May 20, 2025 • 38 mins
In this first of three parts, we look the troubled life of Susie Newsom Lynch. A story steeped in paranoia and deceit, it has everything you need from a southern gothic tale.
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This series is hosted by Mary Kay McBrayer. Check out more of her work at www.marykaymcbrayer.com.
This episode was written by Mary Kay McBrayer
Developed by Scott Waxman, Emma DeMuth, and Jacob Bronstein
Associate Producer is Leo Culp
Produced by Antonio Enriquez
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Executive Produced by Scott Waxman and Emma DeMuth
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion audio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
A note this episode contains mature content and quite graphic
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
I mean it, y'all this episode especially, please take care
and listening. Dolores Lynch lived in a two story, pink brick,
(00:40):
fourteen bedroom and four and a half bath country house
outside of Louisville, Kentucky. It was on four and a
half acres. She had lived there with her husband until
his death eight months ago. Now she lived there by herself,
except for when her Janie visited.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Every weekend up from university.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Janie was thirty nine, but she and her mother were close,
too close, some of her friends thought, and Janie's boyfriends
definitely thought so. None of them were good enough for Janie,
just like none of Dolores's son's girlfriends.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Were good enough for Tom.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Dolores's friends knew that the Lynches could afford help around
the house, but Delores mowed her own four acre lawn,
and when her longtime housekeeper and friend went up on
her rates, Delores let her go. She was the type
of person to clean behind the housekeeper anyway, Even though
(01:45):
she was rich, Delores didn't act like it. She had
grown up in the Great Depression, and it showed through
her frugality. She mashed old bars of soap together, and
she bought all her clothes secondhand.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
But she wasn't humble.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Dolores was vocally conservative and very judgmental. People liked her
adult children, Sweet Jane and all American Tom, and Delores
thought no one was good enough.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
For either of them.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Although she mothered some kids in her neighborhood, she made
enemies of others. She threatened to shoot a neighbor's dog
if it pooped on her lawn. Again, when it did,
she shot the dog, not fatally, but still she shot
her neighbor's dog. She also popped out of her front
hedges when a horseback rider happened to pass in front,
(02:39):
taking photos as if he was trespassing, which she wasn't.
Delores was also quite paranoid. Her security alarms were always set,
and when she left the house she took the phone
off the hook so no one could call to.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
See if she was home.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
In short, Dolores was the type to ask to see
the manager, and she was very resentful of her.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Husband when he was alive.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
It's probably part of what drove him to the alcoholism
that eventually ended his life. Dolores very seldom missed church.
On this day, July twenty second, nineteen eighty four, she
left the pew with her friend Marjorie, chit chatted with
her frenemies on the way to the car, and then
(03:27):
said she had to leave because Janie would be coming
home with their Sunday doughnuts soon. Her friend Susan called
that evening, and the next morning. She even called Tuesday
morning without reaching her. Susan didn't need anything in particular,
but she thought it odd when the phone rang and rang.
(03:49):
After work, Susan decided she would just drop by and
make sure Dolores was all right. She brought her dog
just to visit, but when Susan pulled in to the
long driveway, she saw all three family cars in the driveway,
and then when she topped the hill, she saw Dolores's
(04:09):
body lying at the garage door. Later, one of Janey's
ex boyfriends would tell police.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Dolores was a pain in the ass.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
She was the kind of person you'd invite to leave,
then take an aspirin and sit down to rest for
an hour or two. But you know, shooting her in
the head is a bit extreme. Welcome to the greatest
(04:53):
true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer. Today's
episode we're calling Family Betrayal the Susie Newsome Lynch Story.
It's the story of Susie Newsom Lynch and it has
everything you'd expect from a Southern Gothic tale. Aristocratic families,
(05:14):
old South, racism, paranoia, a feud, and of course murder.
I'll tell you all about it after this quick break.
(05:41):
Normally I try to empathize with pretty much all our characters,
especially the protagonists, but listeners, I need y'all to know
I can't stand any of these people. I'm clearly from
the South, and there's nothing more annoying about the South
than old money. Because the thing is there might really
ain't that old, because the South ain't really that old.
(06:04):
There's a kind of new money that's only a couple
generations old, too, like the kind that makes people not
know how to act with actual old money. There's the
dignity of the noblesse of Liege. It's the reason why
Lord Grantham on Downton Abbey isn't an asshole to his servants.
He's got nothing to prove he's rich and his family
(06:27):
probably has been rich since before Hadrian's Wall. But new money,
this type, it's.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
The most annoying.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
People wave it around like it's an indication of their goodness,
but without doing anything good with it.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Let me give you an example.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
In my hometown, there was a private school. Generally, when
you think about private schools, you'd think that the education
would be better, the teachers would have masters and doctorates,
and the curriculum would be so tight that everyone graduates
and everyone gets into top tier colleges.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But not this school.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
This school was actually inside a megachurch. There were no
honors or ap offerings, and grades were inflated. Actually, there
were no entrance exams or qualifications. You literally just bought
your way in into a lesser education. But among elitists,
(07:30):
I cannot abide this shit, and I really couldn't abide
the attitude that those kids thought they were better than
we lowly public school kids who graduated high school with
a year of college credits just because their parents had
money and they thought it was important to show that
they had money in that weird flex which made the
(07:50):
kids mostly insufferable. I mean, like you didn't earn that money.
Your daddy did put him on the phone. Also, no
one cares about your money, at least I don't. Maybe
other people with money care about whether you have money,
but the rest of us are busy. Granted, not all
the kids were evil or rotten, of course, and a
(08:11):
few of them went there instead of going to the
reform school. They got expelled to, which was an interesting dynamic,
But that was the general attitude, and anyone who came
out of there without their nose and the air was
kind of an anomaly. So that's the class of people
we're dealing with in this story.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And again, to be.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Fair, being well off does not necessarily make someone evil
or bad or wrong. It's the holier inou attitude because
of the money, not because of any sincere altruism that
makes these folks so gross to me. I don't like
any of them, not the victims, not the predators. But
(08:51):
I'm still going to try to be fair because they
do deserve that. I mentioned in the cold Open that
Dolores was resentful of her husband, Chuck, and that was
a gross understatement.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
She hated him.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Chuck had been a big deal at ge and because
he loved his work so much and it was a
good job. He had to relocate several times across the states.
