Latest / True Crime California / TCC #21 Theresa Knorr

Transcript

TCC #21 Theresa Knorr · True Crime California

0:03
Speaker 1: Dark Cast Network. Come to the Dark Side of indie podcasts.
0:13
Speaker 2: On Wiki Travel. The Pacific Northwest is best known for
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its beautiful coastline, green interior, rainy weather, and spectacular mountains.
0:24
But because of all this, it's also the perfect place
0:27
to go missing. My name's Carmita, and I grew up
0:30
in the Pacific Northwest and Portland, Oregon. I host a
0:33
podcast called Missing in the PNW. My podcast is different
0:38
from others you may have heard because I focus specifically
0:41
on two things. The first is that all of the
0:44
missing person cases that I cover are strictly from the
0:46
Pacific Northwest and Oregon and Washington. I know the title
0:51
of my podcast should have given.
0:52
Speaker 3: That one away.
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Speaker 4: The second thing is that my podcast focuses strictly on
0:57
missing persons from marginalized communities such as the black, Hispanic,
1:02
Native American Indigenous people and the LGBTQ plus communities. You know,
1:08
the ones that get absolutely no media attention. Now, I
1:12
am not an investigative journalist or a reporter. I'm actually
1:16
a widowed mom of three who loves true crime and
1:19
has a passion for social justice. So join me in
1:22
helping to spread the word on these missing person cases
1:25
and help you the voice for the ones that are
1:27
now voiceless. You can find Missing in the PNW on
1:31
all of the major streaming apps, as well as on
1:34
socials at Missing in the PNW podcast.
1:37
Speaker 3: If you have a case you.
1:38
Speaker 4: Want me to cover, please email me at Missing in
1:41
THEPNW at gmail dot com or send me a message
1:46
through Facebook Messenger.
1:47
Speaker 3: I hope to talk to.
1:48
Speaker 4: You soon and remember, have fun, but be safe.
1:54
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
2:00
and I'm.
2:00
Speaker 3: Glad you're here. Hey guys, I'm back. I'm a week late.
2:15
Speaker 1: I apologize. I feel like life is never gonna get
2:18
slower or easier, so I just have to find a way.
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Speaker 3: So I'm back.
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Speaker 1: I've got another crazy case for you. I couldn't find
2:25
any more Halloween ones that really spoke to me or
2:28
would be more than like a five minute, you know story,
2:31
So instead, I decided to choose a story that is
2:33
just absolutely fucking horrific. It could be a horror movie,
2:36
and it's the things that nightmares are made of. This week,
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we're going to delve into the story of Teresa Noor. Now,
2:44
this woman is one of the worst mothers probably ever,
2:48
and that's saying something because we all know there's a
2:50
lot of horrible stories about horrible mothers, but she's really
2:53
up there. And as always, this is also a story
2:57
about how the systems have failed children, have failed those
3:00
in need, and are basically just set up to fail,
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which is really fucked. So let's get into it. I'm
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hiding in my room. If you hear a dog's footsteps,
3:10
I apologize. I have a bulldog and he is the
3:14
laziest walker. Every time he walks, his feet like slap
3:17
and it's so loud. So I was trying to record
3:20
in my living room, but I had to actually come
3:22
hide in here from him because anytime he gets up
3:25
to walk, it's like, I don't know, it sounds like
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water sloshing in a bucket, or like somebody painting with
3:31
like a metal paint brush. I don't know. It's insane.
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So anyway, Happy October, everybody, best month of the year.
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Also busiest for me for work, and we just moved,
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so I apologize. I'm not more consistent, but we're gonna
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get there. I'm back here. We are true Crime, California.
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Let's go. So this is like I said, the story
3:50
of Teresa Nor and we're actually gonna start with her
3:52
birth and her young life. She was born Teresa Jimmy
3:57
Francine Cross to Swannee and and Jim Cross, who apparently
4:02
thought they were only ever going to have one baby
4:04
and that baby needed to be named after Jim. So
4:09
that was Teresa's name, Teresa Jimmy, which I actually think
4:12
he was really cute, but a lot of people call
4:13
it out because it's kind of funny. Now, she was
4:16
born March fourteenth, nineteen forty six, in Sacramento, California. Her mother, Swanee,
4:21
was on her second marriage with Jim and convinced him
4:24
to marry her by promising to give him a son. Now,
4:28
Swanne was desperate to get married as her first husband
4:30
died of illness, leaving her with two young children, a
4:33
boy and a girl. Her next husband, Jim, only wanted
4:37
a boy and thought girls weren't worth the time or
4:39
effort whatsoever. Now, what's really cool about that is that
4:43
he and Swanie went on to have two girls and
4:46
no boys. So first they had Teresa. Then after Teresa
4:50
came her younger sister Rosemary. Now, as I had mentioned,
4:54
Swannye had a boy from a previous marriage, and this boy,
4:57
I believe his name was Robert, could do no wrong
5:00
in his parents' eyes. Jim loved him far more than
5:03
he loved Teresa or Rosemary, and allowed this boy to
5:07
get away with anything and everything. And meanwhile, anytime the
5:12
girls would literally breathe too loud, they would be belittled
5:15
and berated and otherwise completely ignored. So we're definitely setting
5:21
a tone here that is very detrimental to all children
5:23
in the household. It's terrible for the sun as he's
5:25
learning that his shit don't stink and he can get
5:28
away with anything, but also to not value women at all.
