Benjamin Franklyn Vann was born in North Carolina on June 14, 1887. Vann was a merchant in Pasquotank County who shot and killed fourteen-year-old Oliver Layden in July 1912. The crime incited intense feelings in the neighborhood, lynch mobs threatening to kill Vann twice before he was safely spirited out of Pasquotank by sheriff Charles Reid. Vann's trial concluded with a conviction of murder and a twenty-five-year prison sentence. Vann had served only a few years when Governor Locke Craig extended him a parole on account of his rapidly deteriorating health from tuberculosis. He then returned to his family in Frisco (Dare County) where he died on October 18, 1916.