Whatever Mother Says... (13 page)

However, Theresa told her friends: “I wouldn’t want to put anyone through what I suffered. I couldn’t tell you the things he made me do.”

Then Theresa simply changed the subject. Fran knew not to pry any further into her background.

One day, Theresa took her sick and elderly patient Alice to Park City, Utah, more than thirty miles away, for a special outing. The Cheneys were most impressed when they heard that Theresa had paid for a three-course lunch for the old lady in the ski resort, with her own money.

Fran and Hal Cheney were concerned that their new friend was overworking herself. During her first eighteen months at Alice’s house in Bountiful, Theresa Cross never once took a vacation.

“We were so worried about Theresa. Looking after an old lady is relentless work, and if you don’t take any time off, it wears you down after a while,” said Fran.

In fact, Theresa was saving up her $1600 monthly salary and planning her next move with military precision. She had already bought herself a Dodge in her favorite bright red color to get around in. Her new life had given her new energy—and a determination to further her career in geriatric care.

In the spring of 1990, Theresa Cross enrolled in a night school at the Holladay Health Care Center, about fifteen miles southeast of Salt Lake City, in an attempt to qualify as a fully trained nurses’ aide in general health care.

On her first night at the imposing three-story building in Holladay, she met classmate Keith Bendixen. The sixty-seven-year-old hospital orderly was immediately impressed by Theresa, whom he considered to be a classy lady.

At first Keith—who worked in the day at the same health-care center in the Salt Lake Valley where the night school was held—felt too shy to exchange anything more than mere pleasantries with the striking but heavy-looking woman. But at break times from the grueling eight-hour weekly class, the two would walk to the soda machine down the hallway together, and they gradually started to strike up conversations.

To begin with, Theresa talked virtually nonstop to Keith about geriatric care and told him how she looked after an old lady in Bountiful. She even spun a yarn about having one time lived up near Idaho Falls where she did some nursing.

She never once mentioned Sacramento.

It seemed to Keith as if she was deliberately talking mainly about work so as to avoid any pointed questions about her personal life. But then, the course was incredibly hard work, and anyone who could work from 4:00
P.M.
to midnight at night school had to be very dedicated.

About a month into the course, the classmates all had to work three eight-hour days in the actual care center as part of the practical side of their training. Theresa impressed everyone with her intelligence and devotion to the job.

She had a long list of duties that had to be carefully checked off, and most of the nurses ordering her around were younger and, in many cases, prettier. Theresa Cross was particularly caring toward a number of old ladies with broken hips who had been moved to the health-care center from hospitals where their beds were needed for more urgent cases.

“She would get those old ladies up, get ’em dressed, comb their hair and shave them. Then put them in a wheelchair and take ’em to the dining room. Then she would feed ’em, take ’em out of the dining room, and put ’em back to bed. She also had to toilet ’em at least several times a day, as well as clean their bed and put fresh sheets on,” explained Keith admiringly.

Every week the class of ten was given a progress test. Theresa passed with flying colors each and every time. Keith said she was always immaculately dressed and she talked with a very nice accent.

“In class she was always putting her hand up to answer questions and the teacher was always saying she did real good in everything.”

At the end of the three-month course—which cost just eighty dollars—Theresa sailed through the big end-of-term exam and became fully qualified as a nurses’ aide in general health care.

A few months after finishing the course, Theresa called Keith Bendixen up and asked him if either he or anyone in his family would like to earn some extra money by relieving her for the occasional day at Alice Powell’s home in Bountiful.

Soon he, his wife, and daughter Marcella were all taking turns to stand in for Theresa whenever she needed days off. She never explained where she was going.

On one occasion, Keith says he stayed overnight at the house after Theresa came home late from some assignation or other. Keith helped fix the hydraulic lift that was used to get Alice into the bath. But the next day, one of Alice’s sisters told Theresa they did not want a man staying overnight in the house. Keith never stayed there again. But he did work at the house at least twenty more times.

