The Knotek Sisters: Episode 3: Everything is fine!

This is the third and final episode in our 3-part series covering the Knotek sisters and their serial killing mother.

Previously on The Secret Sits, we have begun exploring the lives of the Knotek sisters; Tori, Nikki and Sami and the control their mother asserted over every aspect of their lives.  Sami is now at home with her mother and scared that someone will find out about Kathy, and that is where we find ourselves while we pick up our story today.

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Transcript

Start of Episode 3: The Knotek Sisters: Everything is fine!

 [Underscore Music]

Previously on The Secret Sits, we have begun exploring the lives of the Knotek sisters; Tori, Nikki and Sami and the control their mother asserted over every aspect of their lives.  Sami is now at home with her mother and scared that someone will find out about Kathy, and that is where we find ourselves while we pick up our story today.

[Theme Music Start]

Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson.  Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases.  You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.  And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.

[Theme Music Play Out]

[Under Score Music]

Tori was 12 years old now, and she took in everything. Every. Single. Thing.

Ron was no longer allowed the luxury of clothes.  He worked outside from 7:30 am – 8:00 pm on the exhaustive list of chores Shelly gave him.  At night, Ron would eat his dinner upstairs alone.  ON most nights, Shelly would give him a couple of sleeping pills and despite there being an empty bedroom and bed in the house, Ron slept on the floor.

Tori would occasionally stand up for Ron and ask her mother why she was being so cruel to him, telling her mother that Ron was a nice guy.  Shelly’s response was, “well if you like him so much, why don’t you marry him?”  Not long after this encounter, Shelly called Tori down to the living room.  Ron stood there for the longest time before he finally spoke. “I don’t love you anymore, Tori.” He said.  Tears welled up in Tori’s eyes and she told him that she didn’t believe him.  But in typical Shelly fashion, she instructed Ron that he was not allowed to speak to Tori anymore after this.

The two honored Shelly’s demand because they both new the consequences if they chose to disobey her.  But sometimes in the dead of night, when the house was quiet as a cemetery, Tori would tip toe from her bed to the space where Rob slept on the floor and she would silently bend down and give him a quick hug, and he would nod back to her with a small smile.

Sami had noticed a decline in Ron’s health when she was home from school.  And when Nikki learned that her mother had a male friend living at the house, she called her mom and left a pointed voicemail. “I know there is a man living there and you need to get him out of the house before history repeats itself.”  Shelly called her back right away and explained to Nikki that he was a family friend and that he was really good with Tori and that Nothing was going on.  Sami also backed up what her mother said about Ron. “everything is fine”, she said “I keep asking Tori.  She’s fine.  She’s so much mouthier than we were.  She’d tell us.”  Sami did mention that Ron wasn’t wearing any shoes which she found strange.  But, Nikki just thought, Oh crap, something is happening.

And Dave Knotek new it too.  He said when he came home from work, Ron would be down in the swamp with a weed wacker and no shoes, all cut up.  And he watched as Shelly would make Ron slap himself over and over.  When he suggested to Shelly that they buy Ron a pair of shoes, Shelly said, “What for keeps losing them.” Which Dave knew was just not true.

Ron tried running away from Shelly several times through the years, just like Kathy, just like Shane.  But Shelly always found him and brought him back.

No matter where Ron was on the Knotek property, when Shelly called for him, he was to drop everything and get to her as fast as possible.  “I’m coming, Shelly Dear!” he would shout.

The sound of Ron’s anxious and scared voice gave Tori chills, she said, “It was one of the scariest sounds I’ve ever heard, still.  He sounded loke he was dying every single time he said it.  It was like “Shelly Dear” was the last thing he would ever say in his life.

