The murder of Dr. D.T. Chambers

Editor’s Note: This was the eighth installment of Murders in the Heartland, a series delving into the history of nine homicides that have occurred in Scott County’s history. The list isn’t intended to be exhaustive, and these stories are not intended to reopen old wounds. In many cases, descendants of the victims or the perpetrators may still live in Scott County. These stories are written with an attempt to be mindful and respectful of them, while properly documenting the historical value of these famous incidents. This particular story recounts the 1970 death of Dr. D.T. Chambers of Norma. It is told using testimony from court documents.

Brenda Lawson was scared.

It was May 29, 1970 — a Friday night. It had started carefree enough; she and her husband, cruising the streets of Oneida in her 1965 Pontiac Tempest, selling an acquaintance a transistor radio that they had and he wanted, so that they had some extra cash, picking up some friends who had paper sacks of beer. A Friday night, riding around town and drinking beer. 

Then one of their friends — Clifton Pennington — said they were going to rob a man … and not just any man, but Dr. D.T. Chambers, the prominent and beloved physician who lived in Norma but was known throughout Scott County. Brenda’s husband, Robert Lawson, begged Clifton not to do it. But Clifton said that if either Brenda or Robert told anybody, he would beat them and kill their whole families.

That’s what Brenda Lawson testified in court that Clifton Pennington said that Friday night in May 1970, just before he and his brother, James, went inside Doc Chambers’ residence and shot him in the face with a shotgun. 

Stopping to pick up the Pennington brothers and their sacks of beer would prove to be one of the worst mistakes of Brenda’s life. 

Who was Dr. Chambers?

Born Divine T. Chambers in 1885, Dr. D.T. Chambers was one of the most prominent physicians in Scott County’s history. He lived in a stately, two-story house in Norma, with white columns adorning the front and making it the most recognizable home in that community. 

But it wasn’t always that way. Dr. Chambers could remember a time when he was “poor as a church mouse.” That was along about the time that he graduated medical college at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. And after graduating, he chose to return to Scott County, opening a practice at the Tennessee Railroad depot at Smokey Junction.

That Doc Chambers chose to practice medicine in Scott County probably shouldn’t have been a surprise. His great-great-grandfather, William Chambers, a Revolutionary War veteran, had moved to Scott County from Virginia in 1840. And the Chambers had remained in Scott County ever since.

When Dr. Chambers opened his medical practice, Norma and Smokey Junction were happening places. The Norcross hardwood mill was sending out 100,000 feet of board lumber every single day. There were lots of people living in that stretch of eastern Scott County along the New River, but not a lot of patients — because the hardwood mill had its company doctors who tended to the workers and their families.

Eventually, though, Doc Chambers’ practice took root. He opened an office in Norma, and he spent a lot of time visiting folks who were unable to physically travel to his office. Jim Acres, an old engineer on the Tennessee Railroad, would cut loose his engine from the train and take Doc Chambers up and down the tracks to call on patients. 

“He was not only their doctor in whom the people placed complete confidence, but he was their neighbor and confidante,” the Scott County News wrote in 1970. “The welcome mat was always out in every settlement and his popularity never diminished.”

For 50 years, Doc Chambers practiced medicine, not just in Scott County but also in adjoining counties. During that time, he delivered more than 4,500 babies. When the Spanish flu pandemic struck in 1918, he worked around the clock to save as many people as he could. 

And he was more than a doctor. D.T. Chambers was a friend to the community. It was Chambers who helped organize Norma High School, when he served on the Scott County Board of Education. He was one of the school’s greatest benefactors through the years. When junior and senior classes at Norma would plan a trip to Washington, D.C., Chambers would make sure that students who couldn’t afford the trip on their own were able to go. He also donated to the churches up and down the Tennessee Railroad. 

When Dr. Chambers was brutally murdered on May 29, 1970, the Norma and Smokey Junction communities were stunned, and then they grieved. What followed was the largest investigation in Scott County’s history — so newspaper reports said at the time.

Who were the suspects?

Clifton Delbert Pennington was born in 1942, the son of Elbert Theodore Pennington and Frances Cox Pennington. On April 8, 1969, he married Martha Carol Vandeveer. 

Cliff’s brother, James Pennington, was born three years later, in 1945.

