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Post by Angela on Apr 17, 2009 17:08:47 GMT -5
I have to agree with you Maria. If the care taker told this story she should have asked the family before she told anybody else about it, especially someone who planned on putting the story in her book and using that story as her main selling point. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Sissy
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Post by Angela on Apr 17, 2009 17:33:46 GMT -5
Hello, my name is Deborah, and I posted the response on the CLEWS Website last week after reading Ms. Smith's comments. I appreciate the support and respect from all of you in your postings. I need to clear up one significant piece of information that has been mentioned in here relating to my father Hassell Miller. He did NOT have Alzheimer's disease or any other type of dementia. That being said, it is still the case that no one who knows my father would say or has said that he could have or would have kept the information he is alleged to have shared with a care taker a secret all his life. The point is this: the care taker did not contact any of our family before making the decision to share her story about my father with Trudy Smith. Trudy Smith apparently made no attempt to contact our family before deciding to publish a statement that is heresay, and which cannot be confirmed, denied or clarified by the person who is alleged to have made it., because he is dead. As Maria said, "it was not that difficult to contact me". It is my belief that something that is apparently as important to the book as Ms. Smith portrays it to be should have thoroughly checked out and verified, and that significant effort should have been made to advise family members of the decision to publish heresay. I also believe that this story should not have been presented as fact when clearly it is not. It is interesting to me that 2 postings in CLEWS, one by Name Unknown and Hillbillyghosthunter have made reference to a "second person" to whom my father is alleged to have told this story. Having been given information when the book came out that there was a "second person" to whom my father was supposed to have told this story, I checked this out myself and found that it was NOT true. Some of your postings have commented that I seem hurt by all of this. I appreciate your care and concern-Maria was very kind in her telephone call to me, and I very much appreciated her respectful choice not to share our conversation in her postings - in fact, her restraint and respect are reasons that I decided to register in this forum, and share my comments. I am simply disgusted, rather than hurt with the lack of professionalism with which this "information" was handled in the researching and publishing of Ms. Smith's book. My sympathies are with all the Lawson family descendants, both for the terrible losses that were suffered in 1929 and for any continued suffering that is caused by inaccurate or incomplete information. For those of you who are a support to them, God Bless. Deborah Morton
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Post by Angela on Apr 17, 2009 20:21:49 GMT -5
Hi Deborah, Let me welcome you to our message forum. I hope you feel free to post again. I always thought that the story about your father was not true. It has always bothered me that the source of the story was not a family member.Thank you for telling us all the truth. Sissy
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 6:57:15 GMT -5
Hello Deborah! I'm so glad that you have joined our forum. And thank you for your post which I believe clears up this issue. It was kind of you to share your information with us. I'm also glad you got to speak to Maria who I agree is a very nice and respectful person. Angel71242
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 8:23:27 GMT -5
Hello Deborah, Welcome to the forum; as you can tell by now, we're very glad to have you here! I'm sorry to hear that another whole family has been negatively impacted by the reporting of this story,and my biggest consolation is that we, at Break Of Dawn Productions, didn't compound that injury in our film with inaccuracies of our own. Having Maria, the world's best researcher/info trackersure doesn't hurt, but we all made a very conscious choice early on that when errors had to be made, we'd err on the side of respect for the families. This meant leaving out a few pieces that may've given our film a luridness more suited to today's market place, but as I've explained repeatedly, we didn't make this film for today's marketplace; we made it for the ages. Being the first documentary ever on this subject guarantees it's immortality so we didn't feel like we needed to "spruce it up" to sell more copies.I told folks early on that our success wouldn't be measured by the number of weeks at the box office, nor by initial DVD sales, nor by any other immediatedly tangible measure, but that our success could only be gaged after 3 generations pass and we can observe the stats and trends of domestic violence in this region to see if less women and children are being terrorized by their head of households. The effect we have on this issue is our measure of success, in other words, and it reflects in every frame of the film. Again, welcome to the forum Deborah, may you feel as welcome here as I do...after all, this isn't my forum, it's yours and everyone else's affected by or interested in this terrible tragedy. Matt32
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 9:25:24 GMT -5
