Bitter Blood

by Jerry Bledsoe

  “Dr. Klenner was not an open subject with her,” said a former co-worker. “She worshiped the ground he walked on.”

  Camille became managing editor of the Reidsville Review, and in February of 1971, she wrote a long and glowing article about Dr. Klenner and his work, tying it to the publication of Linus Pauling’s book Vitamin C and the Common Cold, in which Dr. Klenner’s vitamin experiments were noted. She later reprinted the article “at popular request.”

  When Ian was four, Tom and Camille Perkins adopted a second child, a daughter they named Lori, Camille telling friends that she didn’t want Ian to grow up a lonely only child. Some wondered later if she’d been successful in that goal.

  “Ian always just struck me as a very lonely little boy,” said a family friend. “I always felt sorry for him as a little boy. He was an idolized son in a strange sort of way. He was idolized and dismissed at the same time. But he was always idolized as a symbol instead of a person. They just had so many hopes pinned on Ian. He blinked a lot. He held his body in a way that always looked as if he felt he was in the way.”

  When Ian was thirteen, his parents divorced, and he, his mother, and his sister moved first into an apartment, then into a house on Ann Ruston Street in a middle-income neighborhood not far from downtown. In July of 1972, Camille left the newspaper to take a job producing a company newsletter for Fieldcrest Mills, a textile plant in nearby Eden. There she met Jim O’Neal, an executive who worked in government relations. They married a year after her divorce, and later they moved into her family home, just down the street from the Klenners, to help care for her aging mother.

  In high school, Ian was quiet and studious, a good student who favored science and won an award for a chemistry project. He was president of an amateur radio group and belonged to the Bible Club. After his graduation in 1982, he was accepted at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. A family friend recommended Washington and Lee to him, and he was drawn to its proud traditions. He began as a chemical engineering major but was less than an outstanding student and later switched to philosophy.

  As highly patriotic as he was devoutly religious, Ian joined the National Guard during his freshman year and spent his first summer break in basic training. After his sophomore year, he had to choose a military job specialty, and he picked field medic. Dropping out of school for a quarter, he went off to training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, on August 15, 1984. He completed the training on November 2 and returned to Reidsville. Soon afterward, he ran into Fritz, and they began talking about his training. Fritz spent hours instructing Ian on what he should have learned but wasn’t taught.

  And Ian was grateful. He felt special being offered help by Fritz. Like all of the other Klenner family friends and acquaintances, he thought Fritz a doctor, a graduate of Duke Medical School. He knew there had been some problem, because Fritz had kept the clinic operating only a short time after his father’s death, but he thought Fritz was finishing his residency, had a provisional license, and would eventually reopen the clinic.

  Ian had known Fritz all of his life, but they had never been close. Fritz occasionally came to Ian’s house with his mother for dinner, but there was an eleven-year difference in Fritz’s and Ian’s ages.

  “Ian looked up to Fritz like an uncle,” a neighbor said later.

  As they got together to talk about medical and military matters, their friendship grew closer, and Fritz told Ian that when he came home from school one weekend they would go shooting at his father’s farm.

  “We’ll have to get out some rifles and see how good you are,” Fritz said.

  Fritz and Ian also shared another interest, one that they hadn’t discussed yet. Ian was thinking about going into intelligence work after he finished college, perhaps becoming a covert agent. He had a great-uncle, Gerald Fournier, who was a secret agent in Europe, and after Ian returned to college in January, where his friends took to calling him “Doc” because of his new training, he wrote to his uncle, asking advice. His uncle sent the following reply.

  I appreciate you requesting my advice about your career plans. It is not difficult to get accepted for the line of work which I have devoted my life to because it’s an occupation that grows on you. It gives you job satisfaction, but it is frustrating at times. Your mother asked me in the early sixties during her visit with your grandmother to Europe the nature of my job. Although I could not answer her because of classification, I did however ask her to read the book War of Wits by Ladislas Farago. But I do not know if you will be able to retain that book now.

