(T/W: Mentions of abuse and child murder. Reader discretion is advised.)

Nina Wilhelma Hartman-Dudley
August 14, 1927-December 22, 1977

Megan Louise Dudley
June 5, 1760-December 22, 1977

Ian Patrick Dudley
February 26, 1963-December 22, 1977

Josephine "Josie" Willa Dudley
March 23, 1964-Present

Isaiah Leroy Dudley
August 1, 1965-December 22, 1977

Ryan Dakota Dudley
July 15, 1968-December 22, 1977

Daniel Ray and David Lee Dudley
January 6, 1971-December 22, 1977

Pictures of the family taken within weeks of the massacre

On December 23, 1977, Emily Dort went to the Dudley house to deliver Christmas presents. She was a close friend of Nina Dudley and bought presents for her children every year. She had her own key to the house, which is how she got in.

When Emily entered the house, she found it quiet. Which was unusual for a home with seven children.

She continued walking, peeking in different rooms. No one could be found. Finally, she got to the children's bedroom. There, she found a bloodbath.

All the children, minus Josie, were lying dead in bed, their throats slit. Nina was lying in the floor, her wrists sliced open. The knife she'd used in the murder-suicide was still in her hand.

Emily screamed and ran outside to a neighbor's house and called the police. Sheriffs would find Josie, alive but covered in blood, hiding under the bed.

Nina Wilhelma Hartman was born on August 14, 1927 to a farming family in Belews Creek, North Carolina. She was an only child.

In 1929, with the Great Depression, Nina's parents lost their farm. They moved to a small cabin hidden away in the woods.

On March 3, 1932, Nina's mother, whose name is unknown, died of an infection from cutting her arm on a nail. Afterwards, Nina's father, whose name is also unknown, began getting abusive to his daughter. Nina would recall to Emily Dort that her father often called her a waste of food and would occasionally starve her.

Nina would finally escape the abuse of her father sometime in 1942.

While wandering the woods, the fifteen year old Nina met a boy close to her age, Merlin Dudley.

Merlin was the son of a tobacco farmer who'd been able to stay afloat during the Depression. Three years Nina's senior, he offered to marry her to get her away from her father. She agreed and the two were wed on June 20, 1942.

In 1943, Merlin would be drafted to fight in WWII. This left Nina all alone for the next two years. Friends and neighbors would notice a change in her. Without Merlin around, she began getting snappish and even violent. She once pushed Carina Jones, a young widow, down her porch steps for "looking at her wrong".

In 1945, the war ended and Merlin came home. Nina went back to being a kind woman.

Merlin and Nina were married for eighteen years before they had their first child. On June 5, 1960, they welcomed their first child, Megan Louise Dudley.

The couple would have six more children over the next eleven years. Their lastborns were twins, David and Danny, born January 6, 1971.

Shortly after the birth of the twins, Merlin admitted that he'd been having an affair with his boss' secretary. On January 30 of that year, he packed his things and left to live with her.

Nina was devastated. She started getting more snappish and violent towards the children. Josie would recall in a 1999 interview, "Mom got mad over every little thing. Once, she twisted Ian's arm behind his back until it broke, all because he forgot to wash the dishes. We never told anyone cause we were scared of being taken away. We didn't wanna be separated."

One night, December 22, 1977, Nina decided she wasn't going to be an abusive mother anymore.

In fact, she decided she wasn't going to be a mother at all.

The following is the night, as told by Josie Dudley.

"I was, I think, thirteen. All seven of us kids slept in one king sized bed in the back bedroom. I always got the edge because I had to get up a lot at night to go to the bathroom.

"That night in particular, one of the twins, I don't remember which one, dropped his teddy bear in the crack between the bed and the wall. The bed was too high off the ground for him to reach, so he woke me up and asked me to get it. I crawled under to get it for him.

"That's when Mom walked in. I stayed silent under the bed because I didn't want to get in trouble for being out of bed. I could only see my mother's feet as she slowly and methodically murdered my brothers and sisters.

"Once all six of them were dead, she walked over to the empty part of the room and laid on the floor. This part I saw. This part, I still see when I close my eyes. She dug the knife into her skin and sliced her wrists.

"I was frozen where I lay. I couldn't move. Not even when my sibling's blood started dripping through the mattress. By the time I was found, I was covered in blood."

Today, Josie Dudley is married with three children, Jacob, Reba, and Chase Marshall. She and her husband, Winston Marshall, live in Charlotte, North Carolina.