They were originally from Pennsylvania, but they lived all over,
from New York to New Jersey, Washington, d c. To Maryland,
Chicago to Louisville. That's when he retired and Delores swore
(09:37):
she would never move again. She took every chance she
could to belittle her husband in front of her friends,
even cooking for him horrible combinations like green beans and
scrambled eggs. She often said I wish he'd die. When
her friend said, surely you don't mean that, Dolores doubled down.
(09:58):
Her maid, Helen said he never walked out the door,
that she didn't wish him dead. None of their friends
understood why they never divorced. One friend said he seemed
like a moral guy. I think he considered this was
his payback for the suffering he inflicted on Dolores. It
(10:18):
seems like Chuck felt he was atoning from making her
move so many times, a sort of she was miserable before,
so I'll be miserable now mentality. He started drinking to cope,
and then she called him a worthless drunk Chuck said
she's a good woman personally, I don't see it. She
(10:41):
may have been a moral person, but even the people
who knew her best said she was irritated by everything.
But by the time Chuck died, Dolores begrudgingly called the
police when she couldn't find his pulse as he lay
on the floor in front of the TV. She was
an empty nester, it is, until Janie moved back east.
(11:03):
Janie had already earned two degrees, and she'd been studying
dental work in Santa Monica, California for a while before
deciding to return to Kentucky. Janie was sweet and really pretty,
and she had no problems finding boyfriends, but her boyfriends
did have trouble appeasing her mother, and Dolores was overbearing.
(11:27):
Janie took it all in stride, but I have to
think it affected her somehow, since even though she'd been
engaged several times, she always begged off when it came
down to the real commitment. Such was the case with
her boyfriend Phil. They were very much in love at
the University of Louisville School of Dentistry, despite that she
(11:48):
was fourteen years older than he. Phil actually had thought
she was joking when she told him her age, but
she wasn't. After Phil had asked her to meet his parents,
Janie got spooped, at least I think she did. That's
why she didn't go on the trip to meet them. Instead.
Dolores's son, Tom, Jane's brother, was supposed to visit the
(12:11):
family in Kentucky in just a few days, and Janie
would be home for that. Tom Lynch had moved to
Albuquerque with his first wife in nineteen seventy. She was
two years older than he was when he proposed. After
he graduated, Tom was twenty two when they made the move,
and he started his dental practice in New Mexico. Since then,
(12:35):
his practice had been steadily growing, and he didn't mind
that in New Mexico no one cared about his pedigree.
Tom was actually in New Mexico just leaving work when
he learned the news. Officer Steve Nobles was the one
(13:02):
who responded to Susan's police call. He didn't notice anything
amiss at the Lynch house until he got out of
the car. That's when the smell hit him and he
saw the body laid out by the garage. Steve realized
he was exposed, and he took cover until his backup
(13:22):
arrived just a few minutes later. His first thought while
he waited was that the daughter might have killed her
mother and could still be in the house. Officer Steve
Swinney knew the Lynches, though, and he was familiar with
the house too. He'd investigated Chuck's death a few months earlier.
(13:43):
Now they both approached the body of his wife. She
lay on her left side. Jerry Bledsoe says in his book,
the top of her head and the left side of
her face were gone. The hot sun had blackened the
remains of her head, which squirmed with maggots and was
(14:04):
swarmed by flies and ants, the most grotesque sight those
police officers had ever seen, but they had to move on.
A third officer arrived. As they rounded the back of
the house, the officers saw a bullet hole in the
gutter drain at the end of the house. When they
(14:25):
slid open the unlocked storm door, two tiny, hungry dogs
yapped at them. They saw two drops of blood by
the counter, next to the telephone. The house was big,
but mismatched in decorps, and the officers crept down the hallway,
pushing open doors until they came to Janie's room. Her
(14:47):
purse and jewelry box had been dumped onto the bed.
Jannie lay face down in the sun room. She was barefoot,
and she had curlers in her hair. Them had been
driven into her skull by the second bullet. The first
was lodged in her right shoulder blade. The police continued
(15:09):
to secure the house, then they called in the mobile
evidence lab. They knew this would be a difficult case
to solve. It was two white women in a wealthy neighborhood,
days after the murder, and the trail had gone cold.
The state Police Department had to be called in. This
(15:29):
one was no match for Oldham County. It was just
an hour after the murders made the news in Louisville
when a volunteer minister at the Albuquerque Police Department came
to notify Tom Lynch. Tom was rushing to meet his wife, Kathy,
and his sons from his first marriage at the movies.
(15:51):
The chaplain said he had bad news. His mother and
sister had been killed. Tom assumed it was a car,
the chaplain said otherwise. Still in shock, Tom drove to
the movie theater to round up his family. His wife
was shocked. His eight year old Jim asked, well, Daddy,
(16:15):
who shot him? Oh? Tom didn't know what would make
a child ask that, but he was right, and they
didn't know who had killed them. Just one day before
he was scheduled to go see his mother in Louisville,
(16:36):
Tom touched down at the airport. The police met him
at the airport and they drove him to the station.
Tom looked devastated, but they still had to question him.
Detective Dan Davidson offered his condolences and then asked basic questions.
When was the last time they talked? Had she expressed
(16:57):
any fears? And after they got the preliminary questions out
of the way, the policeman said, doctor, to be quite
candid with you, I don't know if you realize this,
and Tom replied, I think I know what you're gonna say.
I'm the sole heir. I think you'd be negligent if
you didn't look at that possibility too. Tom agreed to
(17:20):
take a polygraph test. This is elimination, a detective said.
The detectives asked him about his financial condition. Tom said
that he'd been practicing for eight years and he made
about one hundred and twenty thousand a year. He had
some bills, a nice house, two cars, an ira, and
(17:41):
a little money in the bank. And then he added
that he paid five hundred dollars a month in child support.
After the polygraph, the detectives turned to one another and agreed.
Even though the polygraph proved inconclusive, Tom was tense and upset.
They didn't think that Tom Lynch did it, So who did?
