Have you seen the movie, Serial Mom? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a serial killer for a mom? I’m pretty sure we can guarantee it’s not like in the movies. Just ask the family of Michelle Knotek.
Michelle “Shelly” Knotek was born on April 15, 1954 in Raymond, Washington. Along with her two younger brothers, Knotek grew up with an alcoholic mother, who was also suspected of being a prostitute. By the time she was six, her mother had abandoned them.
As you hear in a lot of cases, the oldest child in these situations often becomes the caretaker of their younger siblings, but not Knotek. She preferred to torment her brothers.
The three went on to live with their father, Les Watson, and his new wife, Laura Stallings. This new family was quite different from what they had known all their lives. Les was a business owner, and Laura was often described as a stunning beauty, representative of 1950’s America.
Knotek hated her stepmother, and made sure she knew it.
When she was 13, her mother died, having been beaten to death. She and the man she had been with were “homeless. Drunks. Living on skid row.” Knotek didn’t care. Instead of considering her mother, and what happened, she returned to tormenting her brothers.
Her brother Paul reportedly lacked social skills, and was unable to control his impulses. Chuck, her other brother, never spoke for himself, instead Knotek did all the talking. She picked fights regularly, but it went beyond your typical sibling rivalry, or bickering. Knotek was far worse.
According to her stepmother, Laura, “She used to chop up bits of glass and put them in the bottom of [the kids’] boots and shoes. What kind of person does something like that?”
Then she took her torment one step further, this time turning her focus to her parents, specifically her father. In March 1969, at the age of 14, Knotek didn’t return home from school. Her parents contacted the school, and were informed that she was at a juvenile detention center. What had she done?
It wasn’t at all what you might think. She wasn’t in trouble. In fact, she was stirring it up.
Shelly Knotek had accused her father of rape.
A medical examination was conducted, and the truth was confirmed. Knotek had lied.
She saw a psychologist, both on her own and with her family. It made no difference, she maintained her innocence, believing she hadn’t lied.
Knotek was then sent to live with her grandparents, her stepmother’s parents. This didn’t stop her tantrums and poor behavior. And while her brothers were now safe from her antics, she had several new victims.
On top of accusing her grandfather of abuse, she offered her services as a babysitter to the neighbors. Those poor kids were then barricaded in their rooms and ignored.
Before 1982 As an adult, she found herself married and divorced, married again, and divorced again, and the mother of two daughters, Nikki and Sami. Then in Spring 1982, she found “the one.”
David Knotek was a construction worker and Navy veteran. According to David, Shelly was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. The pair married in 1987 and two years later, had a daughter, Tori. From the outside, they were the perfect family. Inside was a whole different story.
Shelly quickly turned to physical and verbal abuse of her new husband, and even her children. David allowed it. According to Sami, “The reason why my mom was able to control Dave was because – while I love him – he’s just a very weak man.”
Sami went on to say, “He has no backbone. He could have got happily married and been an amazing husband to somebody, because he really would’ve been, but instead, he just got his life ruined, too.”
Just before the birth of their daughter, Knotek’s 13-year-old nephew, Shane Watson, moved in. His father was a member of a biker gang and had found himself in jail, and his mother was unable to care for him. Shane went from a bad situation, to an even worse one.
It’s with Shane that we learned just how bad the abuse was.
He was reprimanded for the most ridiculous things, such as going to the bathroom without asking first. His punishment? Something Knotek dubbed “wallowing.”
Wallowing was a punishment that involved ordering the person, in this case Shane, to stand outside, or lay in the mud, naked in the cold while she dumped water on them. This punishment wasn’t reserved for Shane, Nikki and Sami were also subjected to it.
For the girls, wallowing sometimes involved being locked in a dog cage or chicken coop.
Nikki and Sami were forced to cut off tufts of their pubic hair and give it to her. Sometimes she forced Nikki to dance with Shane, while naked.
On one occasion, Knotek shoved Nikki’s head through a glass door, then blamed her for it. “Look what you made me do,” she said.
With all this abuse, you might ask why the children didn’t run away. Well, perhaps that was because they were often left confused. After torturing them she would drop “love bombs” and surround them with love and affection.
In December 1988, months after Shane moved in, Knotek invited Kathy Loreno, an old friend who had lost her job, to move in. At first, things were good, but then Knotek’s true colors began to shine.
Knotek often forced Kathy to do chores and other labor while naked. She was given sedatives at night and forced to sleep in the basement next to the boiler. Kathy was refused food, and often found herself hungry. In fact, she lost around 100 pounds, and even most of her teeth.
David didn’t sit back and watch either. He found himself using makeshift waterboarding equipment or duct-taping her arms and legs together before pouring bleach onto her open sores.
