Family's Grisly Trail Of Death -- Officials Slow To Believe Mother's Abuse

AUBURN, Calif. - Terry Knorr's story was too fantastic to believe. Her mother and two of her brothers, she said, had killed her sisters more than eight years ago and left their bodies in the mountains near Lake Tahoe.

At first, police officers, a lawyer and a therapist she told dismissed her tale as fiction, authorities said. But when she finally called the Placer County Sheriff's Department last month, her grisly account rang true.

Her detailed descriptions of her sisters - down to the chipped teeth from force-feedings - matched the bodies of two young women that were found in the Sierra Nevada in the mid-1980s and never identified.

"I have been here 33 years and I have never seen such a bizarre case," said Placer County Sheriff Donald Nunes.

Nunes said authorities now think the mother, Theresa Jimmie Knorr, shot and burned one daughter to death and killed another by starving her in a broom closet in Sacramento, Calif.

Over the past 10 days, Placer County authorities have tracked down the mother and sons and charged each of them with two counts of murder.

Robert Knorr, 24, was discovered in a Nevada prison, where he recently began serving a 15-year sentence for an unrelated murder that occurred during a Las Vegas robbery. William Knorr, 26, was arrested Nov. 4 at a warehouse in Woodland, Calif., where he worked.

And Theresa Knorr, 47, was arrested Wednesday in Salt Lake City, where she was taking care of an 85-year-old woman and sharing her house. Knorr, who has been married five times, was using her maiden name, Theresa Cross.

The Knorrs have not publicly discussed the allegations since being charged, and Theresa Knorr is fighting extradition to California.

Authorities have pieced together a portrait of a woman who dominated her family by beating and manipulating her children.

Knorr was especially hard on her three daughters, they say. A woman with some nursing experience, she apparently did not want her daughters to be thin and allegedly force-fed them foods like macaroni and cheese.

Nunes, who also serves as coroner and marshal of mountainous Placer County, gave the following account of the deaths of the two young women, Suesan Knorr and Sheila Sanders:

During a heated argument in 1983, Theresa Knorr allegedly took out a small-caliber gun and shot her daughter, Suesan, in the chest. Suesan, then about 16, recovered from the shooting - even though she received no medical care and the bullet remained lodged in her body.

About a year later, Suesan announced she wanted to move to Alaska, and her mother agreed to let her go - as long as she left the bullet behind.

Concerned the slug could be used as evidence of the shooting, Theresa Knorr allegedly used the kitchen floor as her operating table and extracted the slug from her daughter's back with a kitchen knife.

Infection set in and Suesan grew weaker, eventually becoming delirious. The mother decided she would have to get rid of her and recruited her brothers to take her to the mountains, the sheriff said.

On their way up Interstate 80, the car broke down, and they had to return to Sacramento for repairs. The next night, they made it to Squaw Valley, where on the side of the road, they placed Suesan with her mouth taped shut on a pile of clothes, poured gasoline on her and lit her on fire, Nunes said. Her body was discovered the next morning.

The following year, Knorr got into a violent argument with her eldest daughter, 20-year-old Sheila, tied her up and locked her in a broom closet, the sheriff said. She ordered no one in the family to feed her, although Terry Knorr, then 13, brought her beer.

Sheila died in the cupboard within several days.

After the second daughter's death, the family left Sacramento. Theresa Knorr and her daughter Terry ended up living near each other in the Salt Lake City area. In recent months, Terry had been employed as a grocery store clerk in the same neighborhood where her mother lived. But it is unclear whether they knew of each other's whereabouts.

Terry, now 23, lives with her second husband in the suburb of Sandy, near Salt Lake City.

Terry apparently tried in 1989 to report the alleged murders to Utah police, but they did not believe her, Lundberg said. Even a therapist she consulted did not take her seriously, he said.

But while watching an episode of "America's Most Wanted" on television last month, she realized that charges still could be brought. Authorities said she called the Placer County sheriff instead of Utah authorities.

"She didn't want her mother to get away with any of this, and she wanted to tell her story," said Sandy Police Detective David Lundberg.