The beginning of a fateful night

From court testimony: It was around 5:30 pm on the evening of Friday, May 29, 1970, when 20-year-old Brenda Lawson and her husband, 23-year-old Robert Lawson, set out for Foster Crossroads in the 1965 Pontiac Tempest that her father had given her. They were going to visit a man who wanted to buy a transistor radio from them.

After finding the man and selling him the radio, the Lawsons headed back to Oneida and cruised town. Shortly before 7 pm, they ran into Cliff and James Pennington, who flagged them down. The Penningtons had a couple of paper sacks of beer, and got into the car with the Lawsons to ride around with them.

For a while, the Lawsons and Penningtons drove around and drank beer. They went to Kentucky, and stopped at a tavern in Winfield, where James bought more beer. Then they went back to Oneida so that Cliff could pick up his wife, Carol. When they got to the home where Carol was, it was James who walked up the hill to the house to get her. Cliff stayed in the car and drank.

A gun enters the picture

James Pennington entered the home of his great-aunt, Emma Pemberton, looking for more than just his brother’s wife. He retrieved a 12-gauge shotgun. But Miss Effie, his aunt who lived at the home and cared for her ailing mother, demanded that he put it back. 

James told them he put the gun back. But when he left the home, Emma’s niece, who lived nearby and had gone to the home at sunset to help care for her aunt, noticed that he had something sticking down each side of his pants — “kind of long something,” she would later testify. 

After the ’65 Tempest pulled away from the Pennington home, Brenda Lawson turned around to be introduced to Carol, who she had not met until that night. As she turned around, she noticed a shotgun laying in the floor. She didn’t want any part of that, and said so: No guns were allowed in her car. But Cliff said that a man had threatened to beat him up and kill him, and that the shotgun was just for protection.

Cliff then asked to drive to Norma.

Brenda drove her ’65 Tempest past Norma High School, down the hill, and to the grocery store. Then Cliff told her to turn around, and park in the driveway of the high school — the high school next-door to Doc Chambers’ home; the high school he helped build, and the one where he made sure any junior or senior who wanted to could make a trip to Washington, D.C. each year.

That’s when Cliff Pennington said that they were going to rob old Doc Chambers.

Robert Lawson asked them not to. But then things got ugly. Pennington said they were going to do it, and that if Robert or Brenda said anything to anyone about it, they would beat them and kill their families. And with that, Cliff and James and Carol got out of the car and marched up to Dr. Chambers’ front door.

Carol Pennington didn’t go inside. She returned to the car, acting like she was sick. Turns out, she didn’t want any part of the robbery either. It was a good thing, because this wasn’t an ordinary home invasion. Turns out, the brothers didn’t care to use that 12 gauge shotgun that James had taken while Miss Effie had her back turned.

A robbery gone wrong

Dr. D.T. Chambers was 85 years old. His wife had long since died and he lived alone. He couldn’t get around very well, and used a cane to assist him. He couldn’t see very well, either. 

So when someone pounded on his door that Friday night in May 1970, it took him a while to get to answer.

Fate is a funny thing. Had it taken Doc Chambers another minute to get to the door, the Penningtons may well have given up and left; the events that were about to play out might never have happened. Brenda Lawson testified in court that the brothers had turned to walk away from the home when a light came on inside. So they went back and knocked again. Doc Chambers opened the door, and James Pennington stuck that 12-gauge shotgun in his face.

That’s when Carol Pennington ran back to the car. She told her husband that she was sick. It was just Cliff and James inside with the old doctor.

Cliff and James asked Dr. Chambers if he had a gun. He told them he didn’t. But they opened a drawer and found a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson nickel-plated revolver. That pissed off James Pennington. He told the doctor, “You lied to me.” Then he shot him in the face with the shotgun. 

Investigators who combed Dr. Chambers’ home found pieces of the doctor’s spectacles — and bone fragments — all over the room. He died instantly, of course, laying half on and half off his bed. Cliff and James took all the cash they could find: less than $50. They would later laugh and say that Dr. Chambers had offered them $1,000 not to kill him.

The getaway

What jurors heard about what happened inside the home was based on what Cliff and James told Robert and Brenda later, after they had fled the state. As Dr. Chambers was being killed, Robert and Brenda only heard a low thud, then Cliff and James were running back to the car, telling her to get the hell out of there, and to not turn on the lights until they had rounded the curve. Brenda did what they said. After all, they had threatened to kill her and her husband, she told investigators.

