Whatever Mother Says... (15 page)

Next day, Montgomery carefully wrote up a report of his visit to Heidi Sorenson’s home. Then a letter from Woods Cross Chief of Police Paul Howard was enclosed with Montgomery’s report, plus the tapes of the interview, and dispatched to the Sacramento Police Department’s Homicide Division Commander.

The letter read:

Dear Investigator,

Theresa Knorr Groves of 2020 E. Pepperwood Drive, Sandy, Utah, contacted one of our officers and related some information concerning a possible homicide that occurred in 1982 and a second homicide that occurred in 1985 or 1986 in your area.

Theresa Groves, DOB 8/5/70, stated that she was raised in the Sacramento area and lived with her mother, Theresa J. Knorr, possible date of birth 3/14/ 46. Her maiden name was Theresa Cross, but she has used the names of Boyington, Sanders, Harris, Knorr, and Cross. She has worked as a nurse.

She lists the children as Howard, DOB 7/16/63; Sheila, DOB 3/13/65; Susan [sic], DOB 9/27/66; William, DOB 9/17/67; Robert, DOB 12/31/68; and herself.

She says that her mother tortured and shot Susan [sic], and then disposed of her body in a car fire after several months. This occurred in 1982.

Her mother also killed Sheila by physically abusing her, keeping her tied up in a closet, and after she died the body was disposed of by a car fire near Truckee.

Her mother had also shot her first husband but had been acquitted of that homicide.

These incidents occurred at 2410 Ivory Boulevard, Apt. #A, but the apartment had been burned down to cover up the evidence of Sheila’s death.

Being fearful for her life, Theresa left the Sacramento area and has been in the Salt Lake area since 1988. She has recently been arrested for intoxication and has used drugs in the past and is currently seeing an Alan Rice at the Valley Mental Health Center in Salt Lake. She told him about this information and he advised her to give the same information to the police.

She is currently living within the jurisdiction of the Sandy City, Utah, Police Department and was only in our area to visit a friend at the time she contacted our officer.

I have run the names NCIC with negative results on any of them.

Our officer did record the majority of the conversation, however, without his realizing it, the batteries went dead and the entire conversation was not recorded. I have enclosed the tape for your use.

If we can be of any further assistance, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Paul Howard

Chief of Police

In Sacramento, Howard’s letter, Montgomery’s report and tape—sealed in a registered envelope—were received by Lt. Ken Walker, head of the homicide detail. He assigned a detective to look into the allegations. That detective checked the details out and promptly proclaimed the allegations an unlikely tale after failing to link any homicides with Terry’s claims about the deaths of her sisters.

While there certainly are a number of errors in the letter, the basic essence of what had occurred is clearly and accurately stated.

Terry’s phone number is at the beginning of the letter, yet no one from Sacramento ever called her.

Unfortunately, as it later emerged, the police only contacted officials in Nevada County, where the body of Sheila had been incorrectly linked to the killings committed by Texan truck driver Benjamin Herbert Boyle. Sacramento detectives never contacted the Placer County Sheriff’s Department, where Suesan’s charred remains were discovered and her murder continued to be unsolved. Years later, as questions flew around the Sacramento police headquarters, officials noted that Terry had, in her statement to Montgomery, mentioned Truckee as the location where Suesan’s body was burned, and they presumed that to be in the Nevada County jurisdiction.

When the calls from Woods Cross Sheriff’s Department stopped coming in after those first few weeks of activity, Terry assumed that yet again her pleas for justice had gone unnoticed. Perhaps it would be better to stop retelling those horror stories and get on with her life, she thought to herself. But the nightmares just would not let her forget.

Heidi and Terry never mentioned it ever again. In fact the two friends lost touch when Heidi’s marriage fell apart and Terry’s seemed under severe stress.

Heidi is still astonished by the lack of a police investigation following Sheriff Montgomery’s visit to her home that night.

Those vivid images of child abuse retold so chillingly by Terry haunted her friend Heidi for years. It got so bad at one stage that she could not bring herself to go out to the storage shed in her backyard because it reminded her of the closet where Sheila had perished.

