Fourteen Days

Fritz Klenner Jr. was the son of a well-known Reidsville, North Carolina, physician, and for years he saw patients at the family practice until authorities closed it after his father died in May 1984. He had no license and had never completed medical training. He also told people he did work for the CIA. His first cousin, Susie Newsom Lynch, was in a custody fight with her ex-husband, Tom Lynch, a dentist in Albuquerque who was asking for fourteen extra days a year with their sons.

On July 22, 1984, Tom’s mother, Delores Lynch, 68, was shot outside her home in Prospect, Kentucky, as she came back from church. His sister Janie, 39, was found dead inside. Ten months later, on May 18, 1985, Susie’s parents, Bob and Florence Newsom, and her 85-year-old grandmother, Hattie Newsom, were shot at Hattie’s house in Winston-Salem. A neighbor named Ian Perkins had driven Klenner to the scene believing it was a government operation, and his account broke the case open.

On June 3, 1985, officers moved on Klenner’s Blazer in Greensboro. He opened fire, wounding several people, then drove north with Susie and her sons, John, 10, and Jim, 9. Near Summerfield the vehicle exploded, killing everyone in it. Autopsies showed both boys had been given cyanide and shot at some point before the blast.