Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder (1988) is a non-fiction crime tragedy written by American author Jerry Bledsoe that reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

Bitter Blood is composed of various newspaper articles (from the Greensboro News and Record) and personal eyewitness accounts of several homicides in 1984 and 1985.

Roughly a year after the murder of Delores Lynch, on May 18, 1985, Susie Newsom’s father Bob, her mother Florence, and her grandmother Hattie were all shot to death in their home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

However, on June 3, Fritz fired on police officers when they attempted to raid his Greensboro apartment, then he, Susie and her two children fled from the scene in an SUV.

It is assumed that due to the poisoning, both children were unconscious during the police's chase, and either Susie or Fritz fatally shot both of them just prior to the explosion of the bomb.

This discovery led investigators to believe that the bomb was positioned underneath her seat, on the passenger side of Fritz's Blazer.

The following day, June 4, the police searched the Klenner household and found numerous firearms, explosives, and prescription drugs.

Inside Fritz's office, the police found evidence which showed that he was an admirer of Adolf Hitler as well as an avid supporter of the Ku Klux Klan.

[3] Perkins was spared a life sentence thanks to a note from Fritz Klenner that read, "“I’ll write a paper saying you were not knowingly involved, that you believed you were on a covert mission for the government.

Prior to the murders, in 1981, the SBI (State Bureau of Investigation) was given anonymous information that Fritz Klenner was "a dangerous psychopath who was practicing medicine without a license."

In retrospect, the attorney general of North Carolina, Rufus L. Edmisten, said that this vital piece of information was never brought to his attention.

[5] In 1994, a television movie based upon the novel was produced, titled In the Best of Families: Marriage, Pride & Madness, and directed by Jeff Bleckner.