (7), Raymond (2), Carrie (12). On Christmas Day 1929, Charlie Lawson shot two of his daughters, Mae Bell, 7, and Carrie, 12, before bludgeoning them in the family barn. Then he went into the house and killed his wife Fannie and three of their remaining children: 4-year-old James, 2-year-old Raymond and 3-month-old Mary Lou. The Lawson Family home after the murders, 1930. Notice the chicken wire erected around the home to keep gawkers from stealing pieces of the home. The tobacco barn where Charlie Lawson first killed his two youngest daughters as they returned home from a neighbors house. After shooting Carrie and Mae Bell he dragged their bodies into this tobacco barn and placed rocks underneath their heads.Notice the tourist signs; one marking the spot where Charlie killed his daughter’s and the other directing tourist to the place where Charlie committed suicide. Friends and family found the gruesome scene, the bodies lying with stones under their heads, as Lawson paced in the woods behind the farm. As people gathered at the crime scene, a shot rang out from the woods as Lawson turned the shotgun on himself, a circle of footprints and a nonsensical note left behind. Charlie Lawson's eldest son, Arthur, had been out on errands that morning. He was the only member of the family to survive the massacre. This is the inside of the Lawson Family home, left as it was when the family was found. Charlie Lawson placed pillows under the heads of his victims after they were killed. The guns believed to have been used by Charlie Lawson. The "why" of the Lawson family murder-suicide may never truly be known. Some blamed Charlie Lawson's acts on a head injury he had suffered, though his autopsy reportedly didn't support the theory. Others said he had sexually abused and impregnated his eldest daughter and killed the family to prevent the secret from being revealed to the public. Legacy The murder of the Lawson family immediately captured the curiosity and imagination of people across North Carolina and beyond. Charlie Lawson's brother turned the house into a tourist destination, charging curious onlookers to tour the house. He even displayed the Christmas Cake that Fannie Lawson had baked prior to the murders, protected in a case to prevent people from picking off bits for souvenirs. The proceeds from this attraction went to the remaining Lawson son, Arthur. The Lawson Family funeral, December 28, 1929. The tales of the Lawsons spread into songs, into true crime books and ghost stories as the years wore on. Trudy J. Smith wrote two books about the killings, "White Christmas, Bloody Christmas" and "The Meaning of Our Tears," and she is the person who put forth the theory about Marie's alleged pregnancy being the trigger for the crime. She spoke to family friends and witnesses in the early 90s who recalled conversations that hinted at some kind of relationship between Charlie Lawson and his teen daughter. Singer-songwriter Walter “Kid” Smith wrote "The Murder of the Lawson Family" just months after the killings, even occasionally performing at the Lawson family home for those touring it. “'The Murder of the Lawson Family' was one of Columbia Records best-selling hillbilly records from 1930,” music historian Kinney Rorrer told FOX8. “It sold over 8,000 copies. And by that time, most hillbilly records were in the thousand to two thousand range. And for that one to sell 8,000, that was a really good seller.” In 2022, Netflix highlighted the killings in the series "28 Days Haunted," ghost-hunting in a Madison building that was once the funeral home where the Lawson family had been embalmed. Family annihilation In 1929, what happened to the Lawson family was shocking and nearly unheard of, and the folks of Stokes County and beyond struggled to understand how this could happen. Since then, there have been decades of research into what is described as "familicide," in which a person kills multiple members of their family, and "family annihilation," in which a person kills their entire family. In modern parlance, Charlie Lawson would be described as a "family annihilator." While Lawson's case predates modern crime profiling and statistics, he does fit the profile that ABC News contributor and former FBI agent Brad Garrett says is typical of family annihilators: white men in their 30s. Family annihilation is often motivated by a perceived change of status for the family, whether it's potential financial ruin, a threat of separation or revocation of custody, or the risk of unpleasant personal details being exposed, like accusations of sexual impropriety or domestic abuse. A perpetrator who kills his family sometimes "wants to spare them the misery of living in this awful world," James Alan Fox, a criminologist from Northeastern University, told the Associated Press after a high-profile familicide in Utah. In the 95 years since Charlie Lawson killed his family and himself, numerous families have fallen victim to this tragic fate. Today, familicide is the most common type of "mass murder," defined as the killing of at least four people within 24 hours. You can watch FOX8's full series on the massacre, "Deadly Secrets: The Lawson Family Murder," here.