Why stay? According to his book, If you Tell, author Gregg Olsen said, “Kathy was a pleaser and never did anything to trigger such torment.”
In 1994, after one particularly bad beating, Kathy was left unconscious in the basement. Knotek left and during her absence, David heard noises coming from the basement. According to David, he found her choking on her own vomit, eyes rolled back in her head.
He flipped her onto her side and used his fingers to clear her airway, scooping the vomit from her mouth. After five minutes of CPR, he knew he was too late. Kathy Loreno was dead.
Instead of calling 911? At Knotek’s command, he burned Kathy’s body in the backyard then scattered what was left in the Pacific Ocean.
“I know I should have called 911,” David later said, “but with everything that had been going on I didn’t want the cops there. I didn’t want Shell in trouble. Or the kids to go through that trauma… I didn’t want this to ruin their lives or our family. I just freaked out. I really did. I didn’t know what to do.”
He clearly wasn’t thinking about the trauma the kids were already being subjected to.
Knotek had a word of warning for her family. “All of us will be in jail if anyone finds out what happened to Kathy.” Then she gave them a story to tell. If anyone asked, they were to say that Kathy ran away with her lover.
Shane, however, had had enough. Over the years, he had taken numerous polaroid pictures of Kathy covered in bruises and sores. In February 1995, he went to Nikki and told her he was going to go to the police.
Nikki had been so badly manipulated, that she was truly fearful of what might happen and quickly ran to her mother. Knotek couldn’t allow Shane to go to the police, so she convinced David to shoot him.
Shane’s body was burned, the remains scattered in the ocean.
In 1999, both Sami and Nikki were adults, and left home, leaving their 14-year-old sister, Tori behind. Then 57-year-old Ron Woodworth moved in.
According to Knotek, Ron was “an ugly lowlife,” a gay veteran with a drug problem. A supposed friend. A friend who could use a steady diet of pills and beatings to get his life together.
As with Shane, Knotek had an issue with Ron using the bathroom, and he was forced to go outside. She made him drink his own urine. She even forced him to jump from the roof of their two-story house, and onto a bed of gravel.
Then she would treat his wounds. According to Tori, she used a mixture of boiling water and bleach, the result was a smell that was “like bleach and decomposing flesh, like it was burning his skin off… He smelled like that for a month. Up until the very end.”
Ron Woodworth died as a result of Knotek’s torture in August 2003, after which she stored his body in a freezer until David came home. He had been gone working on a contract project 160 miles away.
After four days in the freezer, David buried Ron’s body in the backyard – there was a burn ban in place at the time, taking their usual disposal method off the table.
At the same time, Knotek was also caring for another man. James McClintock was an 81-year-old retired merchant crewman. He did not move in with the Knotek’s, and ultimately died from a head wound he allegedly suffered after falling in his home. A home he reportedly willed to Knotek. A home worth $140,000.
It is unknown whether Shelly Knotek had anything to do with James’ death, or if it truly was an accident. Police were never able to officially link her to his death.
After the “disappearance” of Ron, Tori had had enough. She was scared and ran to her sisters. Nikki and Sami urged Tori to gather as much of Ron’s belongings as she could so they could go to authorities and make their case.
The police investigation discovered Ron’s body buried on the Knotek property and David and Shelly Knotek were arrested on August 8.
Tori was quickly placed in Sami’s custody.
David confessed to shooting Shane Watson, and confessed to burying Ron Woodworth. He was charged with one count first-degree murder for the death of Shane, and took a plea deal to a second-degree murder charge and served 13 years in prison. David is now a free man.
Shelly Knotek was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Kathy Loreno and Ron Woodworth. She took an Alford plea – a plea that allowed her to plead guilty while also asserting her innocence.
Knotek was therefore charged with second-degree murder for the death of Kathy, and manslaughter for the death of Woodworth. She was sentenced to 22 years. On November 8, 2022, after serving 19 years, Knotek was released on parole.
The only peace of mind people have with her release is that she is reportedly in poor health. “She’s pretty old and not doing too good, I’m not sure she could do this again physically,” said a woman who knows and once lived down the street from her.
“If she ever turns up on my doorstep,” Sami said, “I can just see myself locking all my doors and barricading myself in the bathroom to call the police.”
Since his release, David has reached out to his daughters to ask for forgiveness. Both Sami and Tori have gone on record saying that, despite everything, they do forgive him. They consider him to be just as much of a victim.
Nikki did not accept his apology, the abuse was unforgettable and unforgivable.
Today, Nikki and Sami live in Seattle Washington. Tori has relocated to Colorado.
Since you’ve read about Michelle Knotek – Serial Mom, have you heard about Minnie Dean, the Baby Farmer?
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