5:33
And it's terrible for the daughters because they're also learning
5:35
not to value themselves. And it gets even worse really,
5:38
because even though Jim didn't really care for either of
5:40
his daughters, he was much much nicer too, and clearly
5:44
favored Teresa because she was the thinner, prettier of his
5:48
two daughters. So now Teresa's learning this really fucked up
5:52
value system from basically the moment she's born. And this also,
5:55
of course creates animosity between the children and especially Teresa
5:59
and row Mary, because instead of being mad at their
6:02
you know, their parents, for the way they're treating them.
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They find each other to be competition, so they're competing
6:07
with each other for their parents' approval. They're not competing
6:11
with the brother because he's so high above them and
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he's obviously of more value. So the two of them
6:16
are fighting amongst themselves for scraps, which is a really
6:19
fucked up way to be now. Because their father wanted
6:23
so little to do with them, Teresa and Rosemary spent
6:25
much more time with their mother, Swanny, and Teresa and
6:28
her mother were particularly close because I should note that
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Swannee echoed her husband's sentiments about the girls in general
6:35
and Rosemary in particular, So Teresa and her mother were
6:38
super super close, at least until her mother died in
6:42
her arms. When Teresa was sixteen years old. They were
6:47
out shopping and her mother collapsed in her arms and
6:51
died of like a heart condition, which that's really really
6:56
going to fuck a person up, but especially coming from
6:58
this kind of background, to have the one person who
7:01
you think values you, even if it's for really fucked
7:03
up reasons, literally dying your arms is fucking horrific. And
7:09
as you can imagine, this completely destroyed. Teresa, like, she
7:12
totally freaks out, and she doesn't want to stay home,
7:16
you know, with her piece of shit dad, And because
7:19
of the way she was raised, she figures the only
7:21
way out is to get married. And by the way,
7:23
at this time, her father had been diagnosed with Parkinson's
7:26
and had lost his job. He was an assistant cheesemaker
7:29
by the way, which is fucking random as hell, but
7:32
he lost his job and was also like taking this
7:34
out on the family. So she was like, no way
7:37
do I want to stay here and live with this man.
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So at the ripe old age of sixteen, she finds
7:42
herself a man, Clifford Clyde Sanders, we're gonna call him
7:45
CEC c C. Sanders, who I think is five years
7:49
her senior, and they get married pretty much right away.
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And right after that, Teresa finds herself pregnant with her
7:55
first child. This is a boy, which I'm sure she
7:58
was very happy about, who was born in night nineteen
8:00
sixty three, less than a year after the couple were married.
8:03
And while she is barely seventeen now. Shortly after having
8:07
this son, Howard, Teresa was again pregnant. As I think
8:11
she thought this was the only way to keep a man,
8:13
which was obviously behavior modeled by her mother anyway, So
8:18
the marriage was awful, as you can imagine, with Teresa
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being extremely jealous, likely as a result of having absolutely
8:24
no self worth thanks to her horrible upbringing, and as
8:29
a result of that, she was always accusing CEC of
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cheating on her. And after a pretty short while obviously
8:36
you know, less than a year her second baby isn't
8:38
even born yet, he told Teresa he's leaving her. She
8:43
did not like this, and the two got into a
8:45
terrible fight. Now, this fight took place on July sixth,
8:49
nineteen sixty four, and just two weeks prior to this,
8:52
on June twenty second, nineteen sixty four, Teresa had reported
8:56
CEC to the police for punching her in the face. Now,
9:00
when police offered, she chose not to press charges, which
9:03
makes sense considering you know that something that happens a
9:05
lot and really sucks.
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Speaker 3: But what's interesting is just a.
9:09
Speaker 1: Few weeks later, on July sixth, they're arguing and CC
9:12
tells her I'm gonna leave, and the next thing you know,
9:15
he's been shot and falls down dead in their home.
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Teresa barely eighteen. At this point, goes running to the
9:22
neighbor's house for help, frantic and screaming, and the police
9:25
come and find Cliff here dead, lying face down. Teresa
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claims she grabbed their rifle and shot him in self defense,
9:35
but police don't buy it, considering not only how he
9:37
was positioned, but also because there were no powder burns
9:40
on his skin, meaning he wasn't very close to her
9:42
like she had claimed. So she said, he's coming at me,
9:45
he's gonna hit me, So I shot him, and police
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are like, he's across the room, he's face down, he
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has like a defensive bullet wound through his hand, and
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no powder burns. No fucking way is the self defense.
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So she gets arrested. She's got an eleven month old baby,
10:02
she's pregnant as fuck, and she's on trial for murder.
10:06
Now she goes on trial, but Teresa, she's little, she's cute,
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she's pregnant, she's barely eighteen. So after a ton of
10:14
back and forth, she is in fact found not guilty
10:17
by way of self defense. This as sus as fuck,
10:22
but it's where we end up with this part of
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the story. So now Teresa is single, widowed, I guess,
10:29
with a young child and another on the way, and
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she's desperate, so she starts frequenting a local American Legion Hall,
10:36
which is like a place where veterans hang out. It's
10:39
like a bar, but mostly for veterans, but like anybody
10:43
can go there, but it's really like for them. And
10:45
after the birth of her second child, Sheila Gay Sanders
10:48
in March of nineteen sixty five, she begins drinking heavily
10:52
while out prowling for a new man. Now Teresa, like
10:56
I said, she's desperate, and she finds herself a quadriplegic
11:00
veteran who she takes advantage of and they begin dating
11:03
pretty quickly, this man whose name is Estelle by the way,
11:06
which I found really interesting because that's like a lady's name,
11:09
So we've got a Stelle and Jimmy.
