Bitter Blood

by Jerry Bledsoe

  The officers didn’t want Ian to be charged. They thought that he had been genuinely duped by Fritz, that he had displayed courage by helping them, and that he had made amends by risking his life. They felt an obligation to Ian, and argued his case with Tisdale.

  Caught between the pressures of the officers and those of Newsom family members who wanted Ian prosecuted, Tisdale decided he had to seek an indictment.

  “In my way of thinking, it would have been unconscionable not to have an accountability there,” he explained later.

  No matter what he had done to make amends, Ian had knowingly set out to kill somebody, even though he thought he was acting on behalf of his country, Tisdale noted.

  “You can’t condone that kind of conduct. It’s dangerous no matter whose name it is in, God or country or creed. People who kill in the name of God and country are probably more dangerous than people who kill for greed. You don’t know where these clowns are coming from.”

  Tisdale placated the officers by agreeing to charge Ian only with accessory after the fact of murder, a far less serious charge than accessory before the fact.

  After the meeting, Oldham held a press conference to announce that an indictment would be sought. The name of the person would be revealed, he said, “when the indictment is handed down and the person is charged.”

  That would not be for two weeks, when the grand jury next met.

  “Our opinion is that an indictment can be handed down and probably will be,” he said.

  Oldham went on to tantalize the reporters a little.

  “This is the type of case that’ll drive you crazy,” he said. “It’s had more surprises than any case I can remember. It’s a unique case. It’s got all kinds of twists and bends. You talk about bizarre. It’s got twists and turns you wouldn’t believe. The twists I know, I can’t reveal.”

  When would they be revealed? That would depend on whether there was an indictment and when it came to trial, Oldham said.

  And if there was no indictment?

  Then the information wouldn’t be released, Oldham said with a small grin of satisfaction.

  Ian was indicted June 24 on three counts of accessory after the fact of murder. Allen Gentry appeared before the grand jury for about an hour, and the indictments were issued before noon. At 2 P.M., Ian arrived at the Hall of Justice to turn himself in, accompanied by his attorney, Jim Medford. Reporters, TV camera crews, and photographers swarmed around the pair as they were ushered into Gentry’s office. Ian looked pale and frightened. A short, neat young man with darting dark eyes and a military haircut, he wore a blue blazer, a striped tie, khaki pants, and moccasin-type loafers. After preliminary processing, Ian and Medford went upstairs to Tisdale’s office, where they were joined by Ian’s mother and stepfather.

  Medford wanted Tisdale to drop charges, or failing that, to agree to a plea bargain that would grant Ian a probationary sentence. A tall, hulking man with a round Irish face and a poet’s soul, Medford was a member of one of the state’s largest and most prestigious law firms, a North Carolina native, a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, a Fulbright scholar. He knew that he was not in a good bargaining position. His client had admitted guilt without seeing an attorney and had already done all that he could to help the police.

  Tisdale was firm. He would not drop the charges or make any deals. But he indicated that he would not fight for an active sentence.

  After the meeting, Ian, visibly trembling, his eyes red from crying, was taken before Superior Court Judge William H. Freeman, Jr., for a bond hearing. Medford pointed out Ian’s cooperation with the authorities, and Tisdale noted that he was “probably responsible for making” the case against Fritz.

  “I have no reason to believe he will not show up,” Tisdale told the judge.

  Freeman set a $25,000 unsecured bond, and Ian left with his mother and stepfather.

  Quoting the district attorney, the next morning’s Journal described Tisdale as sounding “as much like a defense attorney as a prosecutor.”

  “I wouldn’t guarantee him probation,” Tisdale said. “I would leave that to a judge. I wouldn’t oppose it…”

  He also said this about Ian: “He’s extremely patriotic. He was playing war games at a time when he should have been doing something else…This is probably a prime example of too much television and too many Rambo movies.”

