The contents of the tape were never made public by the SBI, nor did the agency reveal any more information about the Newsom murder investigation. Letting the public know whether Susie played any role in the murders of her parents and grandmother, or whether she took a hand in the killing of her children, clearly was of no interest to North Carolina’s top police organization.
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Dan Davidson blamed himself for not becoming more suspicious of Susie early in his investigation. Yet, he had to ask, what did he have to go on? Gossip from Delores’s friends that she and Susie didn’t get along well? That was about it. Hell, half the mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law he’d ever encountered didn’t get along, but that was no reason for murder. Not even Tom had thought Susie capable of the murders when Davidson asked about the possibility, and if anybody should have been suspicious, surely it was Tom.
“Who’s going to think some damn daughter-in-law over children?” Davidson grumbled to fellow detectives.
Too, it was not as if he had let Susie escape investigation. On the day of Delores’s and Janie’s funeral, when suspicion was still directed toward Tom, Detective Tom Swinney had been assigned to call Susie and interview her. She told him she had no idea who might want to kill Delores and Janie. Swinney reported back to Davidson that she said Tom was very close to his mother and sister and she thought him incapable of killing them. She described Delores as “overbearing” and “very demanding of her family.”
In August, Davidson had run an intelligence check on Susie with North Carolina authorities, which produced nothing to arouse suspicions toward her.
Later, after Tom had been eliminated as a suspect, Davidson had included reinterviewing Susie on a list of things that needed to be done, but not until two days after Christmas did Detective Sherman Childers call the Greensboro Police Department and ask if a detective could question Susie. Sergeant Furman Melton was assigned the task, and Childers filled him in about the case. Two hours later, Melton called back.
“Sgt. Melton advised he interviewed Susan Sharp, the ex-wife of Thomas Lynch,” Childers wrote in his report. “Sgt. Melton stated she didn’t know anything about the murders or have any idea who would commit such a crime. Sgt. Melton advised he doesn’t believe Susan Sharp had anything to do with the homicide and she does have a good reputation in the community.”
Now Davidson knew that, months before this interview, Susie had been telling family and friends that Tom had had his mother and sister killed by the Mafia so he could inherit money to pay off gambling debts. Yet when two detectives showed up to question her about the murders, she made no mention of any of that.
This was just one more reason to make Davidson think that Susie had directed the executions of Delores and Janie. And as soon as he and his two wounded detectives had returned to Kentucky after the distressing events of June 3, Davidson set out to do what North Carolina authorities had failed to accomplish and now showed no interest in doing: proving that Susie had had a hand in murder.
That Susie could have plotted or committed murder was something that her brother, her aunts Susie and Louise, her lawyers and close friends could not fathom and refused to believe. Fritz had gone to so much trouble to fool Susie about being a doctor and a CIA agent, as well as so many other things, that they were convinced that he had fooled her about the murders, too. He had killed Delores and Janie, they figured, not only to stop Delores from encouraging Tom’s visitation and custody notions but also to instill fear in Susie, to give him control over her and make her dependent on him for protection. The Mafia story was solely the product of Fritz’s troubled mind, they were certain, and Susie’s irrational actions were evidence of the effectiveness of it. Those who knew her best had no doubt that Susie sincerely believed the Mafia had killed Delores and Janie, just as they had no doubt of the authenticity of her fear that the Mafia was after her and the boys.
Sandy Sands, who had seen that fear close up when Susie brought the boys’ toy animals to show him how their throats had been slit, could not accept that she had been pretending. Later, it was clear to him that it was Fritz who had slit the toys’ throats (the slits were almost identical to the one he inflicted on Florence) and made the “two down and two to go” call that had so frightened and intimidated Susie. Why would he have done that except to build her fear and allow him to continue to manipulate her?
