Theresa Knorr
Theresa Knorr | |
---|---|
Incarcerated | |
Spouses | Clifford Clyde Sanders
(m. 1962; died 1964)Robert Knorr
(m. 1966; div. 1970)Ronald Pulliam
(m. 1971; div. 1972)Chet Harris
(m. 1976; div. 1976) |
Children |
|
First degree murder (2 counts) | |
Criminal penalty | 50 years to life |
Details | |
Victims | 2 |
Span of crimes | 1984–1985 |
Country | United States |
State(s) | California |
Date apprehended | November 11, 1993 |
Imprisoned at | California Institution for Women |
Theresa Jimmie Francine Knorr (née Cross; born March 14, 1946) is an American woman convicted of torturing and murdering two of her six children while using the others to facilitate and cover up her crimes. She was acquitted of murdering her first husband and was also considered a suspect in the unsolved murder of her sister. She is currently serving two consecutive life sentences at the California Institution for Women in Chino, California.
Early life
Theresa Knorr was born on March 14, 1946, in
Marriages
On September 29, 1962, a 16-year-old Theresa married 21-year-old Clifford Clyde Sanders, whom she had met a few months earlier. She immediately dropped out of high school and became pregnant, and on July 16, 1963, she gave birth to her first child, Howard Clyde Sanders.[1] The marriage was rocky; Theresa was possessive and repeatedly accused Sanders of infidelity.[2] The couple argued frequently and on June 22, 1964, she claimed that he had punched her in the face during one such argument. She reported the incident to police but refused to press charges against Sanders; the assault charges were subsequently dropped. On July 6, 1964, the day after Sanders' birthday, the couple were arguing because he had spent his birthday out with friends instead of at home. During the argument, Sanders allegedly informed Theresa that he was leaving her. Theresa became enraged and shot Sanders in the back with a rifle as he was walking out the door; killing him.[2][3][4]
Theresa was arrested and charged with Sanders' murder, to which she pled not guilty claiming that she was acting in
She gave birth to her second child, Sheila Gay Sanders, on March 16, 1965.[7] After Sheila's birth, Theresa began drinking heavily. She regularly drank at the local American Legion hall where she met Estell Thornsberry, a disabled United States Army veteran. The two began a relationship and eventually moved in together. During the relationship, Theresa routinely left her children with Thornsberry while she went out drinking. Thornsberry began to question Theresa when she stayed out for days at a time and ended the relationship a few months later, after discovering that she was having an affair with his best friend. Shortly after the relationship with Thornsberry ended, she met and began a relationship with a United States Marine Corps private named Robert Knorr. She soon became pregnant and the couple married on July 9, 1966.[7]
Theresa's third child, Suesan Marline Knorr, was born on September 27, 1966. The couple had three more children: William Robert Knorr on September 15, 1967; Robert Wallace Knorr, Jr. on December 31, 1968; and Theresa "Terry" Marie Knorr on August 5, 1970.
Child abuse
Theresa was physically, verbally, and psychologically abusive toward her children, behavior that escalated after her fourth divorce. She also gained a tremendous amount of weight, and became reclusive to the point of disconnecting the home phone and refusing to allow the children to have visitors.[9] Knorr and her children lived in Orangevale, California for many years before moving into a two-bedroom apartment in Sacramento; her eldest son Howard reportedly left home before the move to Sacramento. According to neighbors, the Sacramento apartment was filthy and smelled of urine. Neighbors also noticed that the children, whom Knorr never let go outside, seemed fearful, nervous and high-strung.[10]
For years, Knorr abused and tortured her children in various ways, including beating them, force-feeding them, burning them with cigarettes, and throwing knives at them; one of the children was hit by a knife and the mother cleaned the wound and stopped the bleeding. She made her children hold each other down while she assaulted them with a special beating paddle. In one instance, Knorr held a pistol to her youngest daughter Terry's head and threatened to kill her.[11] Knorr primarily focused her anger and abuse on Terry's older sisters, Sheila and Suesan. Terry said in an interview that her mother resented that Sheila and Suesan were maturing and blossoming into attractive young women while she faced the prospect of losing her looks as she aged.
