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    Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder
    Unavailable
    Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder
    Unavailable
    Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder
    Audiobook20 hours

    Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder

    Written by Jerry Bledsoe

    Narrated by Kevin Stillwell

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The terrifying #1 New York Times bestseller about the unbreakable ties of blood. The first bodies found were those of a feisty millionaire widow and her daughter in their posh Louisville, Kentucky, home. Months later, another wealthy widow and her prominent son and daughter-in-law were found savagely slain in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Mystified, police first suspected a professional in the bizarre gangland-style killings that shattered the quiet tranquility of two well-to-do southern communities. But soon a suspicion grew that turned their focus to family. The Sharps. The Newsoms. The Lynches. The only link between the three families was a beautiful and aristocratic young mother named Susie Sharp Newsom Lynch. Could this former child “princess” and fraternity sweetheart have committed such barbarous crimes? And what about her gun-loving first cousin and lover, Fritz Klenner, son of a nationally renowned doctor? In this powerful and riveting tale of three families connected by marriage and murder … of obsessive love and bitter custody battles, Jerry Bledsoe recounts the shocking events that ultimately took nine lives, building to a truly horrifying climax that will leave you stunned.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLantern Audio
    Release dateApr 1, 2015
    ISBN9781942248422

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    Reviews for Bitter Blood

    4/5

    127 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Brilliant book, loved it.
      Packed with detail, this author has written a compelling account of a very sad, very crazy, very intriguing family saga.
      I’m definitely looking for more by this author.
      Note: I listened to the audiobook of this one - excellent narration.
    • 5/5
      Great book for fans of the True Crime genre! After listening to a podcast featuring this terrible incident, I couldn't wait to listen to the audio book!
    • 5/5
      This was a fascinating book and kept me riveted all the way through, despite its length. The narrator, with his Southern drawl, was a perfect match.
    • 5/5
      I read this book a long time ago right after seeing the miniseries on TV. Bledsoe does a wonderful job in detailing the families involved. This and Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil are two of the best narrative nonfiction books out there. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      I graduated from John Motley Morehead Sr. High School in June of 1985, but working toward a trip to Myrtle Beach a week or so after graduation, I wasn't around, nor was I paying much attention to news sources enough to even catch the events that had unfolded. In addition to that, I lived only 1.5 miles from the "farm" in what is still known to locals as the Draper section of Eden, one of the three townships incorporated to form the now City of Eden. Later that summer I headed off myself to Georgia for college, much the same as Fritz, to satisfy my parents wishes of becoming a physician. That wasn't where my heart was, however, and I returned to Eden in 1987 at which time I went to school instead to become a Paramedic. I joined Tri-City, now Eden Rescue Squad in 1987 and was hired by Rockingham County EMS as a Paramedic in 1989 where I worked until retirement in 2017. I worked all over the County, but the majority of my career was spent working out of base 3, located in Reidsville, NC. It was there, constantly in and out of Annie Penn Hospital, knowing Sheriff Bobby Vernon, many deputies and other LEO personnel throughout the county as well personnel who had been with EMS since long before it became a Paramedic level agency that I learned and heard the details surrounding this horrendous story. I have long wanted to read this book, but just happened to see it on Scribd as an audiobook, afterwhich I immediately downloaded and listened to it. The writing and research that the author put into this book was so well presented - even down to the radio traffic causing problems in the final pursuit. We did not have 911 in Rockingham County until the early 90s, Guilford County, whose EMS system I also worked part-time for had it before us, but not by that much. EMS, Fire, and each municipal law enforcement agency operated off of different frequencies. The police were usually on a UHF frequency in the 450mHz. range, so that explains the "weak" & broken up signals. Add to that, multiple dispatch locations for each agency and that one aspect of it all comes together. I started my employment as a dispatcher for EMS myself until there was an opening on the units. It was almost headache inducing to keep up with other agencies back then, before consolidated dispatch centers, 800mHz radio frequencies, etc. That one bit of personal knowledge alone is but a drop compared to all that Mr. Bledsoe uncovered and pieced together to write one heck of a book. If you get the chance, no matter where you are from, this is a very true story; an urban legend around here. It is worth every minute of time spent in my case, listening and re-listening to it. A+++!
    • 4/5
      This book tells the facts as they are, and not the ones we want to hear. This is not a negative for a true account book, just that it is a terribly sad set of facts. Bitter Blood covers the story of a family entrenched in the traumatic events of multiple murders within their family by two of their own. It is chilling.
    • 3/5
      Let's get the bad news out of the way first. Jerry Bledsoe's "Bitter Blood" is a bloated doorstop of a book -- 573 pages of often-superfluous information about the family trees of several of the characters (complete with detailed biographies of the forebearers) and replete with observations by bystanders (again with biographical material) who are at best secondary and at worst totally irrelevant to the story.

      Now. Having said that, if you can wade through the impedimentia, there's a helluva story there. It starts -- as all good true-crime stories do -- with a murder. A wealthy, rather unpleasant woman and her adult daughter are found slain in their isolated Louisville, Kentucky home. Months later, a man and wife and her mother are also slain in their home at Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The only link between the victims turns out to be two little boys whose father was part of the Kentucky family and whose mother was part of the North Carolina contingent.

      Sounds like a slam-dunk, doesn't it? Especially when you factor in a bitter custody dispute between the boys' now-divorced parents, and the presence of a randomly wacko cousin with a penchant for guns and a habit of going around telling people he's a CIA assassin but they mustn't let anyone know.

      Unfortunately, the law-enforcement personnel involved in the separate investigations remain unaware of the connection. Even when surviving members of the North Carolina clan point the finger at one of their own, the investigation doesn't take off. And when the forces of justice do finally lumber into action, things move far too slowly for the boys' father, who is certain that his children are in deadly peril at the hands of their mother -- who is either losing her grip on reality or is a world-class liar.

      It all comes together in a bizarre attempt to take the mother and her cousin / probable lover / gun-toting survivalist into custody, the action becomes a tangled mess of multiple law-enforcement agencies who either can't communicate at all or who send garbled and incorrect information. It might be funny, but it's not.

      Even after the dust has cleared (literally) and the case appears to be closed, Bledsoe devotes another hundred pages to the aftermath. And he can be forgiven that apparently unnecessary verbiage because there were still important facts to be uncovered, a dozen or more damaged people trying to comprehend how people they loved and thought they knew could become so dangerously unbalanced, and law officers whose lives were also irrevocably changed by the case.

      If you choose this book, settle in for a long haul. Overall, it's worth the time.
    • 5/5
      Fascinating true story of the murders involving 2 wealthy, prominent families in Kentucky and North Carolina.
    • 5/5
      good and interesting