  Ian, what you want to get into will have to be your choice. However, if you choose to be employed by the CIA, I can put you in contact with a friend of mine who works out of Roslyn, Va. He can evaluate your educational background and assess your capabilities. He can then take you to the CIA screening officer for formal application.

  During his midterm break in late February, Ian returned home and dropped by the Klenner house to see Fritz. Fritz had a bandage on the middle finger of his left hand and a splint on his ring finger. He’d found a small homemade bomb taped to the gas tank of Susie’s car, he said, and it had gone off after he removed it. He claimed that he had suffered nerve damage to the middle finger and sprained his ring finger.

  He knew who’d put the bomb there, he said. He was certain that Susie’s former husband, Tom Lynch, had contracted with the mob to have her killed. This hadn’t been the only attempt on her, he said, going on to talk at length about Tom’s involvement with the mob. Tom had his own mother and sister killed, he said, so that he could inherit the family fortune and pay off mob debts. And Tom still owed Susie for paying his way through dental school, Fritz said.

  They went to the farm, where Fritz got out an AR15 assault rifle, an Uzi submachine gun, and a .45 pistol, and they fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

  Between rounds, they talked of Ian’s dream of becoming a secret agent, and Fritz hinted that he might be able to help. Later that weekend, Ian showed him the letter he had received from his great-uncle.

  On another weekend trip home a couple of weeks later, Ian again went to the farm with Fritz. This time Susie and the boys also came along. Ian rode in Fritz’s Blazer with Chowy, Susie’s protective big male chow. Susie and the boys rode in her Blazer with Maizie, their female chow. Maizie was in heat, and after they got to the farm, Fritz tried to keep Chowy in his vehicle, away from Maizie, but Chowy, protesting, bit him.

  That day, Fritz made “shape charges” by softening dynamite with water and pressing it into wine bottles he’d cut in half. He used them to blow holes in the ground, looking for “lava tubes” that he said lay under the surface. He wanted to get into one of the tubes and look around, he said, but he hadn’t been able to find one.

  They all fired weapons that day, the boys shooting their .22 assault rifle replicas. Susie wore a .45 pistol in a cross-draw holster, but she chose to fire her .25-caliber Browning.

  “Imagine a big, ugly black mugger is about to do something to your children,” Fritz told her as she took aim at the target, and she began firing with such a fierce intensity that she didn’t stop pulling the trigger even after the pistol had run out of ammunition, and Fritz practically had to pry the weapon from her hands.

  That day Fritz told Ian that he’d like to come see the campus at Washington and Lee, and Ian said he’d be glad to show him around anytime.

  In late March, Fritz came. He brought with him what appeared to be a camera, but later he disclosed it to be a weapon capable of firing a shell at an unsuspecting subject. Ian took him on a tour of the historic town, with its brick streets and restored buildings, as well as the hilltop campus of Washington and Lee, with its Victorian buildings, and the adjoining campus of the Virginia Military Institute, with its Gothic barracks, its military museum, and its ramrod-straight cadets.

  Afterward, they sat and talked in the darkness by Lee Chapel, and Fritz disclosed that he was a contract agent for the CIA, that he’d been recruit
ed years earlier when he was at Woodward Academy in Atlanta. He also spent a lot of time at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, he said, and mentioned the Delta Team, but quickly added that these were things Ian didn’t need to know about. He did talk of missions that on occasion had nearly cost him his life. They had brought him much closer to God, he said with a great show of emotion. One of those missions had been to search for POWs in Vietnam, he said.

  Ian was flattered that Fritz chose to tell him these things. At last he understood all of Fritz’s mysterious comings and goings, all the exotic weaponry and military gear. He was amazed that he hadn’t realized it sooner.

  But he could tell no one about it, for Fritz swore him to secrecy. Fritz knew that he could trust Ian, he said, because Ian, too, wanted to be a “Company man,” and Fritz was going to give him the opportunity to prove himself worthy. He had been authorized to take Ian on a mission to see how he functioned under pressure. Even Ian’s great-uncle Gerald had given his approval. The mission would be to Texas. It would take only four days, and it would involve a “touch,” a necessary killing, but Ian would not have to be part of that. His role would be support only. Would he be interested?

