Amanda Jones met Fritz soon after moving to Durham in 1979, and friendship soon developed. They became much closer after Fritz confided that he had incurable cancer, and her maternal sympathies reached out to him. He presented himself as a Duke medical student, but led her to believe that he was involved in clandestine work for the army’s antiterrorist Delta Force, work he’d been drawn into while serving as an intelligence officer for Special Forces in Vietnam. Although secretive about his work, he frequently spoke of political and military stirrings in exotic parts of the world, about which Amanda had little concern. She thought of Fritz as an “inside-track man.”
He always knew people who knew the real situation, no matter what it was,” she recalled.
In the summer of 1980, when she gave birth to a daughter, Ann, her only child, Fritz quit seeing her without explanation, and she feared for what might have happened to him. Not until the spring of 1981 did he suddenly reappear, relieving her anxieties but offering only vague excuses for his absence. Their friendship grew closer early in 1982, when Amanda’s marriage began to fall apart. By then Fritz had grown a full beard, giving him a dark, brooding, and more mature appearance, and he seemed always to be there to comfort and reassure her. After she separated from her husband, she began to feel other stirrings for Fritz, whose cancer, he now assured her, had been cured by his father. By 1983, she was in love with him. That summer, her parents, who distrusted Fritz and wanted to protect their daughter from another disastrous relationship, checked at Duke and discovered that Fritz had never been enrolled there. Presented with the evidence, Amanda chose not to accept it and not to confront Fritz about it, reasoning that even if he hadn’t been to Duke he needed the medical identity as cover for his clandestine work.
“It didn’t make any difference to me,” she later recalled. “I needed to have a relationship with somebody.”
Amanda kept a diary, and in it she recorded her love affair with Fritz.
November 10, 1982: I am constantly emotionally anticipating that perhaps Fritz and I will develop an affair. We’ve been thru so much together in these years—his divorce as well as mine, Ann’s birth and his cancer and at one time seeming sure death. I long for a deeper relationship, but I am not sure of its consequences. We may not have as much in common as we think.
February 2, 1983: And my relationship with Fritz continues to grow. I always look forward to touching but we’re both slow.
February 16: I had a chat with Fritz today and my head still reels. I know now that he is seven years younger than I am, a Catholic of some breeding and I am twice divorced. It seems a ridiculous match. I do seem to attract curious people. He is a survivalist, which I can understand and certainly have leanings toward, but where I’m for retreat he is for action. Too much Vietnam. And religion. He’s ready to defend his fellow man and has reason to believe that necessity will come about in the imminent future. If you believe that, then it’s hard to see any reason to work for today. I mean if all life is to be dismantled, does it really matter if I get a shelf put up in my closet?
February 23: I had a long visit with Fritz last night. Whether he’s clairvoyant or a crazy remains to be seen. But he definitely foresees nuclear war and he plans to be a survivor. Romance of romance, he has invited Ann and I to go along and despite all I agreed. So there is his cousin Susie and her two boys, his sister Mary Ann and her daughter Lynn, and Ann and I so far that I know of in the party. The tea leaves or whatever he reads say between now and the spring thaws in Europe are the times to worry the most. And naturally it is with great reasonableness and justification that he reads these messages. And I try to roll along in my normal pattern wondering once again if there will be a tomorrow. But, too, there still is romance, and I must admit Fritz has charmed me.
April 6: Last night I actually went out for supper with Fritz. Not very prepossessing but I did enjoy it. Fritz has bought property in Idaho and wanted to know if Ann and I would move out there. ‘In theory’ anyway. At least he’s beginning to dream of something other than disaster.
May 25: I had a funny dream about Fritz. I went to visit him at his place and he fell asleep—probably not too unrealistic. That’s what worries me about Fritz. He doesn’t see much joy in life.
