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A note this episode contains mature content and quite graphic descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for sun listeners.

For real, this episode will disturb you.

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Don't worry.

Everybody is nervous on their first mission.

That's what Fritz Kleinner told Ian Perkins as they pulled out of the campground onto Blue Ridge Parkway in the black Chevy Blazer.

Ian was terrified.

Even though his role in this mission was support.

He wouldn't have to kill anyone himself, and if he did it well, Fritz promised that he'd put in a good report to the CIA in Langley, Virginia.

It was his dream job as a patriot.

Ian's great uncle had worked for the CIA, and the uncle had given him a reference, but Fritz's way would expedite his dream.

He'd wondered about the arsenal of exotic weaponry Fritz owned, but Ian had not put it together until a few months before, when Fritz asked him to help.

The mission had been postponed twice, but now here they were with another change of plans.

Instead of heading to Texas, there was a situation in North Carolina they had to take care of first.

Fritz withheld most of the details because the company worked on a need to know basis.

They'd need to make stops in Winston Salem and Charlotte, and when the job ub was done, Fritz would give Ian a third of his nine hundred dollars payment for the operation.

Ian understood they'd already gone down to the campsite and made it look lived in.

Now he would drop Fritz off near the site of the operation and wait at a pre arranged spot.

Then he'd get to the meeting spot, give Fritz a fifteen minute head start in a gold car he'd already planted, and head towards Charlotte.

Ian would wait at the last rest stop before Charlotte.

Fritz would shave his beard to a Fu Manchu after the first stop.

After the second, he'd shave off the mustache.

Fritz repeated the alibi to Ian in case anybody ever asked about this weekend having to lie.

Bothered Ian it didn't align with the honor code at Washington and Lee University, where he was a student.

Lying could get him kicked out of school.

Everything went according to plan until they were leaving Winston Salem, Ian watched as Fritz got pulled over in the little gold car.

Afterward, they rendezvous at Lowman's Plaza, where Fritz came up to the Chevy Blazer with his briefcase in hand.

We've got a change of plan, Fritz said.

The car won't make it to Charlotte.

I've got a dump it.

We'll have to scratch the Charlotte operation.

Pick me up where you let me out In twenty minutes, Fritz shoved his briefcase into the Blazer and went back to the small gold car.

Ian went back to the Burger Kinge to wait.

He chain smoked and panicked about what he would say if someone asked what he was doing there.

Finally, Fritz climbed into the seat beside him.

Ian wanted to know what had happened, but he was afraid to ask.

Ian drove Fritz to a convenience mart, where he disposed of his clothes and disguised himself As planned.

They made several more stops on the way back to Lexington to dispose of his clothes and pick up soft drinks.

Next to a trash dump in the mountains of Buchanan, Fritz buried the ammunition and the briefcase.

They made bathroom stops and threw other weapons into a lake they passed.

Later, back at the campground, they packed up and left.

Fritz praised him for a job well done.

Ian asked if a career in the CIA would prevent him from getting married and having a family.

Fritz said when he'd gotten married, he told his wife everything.

It wasn't until later that she had a problem with it.

He said, she threatened to go public if I didn't get out and settle down.

I had to tell her that if she did that an accident would be arranged.

Some poor soul would die in my blazer and that would be the end of me.

I told her that she would have an accident too, that it would be a real one.

Ian received the message loud and clear.

He wouldn't tell anyone about this weekend.

Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told.

I'm Mary Kay McBrayer.

Today's episode we're calling Family Betrayal the Susie Newsom Lynch Story.

It's part three of our three part story of Susie Newsom Lynch, and it has everything you'd expect from a Southern Gothic tale, aristocratic families, Old South racism, paranoia, a feud, and of course murder.

This is the finale.

So if you haven't listened to the first parts yet, pause me here, go listen, and then come back.

I'll tell you all about the grizzly ending to this story after this quick break.

Okay, listeners, Before we get to the end of this saga, I feel like it's important that we recap what's happened so far because it's a lot.

Our body count is already up to five.

Here's how we got there.

Back in nineteen eighty, Tom Lynch and Susie Newsom Lynch separated.

This was after the children showed signs of abuse at Susie's hands, but not because of those signs.

Tom stayed at his practice in New Mexico and Susie returned back to North Carolina with full custody of the children.

Tom was allowed just two court mandated weeks of visitation.

That wasn't enough time with them, obviously, so Tom asked for more visitation, not full custody, not even joint custody.

Tom just asked for more visitation.

Susie said no.

Susie withheld the kids.

She even moved to Taiwan for about a year, Tom kept asking to see more of them, but Susie had her lawyers tie him up in court.

Her main argument was that the children were too young to make a connecting flight by themselves, and there were no direct flights from North Carolina to New Mexico.