And even through all her torture and abuse routines, Shelly still found a new use for Ron.  She enlisted him to help care for a Pearl Harbor survivor named James “Mac” McLintock, a family friend of Kathy Loreno’s mother.  Shelly talked up Mac like a father she never had, she cared for him and Mac loved Shelly back.  She called several times a day to make sure he was ok, and Tori had come to look at Mac as a grandfather figure, she loved going to his house to spend time with him.  One more than one occasion Mac told Shelly that he wanted her to move in with him.  Instead, however, she moved Ron into Mac’s house.  At first Mac was concerned about the fact that Ron was gay, he was uncomfortable with Ron bathing him and taking care of his personal needs, however; in time Ron and Mac worked things out and Ron spent most days at Mac’s house, he would even spend the night sometimes.  And while there were open bedrooms in Mac’s house, Tori noticed that Ron wasn’t using any of them.  Exploring the house, Tori finally found Ron’s few personal items and some blankets in a small storage area in the cold, wet basement.  Tori immediately knew that her mom was making him sleep down there.  Even away from Shelly’s house, she still held all the cards.

Lara Watson hit the roof when she found out through Sami that Shelly was caring for an elderly man named Mac.  She called Deputy Bergstrom at the Pacific County Sheriff’s Office and asked about the Kathy Loreno case and Bergstrom told her that the case had gone cold, that he was working on another big trial and that he would keep working on the case, when he had time.

Lara called her local chief of police, Dale Schobert, who urged her to let the Pacific County authorities have a chance to build a case.

On September 7th 2001 Mac assigned Shelly power of attorney.  He had changed his will to leave his entire estate to his black lab Sissy, but after Sissy died, everything was left, to Shelly.  

Shelly’s abuse of Ron while in her house was only escalating.  Tori woke in the middle of the night to Shelly’s screaming.  She silently crept down the stairs and saw Ron standing out on the porch almost naked with Shelly standing in front of him yelling at him and making him punch himself in the face over and over.  Shelly held up a cup that was obviously full of urine.  “what is this Ron?” she screamed.  Ron told her that he needed to use the restroom but didn’t want to wake her.  This was her rule after all.  “drink it” she said and handed the cup to Ron.  He put the cup to his lips and drank the entire glass without a pause.  If Shelly said to do it, just do it.

When Shelly decided to move Ron into Mac’s house for around the clock care, Tori felt that maybe he would be a bit safer.

On February 9th 2002, Shelly called Tori while she was getting ready for a football game at Willapa Valley High and told her that Mac was in the hospital.  He had fallen and was hurt bad.  Shelly picked her up and Tori remembers her acting very anxious at the time.  Shelly said she didn’t know if Mac would live and then she said, Ron was there when it happened.  By the time they made it to the hospital the nursing staff informed them that Mac had indeed passed away.  Tori burst into tears and melted into her mother’s arms.  Shelly didn’t seem broken up at all.  Actually, she was nearly giddy.  Shelly had been left 5 thousand dollars.  There was the matter of his dog Sissy, but she was old and wouldn’t live much longer, then Shelly would inherit Mac’s house worth more than $140,000.

How Mac had died was a bit of a mystery.  He died of blunt force trauma to his head from a quote unquote fall.  Ultimately, nothing further was investigated.

Once Ron was back working in the yard at Shelly’s Monohon Landing house, Tori heard her mother’s new line of abuse for her Uncle Ron.  “You killed Mac, you’re a murderer” Shelly would scream at him.  And this went on, and on, and on. Until one day it happened.  “you’re right” Ron said, “I killed him.  Please don’t tell.”

And Shelly was ready to twist the knife, “Don’t disappoint me Ron.  Don’t you ever.  I don’t want to tell, but you need to know you disgust me.  You’re a murderer.”

In May of 2002, Sami snuck down to Sandy, Oregon to attend Nikki’s wedding at Lara’s wedding venue.  Nikki had found a great man and was living a life that was impossible to imagen when she was growing up.

When she was forced to wallow.

When she was told she’d never be anything.

That no one would ever love her.

And Sami understood why Nikki had not invited her tormentor to her wedding, even so she wore a special ring on her finger that contained Nikki, Tori and her own birthstones in it.  It was a gift she would give to Shelly the following day, Mother’s Day.  The ring was another small secret in a family that had kept and buried countless secrets.  By wearing the ring at the wedding, it, in some way, made Sami feel like her mom was at the wedding as well.

