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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good evening in June of nineteen eighty five, while her teenage sons held their half sister down, Teresa cross beat her nineteen year old daughter, Sheila, unconscious, and then stuffed her into a two by two storage locker. After three days, the knocking, kicking, and cries stopped, Treesa and her sons dumped the girl's body in the desolate High Sierras. The summer before, Teresa had dug a bullet out of her
daughter Susan's chest with a paring knife. When Susan failed to recover, without benefit of doctors or hospital, Esa and her two sons drove the delirious girl to the mountains, doused her with gasoline and sent her on fire. For nearly nine years, Teresa crossed nor got away with murder until her youngest daughter, Terry Nora Graves, 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 a brutally heinous crime of ruthless ferocity. The book that were featuring this evening is Mother's Day with my special guest Dennis McDougall. Welcome to the program, and thank you for greeing to this interview. Dennis McDougall, my pleasure, Dan, thank you very much. This is again forever for those people that think they know this is one incredible tale. So
let's get right to that. Tell us. You open this book with the description of an area that for those listening in America and internationally, describe for us the area that we're talking about that you called some of the most beautiful and rugged real estate in the country, the California Nevada border place there county. So tell us a little bit about this area that you described as a beautiful, rugged real estate some of the most beautiful and rugged real estate in the country.
Well, the area we're talking about is near the town of Truckee in northern California, which is a few miles, maybe ten miles from Lake Tahoe, which is the largest lake in California and the deepest. Uh It's it's the stuff of picture postcards. Undoubtedly a good many of of your listeners have seen pictures of it at one time or another. Lake Tahoe is cerulean blue and placid beautiful, and it's surrounded by fir trees forests for as far
as anyone can see. It's very near the famous Redwoods and in fact, the internationally famous you know, Semi the National Park is no more than fifty miles from where Susan and Sheila's bodies were found. Both of these girls were dumped unceremoniously in remote parts of this primeval landscape and the irony the contrast is palpable because people drive through this area every day marveling at how beautiful it is.
It's green, it's in the winter time it looks like a courier and eys etching, and even in the hottest part of the summer. Uh trout fishermen flocked to uh this part of California, UH because uh this is uh nirvana for outdoorsman.
L Now tell us just a little sorry, go ahead.
I'm suh. That's okay, I'm sorry.
Yeah. Now, tell us a little bit about uh the little town of Real Linda before we introduce the cross family.
Yeah.
Well, UH, Real Linda offers a jeff uh a graphical contrast to the trucky Lake Tahoe area where the bodies were found. Real Linda is located north of UH Sacramento, in the flatlands of UH California's Central Valley. It's no sort of renowned I suppose that ha as having been uh settled by the by Oakey's as they were known UH during their flight from UH Oklahoma UH and the dust Bowl in the nineteen thirties.
It's a.
Combination migrant workers and down on their luck UH welfare recipient UH residents and lots of trailer parks, lots of lots of UH thrift stores. And the wind always seems to be blowing at any time of the year. And it's reminiscent of a desert kind of crossroads, the sort of thing that you might see in a David Lynch motion picture. You, I guess the irony is that it's not all that far away from maybe an hour an hour and a half away from the area I was
describing earlier. You go up the Donner Pass from Rio Linda to the east, and in an hour to an hour and a half you're in the high Sierras, where it's beautiful and green and seems to go on like Eden forever. So sort of, you know, heaven and hell in the same spot.
Now, speaking of heaven and Hell, let's talk about early life for Teresa. Jimmy Francine Cross and her mother had been married before, and she had an older sister named Rosemary. Her father's name was jim So tell us a little bit about a little bit about the type of life that they had in real Linda and Teresa Crosses early upbringing.
Well, her father worked for a number of years at a dairy and during that time they were, you know, they were probably lower middle class. They owned their own home, and things were I don't know, uh, relatively normal. I suppose under the sad circumstances of real into itself and tell such time that her father uh developed Parkinson's disease and uh was discharged from his job at the dairy, and.
Um the.
Livelihood the welfare of the family fell to uh the mother who had no job, no skills, and two small girls. And essentially from that point forward, Uh Teresa and her sister grew up in pretty much an abject poverty.
And.
Rosemary seemed to roll with the punches better than her younger sister.
M.
She you know, sh She went on to marry and lived what I I guess somewhat regard as a relatively normal life, uh, whereas her sister, Uh Teresa was an I I don't know how else to term it. Then say that you than to say that she was a bad girl, uh growing up and had no one really to turn to and uh uh no uh help or much in the way of restraints from her parents because one was other we disabled, and the other was trying
to hold it all together. Anyway, Teresa got out of school or dropped out of school and married and the first of several husbands and began having children, and her life from that point forward went from bad to words.
When I read your book, you talked about some of the things that shaped Teresa's life and one of them was that her parents had much more of a premium for the boys in the family rather than the girls. And we're talking about to a great difference between the treatment of the boys rather than the girls. In fact, the father was disappointed that he didn't have uh sons of his own, Wasn't that true?
