John Wesley Lynch

  General Notes:

John (age 10) and his brother James "Jim" (age 9) were the sons of Dr. Tom Lynch of Albuquerque, New Mexico and Susie Sharp Newsome Lynch. They were living with their mother and her cousin/lover Fritz Klenner in Greensboro, North Carolina after Tom and Susie separated.
Fritz & Susie were later suspected in the murders of Tom Lynch's mother and sister (Delores and Janie Lynch) near Louisville, Kentucky on July 22, 1984; and also in the murders of Susie's parents (Robert W. Newsom, Jr. and Florence Sharp Newsom of Greensboro, NC) and Susie's grandmother, Hannah "Nanna" Newsom of Winston-Salem, NC, all on May 18, 1985. On June 3, 1985, several law enforcement agencies in North Carolina were pursuing Fritz Klenner to arrest him for the murders. Susie was with Fritz in his Chevy Blazer, but tinted windows prevented police from knowing that Susie's two sons were in the vehicle. Following a police chase and shootout, Fritz detonated an explosive inside the vehicle, causing it to explode, killing Fritz, Susie, Jim, and John. The boys' bodies were transported to New Mexico by their father and buried. The story of the Sharp/Lynch/Klenner/Newsom families was the subject of the book "Bitter Blood" by Jerry Bledsoe. There was also a movie about the murders in 1995 starring Harry Hamlin and Kelly McGillis (also titled "Bitter Blood").