They would need a chaperone both ways, which was of course a small fortune plus all these lawyers fees.

At one point, Tom went two years without seeing his kids.

Meanwhile, Susie was not doing well.

She went to her uncle, a weird experimental doctor, who diagnosed her with multiple sclerosis, and then he claimed to have cured it with treatments of vitamin C.

When doctor Fred Klinner died of natural causes, Susie's relationship with his son Fritz, who was Susie's first cousin, got really close, too close.

Susie's mother confronted her about having a romantic relationship with her cousin.

Susie was super offended at the suggestion.

They had a huge fight, and Susie stormed out and rented her own apartment.

Then Fritz moved in.

He was a scary, weirdo gun freak survivalist, but Susie claimed he took care of her and the boys.

None of her family saw much of Susie, John, or Jim anymore.

During John and Jim's visitation.

In July of nineteen eighty four, Tom got a phone call saying his mother and sister had been murdered execution style in their family home.

So that he could deal with being investigated as a suspect because he was the sole heir now and grieved for them and handle funeral arrangements, Tom asked Susie to extend the visitation.

Susie refused.

When Tom arrived in Kentucky, he received a sympathy card in a bouquet from Susie's parents, his former in laws, That opened communication between them again, and eventually Tom asked Bob, Susie's dad, to testify in the custody hearing to allow Tom more visitation.

Seven months later, Bob, his wife Florence, and his mother Nana were all found murdered in Nana's home.

The situation was somewhat similar to how the bodies of the lynches were discovered.

These were generally responsible people who communicated well, and they stopped responding to phone calls.

They didn't show up to pick up their granddaughter, and they weren't back at their own house by ten PM, when they were supposed to arrive early in the afternoon, so the family sent someone over to check on them, and the neighbor realized right away that they were dead.

He called the police and they found a similar execution style multiple murder scene, with one big exception.

Florence had been stabbed many times and her throat had been cut, plus she had been shot with multiple bullets as well.

It was a clear case of unnecessary overkill.

Another link that they were piecing together was that Bob and Florence had agreed to testify for Tom in the custody hearing.

Detectives had found copies of their correspondents saying as much, and although they couldn't be sure, they suspected that the contents of Bob's now empty briefcase were what had been burned at his feet in Nana's house, and they suspected but couldn't prove, that the contents were documents relating to that custody case.

They were very confident that Susie was the link between these two cases of multiple murder, but they couldn't yet tell how much Susie was responsible for and how much of it was the gun nut Fritz is doing.

And then they found Fritz's accomplice, Ian Perkins.

That's the story you heard at the beginning of this episode.

When police reached out to Ian, his mom answered, and she had a strong hunch that they were calling about the Knewsome murders.

Ian agreed to be interviewed, and he caved in to the truth almost immediately.

He was so remorseful that Ian was willing to do whatever it took to help police bring Fritz in.

What's wild is when Ian said he had no idea what he was doing when he served as Fritz's accomplice.

This poor guy was so gullible that they actually believed him, especially because when they asked Ian to wear a wire and meet with Fritz.

Fritz the guy with an exotic weapons arsenal and a booby trapped apartment front door, who's having an affair with his first cousin allegedly, but come on, he lives there.

She's touching on his knee during a police interview.

It's happening, okay.

When police asked Ian to wear a wire and talk to Fritz, Ian said yes, right away.

He'd do anything to help, anything to atone for the crimes he unwittingly agreed to commit.

Ian actually wore a separate times, knowing full well the risk that even though five unmarked police vehicles were watching them and the State Bureau of Investigation plane was watching overhead, there was still a good chance that Fritz could learn about the recording and kill Ian before anyone could get there to help him.

It was a risk Ian was willing to take.

As an extra precaution, police sent a plain clothes agent as Ian's friend from college, thinking that Fritz was less likely to do something wild if he knew someone knew Ian had met with him.

So at the first meeting, Ian got in Fritz's car in the mall's parking lot to crank the engine and said they should drive somewhere.

The interference of the car's sound obscured the recording a little, but they had to go with it.

Ian told Fritz what he had rehearsed with the detectives.

They'd interviewed him about the Newsome murders, and he had told them the story Fritz prepared about the camping trip.

Then the detective said that the murders had happened Saturday night, and Ian was scared to death.

Fritz said, well, what do you think.

Ian said, well, first off, we had nothing to do with that, and Fritz said it was possible one of the agents was a company guy there to judge Ian's reactions.

Ian said he had to be getting back.

He was so nervous that he wanted to take his mind off this by going to see Rambo with his buddy Chris.

Fritz gave him a pill to calm his nerves.

Officers listening told Ian not to take it, but Ian couldn't hear them, and he swallowed it right away.

It could have contained anything.

