North Carolina law required the SBI to keep all investigative records secret, but custom allowed top officials to release as much information as they deemed appropriate.
Usually any information that made the agency look good was released. All else was kept secret.
Because some information deemed inappropriate for public purview had been leaked to reporters and unfriendly politicians, the SBI had become almost obsessed with secrecy.
Although primarily an assistance agency for local police, the SBI wouldn’t even provide copies of investigative reports to those it assisted. In some instances, it was resentful of supplying documents to district attorneys. Agents who slipped copies of reports to fellow law enforcement officers knew that they did so in the face of certain dismissal and criminal charges. Agents knew, too, that they spoke to reporters at the risk of their careers, prompting most to remain mum.
Critics suspected that the real reasons for the strict secrecy were to allow the SBI to cover ineptitude and inaction and to use its considerable power against political enemies of the director and attorney general as well as perceived enemies of the state and big business (the SBI had been criticized, for example, for infiltrating and monitoring peaceful anti-nuclear-power groups while bothering little to keep tabs on heavily armed and violent racist and right-wing commando groups). The SBI was susceptible to political use because it answered only to the elected attorney general and was without review from the governor or effective legislative control. The press found penetrating the SBI’s operations difficult and rarely attempted it with success.
Started in 1938 with only a dozen agents, the SBI had remained small until Robert Morgan was elected attorney general in 1968. A former state senator who entered statewide politics as campaign manager for a segregationist candidate for governor, Morgan transformed the SBI from an agency with only 70 employees and a budget of less than $700,000 into one with 270 employees and a $4 million budget. He reveled in being called the “father of the modern SBI” and presided over it for six years before being elected to the U.S. Senate.
Although his single term in Washington was without notable achievement, Morgan seemed a likely candidate for reelection in 1980. His opponent was an obscure, right-wing, wheelchair-bound college professor, John East, the candidate of the National Congressional Club, which raised millions to finance the campaigns of North Carolina’s radical Senator Jesse Helms and other arch conservatives. Morgan had been declared the most conservative Democrat in the Senate by the American Conservative Union, and Ralph Nader had labeled him a “corporate tout,” but with the Congressional Club’s help, East mounted a campaign of deceptive TV commercials that painted Morgan liberal and led to his defeat.
“They were saying things like ‘Morgan’s for killing babies’ or ‘Morgan’s soft on Commies,’” Morgan later complained to a reporter. “It left me with bitter feelings.”
Morgan practiced law and lobbied the legislature after his loss. He was considering a return to politics when Lacy Thornburg was elected attorney general in 1984. Thornburg succeeded Rufus Edmisten, who gave up the attorney general’s office in an unsuccessful bid for the governorship. During his tenure, Edmisten, who gained fame as Sam Ervin’s assistant in the Watergate hearings, had made brazen political use of the SBI. By the time Thornburg was elected, the SBI had burgeoned into a powerful bureaucracy of more than 500 employees with a budget of more than $16 million, and Thornburg, a former legislator and superior court judge, took office promising to free the agency from politics. To do that, he appointed an old friend, Robert Morgan, as SBI director.
That a politician should be charged with eliminating politics from the state police seemed high irony, especially a politician of Morgan’s disposition. A short, banty-rooster-like man, Morgan harbored a peevish temper that was almost legendary. As a state senator, he once threatened to punch a fellow legislator who joked about his stature. As a U.S. senator, he angrily disputed constituents who disagreed with him.
“If somebody says no to him, he’s going to stand up and scream and stomp his feet,” a friend once told a reporter.
“If he gets peeved at you, he’s a real mean person,” an aide said.
“There will be no personal or partisan political roles in the SBI so long as I am associated with it,” Morgan said at his swearing-in ceremony. “I come to this assignment, to this opportunity, with but one thought in mind, and that is to give the people of North Carolina the most effective law enforcement possible.”
Now reporters wondered if politics might be the reason the SBI was keeping the Newsom murder investigation so secret. From the beginning, the SBI had released only the results of the autopsies, which were public records anyway. What had been done to determine whether Susie had anything to do with the murders of her parents and grandmother? Why wasn’t the attempt to arrest Fritz made before he got back to the apartment? Had any effort been made to find out whether Fritz or Susie had poisoned and shot the children? Did hand wipings taken from Fritz and Susie by the medical examiners reveal whether Susie had fired a weapon? What kind of bomb had been in the Blazer? All these questions and many more went unanswered. What purpose was served by keeping such information secret when the case was effectively closed and no trial could be jeopardized by release of the information? The SBI wouldn’t say.
Reports circulated that both Morgan and Thornburg had taken an unusual interest in the investigation, with Morgan closely monitoring events on the day of the shootout and explosion. Added to this, the SBI’s refusal to allow the third tape to be heard publicly raised several questions. Was the SBI trying to hide something? Was somebody trying to protect former Chief Justice Sharp and her family from embarrassment? Was the SBI trying to cover a bungled operation? Had the agent in charge acted with proper caution in trying to arrest Fritz, considering that the boys in the Blazer were essentially hostages? Should officers have fired at the Blazer knowing the boys were inside? Was the SBI fearful of a lawsuit from Tom Lynch?