The fake bombs that Fritz had planted and other supposed attempts on his and Susie’s lives were, to Susie’s defenders, further evidence of Fritz’s determination to control her with fear. The slayings of Bob, Florence, and Nanna had been carried out by Fritz, they thought, for several reasons: to stop the visitation hearing, to punish Florence for her opposition to Susie’s relationship with Fritz, to wreak retribution on Bob for being a “traitor” to his daughter by agreeing to testify for Tom, to further convince Susie that the Mafia was closing in on her, and perhaps to make Susie the beneficiary of her considerable inheritance.
Some of Susie’s defenders thought that with Susie nearing completion of her degree and talking of starting a career in some faroff place, Fritz feared losing her and the boys and that only by pulling her deeper and deeper into his deadly games could he hold onto her.
“Fritz created a lot of self-fulfilling prophecies for Susie,” Rob said. “‘Tom will have his family wiped out. Tom will have your parents killed.’ Everything Fritz was telling her was coming true.”
Susie’s aunt Frances and cousin Nancy were among those who did not subscribe to the theory that Susie was an innocent, duped and manipulated by her devious cousin. She was too intelligent for that, they thought. If she hadn’t been involved, they were sure that she was smart enough to become suspicious of Fritz and begin asking questions. Her irrational behavior of recent years, her lack of grief about the deaths of her parents and grandmother, her strange actions after the murders, all pointed to her involvement.
“Anybody who could take their children away from their grandparents and not let them see them must’ve hated them so bad that she could’ve had something to do with it,” Nancy recalled thinking.
“I’m not totally, absolutely sure of how deeply she was involved in the killing,” Frances said. “I think she was deeply involved in this game they played.”
Frances and Nancy searched for reasons to believe Susie was not a participant but kept coming up with evidence that indicated otherwise. Why had she lied to the SBI agent who called to ask Fritz to come for an interview on the last day of their lives if not to protect Fritz? Surely after the police had come back to interview Fritz, and after Ian’s frantic calls to the apartment, she had to realize that the police were now suspicious of Fritz. Had Fritz told her nothing about his interview and his meetings with Ian? Was her curiosity not aroused enough to ask?
At Ian’s trial, Frances and Nancy heard something during the playing of the tapes that led them to think Fritz must have told Susie at least some of what went on in his meetings with Ian. On the Sunday of Fritz’s and Ian’s second meeting, Ian had told Fritz about the police taking him to Nanna’s house, where he saw the car Fritz was driving on the night of the murders. Fritz had asked how many cars were at the house. Ian said two. “Unless Rob has picked the car up, there should have been three cars,” Fritz said. Actually, Rob had gone to Winston-Salem the day before and driven his father’s car back home, but neither Susie nor Fritz knew that.
At 5:30 P.M. that Sunday, Susie had driven past her parents’ house after Rob and Alice had walked to the home of a neighbor for supper. Chris Hunt, Annette’s son, saw Susie and waved her to a stop. He had locked himself out of the house, and he talked to her about his problem. Frances and Nancy had wondered why Susie would come by the house with no apparent intention to stop. Now they saw a reason. Fritz must have sent her to see if Bob’s car was at the house so he would know whether Ian had been telling the truth. If Fritz had done so, wouldn’t he have had to explain why to Susie?
Frances and Nancy also had many unanswered que
stions about the events leading up to the deaths of Fritz, Susie, and the boys. Was Susie aware of the notes Fritz left behind? Was it for Susie’s benefit that Fritz wrote the note in which he denied killing anybody and pictured himself a victim of a frame-up? Or was it for his mother’s sake? For both? Fritz had been last to leave the apartment. Did he secretly write the notes and leave them without Susie’s knowledge? Clearly, the notes, which were neither released by authorities nor made available to the families, showed that Fritz knew that he would never be returning to the apartment. Did Susie know that? Why had she kept the boys out of school that day if she were not anticipating that they might have to flee forever? But if she thought they were never to return, would she have taken her schoolwork? Where could they have been headed when they left the apartment so hurriedly, apparently unaware that it was surrounded by police?
