dailyBooks - If You Tell--A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood by Gregg Olsen--Conversation Starters

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Gregg Olsens

If You Tell

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Introducing If You Tell

I f You Tell is about three abused sisters who braved to put their mother behind bars. Michelle "Shelly" Knotek's daughters reached out to Olsen in 2017 and asked him to write a book about their mother for one simple reason: They want to stop her from killing again.

The now-65-year-old Shelly, convicted of second-degree murder and manslaughter, is to be released from the Washington Corrections Center for Women after serving 18 years in June 2022. She did not admit guilt and only took a plea deal. Although the case earned much attention after the crimes' reveal in 2003, Shelly's children Nikki, Sami, and Tori want to remind people how inhumane their mother can be and warn about her release.

When a live-in babysitter disappeared from the home of Dave and Shelly Knotek in tiny Raymond, Washington, in 1994, the people who noticed it were little to none. Eventually, two more of the familys tenants vanished, and Shellys three daughters speculated the frightening truth: The couple had murdered the missing people.

The couple's arrest happened in 2003; they were sent to prison for their roles in the deaths of babysitter Kathy Loreno, Shane Watson, Shelly's 19 -year-old nephew, and her 57-year-old friend, Ron Woodworth. For years, Shelly perpetrated sadistic abuses on her tenants and daughters as Dave assisted or stood by passively. Loreno was drugged, beaten, starved, and tortured using makeshift waterboarding equipment; the Knoteks' other victims endured similar cruelties.

Along with her two younger brothers, Shelly was raised first by her alcoholic mother and thenafter their mother left themby Lara, her young stepmother. Lara noticed that Shellys behavior, even at six years old, seemed odd and even frightening. She seemed to control her younger brother, and later on, when the family discovered that her mother had been beaten to death, the 13-year-old Shelly hardly responded at all. Her violent behavior grew increasingly over timeshe lied, set fires, stole from her family, and even put broken glass in their shoes. When she was 15, she falsely accused her father of raping her. Shelly was only 17 years old when she married for the first of three times. All three husbands were reeled in by her good looks and charm, but each ended up emotionally and physically victimized

Olsen follows the half-sisters, whose fears proved justified when their parents were sent to prison. His latest true-crime book tells a grim tale, told in 85 short chapters, influenced only by the sisters courage, strength, and love for one another. Olsen had access to Dave Knotek, the sisters, and their grandmother. Murder, torture, and sisterly love are extracted for all their potential melodrama.

Olsen loosely connects Shelly's behaviors and mental state to her traumatic life with her birth mother and her cruel paternal grandmother's influence, but behavioral analysis is not the ultimate goal, and readers are left to try comprehend Shelly's motivations as a child and especially as an adult when her abuse of others turned fatal.

The book's real heart is the daughters' resilience and strength throughout years of terrible abuse, including how their mother often forced them to be a part of the other victims' suffering, which they witnessed. It narrates how she made her children sleep outside and the way she once shoved Nikki head-first through a glass door. Shellys response to what happened was, Look what you made me do, as blood trickled from her daughters face and body. She physically and emotionally abused the girls, who all had different fathers. Her favorite punishment, aside from beating them into a pulp, was something she called wallowing; Shelly would forcefully strip them naked in the middle of the night and make them roll in mud as she hosed them with cold water.

The detailed abuse and crime are almost unbelievable, according to reviews. The power of sisterhood on display in the contents is remarked as inspiring and unforgettable. Olsen gives Nikki, Sami, and Tori the space on the page to unwrap, explain and fight with the feelings they have for their mother. He also gives Shelly's stepmother a voice, who often was the only real positive adult family member the girls had. Dave Knotek, Shelly's third husband and criminal accomplice, shared his side as well.

Shelly Knotek's story shares many features and is known not to be recommended for the faint of heart or squeamish reader. Those looking for analysis of the criminal mind or legal procedural details might not find it in this book, but If You Tell accomplishes what it sets out to do. The outcome is a compelling portrait of terror and an intensely honest, yet even sensitive, look at survival.

Introducing the Author

G regg Olsen is an Amazon Charts and # 1 New York Times bestselling author who has penned more than thirty books, including Lying Next to Me, The Last Thing She Ever Did, and two novels in the Nicole Foster series, The Sound of Rain and The Weight of Silence. He has been a guest on multiple television and radio shows and news networks, such as Good Morning America, Dateline, Entertainment Tonight, CNN, and MSNBC. Also, Olsen has appeared in Redbook, People, and Salon magazine and the Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, and the New York Post. His young adult novel Envy had been officially selected for the National Book Festival, and The Deep Dark earned Idaho Book of the Year.