I have a question (a rhetorical question) Why would Hassell Miller tell that story about the experience he and his father Ralph Miller had at the tobacco barn five years after the murders involving a man by the same name as Charlie Lawson, the story about when 14 year old Hassell nearly brained this second Charlie Lawson with a hatchet when they were approached by this other Charlie Lawson in the middle of the night which terrified him when the man said, "wake up my name is Charlie Lawson' but not tell the other much more important story about being at the Lawson home Christmas Day 1929 watching the other Charlie Lawson killing his wife and children?. And why did Hassell's parents not tell anyone including Sheriff Taylor what Hassell allegedly told them (as reported in the first book as the UN-named child was said to have run home and told them)? Although Hassell Miller was not mentioned by name in the first book but which I learned conclusively was another boy, Abe Heath, which turned out not to be true, he, Hassell was mentioned by name as everyone knows in the second book. So what we have here is one boy in the first book listed as a witness and yet an entirely different boy listed as the witness in the second book. Maria
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 10:18:53 GMT -5
Those are good questions Maria. Personally I've never believed Hassell Miller was there that day, at least not inside the house witnessing what Renee Dudley told Trudy Smith he did. Sissy
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 11:36:37 GMT -5
Not one single person we intetviewed , and we interviewed close to one hundred people, ever said anything about having heard Hassel Miller tell that story even though many of those people knew Hassell and his family real well. No nine year old child in my opinion could have kept seeing something that horrible solely to himself. For a nine year old child, or even an adult witnessing such a blood bath and keeping it to himself all bottled up inside would have been seriously deranged by that. From everyone I've talked with that knew Hassell said he was a very nice and very normal person. Maria
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 11:46:48 GMT -5
Well I think it was just a big ole lie that his care taker told to get herself a little attention. The incest story was the selling point of the first book by Trudy Smith so Trudy needed something new to sell her second book and the Hassell Miller witness child was the perfect lie. It's what she sold it on..."I know what happened in the house that day and I know the identity of the eye witness who was there that day" she said. If it was really true they why didn't she check out that story with Hassell's family? Why did she wait until AFTER Hassell died to write that up and put it in her book? Simple...it was a lie and I think she knew it and by not checking deeper into the story nobody could tell her any thing different. Sissy
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 12:07:07 GMT -5
A story of that much importance withoutreliable back up to confirm it would never had made it into our documentary I can tell you that right now. Even if we had believed it was true we would not have run with it with someone reliable to confirm it. Even if a relative had confirmed it as true but would have been upset about it being put in our documentary and or asked us not to, we would have respected their feelings and left it out. As I've said before...the people come first. Maria
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 12:13:43 GMT -5
Looks like you all had a lively discussion about this over on the CLEWS Web Site. I like to read the postings in CLEWS but when I saw the story of Hassell Miller being a witness to the murders I just got so mad. When I read that second book I did not believe he told his care taker Renee Dudley any such thing, that it was just a case of "artistic license" to make her book sell more copies. I also believe that if Hassell Miller had been there that day he would not have emerged as a witness but would have ended up as a murder victim. Harleymomma34
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 13:00:21 GMT -5
My theory on the confusion here which isn't backed up by anything other than my experience interviewing people and seeing it elsewhere is that Mr. Miller was in the house that day, just not when the murders took place. He was almost certaintly there along with several hundred other folks after the bodies were discovered, which was traumatic enough, seeing the crime scene and all. It isn't hard to imagine a statement like 'I was there that day" could have been taken out of context. Eric
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 13:04:13 GMT -5
I certaintly agree with you on that point Eric. I have seen it mentioned before by someone in here. If Hassell had been in the house att the time the murders were taking place he would have been another victim of this terrible and senseless tragedy. Why would charlie Lawson leave a witness behind? Harleymomma34
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 13:36:20 GMT -5
Dorothy Montgomery's son Don just came by to see me and we had a good long chat together. Don brought up the subject about Hassell Miller and he said that he had read somewhere that Hassell's care taker said Hassell had been a witness to the murders committed by Charlie Lawson on Christmas Day 1929. Don said that he and Hassell had been best of friends their entire lives and that Hassell definitely would have told him if he had seen Charlie Lawson kill his family. He went on to say that since Hassell had never said a word about it to him even during the times they discussed the murders from time to time then that story could not possibly be true. This is exactly the same thing Hassell's daughter Deborah Morton said about her father!!! Maria
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Post by Angela on Apr 18, 2009 14:26:50 GMT -5
If that gentleman knew Mr. Miller that long and was that close to him, then he should know if he had been there that day or not. I have to believe if he had been in that house that day it was either very early before anything happened or when all the crowd gathered there afterwards watching as the bodies were brought out. But it was definitely not during. Harleymomma34
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