Bitter Blood (60 page)

As Fritz drove slowly back, three of the trailing police cars stopped at a phone booth at a Sunoco station at the corner of Battleground Avenue and Cone Boulevard, and SBI agent Tom Sturgill called the district attorney’s office in Winston-Salem.

Tisdale was at a crucial point in an emotional and controversial trial that was making big news. Amid charges of frame-up and racial discrimination, he was trying a young black man for his life for murdering and raping a beautiful young copy editor for the
The Sentinel
as she arrived for work early one morning the previous summer. Tisdale had to request a recess to take Sturgill’s call, and more than fifteen minutes passed before he got to the phone.

Sturgill filled Tisdale in on what had happened.

“Have we got enough to make an arrest?” he asked.

“Yes, you have enough to charge him,” Tisdale remembered telling him. “You can’t go any further, and he is a potential danger.”

“Do we need a warrant?”

“No, we can get a warrant later. Just go ahead and pick him up, but proceed with caution. You cannot let him hole up in that apartment.”

By that time, Fritz was already back at the apartment, which was being watched by two surveillance cars.

The officers at the Sunoco station realized that they might have a problem with communications. All had hand radios with which they could communicate from car to car and with the SBI airplane. All but one of the cars, however, were Forsyth County cars, and their radios were out of range and ineffective if further help was needed. The command car, driven by Travis, could communicate only with the Greensboro police dispatcher. The officers decided that an SBI car would have to be used, despite its easy recognizability, so they would have a radio connection to the state highway patrol.

All three cars left the Sunoco station and drove to a small shopping center a few hundred yards from Susie’s apartment. The command officers stopped at a Big Star supermarket from which they could see Fritz’s Blazer. Bryant, Gentry, Sturgill, and Boner continued on to the SBI office to swap cars and pick up Carden, who’d returned there with Ian.

At the SBI office, Sturgill and Gentry came up with a plan. Why not just call the apartment and ask Fritz to come in for another interview? As confident as he’d been earlier about matching wits with the officers, Fritz might be cocky enough to do it, they thought. Gentry was looking forward to telling Fritz that he was under arrest. Knowing Fritz’s admiration for G. Gordon Liddy, Gentry had picked out a Liddy quote for the occasion: “In a battle of wits, you came unarmed.”

Sturgill dialed, and Susie answered. He identified himself and asked to speak with Fritz.

“He’s not here,” Susie said.

“Do you know when he will be?” Sturgill asked.

“You can try about six-thirty or seven.”

Neither Sturgill nor Gentry was surprised that Susie had lied.

Sturgill, Gentry, and Boner returned to the Big Star in a gray SBI Ford and joined the debate on how best to attempt the arrest. Carden rode with Bryant in a burgundy Chevrolet Impala and took up a position east of Susie’s apartment.

The officers didn’t want to risk a shootout in the crowded apartment complex, and they realized that they could not evacuate the apartments without attracting Fritz’s notice. They considered sending two officers to the door but rejected that as too dangerous.

Because all of the officers involved were detectives in civilian clothes, all the cars unmarked, Ed Hunt finally decided that a uniformed officer in a marked car should be on hand before any attempt was made to move in on Fritz, and at 2:38 Travis radioed that he needed assistance from a uniformed officer.

Squad Leader L. C. LeClear was the first to respond to the call. But he was downtown, miles away, headed for the police gas pumps on Smith Street, and couldn’t come until he got fuel. Squad Leader Tommy Dennis was near the coliseum in the southwestern section of the city, nearly eight miles distant, and he radioed that he was on his way.

Soon afterward, officers close to the apartment called on their hand radios that Fritz and Susie were loading things into Fritz’s Blazer. They saw Fritz carrying what appeared to be military weapons to the vehicle while Susie ferried duffel bags. Then they saw something that startled and unsettled all of them.

John and Jim emerged from the apartment dressed in camouflage fatigues.

The officers had assumed that the boys were in school.