  Ian couldn’t say yes quickly enough.

  As they rode toward Lexington, Virginia, to find Ian on Thursday morning, May 30, Allen Gentry and Tom Sturgill felt good about the way their case was developing.

  “Let’s say we were cautiously optimistic,” Gentry said later. “In this business you don’t want to get too excited, because we’ve all had cases where we felt like we knew who was responsible but couldn’t get all the pieces together to prove it.”

  The detectives arrived in Lexington a few minutes after noon and went straight to the neat, story-and-a-half, shuttered home of Violet Firebaugh, a widow who rented spare rooms to college students. Mrs. Firebaugh had company and said that Ian was not there. He likely would be in a little later. The detectives went to lunch and returned to find Ian nervously awaiting them, clearly frightened.

  “We need to talk to you,” Gentry said. “Would you mind coming out to the car?”

  Ian accompanied them to the four-door Ford Crown Victoria and got into the backseat. The detectives got into the front. Ian lit a cigarette, and both detectives noticed that he trembled as he smoked it.

  Gentry asked first for biographical information, then went straight to the camping trip with Fritz less than two weeks earlier. Would he mind telling them about that?

  Fritz had called about 3 that Friday afternoon and asked him to meet him at Roanoke Mountain at 6, Ian said. He’d gone there and waited until the overlook closed, but Fritz didn’t arrive. He drove back to his room in Lexington and called Fritz’s mother, who told him that Fritz had left several hours earlier. A little later Fritz called from Roanoke Mountain and said that he’d come on to Lexington. He arrived before midnight and they struck out for the Blue Ridge Parkway. They went to Peaks of Otter, set up a camp and got to sleep about 6 or 7. They slept until about 1, had brunch at the coffee shop, and returned to prepare for a night hike. They left about 5 and got caught in a rainstorm near the top of the mountain, where they stopped and started a fire to dry themselves. They got back to the campsite well after midnight, went to sleep, got up late, made breakfast, broke camp. Fritz brought him back to his room, took a shower, called Susie and told her to meet him for dinner at Natural Bridge, then called his mother. After Fritz left, Ian said, he just stayed in his room the rest of the evening.

  Ian lit another cigarette as he talked. His mouth was obviously dry, his tongue sticking. Now and then his voice cracked. The fine bead of sweat that broke out on his forehead and upper lip didn’t go unnoticed.

  Had Ian seen Fritz since then? Gentry asked.

  Yes, he’d talked to him just the night before. Fritz had called to find out how he was doing. And Fritz had come back to Lexington on the Wednesday night following the camping trip to help him study for his final exam in his medical ethics class. Ian went on to explain that Fritz was a doctor—of course, he realized, the detectives probably knew that—although he wasn’t practicing right now.

  “He’s not a doctor,” Gentry said. “He was never even in medical school. He just pretended that he was. His own mother told us that.”

  Ian looked startled, and Gentry pushed on with his questions. Was Ian aware of any weapons Fritz might own?

  Yes, Ian said, they’d gone shooting together several times. They’d fired a .223 assault rifle, a .45 and a .22 pistol, he said, failing to mention the Uzi submachine gun. The last time they’d gone shooting was on Mother’s Day, just a few weeks before.

  Gentry paused in his questioning and consulted his notes, leaving Ian, who still puffed nervously on his cigarette, to ponder what they’d just been over.

  “You know,” Gentry finally said, “this just isn’t going to fly. Something’s wrong here. Fritz claimed that y’all left out on your hike about eight, but you said five. Fritz said that y’all didn’t go to bed when you got back, that you just laid around and talked, but you said you went to sleep. Which way is it?”

  Ian gulped noticeably and took another quick puff on his cigarette. The detectives could see panic welling in his eyes.

  “You know,” Gentry pushed on, “in the time you say it took for this hike, ya’ll could’ve driven to Winston-Salem, murdered three people, and returned to Virginia.”

  He didn’t have to say any more. Ian broke into tears and began sobbing loudly, his head in his hands.

  The detectives were surprised by his sudden outburst and looked wonderingly at one another, saying nothing.