  Tisdale acknowledged that Ian had made three tapes with Fritz, and said that he would play them at the trial. The tapes, he said, would show Ian’s limited role in the murders.

  Ian was scheduled for arraignment on July 9, but did not appear in court. Instead, Medford waived the proceeding, and trial was set for July 29. But Medford maneuvered to have the trial delayed two days so that Ian would come before Judge Edward Washington.

  A tall, rawboned man, Washington had played football at the University of North Carolina with Charlie “Choo-Choo” Justice. Elected district judge in 1968, he was appointed chief judge for the 18th district by Susie Sharp in 1976. Two years later, he moved up to superior court. Now sixty-two, and a year from retirement, Washington was a kind, sincere man, a favorite of defense attorneys, who called him decent and fair. Prosecutors tended to think him too easy. Tisdale, who liked Washington (“He’s easy but he’s very honest and serious”), didn’t resist the move.

  “Are you in fact guilty?” Washington asked in a rumbling voice as Ian stood before him on July 31.

  “Yes,” Ian said in a gush of tears.

  Gentry took the stand to sketch in details of the case, to tell of interviewing Ian and of Ian’s agreeing to help. He read the note Fritz had left exonerating Ian. Gentry was followed by SBI agent J. W. Bryant who told of wiring Ian and gave details of the three taping sessions. Bryant played the tapes of the first two sessions for the judge. When he left the stand without playing the third tape, a stir went up among reporters. Why wasn’t the tape being played? Was something on it that the SBI didn’t want known?

  Rob was next on the stand, speaking slowly and thoughtfully on behalf of the family.

  “I wanted the court to know most of all that the people who died that night weren’t just special to us,” he said, “that Hattie Carter Newsom was easily the most beloved person in her community, and that my mother and father had been active in civic affairs in this city and in Greensboro, and that in addition to the emotional impact on the family that there are two communities which are going to miss them very, very much. Certainly I miss their wise counsel and advice and gentle ways and the rest of the family does too.

  “I think the feeling that the family would like to convey to the court about the emotional impact of all this is that it’s rather like being a survivor of the Holocaust. We’ve lost four generations of people. Aunt and cousin are the closest kin I have left aside from my children. Others have suffered similarly.

  “We simply cannot foresee what all the consequences of this are going to be. I have an eight-year-old son who every once in a while wants to know where children can get bullet-proof vests.

  “I don’t think that we’ll see life in quite the same way that we did before.

  “The other thing that the family would like to express is just the impact it’s had on things like the homeplace itself. The residence on Valley Road was the family homeplace, and it was so full of good memories…and for economic reasons and emotional ones, we simply won’t have that place anymore.

  “The family feels that what we’ve lost is an awful lot to lose. At least at this point, we can’t foresee a time when we’ll be free of all this.”

  Medford called Ian to the stand and led him gently through his association with Fritz and his involvement in the murders.

  “That Saturday night in Winston-Salem, did you believe that you were on a mission for the United States government?” Medford asked.

  “I did.”

  “Was there any doubt in your mind about it?”

  “There was no doubt at that time.”

  Ian
went on to explain that doubt did not surface until Gentry and Sturgill came to Lexington to ask about his activities that night. He had been uncomfortable having to lie, he said, because of his school’s honor code, but thought he had to for national security reasons. But when the officers began pointing out discrepancies, he realized that he could not stick with his story.

  “It struck me that something was just very wrong,” he said. “It didn’t make a lot of sense. I figured the best thing I could do was tell them the truth and do whatever they wanted me to do.”

  He told of assisting the officers in trying to find evidence the following day, of their asking him to come to Winston-Salem to try to trap Fritz.

  “Were you willing to do so?” Medford asked.

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Why?”

  Ian took a long pause. “Because,” he said, beginning to sob, “I had realized that something was terribly wrong and I wanted to attempt to right that wrong as much as I could.”