In the spring of 2003 Pacific County Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Bergstrom attempted to serve Ron with a restraining order brought forth by his mother.  The deputy saw Ron on the porch as he pulled into the driveway.  Ron, now a thin, spiderly figure, shot the deputy a startled look and ran through a hole in the fence into the woods of the back yard.  The deputy knocked on the door, but no one answered. 15 minutes later the dispatcher took a call from Shelly asking for the deputy to meet her in front of the post office.

“He’s not living with us now” Shelly lied “He’s living in Tacoma.”

The deputy shot back at her, “I don’t appreciate being lied to, I saw him at your place.  He ran away.  I know he was there.”  Shelly, always quick with a come back said that he had probably ran away because there were warrants out for him.  She told the officer that he was sick and that she had been taking care of him.  She promised to have Ron call, but before she could escape the conversation with the deputy, he asked about one more thing.  He wanted to know about Kathy Loreno, her family was still worried and had even paid a private detective to try and find her.

Shelly replied that she hadn’t heard from her in a long time, in fact no one had.  That night Shelly quizzed Tori for the first time in a long time about Kathy.

Boyfriend’s name: Rocky

His Job: Trucker

Yet all the preparations in the world couldn’t have prepared Shelly for what would happen next.

On April 19th 2003 Shelly opened a letter postmarked from Olympia and suddenly she turned white as a sheet and her hands started shaking as she read the letter:
 The gunshots you heard last night were from Kathy.  Like the Lord Jesus Christ, SHE also arose from the dead and is back to revenge you.  Ashes to ashes.

Shelly repeatedly asked Tori over the next few days if anyone had approached her about Kathy.  Tori kept telling her no and she didn’t understand her mom’s over the top concern.  Kathy, whom Tori could barley remember, wasn’t dead.  She had run off with her boyfriend.  She was having a happy life.  Because remember that Tori still only knows her mother’s lies about Kathy. 

Next, Shelly called Sami at her teaching job.  Sami’s supervisor pulled her aside to tell her that her mother was on the phone.  It had become habit for Sami to pre-warn any new supervisor about her mother’s antics, knowing Shelly would not give up calling until she got her way.  Sami got on the phone and Shelly was frantic, “Kathy, has any one asked you about Kathy?” she asked Sami told her no and Shelly told her about the letter.  The letter scared Sami, because it meant that someone outside of the family knew something.  Sami hung up and thought of the necklace Kathy had given her on her birthday.  She thought of how Kathy always had time for the girls when they were growing up, doing their hair, making them laugh with a story.  She could think of a million good things about Kathy.  

And that is when Sami decided that Kathy’s family needed to know what had really happened.

Tori spied on her mother and father one weekend when Dave had come home from work.  They were outside with Ron, who had fallen off the roof while trying to clean the shingles.  He was crumpled up like a ball on the ground and Dave and Shelly just stood there, not rendering aide, but telling him to get up and do it again, which he did.  Shelly would also make Ron stand on the porch railing, barefoot with his feet already bleeding and she would make him jump from the railing down to the rough and jagged gravel driveway. Over and over.

Even in his declining health, Shelly, never let Ron wear shoes not even while working outside.  And when his feet where a gnarly mess of blood and pus, Shelly would boil a pot of water and then add bleach and force Ron to soak his miserable feet.  Tori said it was the worse thing she had ever smelled.  A combination of bleach and decomposing flesh.  One time Shelly made the water too hot and the skin began to sluff off of his muscle.  Shelly bandaged his feet after this incident and Ron was allowed to sleep on the laundry room floor again.

By this time Shelly was ready to get rid of the troublesome Ron, so she called Dave and told him that she was going to take Ron to a homeless shelter, but Dave would have nothing of that.  He didn’t care for Ron, but also did not think the shelter was the best idea.  The next morning when Tori woke up, she did not see signs of Ron anywhere.  When she asked her mother where he was, she told Tori that she had taken Ron to stay at Mac’s house for a while.  Tori’s room was just above the noisy gravel driveway and no one could sneak in or out of it without making a distinctive loud crunching noise.  Knowing a lie when she heard one, Tori simply replied, “I didn’t hear you leave I guess.”