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Speaker 3: Very weird.
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Speaker 1: Anyway, pretty quickly he gets fed up because she's basically
11:15
using him as a babysitter for her two kids while
11:17
she goes out and gets wasted and sleeps with other men.
11:20
And finally Estelle cuts things off after finding out that
11:22
Teresa was sleeping with his best friend, which, if nothing else,
11:26
is a very bold move on her part. Now shortly
11:30
after this, she actually is able to secure herself another husband,
11:34
Marine Private Robert Norr. Now really quickly, I want to
11:38
call out that Teresa was very much following in her
11:40
parents' footsteps by valuing her son far more than her daughter.
11:45
There is no world in which Teresa was ever a
11:47
good mother. But she did give Howard her best version
11:50
of love, allowed him to cry, to need things, to
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hug her, to be of abnormal baby and child, and
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she reciprocated as much as her fucked up self was able.
12:00
But Sheila, on the other hand, was routinely beaten for crying,
12:05
denied basic things, never given love, and it got to
12:10
the point where apparently all Teresa had to do was
12:12
give Sheila, who was not even two years old at
12:14
this point, a death stare, and she would quiet down
12:18
for fear of being hit. Super crazy shit. So now
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she has these two young children being treated very differently,
12:26
but neither one being treated very well because she's going
12:28
out drinking, leaving them with random men.
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Speaker 3: But then she.
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Speaker 1: Meets this guy, Robert, and they get married, and guess what,
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she gets pregnant again. The couple go on to have
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a total of four children together, Susan Nor, whose name
12:44
was spelled Sue Say and very fucking weird. It was
12:47
hard to look her up until I realized that so
12:50
Susan Nor born in nineteen sixty six, William Robert Nor
12:55
born in nineteen sixty seven, Robert Wallace Nor born in
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nineteen sixty eight, and Teresa Terry Nor in nineteen seventy.
13:06
So she used the name Robert twice and used her
13:08
own name because on top of everything else, she's also
13:11
not a very creative person. So despite constantly being knocked up,
13:16
Teresa was convinced Robert was stepping out on her a
13:19
persistent theme with her husbands so far, and the two
13:23
would fight constantly over her jealousy because again, she has
13:26
no sense of self worth, So of course he's cheating,
13:28
because why wouldn't he, right, it's a really sad way
13:30
to live. By nineteen seventy one, after having children in
13:35
super quick succession, the two were divorced, and Teresa was
13:40
so angry about this that she did everything she could
13:43
to make it basically impossible for Robert to see his children,
13:47
and it pretty much worked like he was basically out
13:50
of the picture. She even moved up to Washington for
13:53
a bit before coming back to California because she really
13:56
didn't like it up there, which like I feel that
13:59
anyway from him. She meets yet another man, Ronald Pollium,
14:03
and they married, but divorced shortly after, like less than
14:06
a year because he got fed up with her, leaving
14:09
him with her now six kids while she went out
14:12
to drink and party, which, by the way, the drinking
14:15
and partying was something she never stopped doing even when
14:18
she was married to Robert. So we have this really
14:20
interesting pattern here. She finds a man that she seemingly likes,
14:25
has his babies, accuses him of cheating, and then their
14:28
relationship falls apart he either gets murdered or they get
14:30
divorced or or I guess. And then she finds a
14:34
man she's not super interested in but wants for stability
14:38
and a paycheck and leaves him with her children while
14:42
she goes out and parties and cheats, which is really interesting.
14:45
So we've had the husband that she has kids with,
14:48
the veteran that she abused and used as a babysitter,
14:52
the Robert who she got married and had four kids with,
14:55
and now this husband who she's just using and abusing,
14:58
so it's a really interesting pattern. And meanwhile, all the
15:03
time she's treating her children horribly but always much kinder
15:07
to the boys than the girls anyway. And this poor guy,
15:11
you know, he gets away from her, this Ronald Pollium,
15:14
he's basically just like a footnote in the story. And
15:16
after him, Teresa finds yet another man to marry. This
15:21
is a man named Chester Harris, who thankfully went by
15:24
Chet so Chet Harris here. Luckily they don't have any
15:27
kids together because he really doesn't like kids like at all.
15:31
But this, of course is not a deal breaker for
15:32
Teresa because she really also doesn't like kids, including her
15:36
own for sure. So the two get married, and again
15:39
things go sideways fast. First, Teresa finds that Chet isn't
15:43
a witchcraft while she is a woman of God clearly,
15:48
so that's a problem, of course. But what's worse is
15:50
that despite Chet not liking kids, he forms a really
15:53
strong bond with Susan, who at this time is only
15:57
ten years old. So, just so we have it in
16:00
in order, here we've got Howard, Sheila, Susan William Robert Terry.
16:07
So Susan is her second youngest daughter. I think third
16:11
youngest child and only ten years old at this time.
16:16
But even at ten years old, Susan is very pretty,
16:19
very petite, very cute, and super smart, and Chet really
16:24
enjoys talking to Susan, and Susan enjoys talking to Chet.