Often, Theresa would take Keith and his wife out with her and Alice for a meal at the Seven Seas Japanese restaurant in the shopping mall near the house. Sometimes they would also eat out at the Red Lion Cafe. As usual, Theresa showed great generosity by always treating everyone.

Keith received his wages for helping look after Alice Powell out of the $1600 a month that Theresa was paid. Theresa also shelled out cash for most of the delicious food she prepared at the house, because her housekeeping allowance from Alice’s daughters of $250 a month did not cover everything.

Keith loaned her countless books on nursing care, and she loaned him her math and chemistry books. She also owned dozens of books on the development of certain drugs.

Keith remembers Theresa’s cooking as being superb. He would always say a blessing before each meal, which Theresa seemed impressed by.

“Bless this food and do our bodies good and help us. Amen.”

One time, Theresa told Keith she had been on a trip down to San Diego to see her son. It was a rare reference to her family, and untrue, since she had no son in southern California.

But even more significantly, Theresa Cross told Keith she had just one other son and he had died in a motorcycle crash.
She did not mention her three daughters.

Sometimes Keith, his daughter Marcella, and Theresa would do some Bible readings together. And at breakfast Theresa would sit buried in her chemistry books once Alice had sat down to eat. She told Keith that she was studying hard in the hope of one day being allowed to enroll for a full four-year nursing course to get an R.N. degree. Theresa Cross was thinking big-time. Her life had taken on an entirely new dimension.

Once again Theresa talked in fictional terms about her upbringing; this time she claimed she had been raised in places like Kentucky and Tennessee. She admitted she wasn’t close to her family but had written to them on occasions. Keith—who had at one time sold cars and real estate in California—was intrigued by his new friend. But there was something about her … he just could not quite put his finger on it.

*   *   *

In Sacramento, more Knorr family problems were brewing following a surprise visit to Billy Bob’s cozy home in North Highlands, near Sacramento, by wayward brother Robert.

At first Billy Bob was fairly pleased to see his kid brother. It had been at least four years since he and Theresa Knorr had skipped town for Reno, and he’d thought about them both many times.

But when Robert’s brief visit turned into months, Billy Bob started to notice habits of his brother’s that he never knew existed.

Robert was always out until late, and waking up Billy Bob when he struggled into the apartment in the early hours. And Robert was behaving “differently” from what he had been like before.

Ultimately, Billy Bob kicked Robert out of the house, and never saw him again.

Billy Bob was very careful not to introduce his brother to his new pretty blond girlfriend DeLois, whom he had met when the two attended a radio broadcasting school in Sacramento. They were already deeply in love and talking about marriage.

Twelve

The single most consistent finding regarding juvenile homicide is that kids who kill, especially those who kill family members, generally have witnessed or have been directly victimized by domestic violence.

Charles Patrick Ewing, author

When bartender Robert Ward walked into work for the night shift at Red’s Place on North Nellis Boulevard, in Las Vegas, on November 7, 1991, he could not have had any idea that he was about to become the next victim of the Knorr family’s sick and twisted household.

For Robert Knorr, life in Vegas had become a game of desperate stakes since arriving from Reno. He had no money and was living on the streets or scrounging a bed for the night from some passing stranger. Reno might have been the garbage can of northern and central California, but Vegas seemed to be the waste disposal unit for the entire country.

And Robert’s earlier split with his mom when they were both up in Reno was probably the final straw as far as his own sense of self-preservation was concerned. Ironically, while he may well have been desperate to get away from her, she did in many ways protect him from himself. How could a man barely out of his teens have any sense of moral purpose in life after experiencing and, his sister Terry claims, taking part in the killing of his two sisters?

Throughout his short life, Robert Knorr had demonstrated an escalating propensity toward violence, an important trait of an emerging murderer. As a child he had witnessed such horrors that he later admitted he had no real control over his temper. In some ways, he was just asking for the intervention of the criminal justice system. He barely recognized society’s laws because punishment had no real meaning to him—he had just been through a childhood that no human being should ever have to endure.

