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Dennis McDougal

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Mother's Day Kindle Edition

by Dennis McDougal (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 1,657 ratings

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The true story of Theresa Knorr, the twisted child abuser who murdered her daughters—with the help of her sons—told by a former New York Times reporter.

In June 1985, Theresa Cross Knorr dumped her daughter Sheila’s body in California’s desolate High Sierra. She had beaten Sheila unconscious in their Sacramento apartment days earlier, then locked her in a closet to die. But this wasn’t the first horrific crime she’d committed against her own children.

The previous summer, Knorr had shot Sheila’s sister Suesan, then ordered her son to dig the bullet out of the girl’s back with a knife to hide the evidence. The infection that resulted led to delirium—at which point Knorr and her two sons drove Suesan into the mountains, doused her with gasoline, and set her on fire.

It would be almost a decade before her youngest daughter, Terry Knorr Graves, revealed her mother’s history of unfathomable violence. At first, she was met with disbelief by law enforcement and even her own therapist. But eventually, the truth about her monstrous abuse emerged—and here, an award-winning journalist details the jealousy, rage, and domineering behavior that escalated into homicide and shattered a family.

A former reporter for the New York Times and Los AngelesTimes and the author of true-crime classics including Angel of Darkness, about serial killer Randy Kroft, and Blood Cold, about Robert Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley, Dennis McDougal reveals the shocking depths of depravity behind a case that made headlines across the nation.

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Amazon.com Review

"Theresa Cross was a toxic mother, but the maternity myth blinded, deafened, and silenced those that might have stopped her." Dennis McDougal, with his flair for storytelling and his eye for vivid detail, is one of the best of true crime writers. In this book he profiles a very dark character indeed: a woman for whom neither her life nor her fantasies ever got beyond her sad, narrow world of severe men, twisted religious ideas, beatings, sexual jealousy, horror fiction and movies, and obsessive housecleaning. She had several husbands, one of whom she killed, until she ended up as a single mother with two boys and three girls. Then she began to torture and kill the girls, one after another, as they became old enough that their beauty made her angry. Prepare to enter a closed-off realm of nightmare, when you read this one.

From the Inside Flap

A MODERN MURDEROUS MEDEA...
In June of l985, while her teenage sons held their half-sister down, Theresa Cross beat her l9-year-old daughter Sheila unconscious and then stuffed her into a 2' X 2' storage locker. After three days, the knocking, kicking, and cries stopped. Theresa and her sons dumped the girl's body in the desolate High Sierras....
The summer before, Theresa had dug a bullet out of her daughter Suesan's chest with a paring knife. When Suesan failed to recover (without benefit of doctors or hospital), Theresa and her two sons drove the delirious girl to the mountains , doused her with gasoline, and set her on fire....
For nearly nine years, Theresa Cross Knorr got away with murder, until her youngest daughter, Terry Knorr Graves, finally found a cop who believed the incredible story of her two murdered sisters.
That story is all here, the shocking life of a woman whose violence, jealousy, rage, and domination led to a brutally heinous crime of ruthless ferocity.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B010P21IAI
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Road Media (July 1, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 1, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4497 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 353 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #291,632 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #60 in Forensics Biographies & Memoirs
- #81 in Western U.S. Biographies
- #468 in Biographies & Memoirs of Criminals

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4.2 1,657 ratings

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Dennis McDougal

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With the publication of OPERATION WHITE RABBIT: LSD, the DEA and the Fate of the Acid King (Skyhorse Publishing, May, 2020), Dennis McDougal has authored over a dozen biographies, true crime sagas and novels as well as hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles in a career that has spanned five decades.

THE LAST MOGUL is being developed as TV miniseries starring Jonah Hill as Mob lawyer Sidney Korshak and BLOOD COLD is under option by Mad Dog Films as a directing project for Elizabeth Banks. He is coproducing a Rodney King documentary with Revelations Productions. While many might call it an oxymoron, he is currently at work on a contemporary history of the seamy side of Las Vegas.

Before he began covering movies and media for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, McDougal worked as a staff writer at dailies in Riverside and Long Beach, California. A UCLA graduate, McDougal holds a Bachelor's in English and a Master's in Journalism. He was awarded a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and spent a year teaching and studying in Palo Alto, Japan and Canada. Over the years, his journalism has won over 50 honors, including the National Headliners and George Peabody Award. He was a producer for CNN during the O.J. Simpson murder trial and co-produced "Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times" (2009) for PBS.