Susie’s defenders thought that Fritz had convinced Susie that the Mafia was closing in on them when they fled. They thought Susie believed that the police officers who first tried to stop them were hit men sent by Tom. After all, the officers were in unmarked cars and plain clothes.
But once Susie saw a uniformed officer and watched Fritz shoot him, didn’t she know better? Why didn’t she do something then to stop Fritz? If she had killed him, she could have claimed she’d been duped all along and nobody would have been able to prove otherwise. She would have emerged a hero. Yet, she remained at his side as he continued on his disastrous course, and she stayed in the Blazer when he stopped in the middle of the road and got out to fire at officers. Couldn’t she have made some effort to flee with the boys at one of those moments? Couldn’t she have picked up one of the many weapons in the Blazer and shot Fritz or forced him to surrender? That she didn’t indicated complicity.
Even if Susie were completely innocent, did she realize when the shooting began that her mere association with Fritz would cause her to lose the boys, that the courts surely would take custody from her, and did she then decide that without the boys, life was not worth living? Or was she so deeply involved in the murders that she had made a suicide pact with Fritz that included the boys should the arrest of either her or Fritz become imminent? Were the notes left by Fritz proof of their suicidal intentions? Did the scapulars Susie and the boys were wearing add to that proof?
The autopsy showed that Susie had been alive and conscious when the bomb went off, which meant that she had to be aware of the killing of her children. Did she participate in it? Did Fritz do it against her wishes, as her defenders wanted to believe? Did he get the boys to take the cyanide by telling them it was something else, vitamins perhaps? Were her children shot so that Susie didn’t have to watch the violent death throes produced by the poison? Did she shoot them, or did Fritz? Could Fritz have performed the contortions necessary to shoot the boys in the back of the Blazer while driving and firing out the window at the sheriff’s deputies who had pulled in behind him with their blue lights flashing and their sirens wailing? If so, did Susie just sit calmly and watch?
Was Susie indeed a modern Medea, or just another innocent duped by Fritz?
With the SBI declining further investigation and refusing to make known any information it might have, that question seemed likely to go unanswered. But Frances and Nancy didn’t stop searching for the truth, and neither did Dan Davidson.
Like all other police officers involved in investigating the murders, Davidson believed that Susie had been a full participant from the beginning. He was certain that she had talked Fritz into killing Delores and had gone to Kentucky with him to do it. He believed she had directed Fritz to murder her parents, too. Janie and Nanna, he figured, were victims who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Davidson was also certain that Susie had killed her children to keep Tom from getting them. But he had no proof of that. In fact, he still had no solid evidence connecting either Fritz or Susie to the murders of Delores and Janie.
With his chief suspects dead, Davidson could have closed the books on the case, confident of their guilt. That was the usual procedure, but he didn’t want that. Neither did Bruce Hamilton, the commonwealth attorney for the 12th Judicial District of Kentucky.
Bruce Hamilton had been a prosecutor for twenty-five years, and he loved his work. At fifty-five, a shambling man whose suits always seemed too big and whose shirt-tail always seemed to be peeking from the back of his trousers, Hamilton had passions for guns and Harry Truman, whose portrait dominated his office. In some ways he had modeled himself after Truman. He was tough and outspoken and never shied from trouble or profanity.
“I’m a hard-nosed son of a bitch,” he liked to say, “and I don’t back up from nobody.”
Hamilton considered himself “a knight in shining armor” standing up for decent citizens. He particularly disliked slick, big-city defense lawyers who thought they could thwart justice by coming into his rural, small-town district to “run over the local police and the prosecutors and the victims,” and he took pride in sending them back with a message for others of their ilk: “They’re going to hit a concrete wall. We’re going to fight.”
Like most prosecutors, his sympathies lay with the police and victims, but that did not stop him from disagreeing with the officers who had to make his cases for him, nor did it keep them from sometimes feeling the sting of his invective.