Oh?
Yeah, of course.
The the.
I mean this was translated, uh into every aspect of Teresa's life. She she she regarded her her own sons uh with as young princes uh and all of them could a do no wrong and b would somehow aspire to great things and great fortune and UH lead them all to the promised Land. The girls, on the other hand, were were worse than second class citizens. I mean, the girls were were regarded as almost you know, almost in
a uh a medieval sense. And the girls were seen as a burden, as a a as of no value whatsoever, and treated that way. And they were, uh, you know, if you can imagine Cinderella in the twenty first century, or in this case, in the late twentieth century, that's what that's what it was like to uh to grow up uh in that family.
The other commonalities that we'll we'll talk about alt as we go on in this story. But Teresa was raised in that her mother would not let her and Teresa out of the yard, so very very protective. And also another aspect that comes up later, as the audience will find out, is that they had jobs and from that early time of their jobs, that money was taken and put into the family good, whereas the Sun could be
a lay about and had this preferential treatment. So some of the things that we will see that Teresa carried on into her own family. Now you talked about Teresa in your book also that she received preferential treatment over that of Rosemary as well, her sister, which again we can see can lead to not very good results. So talk You mentioned about Teresa being sort of an unruly person, and both the sisters were seemed to be sexualized in
terms of their interest in boys and sex. What did that lead You talked about Teresa marrying early and having children, and tell us about the earliest marriage and what that constituted.
What it constituted, Well, Teresa was had a fascination early on, and you know, I can only make these assumptions based on what I was say able to gather from the next generation.
But Teresa was.
W was sexually active at a very precocious uh age, perhaps as early as thirteen or fourteen, maybe even earlier than that.
Uh and.
Uh and she was the baby of the family, and her mother uh doated on her more than she did obviously a lot more than she did Rosemary. Rosemary was more of a workhorse.
And and.
Um, gosh, Teresa, Teresa, how do.
I fell for no, not fell for set her hat for a uh a young man who was going to s uh sweep her away, take her away from uh the real Linda uh to a new life and uh another part of uh the the uh Sacramento Valley. They they bought a house and uh what's euphemistically known as a shotgun house because you can stand at one uh end of the house and look all the way through
to the other. Called a shotgun house because if you had a shotgun, you should you could shoot it right through the center of the house and uh not hit anything. It was to be uh nothing but doors leading uh through the to several rooms to the other side. So they bought this a relatively cheap house.
In a.
Another downtrodden part of the central valley and town called uh Gaunt, which is south of Sacramento.
And.
And her husband, and I I guess this would turn out to be something of a theme throughout her life. Her her husband turned out to be a a career short career, a career drunk and m hm, and you used to beat her and even when she was pregnant with their their first child, my son, her husband slapped her around. And there was an incident not long after the boy was born the baby was born, when Teresa picked up a gun and shot him dead, and the police were called in and investigated, and she was charged
and jailed. She hired a or was assigned a pretty sharp attorney whom I interviewed at length about the entire incident. And it was something of a celebrated case back when it happened, because she got on the stand and whether she was coached or just came to her naturally when she was being cross examined by the cross prosecution, she broke into tears, and she was.
A to.
Persuade the jury that she acted purely in self defense and that uh, she was a classic battered wife. And
she got off scot free after the fact. Uh, even her attorney marveled at the fact that she was able to pull this off because the UH forensic evidence and all of them and what there was in the way of witnesses UH indicated that she was probably laying in wait for him and when he came home drunk from the bar, rather than wait for him to pound her into submission, she shot him, just shot him in cold blood, and didn't think twice about it.
She was.
She was a real piece of work, Theresa was.
So it's interesting that you write in the book because this is the beginning of obviously establishing that she can get away with and murder. Basically, because what's interesting about this case is the players in this case and for the prosecutions, a man named Dorfmann, which will come up a little bit later. And also even more incredibly is the judge Johnson, who appears in almost every single thing from this point on in the legal court where Teresa's involved.
So it's incredible this judge deemed a lot of evidence inadmissible To say that he was favoring her as is an understatement in that her self defense hinged on that she accidentally shot the gun, but as they testified at court but unsuccessfully, that it would take three steps to be able to shoot somebody, and certainly neither one of
those three steps could be deemed accidental. If it were to happen, there was witnesses that were to say that would have testified to say that she had made statements that she wanted to get rid of him, or if he ever left and she would shoot him rather than have him leave. Judge Johnson will say, for example, said that because that woman was married to a deputy, then she was acting just like a deputy. And then Teresa wasn't given her miranda rights, so that that testimony was
deemed it amissible. So right away in your book, you're presenting this incredibly the incredible chicanery at the trial and really must have been emboldened Teresa for the rest of her life with this ability to get away with murder with this incredible trial.