  “Were you frightened to get in the car with Fritz?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Now, Ian, sitting there right now, do you have any regrets for having cooperated with the police?”

  “No,” Ian said, crying again. “I have no regrets at all. I was glad to be able to help.”

  Tisdale evoked laughter when he asked Ian about his grades. Ian said he got a D on the final exam with which Fritz had helped him. The course was medical ethics.

  Tisdale asked only a few questions. Among them was this: “Going back to May of this year, did you think it was legal for somebody to be killed even by the CIA?”

  “That was a point I had to wrestle with,” Ian said. “It is an odious thing, but I figured if by my actions that I could prevent even an iota of suffering from those who might possibly become hooked on drugs as a result of what I believed to be the situation that Fritz told me about, then I thought and I sincerely believe that it was worth the stain upon myself.”

  The answer left the impression that Ian still believed his actions were right, causing Medford to wince. When Tisdale passed the witness, Medford sought to clarify the point.

  “In response to the district attorney’s question about whether you thought killing a drug dealer was legal, let me ask you, you replied as you saw it, you felt it was. Was that because you felt you were working for the United States government?”

  “Yes, I would not have attempted to do that on my own.”

  Medford submitted the results of a polygraph test showing that Ian was telling the truth about his role in the murders, and his associate Jack Floyd, who had also worked on the case, called Norwood Robinson as a character witness.

  Robinson, a prominent Reidsville lawyer, lived next door to Ian’s family on Huntsdale Road. He had known the family for thirty years and had first met Ian when Ian came to visit his grandmother as a small child. When he first came to Reidsville, Robinson worked with James Sharp, and he knew all the Sharps. Later, he worked with Sandy Sands, Susie’s attorney. He was a friend of Bob and Florence Newsom and was well acquainted with the Klenners. He had known Fritz from babyhood.

  He was shocked, he said, when Ian’s father told him that Ian was involved in the murders and wanted to talk to him. Ian’s father wanted him to defend Ian, but he could not because of his associations with the families involved. Nevertheless, he offered Ian his counsel on “two or three” occasions.

  “Ian cried about it,” he said. “In fact, he told me at one point that when the enormity of the situation hit him that if he’d had the .45 he would have killed himself, he would have committed suicide, and he broke down and cried, said it just absolutely got to him.

  “I was concerned that he might even try to do that at that time. He was very much upset about it. I told his stepfather about what he did tell me, but Ian assured me he was not going to do anything like that. I talked to him and told him that would not solve anything.”

  “Do you know Ian Perkins’s reputation for character in the community?” Floyd asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s good.”

  “Yeah,” somebody cracked in the press room, “just don’t let him mistake you for a drug dealer.”

  “What you’ve heard here today,” Medford said in his closing arguments, “is an absolute tragedy from all aspects of it. In all of this bizarre happening, it’s clear that the person behind it was Fritz Klenner, the person who sucked Ian Perkins into believing through all sorts of subtle means that he, Fritz Klenner, was working for the CIA, was doing a job for his government, and when he found out about Ian Perkins’s background, it looks like to me that he laid a trap for him starting in November and going on through into May.

  “There is no excuse for the absolute utter naïveté of this young man, but I think when he accompanied Fritz to Winston-Salem, he thought he was not doing anything wrong…He thought he was doing something for his country.

  “Your honor, I confess to you, when I heard the initial outline of the story, I said, This just can’t be right. The more I heard and the more I got to understand Ian, the more I came to see how something that on its surface is totally bizarre, how Ian could believe it.

  “Your honor, I realize that this is a very difficult decision, but I want to emphasize from the bottom of my heart, I do not think that an active sentence for this young man would serve any useful purpose.”

  Jack Floyd spoke of punishment in his closing remarks. “Insofar as we can be punished in this world, I submit to you that this young man has undergone it. He’s suffering as he sits here now.

  “He put his life on the line; he sat on a bomb to try to help the authorities get evidence to bring Fritz Klenner to justice. He will continue to suffer no matter what your honor may adjudge today.