Heidi could even imagine the smell of rotting flesh inside that closet, thanks to an incident years earlier when she found herself standing near a corpse in a hospital elevator.

“There was no light in there and I remember getting goose bumps when I went in it. I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened,” recalled Heidi.

*   *   *

Just ten miles south of Woods Cross, Theresa Cross, as she now called herself, was blissfully unaware of just how close she had come to being arrested. Her main priority at that time was finding a new job following her departure from Alice Powell’s house in Bountiful.

As she carefully studied the classified section of the
Deseret News,
an advertisement caught her eye.

Care Giver for elderly lady. Full time salary plus room and board. Please phone …

A few hours after calling the number, Theresa Cross—the one-time alleged mom from hell turned saintly nurse to the sick and elderly—was handing over two sparkling references to retired bank executive Bud Sullivan and his sister Pat Thatcher, who were interviewing her for the job of care giver to their elderly mother, Alice Sullivan.

Bud Sullivan was particularly impressed by her knowledge of medications. Pat, whose husband Vere was a retired Salt Lake City detective, was just as enthusiastic.

Theresa Cross was particularly proud of her certificate from the state government that proclaimed her to be a fully qualified health care worker. She even gave Bud Sullivan the number of her certificate just in case he wanted to check it out.

“I figured that since she gave me the number, it had to be true,” remembered Bud.

By the time Theresa Cross had left Bud’s mom’s home in east Salt Lake City where the interview was conducted, both he and his sister were convinced she was the perfect person for the job.

Bud had actually hired another woman a few days earlier, but she had not even showed up for her first day of work at the Sullivan house.

“Theresa seemed so solid in comparison. We both knew she was the right one for the job,” said Bud.

Fourteen

The emotional development of children is intimately connected to the safety and nurturance provided by their environment.

Bessel Van Der Kolk, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist

By December of 1992, Theresa Cross was lapping up her new life in Salt Lake City with relish. All those memories of what happened back in Sacramento had been neatly filed away. She was now the loving, caring nurse to elderly Alice Sullivan, and the added bonus was Alice’s family, who all readily accepted Theresa Cross into their lives and homes. Later, they used words like “good” and “kind” to describe the woman whom her daughter Terry claims is one of the most cold-blooded mothers in criminal history.

“Theresa was a great person. My mother just loved her. Everybody in the family loved her,” recalled Bud Sullivan, Alice’s son.

That affection toward Theresa Cross came to a pleasant head at Christmastime that year. Bud and his sister Pat insisted that she be involved in every aspect of the yuletide festivities. The contrast between the punishments she inflicted so horrifically on her children that most of them have blocked Christmas out of their minds completely, and life in Salt Lake City that year could not be greater.

Christmas Eve at Alice Sullivan’s neat single-story corner house on 1504 South 600 East was, according to family tradition, when the presents were handed out among twenty-five of the closest family members.

Over the years, Bud Sullivan—with all his years’ experience as an executive at the First Interstate Bank, Utah—had devised a sensible system so that no one in the family had to buy gifts for everyone because that would be ludicrously expensive. Instead, the entire family wrote their names on a piece of paper and dropped it into a hat and drew just one name out at a time, so that no one had to purchase more than one present. Naturally, Theresa was included in that.

She sat with the four generations of Sullivans around Alice’s vast Christmas tree, flowing with lights and decorations, savoring every moment. Who knows if she even once considered the plight of her surviving children scattered around the country, suffering endless nightmares of the dreadful injuries she allegedly inflicted on them?

On Christmas Day itself, the Sullivans reconvened back at Alice’s house for Christmas dinner. Theresa Cross could not believe her luck. The holiday celebrations were continuing, and the family had insisted she stay involved throughout.

Dinner that day consisted of a huge turkey cooked to perfection at Alice’s daughter Pat’s home just around the corner. Everything else—salads, turkey dressing, apple and pumpkin pies, all the vegetables—were prepared by Theresa Cross in Alice’s kitchen. Her own children recalled that mealtimes at home in Sacramento usually consisted of microwave fast food … if they were lucky.