Yeah, well, you have to remember that this was when this happened, there was a real, I don't know, backlash I suppose in the court system. And when it came to these kinds of marital discord crimes, when when a wife shot a husband, you know, in the past, up until this time, the wife was guilty and the wife was Centerway, and and you know there there was no question about it. It was the whole concept of of abuse was.
Okay.
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Short shrift at best, so you know. In the post feminist era of the sixties, the late sixties, seventies and eighties, there was a reversal of that. That's tried and true. Look at domestic violence in the court system in particular, and I think that this case, Teresa's case, is an extreme example of what happens when the courts see their previous wrong in being biased toward one one sex or one gender over another, and then they go to the
other extreme. And and you know, Teresa was the benefactor of this because she didn't necessarily do it, but everybody involved in the course system, from the judge on down did it for her.
Now part of her ability to part of her ability to be able to do some of these things, including being I guess persuasive in this trial when she was on the stand. So I like to describe her physical attributes and her sort of demeanor in terms of her ability to influence men. Will say she had had acquired some abilities in that area. Tell us a little bit about how she presented herself and what she looked like.
Well, I think slut comes to mind, but that would probably be overstated. The case, she she played a part. She she learned early on how to game the system based on her her extreme sexuality, from her most tender years and h and she was both alluring and at the same time she tried to present this this I don't know put upon or um um hard scrabbled m young widow who had overcome a a you adversity and.
Was uh.
Was trying her her best to to take care of herself and her and her baby boy. And you know, she played the pity card to the to the uh in degree and successfully so from you look at the results, she was real piece of work.
Now she marries a U a gentleman named Thornsbury, and he's crippled and he wounds up being a couple to her. So anyway she's is Obviously when she's married, it doesn't stop her from looking for other prospects. And again with her ability to uh be a seductress. Uh. Then she finally meets Bob Nor. Bob Nor, and and what does Bob Nor about the killing of Clifford? And does he find that out in the beginning or when does he find that out? And how does he come to terms with that?
What?
How does he deal with that information?
Well, he was w when he met uh Teresa, he was a virgin. I mean to say that he was uh. Uh he was not the world who l worldly wise.
Uh.
Half of the marriage is an understatement. So you know he was both naive, he was in the military. Uh, and he was completely taken by this hot young m hot a young woman who's with with the the shady past. There's been there's been some time.
Um.
He was uh. He he did her bidding.
He was he was.
Um he he was young and in love and uh and believed that uh he found the girl of his dreams. And they were going to they they were going to start a family, which of course they did do.
Uh.
And they were going to uh overcome her tawdry passed and they were going to live the American dream. Didn't turn out quite that way, but that was the intent.
How many children do they have in short order? And how many boys? How many girls?
Let's see.
One, two, three, four, five, Susan, Sheila, Terry, Terry William, and Robert.
William exactly, and Terry was the youngest, youngest.
Yeah, so.
Yes, and they had them one after the other. You're right, that's exactly how it went down. So, yes, Theresa became something of a a baby machine. But you know she was also at least according to her daughter.
She was not.
Especially true to to Bob either, but that's that's a whole other story.
She would she would go out to bars while she was still married, and whether she was pregnant or not.
Yeah, of course that was you know, that was part of her. That was her her lifestyle from the earliest days. That was true even back in Gaunt. I think.
What did Bob What did Bob nor observe in terms of Again we mentioned that she had learned something from her own childhood Teresa, and then was repeating that with her own children. So what did Bob Nor realize early on in terms of their treatment of the children.
Well, she pampered the boys. She made excuses for them, and she treated the girls, especially Susan the oldest like the second actually a three class citizen and you know,
had no problem slapping the girls around. And the boys were given whatever they wanted and had jurisdics and uh over the girls YU when when Dad was away the boys and include including the u the oldest uh of of the the boys, it was not Bob's but Clifford's uh son, they had they had control and the girls had to do uh their bidding as if uh they were uh the the men of the house, and uh if if they protested in any way, uh, the boys would either lash out at them with impunity, or Teresa
herself would administer the worst possible corporal punishment.
Now, Teresa had a habit of living beyond her means, and so she would rack up in incredible bills that, despite their their working histories, could not support anything like this. But let me just ask the question of we never mentioned any real extreme religiosity in the Cross family early on, but is there any indication that Teresa, with her own family is introducing any religious ideas that say, might be alarming to anyone.
Oh boy, well, you're you're asking me to pull up details from twenty years ago, Dan, And I'm not certain exactly where you're going here.
I know that I know that.
Later on, especially after she and Bob were divorced, that she, you know, she played the role. She was always looking for a sucker, and she found many of them, and if they evidenced any born again tendencies, then she would adapt. She was a consummate actress and played whatever whatever role the situation demanded the end, always justifying the means the end being land a husband and make him pay.
Now, what was the fate of the relationship with Bob nor and and Teresa? And how did that affect or did that affect the relationship with the children and Bob nor.