  “I’m thinking, ‘This is too easy,’” Gentry said later. “Usually, you wind up having to get a little ugly and go back and forth with ’em before something like this happens.”

  Gentry and Sturgill sat quietly as Ian struggled to control himself. After a couple of minutes, Gentry broke the silence.

  “You want to tell us what really happened?” he said softly.

  It was true, Ian said, that he and Fritz had been to Winston-Salem that night but he had not known of any plan to murder the Newsoms. Fritz had recruited him for a CIA mission to go after arms thieves, drug dealers, traitors. He went on to tell the whole long story of how he’d dreamed of becoming a secret agent, how Fritz had finally told him that he was with the CIA and had invited him on a mission to Texas. The mission had been planned for a couple of months, he said, but after Fritz came to pick him up for the camping trip that was to provide their cover story, he had changed the plan. They were going instead to North Carolina, first to make a “touch” in Winston-Salem. There Fritz would steal a car, and then they would go on to Charlotte for a second operation.

  Gentry and Sturgill had heard a lot of stories in their years in law enforcement, but never one like this.

  “I’m writing,” Gentry recalled later, “but we kept looking at each other like ‘Is this guy for real?’ It was almost too incredible to believe.” But Ian was so rattled and so sincere that neither of them doubted that he now was telling the truth.

  He and Fritz had gone to Peaks of Otter and camped just as he’d told them earlier, Ian said, but instead of going on a night hike, they had left at about 5 P.M. for Winston-Salem. Questioning Ian carefully about times and locations, the detectives were able to put together the exact route Fritz had taken across Winston-Salem. And when Ian described the shopping center where he had turned to let Fritz out nearby in the darkness, the detectives knew its location precisely. It was just down the hill from Nanna’s house. The time, Ian said, was about 11 P.M.

  When Ian told of Fritz’s reappearance in the gold car and of his fear when the police car stopped Fritz later, the detectives grew excited. Surely there would be at least a radio record of the stop. From that they would learn the officer’s identity and perhaps he would remember Fritz. Regardless, it would still be corroborating evidence for Ian’s story.

  After Ian told them of Fritz’s decision to cancel
the Charlotte part of the operation and of Fritz’s return to the scene to leave the car, the detectives questioned him closely about the trip back to the mountains and all the stops to dispose of evidence. Their hope was to recover some of the items.

  When Ian had finished his story, Gentry asked if he hadn’t been concerned after he heard about the Newsom murders. Ian said that he had been “stunned” at the news, but that he thought the murders had occurred on Sunday night, not Saturday, and that it was all just a big coincidence. Besides, he said, he trusted Fritz and couldn’t believe he would do that. True, he knew that Fritz had killed three people, but he believed that was sanctioned by the CIA and thus all right.

  Gentry thought that Ian’s naïveté was a spectacle to behold, but even with such a handicap, Ian should have known that the CIA couldn’t operate in such fashion without stirring official interest.

  “It’s not like James Bond where somebody goes through and kills people and nobody asks why,” he said.

  Perhaps fear was what had kept Ian from linking his and Fritz’s activities to the Newsom murders and coming forth earlier, Gentry thought. Regardless, he was now clearly repentant, and seemed eager to do whatever he could to make amends.

  Ian had mentioned in his story that Fritz had paid him three one-hundred-dollar bills for his part in the mission, and he had deposited them in an automatic teller at Dominion Bank shortly after Fritz left on Sunday. He still had the deposit slip, and the detectives wanted that for corroborating evidence. He also had mentioned the Colt Gold Cup National Match .45-caliber pistol Fritz had given him, and they asked him for that as well.

  Both detectives went with Ian to his room to fetch these, and they again grew excited when Ian mentioned something that had occurred on Fritz’s return trip to Lexington the previous Wednesday. Not only had Fritz told Ian that his superiors at the CIA had been very impressed with how Ian handled himself, Fritz had changed the slide on the pistol he’d given Ian. Would he have put the slide from the murder weapon onto Ian’s pistol? It would be easy enough to check. The two empty shell casings found at the Newsom house had ejection markings on them that could be matched with the slide.