Excerpt:

The two crucial prosecution witnesses in Charlotte's celebrated 1972 Lazy B stable-burning trial were secretly paid at least $4,000 in cash by the federal government in exchange for their testimony in the case and a related federal trial, The Observer has learned.

During the Lazy B trial -- one of Charlotte's most controversial criminal cases in recent years -- one of the witnesses, Theodore Alfred Hood, 26, who admitted participating in the stable burning, denied under oath that he had been paid any money in exchange for his testimony.