Well, they separated, divorced, Bob remarried in short order, and Teresa found a sucker named Ron Pulliam, and.
She too.
Remarried very quickly, and the oildren became ponds in uh in a war between Teresa and Bob. He Uh, Bob by that time was ready to go out and start all over again. Was not the best uh father in the first place. I mean, he was not the greatest father even when he was with Teresa. But but he was a better parent overall, I suspect than Teresa ever
could have been. And and you know the Teresa took the children and treated them as chattel and essentially kept them unto herself and away from their father, which I think was the first of a series of tragic events that would eventually lead to to multiple murder.
Now she me she meets again, goes through a succession of men, and now she meets Chester Harris. He's a four hundred pound veteran newspaperman not in the prime of his career, and tell us a little bit about Chet Harris and that relationship.
Uh well, yuh h. Chet Harris was a as you say, he was a newspaperman, worked in the Sacramento He was uh, he was god.
What was chat like?
He was?
Uh?
He was a pack rat.
He was he was a.
Uh.
He was attracted to her for obvious reasons because she would she was a U s a sexual object object to him and even later on when he discovered that she was cut holding him that I didn't dissuade him.
He was uh.
Uh.
The big attraction to uh Theresa was that he uh A had an income and b had a house, so.
So she.
Made no She had no problem uh dealing with his predilections. He was into pornography, he was into.
Uh uh.
Kinky sex and uh he was uh always ready to go. He ordered her to wear moo mooves around the house and nothing else for the express purpose of servicing him
at at a moment's notice. And none of this, by the way, escape the the the notice of the children as they were growing up there, especially the girls are watching their mother deal with men in this fashion over and over and over again, and ultimately began, of course, in getting this head of the story in a way, I suppose, but they modeled their own sexual identify identification on their mother, and you know this would have ramifications years later.
Chet was.
Let's see, how do I put this delicately? A big fat sex fiend. How's that?
Yeah?
Okay, Now, this is about the time you describe in the book that Susan starts calling Susan a witch, the oldest daughter, and saying that she has a demon. And so when I mentioned about religiosity or religion, that's what I was alluding to. When is it that she suddenly starts talking so extreme about demons and demons in her own daughter. So just tell us a little bit about what she says to the to the other family members about daughter Susan.
Well, I don't think that you know at this point in the story that it has escaped anyone's noticed that Theresa might have a mental problem, that there might not be an overactive imagination at.
Work, that.
She had a great difficulty keeping her id under control. And this imagine imagining that she had about about Susan was I mean, the the not the first, but but certainly one of the most vivid of her various and sundry delusions. You know, there are shrinks after the fact that attributed her behavior towards Susan and then later Sheila.
To a.
And innate jealousy because they were coming into their their own sexuality, their own blooming at the same time that Teresa was pretty much used up. And you know, she was already by the time, you know, she hooked up with the chat. She began to develop uh, both his lifestyle and his body type, and gained weight and and she saw, you know, at the same time that she
was going downhill quickly. She saw all three of her daughters blooming and um an in s Susan the oldest was UH, you know, becoming buxm and they had a UH was developing a a figure and was also overtly sexual as or a dire direct result of my modeling her her mother's behavior. And none of that set well
with UH Theresa. So whether it was whether it was UH strict imagining or a manifestation of a deteriorating and ultimate lee schizophrenic personality, Teresa decided that her daughter was possessed by witches and that and that she was consorting with the devil. And she thought and she literally during her time with Chester Harris believed that that Susan was some sort of a character out of Stephen Keen.
Now, the thing is we're talking about delusions or one thing, but she has the the dynamic you describe in the book is that she has these uh uh an older son Howard and Bill. And what she has is these sons that will do her bidding, like hold their daughter down hat and she'd gotten the practice of handcuffing her daughter at some point, even handcuffing her to a dining room table, I believe, in the living room, and this constant proclamation that she was a witch, she was possessed.
And then when she left chet Harris, there was also talk within the family you describe in your book that she'd said that chet Harris had a coven and that they forbade the children from communicate with him. Yet Susan
did communicate with him. So when we talk about delusions, it's delusions but taken to this other level within this family where the boys will do her bidding, who have had preferential treatment, which have already shown that she likes one daughter over another one, but obviously the sons have preferential treatment, and then the delusions come in and the
jealousy and the competition. Yet at the same time you describe how the daughters are enlisted to use their sexuality to make money to bring it back to the family, because Teresa now has no real way of making money like she had used to when she had her youth and her beauty inter sexuality right, yes, well.
In essence, what she did was turn her daughters out. They were you know, they by the time they had moved to the trailer park where all of this comes to a being new won at least for the two older girls, they had hard to say whether they did it on their own or they were just encouraged. I mean, according to Terry, the youngest and surviving sister the girls, this is like another example of the difference between being
a girl and a boy. In the Nora family, the girls were encouraged not to go to school, to drop out, and you know, by the time they were into their early teens, Susan and Sheila spent more time trolling for tricks along a notorious strip north of Sacramento. Then they were in school, they just quit going to school altogether.