Six days after Ian’s trial, the Greensboro News & Record revealed that the SBI had been warned that Fritz would not be taken alive and that methods used by some officers to stop him—“John Wayne tactics,” veteran officers called them—endangered police and bystanders.
More significantly the paper reported that the SBI had an earlier file on Fritz, that Sam Phillips and John Forest had told an SBI agent four years earlier that Fritz was “a dangerous psychopath,” who was practicing medicine without a license, but nothing had been done about it.
Surely, even a perfunctory investigation would have revealed that Fritz was posing as a doctor, treating patients and passing out prescription drugs. The unasked question in the story was clear: Had the SBI declined to act against Fritz because it learned that he was the nephew of the recently retired chief justice of the state supreme court, a greatly admired figure in state political circles?
“It was never brought to my attention,” said Rufus Edmisten, attorney general at the time the report was made. “I wish it had been.”
Justice Sharp said she’d never been told that her nephew had been reported to the SBI.
“If the SBI knew that and didn’t do anything about it, I think that was reprehensible,” she said.
Robert Morgan reacted angrily to the story, calling it “Monday morning quarterbacking.” Of the attempt to arrest Fritz, he said: “I can think of a hundred scenarios of how it might have been handled differently, but I’m not sure the results would have been different. We did the best we could under the circumstances.”
He called his agents’ handling of the case “commendable.”
Morgan acknowledged that Fritz had been reported to the SBI four years earlier. Ignoring that the point of the report was that Fritz was practicing medicine without a license, he noted that the SBI regularly gets allegations about dangerous people and that being a “dangerous psychopath” is no grounds for arrest.
“Apparently a lot of people in the Greensboro area who knew him
didn’t think he was a psychopath,” Morgan said. “There were a lot of people who thought he was all right.”
Despite Morgan’s close involvement in the investigation and his strongly stated opinions about it, Attorney General Thornburg appointed him to conduct an inquiry into his agency’s handling of the case.
Morgan’s report was ready ten days later, on August 15, and he and Thornburg appeared at a press conference at SBI headquarters in Raleigh to reveal it. Thornburg spoke first, but only briefly. He said he was satisfied that the case had been handled in a “competent and commendable manner.” He went on to especially commend Ed Hunt, the SBI district supervisor who had commanded the operation to arrest Fritz. Hunt was then recovering from wounds he had suffered a few weeks earlier, when he was shot through the neck in a police standoff with a man who had killed his employer.
Morgan, who was himself recovering from a recent operation to repair nerve damage from tumor surgery, took the podium to offer his twenty-three-page report. He was flanked by huge charts showing the position of police vehicles at different points in the chase as well as a huge montage of aerial photographs showing the 12.1-mile route from Susie’s apartment to the spot where the Blazer exploded.
Acknowledging that he had been closely involved in the investigation from the beginning, including almost hourly briefings on June 3, the day of the arrest attempt, Morgan gave a version of events that at some points varied widely with descriptions offered by officers and eyewitnesses.
Fritz had been under surveillance “throughout all of Monday,” he said, when in fact it had begun only shortly before noon; otherwise, officers would not have been surprised when the boys appeared, for they thought the boys were in school. He emphatically denied that the SBI had been warned in advance that Fritz wouldn’t be taken alive and would “come out shooting,” although District Attorney Tisdale said so in print, and both Sam Phillips and John Forrest claimed they had told the same thing to SBI agents who called them beforehand.
Morgan further denied that “John Wayne tactics” had been used to stop Fritz. At the intersection where the first shooting erupted, he placed the blue Mustang driven by Officer Spainhour alongside the Blazer instead of blocking it from the front, where officers in the car and eyewitnesses placed it. The chart Morgan used to show the placement of cars at the intersection didn’t show the civilian cars that had played a crucial part in the situation.
The actions of officers at the intersection were “reasonable,” Morgan concluded.
“Knowing what is now known, and after reflecting on what did occur, one might speculate that some other approach should have been made,” he said. “But that was a judgmental decision that had to be made under extreme time constraints and very tense conditions. The several officers involved had no opportunity to call ‘time out’ and plan another strategy.”
That officer Dennis was left shot at the scene was “not accurate,” Morgan said, although all cars involved in the operation sped off in pursuit of Fritz, according to Dennis and other witnesses. Questioned later, Morgan acknowledged that he had not talked to Dennis during his investigation.
In summary, Morgan found the actions of the officers not only faultless but laudable, although he did recognize that a problem in communications existed, which under later questioning he acknowledged “could have been disastrous.”
Asked why the officers tried to stop Fritz knowing that the children were in the Blazer, Morgan said that they had information that Fritz cared very much for the boys and “would do nothing” to hurt them.
About the file on Fritz, Morgan said that it had been kept in the intelligence files of the Bureau’s Special Operations Division. The file was submitted by agent Mike Kelly on July 13, 1981, Morgan said, which was two and a half months after Sam Phillips had told Kelly about Fritz.
