Mebane, Aug. 2—At dawn today the body of Mrs. Annie Laws, 40 years old and a widow with eight children, was found with the top of her head blown off by a shotgun o n the front porch of her home on Jackon street.
Miss Lula B. Laws, 19, oldest child in the family, and her sister, Miss Eva, 15, discovered the body. The girls shrieked in terror. Neighbors, hearing the screams, hurried to the spot.
The body was rigid and cold. Blood, fragments of skull and bits of brain were strewn across the floor where the body lay and the walls of the house near the body were spattered with blood. It was a gruesome sight.
Two chairs were near the corpse and a shotgun, containing a discharged shell, lay near at hand. Officers soon arrived and the coroner was notified. a coroner’s jury expressed the view that the woman had taken her own life. The top of the head from the nose upward was torn away completely. Mrs. Laws, it is thought, sat in a chair, placed the gun muzzle against her head, rested the gunstock on a chair directly opposite her, and with her toe, pulled the trigger. The body was without shoes and stockings when found.
From the front page of the Mooresville Enterprise, Thursday, Aug. 7, 1924
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn93064798/1924-08-07/ed-1/seq-1/#words=August+7%2C+1924
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