As they sped along Norma Road, they passed a Scott County Sheriff’s Department cruiser. Cliff said that if the deputy came after them, he had already killed one man and wouldn’t care to kill another. That’s what Brenda later told the court. But the law didn’t come back. The Penningtons were safe … for the time being.

The Penningtons were enjoying themselves. Brenda said that James fired a pistol with white handles out the windows of the car towards a house on Norma Road. Robert grabbed the pistol from James to prevent a bad night from getting worse.

Later, when they stopped at a service station in Whitley City to use the bathroom, James begged Cliff to give him the pistol back so he could rob the man tending to the filling station. Cliff refused.

It was nearly 11 pm when Brenda’s Pontiac rolled back into Oneida, to the home of Emma and Miss Effie at Skating Rink Holler. There, James returned the shotgun. Carol picked up her little boy. And then they ordered Brenda to head north, to Cincinnati.

All night they drove, reaching Covington between 5 am and 6 am. Cliff and Carol had an apartment there. For the next several days, the Penningtons hung out between Cincinnati and Attica, Indiana. They threw the pistol over a bridge and into a river to dispose of it. They never let the Lawsons out of their sight. 

The Penningtons were nervous, though. Brenda Lawson would later testify that they called several times to see if Doc Chambers was dead, and if the authorities were looking for them. 

On June 5, 1970 — exactly one week after the murder of Doc Chambers — Cliff Pennington called the Scott County Jail. Deputy Sheriff Boyant Sexton answered the phone. Pennington identified himself by name and asked to speak to Sheriff Bernard Brumitt. When Sexton told him the sheriff wasn’t in, Pennington asked if warrants had been issued on the Penningtons for the murder of Dr. Chambers. “I understand they went up there and tore the damn house all to pieces,” Pennington told Sexton, according to Sexton’s testimony in court later on.

But even then, the law was closing in on the Penningtons. TBI special agent John Marcum had been to Miss Effie’s home and retrieved the shotgun. And, in Attica, a state police officer was patrolling when he noticed some people in a phone booth. It was the Penningtons and the Lawsons. Cliff Pennington was making the call to Deputy Sexton at the Scott County Jail, wondering whether the law was looking for him and his brother.

On Monday, June 8, Indiana state police arrested all five of the suspects as they left a home in Attica. They were in Brenda Lawson’s 1965 Pontiac. Carol Pennington had shotgun shells in her purse. Scott County officers drove to Indiana to pick up the suspects.

The trial

District attorney general Arzo Carson prosecuted the case. He insisted to jurors that Robert and Brenda Lawson were not accomplices to Doc Chambers’ murder; rather, they were accessories after the fact, because the Penningtons had them afraid for their lives. The D.A. said that he had not promised the Lawsons leniency in exchange for their testimony.

In Kentucky, a police officer surveyed the apartment of Cliff and Carol Pennington and found a scrap of paper with “663-2245 Huntsville, Tennessee” written on it. The phone number for the Scott County Jail. 

Elsewhere in Kentucky, Robert Lawson led Sheriff Brummitt and the TBI to the bridge where the Penningtons had tossed over the revolver. Using a 7-ton magnet, a barge captain pulled up the .32-caliber Smith & Wesson. The serial number on it matched a record that Doc Chambers kept in a safe inside his home.

Jurors found Cliff Pennington, Carol Pennington and James Pennington guilty of first degree murder. Cliff and James were each sentenced to 99 years in prison. Carol was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Robert Lawson was charged with involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Brenda Lawson was not sentenced to prison.

Aftermath

Twice during their stay at the Scott County Jail, the Penningtons nearly escaped. On one occasion, their attempt was thwarted when they couldn’t locate a key to free Carol Pennington from her cell and were talked into surrendering by a jailer. On the second occasion, they made it through the fence, but were quickly located by dogs.

The Penningtons were sent to Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. There, Clifton Pennington died in July 1980, at the age of 37. The cause of death was said to be a heart attack. His body was returned to Scott County and he was buried at Pennington-Collins Cemetery in Oneida, near his parents.

Carol Pennington had her sentence commuted to time served by Tennessee Gov. Ray Blanton in 1976. By the time of Cliff Pennington’s death in 1980, his obituary no longer listed Carol Pennington as his wife. She returned to the Cincinnati area and later remarried. 

Brenda Lawson also left Scott County and returned to Ohio.

Robert Lawson served three years of his sentence and was released. He currently lives in Kentucky.