16:27
They talk about religion, they talk about all sorts of
16:29
deep ideas, and Teresa hates this because it threatens her
16:34
because she's in competition with her own daughter, just like
16:38
she was in competition with her own sister, right, but
16:41
in this case, this is her pretty huge, besant daughter,
16:44
Like she's not she's ten, like insane, So we're kind
16:48
of getting from like severe insecurity into actual mental illness
16:52
at this point, which is a really crazy thing to
16:55
sort of see happen. And as a way of sort
16:58
of justifying her jealousy and hatred of her own daughter,
17:01
she starts telling the other kids that Susan is possessed
17:05
by a demon or that Chet has made her a witch,
17:08
and that this has to be beaten out of her.
17:11
So she and Chet are married for like not even
17:14
six months. He bails out real quick, and after that
17:17
Teresa sort of spirals out. She gives up on finding
17:20
a man and instead she starts drinking even more heavily
17:25
and also starts gaining a ton of weight. Now, instead
17:28
of taking any sort of personal responsibility for this, this
17:31
monster of a woman blames her daughter Susan for cursing her,
17:36
saying that she's casting spells on her. She's a demon
17:39
and that's why Teresa is gaining all of this weight.
17:43
Speaker 3: Now.
17:43
Speaker 1: To be clear, Teresa had always beaten all of her
17:47
kids pretty regularly and not necessarily for any good reason.
17:51
But around this time she really goes off the deep
17:56
end and kicks the abuse into high gear, and it
17:59
also bec comes clear that Susan is her main target,
18:03
and the abuse against Susan in particular ramps up very
18:08
very quickly. Now, for the next eight or so years,
18:12
Teresa becomes more abusive, more reclusive, and more horrible to
18:16
her children.
18:18
Speaker 2: Now.
18:18
Speaker 1: At this time, they lived in a house in Orangevale,
18:20
which is kind of in the Sacramento area, which is
18:21
where much of this abuse took place, and during their
18:25
time there, Teresa ended up pulling all of the kids
18:29
out of school, turning off her phone, and not even
18:32
allowing the kids to go outside. Susan loved school because
18:38
she was smart, like she was five years ahead of
18:40
all of her classmates, so she was the first one
18:42
to be pulled out of school because Teresa wanted to
18:44
do anything she could to like hurt her daughter, to
18:47
like abuse her, and you know, assert power and control
18:51
over her. But eventually all the kids were out of school,
18:54
and I guess this was okay because nobody was paying attention.
18:57
So super fucking crazy. Now after the kids are all
19:02
out of school and the abuse is ramping up. Like
19:04
I said, she's really on Susan. And one of the
19:07
reasons that she really hates Susan in particular is because
19:10
while Teresa has gained so much weight, Susan is thin
19:13
and pretty and shapely and just everything that Teresa wants
19:18
to be. So one of the ways that she tournaments
19:21
Susan is for two years straight, she is handcuffed to
19:26
the dinner table. Now she's allowed to go to the
19:28
bathroom and get up occasionally, but she's literally handcuffed to
19:32
the table and made to sleep under it. And during meals,
19:36
Teresa has her stuck in her seat and is force
19:40
feeding her. Now she's force feeding her like mashed potatoes,
19:45
fattening food as anything she can to try to make
19:48
Susan fatter so that Teresa doesn't have to feel so
19:51
threatened by her, and she will not let her up
19:55
from the table until she's done eating. It got to
19:58
the point where, on multiple occasions, Susan would throw up
20:02
from being too full, and Teresa made her eat her
20:06
own vomit. Her youngest daughter, Terry, once recalled Teresa forcing
20:12
a spoon of food into Susan's mouth so forcefully that
20:16
she chipped her tooth. So this is really really gnarly,
20:23
really fucking severe, and she would do this in front
20:26
of all the other kids. She would also beat the
20:30
children with a paddle, and what's worse, she would make
20:33
them hold each other down while she did it, So
20:36
she was normalizing not only being abused, but also teaching
20:40
the children to be abusive to each other, even though
20:44
they were all they had in the whole world because
20:46
they were isolated from everyone else, she was forcing them
20:50
to harm one another on a daily basis, which is
20:54
so fucked up. Now. After many years of this, when
20:58
Susan was around sixteen years old, she tried to run away. Unfortunately,
21:03
Truancy police found her fairly quickly, which is funny because
21:06
they didn't notice she wasn't in school, but they arrest
21:09
her for being not at home right interesting, and at
21:13
first she was taken to a mental hospital because she
21:15
was so terrified of going home, and police found her
21:17
to be hysterical, which she likely was with very good reason.
21:21
But from here they end up taking her back home
21:24
and they interviewed the other children with Teresa in the
21:28
room to see if Susan was telling the truth about
21:31
the abuse. Now, despite the children for the most part
21:34
being very clearly malnourished, not including Susan being dirty, not
21:39
being in school, child quote unquote, protective services chose to
21:44
believe Teresa that there was no abuse and believed that
21:47
the children when they denied abuse because their mom is
21:49
in the room with them, and returned Susan to her
21:52
home after the social workers left, and I mean immediately after,
21:58
Teresa made each of her other five chans children punched
22:00
Susan in the stomach as hard as they could, and
22:04
if they didn't hit her hard enough, she made them
22:06
do it again. So now the children are seeing that
22:09
they really truly are on their own. Nobody's going to
22:13
help them, and this is just the way life is.
22:17
Susan straight up went to the police and they just
22:21
returned her to her mother, which is just fucking crazy. Now.