Ron had been gone for a few days before Tori asked about him.  Shelly told her that he was at Mac’s house and that he was fine.  She said that she saw him twice a day and she went over everyday at 7 am to check on him.  Tori knew that was a lie, her mother didn’t get up that early for anyone.  But then Shelly turned back on the lovey dovieness toward Tori, she told her to remember the story, if anyone came asking for Ron, she was to say he left and was living in Tacoma now, to which Tori agreed, she had no choice.  But she persisted in asking to go see Ron until Shelly finally snapped.  Shelly insisted that Tori now do all of the chores that Ron had been doing; weeding, feeding the animals, organizing the kitchen, whatever had to be done and to Shelly’s meticulous specifications at that.  When Tori didn’t clean the dog’s kennel to Shelly’s standards, she to Tori to crawl inside, when she did Shelly locked the cage.  
 “That’ll teach you.” Shelly balked “How does it feel to be treated like your precious puppy?  You stupid asshole. You think a dog like lying in it’s shit?”  And then Shelly turned on the hose, soaking Tori with water muddled with dog feces.

Sami was pleased when her mom called and said she had decided to allow Tori to go spend a few days with her sister in Seattle.  It was the first time this had ever happened.  They met in Olympia, a good half way point for both parties, and had dinner.  Sami could tell her mother was a mess.  Her hair was frazzled and her thumb was swollen to double it’s size, she may have also lost a couple of teeth, but Sami could not tell for sure.

On the drive to Seattle Sami had two surprises for her little sister.

“First you are going to try sushi for the very first time. Second, we are going to see Nikki tomorrow.”

All of the sudden, Tori was panic stricken.  She was not only terrified of seeing her sister for the first time in 7 years, but she also didn’t want to defy her mother.

When the three sisters gathered at Duke’s Seafood & Chowder House on Seattle’s Lake Union the next day, it was, for Tori, like experiencing the most amazing women she had ever met.

Nikki was now 28, all grown up.  Beautiful and poised, she even smelled wonderful.

No one talked about how terrible their mother was during the meal.  Or how misguided their father had been.  They all just reveled in this moment of reconnection and reunion.

On July 22 2003, Dave’s phone rang.  It was Shelly.  Not normal Shelly. Not demanding Shelly.  This Shelly spoke in a halting, weary voice. She told him that he needed to come home, that there was something bad going on with Ron.

Dave had been home the previous Sunday and he’s seen Ron recovering from what Shelly insisted had been a fall from a tree.  His finger had been broken in the fall.  Dave also recalled that Ron’s feet where bandaged, there were burns on his head and chest which Shelly claimed came from burning bushes in the yard.  There were bruises too.  Lots of bruises.  Again all from accidents, Shelly claimed.

Dave had tried to get Ron to leave, offering him $270 cash to leave town, but Ron said he would hurt of kill himself if he had to leave Shelly.  Dave was already in hot water with his boss and he told Shelly he couldn’t make it home until Friday, which seemed forever away.

During this early morning call Shelly never told Dave that Ron was dead, but he already knew.

Shelly claimed to have just found him on the back porch dead.  She insisted that she had tried to revive him, but to no use.  So, she dragged his body down to the pole shed, dressed him in clean sweatpants, something she would never let him wear while alive, and put his body in a couple of sleeping bags.  Next, she moved all of the camping gear from atop the freezer, opened the lid and placed his body inside.  She then meticulously placed all of the camping gear back on top, so no one, especially Tori would notice.  After this is when she made her first call to Dave on that early morning.

When the weekend came and Dave came home, he was hopeless in his thoughts.  He couldn’t believe that he was having to dispose of another body.  And as he struggled to get Ron’s frozen body out of the freezer, Shelly was right there watching, “I tried to save him” she claimed “I did CPR but it didn’t work, he was too weak.  They’re going to think we did some kind of abuse on Ron.  The police will point fingers at us.” She lamented.  