The Christmas celebrations that day were rounded off with a bourbon toast for all the adults, including Theresa. Bud Sullivan was impressed that the warm and caring lady looking after his mother only drank alcohol very occasionally. And she had to be forced to accept a drink that day. Bud was surprised that Theresa Cross did not seem to want to say too much about her past, especially her children. But he figured he shouldn’t pry, so he never pressed her on the subject.

Bud’s sister Pat Thatcher had a little more intuition, and tried to pump Theresa Cross for further information.

But Theresa was very evasive. She did tell Pat she had no daughters, and talked in hushed tones about how she had two sons, but one had been killed in an accident. It was a fantasy, but as with the Cheneys back in Bountiful, how could anyone know she was lying?

Pat had the overriding impression that Theresa Cross was a very private kind of person who made everyone feel they shouldn’t ask too many questions.

The only background about Theresa’s upbringing came in a brief reference to being brought up on a farm in Iowa. But it was a fleeting comment that she never expanded upon.

Theresa did confide in Pat that she was happy to be working for them and considered them to be her adopted family.

Bud and Pat were eternally grateful to have discovered Theresa. She seemed a real gem. Not many people would work around the clock without a word of complaint. It was almost as if Theresa was punishing herself by being so solid and reliable.

Her typical day at Alice Sullivan’s house started at 5:00
A.M.
, when she liked to get up and get things done about the house before Alice woke up. Often she would pop out to do some errands in the morning and let Alice sleep in—unlike her previous charge, Alice Powell, this Alice was fairly active and compos mentis. On returning from her errands, it would be time to get Alice up, bathe her, and feed her breakfast. However, Theresa spent a lot of time reading in her room in the middle of the day. Both Bud and Pat would often ring the front door of the house and have to wait some moments before Theresa waddled through the house to open up. Alice, usually sitting in her favorite chair near the front window, was not expected to start answering doorbells.

Pat Thatcher’s only concern about Theresa was that she never seemed to want to take any time off.

Theresa happily took Alice Sullivan to the Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, on the corner of Eleventh East and Seventh South most Sundays, and she was very conscientious about making sure the old lady—who was eighty-six at the time—got whatever she required.

“Theresa would often call me up and say, ‘Your mother needs this and that.’ I would say, ‘Fine, Theresa you go get it and give me the bill and I’ll pay you,’” says Pat.

But her mother’s nurse often did not give Pat the bill—preferring instead to pay for the old lady herself. Frequently, Theresa would spring for a blouse or a pair of shoes for Alice—all paid for with her own hard-earned cash. She made a special effort to make Alice look nice whenever they both ventured out.

On Valentine’s Day—February 14, 1993—she even bought Alice a gift to celebrate. Pat, meanwhile, kept saying to herself, “This lady is too good to be true…”

Bud Sullivan did find it strange that Theresa Cross spent so much time in her little bedroom at the back of the house, even though she had the run of the place. But he reckoned it was none of his business, so he did not mention it to Theresa.

That nine-by-nine room at the back of the Sullivan house became a virtual shrine to Theresa Cross. It was filled with jewelry and a closet crammed with expensive clothes. That room was the one place she could gather her real thoughts and fears … and face the memories of the past. The room itself was always kept immaculately clean. A bedspread colored dark blue, with streaks of blood red, adorned the queen-size bed that was provided by the Sullivans, although Theresa insisted on buying herself a new mattress. Matching drapes were closed for much of the time against the light. Just like back in Sacramento, there were no pictures on the wall, no evidence of family or friends. But on a white cabinet lay a vast range of expensive makeup: Christian Dior, Lancôme, and other designer labels. Under the bed was a box filled with receipts from restaurants, shops, and hotels that she had collected during her travels over the previous few years. The bills were from as far afield as East Illinois and California. In another box under the bed, yet more makeup. In one corner, a large maple double dresser with a full-length mirror that she would constantly check her appearance in. Inside the dresser, many pairs of shoes, nearly all a safe, one-inch heel. Theresa had so many clothes that Bud had to build her an overspill rail on the enclosed porch outside the back of the house.