Knorr also believed that her fourth husband, Chet Harris, had turned Suesan into a witch, so Suesan received the worst of Knorr's abuse. After one severe beating, Suesan ran away from home. She was picked up by police and placed in a psychiatric hospital where she told staff that her mother abused her. Knorr denied the abuse claims and told the hospital staff that Suesan had mental issues. Authorities did not investigate the matter further and released Suesan back into her mother's custody. Knorr immediately punished Suesan by beating her while wearing a pair of leather gloves, and forced Suesan's siblings to take turns in the assault. In the subsequent weeks, Knorr handcuffed Suesan to the kitchen table and ordered her other children to stand watch over her; she remained handcuffed under the table for two years, intermittently being allowed to get up due to pressure sores, and being force fed. If she vomited, she was forced to eat the vomit. Previously, she had forced Suesan to drop out of school and forbade her to leave the house.[9] Knorr also pulled her other children out of school, removing their access to phones and not allowing them outdoors; most of them never advanced past the eighth grade.[10]
Deaths
Suesan Marline Knorr
For two years, Knorr tortured Suesan by handcuffing her under the dining room table. Knorr would hand feed her from time to time, but she had to have a mouth gag on. Suesan eventually could not handle the torture anymore and begged her mother to release her. The next morning on July 16, 1984, Knorr went on a psychotic rampage and started hitting all her children. She uncuffed Suesan for a minute, but handed Terry a gun to point at her and shoot her if she moved. While Knorr and the other children were in the kitchen preparing oatmeal, one of them dropped a spoon; the noise frightened Terry, causing her to accidentally pull the trigger and shoot Suesan. Knorr immediately rechained her under the dining-room table; her only response to the fact that her daughter was profusely bleeding, begging to be taken to the hospital was to get upset that her blood had stained the carpet. Knorr decided to "nurse" Suesan back to health, making her stay in the bathtub for several weeks. Suesan survived the shooting and continually begged her mother to let her leave. Knorr demanded to remove the bullet before letting Suesan go; she managed to gouge the bullet out while Suesan was unconscious, which led to infection and sepsis. Suesan was 17 years old at the time of her death.
Sheila Gay Sanders
Following Suesan's death, Knorr began directing the majority of her anger and abuse towards her 20-year-old daughter Sheila, forcing her into
However, after a few weeks, Knorr became angry and accused Sheila of being pregnant and contracting a
Knorr left Sheila's body in the closet for an additional three days before discovering that she was dead. Once again she ordered her sons William and Robert to dispose of their sister's body, which had begun to
Although Sheila's body had been removed from the closet, the smell of decomposition still lingered in the apartment,[19] and Knorr became concerned that the smell and physical evidence in the closet could implicate her in Sheila's death. On September 29, 1986, she moved the family's belongings out of the apartment and ordered Terry to burn it down to eliminate any physical evidence.[18] During the night, Terry dumped three containers of lighter fluid on the apartment floor and set it on fire, but the fire did little damage as neighbors quickly reported it before it spread; the closet in which Sheila died was not damaged. After Knorr's arrest, investigators were able to remove the subfloor from the closet to test it for physical evidence.[19]
After leaving the Sacramento apartment, Knorr went into hiding. Her sons Howard and William, who were of legal age by then, severed all ties with her; 16-year-old Terry also escaped from her mother and used Sheila's identification card to pass herself off as a legal adult. The only child to remain with Knorr was 19-year-old Robert Knorr, Jr. and he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, and attempted to keep a low profile. In November 1991, Knorr, Jr. was arrested after he fatally shot a bartender in a Las Vegas bar during an attempted robbery. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Shortly after his arrest, Knorr left Las Vegas and relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah.[20]
Arrests, convictions and aftermath
After escaping from her mother, Terry attempted to report her sisters' murders to the Utah police, but they dismissed her stories as fiction, as did a therapist she visited.[21][19] On October 28, 1993, Terry phoned the hotline for the Fox television program America's Most Wanted, and was told to contact detectives in Placer County, California, where Suesan's body had been found. Placer County detectives took her claims seriously and followed up with an investigation, soon linking the two Jane Does found in the area in 1984 and 1985 to Terry's detailed stories of her sisters' deaths.[14][22] William Knorr was arrested on November 4, 1993, in Woodland, California, where he had been living and working.[19] Robert Knorr, Jr. was charged with his sisters' murders while he was serving his 16-year sentence in an Ely, Nevada, prison; William and Robert's stories tallied very closely.[22] On November 10, 1993, Knorr herself was arrested at her home in Salt Lake City. At the time of her arrest she was using her maiden name of "Cross" and working as a caregiver for her landlord's 86-year-old mother.[23]
On November 15, 1993, Theresa Knorr was charged with two counts of murder, two counts of
William Knorr was sentenced to probation and ordered to undergo therapy for participating in his sister Suesan's murder. In exchange for his testimony, the prosecution dropped all charges against Robert Knorr, Jr. save for one count of being an accessory-after-the-fact in relation to Sheila's murder. Robert Jr. pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced to three years in prison, which was served concurrently with his 16-year sentence in Nevada.[24][27] After running away from her mother's home, Terry Knorr married twice and eventually moved to Sandy, Utah, where she lived with her second husband. She worked as a grocery store cashier in the same neighborhood where her mother had also lived and worked before her arrest. Theresa and Terry apparently did not know they lived in close proximity and had no contact.[19] Terry Knorr died at 41 in 2011.[28]
Following Theresa Knorr's arrest, police decided to reopen the murder case of her older sister, Rosemary Norris, who was found
In popular culture
The 2010 horror film The Afflicted (also titled Another American Crime) is loosely based on the Theresa Knorr case. The film follows the real-life events through a substantially-compressed timeline. Unlike the real case, the movie ends with the youngest daughter killing her mother and one of her brothers before committing suicide.[30]
The murders were profiled on the
References
- ^ a b Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Theresa". trutv.com. p. 2. Archived from the original on December 16, 2013.