Dave carried Ron’s body deep into the back yard.  There was currently a burn ban in place so he could not cremate Ron as he had done with Kathy.  So, he buried him in a shallow grave, which he attempted to make natural.  He then hid his tools for this burial at Mac’s house.  

Tori, Sami and Nikki were finally starting to come down from their high brought on by their long overdue reunion.  Sami was talking to Tori, making sure she knew that she had to keep seeing Nikki as a secret from their mother.  Tori was nervous and not sure she could keep it a secret.  Just then Sami asked Tori if their mother did things to Tori.  Tori just looked at Sami, who was already crumbling in front of her little sister, and gave her the list of the horrid, terrible things that their mother had been doing to her.  Sami hugged her sister and asked why hadn’t she ever told her, every time Sami asked about Tori’s home life she had just said it was fine.  But what Sami didn’t know was just how shielded Tori had been from the life Sami, Nikki, Shane and Kathy had lived under her mother.

“I thought you and Nikki had a happy childhood.” Tori said.

The sisters kept talking and got into the Ron situation happening at the house.  And Sami knew she had to reveal a secret to Tori.  She could barely speak the words out loud to her little sister.  “Mom killed Kathy; they burned her body in the back yard.”

Dave and Shelly spent the evening coming up with yet another cover story.  Ron had always wanted to go to San Diego, so they gave him some money and Dave drove him to Olympia to catch a bus.  Yes, this would work, but if it didn’t Ron had always been suicidal since Gary left him.  Well, they had two options.

Sami and Tori sat up talking the entire night, being open and honest with each other, giving one another a blow-by-blow incident report.  If it had happened to Sami, it was now happening to Tori.  Then Sami asked for the truth about Ron. Tori didn’t need to say anything, just with her eyes she said it all.  I think Ron is dead, and I think our mother did something to him.  Sami pulled herself together and said, “We need to tell Nikki.”

The call came at an hour when people only call with the most dire news, and Nikki answered the phone.  It was Sami, “We have to get Tori out of there” she said.  Sami recounted Tori and her conversation and about Ron.  But Nikki was in a different place in her life than where she was two years ago when she had gone to the police.  And they didn’t do anything back then either.  They broached the subject of Shane, which they had only spoken about in whispers before.  Sami then went back to Tori.

“we need to figure out what is best” she told her little sister. “Do you think you can give us some time and wait this out?  You will be 18 in 4 years.”  

Tori cried in her sister’s arms.  She wanted to do what was best for everyone, but she was filled with anger and she knew her mother needed to be stopped.  “I can’t do this anymore, Sami” Tori said.  Sami held her sister.  She was desperate.  She knew that everyone’s lives would go up in flames in the truth ever came out.  Even so, she’d found a way to navigate he mother’s treachery.  She hoped Tori could too.

Shelly met Tori and Sami in the same Olive Garden parking lot in Olympia where she had dropped her off.  Tori just sat in the car for the whole ride, telling her mother she had a head ache and pretended to sleep.  When they arrived at the house on Monohon Landing, the house already felt foreign to Tori.

“Ron got a job” Shelly proclaimed

No he didn’t, Ron’s dead – Tori thought.

Shelly started to grow suspicious of her daughter’s silence since returning home.  When Shelly asked her if she was alright, Tori said she didn’t feel well and was getting a runny nose.  Shelly was not fooled, but she was willing to play the fool.  She gave Tori a cool look and said, “oh I have something that can help that.” She disappeared and came back with a couple of tablets.  “take these” she said.

Tori called Nikki later that night and told her about the interactions with her mother and the pills.

“what? What did she offer you?”

“Some pills”

 “what kind of pills”

“yellow ones, for my nose”

“You need to throw those up right now Tori” Sami exclaimed.

Tori balked back at Sami, “Mom wouldn’t hurt me” to which Sami replied, “You don’t know her Tori, you need to get that out of you right now.”