By the time Robert Knorr found himself hanging around outside Red’s Place that warm evening, casing the joint and planning an armed holdup, he had all but given up on life as we know it.

Ten minutes later, bartender Robert Ward was dead after Knorr held him up with a pistol in yet another desperate attempt to feed his drug habit. The police picked Knorr up without a struggle a couple of blocks from the bar a few minutes later.

Intriguingly, Robert Knorr did not even bother to ask for a lawyer when police took him down to the local precinct to be booked and thrown in a holding cell. His only request was for them to get in touch with his mother. He gave them an address. But when detectives contacted Theresa Knorr, she never returned their calls. The son who must have been turned into a killer by those awful scenes at that little house off Auburn Boulevard, was being snubbed by the very person who created his downfall.

Las Vegas police pressed for first-degree murder charges, and with it, the potential of a cell on Nevada’s death row. But in the end they reduced the charge to second-degree murder in exchange for his admission of guilt.

On June 25, 1993, he stood before the Eighth Judicial District Court in Las Vegas and was sentenced to sixteen years. His mother never did bother to contact him.

*   *   *

But Robert’s problems were of no concern to Theresa Cross, as she was now known. In Salt Lake City, she did not even acknowledge the existence of a son in Las Vegas. She had a new life, after all.

However, there was a slight hiccup to her plans when she took a one-month vacation from her job at Alice Powell’s place in Bountiful and ended up staying away for eight weeks. Once again she used that now familiar tale of going to visit her son in San Diego. No one knows where she really went.

Not surprisingly, Alice’s daughters decided that they needed someone a little more reliable in charge of their mother, and Theresa was dismissed for taking the extra time off without permission. (Alice’s daughters insist to this day that she walked out on the job.)

Ann Cristofersen, fifty-six, took over from Theresa at the Powell house in Bountiful, and she completely discounts reports of her predecessor’s diligence.

“I believe that she left Alice alone on many occasions. Neighbors have told me they would often call around and discover that Theresa was out and Alice was here by herself.”

However, Ann Cristofersen made much more serious allegations about Theresa Cross’s treatment of Alice Powell, who is basically unable to attend to anything for herself:

“I think she was sometimes physical with Alice. I have no doubt that she slapped her a few times and used to leave her on the toilet for hours. When I arrived here, I had to spend months getting Alice’s confidence because she was so scared every time she had to be taken to the toilet.”

If Ann Cristofersen’s claims have any real substance, they completely contradict the opinion of many others in Salt Lake City.

But Theresa’s falling out with the Powell family had no effect whatsoever on her friendship with Fran and Hal Cheney over at Centerville. In fact, the elderly couple took pity on Theresa when they heard she was no longer working for Fran’s sister-in-law and offered to let her stay in their house while they were away on a trip to Russia in 1992.

Theresa kept the red-brick, detached two-story house built in the 1920s spotless, watered all the plants, and behaved like the perfect guest while they were on their travels. For Theresa Cross, the Cheneys’ hospitality would remain indented on her conscience. She never forgot their kindness.

But for the time being she needed to find another job as a home help to an elderly person. Once again she picked up the local newspaper, the
Deseret News,
and studied the jobs columns in the classified section.

*   *   *

Less than ten miles away from where Theresa Knorr was reading that newspaper, her wayward daughter, the only surviving female child in the Knorr family household, was getting married to the man she hoped would help wipe out those awful memories forever.

In an extraordinary twist of fate, both mother and daughter had ended up running away to the same city. Incredible though it may seem, neither of them apparently had any clue as to each other’s whereabouts.

Terry had escaped from the evil clutches of vice girl Debra and then another even more unpleasant madam in Sacramento, when she met and fell in love with softly spoken, hardworking Mike Groves.