Fritz tried to make plans with Ian to go on a hike the following morning, but officers coached him to say he couldn't go.

That's when his polygraph was scheduled.

That interview didn't yield much to go on for the detectives.

The second time he tried was two days later.

On Sunday, June second, Ian was supposed to try to trap Fritz into admitting he'd murdered the newsoms.

This time, Ian's briefing was more direct.

He was supposed to tell Fritz that the detectives had come back to talk to him.

He'd gone with them to Winston Salem and they took him to the murder site.

Now Ian realized it was just up the hill from where he let Fritz out of the car.

Ian was even more nervous than before.

He was also supposed to find out if the original trip to Texas would have actually resulted in them heading to New Mexico to kill Tom Lynch.

Ian had trouble delivering.

He kept asking questions and then answering them himself.

Sergeant Alan Gentry was listening in and he slapped the dashboard of his surveillance car in frustration, saying let him talk.

But it was still a better outcome than the first interview.

Fritz did admit to killing people on the night of the murders, just not the Newsoms, and he acknowledged to being in a car similar to the one that had been pulled over.

It was something, but not enough solid evidence to take him to court.

The third time Ian met with Fritz, his briefing put him at even more risk than before.

Now Ian was to reveal that he knew Fritz had been in Nana's car and that the CIA mission story was a lie, and he would let Fritz know the police were closing in on him.

Ian was supposed to directly confront Fritz about the murders.

Ian did it all, and Fritz's manner changed.

He said, I'll write a paper saying you were not knowingly involved, that you believed you were on a covert mission for the government.

I've got things to do.

I won't see you again.

The whole meeting lasted fourteen minutes.

They had learned two things.

One, they couldn't use Ian in this capacity again.

Fritz was about to make a run.

They had to make a move, and they had to do it soon.

It was a tense situation.

The police didn't have warrants yet, but they knew both that Fritz was about to make a run, and they knew that this was a high profile case.

They had to do everything right.

Tom Sturgel called his superior about their next move.

They had enough to charge Fritz and they get a warrant for him.

Later, they had clearance to pick him up with caution, but they could not let him hole up in that apartment.

Fritz was already back at Susie's place by now, An officer's and want to risk a shootout in the crowded complex.

Plus, they couldn't evacuate the complex without alerting Fritz.

The officers were all in plain clothes from the wired interview, so they called for a uniformed officer to assist.

While they waited close to the apartment, Fritz and Susie loaded stuff into the blazer.

It appeared to be military weapons and devil bags, and then they became truly alarmed.

John and Jim came out of the apartment in fatigues and got in the back seat with their dogs.

The officers had assumed the boys were in school, why would they have been held out of school?

The police started to scramble.

Susie got in the passenger seat, and Fritz backed out of the parking lot.

Officers tried to hem him into the lot.

Fritz was surprised, but not scared.

He didn't speed away.

He drove slowly, deliberately, and police followed him.

Uniformed officers L.

C.

Leclear and Tommy Dennis were on the way from different directions.

They were briefed en route, and they were encouraged to put on their bulletproof vests if they weren't already wearing them somehow.

During the chase, Tommy Dennis skidded at an angle into the Blazer.

His windshield faced Fritz's door.

That's when he saw Fritz's left arm come down in the open window with an oozy nine millimeters submachine gun.

Tommy reached for his own pistol and moved to protect his head just as five bullets hit his car.

The first three hit the car's body and the last two came through Tommy's windshield.

One hit him in the right side of his chest, and the second hit his buckle and deflected.

The officers took cover as Fritz swung his oozy toward the other police vehicles.

One bullet hit the nine millimeters smith and Wesson that Steve Nobles was drawing.

Both pieces of the broken bullet hit him in his right armpit, but he didn't realize it until later.

He was focused on SUSY's face in the windshield.

Her expression was blank and unconcerned.

He drew down on her.

It didn't fire.

A third officer, Sherman Childers, left arm was sprayed with broken glass.

He got a shot off at Fritz, but he missed.

After confirming the three injured officers were stable.

The remaining police vehicles moved after Fritz.

A volunteer firefighter who happened to be at the intersection was the first to reach the injured officers.

The chase, though it was never high speed, Fritz barely topped out at thirty five miles per hour.

Fritz stopped several times just behind blind curves and at the bottoms of hills with the airplane surveillance warned the officers to beg off in time.

At one moment, the Blazers stopped sideways in the road over the center line and Fritz was outside it with his oozy.

He opened fire and the officers began bailing out.

One policeman came out of his vehicle with an AR fifteen assault rifle.

That's what got Fritz back into his car.

The other officers would later say this move saved their lives.

The chase continued.

When Deputy David Thacker, one of the officers in pursuit, saw brake lights on the Blazer, he went off the road to the right.

He thought Fritz would again come out firing before he could get out of his car.