But Tori was afraid to throw up, afraid that her mother would hear her and ask questions.  She had only taken one of the two pills to begin with, but then she started to feel groggy.  She called Sami back.

“get me out of here I can’t find Ron.  He’s dead, Sami. I know it.”

“are you sure you can’t do this for a couple more years” Sami asked

“No, I fucking can’t, Sami.  Mom’s a killer.  She’ll know.  She’ll probably kill me too.  You know what she’s capable of.”

“Okay” Sami said “we’ll get you out.”

On August 6th 2003, Nikki and Sami drove down to Pacific County to tell the sheriff what they knew to be true.  With tears and long pauses to work up courage for what they needed to say, the Knotek sisters gave their stories, the same one Nikki had told before.  But this time was different, this time they were believed. Others from the prosecutor’s office and law enforcement came in and out of the interview room.  Deputy Bergstrom and the prosecutor’s staff recorded everything they said.

Then Nikki looked Bergstrom directly in the eye and said, “If Ron is dead, you could have stopped it.”  Bergstrom didn’t reply.  After their meeting they got back into their car and started the long drive back to Seattle.

That night Nikki tossed and turned, sleep avoided her, so she called the one true ally in her life, Lara.  When she couldn’t get her on the phone she sent her an email.
 You need to call me.  I was in Raymond until 1:00 am last night.  CPS is taking Tori out of the house this am at 8.  Mother and Dave did something VERY bad AGAIN! I was with Pacific County prosecutor and Sami came with me too.

Tori was only 14, but she was strong.  While waiting the next day for her parents to get arrested she called Sami again and again.  She was getting nervous because nothing was happening, life was just continuing as normal.  But Tori had also prepared for authorities to comb through the house for evidence.  She wrote them a note on white and pink lined paper stating.

Dear FBI, police, etc.

Please don’t ruin all of my things when you’re investigating.  Nothing of interest in here anyways.  Please leave all of my personal belongings alone.  Please find the animals good homes.

When the knock came the next morning, Tori was already standing by the door.  She didn’t open it immediately because she didn’t want her mom to see how excited she was.  The deputy and CPS where there to take Tori for suspected child abuse. Tori went upstairs to pack with an officer to which she said, “You need to get a search warrant and came back.  IN the pole building there’s a bunch of Ron’s stuff.  I’m pretty sure my parents are going to burn all of it.  I put some stuff in the chicken coop, to hide it.”

But when Tori told the Pacific County investigators her story, she minimalized most of what had happened to her, she told of what happened to Ron as well.  She was careful of what she said because, in her mind, there was always a chance that she would be released back to her mom.  She later said that she only told about 10% of what had happened to her.

Investigators, however; understood that 10 percent of a nightmare, was still a nightmare.

The call Sami had been dreading was happening, she stared at her mother’s phone number on her phone and for a moment, she considered letting it go to voicemail.

When she answered, Shelly launched into what had just happened. “I’ve never even laid a hand on her.  I don’t think I’ve ever even grounded the girl!  And every time I did, I would take it back!” Shelly claimed.  

Tori had spoken to police, so had Nikki and Sami.  Lara had also called the deputy and spoke for 2 hours about what she knew.  But none of these statements led to an arrest.

But, Dave Knotek took care of that all by himself.  He went to the sheriff’s office.  Dave was tired.  Dave was beaten down.  And Dave was nervous too.  When investigators asked him if her would consent to an interview, Dave could not think of a reason not to.  He had never hurt Tori and neither had his wife, he thought.  But as it turned out, they didn’t want to talk to Dave about Tori, they wanted to talk about Kathy and Ron.  Dave stayed firm to the story that he and Shelly had done nothing wrong.  But then little pieces started to crack away and Dave started to cry.  He asked to use the restroom, the interrogators agreed; and one fallowed him down the hall.

Just outside of the bathroom, Dave broke down and told the officer where Ron had been buried and where Kathy’s remains had been scattered after her body had been burned in the firepit.