The boys, on the other hand, especially William, not only stayed in school but excelled and were encouraged by Mom and and were indirectly supported by Uh, their their sister's prostitution. It was, you know, it was say the ultimate and
dysfunctional families. And you know, Teresa, encouraged in part by her relationship with chet Uh and by her own religiosity, moved from the Bible, to the Book of Mormon, to anything that would give her signs as to ah where the devil was it any given hour, and all the signs eventually pointed to Susan.
The interesting thing, or another interesting aspect, is that she believed that Susan had cast a spell on her, and that spell would take all the weight from Susan and potentially put it on the ever increasing weight of Teresa. But to be fair, Teresa at some point I don't know if she was suffering from mental illness, but she at least played into the game and admitted to some
accusations about Chad Harris's coven. So either she was poking the bear or there was something else going on that you describe in your book that didn't help the situation, did it?
No?
No, No, there was there, and there was umn this belief that that uh, somehow uh Susan was uh an agent of the devil, and that.
That which is uh m e.
Everyone uh with a uh uh a normal view world view untainted by mental illness UH would see as just the natural course of things. Teresa saw as the the work of Satan. And rather than UH look to her daily diet and her uh her sloth as the cause of her weight gain, she had to lay the blame somewhere. So she laid it directly at the feet of her daughter.
Let's talk about the shooting of Susan, because that leads to this incredible incident later, and namely her murder. Let's talk about the wounding of the daughter, and then we'll just fast forward to how it came that they wanted to take this bullet from her. So explain first the shooting and that rationalization for how that happened, and then we'll just fast forward to how we get to Susan and that bullet being attempted to be taken from her body and why.
Let's see if I've got this right. I mean, you're probably gonna have to remind me of the details then, because it's been quite a while. I I I know that, uh, Teresa, And in fact, there there's something that I I, well, well go ahead and and fill in the details, because
there there was. I had a conversation after uh, the book was written and published with uh William, who would not talk to me when I was writing the book, but after the fact got to be he got to be, you know, very open with me, and he maintained that that Susan was actually shot by by Terry, uh, not by Teresa.
HM.
No, I don't know. I don't know that that's true. In fact, I confronted Terry with it, and she maintained that that was not true. But you know, we're dealing with a family that where the truce is pretty slippery, so that remains an open question. Nonetheless, Susan was shot. She was shot in part because she was a witch. I mean, regardless of who it was that shot her, whether she was encouraged, whether Teresa encouraged Terry to shoot her,
or Teresa shot her herself. Susan was shot. There was a bullet lodged in her body, but Teresa would not take her to emergency, would not take her to a doctor, because obviously the question would arise who shot her and why? And Thereesa couldn't have that, because this was a woman who many years, twenty years earlier, shot and killed her
first husband and got away with murder. And now she took her daughter into an emergency and questions began to arise as to how she got shot, and she turned out to be on the police blot her to be the same woman who got away with murder twenty years earlier. Well, you know, it doesn't take a rock scientists who leap to the conclusion that she had done it again, which of course she did. But Susan stayed at home and had a bullet lodge in her and well we know what happens next.
Well, tell us about why they wanted to remove the bullet, and as a result, tell us continue with the story of Susan's fate.
Well, they wanted to remove the bullet because you know, you get rid of the bullet, you get rid of the evidence. And no one can say, or at least, there is no direct physical evidence that she was shot by someone. Maybe she just you know, fell hard on on a nail. Or something. I mean, uh, it all has to do with guilt and responsibility in the failure fail failure to take any uh. So it was when you know, she continued to worsen and developed fever and uh uh you know, the you're shot and it doesn't
just uh heal itself. Well, you take the bullet out. So so the boys held her down and and you know, dug the bullet out and and she you know, I mean, in the most unsanitary fashion and wonder of wonders, Rather than get better, she got worse, a lot worse, very quickly.
And then they hatched a plan to do what and what did they do?
Well, this was Teresa's Teresa, you know, concluded that this witch to whom she had given birth seventeen years earlier, was going to die anyway, and she decided to just
hasten things along. So she got the boys to load her up in the car and got the rest of the kids and drove up, drove up the highway over the Donner Pass into this same pristine woodsy area that I described to you at the top of the broadcast, and found the side road off to an area known I guess pretty much worldwide is Squaw Valley and came to a relatively a relative clearing in pulled to the side of the road. There was no one else around.
It was.
Early winter time, wasn't there wasn't much traffic, and the the boys dragged her out, made a makeshift funeral pile funeral pyre and loaded their sister on top and doused her with them m gasoline and while she was still
alive and still moaning, Uh set her on fire. Hopp In car drove home and it wasn't until another car passed some time later that they saw the fire stop and saw the susan's remains and called the Sheriff's department, who came to the scene, and the following day the the case was reported as a Jane Doe who's set on fire near Lake Tahoe. And you know, no one had any identification of who she was, and so she remained for several years thereafter.