22:25
As I said, the kids are all normalizing this abuse,
22:27
and at one point Howard supposedly sexually abused one of
22:32
his sisters or two of his sisters, I'm not sure.
22:35
What I do know is that when Teresa found out,
22:37
she beat the living shit out of him and it
22:40
never happened again. But like who's surprised by this? I
22:44
should also mention that he was able to find the
22:46
time to do this because while the children were locked
22:48
in the house all day, Teresa had a full time
22:50
job working as a caretaker for the elderly, which is terrifying.
22:55
But what's interesting is she had such a hold on
22:57
these kids that she could leave for hours on end
22:59
and they would just stay put because they were that
23:01
afraid they would just do her bidding. Like she's one
23:06
woman and there are six of them, but she has
23:08
such a hold on these children that they are just
23:11
living in such fear that they do whatever she says,
23:15
which is so scary and so sad, and things to
23:19
be clear, like Susan was bearing the brunt, but things
23:21
were not just bad with her. At one point, Teresa
23:24
took a gun because of course she had one, and
23:26
put it to Terry's head, threatening to kill her by saying,
23:29
I shot one, I'll do it again. Terry wasn't even
23:33
ten years old, I don't think at the time, and
23:35
she later recalled that she was left with a bruise
23:37
on her temple after this interaction. So the years continue
23:41
to go by, and like I said, you know, Susan sixteen,
23:45
tried to run away, but still, you know, thin and pretty,
23:50
she's locked to the table and her mom's pissed. So,
23:54
like I said, she had her locked to the dinner
23:57
table for two fucking years with a gag in her mind,
24:00
as a matter of fact. And finally, one night, after
24:03
Susan's just begging please let me go, please let me up,
24:05
please let me get away, Teresa has the boys, the brothers,
24:09
uncuff her, but only so her two brothers can hold
24:12
her down. I should mention Howard had moved out at
24:14
this point because he was twenty and he's like, fuck
24:16
this crazy house. But the two remaining, William and Robert,
24:20
hold her down and then they pick her up to
24:23
move her into another room and wildly do this, Teresa
24:27
pulls out a gun and shoots Susan. This shocked everyone,
24:33
including Teresa, who I don't really think realized that she
24:36
was actually going to shoot her own daughter, and after
24:39
she did, Susan screamed and fell to the ground with
24:43
blood gushing out of her chest. Teresa immediately sprang into action,
24:48
not to save her child, but to save her own
24:50
ass by throwing Susan into the bathtub while instructing her
24:54
children to clean up the blood all over the kitchen
24:57
floor and walls that resulted from the shooting. Now, believe
25:00
it or not, Susan did not die from this wound,
25:04
at least not directly, and we'll get there. She lived
25:06
in that tub for weeks until she was finally strong
25:10
enough to rejoin the family, and during this time, Teresa
25:14
was feeding her random tailanol and antibiotics that she just
25:17
happened to have, and just hoping that she didn't die,
25:20
because you know, she wasn't going to take her to
25:21
the fucking hospital. But somehow, miraculously, Susan did in fact recover,
25:28
and as soon as she was recovered, Teresa was back
25:31
to abusing her horribly, and this was despite Susan, who
25:36
had always sort of talked back to her mom a
25:38
little bit, probably because of how horribly she was abused.
25:41
This was despite her sort of changing her ways and
25:43
being on her best behavior and trying not to poke
25:46
the bear because obviously she knows her mom will in
25:49
fact kill her, so she's, you know, trying to be good,
25:52
but didn't really make a difference.
25:54
Speaker 3: Now.
25:54
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, Teresa loved to drink, and even during
25:58
this time, she would often go out drinking and one
26:01
night she came back in a really good mood. Usually
26:04
she'd come home drunk and beat the shit out of
26:06
her kids, but in this instance, she comes home and
26:08
she's happy. This was about a year after the shooting,
26:11
and Susan, now seventeen, saw her chance and decided to
26:15
ask Teresa to please let her leave home. She told
26:19
Teresa she wanted to go to Alaska and start over,
26:22
and that Teresa would never have to see her again
26:24
if she'd just let her leave. She knew the idea
26:28
of never seeing Susan again would make Teresa really happy,
26:31
and she was right. Teresa considered this for a while
26:35
but eventually said, yes, Susan, you can leave. But she
26:38
said before Susan was able to leave the house, she
26:42
had to let Teresa remove the bullet from her back
26:44
so she couldn't go to the police and have Teresa
26:47
arrested for abuse, which right here shows that no matter
26:52
how mentally ill Teresa was, she knew what she was doing,
26:55
and she knew what was wrong, and she did things
26:58
to keep from getting caught. People talk about whatever mental
27:02
illness she was going through, which was obviously very severe,
27:05
she still had the presence of mind to know what
27:07
she was doing was wrong, and she was doing it anyway. Anyway,
27:12
Susan really didn't want to do this, like who wants
27:14
to allow their crazy drunk mother to cut them open
27:16
with a fucking knife, but she thought it was the
27:18
only way to get away from her mother, so she
27:20
agreed to do it. So we're now sometime in mid
27:23
June nineteen eighty four, and Susan's like, okay, dig it out, mom.