McDougal has lectured in journalism and creative writing at UCLA, Stanford, and the California State Universities at Fullerton and Long Beach. He and his wife, Sharon, live near Memphis, Tennessee, have five children, and 15 grandchildren.

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Ldympr

My aunt was the prosecutor of this trial

Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2019

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I saw a shirt YouTube video on this. I live right around the corner from where all this took place and never even knew. I remember vaguely from news what happened. The book was great and well-written and if you're into crime dramas I highly recommend this book. And maybe a little dark and disturbing to few people.
I think it tells the story very well. The author did do a good job on their research

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Jello Rules!

LOTs of interesting details

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2019

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i liked this book better than clarkson's 'cause it had a lot more input from billy bob, robert, and those who knew theresa knorr. we get a lot more info about their childhoods and adolescence. there's evidence about theresa being abused by her husband via testimonies from others including a dr who treated her facial injuries. this helped her get away w/murdering her husband who wanted to leave her. we learn about the childhood of theresa (clarkson didn't have details about it 'cause she lied a lot about it) to explain why she had a bitter lifelong feud w/her sister, rosemary.

it gives an afterword in 1998 describing what happened to this "family'' after the sentencing and clarkson's didn't. lots of interesting stories including billy bob getting beaten up and doesn't even fight back when he's attacked. howard sanders jumped his attacker and had the football team surround them, so teachers couldn't break up the fight.

testimonies from rob knorr sr and his relatives including terry's brother says that sheila was slow and his uncle and aunt helped a lot for free were interesting. unlike clarksons which showed that theresa was a good mother 'til knorr sr left her, it showed she wasn't a good mother according to others. she was abusive (physically and emotionally) to sheila and robert knorr sr thinks it's 'cause she blamed her for theresa shooting cliff. (cliff doubted the daughter's his and wanted to leave her 'cause he was sick of the accusations of infidelity.) theresa blamed the fetus. testimonies here show that rob knorr sr wasn't abusive and those memories were likely created 'cause of the brainwashing of theresa when the kids were young.

it made more sense than clarkson's book. if sheila was seriously dating a guy and considering marriage, then how come he didn't report her missing? he didn't even know her last name? have a picture? the police didn't ask them questions and they lived there for a year after sheila's tortures and murder. this book had her brothers explain that she had a major crush on a native american nicknamed chief. he didn't notice her much because before she was able to get into a friendship/relationship w/him, she was a prisoner at home.

clarkson didn't explain what happened to suesan after she reported the abuse to cps and was sent back home. she was 15 and after she was shot, she tried to stay at friends' or stayed out late for as long as she could. (why didn't she report the shooting? she had a bullet as evidence! it was trapped in her. her friends, most likely, would've helped her. why didn't she bike away after one of the severe beatings and report it to the cops w/evidence all over her body?) she could've asked customers in a store to call the cops and showed the bruised and battered body. begged neighbors to call.

in this book, it explained that after cps returned sheila to her mother, sheila beat was beaten like a side of beef. by order of age and size, they had to sock her in the stomach. (her siblings). terry thought her spirit broke after this. (years of intense physical abuse, slaps by theresa after she stood up for herself, going into prostitution, forced back home). robert thought that suesan thought it was better the devil you know than the one you don't. theresa told her that if she ran away again, her situation would be worst and she'd never see her siblings again.

i liked how connie went into details about the abuse she suffered from howard and about how her friend, who was a nurse, "forced" her to go to the cops. her son, howard sanders jr, was lucky to be alive! it was the worst child abuse the court's seen in years. (howard was drunk and lost control of his temper.) it was interesting that bud watson, his former best friend, turned against her and beat him w/friends as badly as the time howard beat the guy who jumped his brother. connie exacted her revenge. (after her son's near death, howard was ordered to go into a drug abuse program. connie confessed that she had a tryst w/bud watson during their separation. howard got drunk and almost stabbed her in the shower. then, he beat her. connie finally had enough. he's been beating her since the start of the relationship! she was scared to leave him)

it was interesting to know that billy bob still has nightmares and a drinking problem since 17 from his horrible experiences. he even said that both contributed to the demise of the relationship w/emily fisher, his former domestic partner. his life, de lois, left him 'cause of the possibility of prison and the trial. he still had lots of friends and knorr sr's family to support him. since he said that terry is a loser (and she was abused much worst than him 'cause she was a girl) and he pretended that she had the wrong bill knorr on the phone when she asked for $, i think he deserved it.
clarkson's book didn't have much info about him. it mentioned that terry said suesan was so battered in oct by her mother and brothers that her apprearance changed. the family thought it was due to the possession by the devil. in this book, bill knorr was said to rarely hit his sister and held them down for their mother to hit. (if he didn't, he was beaten.) billy bob, robert, and terry were interviewed by the author and quoted.