- ^ ISBN 1-615-92205-9.
- ^ a b Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Defending Dignity". trutv.com. p. 3.
- ^ "10 Facts You Need To Know About Theresa Knorr and Her Life of Crimes". AnswersAfrica. August 22, 2019.
- ^ a b Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Unexpected Outcome". trutv.com. p. 4.
- ^ a b "Murder Suspect Killed Husband". Lodi News-Sentinel. November 8, 1993. p. 8.
- ^ a b c Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Moving On". p. 5.
- ^ a b Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Desperate". trutv.com. p. 6.
- ^ a b Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: The Edge of Sanity". p. 7.
- ^ a b Foster, David (November 15, 1993). "Girl begged police to believe her". Lakeland Ledger. p. 4A.
- ^ Matthew Blackburn (August 12, 2015). "Behind Closed Doors: The Secret Life of the Knorr Family". The Line Up. Open Road Media. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
I grew up in an insane asylum basically, but what's worse is we didn't know it was an insane asylum.
- ^ a b c Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Bartering Freedoms". trutv.com. p. 8.
- ^ Sam Warrington (August 16, 2016). "8 Female Serial Killers That Have Committed Despicable Crimes". Movie Pilot. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
- ^ a b c Paddock, Richard C. (November 14, 1993). "'Unbelievable' Tale Reveals Grisly Crimes". Los Angeles Times. p. 1.
- ISBN 1-572-30864-8.
- ^ Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Unforeseen Discovery". trutv.com. p. 1.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-585-62705-9.
- ^ a b c d Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Jane Doe #6607-85". trutv.com. p. 9.
- ^ a b c d e f Paddock, Richard C. (November 15, 1993). "Police finally believe tale of depravity and murder". The Spokesman-Review. p. A12.
- ^ Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Last Stop". trutv.com. p. 10.
- ^ Paddock, Richard C. (November 15, 1993). "Police finally believe tale of depravity and murder". The Los Angeles Times. AUBURN, Calif. Retrieved December 26, 2016.
- ^ a b "Mom Who's Sought In Slayings of Daughters Is Arrested In S.L." deseretnews.com. November 11, 1993.
- ^ Carter, Mike (November 12, 1993). "Woman accused of killing children arrest in Utah". Moscow-Pullman Daily News. p. 7A.
- ^ a b Lohr, David. "Mother Knows Best: The Story of Theresa Jimmie Cross: Epilogue". trutv.com. p. 11.
- ^ "MOTHER WON'T BE CONFRONTING DEATH PENALTY". Deseret News. Associated Press. August 6, 1995. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
- ^ "CDCR Public Inmate Locator Disclaimer". inmatelocator.cdcr.ca.gov. Retrieved January 18, 2022.
- ^ a b Gee, Jennifer (December 19, 2008). "'Wicked' local crime documented | Discovery Channel interviews defense attorney about 1994 case". auburnjournal.com. Gold Country Media. Retrieved December 26, 2016.
- ^ "Theresa M. Knorr". The St. Joseph News-Press. St. Joseph, Missouri. December 14, 2011 – via Newspapers.com.
- ISBN 0-312-95542-1.
- ^ Corey Danna (May 10, 2012). "Film Review: The Afflicted (2010) | HNN". horrornews.net. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
- ^ "Watch Mommy's Rules Full Episode - Cold Case Files Classic | A&E". A&E. October 28, 2003. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
S2, E24 Mommy's Rules TV-14
A mother is suspected in the murders of two of her daughters, when her third daughter finally convinces police to reopen two cold cases.
Aired on: Oct 28, 2003, Duration: 42m 25s - ^ "Cold Case Files". TVGuide.com. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
- ^ "Cold Case Files: Mommy Rules". TV.com. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
- ^ "Murderous Women | Most Evil | Investigation Discovery GO". Investigation Discovery GO. March 7, 2007. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
Season 1 Episode 3 Over 90% of murders are committed by men. But what motivates the women who are driven to kill? Most women who do kill, murder those closest to them, Find the striking difference between men and women killers. 44 min. | TV-14 | Premiered 03/07/2007
- ^ "Most Evil S01E03 - Murderous Women". Dailymotion. March 30, 2015. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
- ^ Jenifer Gee (July 29, 2009). "Auburn attorney to appear on national TV". Auburn Journal. Gold Country Media. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
The show airs on channel 285 on DirecTV on the Investigation Discovery Channel. The episode is titled, "A mother's love."
- ^ "The Sacred Bond | Deadly Women". www.investigationdiscovery.com. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
Season 4 • Episode 7 Women who kill husbands, lovers, rivals and parents will shock society. But a very special horror is reserved for the women who will kill their own, breaking the sacred bond between mother and child. 43 min | TV-14 | Premiered 09/23/2010
- ^ "Deadly Women - The Sacred Bond". Dailymotion. December 4, 2015. Retrieved November 10, 2017.
Further reading
- Clarkson, Wensley (1995). Whatever Mother Says: A True Story of a Mother, Madness and Murder. ISBN 978-0-312-95542-7.
- ISBN 978-0-449-14930-0.