27:30
So she's given like a fifth of whiskey, I believe,
27:33
which she drinks all of plus a bunch of pills
27:36
to make her fall asleep, because of course Teresa has
27:39
access to all of this, and she goes out like
27:43
pretty pretty hardcore, like she's passed the fuck out. And
27:46
while she's out, Teresa grabs a fucking exact o knife
27:51
and starts cutting into Susan's back, going deeper and deeper,
27:56
but never able to find the bullet. She made one
28:00
of her sons, I don't know if it's William or Robert,
28:03
but she makes one of them dig his fingers inside
28:06
his own sister's back, and finally he's able to find
28:09
and remove the bullet. Now, Susan should be waking up
28:14
the next morning and hopefully healing, but uh, she doesn't.
28:20
She didn't wake up for most of the following day,
28:22
and when she did finally come too, it was clear
28:26
that something was very, very wrong. Susan was in and
28:30
out of consciousness, was not able to form words, and
28:34
was not able to control her bowels. Her mother again
28:37
tried to heal her at home, definitely refusing to take
28:40
her to the hospital and just trying to pumper full
28:42
of antibiotics, but things only got worse and worse. Her
28:47
back turned black with internal bleeding and rotted skin. She
28:52
had a terrible fever, and she just laid on the
28:55
floor in diapers for weeks. Teresa refused to allow her
29:01
siblings to help her at all, so the entire family
29:04
would just walk over her body as she lay there dying. Finally,
29:10
after weeks of this horrific, nightmarish scene, Teresay's like, fuck this,
29:16
she's gonna die. Let's just get rid of her. So
29:20
on July sixteenth, nineteen eighty four, I believe, yeah, nineteen
29:24
eighty four, she gets her sons to duct tape Susan's
29:28
hands together, put duct tape over her mouth because she
29:31
had been like sort of just randomly screaming in pain,
29:35
which is fucking horrific, and she throws Susan in the car,
29:39
puts the brothers in the car, and makes them go
29:42
out driving. Now, they end up driving for a few
29:45
hours up to Squaw Valley, which is like a really
29:47
popular ski resort in the area, but it's summertime, so
29:51
at that point it was pretty desolate out there. She
29:54
takes them, which is another bit of proof that she
29:56
knew what she was doing. She was trying to hide
29:57
the body. So she takes them out to a wood,
30:00
has them dump Susan on the ground, and then you're like, Okay,
30:04
she's just gonna leave her dying body there. No, it
30:07
does not end there. Once Susan was on the ground,
30:10
Teresa pulled out a fucking gas can from the car
30:13
and poured gasoline all over Susan's body. She then said
30:16
to her sons light her up. The two did as
30:20
they were told and lit Susan's still alive body on fire.
30:27
It was later determined that she died from smoke inhalation
30:31
because she was still alive when her brothers lit her
30:34
on fire with gasoline at their mother's order. And I
30:38
want to say also that when her body was found,
30:41
which it was the very next day, she was in
30:44
a partial boxer's pose, which if you guys know what
30:47
that means. So when somebody is burned alive, even after
30:50
they're pretty much not conscious anymore, their arms will automatically
30:55
kind of curl up in front of them, so they
30:57
look like an old timey boxer, like putting their hands
30:59
out to fight. And so this is something that only
31:02
happens when a body is burned alive, and so this
31:05
is often a telltale sign that the person was still
31:08
alive when they were set on fire, which was a
31:10
really fucked up thing to know, and now all of
31:13
you know if you didn't already. So she was found
31:16
the next day by a hiker and while police did
31:18
everything they could figure out who she was. They took
31:20
her fingers for fingerprints, they got her teeth in hopes
31:23
of like dental records.
31:25
Speaker 3: She went on to be a.
31:26
Speaker 1: Jane Doe for a very long time. Now that Susan
31:33
was dead, Teresa, of course didn't learn anything or stop
31:36
her crazy behavior, and instead she turned her hatred to Sheila,
31:40
who was now twenty years old and still afraid to
31:42
leave home. She told her other children that now Sheila
31:47
was possessed by a demon, because of course she was,
31:49
and the torture against Sheila was just as bad as
31:52
it had been for Susan, although it was very different.
31:57
Beyond the regular beatings, Teresa forced Sheila into sex work
32:01
to make money for her, which I should mention that
32:05
they moved after Susan died, I think to avoid suspicions
32:08
since there was suddenly one less minor in the house,
32:10
so they stay in the general area, but they moved
32:12
actually into Sacramento. So now they're living in an apartment
32:16
and Shila is being forced to do sex work to
32:19
make money to help pay the bills. And what's so
32:22
fucking twisted about this is that Sheila actually enjoyed the
32:27
sex work because she was able to get out of
32:29
the house and away from her mother. And not only that,
32:32
but Teresa was so happy with the amount of money
32:35
coming in that she basically just lets she Li do
32:37
whatever she wanted, at least for a very short amount
32:42
of time. Pretty quickly, things sour again when Teresa finds
32:48
out that she has an STD. Now, Teresa has decided
32:52
that she got this from Sheila because they shared a toilet, which,
32:55
you're an idiot, Teresa, That's not how that fucking works.
32:58
And also, the only reason Sheila would have an STD
33:01
is because you're forcing her into sex work, So who's
33:03
really to blame here? In any case, she decides that
33:07
Sheila gave her the STD, and she also decides that
33:09
Sheila must be pregnant, and she's so fucking pissed about this,
33:13
even though once again, none of this would have happened
33:17
if she wasn't being forced into sex work. But in
33:20
Teresa's twisted fucking mind, this is Sheila's fault. So she
33:24
beats the shit out of Sheila. And after she beats
33:28
the shit out of her, she hog ties her and
33:31
throws her in a tiny closet in their apartment. Now
33:35
there is no airflow in this closet.
