True Crime Stories

  You have often heard me state how I love hearing stories from the early 1900's and prior. But, you have also heard me state they prove difficult to research because it is hard to distinguish between fact, rumor, and just a story that becomes a legend disguised as a fact. This is just such a case. There often are just not enough facts known to make a decent story out of things and so things become “fillers” so to speak. I am not saying that I do not do the same sometimes, however, I do not state things as facts if I cannot prove them to be so, if there is conflicting information, or as in this case there is really not enough information in my opinion to know exactly what happened and in what order. I will start with the facts that we do know. We know that on December 25, 1929 in Germantown North Carolina forty-three (some say forty-two) year old Charles “Charlie” Lawson murdered his wife and six of their seven living children on their farm. Several hours later he would co...

I told you I would get away from Kentucky this time!! Now I have moved on to Texas. I have seen this case covered on many crime shows including one of my favorites, Forensic Files. I am sure most of you have watched that show but for those of you who have not you should check it out. It is on several different streaming channels. It is a short thirty minute show that focuses solely on forensics. They do not have time to be overly bias one way or another in my opinion and is just long enough to give the facts. I am also in the middle of reading a book that was written in 2005. It was written by Scott Dunn's father Jim, in collaboration with Wanda Evans and is called Trail of Blood. I already know that the book ended technically I guess we can say before the case actually did. It was said that Jim reportedly said after writing the book he was giving up his “obsession” with finding his son's body and it was time to just accept the inevitable, that his son was dead an...

I bet you guys thought I would be done with Kentucky cases! Well, to be fair, I thought I was for a while too. I checked out a few more on my list that were clustered with the last several I have done recently and nothing “caught my bones.” So I moved on and it just so happened the next case that I decided to write about is from Kentucky. But, I will say this is not a death penalty case so it is not completely like the others. In fact, this case is quite interesting because it first involves what is called the “dual sovereignty doctrine.” Basically it means that state governments and the federal government are considered to be separate with their own laws and their own ability to prosecute. You may have often heard about “double jeopardy.” That is the law that says you cannot be tried twice for the same crime. But, with all things there are exceptions and this case is an example of one of those. This case also addresses the power given to officials. We have heard a lot ...

This will be my fourth case that involves a death penalty case out of the state of Kentucky. One would think so many of them would be rather routine or at least similar in nature, but if these four cases show anything it shows that anything can happen, every case is different and you never know what legal maneuvers will be tried and which ones will fail and which ones will succeed. Some only succeed temporarily. Marco Chapman murdered two children, injured their mother and sister and in the end volunteered for the death penalty. Yet the courts had to decide if he had that right. Thomas Bowling Jr. was convicted and sentenced to death for the killing a couple in their car and shooting their son but in my opinion there was insufficient evidence. He died in prison of cancer. John Garland was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of three people. He maintained his innocence until his natural death in prison, blaming his son. This latest case is one in which David Matthe...

I have mentioned many times in the past that when cases make it to my list of cases to research they often fall in groups with related topics or places. I do not always do them obviously in any sort of order. It depends on my mood at the moment but sometimes, like now, you will notice the trend because my last two blogs were about men who were sentenced to death in Kentucky, and here we are with another one. This is a case that going into it I thought was probably pretty cut and dry but then the more I dug, the more issues I saw. We all know that court cases come down to who the jury believes in the end. This was a case that pitted father against son inside the courtroom. It is seemingly a case that continued to pit father against son until the father died in prison in 2018. Before I want to start telling the story I want to clear up something that I was confused about at first. The first thing that I came across was a Murderpedia page that took the facts of the crime fr...

There are certain things that are so commonly heard in murder cases that they sometimes seem so routine and mundane. One of the biggest things you will hear is the argument about “ineffective counsel.” I have actually read an appeal in which a judge discusses his disdain for this phrase as that seems to be a “given” in an appeal after a conviction. He is not wrong but the sadder part about that is that there are cases in which ineffective counsel is very valid but it can get lost in the shuffle because so many make this claim. Now, let me be clear that while Bowling would basically make this claim after his conviction, personally to the judge and not necessarily through an appeal, I have to say I agreed with the judge on this point, one of the very few it seems, when it was denied. Another thing you hear a lot, if not more than the claim of ineffective counsel, is that the defendant is innocent. More often than not state prosecutors (or federal attorney generals if it applies)...