June 28: Fritz came in last night. It’s been a month since I’d seen him. He brought me another towering pile of flowers with a lily kind of thing on top. It’s charming to have a fellow bring you flowers. He also brought me a pair of jade earrings. He says he’s going to remount the jade into gold pierced earrings, that these aren’t gold but had better jade. Anyway, it’s nice to have him back in the country.
July 8: He brought me more flowers and has some pearls for Ann and I that he’ll bring later. I’ve never encountered such a gift giver and am somewhat perplexed how to handle it. He seems to have a very thick shell that I find hard to pierce. His defense is innate. I almost look forward to making love to him just to remove the physical layer of clothes. There are so many more layers remaining I can’t imagine really seeing in. Meanwhile, he is gentle, kind and thoughtful.
July 18: So I did see Fritz again and then he’s off for a couple of days. But I did tell him I loved him. It was smooth and easy for us both. Not a shocking revelation, but perhaps a letting down of barriers.
August 5: I haven’t heard from Fritz in over a week. That situation always chafes me. I’m so much a waiter. It’s just like all my affairs with married men—I’ll hear from him. Except he’s not married. I keep hoping our communications will improve. Right now I don’t know if he’s in Chad or Reidsville. He’s got so many roles I wonder if he keeps them straight.
August 10: I’m sure Fritz is off in North Africa. I think there is a lot going on in Chad and Libya that we are concerned about. I m pretty sure I would have heard from Fritz if he’d been in the U.S. I do miss having him to talk to tho he’s never really been that available.
August 19: Fritz came by last night. Again momentarily and back off to Chad and the unknowns. But I am cheered.
September 17: And always I am waiting for Fritz. He called me Friday before I left work. His “I miss you and I love you” were enough to keep me warm again.
September 20: I haven’t often been as depressed, mad and disappointed. It’s Fritz. He called Fri. night that it would be the first of the week that he’d see me. It’s Tuesday night and no word. He could be in N. Africa or Reidsville for all I know. He has promised time and time again to do things for me, yet he’s never come thru. He never has time for me or him. I feel like I’ve reached the end.
October 25: Fritz has still not appeared. The world is currently rocking and close to war on all fronts. 200 or so Americans were killed in Lebanon on Sunday. Few of the relatives have been notified and so few names released. The only thing that gives me cheer is that Fritz said someone would come to Ann and I and give us some money were anything to happen to him. So no news is good news. I just pray he returns before the world explodes. It really seems imminent.
The image that dances into my head is what a complex, intelligent and sensitive soul the Lord has created in Fritz, and the reduction of that to a mass of blood and tissue would not be sensible. The Lord must have more in mind for him than that and I need to keep that faith.
December 18: Speaking of Fritz, still no word. Either he’s lost in the jungles of S.E. Asia looking for POWs, or he’s in a loony bin. I really can’t decide what’s up. The strange thing is not feeling at liberty to call his dad.
December 20: I called Fritz’s mom today. I broke all the barriers. What the hell. Is he alive, dead or in a loony bin? The former or the latter I guess. I still can’t be sure. She said they saw him last Sunday, that he is working hard but ok. Did he owe me any money?
January 1, 1984: I didn’t mention that Fritz called. Sometime maybe Christmas Eve, or the Monday after. Wished us all a merry Christmas and said he’d see us in the first of the year. I was not overly friendly and tried to express some of my indignation. Oh well. I have tha
t relationship still on Freez-dry. We’ll see what comes.
Amanda never heard from Fritz again. Not until more than a year and a half later would she discover that all the time she had spent longing and waiting for Fritz, while she thought him off surreptitiously fighting for his country in North Africa and Southeast Asia he was right in North Carolina, much of the time in Durham, plodding through mundane dental lab classes while living a fantasy life that was growing ever richer and more adventurous. Nor would she know until then that all that time she had been but one of several women in Fritz’s crowded life, and that by the time she last heard from him, he had focused his attentions on only one, his cousin Susie—the cousin he had planned to include in his little survival brood with her and his sister and their children.