Deputies picked up Shelly at Mac’s house.  She was confused. Indignant. She couldn’t understand why anyone would think that she had done anything wrong.

Nikki cried when she got the news her parents had been arrested.  Her dad had admitted to disposing of Kathy’s and Ron’s bodies, but nothing else.  And he hadn’t pointed a finger at Shelly, and for her part, Shelly kept her mouth clamped shut.

There was a tragic irony to the date.  

It was Kathy Loreno’s birthday.  Missing for a decade, the woman who told the Knotek girls not to help her, out of fear that something would happen to them, would have been 45 that day.

Nikki sent an email to her grandmother.

The police are going to search the house and property today.  Cross your fingers they find stuff.  But I think the confession from Dave on disposing of the bodies might be enough along with our statements.  We all have to remember that mother is pretty smart, and she manages to weasel her way out of a lot of things.  I hope this won’t be one of them.

As the whirlpool of truth began to pull Shelly and Dave downward, there was the matter of the other person who had vanished in the night.

Shane.

On the day after her parent’s arrest, Sami and her boyfriend went out for a steak dinner to celebrate her 25th birthday.  Trying to maintain a sense of normalcy.  Newspapers and TV had been rife with stories about her parents.

“Take of abuse, deaths unfolding in rural Raymond.”

“Raymond couple befriended 3 strangers who then disappeared.”

It seemed as if what was happening in Raymond was sucking all of the oxygen out of Sami’s birthday celebration. They left the restaurant and as they drove through Tacoma, Sami’s cell phone rang.  It was Lara.

“Shane is dead” Lara said in a shattered voice.  “Dave confessed to killing him.”

Sami dropped the phone and started screaming.  Later Sami would say that she looked for Shane through the years, in crowds, on the street, anywhere.

“Shane’s in the ocean” Dave said, standing on the edge of the field as criminalists and dogs scoured the property.  Dave told investigators a story of Shane being out in the pole building and when Dave found him there, he was messing around with one of Dave’s rifles.  Dave had told him explicitly that he was not allowed to touch the guns, and as Dave and Shane argued about the gun and then Dave tried to physically take it from Shane, it had gone off.  He said he had been too scared to report the accident, if that is indeed what it was.

Nikki remembered when Shane had secretly talked to her out in the pole shed.  He had found pictures of Kathy, polaroid pictures that Shelly had taken.  Kathy was on the ground crawling, covered in bruises.  Shane showed them to Nikki and then made a plan to go to the police with the pictures and save Kathy.  But for some reason, possibly survival instincts, Nikki went to her mother and told her that Shane had pictures of Kathy.  

Shelly flew into a rage.  She spent the next few weeks, constantly telling Dave that they needed to get rid of Shane, that he was going to tell.  Eventually one night Dave walked out to the pole building with his .22 and he opened the door and fired one shot directly into the back of Shane’s head.  He walked back to the house and told Shelly what he had done. 

“I killed Shane” he said

In typical Shelly fashion she responded, “You did what?  You killed our nephew? Why?”

Dave didn’t know what to make of Shelly.  This is what she had begged him, harassed him, cajoled him into doing, nearly since the day Kathy had died.

The next morning the girls awoke to Shelly’s story with the bird house and the note, Shane had run away to Alaska to fish.  Dave burned the body as soon as the girls were away.  But this time he didn’t use extra accelerants like he did with Kathy, he just kept putting more and more wood on the fire until his nephew’s body vanished into ash and bone.  When the ashes where cool enough, Dave collected them and drove them out to Washaway Beach, and he dumped Shane’s ashes into the white foamed surf of the Pacific. 

Nikki and Sami stayed in constant contact after their parents’ arrest, avoiding TV when they could.  The media had dubbed it the Raymond Torture Killings.  Nikki, Sami and Tori never said a word to the media, a pact they had made with each other.  Shelly and Dave were held on multi-million-dollar bonds and faced charges from murder to concealing a death.

