Murder Suspect. He received much notoriety as a suspect in a murder spree with his first cousin and lover. He was the last child and only son of Dr. Frederick Klenner and wife Annie Hill Sharp. In 1982 he became romantically involved with his first cousin, Susie Newsom Lynch. Lynch was recently divorced; the mother of two young sons, John and Jim; and involved with a bitter custody battle with her sons' father. Dr. Tom Lynch of New Mexico. On July 24, 1984, the dead bodies of Tom's mother and sister, Delores and Janie were discovered in Prospect, Kentucky. The two had been killed by a military-style assault rifle with back wounds. On May 19, 1985 the dead bodies of Susie's parents, Robert Newson and Florence Sharp Newson and Susie's paternal grandmother, Hattie Carter Newsom, were found in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The three had died from gunshot wounds. The day before, Ian Perkins, believing he was part of a covert CIA mission, drove Klenner to and from Hattie Newsom's home in Winston-Salem. On July 31, 1985 Perkins pleaded guilty to three counts of accessory after the fact of murder for these three deaths, and he served a four-month sentence followed by a five-year probation period. On June 3, 1985 officers from several law enforcement agencies attempted to arrest Klenner for the murders. As authorities came close to Klenner, he fled in his Chevy Blazer with Susie and her sons; authorities gave chase. At one point Klenner opened fire with an automatic weapon, wounding a Greensboro police officer. The chase ceased when he ignited a bomb under the driver's seat of the Blazer ending Klenner and Susie's lives. Although Susie's sons were in the Blazer when it exploded, a medical examiner stated that they were already dead prior to the the explosion as someone had given them cyanide and shot them in their heads. Going into print eleven weeks after the ordeal, Jerry Bledsoe's best-selling book "Bitter Blood" tells the story of this obsessive love, incest and a bitter custody battle that connected three wealthy families by marriage and left nine people dead. Besides the book, there was a 1994 made-for-TV movie "In the Best of Families: Marriage, Pride and Madness" starring Harry Hamlin and Kelly McGillis. Fritz Klenner and Susie Lynch's aunt was Susie Sharp, who received notoriety as the first woman state Supreme Court Chief Justice in the United States and the first woman Superior Court Judge in North Carolina.