book says knorr sr bought a small headstone for suesan. tears fell on his glasses and down his face during the trial. sheila sanders has 1, too and i saw it from findagrave.

i wished we could've known why terry and howard fell out during the late 90s. howard worked as a chef, but didn't loan money to his sister who slept on the dirt. (it was mentioned that howard rekindled his relationship w/terry and worked hard to repair his relationships w/his sons. connie protested his visits unless a court appointed counselor was there. after he arrogantly tried to get custody, she moved w/them.)

their mother was too afraid to beat her when howard lived there when she was either 15 or 16 since he raised her from when she was a kid. they were 7 years apart. howard went back w/his mother briefly 'cause he couldn't live at home after the child abuse and spousal abuse charges.

sheila was like a zombie 'cause she didn't have a reason to live and wasn't adequately defended by anyone 'til she met chief. (sheila and howard were 2 years apart and she had the fire beaten out of her as a toddler. theresa let howard get away w/nearly anything and doted on him. that was 'til he raped his siblings at 13 and she beat the crap out of him. it started w/breaking a chair over his back. he never did it again and terry never blamed him 'cause she thought he was just expressing his sexuality. she teamed up w/robert to tell their mother 'cause being anally raped hurt her and robert was tired of the incestous prostitution. )

she wasn't able to escape to him for help or able to call him 'cause they didn't have a phone i think. when he became her reason to live, she fought against her mother.... and it led to her death. her mother was convinced a demon was trapped in her after she survived a car hit outside the mortuary and later gave her a veneral disease from the toilet. she was convinced that sheila got a magical cure and wouldn't tell her. theresa was a hypochondriac. )

i liked how terry was uncertain as to who shot suesan after hearing robert say it was actually terry who shot her in a panic. (they thought the devil was in suesan and this was during a fight between suesan and their mother.) robert said he took the gun away, took the casing away, wiped the prints,a nd put it back. their mother was mad that terry shot suesan, but madder that robert wiped the prints away 'cause that would've cleared her. terry said she wasn't certain who shot her after hearing what he said. (clarkson quoted terry. the book was mostly about her. he didn't interview as many people or as extensively.)

howard had a lot of self-hatred! robert overheard him telling his friends that he realizes there's monsters in the world and he hates them. he also realized that he's one of the monsters he hates. (he was doing a lot of mushrooms.) he gave a lot of drugs to his siblings to show his affection. howard told robert he needs to smoke a bong of pot/cannabis/mary jane like a man when he was 7 or 8. robert says he's surprised that he has any brain cells left.

howard hated what he did to his family, but it was the only way he knew how to be a father. an ogre authoritarian. also, he sucked at controlling his temper. clarkson's book shows a confused and confusing howard. sometimes, he'd stand up for his siblings against his mother, but connie said that she'd call him to "teach them a lesson" if they misbehave. his mother resorted to "disciplining" them behind his back. (at one point, he had to grab the plastic tube away from his mother to protect his sister, suesan. she kept attacking her horrendously for her "witch" ceremony that included cutting the eyelashes of her mother, taking a few pieces of hair, and some of her spindly nails.)

in this book, he stopped holding them down for beatings 'cause he's nobody's stooge. (stopped at 13). at 14, he's 6' 190 says clarkson's book...

i liked how he explored the relationship between howard and suesan more. they hated each other! (howard did rape suesan in front of robert when he was 13 and he made robert watch 'cause he wouldn't mount her. howard's order. suesan was 10, robert was 7 or 8.)

suesan would terrify howard by telling him that he's going to kill his family w/her powers as a possessed witch as a teen. this is after he began holding her down, so their mother could beat her for whatever "reason" i think. she saved most of her venom for her mother. billy bob said their mother started being abusive to them in '77 or '78, maybe later. well, he said when she was 10, 11, or so and he was born in 67.