Jane Doe now back at the at the home of Teresa. It's an interesting development too, because it it seems to boggle the mind that the father of some of these children, Bob Nor, is out of the picture, but then comes back in the picture and asks about the children and he gets a response. So after this Jane Doe is discovered, the police don't have any leads whatsoever, and the family
doesn't give up any of the secrets. So just tell us about Bob nor coming back into the picture and what he has told when he asks about Susan and then later Sheila.
Well, I mean, by this time, many years after the divorce, obviously Bob had started another family and wanted to see what had become of his children he lost touch of for some time, but when he finally relocated the the family, he uh confronted uh Theresa and asked what had happened? Where where Susan was and uh and was told that she was a runaway, that she'd run off and uh and that they had no idea where she had uh
gotten off to. But she was, you know, she was a hooker and worthless and so on and so forth, so she could be anywhere, and Bob, never being the brightest bulb in the pack, uh took his uh his wife's word for it. One more time. Same thing with Sheila later on, But we'll beginning to that sh soon enough, I'm sure.
Tell us about Sheila and her role in the family, and how she becomes to be out of favor in this family.
Well, I mean, she was defending Susan, and she you know, she she tried to have her own life, but and in fact showed a little bit more spunk, I think than Susan probably did. But she was beaten down too. And and as was Teresa's want, whenever any of the girl children were disobedient or would not do as they were told, she was punished and punished severely, far more severely than any of the boys her obviously that would
be the case, but but horribly so. I mean, you know, punished the way that a Nazi would uh punish uh a Jew. And um in this one instance, she was uh particularly defiant and.
And Teresa.
Beat her and UH locked her.
In a.
Closet, actually a cupboard, not even a closet. It was uh this very tiny kits not a kitchen cabinet because it was off on the side, but but nonetheless it was like the size of a kitchen cabinet, and UH locked her inside and left her there not for an hour, not for a day, but for several days. And of course at first she was Sheila beat on the cupboard and kicked and screamed and carried on, but nobody came to her rescue. Terry, after the fact, used to beat
herself up all the time. Terry the younger sister, because like in any of the other members of the family, she knew that if she dared help her and got caught, that she too would be punished, just bad or worse than her sister.
So she was.
Sheila was locked away until she stopped screaming, and then it was silent. And even then Teresa didn't open the cupboard, just left her there and no food, no water, no bathroom breaks, uh, just locked in the cupboard. And then finally, some time later, they did open the cupboard and she was dead. Might have been a shock to any other family, but the Nora family took it in, especially the boys.
I guess took his sort of instride. When Mom discovered the body, she ordered the boys to box it up and throw it in the trunk of the car, and then they went for another ride up into the Sierras.
What's interesting in do you chronicle in the book that they're almost they're out to bury her. They got the cardboard box and they pull off to the side and out, a police car pulls up.
And they ask them.
Questions, and calmly and coolly, these family, the killer family just says, oh, we're just out for a pee officer and he didn't smell the body that had been putrefying for three days. So again they get away with murder. This is nineteen eighty five. And even more so baffling is that the police thought there was some incriminating evidence as sort of this other killer, Texas truck driver Benjamin Boyle, who had been convicted of rape and murder four months
after this first body was found. So even more insulation from arrest was Teresa and the family. And so let's just also talk about what because Terry becomes the big hero in this case, in this story, and without her, well we would not talk right now.
There would be no story. In fact, if there without her, it would remain probably remain on the books of both Nevada and Placer County is unsolved for murders to this day.
Yes, Terry's sorry, go ahead, Well, Terry's.
Sorry, that's okay, go ahead now.
Now, Terry obviously has lived the same life as Susan and Sheila and William and Robert witnessed the same things this deluded, insane killer mother. Obviously, again we alluded to that she you know, was not having an easy time with this and it impacted her life relationships again, stormy, drug abuse, just an unstable life. So let's fast forward to the point where she gets to the point where she wants to talk. She's married to a man and finally comes around to telling him what does he do?
When he's told, what does her husband do?
Yes, well, I mean her husband along with her friends, especially after she sees the television program, encourage her to come forward. But you know, he tells her why you need to try to to let somebody know so that that your mother can be brought to justice. But Terry's initial efforts in that regard fell on deaf ears. She couldn't find anyone who believed.
Her because she was.
She herself. After Sheila died shortly thereafter, didn't have to figure too much in terms of what would happen and the next who the next victim would be because both sisters were now dead and dispot of Terry reckoned that she would be number three. So she dropped out of school, ran away from home, and del you know, developed the life as as a runaway and then ultimately married early.
But she kept the secret to herself all these years because you know, she she had tried early on, especially when she she was briefly in the in a state home for runaways. She tried to tell this story, and no one believed her. They just figured that she was lying because that's what runaways did. And the story was entirely too fantastic to be have any basis in fact shows.
