![]() ![]() The victims: Barfield was convicted in 1978 of poisoning and killing fiance Rowland Stuart Taylor by mixing Singletary Rat Killer or Terro Ant and Roach Killer into his beer and tea. She is suspected of killing at least two additional people. She was convicted of killing her fiance, but eventually made official confessions to killing three others. ![]() ![]() Velma Barfield: Margie Velma Barfield was born in South Carolina in 1932 but raised in Robeson County, where she lived nearly her whole life. Charles Lawson’s motives in the killings remain a mystery, but some point to a head injury he suffered in the years before the murder, which family members said changed his personality.Ī more likely answer comes from a 1990 book on the crime, “White Christmas, Bloody Christmas,” which cited Lawson family members revealing an old family rumor that Charles Lawson had gotten his daughter Marie pregnant, and killed the family to hide the horrible secret. Surviving son Arthur died in an automobile accident in 1945 at age 31. A glass dome was placed over the cake and it sat on display in the home for years. Some tourists even stole souvenir raisins from the top of the Christmas cake, which had sat undisturbed on the kitchen table. Interest in the murder was so extreme that Charles Lawson’s brother began charging 25 cents for admission to tour the crime scene, and sightseers traveled there from miles around to walk through the Lawson home. The Outcome: The entire family was buried in a mass grave in Germanton. ![]()
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