Referring to Phillips as a “confidential informant,” Morgan called him a member of a “survivalist group” to which he said Fritz also belonged. He said that Fritz had talked the informant’s wife into leaving him. “The informant’s wife had left him and taken the children, and they all were living with Klenner in his apartment at that time,” Morgan said, although in fact Cynthia Phillips never left her home and at no time did Fritz live there.
Morgan went on to list the contents of the bag of medical paraphernalia and prescription drugs that Sam Phillips had turned over to Kelly. The drugs included an antibiotic, a muscle relaxant, plus Darvon and Dexamyl, both controlled substances.
“The possession of six Darvon and one Dexamyl tablet was not sufficient to indicate that an individual was selling drugs,” Morgan said.
Kelly, he said, supported by Assistant Director Cuyler Windham and Drug Supervisor Charlie Overton, determined that the contents of the bag were not a “drug dealer stash.”
While Morgan was making it appear that Phillips reported Fritz for dealing drugs, the intelligence report submitted by Kelly, which Morgan refused to release, made it clear that Phillips only wanted Fritz investigated for practicing medicine without a license.
“Klenner was introduced to everyone in the group as a medical student at Duke University,” Kelly wrote. “From that point, Klenner began treating group members for various medical problems. The CI [confidential informant] subsequently learned that Klenner’s father was in fact a practicing physician in Reidsville, N.C., who mailed checks to his son for large amounts. Klenner, Jr. was supposed to be paying for his education with the money from his father.
“The CI advised that Klenner, Jr. had treated his two sons and his wife, including giving them oral medication and an injection on occasion. It was believed that Klenner was getting the medicine from his father with his dad’s knowledge. Group members eventually found out that Klenner was not in medical school, and in fact did not work or go to any school. Most of the money from his father was being used to buy weapons, which most group members possessed several of.
“The CI said Klenner was a very paranoid person, and usually carried several weapons with him along with his black medical bag. He also said he had a bag of various drugs obtained form [sic] Klenner that he would give to Writer if it would help in an investigation of Klenner.”
Morgan said that Kelly had investigated the matter by making routine checks of the apartment complex where Fritz lived, by checking with the Durham police vice squad, which said it had no information on him, and by asking agent Fred Tucker in the Greensboro office to check around Reidsville for information that might be helpful about Fritz or his father.
“Tucker reported back that there was nothing unusual about Dr. Klenner or his son,” Morgan said.
Morgan went on to say that in his own investigation following the newspaper report, he had gone to Rockingham County and talked with Sheriff Bobby Vernon about the Klenners. “He said that he knew that the family was a prominent family in the area and that to his knowledge, neither Klenner or anyone in the family had ever been involved in any kind of illegal or suspicious activities and that they all enjoyed the finest reputation.”
Morgan’s conclusions were that the report about Fritz had been handled appropriately and that “the possession of the six Darvon and one Dexamyl did not indicate a ‘drug dealer stash’ or give cause for further proceedings.”
Questioned persistently about details of the case after finishing his report, Morgan grew angry and abruptly shut down the press conference.
He got angry again the following day, when he read the Winston-Salem Journal’s report of his findings. The story noted that Morgan still declined to release the tape of the third conversation between Fritz and Ian. It quoted District Attorney Tisdale as saying that even he still had been unable to get a copy of the tape. “I’ve been getting the runaround,” Tisdale said.
In a fit of pique, Morgan fired off a letter to Tisdale.
He quoted law and said that the attorney general as well as himself had decided that the tape shouldn’t be released and that Tisdale’s stand was “a specific affront” to both
that also eroded public confidence in law enforcement. Nevertheless, he would provide the tape if Tisdale demanded it, he said, adding that if Tisdale played it for reporters, “I think you will have violated the law.”
In all of his years as a prosecutor, Tisdale had never known an SBI director to get involved in an individual case, and he wondered why Morgan was so wrapped up in this one. He also wondered why Morgan had come to Winston-Salem during his investigation and not bothered to call him. Now he wondered who Morgan thought he was.
He composed a three-page letter to the attorney general to tell him that he didn’t appreciate Morgan’s letter or his attitude.
“It is not appropriate for the director, who is, after all, a police officer, to instruct me as to what the law is,” Tisdale wrote. “I believe the director is way out of line both in the tone of his letter and in issuing a subtle threat to me.”
He requested the tape and said he intended to play it for reporters unless Thornburg asked that he not.
Thornburg responded with a conciliatory letter saying that he hadn’t taken affront at Tisdale’s actions and that he hadn’t seen Morgan’s letter before it was mailed, nor had Morgan discussed it with him. He made it clear, however, that he didn’t want the tape made public.
“Our concern goes to the much broader problem of protecting sensitive information in a variety of cases. The tape, in this instance, could be considered innocuous. The release, though, could add to the difficulties we are already experiencing.”
Tisdale dropped his request for the tape, although he still thought it should be made public.
“I would have pushed the thing further,” he said later, “except for my relationship with Ed Hunt. I wasn’t going to put him in the middle.”
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