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Submitted Photo
Dennis Johnson, of Watford City, is helping with the script for a movie to be filmed in McKenzie County about the last lynching in North Dakota. Johnson first published a book in 2005 about the incident in McKenzie County occurring in the early 1930s.
WATFORD CITY – Nearly 89 years ago during the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 1931, a group of vigilantes stormed the jail at Schafer, then the McKenzie County seat a few miles” east of Watford City, knocked down the door, grabbed mass murderer Charles Bannon and, in finality, hanged him at Cherry Creek bridge.
Bannon had confessed to murdering several months earlier six members of the Albert Haven family who lived north of Schafer. He had worked as a hired hand for the Havens. Bannon’s father, James, who had been arrested in connection with the murders also was in the jail at Schafer. (The elder Bannon was pardoned in 1950 and released from prison. He maintained he was innocent.)