by Wensley Clarkson

Raising her five kids alone in a rundown section of Sacramento, Theresa Cross Knorr seemed like the ultimate survivor. But her youngest daughter, 16-year-old Terry, told police another story, one almost too terrible to believe. According to Terry, Theresa – no longer the petite brunette she once was – had become insanely jealous of her pretty eldest daughters and enlisted the help of her two teenaged sons in a vicious campaign against their sisters. Terry’s gruesome tale told how Theresa had drugged, handcuffed and shot 16-year-old Susan, allowing her wounds to fester until the day she ordered her sons to burn their sister alive. Next, Terry said Theresa severely beat 20-year-old Sheila and then locked her in a stifling broom closet, so that when the girl finally starved to death, her sons were again ordered to dispose of the body. It took Terry five years to convince the authorities to investigate her grisly accounts of burning flesh, starvation and torture… of a mother from hell, so sadistic, that she had become her children’s executioner.