Though David saw fire under the Blazer, and then it was like the sky ripped open.

Officers sat stunned as the blazer exploded from the pavement in every direction.

The vehicle itself lifted almost as high as the telephone lines, and then slammed back down while debris rained down all around them.

The agents prebbed themselves in case of ambush.

The sergeant Alan Gentry knew they didn't need to.

He'd already seen the bodies.

This is the part I warned you about.

Fritz was face down over a drain ditch, over one hundred feet from the side of the explosion.

His body was fairly unmarked and he was still breathing.

Officer Dan Davidson rushed over, yelling, Fritz, can you hear me?

He was hoping for a last minute confession, but when they turned Fritz over, the sounds that came from his body were of bones scraping.

His chest gurgled to a stop as he drowned in a hemorrhage of his own blood.

Susie was crumpled up on the other side of the culvert.

According to Jerry Bledsoe's book, bitter blood.

Blood came out of her nose, mouth and ears her blue jeans were shredded, and the back of her body was quote pulp from the waist down.

Her right leg ended at the knee, her left at midshin A seat spring protruded from her vagiinant.

She was dead without a doubt, and it was obvious that she had been sitting atop the bomb.

It gets worse.

The remnants of the Blazer slid down an embankment on the other side of the road through a barbed wire fence around a horse pasture.

The shell of the car was almost completely gone and the rest of it was peeled back.

There was a huge hole where the passenger seat had been in the back seat, both children and both dogs were dead.

It was the worst case scenario.

It was what the detectives had been fearing the most all along.

Listeners, if you think the worst is behind you, I hate to disappoint you.

I'll tell you the rest of this dismal, grisly ending after the break.

The investigation into the explosion soon revealed that what everyone thought was the worst possible outcome was actually worse than that.

It was immediately clear that the adults had fixed a bomb under Susie's seat, and detectives deduced that such a bomb had been built for just such an occasion.

From the moment of detonation, they had no doubt that it was a suicide.

Several bomb squads arrived to secure the area of any potential booby traps.

It took them even longer to secure the apartment.

After they diffused the tear gas canister over the door and conducted a thorough search, The detectives were nonetheless devastated.

They knew that Fritz and Susie were to blame, but they didn't know to what extent each of them did what.

And they didn't know why, not for these four deaths, nor for the five previous murders.

And now they couldn't really find out they'd been robbed of a trial.

Ian would have a trial, but that wasn't the same from what I can tell.

He helped the officers bring Fritz in as best he could, and then he pleaded guilty.

I think the charge was accesserate of murder.

He served five months in prison.

Much worse than not having a real trial, of course, was the death of the boys.

I can only imagine the amount of guilt that racked the detectives when they saw the bodies of ten year old John and nine year old Jim.

But as I said, it gets worse.

The autopsies determined that the boys did not die from the explosion.

They revealed that both children had a fatal amount of cyanide in their bloodstreams.

It gets worse.

Jim, Susie's favorite, had eighteen milligrams of cyanide in his bloodstream.

John had only one point seven.

That implied that it was more important to Susie that John not feel any pain.

And as if that weren't bad enough, the boys also had fatal gunshot wounds.

Autopsy results supported that at the time of the gunshots, the boys were unconscious from the cyanide poisoning, but the gunshot wounds to the head is what actually killed them.

And now for the worst part of all.

Based on the entry and exit wound angles, the gun that killed John and Jim was fired from the passenger seat, and although it's not clear when she did it, gunpowder residue on Susie's dominant hand further supports that she is the one who fired the handgun.

In the documentary Kissing Cousins All about this story, Tom Lynch gave multiple interviews the boy's father said that Susie quote killed them to spite me.

They killed me that day too, It's just taking me longer to die.

Spite might be their reason, but is not good enough.

No answer about why they murdered Tom's mother and sister, Susie's mother, father, and grandmother, and certainly the sons, John and Jim could ever be good enough.

We'll probably never know what their reasoning was anyway, and maybe that's part of why they ended their own lives rather than face the consequences of their actions.

There is no acceptable explanation.

Besides, even if they told us their reasons, no answer could ever really answer the question of why they did it.

Join me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told.

For our episode on Gloria Allred, a sexual assault survivor who went on to become one of the most high profile and controversial attorneys working on cases involving r Kelly, Bill O'Reilly, Harvey Weinstein, and Moore.

I'd like to shout out a few key sources that made it possible for me to tell this week's story, especially Jerry Bledsoe's book Bitter Blood and the docuseries Southern Fried homicide, both of which are detailed in our show notes.

The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio.

I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, and I hosted this episode.

I also wrote this episode.

Our show is produced by Emma Desmouth and edited by Antonio Enriquez.

Theme music by Tyler Cash.

Executive producer Scott Waxman.