McDougal - Mothers day: [the shocking true story of a mother who murdered her two daughters with the help of her own sons]

Mothers Day

Dennis McDougal

For Kate and Jennifer

Acknowledgments

Mothers Day belongs as much to Robert Knorr Jr. and his kid sister, Terry, as it does to my publisher or me. These two ravaged children, who were brought up in a nonstop atmosphere of hate, cruelty, sordidness, superstition, and murder, are living proof of the indomitable will and ever-evolving goodness of human beings. Along with Sergeant John Fitzgerald of the Placer County Sheriffs Department, Robert and Terry are the soul of this story. At the end of every human tragedy, there is always some glimmer of hope. If there werent, none of us would have much reason to carry on. I dont think I give anything away here by revealing that these three people are that glimmer of hope at the end of Mothers Day.

Special thanks also to Don Dorfman, Carol Vogel, Ray Thielen, Robert Knorr Sr., Connie Sanders, Wayne Wilson of the Sacramento Bee, Janell Deter Bekauri of the Galt Herald, John Trumbo of the Auburn Journal, Jeff Cole of Inside Edition, Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the wonderful staff of Placer County Superior Court Judge J. Richard Couzens, and Inspector Johnnie Smith of the Placer County Sheriffs Department. My gratitude, too, to all those who shared their memories and mental notes with me about Theresa and her family, but asked to remain anonymous.

On the home front, I thank my support group, which seems to grow stronger and more dedicated with each of my published parables about California crime: my pal, partner, and first-line editor, Sharon McDougal; my wonderful parents, Carl and Lola McDougal; my sister, Colleen, and my brothers, Neal and Pat; my children, Jennifer, Amy, Kate, and Fitz; and a small army of friends and peers, including Pat and Jim Broeske, Julie Payne, David Cay Johnston of the New York Times, Dot Korber, Lee Gruenfeld, Vince Cosgrove, Randy Bean, Gary Abrams, Brian Zoccola, Richard Lewis, Bella Stumbo, Dave Farmer, David Levinson, Larry Lynch, Dominick Dunne, David and Margo Rosner, Kathy Cairns, Bob Sipchen, Michelle Winterstein, Steve Weinstein, Barbara Howar, John Horn, Leo Hetzel, Tim Fall, Laurie Pike, Wayne Rosso, Jim Bellows, Jill Stewart, Julie Castiglia, Lisa Sonne, Mark Gladstone, Pierce ODonnell, Tom and Donna Szollosi, and Brian Taggert.

The men and women who keep the court and other public records in Sacramento, Las Vegas, Reno, Nevada City, and Auburn rarely hear a thank-you for their polite efficiency. With this acknowledgment, I hope to correct that. Same goes for the staffs at the Sacramento County Public Library, the library at California State University in Sacramento, and the morgues of the Sacramento Bee, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Amarillo Globe News.

Thanks to Susan Randol, my editor at Ballantine, who became a mother herself during the molding of Mothers Day; and to Alice Martell, another mom, who also happens to be the best agent in New York City; and to her aunt, Edna Harris, who became mother to Mothers Day when she had the audacity to send her niece a news clipping about an unbelievable crime that had been committed out in California, where all those crazy people live, along with the suggestion that it might make a good book.

And finally, thanks again to Irv Letofsky. He may not be a mother, but he remains the best editor on the planet, in addition to being an unswerving friend.

Foreword

When a beaming young mother and her helpless infant are wheeled out of the maternity ward together for the first time, any question that the mother might ever bring harm to her baby can only be viewed as sacrilege.

Even now, in the latter days of the twentieth century, mother love remains venerated and inviolate always full of hope, never marked by despair. Mothers remain unassailable in our culture. In divorce, mothers are generally granted child custody over fathers. When domestic violence erupts, the mother is always the least likely suspect. Principals and teachers dont call fathers when children raise hell, need help, or get in trouble. They call mothers. When the most violent felon stands alone in court and no one else will stand by him, his mother can usually be counted upon to be there.

Mothers care. Period. End of argument.

That is the myth that we live by. A mothers love is unconditional. Maternal mystique is a fiber in every thread of the social fabric: government, courts, education, religion. We speak of Mother Nature, Mother Country, and Mother Earth. Roman Catholics tend to worship that ultimate mother, the Virgin Mary, as much or more than they do Jesus Christ. Joseph, the good man who stood by Mary and raised her son as if he were his own, is hardly worth a footnote in catechism classes.

But cracks have appeared in the motherhood myth over the centuries. From the ancient Greek tale of Medea, who killed her own children because her husband deserted her, to the sobering story of South Carolinas Susan Smith who confessed in 1994 to the drowning of her two tiny sons, the truth emerges that motherhood is no more consecrated than any other type of human bonding. Mothers may give birth, but that is all that nature requires of them. From the snipping of the umbilical cord onward, a mothers love for her child is a matter of choice, not some genetic requirement or divine mandate.

And many mothers choose in varying degrees not to love or care or do what is best for their children. Some abandon their progeny. Some beat them into submission. Some even kill them.

Theresa Cross was a toxic mother, but the maternity myth blinded, deafened, and silenced those that might have stopped her. When I set out to tell the story of how she destroyed her family, I wondered where the good people were who might have saved her children. Theresas sins werent the product of instant rage. She moved inexorably toward her hideous deeds over a period of years, leaving unmistakable signs as she lumbered toward her own and her childrens awful destiny. She could have been stopped at any point along the way.

The fact is nobody tried to stop her. A legal system biased in favor of motherhood literally let Theresa Cross get away with murder, not once or twice, but three times.

Bad judges, lousy cops, greedy lawyers, lazy prosecutors, mediocre teachers, and incompetent bureaucrats are inevitable. When they happen, they should be weeded out and sent back to school to learn something about moral courage and the Golden Rule. The most egregious of their number usually are found out and bounced from their positions, but a residue of them always seems to remain in the system, and the harm that they do with their substandard civil service and self-serving abuse of authority is immeasurable.

The most insidious of these petty villains go utterly undetected. They are those who dont understand that looking the other way is a crime. They are the ones who refuse to intervene when they see a woman backhanding her baby in the supermarket or shrieking at a son or daughter for no apparent reason at all. These are the good people who go home every night and cluck their tongues in wonder over the latest atrocity they see on the nightly news, completely unaware that they are the ones who are responsible. They are your next-door neighbors, just doing their jobstrying to get through another day. They are school nurses, police officers, social workers, doctors, baby-sitters, clerks, crossing guards, teachers, technicians, lawyers.