Dennis McDougal

(Ballantine, 1995)

In June of 1985, while her teenage sons held their half sister down, Theresa Cross beat her nineteen-year-old daughter Sheila unconscious and then stuffed her into a 2' x 2' storage locker. After three days, the knocking, kicking, and cries stopped. Theresa and her sons dumped the girl’s body in the desolate High Sierras. . . .

The summer before, Theresa had dug a bullet out of her daughter Suesan’s chest with a paring knife. When Suesan failed to recover (without benefit of doctors or hospital), Theresa and her two sons drove the delirious girl to the mountains, doused her with gasoline, and set her on fire. . .

For nearly nine years, Theresa Cross got away with murder, until her youngest daughter, Terry Knorr Groves, finally found a cop who believed the incredible story of her two murdered sisters.

That story is all here, the shocking life of a woman whose violence, jealousy, rage, and domination led to brutally heinous crimes of ruthless ferocity.