Mother's Day [Paperback]

Dennis McDougal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 27, 1995

A MODERN MURDEROUS MEDEA...
In June of l985, while her teenage sons held their half-sister down, Theresa Cross beat her l9-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 Knorr got away with murder, until her youngest daughter, Terry Knorr 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Theresa Cross was a toxic mother, but the maternity myth blinded, deafened, and silenced those that might have stopped her." Dennis McDougal, with his flair for storytelling and his eye for vivid detail, is one of the best of true crime writers. In this book he profiles a very dark character indeed: a woman for whom neither her life nor her fantasies ever got beyond her sad, narrow world of severe men, twisted religious ideas, beatings, sexual jealousy, horror fiction and movies, and obsessive housecleaning. She had several husbands, one of whom she killed, until she ended up as a single mother with two boys and three girls. Then she began to torture and kill the girls, one after another, as they became old enough that their beauty made her angry. Prepare to enter a closed-off realm of nightmare, when you read this one.

From the Publisher

Among many other things, my department is responsible for watching the backlist and making sure that we reprint titles that need to stay in print. Without fail, every year since it's publication in 1995, the reorders on this title pick up dramatically right before Mother's Day. Every year we reprint it, just before Mother's Day. It's a great book, and I'm glad it reaches new audiences because it has a lot to say about the darker side of the revered role of the mother; and it "sells-through", which means the stores don't have to return it because customers buy enough of them. But somehow I envision these out of control computers churning out reorders based on the title alone," thinking" that it's a delightful little book honoring Moms. Maybe it sells so well be cause that's just what it isn't!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Fawcett (June 27, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449149307
• ISBN-13: 978-0449149300
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

With the recent publication of "Five Easy Decades" (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), Dennis McDougal has authored a total of nine books and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles in a career that has spanned over 40 years. Currently, he is working on "The Acid Chronicles," a documentary film about the history and renaissance of LSD as a powerful tool in the treatment of mental illness.

Before he began covering movies and media for the Los Angeles Times in 1983 and, more recently, the New York Times, McDougal was a staff writer at the Riverside Press-Enterprise (1973-1977) and the Long Beach Press-Telegram (1977-1981). A UCLA graduate, McDougal holds a Bachelor's in English and a Master's in Journalism.

In 1981, he was awarded a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University and spent a year teaching and studying in Japan and Canada, as well as at the Palo Alto campus. Over the years, his journalism has won over 50 honors, including the National Headliners Award and several Associated Press awards.

Before turning his attention full-time to writing books in 1993, McDougal reported on the glamorous and occasionally corrupt aspects of Hollywood as a staff writer for ten years at the Los Angeles Times. As a Times investigative reporter concentrating on movies, television and pop music, McDougal took readers behind the scenes of pop star Michael Jackson's troubled career, beginning with his "Victory" tour in the early 1980s; exposed the waste and mismanagement of Band Aid, USA for Africa, Farm Aid, and other "pop charities" of the 1980s; and followed celebrity courtroom dramas, such as the so-called "Cotton Club" murder trial, which featured former Paramount Pictures chief Robert Evans in a major supporting role. He was a producer for CNN during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

McDougal's reporting has taken him to the top of San Francisco's Mt. Tamalpais at sunrise with Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama, Rodney King's rap music debut, Ethiopia with Harry Belafonte, Tokyo with former U.S. Ambassador Mike Mansfield, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer's Washington Heights bedroom for a discussion of the elements of good sex. He has interviewed dozens of celebrated men and women who have influenced our lives: pop stars, politicians, moguls and cultural icons.

A contributing writer with TV Guide through the 1990s, his last story for the magazine was the murderous saga of actor Robert Blake and his late porn queen wife Bonny Lee Bakley. McDougal and co-author Mary Murphy turned that story into the book "Blood Cold" (Putnam, 2002), which Mark Sennet Productions optioned for a motion picture. McDougal is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and has also written for Los Angeles Magazine, Brill's Content, Premiere, and the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine.

McDougal has been a lecturer in journalism and creative writing at UCLA, the University of Memphis, and the California State Universities at Fullerton and Long Beach. He and his wife, Sharon, live near Memphis, Tennessee, have five children, and ten grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Shocking and disturbing, October 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mother's Day (Paperback)

I found the book to be very interesting, however, I feel like the book does not have an end. Most books of this nature provide a full ending to the story. This story has no ending for the reader. I'm sure that anyone else who reads this book will agree that they are left in suspense. I want to know what happened to Theresa Cross after she was initially arrested. I would like to read about the court case and what transpired while in the court room. At the very least, I would like to know what her sentence was. I have looked on the internet and have not been successful in finding any pertinent information regarding Theresa Cross. I would really like to see a sequel to the book, Mother's Day. According to the other reviews, the story was also discussed on a talk show. Does anyone know the name of the talk show? I would like to get the transcripts and would like to know that this disturbed lady got what she deserved....

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling...., June 10, 2003

By 

Lorrie Berg (Conrad, MT.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mother's Day (Paperback)

I read this book years and years ago. It's still one of my favorite true crime books. I can't believe the horror the kids had to go through just to live in Teressa's twisted world and the scars it left on her children into adulthood. Upon reading it, I had nightmares for a while. This is the only book that has had that much of an impact on me, I still find it amazing. The author, I think, does a fantastic job with detailing scenery, dialogue, etc. It's a wonderful book. Too bad it's true...

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Evil Does Walk this Earth!, August 23, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mother's Day (Paperback)

The horror this "family" lived through is almost unimaginable. I watched a talk show program about this case, which prompted me to buy the book. These adult children revealed as honestly as they could the circumstances surrounding the horrendous murders of their two sisters. It is a testimony to Terry's strength that she persisted in getting this story out in the open. I think the author is a great story teller and investigator, however his writing style jumps around a little too much. Never-the-less, I would recommend this book to people who are interested in a Story of Life that is stranger than Fiction.