33:37
Speaker 2: It's just a.
33:38
Speaker 1: Dark hole, and it's hot because it's now the middle
33:42
of summer. It's about a year after Susan died, and
33:45
Sheila is now being locked in a fucking hole which
33:48
is so fucked up or in a closet. It in
33:50
like a dark, nasty place. Sheila was crying and begging
33:56
to be let out, but Teresa forbade the children from
33:59
helping her, and they were also afraid of Teresa that
34:02
they just listened. Eventually, Sheila had to use the restroom,
34:06
but because she wasn't allowed out, she wet herself and
34:09
after being left in there without food or water for
34:12
a few days, she was covered in her own urine
34:15
and feces, was dehydrated, and became too weak to even
34:19
cry out for help. She was left in the closet
34:23
for just over a week, and after a few days,
34:25
her siblings could hear her starting to hallucinate from lack
34:28
of sustenance. They heard her say something like she was
34:31
going toward the light, then heard a climbing sound and
34:35
then a loud thud on the floor. Now, prior to this,
34:39
a day or two into this. Terry had actually opened
34:42
the door to help Sheila, giving her a drink of
34:44
beer because that was the only thing nearby, because of
34:47
course it was, and she was trying to help her
34:49
before Teresa came back home.
34:50
Speaker 3: But as she was.
34:51
Speaker 1: Trying to help her get hydrated, Teresa came home, so
34:55
she had to close her back in the closet and
34:57
not help her anymore, and Teresa or Mary later said
35:00
this was the last time she saw her sister alive.
35:04
After the thud on the floor, the children never heard
35:07
another sound out of the closet and only checked on
35:10
their sister a few days after this because it had
35:13
started to smell. Sheila Gay Sanders died age twenty one,
35:19
on June twenty first, nineteen eighty five, less than a
35:25
year after her sister Susan was murdered by their mother.
35:29
So these two died within a year of each other.
35:32
I hesitated on the nineteen eighty five because I might
35:34
have said that's when Susan died, but she died in
35:37
nineteen eighty four. I apologize if I got that wrong,
35:39
But anyway, they were both killed within a year of
35:43
each other by their fucking crazy ass mom. After Sheila died.
35:48
Terry and her two sons put her in a cardboard
35:51
box and drove her out and dumped her somewhere in
35:53
the woods. Now again, Sheila was found pretty quickly, but
35:58
they were not really able to addent fire her body,
36:00
so she once again was another Jane Doe. Now from
36:04
here things go a little fucking sideways. It gets it's
36:10
just Teresa, it does not. Once again, she's not like
36:13
learning anything from this, and she's actually uh, you know,
36:18
get getting worse, continuing to get worse. So Teresa's completely
36:23
out of her mind. She decides to smell in the
36:25
stains in the closet from Shela's bodily fluids would get
36:27
the family caught. I should also mention that when she
36:30
burns Susan alive, she also burned all evidence of her
36:33
ever being alive, including all photos of her, which is
36:35
why if you go online you only see one photo
36:38
of Susan. It's because it was in a yearbook, so
36:41
she couldn't get rid of it. But there's literally no
36:43
other photos of Susan anywhere, which is crazy. So in
36:46
this case, she again decided to use fire to solve
36:50
her problems and instructed her youngest daughter, Terry, the only
36:53
one still alive, to light their house on fire to
36:56
burn away the smell and stains in the closet. Terry
36:59
did as she told, but the fire was barely catching
37:01
when neighbors called for help. The fire was extinguished within
37:04
minutes and the evidence remained, but luckily for them, nobody
37:08
at the time seemed to notice it, and the family
37:10
was off the hook, at least for now. From here,
37:13
Teresa decided to move the family since their apartment was
37:16
now destroyed, and Terry saw her chance to get away
37:18
from her mother once and for all.
37:21
Speaker 3: Now.
37:21
Speaker 1: I should say also that police believed the fire was
37:24
set intentionally, but once again they couldn't find proof. So
37:29
or Teresa is just like getting away left and right,
37:31
like she's just so lucky, and I hate that. But anyway,
37:36
so she's like, damn, I don't want to push my luck.
37:38
Time to move. She decides, you know, we're going to
37:41
move away now. William, who I believe was then around
37:44
twenty one, took off and started his life away from
37:46
his mom, and Terry wanted to do so as well.
37:49
So she took her sister Sheila's ID to show she
37:51
was of age and convinced her mom to let her
37:53
go after burning down the apartment or trying to. She
37:56
was basically like, yes, Mom, I will burn down the apartment,
37:59
but after this, you need to let me move out.
38:01
Speaker 3: Now.
38:01
Speaker 1: Terry was only fourteen at the time, but Sheila was twenty,
38:05
so she took Shila's ID and apparently looked enough like
38:08
her to use it and go out got away from
38:12
her mom. So Terry went off took off to Utah,
38:16
while Teresa and Robert, who was nineteen, went to Vegas,
38:20
which really makes a lot of sense. Vegas, Sin City.