28
January of 1983 brought the long-brewing final confrontation between Susie and her mother. It came after a neighbor told Florence that Fritz had been spending weekend nights at the Newsom house while Bob and Florence were in Winston-Salem at Nanna’s. Florence could not tolerate that. No matter what was happening in the house when she and Bob were not there, the appearance was scandalous and it had to cease.
“Propriety was so important to them,” Bob’s sister Frances later explained. “How one appears to other people is as important as what one really does.”
For several months, the spats between Susie and Florence had been growing in frequency and intensity. Florence confided to her sister Louise that she feared Susie was becoming mentally ill. It worried her that Susie was so consumed by her bitterness toward Tom and her protectiveness of her children, that she was becoming so dependent on Fritz and wouldn’t talk about her problems.
“Susie Q didn’t confide in Florence,” Louise said. “She was very difficult and she got more difficult as time went on. Florence was so good to Susie. She never deserved the treatment she got from her.”
The family whispered that Susie had undergone a personality change and that its roots lay in Albuquerque.
“Nobody knows what went on in Albuquerque,” Florence said.
Annette Hunt, whose corner house on Fairgreen Drive was separated from the Newsom house by an intersecting street, Redwine Drive, saw the confrontation building and tried to keep clear of it. She was Susie’s best friend but she also loved Bob and Florence and didn’t want to take sides. Other neighbors found themselves in the same situation. The Newsoms were gracious hosts, and their big house was a neighborhood gathering spot. In warm weather, neighbors gravitated to their spacious back porch to chat, sip cool drinks, and admire the roses Bob tended so lovingly. All of them were aware of the tension between Susie and her mother, and none wanted to get involved.
Annette had watched the relationship build between Susie and Fritz. At first, it seemed centered on Susie’s boys. Annette felt sorry for John and Jim. She knew that they needed male attention, John particularly. Fritz doted on the boys, played with them, took them places, did things a father would do, and Susie was plainly grateful.
Susie told Annette that Fritz longed to have sons of his own but couldn’t. He’d had leukemia while she and Tom were living in Kentucky, she said, and although his father cured him the treatments left him sterile. “I guess that’s why I care so much for John and Jim,” she said Fritz told her.
Annette knew the power Fritz held over children, because he had become close to her own sons, talking to them about camping, hunting, guns, and the arts of the Ninja, the secret hooded assassins of ancient Japan. She knew how much John and Jim looked forward to his visits.
“They adored Fritz,” she said. “The children really looked up to him.”
Although Susie didn’t talk much about Fritz, as time passed Annette realized that not only had Susie, too, come to have deep feelings for him, she seemed dependent on him.
“He wanted her to need him,” Annette said. “He wanted her to feel dependent on him.”
He wanted her to believe his fantasies, too, Annette later was certain, and he went to extraordinary measures to convince her they were true. Once, Susie had become excited when Fritz invited her to attend a medical school dinner at Duke, at which, he told her, he was to be honored for his scholarship and research. She bought a new dress, and for weeks she talked to Annette about the upcoming event. Famous doctors were to attend, and Susie, who always had been impressed by doctors, was to sit beside a noted medical school professor. She even read about him so she could converse knowledgeably. On the day of the dinner, she left her sons with her parents and drove off to meet Fritz at his apartment in Durham.
“Well, how did it go?” Annette asked when she saw Susie the next day.
“We didn’t get to go,” Susie said, crestfallen. “I got down there and Fritz was sick and throwing up. All I did was sit and hold his head while he threw up all night.”
Although Annette could see Fritz’s Blazer across the street when Bob and Florence went out of town, she didn’t want to believe that Susie was having a physical relationship with her cousin. But she realized that Florence, who long had thought the growing closeness between Fritz and Susie improper, might now be facing that possibility and that she could not abide it.
Florence had even expressed concern about the relationship to her sister Annie Hill, Fritz’s mother. But Annie Hill saw no harm in it. Fritz and Susie were just close friends, she said. Fritz was good with the boys, and Susie just felt better when he was around. They were comfort to one another in their troubles.