(in clarkson's, howard and suesan's relationship was more positive. howard was quoted in between paragraphs explaining it. he said that he tried to get help for his sister and didn't believe she was possessed by the devil or sold her soul to him. he said he realized beating kids isn't right and protected them from their mother. he became a chef at 16 (how???? still in high school) and being out of home made him realize it.)

even in this book, connie said that howard was really upset to find out about suesan's death. he was crying and everything.

i wished it explained more about what happened to billy bob and howard, too. also, terry's life from between '98 'til 2011 aka when she died.

5 people found this helpful

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Shane Music

Gripping, painful story

Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2024

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You don't want to stop once you begin this book. If you've had any experience with a painful childhood, you will know the children in this family well. God give comfort to the survivors of this sad family, except for the mother. She can burn!

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Eden.M

Not Your Typical True Crime

Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2019

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This book is a little hard to review, as I did find it interesting reading, even if it was very hard to understand how this all could of occurred not so long ago, but ... it’s not a standard true crime, it’s more what I would call a biography, as there is just about zero of anything to do with police or courts, and 99.9% of a retelling of the lives of the people involved.

As I mentioned I do find it hard to comprehend all of what is stated in the book, I just can’t get over how people would allow this to happen to themselves and to each other, but I do understand that with such extended mental brainwashing, and with an induction that is steeped so deeply in the family values that yes it could, it’s just a shame that not one child spoke out any sooner.

I would not recommend this book to anyone who’s after the normal true crime tale, but if you want something totally different then this may peek your interest.

10 people found this helpful

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Joshua D. Zech

Slow at the start, but gets up to speed

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2022

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This book starts off with a little bit of irrelevant chatter, but does eventually get into the meat of the story. The author does a good job relating the details of a family that is really messed up. It is well written and flows well. It definitely gave me a good look at how families far from the norm function. On the side, it is a short sociological study of how abuse can bring about abnormal psychology in children. The aberrant behaviors of some of the family members makes for an almost unbelievable tale. In the end, you’re just thankful for your “normal” family, even though you don’t think your family is that great.

One person found this helpful

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Tom W. Chilek

Bad Mother....

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2018

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Great book, fascinating read, and wonderfully written! Theresa Cross represented a special kind of terrible. It was horrible to read the kinds of terror that all of her kids had to go thorough on a daily basis. A terror that led to the tragic deaths of Suesan Knorr and Sheila Sanders. How any mother could commit such horrible things against her own children is beyond explanation. Mother Theresa should have been given the death penalty. She has no right to be walking and talking, even if it's through a prison cell.

One person found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Amazing story

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2021

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I bought this book after seeing this story on a episode of cold case Files and it's just a amazing story of survival but also just how cruel people can be i will never understand how a mother can kill her own flesh and blood I think it's a great book I couldn't put it down and would love to see it become a movie

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2021

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The author does an excellent job of presenting a most difficult and horrible story of abuse and destruction. No words can describe what one woman could do for self, total control and greed. She is blasphemy to the word mother. Her children will forever live with a life sentence filled with the nightmare they lived. And this evil woman should never see the light of day except through prison bars. This was a very difficult read. That anyone could treat her children in such a manner is hard to believe. And it was ALL SYSTEMS FAILED. Not one agency or school or neighbor or court or child protective services or family or relative or ex spouses did the right thing. Someone knew something and chose incompetence, ignorance or down right negligence and failed to act. Many were complicit in her reign of terror.Shame on them all.

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Ann Noddin

Excellent

Reviewed in Canada on May 28, 2021

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Product is true to form.

nina quinn

Heartbreaking

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 16, 2022

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I never usually read books where there is any child abuse. However I had to read this to the end, I needed to know what happened to children and kept praying someone would step in and save them......its heartbreaking to know that one toxic person can have such a detrimental effect on so many good people 💔

Kerrie Dodds

What a Brutal Woman

Reviewed in Australia on July 11, 2023

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Read in 24 hours and then googled for more information. Intriguingly bizarre and mind boggling. Hard to believe mothers could ever even think about the events that occurred

Disa Ostrom-Jaye

Heartbreaking story about surviving a wickedly sick mother.

Reviewed in Canada on July 10, 2019

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This mother was a real cunundrum to me, was she really mentally ill or just totally in it for herself and to hell with her children. I don't think anyone knows the answer.

Gemma

Badly written,

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 12, 2017

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How to turn a compelling murder mystery into serious boredom! Just ask this author! Long winded & incredibly dull ,

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