So she got used to being, you know, the the boy who cried wolf, and no one believed anything that she said, and so she stopped even trying for quite a while. It wasn't until she was watching I can't remember what the program was, but it.
Was America's Most Wanted.
Yeah, one of the tabloid TV shows, America's Most Wanted, and you know, they had these mystery cases and uh uh. And she was encouraged by a friend of hers when she.
She saw this.
He related a story to a friend who was also watching the show, the story of her sisters in two bodies that were deposited in the Sierras, and she was encouraged to give it another try, and through America's Most wanted. She managed to get in touch with a sergeant with the Nevada County Sheriff's office who took an active interest immediately and said that he would follow up on her information.
And he matched one of the bodies in his jurisdiction to Terry's story, and then went over to the next county over to look through their records and found the other body. And he knew that he knew that he had a winner. He knew that this young woman was not just spinning tales out of the ether, but she was in fact telling the truth about a monster, a monster who was still at large, still getting away with murder thirty years after the fact, by this time, before they well go ahead.
Before they go down, before they hunt her down, really and it's a little bit of a task to find this woman. She's using wigs and disguises and aliases, and she's glombed onto what she had done earlier in her life. She was a nurse, and so she realized that one of her good gigs was a convalescent type treatment and care for people that were old, and she could help them out and and uh and exist and do well
in that sort of environment. What was interesting too in it this is that without the corroboration of William and Robert, maybe this tale doesn't have as much credibility. So tell us about that corroboration and cooperation to a certain degree from the brothers once they are questioned and taken in by police.
Well, first of all, the I mean the cops closed in pretty quickly on the brothers, but because they knew where they where they were, especially William. I mean William by this time had graduated. In fact, I think he may have been the only member of the family that actually graduated from high school. But he had, he had married and was in a position of some responsibility working at a warehouse in Sacramento.
And his.
You know, his younger brother by this time, Robert had himself gotten into trouble, was gone the other way. And I had been involved in a robbery murderer in Las Vegas and was I've been doing time in an eastern Nevada prison for that murder. So the two boys were relatively easy to locate. Teresa not so much as you say she was. She was in Reno for a while and then moved on to to Utah, and she was taking care of an an elderly woman and getting paid
for it. I guess it's called assisted care. And they finally were able to track her down, and even though she lied to the cops and said that she was not who they said that they thought that she was, they were in fact able to prove that it was
the reason they took her into custody. Now, the boys, William and Robert, both cocked to their parts in the disposal of their sister's bodies and made essentially made a deal with the prosecution to testify against their mother, and William got off relatively relatively free, in part because he had led a a a pretty exemplary life. I mean he's still you know, William's still around and living in Colorado now and trying to run away from his past,
but he's also confronted it too. He's pretty stable. I don't know how you ever outrun that kind of childhood, But.
Of the.
Six children of Teresa cross Us, he's probably the only one who's genuinely survived and led what would euthemistically be referred to as a normal life. So they turned, they turned on their their mother and told the story, and that was in part what ultimately brought her to justice.
Now, she obviously got her just due. What was the fate of Terry?
What?
How was it for her to obviously go through this trial, But was it of any benefit to her in terms of stabilizing her life after the fact in any way tell us about the fate of Terry.
Well, now we come to a part of the story that's a little difficult for me on a personal basis, because I got to be very close to Terry.
Uh.
She was obviously my primary source in telling the story. This is essentially Terry's story. It's told from her point of view. She was the hero of the story. After it all went down, made the headlines. And Teresa was who by this time, incidentally had gone on a hunger strike. And when she showed up in court, uh, I mean when she was arrested, she weighed in excess of uh I think in the s excess of three hundred pounds. But at any rate, she was uh as big as
a house. When she showed up in court uh for sentencing, she was raal thin. I mean, it was shocking how thin she was, and the skin just hung on her frame and her face, and she had a high, squeaky voice, not the sort of individual that you would ever judged to be capable of not just murder, but torture and and the kind of horrible and sessuous.
Deet that.
That were the backbone of her life she wound up with, as I recall, two uh two less sentences. At any rate it was she would have been eligible for parole in thirty two years, I believe, is how it ultimately shook out, which at her age was not likely. I haven't followed up to see whether or not she survived. I doubt that she did. But in her daughter's case, Terry.
Was the.
She was the object of tabloid TV for several years after after the case made the headlines.
She was on.