(18:04):
We'll take a closer look after the break. Tom Lynch
(18:31):
met his first wife when he was in college at
wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina. When he
was a freshman. He was a basketball player, and they
struck up a conversation at the library. Susie Newsom had
transferred to this private school in her hometown of Winston
(18:51):
Salem from another small, expensive private girls' school, Queen's College.
She hadn't liked it much there because the girls were frivolous.
They were almost all wealthy, but they weren't what she
thought of as good families. She thought you didn't have
(19:11):
to be wealthy to be good. She felt there was
such a thing as listen to this shit genteel poverty?
Is that not the most condescending thing you've ever heard. Anyway,
Susie was drawn to Tom because he looked wholesome and
he was medically ambitious. She had always liked doctors, but
(19:34):
she hated hippies, war protesters, and civil rights activists. This
was nineteen sixty eight and she was in college, and
she strongly supported the war in Vietnam. She was also
a sorority sweetheart, which is a title that still makes
no damn sense to me. So when she met Dolores,
(19:57):
it didn't go great. It didn't go well at all.
They immediately disliked each other. Delores didn't like when someone
looked down on her origins. Susie was a privileged kid,
and she absolutely looked down on Dolores for her hard
scrabble upbringing. Tom didn't know of any actual conflict during
(20:19):
the meeting, but afterward, Susie told her family that Dolores
was quote overbearing and domineering, and Dolores told her friend
that Susie was quote snooty and pretentious.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And both of them were right.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
It's not that uncommon for there to be drama between
mother and daughter in law. Delores and Susie were both
bull headed about bossing Tom around. They didn't want to
get along. They both wanted to win. Obviously, Susie won,
(21:04):
daughters in law always do. At least she won Tom.
They got married in nineteen seventy, right after Tom's graduation.
Even though Dolores did everything she could to try to
dissuade him. She said she had a gut feeling that
made her dislike Susie, even after she had tried to
get close to her. I don't know what trying to
(21:27):
get close to her looked like, but it didn't work.
They moved to the University of Kentucky and Lexington to
complete dental school. Dolores tried to be friendly, but her
friendly looked like surprise.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Visits and doting on Tom.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
And I can't blame Susie for being annoyed that there
is absolutely no reason why anyone should drop by your
house unannounced. Ever, it is the most rude thing you
can do, vipecially when telephones exist and there are small
napping children involved, and soon there were. Susie had John
(22:09):
Wesley in nineteen seventy four and then James Thomas in
nineteen seventy six, and then they moved to New Mexico
for Tom to open his own dental practice.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Susie didn't like New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
More specifically, she didn't like that people there didn't already
know who she was, and they didn't respect her out
of habit At Christmas of nineteen seventy eight, Susie brought
the boys home to Winston Salem on her own. Tom
stayed behind with no explanation. While she was home, Susie
(22:48):
often complained about Dolores, but it wasn't just the normal
pest type complaints of her dropping in or being overbearing.
Susie said quote she's mean and evil. When she returned,
Susie said that it might be better for everyone if
she took the boys back home for good. Susie was
(23:11):
unhappy in Albuquerque and apparently unhappy in her marriage as well.
Tom resisted for a while he didn't want to lose
his sons. Susie favored Jim the younger boy big time.
She thought Jim was more like her. Really, he just
looked more like her. He was laid back and relaxed
(23:33):
like Tom. So John, the child who acted more like Susie,
sad and withdrawn, was the one who was punished more naturally.
He acted out this unfairness in tantrums and destroying his things.
But by the following spring of nineteen seventy nine, Jim
displayed behavioral concerns too. He put objects in his eyes,
(23:59):
and then one day Tom came home from work and
John was holding his arm in a weird way. As
soon as he took off the boy's shirt, he could
see the arm was broken. John said he fell off
the bed at his babysitter's home, but that was a lie.
The babysitter's husband worked nights and he slept all day.
(24:22):
They never played on the bed there, and both boys
had bedwetting problems, which is another sign of abuse, so
the sitter had palettes fixed for them on the floor
just in case. The babysitter said she saw injuries on
the boys all the time, like bruises and bloody noses.
(24:43):
One day, Jim showed up with red eyes, which not
unusual for him, and then she saw that Jim had
a big, mushy lump on the side of his head.
He didn't get to the doctor until Tom came home
from work and Tom saw the three year old's eyes
were starting to blacken. The doctors suspected something wasn't right,
(25:05):
especially after they diagnosed Jim with a mild concussion. The
nurses strongly suggested it might not have been an accident.
Both parents were pretty offended at the implied accusation, but
especially Susie. Nothing came of it. There were no further
(25:26):
investigations by child services. Susie and Tom separated soon after,
and while it was not hard for Tom to say
goodbye to Susie at this point, it was hard for
(25:47):
him to say goodbye to his two little boys. Susie
took them with her back to Winston Salem. In the divorce,
Tom got two weeks summer vacation. That wasn't enough. He
wanted more visitation, but Susie denied him that. I just
want to note he's not suing her for custody, not
(26:10):
even partial custody. Tom just wanted more visitation, like four
weeks instead of two, and not even necessarily all at
the same time. It wasn't a lot to ask, but
Susie wouldn't have it. Instead, she tried to keep the
boys away from Tom completely. She took them with her
(26:33):
to Taiwan for a year while she was studying Chinese.
At one point, Tom didn't see John and Jim for
two years. Not only is that some evil shit, but
it's completely unnecessary and the reason why Susie was keeping
the kids from him is even more disturbing. She thought
(26:54):
Tom was a drug dealer with a mafia connection. To recap,
Tom was a dentist. That's it. It might be just
my personal opinion, but it seems to me like there
might have been some jealousy at play. Tom had married
his dental hygienist, Kathy after he and Susie divorced, and
(27:17):
I say it might have been jealousy because John and
Jim really liked Kathy. When a child psychologist asked them
about it, they said they felt even more comfortable with
Kathy than their own dad, although they felt good around
him too. Remember, it was Kathy who had taken the
boys to the movies when Tom got the news that
(27:38):
his family had been murdered, So the boys happened to
be on that two week visitation with Tom when his
family died. He actually asked Susie to extend their visitation
(28:03):
just by a few days, but of course she declined
she was going camping. Tom thought that was weird. Susie
going camping, but he had other concerns.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
He was back in.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Louisville for the arrangements when he received a bouquet of
flowers from his former in laws, Susie's parents. Tom felt
like that opened a line of communication. So after a
few interactions, Tom asked Bob, that's his former father in law,
if he would be willing to testify in the custody hearing.
