Theresa Knorr: Worlds Worst Mom

Theresa Knorr was a mother of six in Sacramento, California. By the early 1980s she and her children were living in a cramped apartment on Auburn Boulevard, where she beat them, starved them and made them punish one another. Her anger came to focus on her two oldest daughters, Sheila and Suesan, whom she accused of using witchcraft to steal her youth and looks.

In 1983 Knorr shot Suesan during an argument, and the bullet stayed lodged in the girl’s back. In July 1984 she had one of her sons cut it out at home. Suesan, seventeen, slipped into a coma, and her brothers were made to carry her to the car and drive her into the mountains off Highway 89 near Squaw Valley, where their mother set her on fire while she was still alive. In June 1985 Sheila, twenty, died after her mother kept her locked in a tiny closet for days without food. Her body was left in a cardboard box near Truckee.

For years both women were listed as unidentified. In October 1993, surviving daughter Terry called the America’s Most Wanted tip line and then told Placer County investigators what had happened. Knorr was arrested in Salt Lake City on November 10, 1993, living under her maiden name. She pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and in 1995 received two consecutive life sentences. A parole board turned her down in 2019.