Dan Davidson, whose area of jurisdiction included Hamilton’s district, sometimes disagreed with Hamilton about details of crimes and how to solve them, and now and then they found themselves locked in irresolvable dispute. Hamilton liked to involve himself in investigations of big cases, and Davidson dreaded his intrusion and quietly resented it. Hamilton had done that in the Lynch case, and he and Davidson had argued about the order of the shots and from where they had come.
But on one important point Hamilton and Davidson agreed. Hamilton was also convinced that Susie was behind the Lynch murders—“She was the link, the cause, and the motive,” he said later. “She had to be connected. Why would Klenner do it if not for Susie?”—and a week after the shoot-out and bomb blast in North Carolina, he was speaking out to reporters about it. He called Susie “the brains of the outfit.”
“She used Klenner like you would a broom—to sweep things out,” Hamilton declared, going on to say that he planned to take the case before a grand jury.
Davidson had called Hamilton several days earlier to tell him that he planned to continue the investigation and to ask if Hamilton could take the unusual step of taking the case to the grand jury when he had accumulated enough evidence.
Davidson wanted a grand jury declaration not only to assure the public that the murders had been solved and no killers were still at large but also to get a public record of Susie’s guilt, which he hoped to prove. Hamilton concurred. He usually took all homicides to a grand jury, and it made no difference that in this case the suspects could never be brought to trial. A grand jury could make a finding of responsibility and allow a clean closing of the case. But there was another reason that Hamilton agreed.
“PMA,” he later said with a little grin. “It protects my ass.”
Davidson began his renewed investigation by making a seven-state check of traffic records to see if Fritz or Susie had by chance received a ticket on their way to or from Kentucky in July of 1984. They hadn’t. He also sent officers to check the registration records of all motels and campgrounds in the Louisville area and along major highways leading to Oldham County from North Carolina. Officers took the names and addresses of anybody who had registered with a North Carolina address on the weekend of the murders and checked them out to make sure Fritz or Susie had not registered under a false name. The extensive check produced nothing.
When he returned from North Carolina, Davidson had brought with him the telephone records for the summer of 1984 for Susie’s apartment, Annie Hill Klenner’s house, and Dr. Klenner’s office. These offered more promise.
Long-distance calls were made from Susie’s phone nearly every day, and
they were made in great numbers. Davidson and his officers began calling every number and questioning whomever answered about Fritz and Susie. Many of the calls were to manufacturers and distributors of exotic weaponry who reported orders placed by Fritz. A call to a business named Military World in Tucker, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb, provided the information that Fritz had been there half a dozen times, that he bought lots of equipment—including flak jackets, bulletproof diapers, and gas masks—always paid with hundred-dollar bills, and tore up the receipts, saying he didn’t want his wife to know how much he was spending.
A call to Mebane, North Carolina, about twenty-five miles east of Greensboro, brought to the phone Everett Smith at Arrowhead Gulf station, who said he’d known Fritz for ten years, that Fritz had prescribed medicine for him, treated his mother, and confided to him that he was a CIA agent. Fritz had never mentioned Tom or the Newsoms, Smith said, but in the summer of 1984 Smith had put four new tires on Fritz’s Blazer. Fritz told him he was going on a long trip for the CIA.
A frequently called number in Winston-Salem produced the most intriguing results for Davidson. The number turned out to be that of McHargue’s Guns and Coins, where Fritz had told many secrets and bought and traded so many weapons over the years that the McHargues wouldn’t even attempt a guess at the number. Mike McHargue told Davidson of Fritz buying rifles for the boys and telling him that Tom was going to have all of them killed. He’d last seen Fritz four days before he was killed, when Fritz came in and bought a 308 automatic rifle. Davidson suspected that Fritz might have bought from the McHargues the military assault rifle that had been used to kill Delores and Janie. He had the bullet that had passed through Janie’s head, and it was in good enough condition that ballistics tests could prove from which weapon it had been fired. Davidson filed a request with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms for a record of all the weapons transactions between McHargue’s and Fritz.
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