(28:39):
Bob agreed to do it.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Again.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Tom was just asking for more visitation, not full custody,
not even joint custody, just more visitation. It shouldn't have
been all that surprising that Bob agreed to testify on
Tom's behalf, but I imagine it felt pretty relieving to Tom. Besides,
Bob had noticed the kids were acting weird. Tom had
(29:06):
noticed it too. First was their appearance. They were so pale,
they had deep circles under their eyes, and the plaque
build up on their teeth was egregious, especially I'm guessing
to Tom as a dentist.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
But John and Jim.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Were also behaving weirdly. They talked mostly to each other,
they didn't say much about their mother, and they seemed
to check themselves when they.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Were about to speak about her.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Plus, over the course of the stay, each of them
had accidentally called Tom Papa a handful of times. And
if Bob had noticed the kids were acting weird, it
was nothing compared to how weird Susie was acting. I'll
tell you all about it after the break. When Susie
(30:13):
and Tom had divorced in nineteen seventy nine, Susie moved
back to Winston Salem, back in with her parents. She
wasn't feeling right. Susie chose to go to doctor Fred Klinner.
Fred was her uncle, and depending on whom you asked,
he was either a man treating patients at the end
(30:33):
of the line with cutting edge experimental vitamin treatments or
a complete crackpot mad scientist. If you want to know
my opinion on doctor Fred Klinner, well let me just
describe his practice for you. Firstly, his practice was on
the second floor above a drug store in an old
(30:54):
building in downtown Reidsville, up a steep wooden staircase. Plaster
crumbled from the rain stained walls. Doors led to separate
segregated waiting rooms in the nineteen eighties. In the waiting rooms,
the magazines were for gun aficionados, stuff like tracts from
(31:19):
the White Citizens' Councils, Christian Crusades, pamphlets about how integration
was a Communist plot, that FDR was a trader, and
how women's rights were sacrilegious. He was a first generation
American from Austria, and his whole family had been Nazi sympathizers,
(31:40):
claiming to date that Adolph Hitler was misunderstood on.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
This side of the pond.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
He was also a Civil War buff who claimed the
wrong side had won the war, and he spoke favorably
of the KKK. I'm not sure I personally would have
even made it up the staircase, let alone into the
hallway to wonder which waiting room I was supposed to enter,
since I'm not really black or white. But people with
(32:10):
progressed neurological disorders, people who had already been told by
multiple doctors that there was no hope for them, I
can imagine that they would overlook a lot on the
off chance of a miracle. It's actually really strange to
(32:38):
me how much educated people can overlook. Not only did
Susie go to Fred for treatment, but her family encouraged
it because they were family listeners, do y'all overlook this
kind of thing in favor of your family? I get
that to a degree, you have to, like not cause
a scene at Thanksgiving at a stupid political comment or whatever.
(33:02):
And I understand that a certain amount of loyalty in
like getting your roof replaced by your brother rather than
a rando, but only if they're good at their job, right,
or if it's very low stakes. But this didn't seem
low stakes. Fred was a doctor, but he was not
a neurologist. Actual neurological doctors almost always disagreed with Fred's diagnoses,
(33:27):
so his success rate was flawed because basically, it's easy
to cure someone of a disease they never had. So
when he diagnosed Susie with multiple sclerosis, he treated her
with vitamin C injections and she started to feel better.
Vitamin C will do that. It will give you more energy.
(33:47):
Susie had more energy, and Fred claimed that the vitamin
C was helping her multiple sclerosis. Listeners, I don't know
a lot about MS, but I know it's a chronic
condition that's hard to diagnose. A lot of tests happen
before you can secure that diagnosis, like MRIs blood tests,
even spinal taps. And while some symptoms of IT might
(34:10):
be treated with vitamins, vitamin C is not a cure
for that neurological disease. There is no cure for MS.
Most doctors try to slow its progression. Much of the
treatment addresses attacks. So when Fred pronounced Susie cured of
a disease that only he confirmed even existed, I should
(34:47):
tell you too that Fred's son, Fritz, worked at the clinic.
Fritz is Susie's first cousin, and the whole family thinks
he's weird. He prowls around at night, he's too enthralled
with guns and in Susie didn't know him well when
she was growing up, and she had barely seen him
in years now, though they were both going through a divorce,
(35:10):
he started pecking around Susie's parents' house a lot, spending
time with her. Fritz was also not a doctor. The
family thought he was in medical school, but he wasn't.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
He was a fraud.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
He just helped his dad out and lied to everyone
about his medical studies. Fritz was actually pretty obsessed with
his dad, like wanted to be him. He would sign
Fred Klinner on forms that were addressed to him and stuff.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
It was a weird relationship.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Susie's mom, Florence, also thought Fritz's relationship with Susie was weird.
She thought they were getting too close, and Florence confronted
Susie about having a romantic relationship with Fritz. Susie was irate,
so upset that she left the house with the boys
and rented an apartment for the three of them. After that,
(36:04):
Susie's parents and siblings didn't see them all that much.
They wanted to, but Susie kept them away. When the
boys showed up to visit, their appearance was shocking. They
had sallow skin and deep circles under their eyes. They
showed up with bags and bags of vitamins and supplements,
which Tom threw away. How could he know what was
(36:27):
in those pills?
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Really?
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Dolores had been willing to testify at the custody hearing
on Tom's behalf, and now his former father in law
was ready to testify for Tom too. And as for
Susie and the kids in her new apartment, well, she
felt much safer there now that Fritz had moved in.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Join me.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Next week on the greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told
For our second episode of three on Susie Newsom Lynch
and the Southern Gothic tale of aristocratic families, Old South, racism, paranoia,
a feud, and of course murder, I'd like to shout
out a few key sources that made it possible for
(37:35):
me to tell this week's story, especially Jerry Bledsoe's book
Bitter Blood and the episode of Southern Fried Homicide about
this case. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is
a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, and
(37:57):
I hosted this episode. Also wrote this episode. Our show
is produced by Emma Dumouth and edited by Antonio Enriquez.
Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive producer Scott Waxman
Diversion audio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
A note this episode contains mature content and quite graphic
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
I mean it, y'all this episode especially, please take care
and listening. Dolores Lynch lived in a two story, pink brick,
(00:40):
fourteen bedroom and four and a half bath country house
outside of Louisville, Kentucky. It was on four and a
half acres. She had lived there with her husband until
his death eight months ago. Now she lived there by herself,
except for when her Janie visited.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Every weekend up from university.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Janie was thirty nine, but she and her mother were close,
too close, some of her friends thought, and Janie's boyfriends
definitely thought so. None of them were good enough for Janie,
just like none of Dolores's son's girlfriends.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Were good enough for Tom.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Dolores's friends knew that the Lynches could afford help around
the house, but Delores mowed her own four acre lawn,
and when her longtime housekeeper and friend went up on
her rates, Delores let her go. She was the type
of person to clean behind the housekeeper anyway, Even though
(01:45):
she was rich, Delores didn't act like it. She had
grown up in the Great Depression, and it showed through
her frugality. She mashed old bars of soap together, and
she bought all her clothes secondhand.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
But she wasn't humble.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Dolores was vocally conservative and very judgmental. People liked her
adult children, Sweet Jane and all American Tom, and Delores
thought no one was good enough.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
For either of them.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Although she mothered some kids in her neighborhood, she made
enemies of others. She threatened to shoot a neighbor's dog
if it pooped on her lawn. Again, when it did,
she shot the dog, not fatally, but still she shot
her neighbor's dog. She also popped out of her front
hedges when a horseback rider happened to pass in front,
(02:39):
taking photos as if he was trespassing, which she wasn't.
Delores was also quite paranoid. Her security alarms were always set,
and when she left the house she took the phone
off the hook so no one could call to.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
See if she was home.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
In short, Dolores was the type to ask to see
the manager, and she was very resentful of her.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Husband when he was alive.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
It's probably part of what drove him to the alcoholism
that eventually ended his life. Dolores very seldom missed church.
On this day, July twenty second, nineteen eighty four, she
left the pew with her friend Marjorie, chit chatted with
her frenemies on the way to the car, and then
(03:27):
said she had to leave because Janie would be coming
home with their Sunday doughnuts soon. Her friend Susan called
that evening, and the next morning. She even called Tuesday
morning without reaching her. Susan didn't need anything in particular,
but she thought it odd when the phone rang and rang.
(03:49):
After work, Susan decided she would just drop by and
make sure Dolores was all right. She brought her dog
just to visit, but when Susan pulled in to the
long driveway, she saw all three family cars in the driveway,
and then when she topped the hill, she saw Dolores's
(04:09):
body lying at the garage door. Later, one of Janey's
ex boyfriends would tell police.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Dolores was a pain in the ass.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
She was the kind of person you'd invite to leave,
then take an aspirin and sit down to rest for
an hour or two. But you know, shooting her in
the head is a bit extreme. Welcome to the greatest
(04:53):
true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer. Today's
episode we're calling Family Betrayal the Susie Newsome Lynch Story.
It's the story of Susie Newsom Lynch and it has
everything you'd expect from a Southern Gothic tale. Aristocratic families,
(05:14):
old South, racism, paranoia, a feud, and of course murder.
I'll tell you all about it after this quick break.
(05:41):
Normally I try to empathize with pretty much all our characters,
especially the protagonists, but listeners, I need y'all to know
I can't stand any of these people. I'm clearly from
the South, and there's nothing more annoying about the South
than old money. Because the thing is there might really
ain't that old, because the South ain't really that old.
(06:04):
There's a kind of new money that's only a couple
generations old, too, like the kind that makes people not
know how to act with actual old money. There's the
dignity of the noblesse of Liege. It's the reason why
Lord Grantham on Downton Abbey isn't an asshole to his servants.
He's got nothing to prove he's rich and his family
(06:27):
probably has been rich since before Hadrian's Wall. But new money,
this type, it's.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
The most annoying.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
People wave it around like it's an indication of their goodness,
but without doing anything good with it.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Let me give you an example.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
In my hometown, there was a private school. Generally, when
you think about private schools, you'd think that the education
would be better, the teachers would have masters and doctorates,
and the curriculum would be so tight that everyone graduates
and everyone gets into top tier colleges.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But not this school.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
This school was actually inside a megachurch. There were no
honors or ap offerings, and grades were inflated. Actually, there
were no entrance exams or qualifications. You literally just bought
your way in into a lesser education. But among elitists,
(07:30):
I cannot abide this shit, and I really couldn't abide
the attitude that those kids thought they were better than
we lowly public school kids who graduated high school with
a year of college credits just because their parents had
money and they thought it was important to show that
they had money in that weird flex which made the
(07:50):
kids mostly insufferable. I mean, like you didn't earn that money.
Your daddy did put him on the phone. Also, no
one cares about your money, at least I don't. Maybe
other people with money care about whether you have money,
but the rest of us are busy. Granted, not all
the kids were evil or rotten, of course, and a
(08:11):
few of them went there instead of going to the
reform school. They got expelled to, which was an interesting dynamic,
But that was the general attitude, and anyone who came
out of there without their nose and the air was
kind of an anomaly. So that's the class of people
we're dealing with in this story.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And again, to be.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Fair, being well off does not necessarily make someone evil
or bad or wrong. It's the holier inou attitude because
of the money, not because of any sincere altruism that
makes these folks so gross to me. I don't like
any of them, not the victims, not the predators. But
(08:51):
I'm still going to try to be fair because they
do deserve that. I mentioned in the cold Open that
Dolores was resentful of her husband, Chuck, and that was
a gross understatement.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
She hated him.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Chuck had been a big deal at ge and because
he loved his work so much and it was a
good job. He had to relocate several times across the states.
