In later years, with the 1990 publication of the book White Christmas, Bloody Christmas by Trudy J. Smith, a new theory as to the reason behind Charlie Lawson’s killing spree surfaced. According to anonymous sources, as well as relatives and friends of the family, Charlie Lawson was suspected of having an incestuous relationship with his oldest daughter Marie, who may have been pregnant with his child. In a 2006 book, The Meaning of Our Tears, the author provided more support for this theory, including a conversation with one of Marie's closest friends, who claimed that Marie had told her that Charlie had gotten her pregnant. There is, however, no official report that would support this supposed pregnancy.

Arthur Lawson, the only remaining member of the family, grew up, was married, and had four children. Sadly, he was killed in a car accident in 1945 at the age of 32.

There is a small museum dedicated to the Lawson Family, located at the Madison Dry Goods Country Store in Madison, North Carolina. The museum sits on the original site of the funeral home where the eight members of the Lawson family who died that fateful Christmas were embalmed. To this day, tourists and locals alike pop into Madison Dry Goods to view newspaper clippings and old photographs of the Lawson Family affair.

"After all of these years, people are still fascinated with that terrible tragedy," says Richard Miller, owner of Madison Dry Goods.

The eight Lawsons who perished that Christmas day—including Charlie—are interred together with lost baby William beneath a single headstone, which bears the melancholy inscription: “Not now, but in the coming years / It will be in a better land / We’ll read the meaning of our tears / And then sometime we’ll understand.”

The Lawson Family Massacre

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