It had only taken Sami two weeks to get guardianship of Tori.  Sami, who was then living in a one-bedroom apartment off Greenwood Avenue in Seattle, made arrangements to get a two-bedroom apartment.  She felt good about the opportunity to give her sister a fresh start, away from their parents.

In February 2004, six months after his arrest Dave Knotek pleaded down his first-degree murder charge for killing Shane Watson to second-degree murder, and pled guilty to unlawful disposal of human remains and rendering criminal assistance.  He was sentenced to just under 15 years in prison.

10 months after Shelly’s arrest she entered an Alford plea of guilty to the charges.  An Alford can be rather perplexing; it’s a plea that allows the defendant to plead guilty yet assert innocence at the same time.  The Alford plea, unlike many plea bargains, didn’t require Shelly to tell the court what she had done.

Shelly was sentenced to 17 years.  At her sentencing hearing two months after her trial, Shelly Knotek looked beat down.  Her hair was scraggly, and her Clairol red had long faded into a mix of grey and reddish blonde.  He jail-issued orange jumpsuit hung loosely on her frame.  No one from her family showed up to support her.

Shelly’s statement at her sentencing is as follows:
 in this jail and in this courtroom and in this community and everywhere else I’m known as some kind of horrible monster.  I’m not.  I’ve made such horrible mistakes though.  Kathy was my friend, she had value and she had a purpose.  She would have been there for me. I wasn’t there for her a lot.  I was not there when Kathy died.  Not there for her. I believe I am not guilty of murder, of deliberately causing her death.  But a mother is the most responsible for her home environment.  She was mistreated in my home and now she’s gone.  I’ll never got over it and I don’t deserve to.

Shelly continued to point the finger at Nikki and Shane as Kathy’s abusers.  None of it was her fault.  Not Kathy, not Ron, not Shane, not Mac.

Shelly was shocked when her words didn’t have her desired effect on the sentencing judge.  In fact, instead of sympathizing with Shelly, the judge added 5 additional years to her sentence for a total of 22 years in prison.

For a woman who lived to control others, who reveled in telling people wat to do and how to do it, it was fitting justice.  Shelly Knotek wouldn’t be in charge of anyone or anything for more than two decades.

Dave Knotek was released from prison in 2016.  He lives on the Washington coast, working at a seafood processing plant.  He is thin and struggles being on his feet all day.  The only thing that keeps him going is his relationship with Tori and Sami.  Nikki refuses to see him, which he understands.

Nikki can neither forgive nor forget.  She can only move on, raising her children in a way that her mother would never understand. With love and respect.  Her heart remains heavy and full of regret for her part in what happened to Shane and Kathy.

Shelly Knotek will be released from prison in 2022, she will be 68.  She maintains that her conviction was a mistake, claiming she misunderstood the Alford plea.  None of her daughters have visited her, though a visitor to the woman’s prison in Gig Harbor, Washington, says Shelly’s hair is white now and that she is fighting cancer.

At least that’s what she says.

Tori, finds moments of nostalgia for her mother, she had once loved.  She doesn’t miss Shelly at all, but she does miss having a mom, a roll that her sisters were able to fill.

The Knotek sisters gather together several times a year, mostly at Nikki’s place in Seattle.  Nikki returned to Raymond in 2018, for the first time since the case broke.  It was hard, but Sami was there as Nikki revisited memories of their mother.  She remembered a few times when her mom was kind and attentive, even.  Those good memories brought tears.  Sami also returned to the Louderback and Monohon Landing houses for the last time that fall.  She had a visceral reaction to the bathroom at Lauderback and the place where Nikki had been made to wallow.  Tears came.  Smiles too.  She pointed out a fish pond that her boyfriend had made and the spot where he’d park his car to drop her off, honk and flash his lights until Shelly gave up and let her inside.

The sisters text and talk all the time.  They see the insanity of the things their parents did, the horror of what happened while they were growing up.  While Shelly may have sought to keep them apart, to control them forever, she underestimated the strength of their bond.

Sisters forever.  Victims, no more.