They were originally from Pennsylvania, but they lived all over,
from New York to New Jersey, Washington, d c. To Maryland,
Chicago to Louisville. That's when he retired and Delores swore
(09:37):
she would never move again. She took every chance she
could to belittle her husband in front of her friends,
even cooking for him horrible combinations like green beans and
scrambled eggs. She often said I wish he'd die. When
her friend said, surely you don't mean that, Dolores doubled down.
(09:58):
Her maid, Helen said he never walked out the door,
that she didn't wish him dead. None of their friends
understood why they never divorced. One friend said he seemed
like a moral guy. I think he considered this was
his payback for the suffering he inflicted on Dolores. It
(10:18):
seems like Chuck felt he was atoning from making her
move so many times, a sort of she was miserable before,
so I'll be miserable now mentality. He started drinking to cope,
and then she called him a worthless drunk Chuck said
she's a good woman personally, I don't see it. She
(10:41):
may have been a moral person, but even the people
who knew her best said she was irritated by everything.
But by the time Chuck died, Dolores begrudgingly called the
police when she couldn't find his pulse as he lay
on the floor in front of the TV. She was
an empty nester, it is, until Janie moved back east.
(11:03):
Janie had already earned two degrees, and she'd been studying
dental work in Santa Monica, California for a while before
deciding to return to Kentucky. Janie was sweet and really pretty,
and she had no problems finding boyfriends, but her boyfriends
did have trouble appeasing her mother, and Dolores was overbearing.
(11:27):
Janie took it all in stride, but I have to
think it affected her somehow, since even though she'd been
engaged several times, she always begged off when it came
down to the real commitment. Such was the case with
her boyfriend Phil. They were very much in love at
the University of Louisville School of Dentistry, despite that she
(11:48):
was fourteen years older than he. Phil actually had thought
she was joking when she told him her age, but
she wasn't. After Phil had asked her to meet his parents,
Janie got spooped, at least I think she did. That's
why she didn't go on the trip to meet them. Instead.
Dolores's son, Tom, Jane's brother, was supposed to visit the
(12:11):
family in Kentucky in just a few days, and Janie
would be home for that. Tom Lynch had moved to
Albuquerque with his first wife in nineteen seventy. She was
two years older than he was when he proposed. After
he graduated, Tom was twenty two when they made the move,
and he started his dental practice in New Mexico. Since then,
(12:35):
his practice had been steadily growing, and he didn't mind
that in New Mexico no one cared about his pedigree.
Tom was actually in New Mexico just leaving work when
he learned the news. Officer Steve Nobles was the one
(13:02):
who responded to Susan's police call. He didn't notice anything
amiss at the Lynch house until he got out of
the car. That's when the smell hit him and he
saw the body laid out by the garage. Steve realized
he was exposed, and he took cover until his backup
(13:22):
arrived just a few minutes later. His first thought while
he waited was that the daughter might have killed her
mother and could still be in the house. Officer Steve
Swinney knew the Lynches, though, and he was familiar with
the house too. He'd investigated Chuck's death a few months earlier.
(13:43):
Now they both approached the body of his wife. She
lay on her left side. Jerry Bledsoe says in his book,
the top of her head and the left side of
her face were gone. The hot sun had blackened the
remains of her head, which squirmed with maggots and was
(14:04):
swarmed by flies and ants, the most grotesque sight those
police officers had ever seen, but they had to move on.
A third officer arrived. As they rounded the back of
the house, the officers saw a bullet hole in the
gutter drain at the end of the house. When they
(14:25):
slid open the unlocked storm door, two tiny, hungry dogs
yapped at them. They saw two drops of blood by
the counter, next to the telephone. The house was big,
but mismatched in decorps, and the officers crept down the hallway,
pushing open doors until they came to Janie's room. Her
(14:47):
purse and jewelry box had been dumped onto the bed.
Jannie lay face down in the sun room. She was barefoot,
and she had curlers in her hair. Them had been
driven into her skull by the second bullet. The first
was lodged in her right shoulder blade. The police continued
(15:09):
to secure the house, then they called in the mobile
evidence lab. They knew this would be a difficult case
to solve. It was two white women in a wealthy neighborhood,
days after the murder, and the trail had gone cold.
The state Police Department had to be called in. This
(15:29):
one was no match for Oldham County. It was just
an hour after the murders made the news in Louisville
when a volunteer minister at the Albuquerque Police Department came
to notify Tom Lynch. Tom was rushing to meet his wife, Kathy,
and his sons from his first marriage at the movies.
(15:51):
The chaplain said he had bad news. His mother and
sister had been killed. Tom assumed it was a car,
the chaplain said otherwise. Still in shock, Tom drove to
the movie theater to round up his family. His wife
was shocked. His eight year old Jim asked, well, Daddy,
(16:15):
who shot him? Oh? Tom didn't know what would make
a child ask that, but he was right, and they
didn't know who had killed them. Just one day before
he was scheduled to go see his mother in Louisville,
(16:36):
Tom touched down at the airport. The police met him
at the airport and they drove him to the station.
Tom looked devastated, but they still had to question him.
Detective Dan Davidson offered his condolences and then asked basic questions.
When was the last time they talked? Had she expressed
(16:57):
any fears? And after they got the preliminary questions out
of the way, the policeman said, doctor, to be quite
candid with you, I don't know if you realize this,
and Tom replied, I think I know what you're gonna say.
I'm the sole heir. I think you'd be negligent if
you didn't look at that possibility too. Tom agreed to
(17:20):
take a polygraph test. This is elimination, a detective said.
The detectives asked him about his financial condition. Tom said
that he'd been practicing for eight years and he made
about one hundred and twenty thousand a year. He had
some bills, a nice house, two cars, an ira, and
(17:41):
a little money in the bank. And then he added
that he paid five hundred dollars a month in child support.
After the polygraph, the detectives turned to one another and agreed.
Even though the polygraph proved inconclusive, Tom was tense and upset.
They didn't think that Tom Lynch did it, So who did?
(18:04):
We'll take a closer look after the break. Tom Lynch
(18:31):
met his first wife when he was in college at
wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina. When he
was a freshman. He was a basketball player, and they
struck up a conversation at the library. Susie Newsom had
transferred to this private school in her hometown of Winston
(18:51):
Salem from another small, expensive private girls' school, Queen's College.