  “He has demonstrated throughout his life that he is committed to his God and his country. He thought he was serving his country when he got pulled into this thing. He was set up beautifully to do as Fritz Klenner wanted him to do. He is probably as vulnerable as they come. Active time, your honor, may complete the ruin of this young man that Klenner started.”

  “Insofar as Mr. Perkins is concerned,” intoned the judge, “I cannot believe, nor can the law be construed to allow any individual to share in a plan where a person is to be executed without trial, without an opportunity to defend himself, or herself, without a determination of that person’s guilt.”

  He went on to quote a North Carolina Supreme Court decision in another case. “‘If we take our eyes from the law and give our attention only to consequences, or if we stop to consider who is morally right or wrong without regard to right or wrong as judicially ascertained, we will soon have a government not of law but without law, and the lawlessness which is sought to be avoided will follow as an inevitable result.’”

  The judge noted Ian’s immaturity. “But ignorance of the law has been described as no excuse. Does then naïveté or gullibility present a mitigating factor? There is no evidence of threat. There is no evidence of duress. There is evidence that the role of this person was a minor role…”

  Ian had risked his life to assist the officers, Washington pointed out. “From that standpoint then it could be said that he voluntarily acknowledged his wrong at an early stage of the criminal investigation…

  “Mr. Perkins, stand up, please, sir.”

  Ian rose, trembling.

  “This court and the law give to you the right to make the last statement to the court before judgment is pronounced. Do you have anything else you’d like to say?”

  “Your honor,” Ian said, struggling to hold back tears as he spoke with hesitation, “I can’t take away the pain that the Newsoms suffer, nor do I blame them for what they feel. They have every right.” He paused, sniffling. “Nor can I expect myself to not share some of the pain that they suffer. But my only desire is”—his voice broke—“to see justice done.”

  He dabbed at his tears.

  “Take your ti
me,” the judge said.

  “That’s all, your honor.”

  With that, Washington sentenced Ian to six years, suspended on grounds that he serve a four-month active sentence, remain on probation five years, and pay a $3,000 fine. Medford asked for a five-day delay in having Ian report to jail, and it was granted.

  Ian’s family was surprised that he got an active sentence, although his attorneys were not unhappy with it. Members of the Newsom family, however, thought the sentence too lenient.

  “He was kind of pitiful,” Frances Miller said much later of Ian. “He was a nerd to be that gullible. People have to be responsible for their own actions, though I just didn’t feel it was enough punishment.”

  Before the year was out, noted Nancy Dunn, Frances’s daughter, Ian would be free to start his life anew.

  “We’d like to start new lives, too, but we can’t,” she said. “Why should he?”

  47

  At the close of Ian’s trial, reporters swarmed around the district attorney, asking why the third tape hadn’t been played. On that tape Ian asked Fritz whether he’d murdered the Newsoms and Fritz claimed he was being set up. Fritz hinted at suicide and told Ian that he had things to do and wouldn’t see him again. But only the police and attorneys knew what was on the tape, and none had made any of the contents public. Was there something that the police wanted to keep hidden? Nothing that he knew about, Tisdale responded. He had not played the third tape, he said, for the simple reason that after listening to two tapes, the judge indicated that he didn’t care to hear the third.

  Tisdale said he wanted the tape made public, and told reporters to call SBI agent J. W. Bryant, who would play it for them. But Bryant said no on orders from SBI Deputy Director Harold Elliott, who said the tape would not be released without a court order. Apprised of this, Tisdale said he would get the tape and play it for reporters, but the SBI denied it even to him.

  The following day, the Greensboro News & Record filed a motion seeking a court order releasing the tape, but later dropped it after the SBI’s feisty director, Robert Morgan, told the paper’s editors that he would fight to the Supreme Court if necessary and the paper’s lawyers advised that the SBI likely would win.