The boys climbed into the back of the Blazer with their dogs, Chowy and Maizie. Susie got into the passenger side of the vehicle, carrying books and papers. Fritz was last to leave the apartment and clamber into the Blazer. He backed it out of the parking space and headed away from the watching detectives down winding Hunt Club Road toward the apartment complex’s main entrance on Friendly Avenue.

Police cars began to scramble.

Fritz had turned his black K-5 Blazer into an ominous-looking machine, a gunship designed for combat and survival under harsh conditions. Short and stumpy, it sat high on ballooning tires that could deliver it over almost any terrain. The front bumper was made of steel nearly three-quarters of an inch thick, capable of plowing through formidable obstacles. A heavy winch built into the bumper could be used to pull stumps from the ground or vehicles from tight spots. Stout roll bars protected the cab, where Fritz always carried vital spare parts as well as powerful weapons, and black-tinted windows kept prying eyes from knowing what was inside. The vehicle was equipped for nighttime operations, too. Seven headlights across the front could throw a 180-degree arc of light for a great distance. Floodlights on the back could blind pursuers.

As the Blazer rolled slowly down Hunt Club Road toward the apartment complex’s entrance on Friendly Avenue, police cars moved to close in. A red Camaro driven by a young narcotics officer, Marc Fetter, had been parked behind Susie’s apartment on Vinegar Hill Drive, from where Fetter and SBI agent Walt House were keeping watch. Fetter now hurried down Vinegar Hill to Quail Hollow Road, hoping to cut off Fritz before he got to the entrance. Bryant and Carden followed in a Chevrolet Impala.

As soon as Greensboro detective A. G. Travis, the driver of the command car, saw the direction Fritz was taking, he said, “We can cut him off at the entrance!” He whipped the Buick onto College Road going north and turned left onto Friendly, speeding toward the entrance.

Five minutes after Travis had put in his call for a uniformed officer, two were on the way, L. C. LeClear and Tommy Dennis, both patrol squad leaders, both coming from different directions. LeClear was several miles away on Friendly, Dennis closer, on Interstate 40.

While Fritz and Susie were loading the vehicle, Travis had radioed again to ask the whereabouts of the uniformed officer. Dennis reported he was arriving at College Road only minutes away.

“What’s it in reference to?” LeClear wanted to know.

“Just tell him to come on, and I’ll fill him in,” Travis said. “Tell both of ’em to pull in front of the Big Star.”

At 2:47, Travis called to Dennis. “Three-o-three, where are you?”

“Just passing the fire station.”

A minute and a half later, Dennis reported his arrival at Big Star, but by then Travis had already gone. Dennis spotted a gray Ford that had just left the parking lot and recognized it as an SBI car. It was followed by a blue Mustang driven by another young narcotics agent, Terry Spainhour. In that car were the Kentucky detectives, Nobles and Childers, Nobles in front, Childers in back. But Dennis had no idea that these were officers, nor did he know what was going on.

Now Travis radioed again: “That uniform car, come on out Friendly. By the exit to Guilford Hills,” he said, giving the wrong name of the apartment complex. “Rush it up.”

The gray Ford and blue Mustang stopped in the left turn lane at the traffic light at Friendly, and Dennis, driving an unmarked dark blue Chevrolet Malibu police cruiser with a blue light on the dashboard, pulled to the right side of the SBI car and rolled down his window. He didn’t recognize the three men inside.

Gentry was closest to him. Later, Gentry remembered telling Dennis that they were after a serious felony suspect. Three murders. A black Blazer. He recalled Sturgill saying, “Have you got a vest? Better get it on.”

Dennis remembered both men talking, but heard only about felony warrants and a black Blazer, nothing about murders or a bullet-proof vest.

“Wait a minute and I’ll let you know which way he’s coming,” he recalled Gentry telling him as he listened to his hand radio. “He’s coming our way. Be careful.”

Dennis always wore a bullet-proof vest. His wife, Sandy, made him. Two weeks earlier, he had traded an old vest for a new one designed to stop bigger and faster bullets. Dennis was a by-the-book officer who loved his work. He had been on the force thirteen years. In that time, he’d been in the news for helping to capture a stray bear, for being seriously injured during a chase on a motorcycle, and for receiving a commendation for saving the life of a wreck victim. He was about to make the news again.