She hadn't liked it much there because the girls were frivolous.
They were almost all wealthy, but they weren't what she
thought of as good families. She thought you didn't have
(19:11):
to be wealthy to be good. She felt there was
such a thing as listen to this shit genteel poverty?
Is that not the most condescending thing you've ever heard. Anyway,
Susie was drawn to Tom because he looked wholesome and
he was medically ambitious. She had always liked doctors, but
(19:34):
she hated hippies, war protesters, and civil rights activists. This
was nineteen sixty eight and she was in college, and
she strongly supported the war in Vietnam. She was also
a sorority sweetheart, which is a title that still makes
no damn sense to me. So when she met Dolores,
(19:57):
it didn't go great. It didn't go well at all.
They immediately disliked each other. Delores didn't like when someone
looked down on her origins. Susie was a privileged kid,
and she absolutely looked down on Dolores for her hard
scrabble upbringing. Tom didn't know of any actual conflict during
(20:19):
the meeting, but afterward, Susie told her family that Dolores
was quote overbearing and domineering, and Dolores told her friend
that Susie was quote snooty and pretentious.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And both of them were right.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
It's not that uncommon for there to be drama between
mother and daughter in law. Delores and Susie were both
bull headed about bossing Tom around. They didn't want to
get along. They both wanted to win. Obviously, Susie won,
(21:04):
daughters in law always do. At least she won Tom.
They got married in nineteen seventy, right after Tom's graduation.
Even though Dolores did everything she could to try to
dissuade him. She said she had a gut feeling that
made her dislike Susie, even after she had tried to
get close to her. I don't know what trying to
(21:27):
get close to her looked like, but it didn't work.
They moved to the University of Kentucky and Lexington to
complete dental school. Dolores tried to be friendly, but her
friendly looked like surprise.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Visits and doting on Tom.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
And I can't blame Susie for being annoyed that there
is absolutely no reason why anyone should drop by your
house unannounced. Ever, it is the most rude thing you
can do, vipecially when telephones exist and there are small
napping children involved, and soon there were. Susie had John
(22:09):
Wesley in nineteen seventy four and then James Thomas in
nineteen seventy six, and then they moved to New Mexico
for Tom to open his own dental practice.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Susie didn't like New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
More specifically, she didn't like that people there didn't already
know who she was, and they didn't respect her out
of habit At Christmas of nineteen seventy eight, Susie brought
the boys home to Winston Salem on her own. Tom
stayed behind with no explanation. While she was home, Susie
(22:48):
often complained about Dolores, but it wasn't just the normal
pest type complaints of her dropping in or being overbearing.
Susie said quote she's mean and evil. When she returned,
Susie said that it might be better for everyone if
she took the boys back home for good. Susie was
(23:11):
unhappy in Albuquerque and apparently unhappy in her marriage as well.
Tom resisted for a while he didn't want to lose
his sons. Susie favored Jim the younger boy big time.
She thought Jim was more like her. Really, he just
looked more like her. He was laid back and relaxed
(23:33):
like Tom. So John, the child who acted more like Susie,
sad and withdrawn, was the one who was punished more naturally.
He acted out this unfairness in tantrums and destroying his things.
But by the following spring of nineteen seventy nine, Jim
displayed behavioral concerns too. He put objects in his eyes,
(23:59):
and then one day Tom came home from work and
John was holding his arm in a weird way. As
soon as he took off the boy's shirt, he could
see the arm was broken. John said he fell off
the bed at his babysitter's home, but that was a lie.
The babysitter's husband worked nights and he slept all day.
(24:22):
They never played on the bed there, and both boys
had bedwetting problems, which is another sign of abuse, so
the sitter had palettes fixed for them on the floor
just in case. The babysitter said she saw injuries on
the boys all the time, like bruises and bloody noses.
(24:43):
One day, Jim showed up with red eyes, which not
unusual for him, and then she saw that Jim had
a big, mushy lump on the side of his head.
He didn't get to the doctor until Tom came home
from work and Tom saw the three year old's eyes
were starting to blacken. The doctors suspected something wasn't right,
(25:05):
especially after they diagnosed Jim with a mild concussion. The
nurses strongly suggested it might not have been an accident.
Both parents were pretty offended at the implied accusation, but
especially Susie. Nothing came of it. There were no further
(25:26):
investigations by child services. Susie and Tom separated soon after,
and while it was not hard for Tom to say
goodbye to Susie at this point, it was hard for
(25:47):
him to say goodbye to his two little boys. Susie
took them with her back to Winston Salem. In the divorce,
Tom got two weeks summer vacation. That wasn't enough. He
wanted more visitation, but Susie denied him that. I just
want to note he's not suing her for custody, not
(26:10):
even partial custody. Tom just wanted more visitation, like four
weeks instead of two, and not even necessarily all at
the same time. It wasn't a lot to ask, but
Susie wouldn't have it. Instead, she tried to keep the
boys away from Tom completely. She took them with her
(26:33):
to Taiwan for a year while she was studying Chinese.
At one point, Tom didn't see John and Jim for
two years. Not only is that some evil shit, but
it's completely unnecessary and the reason why Susie was keeping
the kids from him is even more disturbing. She thought
(26:54):
Tom was a drug dealer with a mafia connection. To recap,
Tom was a dentist. That's it. It might be just
my personal opinion, but it seems to me like there
might have been some jealousy at play. Tom had married
his dental hygienist, Kathy after he and Susie divorced, and
(27:17):
I say it might have been jealousy because John and
Jim really liked Kathy. When a child psychologist asked them
about it, they said they felt even more comfortable with
Kathy than their own dad, although they felt good around
him too. Remember, it was Kathy who had taken the
boys to the movies when Tom got the news that
(27:38):
his family had been murdered, So the boys happened to
be on that two week visitation with Tom when his
family died. He actually asked Susie to extend their visitation
(28:03):
just by a few days, but of course she declined
she was going camping. Tom thought that was weird. Susie
going camping, but he had other concerns.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
He was back in.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Louisville for the arrangements when he received a bouquet of
flowers from his former in laws, Susie's parents. Tom felt
like that opened a line of communication. So after a
few interactions, Tom asked Bob, that's his former father in law,
if he would be willing to testify in the custody hearing.
