Lynching of Charles Bannon

Charles Bannon, aged 22, worked as a hired hand on the Haven family farm north of Schafer, North Dakota. The Haven family — parents and four children, the youngest two months old — had lived on the farm for over a decade and were reportedly well off. After February 9, 1930, no family member was seen again. Bannon remained on the property, telling neighbors the Havens had left and that he was renting the land from them. With his father James, he tended the livestock through the fall. In October, the two began selling property and crops, which raised suspicion among neighbors; the father then left for Oregon, allegedly to search for the Havens. In December, Charles Bannon was arrested on grand larceny charges, and during the investigation authorities discovered the Haven family had been murdered.

Bannon confessed, giving a statement and then two confessions with differing details, admitting to accidentally killing one child and then killing the rest out of fear. He said his father was innocent, but James Bannon was also arrested, in Oregon, and returned to North Dakota as an alleged accomplice.

Bannon was initially held in the more secure Williston jail but was moved back to Schafer on January 23, 1931, for arraignment on six murder charges. In the early hours of January 29, between 12:30 and 1 a.m., a mob of more than 75 men in over 15 cars came to the jail, seized the sheriff, overpowered a deputy, and broke into Bannon's cell. Bannon surrendered, asking that his father not be harmed. He was dragged out with a noose around his neck, taken briefly to the Haven farm, then to the nearby Cherry Creek bridge, where he was pushed over the side and hanged. Authorities said the hangman's knot showed "expert knowledge." His body was later buried in Williston.

According to the book *End of the Rope* by Dennis Edward Johnson, part of the mob's motivation stemmed from suspicion that Bannon was responsible for a 1925 house fire in rural McKenzie County that killed four children of the Amlien family, for whom Bannon had also worked; this suspicion was also referenced in 1988 Williston Herald articles.

Governor George F. Shafer ordered an investigation, led by Attorney General James Morris, who concluded the lynching had been carefully planned and controlled by several ringleaders, though no mob member was ever identified or arrested. Reviews by the Federal Council of Churches and a later 1990 study found that authorities had failed to protect Bannon and other lynching victims in North Dakota. James Bannon was later tried and convicted for the Haven murders in Divide County, lost an appeal to the state Supreme Court, and began a life sentence on June 29, 1931; he was paroled in 1950 at age 76. In response to the lynching, a state senator introduced a bill to restore capital punishment in North Dakota, which the state Senate rejected 28–21.