personal.”
Minutes after returning to the house, Theresa Knorr got rid of that hat. She thought that as long as any of her daughter’s possessions were there, her spirit would still be there to haunt her.
Theresa Knorr also called up Wes Seegmiller, the lawyer who was chasing the insurance company for compensation after Sheila had been knocked down on Auburn Boulevard, and told him: “Forget it. I want you to drop the case.”
* * *
Soon after Sheila’s death, Theresa began voicing her hatred toward her daughter-in-law Connie Sanders.
She decided Connie’s child should be taken away from her because she believed she was a bad mother. In order to do that, she figured she had to get Connie on unfit parent charges. With no evidence, she somehow became convinced Connie was drugging the baby so she did not have to feed it regularly.
Theresa decided that her youngest daughter, Terry, should become a police informant and help detectives set up Howard and Connie Sanders for a drug deal. First she told Terry to apply for a driver’s license in her dead sister Suesan’s name so that she could appear to be eighteen years old rather than fifteen. Then Terry could be recruited to make what police call a “controlled buy” of narcotics from her own brother and sister-in-law.
Local narcotics squad detective Richard Lauther had his suspicions right from the start when a mutual contact introduced him to “Suesan.” The first disastrous drug purchase, in which “Suesan” was supposed to pick up some amphetamines from Howard Sanders, ended in a no-show. Detective Lauther dropped her a short time later, unaware of the brutality and death that allegedly had occurred inside the Knorr household, but highly suspicious of the young girl’s real age.
When the detective had asked Terry about her sisters, she replied coolly: “One ran off with an Indian to go work in Canada, and my other sister just up and left home one day.”
Terry was already passing into what psychiatrists describe as the denial stage of her horrendous childhood.
The Knorr’s neighbor on Bellingham, Sean Martin, met up with Robert Knorr long after the family had moved to the small house just off Auburn Boulevard. Robert, unlike his younger sister, dropped a huge hint about what had happened to one sister, but not the other.
“It was weird,” Martin later said. “First time I saw him, he said Sheila had met a used car salesman in Vegas who had swept her off her feet. Then a year later I met him and he told me that satan worshipers had come back and gotten his sister Suesan and set her on fire just off Highway 89.”
On that second meeting with Sean Martin, Robert seemed to have changed a lot. He was a much more menacing character, and Sean warned his own brother Chris to steer clear of Robert as well. He seemed really strange. Almost dangerous.
One time, Sean actually visited the house just off Auburn Boulevard, but he could not get past the front door.
“I saw Robert in the street on his bike, and he persuaded me to take a spin down there. Well, it was so creepy at that house.
“As I walked up to the front door, I heard the mother beating Terry with a stick and I could hear other screams coming from the back of the house. Suddenly Robert freaked out completely and said I had to leave. ‘My mom’s freaking out’ was all he would say. He was a very pale white color and seemed very shocked and upset.”
After Theresa Knorr’s plan to have her daughter-in-law arrested failed, she turned to Terry as the next object of her continuing war against the other women inside her family.
Those same handcuffs were pulled out of the closet and used on Terry with alarming regularity following the deaths of her sisters.
Theresa Knorr was consistent, if nothing else. She had always punished the eldest daughter the most, followed by the second eldest and so on. But now there was only Terry left to bear the brunt of her mother’s brutal regime.
In
Minutes after returning to the house, Theresa Knorr got rid of that hat. She thought that as long as any of her daughter’s possessions were there, her spirit would still be there to haunt her.
Theresa Knorr also called up Wes Seegmiller, the lawyer who was chasing the insurance company for compensation after Sheila had been knocked down on Auburn Boulevard, and told him: “Forget it. I want you to drop the case.”
* * *
Soon after Sheila’s death, Theresa began voicing her hatred toward her daughter-in-law Connie Sanders.
She decided Connie’s child should be taken away from her because she believed she was a bad mother. In order to do that, she figured she had to get Connie on unfit parent charges. With no evidence, she somehow became convinced Connie was drugging the baby so she did not have to feed it regularly.
Theresa decided that her youngest daughter, Terry, should become a police informant and help detectives set up Howard and Connie Sanders for a drug deal. First she told Terry to apply for a driver’s license in her dead sister Suesan’s name so that she could appear to be eighteen years old rather than fifteen. Then Terry could be recruited to make what police call a “controlled buy” of narcotics from her own brother and sister-in-law.
Local narcotics squad detective Richard Lauther had his suspicions right from the start when a mutual contact introduced him to “Suesan.” The first disastrous drug purchase, in which “Suesan” was supposed to pick up some amphetamines from Howard Sanders, ended in a no-show. Detective Lauther dropped her a short time later, unaware of the brutality and death that allegedly had occurred inside the Knorr household, but highly suspicious of the young girl’s real age.
When the detective had asked Terry about her sisters, she replied coolly: “One ran off with an Indian to go work in Canada, and my other sister just up and left home one day.”
Terry was already passing into what psychiatrists describe as the denial stage of her horrendous childhood.
The Knorr’s neighbor on Bellingham, Sean Martin, met up with Robert Knorr long after the family had moved to the small house just off Auburn Boulevard. Robert, unlike his younger sister, dropped a huge hint about what had happened to one sister, but not the other.
“It was weird,” Martin later said. “First time I saw him, he said Sheila had met a used car salesman in Vegas who had swept her off her feet. Then a year later I met him and he told me that satan worshipers had come back and gotten his sister Suesan and set her on fire just off Highway 89.”
On that second meeting with Sean Martin, Robert seemed to have changed a lot. He was a much more menacing character, and Sean warned his own brother Chris to steer clear of Robert as well. He seemed really strange. Almost dangerous.
One time, Sean actually visited the house just off Auburn Boulevard, but he could not get past the front door.
“I saw Robert in the street on his bike, and he persuaded me to take a spin down there. Well, it was so creepy at that house.
“As I walked up to the front door, I heard the mother beating Terry with a stick and I could hear other screams coming from the back of the house. Suddenly Robert freaked out completely and said I had to leave. ‘My mom’s freaking out’ was all he would say. He was a very pale white color and seemed very shocked and upset.”
After Theresa Knorr’s plan to have her daughter-in-law arrested failed, she turned to Terry as the next object of her continuing war against the other women inside her family.
Those same handcuffs were pulled out of the closet and used on Terry with alarming regularity following the deaths of her sisters.
Theresa Knorr was consistent, if nothing else. She had always punished the eldest daughter the most, followed by the second eldest and so on. But now there was only Terry left to bear the brunt of her mother’s brutal regime.
In
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