Florence was certain that the relationship was not so innocent. She suspected that Susie and Fritz were sleeping together and adding insult to injury by doing it in her house and she knew she would have to confront Susie about it. She knew, too, that nobody said no to Susie without paying a price, and she was proceeding cautiously in bringing up the matter. But before she could do it, a minor incident provoked a blowup.
Florence fixed elaborate breakfasts on Saturday mornings. One Saturday at the end of January, Fritz showed up at breakfast and was invited to eat. During the meal, Susie mentioned that her cousin in Washington, Jim Taylor, had bought a chow.
“I think somebody would have to be stupid to get a chow,” Bob observed.
It was an offhand remark, but it threw Susie into a rage.
“I don’t have to take this kind of shit!” she said, slamming down her fork.
Susie stormed from the table and left the house, taking Fritz and the boys with her. She didn’t return until Sunday night, when Florence confronted her, not only about her behavior but also about Fritz. A loud and bitter argument developed, and rumors later circulated through the family that Susie struck her mother, claiming that Florence’s body language had been threatening. The conflict ended with Susie gathering up her children and her belongings and leaving her parents’ home permanently.
The boys later mentioned little to their father about what happened that night, John saying only that they’d had to leave “because GG swore at Uncle Fritz.”
Florence confided the events of that night to only one person, her sister Susie, who, at Florence’s request, kept them secret even from other family members. “It was so terrible, and Florence was so humiliated and embarrassed by it, that she didn’t want anybody ever to know,” Judge Sharp explained.
After Susie left that night, Florence, distraught, called her son Rob and his wife, Alice, who were living in Illinois. Susie had gone, she said, but she didn’t say why. She was worried that Susie didn’t have enough money to take care of herself and the boys. If Susie called, Florence wanted to know about it.
Susie did call Rob and Alice a few days later. She said she’d moved out but wouldn’t say where she was living. She left a phone number where she could be reached, however.
“She just said she had this big fight and she would never tell anybody what had been said, never,” Alice recalled. “She said that her mother was just shrieking. I said, ‘That doesn’t sound like your mother.’”
Weeks passed before Bob and Florence even learne
d Susie’s whereabouts. Florence was especially worried about the boys, whom she and Bob loved dearly. She told her sister Louise that John cried at leaving and she had taken him into the bathroom to console him.
“You know Grandpop and I don’t want you to go,” she told him. “This is your mother’s idea.”
A few weeks after the confrontation, Florence spotted the boys outside an ice-cream parlor in Friendly Shopping Center and hurried to chat with them. Susie emerged from the store to snatch up the boys, screaming at her mother to keep away. Publicly humiliated, Florence fled home in tears.
Susie had long wanted to be out of her parents’ house and on her own but simply couldn’t afford it. Now she could. At least for a while. Shortly before Christmas, her divorce had become final.
In the settlement, Susie received $23,500—$14,000 for her equity in the house, $1,500 for the furniture she left behind, $5,300 for her share of Tom’s dental practice, $2,000 in attorney fees, $500 for medical bills, and $200 for unpaid alimony. The $100 monthly alimony was dropped in the settlement, but the $400 support that Tom was paying for the boys was raised by $100 each month. Susie was to receive $8,000 in cash, which was provided by Tom’s father, who would be dead in less than a year. Tom was to pay the remaining $15,500 at $200 a month, with 10 percent interest annually. He left in a bank account the $15,500 his mother had sent earlier and used the interest to help pay the additional $200 he sent Susie each month.
With the $8,000 as a cushion for survival, and $700 in monthly income, Susie rented for $475 a month, utilities included, a two-bedroom upstairs apartment at 28-L Hunt Club Road in Friendly Hills Apartments, a huge complex on Greensboro’s western edge near Guilford College, less than two miles from her parents’ house. Without telling family members about it, she had put a deposit on the apartment four days before the confrontation with her mother.
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