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They were first cousins. Then they became lovers. By the end of their family war, nine people were dead. The Bitter Blood Murders of Fritz Klenner and Susie Newsom Lynch are one of the most disturbing family murder cases in true crime history.
What began as an increasingly vicious custody battle would eventually tear apart two prominent American families and leave behind a trail of murder spanning two states.
After Susie Newsom Lynch’s marriage to Tom Lynch collapsed, the battle over their two sons, John and Jim, became extraordinarily bitter. Allegations flew. Relatives took sides. Court hearings, psychological evaluations and accusations consumed the family.
And standing beside Susie was her first cousin — and lover — Frederick “Fritz” Klenner. Then the people caught up in the dispute began to die.
In 1984, Tom Lynch’s mother, Delores, and sister, Janie, were murdered in Kentucky. Months later, Susie’s parents, Robert and Florence Newsom, and her grandmother Hattie were found murdered in North Carolina.
Five members of the same extended family were now dead.
As investigators began connecting the killings, evidence increasingly pointed towards Fritz Klenner. But Fritz was far from the person he had spent years pretending to be. Behind his extraordinary stories about medicine, military operations and the CIA was a man obsessed with weapons, survivalism and an increasingly elaborate fantasy life.
And police were closing in.
On June 3, 1985, officers encountered Fritz, Susie and her two young sons inside a Chevrolet Blazer packed with weapons and explosives. What followed was a terrifying police chase involving gunfire before the vehicle exploded on a rural North Carolina road.
Fritz was dead. Susie was dead. John and Jim were dead.
And the horrifying discoveries made afterwards would reveal just how far this family nightmare had gone.
This is the disturbing true story of the Bitter Blood Murders — the Fritz Klenner and Susie Newsom Lynch case: a bizarre story of first cousins turned lovers, a brutal custody battle, family betrayal, five murders, an explosive police chase and nine deaths.
A true crime deep dive into a case so twisted that the reality genuinely sounds fictional.
Podcast: True Crime w/ Anna Templeton