“Can you give me any idea what he’s got?” LeClear asked the dispatcher after hearing Travis’s call to “rush it up.” He said he’d have to run with lights and siren to get there.

“Nine-ninety, can you advise its nature?” the dispatcher asked Travis.

“Just have him keep coming this way,” Travis said.

Patrol Captain Charles Allen interrupted. “What do they have out there?”

“I’m unable to advise,” the dispatcher said. “Nine-ninety will not say.”

“If it’s urgent enough for us to get there,” Allen said, “respond ten-thirty-nine.”

LeClear turned on his blue lights and siren and speeded up.

The Blazer reached the apartment complex’s entrance at the same time as the command car. Travis saw the Blazer and attempted to block it at the entrance, swerving in front as Hunt held up his badge and Davidson and Barker tried to wave Fritz down from the backseat.

The attempt to stop Fritz was instinctual. “We couldn’t just let him disappear out into the world,” Barker said later. “We just understood that we had to stop him somehow.”

The Buick skidded to a halt, overshooting the Blazer by a few feet. Later the officers inside remembered Fritz as looking surprised but not frightened. Fritz whipped off a hat he was wearing, turned the Blazer up onto the curb, and went behind the Buick, which had stalled momentarily.

“There’s the truck!” Travis radioed excitedly at 2:49. “I want him stopped! Get him! He’s considered—” But he never finished that sentence. Instead, he turned his attention to getting his car started again and turning it around.

Fetter and House, followed by Bryant and Carden, were coming out of the apartment complex on Quail Hollow Road and reached the entrance in time to see Fritz pull behind the command car and turn right onto Friendly. Both cars came out behind him. Fritz was not speeding away. He drove slowly and deliberately as always.

“Nine-ninety, give a description,” the dispatcher pleaded. She got no answer. “Four-forty-one and three-o-three, we have a truck that nine-ninety wants stopped. I have no description.”

Dennis was now heading west on Friendly after pulling ahead of the SBI car. He saw the Blazer coming toward him, followed by other cars. He did not know that two of those cars contained police officers. Dennis flicked on his blue light and began to make a U-turn to get behind the Blazer and attempt a standard felony stop, something he’d practiced many times in training but rarely had an opportunity to use. He hoped to stop the car before it got to Francis King Street, a narrow side street about a hundred yards from the major intersection at College Road from which he’d just come.

At that moment, Debbie Blanton was headed east on Friendly in her 1970 red Mustang. She was on her way back to work after lunch. She saw the police car coming toward her. Then, in her rearview mirror, she saw it begin a U-turn.

“Oh, no,” she thought. “What have I done?” She slowed for the traffic light ahead, just up a slight rise.

Dennis was in the middle of his U-turn when he heard Travis’s excited command to stop the truck. Before he could finish his turn, the Camaro driven by Fetter pulled out from behind another car and started to pass Fritz. Dennis had to swerve to avoid hitting Fetter’s car. Fetter pulled directly across Fritz’s path at Francis King Street, but Fritz simply maneuvered to the left and went around him.

Debbie Blanton had stopped at the light in the center eastbound lane of Friendly. In the left-turn lane, beside and to the back of her, was a gray car driven by a woman with a young child. The gray car had stopped short of the light. Its front bumper was aligned with Blanton’s rear wheel.

The SBI car driven by Sturgill and the blue Mustang driven by Spainhour had followed Dennis onto Friendly, and both also made U-turns. Suddenly, Spainhour pulled out to try to overtake Fritz, causing Dennis to evade again, sending him into a skid. Dennis realized that he was skidding at an angle into the left side of the Blazer, his windshield facing Fritz’s door. He saw Fritz with his left arm propped in the open window. The next few moments passed in slow motion for Dennis.

He saw the arm in the window lowering, then realized that it was holding a gun, an Uzi 9-millimeter submachine gun, the same type weapon the Israeli army used. His training told him not to sit still. He reached for his pistol at the same time he began squirming high in his seat to protect his head. He saw the first flash from the muzzle but not the others.