38:22
It's perfect for Teresa. It makes sense that's where she'd go. Now,
38:26
after a few years, Robert was jailed for murder, which
38:29
shouldn't be surprising for anyone. I've read conflicting things. One
38:33
that he killed someone in a bar fight and the
38:35
other was that he shot a bartender during a robbery,
38:38
but either way, he was given sixteen years for second
38:40
degree murder. And what I mean by it shouldn't be
38:42
surprising is that considering the life these children have lived,
38:45
of course they're going to be getting into trouble. So
38:47
while I don't necessarily blame them, they're also not going
38:50
to be like upstanding citizens necessarily at least Robert wasn't.
38:55
Now from here, Teresa also moves to Utah, and she
38:58
and Terry both ended up living in Salt City, but
39:00
not knowing the other was there over the years. Terry
39:04
actually went to police with her story, but they straight
39:07
up did not believe her, which I'm so beyond sick
39:10
of hearing. She also told a therapist who also did
39:13
not believe her, and it's like, what are these people for?
39:16
Like police are saying your story's too crazy, we don't
39:19
believe you. And I'm like, do you guys not like
39:21
pay attention or do research about your own job? Like, yes,
39:25
this is crazy, but it's not that crazy. It's not
39:28
out of the realm of possibility like true crime as
39:32
you know, like podcasts and stories like these exist because
39:36
there's so much craziness.
39:38
Speaker 3: So like, how how are police.
39:41
Speaker 1: So consistently so useless? Like and therapists too, Like what's
39:45
going on here? It's so crazy. Finally, in nineteen ninety three,
39:49
so we're like eight years after the last murder, she
39:52
called America's Most Wanted after watching an episode, and they
39:55
told her to contact the Placer County police where Susan's
39:59
body had been ump And I want to say, over
40:01
the years, I've heard other podcasts talking about this, and
40:04
everybody calls it Placer County because it's spelled Placer, But
40:09
I'm from California, so you get the benefit of my
40:11
knowledge on these cases. It is Plaser County. So Susan's
40:15
body had been dumped in Plasar County. So she called
40:18
Plaiser County police and gave a super detailed account of
40:22
both Susan and Sheila's murders. And it was so convincing
40:25
that these police actually believed her, but also probably because
40:29
they had the bodies to match the story. Now, within
40:32
days of Terry calling Plaser County, both of her brothers
40:35
were arrested. William while working in Woodland, California, which is
40:39
about fifteen miles from Sacramento and also where I was born,
40:43
and Robert was already in prison, so that was easy. Teresa,
40:47
on the other hand, was a little bit harder to find,
40:49
but finally police tracked her down in Salt Lake City
40:52
after finding a recent arrest record for drunk driving. Teresa
40:57
had been going by her maiden name of Teresa Cross
40:59
and was working as a caretaker for her landlord's eighty
41:02
five year old mother. When police knocked on her door,
41:05
she didn't put up a fight, but she did try
41:06
to run out the back, and it was clear she
41:08
had been packing for an escape, as she had definitely
41:11
heard about her son's arrests on the news. At first,
41:14
Theresa fought extradition to California and planned to plead not
41:17
guilty on all counts, but after hearing her son Robert
41:20
was going to testify against her, she gave in and
41:23
agreed to a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
41:26
She was sentenced to two life sentences with the possibility
41:29
of parole, for which she was denied. In twenty nineteen.
41:33
Her son Robert was given three years for his part
41:35
in the murders to be concerned, to be served consecutively
41:39
with his own sentence, and William was given probation, which
41:42
I honestly think is fair. He had stayed entirely out
41:45
of trouble since leaving his childhood home and was very
41:47
much a victim in this case, I believe now. Robert, unfortunately,
41:51
who I also believe was a victim, was given eight
41:54
years in twenty sixteen for possession of child pornography, which
41:57
is just the saddest shit to me, because these kids
42:00
never stood a chance. Now, Terry, the youngest, actually had
42:06
a pretty okay life. She was married twice and very
42:10
unfortunately died at the very young age of forty one
42:14
from a heart ailment. She had a Facebook page where
42:17
she'd begun writing about her trauma and her life story,
42:20
and I actually use some of it for this story,
42:22
but unfortunately she never finished her writing, as her death
42:25
was very sudden and unexpected. Teresa Nor, unfortunately is still alive,
42:31
but rotting away in a prison in Chino, California, where
42:34
she absolutely belongs forever. She will be eligible for parole
42:38
in twenty twenty seven, which I'm sure she will be denied,
42:41
and I gotta say I hope she dies before then anyway,
42:43
because fuck her. It was so bad that even though
42:47
her daughters were found within a day of being dumped,
42:51
they were both so disfigured and horrifically treated that even
42:57
after Teresa was arrested for their murders, they were never
43:00
able to positively identify either body. They only went off
43:04
of Terry's testimony, the son's testimony, and Teresa admitting to
43:13
killing them like they couldn't even identify the bodies. Like
43:16
that's how fucked up all of this was. So fuck
43:18
this woman forever. She's a total piece of shit. I'm
43:21
glad she's rotting, and I actually, you know, I can't
43:24
wait till my kid gets a little older so I
43:26
can be like, at least I'm not Teresa nor when
43:27
he's telling me what a terrible mother I am, because
43:29
I'm absolutely gonna tell them the story that's so fucked up,
43:33
not till he's a teenager, I promise. Anyway, Thanks everybody
43:36
for listening. Sorry, there's more delays between episodes than I
43:39
would like. Moving Internet life, it's hard. I'll keep going though.
43:43
You'll hear from me soon. Until then, everybody, stay safe.