I don't Know Montel Williams and Maury Povich and I don't know you name it. Terry made an appearance at one time or another. She told her story. She had a great camera presence. She appeared on the outside to be abuliant. She was blonde like her mother, piercing blue eyes, but she was a tortured soul. And you know, by the time I met her, she was admitted stone cold alcoholic. She couldn't stay away from drink and you know, it's obvious to me now as it was then that she
was self medicating. She fell in with a crowd that that he used any and all sorts of drugs in order to deaden the pain. And probably you know, more than any of her other peers, she had perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to deaden that pain. She she found out, much to her sorrow. She wept about this every time
I spoke with her on the phone. That the abuse that she sustained at her mother's hands when she was a child and was beaten on a regular basis, ruptured her her innerds, and she was incapable of conceiving or giving bir to a child. She married into abusive relationships, goaded her various husbands into beating her up, and she tried, you know, at one point she even tried to go back to school, but she fell back into her old ways. She was in the bar, attending and probably even in
some hooking at one point or another. I suppose she moved around, lived in Kansas for a while, and then Utah again, and finally wound up living in Missouri. Saint Joseph, Missouri, I think is where it was she ultimately died, perhaps four or five years ago. I was told by her then husband that although it was I don't know, described in the autopsy as being accidental, that an accidental drug overdose, that in fact, he said that she did it on purpose,
and that she committed suicide. She couldn't stand it anymore. And you know, I don't, I don't know. I mean, it breaks my heart because I got to be relative. I mean, I got to be pretty close to Terry and to Robert. You know, Robert finally finished his sentence for the Las Vegas murder rap and got out, couldn't get a job, and he too moved back to Missouri, but he went to trucky truck driving school and ultimately
got himself a job as a truck driver. And the last I heard, he was still driving a truck for a living.
And.
You know, was.
I don't know, I mean, living as decent a life as one could conceive of under the horrific circumstances of his youth. So there were survivors, Sadly, the hero of the piece was not one of them. And William and Robert, I mean, you know, here we are irony of ironies. The two Princes of Theresa Cross are still alive and still getting along relatively.
Okay, Yeah, it's incredibly.
I don't know what the moral of the story is. I doubt that there is one, but it is a sobering and instructive study in American Gothic.
Absolutely. I don't know if there is any moral to the story. It's just a profoundly sad and very very disturbing story, and hence the title Mother's Day. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about Mother's Day just before I let you go, And if you could tell us any contact information if you have Facebook, if you do Facebook, if you have a page, or if you have an email that people might be able to correspond with you find out more information or
find out more of your work. Let us know about that if you could, Oh.
Sure, Dan, I'm Probably the easiest thing is to just go to you know, my author's page. I'm in the in the Author's Guild and my author's page is my name w W W Dennis mcdougle dot com. I'm also in Wikipedia and I have an Amazon author's page as well. Uh, and you know, if people want to contact me directly, my email address is Dennis McDougal sixty at gmail dot com. And I try to respond to two people who to my readers. I've written a dozen books, so I hear
from a lot of people. But but I'll, you know, I will try to answer whatever questions anyone might have about about the sad story of Teresa Cross and her store Across the Family.
Now, I'd asked this question early on, and has asked this question too, that this book had originally come out I believe in nineteen ninety eight, so we're talking about quite a while ago. But it has been reissued through a publisher, Open Road. So tell us just a little bit about that new edition and its availability through Open Road.
Sure.
Open Road is a new publisher out of New York. They're primarily E books, but I believe they have paper capability as well, and they contracted with me to published two the books that I wrote some time ago, Mother's Day being one of them, and Blood Cold, which is the the story of Robert Blake Blake and Bonnie Bakeley. The Robert Blake was the our gang.
Star who.
Charged with the murder of his wife, Bonnie Bakeley in Hollywood and beat the rap a llah O. J. Simpson back in the early two thousands, so Blood Cold is also available on open road. They are a new outfit, as I say, out of New York, and they make a practice of finding Jim's at least that's the way they put it. I'm not sure that, you know, I would be so full of hubris to call these gems. But actually one of my editors said that Mother's Day
was a class which was news to me. But nonetheless, they make a practice of tr of finding these older titles and bringing them back to a younger audience. And you know, I'm obviously, as the author, I'm very much in favor of that, but I also you know, I applaud them for what the the the whole idea of doing it, because these sorts of sagas, I mean, these
sorts of stories. The reason that I did true crime in the first place was because I was far more interested in the psychology of what goes into making a criminal or a horrible crime, how it comes to pass, And then I was in the actual you know, nuts and bolts and blood and guts of the current crime itself. But I think these stories are timeless. I mean, I think these stories are the story. This is what the brothers Grim relied upon when they put together their fairy tales several centuries ago.
This is the.
The sum and substance of Greek myth. These, these modern tales, that of the Cross family or the Blakes, these are the stories that are that will live on long after all of us are gone and an open road. Guess uh. A lot of Brownie points in my estimation for seeing that and making these stories available to a new generation.
Absolutely, it's well deserved to re release this book Mother's Day, And I wanna again thank you very much for coming on and taking the time to really explain this story and again the psychology behind a very very fascinating killer and her compliant family, very very interesting and unique tale. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about it. Thank you very much, Dennis, and have yourself a good evening.
You do the same, Dan, and thank you very much for having me.
Thank you all right, good night, good night,