(28:39):
Bob agreed to do it.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Again.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Tom was just asking for more visitation, not full custody,
not even joint custody, just more visitation. It shouldn't have
been all that surprising that Bob agreed to testify on
Tom's behalf, but I imagine it felt pretty relieving to Tom. Besides,
Bob had noticed the kids were acting weird. Tom had
(29:06):
noticed it too. First was their appearance. They were so pale,
they had deep circles under their eyes, and the plaque
build up on their teeth was egregious, especially I'm guessing
to Tom as a dentist.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
But John and Jim.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Were also behaving weirdly. They talked mostly to each other,
they didn't say much about their mother, and they seemed
to check themselves when they.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Were about to speak about her.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Plus, over the course of the stay, each of them
had accidentally called Tom Papa a handful of times. And
if Bob had noticed the kids were acting weird, it
was nothing compared to how weird Susie was acting. I'll
tell you all about it after the break. When Susie
(30:13):
and Tom had divorced in nineteen seventy nine, Susie moved
back to Winston Salem, back in with her parents. She
wasn't feeling right. Susie chose to go to doctor Fred Klinner.
Fred was her uncle, and depending on whom you asked,
he was either a man treating patients at the end
(30:33):
of the line with cutting edge experimental vitamin treatments or
a complete crackpot mad scientist. If you want to know
my opinion on doctor Fred Klinner, well let me just
describe his practice for you. Firstly, his practice was on
the second floor above a drug store in an old
(30:54):
building in downtown Reidsville, up a steep wooden staircase. Plaster
crumbled from the rain stained walls. Doors led to separate
segregated waiting rooms in the nineteen eighties. In the waiting rooms,
the magazines were for gun aficionados, stuff like tracts from
(31:19):
the White Citizens' Councils, Christian Crusades, pamphlets about how integration
was a Communist plot, that FDR was a trader, and
how women's rights were sacrilegious. He was a first generation
American from Austria, and his whole family had been Nazi sympathizers,
(31:40):
claiming to date that Adolph Hitler was misunderstood on.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
This side of the pond.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
He was also a Civil War buff who claimed the
wrong side had won the war, and he spoke favorably
of the KKK. I'm not sure I personally would have
even made it up the staircase, let alone into the
hallway to wonder which waiting room I was supposed to enter,
since I'm not really black or white. But people with
(32:10):
progressed neurological disorders, people who had already been told by
multiple doctors that there was no hope for them, I
can imagine that they would overlook a lot on the
off chance of a miracle. It's actually really strange to
(32:38):
me how much educated people can overlook. Not only did
Susie go to Fred for treatment, but her family encouraged
it because they were family listeners, do y'all overlook this
kind of thing in favor of your family? I get
that to a degree, you have to, like not cause
a scene at Thanksgiving at a stupid political comment or whatever.
(33:02):
And I understand that a certain amount of loyalty in
like getting your roof replaced by your brother rather than
a rando, but only if they're good at their job, right,
or if it's very low stakes. But this didn't seem
low stakes. Fred was a doctor, but he was not
a neurologist. Actual neurological doctors almost always disagreed with Fred's diagnoses,
(33:27):
so his success rate was flawed because basically, it's easy
to cure someone of a disease they never had. So
when he diagnosed Susie with multiple sclerosis, he treated her
with vitamin C injections and she started to feel better.
Vitamin C will do that. It will give you more energy.
(33:47):
Susie had more energy, and Fred claimed that the vitamin
C was helping her multiple sclerosis. Listeners, I don't know
a lot about MS, but I know it's a chronic
condition that's hard to diagnose. A lot of tests happen
before you can secure that diagnosis, like MRIs blood tests,
even spinal taps. And while some symptoms of IT might
(34:10):
be treated with vitamins, vitamin C is not a cure
for that neurological disease. There is no cure for MS.
Most doctors try to slow its progression. Much of the
treatment addresses attacks. So when Fred pronounced Susie cured of
a disease that only he confirmed even existed, I should
(34:47):
tell you too that Fred's son, Fritz, worked at the clinic.
Fritz is Susie's first cousin, and the whole family thinks
he's weird. He prowls around at night, he's too enthralled
with guns and in Susie didn't know him well when
she was growing up, and she had barely seen him
in years now, though they were both going through a divorce,
(35:10):
he started pecking around Susie's parents' house a lot, spending
time with her. Fritz was also not a doctor. The
family thought he was in medical school, but he wasn't.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
He was a fraud.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
He just helped his dad out and lied to everyone
about his medical studies. Fritz was actually pretty obsessed with
his dad, like wanted to be him. He would sign
Fred Klinner on forms that were addressed to him and stuff.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
It was a weird relationship.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
Susie's mom, Florence, also thought Fritz's relationship with Susie was weird.
She thought they were getting too close, and Florence confronted
Susie about having a romantic relationship with Fritz. Susie was irate,
so upset that she left the house with the boys
and rented an apartment for the three of them. After that,
(36:04):
Susie's parents and siblings didn't see them all that much.
They wanted to, but Susie kept them away. When the
boys showed up to visit, their appearance was shocking. They
had sallow skin and deep circles under their eyes. They
showed up with bags and bags of vitamins and supplements,
which Tom threw away. How could he know what was
(36:27):
in those pills?
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Really?
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Dolores had been willing to testify at the custody hearing
on Tom's behalf, and now his former father in law
was ready to testify for Tom too. And as for
Susie and the kids in her new apartment, well, she
felt much safer there now that Fritz had moved in.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Join me.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Next week on the greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told
For our second episode of three on Susie Newsom Lynch
and the Southern Gothic tale of aristocratic families, Old South, racism, paranoia,
a feud, and of course murder, I'd like to shout
out a few key sources that made it possible for
(37:35):
me to tell this week's story, especially Jerry Bledsoe's book
Bitter Blood and the episode of Southern Fried Homicide about
this case. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is
a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, and
(37:57):
I hosted this episode. Also wrote this episode. Our show
is produced by Emma Dumouth and edited by Antonio Enriquez.
Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive producer Scott Waxman
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