True Crime Stories

So, I walked into my research on this one thinking that at worse I would have the issues that I often face doing a very, very old crime where dates and stories conflicted from read to read. I thought this case was pretty cut and dry... there was a mass murder, there was a perpetrator... the end. But thankfully for both you and I, I do not just stop at just a few things. I will dig and dig, sometimes to the point that I have to force myself to stop, this is just such a case. This case happened in 1920 and is still considered to be the worse mass murder incident in North Dakota. It is also alleged that “this is believed to be the fastest administration of justice on record in any state” and I cannot be sure I disagree, at least from a legal sense. Whether justice was actually served is apparently up for debate. A book was released in 2010 called The Murder Family by Vernon Keel. I have checked my local library to see if I could manage to find this book and so far I have not ha...

  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...