If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

Shelly does not have medical training but still insists on treating her children, Dave, and Kathy after their injuries using her plentiful pharmaceutical drugs. She often gives her own young children muscle relaxers for minor medical maladies. Evidence was later found that she was trying desperately to find a drug she could not easily get a prescription for: a powerful tranquilizer called Haldol.

Lara can no longer ignore Shelly’s lies about having cancer and feels Dave is far too gullible. Lara and Shelly’s half-sister, Carol, confront Shelly. They tell her they want to help support her recovery and take over the medical bills. Shelly goes the bathroom and comes out with a clump of her hair, claiming it just came out. Lara finds scissors and hair in the bathroom trash can. Even when confronted, Shelly won’t tell the truth. Lara and Carol realize that Shelly is indeed sick, but not with cancer.

After this episode, Lara begins receiving screaming phone calls in the early hours of the morning before being hung up on. Carol loses work through her modeling agency after an anonymous tip is left for her agent advising that she is a thief. Shelly was the perpetrator behind this vengeful behavior.

When Shelly learns that there was a fundraiser for one her classmates’ parents who was diagnosed with cancer, she is angry with Nikki for not doing the same for her, even though Nikki knows her mother doesn’t have cancer. Shelly tells Nikki she is a disappointment.

Shane grows intensely miserable at the Knoteks’ house. Between struggling in school, grueling yard work, sleeping in Nikki’s closet, getting into fist fights with Dave, and being forced to physically abuse Kathy, he has had enough. He tells Nikki he needs to get out and encourages her to come with him. Nikki wants to wait to graduate high school and go off to college to escape, but Shane tells her he may not be able to wait that long. Deep down, Nikki knows that given her mother’s possessive and jealous nature, she may not ever be able to leave.

Dave believes Shelly when she says he needs to physically discipline Nikki and Shane because they are “out of control and needed harsh discipline to ensure that they’d be on the right path in adulthood” (157), but he struggles to reconcile the need to physically abuse Kathy, who is an obedient adult. Realizing Kathy is on the brink of death, he tries to sell Shelly on a plan to drive Kathy to Oregon and drop her off in a random town. Shelly turns down the plan, insisting that Kathy is “getting better.”

Shelly becomes enraged with Kathy, who relieves herself in a Tupperware container after Shelly “revokes” her bathroom privileges. As punishment, Shelly and Dave bind a naked Kathy to a plywood board with duct tape and dunk her head underwater while yelling insults at her. Olsen characterizes Kathy’s role to Shelly as “a sadist’s worst pet” (162).

Neighbors would later say that they felt there was something odd going on at the Knotek house, but the only complaint ever officially filed was one claiming that they were neglecting their horses. Kathy now struggles to breathe. Shelly tries to give her a real bath for the first time in months, but Kathy is unsteady on her feet, and the tempered glass shower door falls and smashes into pieces. Unwilling to take Kathy to the hospital for stitches, Shelly says she can treat Kathy’s cuts herself. Sami once again tries to help Kathy but is scolded by Shelly, and Sami realizes Kathy’s physical condition is too far gone.

Dave arrives home from his construction job one night during July 1994 and heard a strangling noise coming from the family’s laundry room, where Kathy is staying. Shelly tells him there’s nothing wrong before leaving with the house with Sami to meet Nikki at a restaurant, but Dave doesn’t believe her. He and Shane find that Kathy is choking on her own vomit and barely breathing. Dave administers CPR and chest compressions, but she stops breathing. He claims not to have called 911 because he was afraid that Shelly would get into trouble and that the girls would be subjected to trauma if they saw Kathy’s body taken away. Panicked, Dave calls the restaurant to tell Shelly what happened.

Nikki and Sami say their mother went white after the phone call and would not tell them what had happened. When they arrive home, Dave takes Shelly aside to break the news that Kathy has died. Shelly seems shocked that Kathy is dead despite her weak condition. Nikki, Sami, Tori, and Shane head upstairs while Dave and Shelly yell and fight outside. Nikki and Shane sneak downstairs to try and hear what is going on. They peek in the laundry room and find Kathy’s body.

When Dave and Shelly tell the kids that Kathy has died, the news unleashes chaos. Shane insists that Dave and Shelly need to call an ambulance, but Shelly shoots this down, arguing that they need to protect themselves as a family. Instead, she takes the girls to a motel, leaving them with money, snacks, and an order not to speak with anyone until she returns.

Dave tells himself that the family has been swept into an unthinkable tragedy and that calling the authorities would cause their family to fall apart. He tells himself Kathy died of natural causes, unable to confront the truth of Shelly’s brutality.

Late that night, Dave and Shane start a fire to cremate Kathy’s body. Dave takes the cremains to the coast, waiting for the right moment when the tide will wash her out to sea. Meanwhile, Shelly collects Kathy’s belongings so that Dave can burn those, too. The next day, the girls return home to a strange smell coming from the fire pit. Shane tells Nikki what happened the night before.

Dave is haunted by Kathy’s death and cremation. Shelly assures him that she is as well. She tells the older children that they are never to speak of what happened to Kathy. She tells them that Kathy’s death was a suicide and that they cannot run the risk of Kathy’s family finding out about it. Nikki recognizes this as a lie. Shelly says that the strange smell is due to burned insulation, but when Shane and Nikki are instructed to clean out the burn pit a few days later, they find shards and fragments of Kathy’s bones. 

It dawns on Shelly that she will need to come up with a cover story for Kathy’s disappearance that isn’t suicide—after all, there is no body to confirm her death. Excited about the challenge, Shelly tries out her fake story on Dave: that Kathy ran away with Rocky to start a new life. Dave sees this as far-fetched, particularly since Kathy didn’t really date anyone. She tries to feed this story to the kids, acting as though they met Rocky once at the Louderback house. Sami falls for the story, wishing it were true in the hopes that Kathy could still be alive, but Shane and Nikki do not.

Shelly enlists Nikki to help her make fake cards and letters with Kathy’s forged signature to make the story feel more real. However, Shelly’s confidence in the plan quickly fades, and she informs the family that if the police find out, she will blame Shane for Kathy’s disappearance. Shelly, knowing Shane’s frustration with the family, suspects he will go to the police. Shane, knowing his days in the house are numbered, knows he needs to tell the police or run away for good.

Shelly wants to see if Kathy’s family will come looking for her and hatches a plan to see if Kathy’s sister will come over despite her not having had much of any contact with Kathy for the past five years. Dave is worried about this idea and tries to dissuade her, but Shelly calls Kathy’s sister, who appears to have no interest in speaking to her.

With Kathy’s family no longer a threat, Shelly grows paranoid that the neighbors across the street might know something about Kathy’s death. She recruits Nikki to spy on the family, and Shane joins her. They don’t find or hear anything unusual. Shelly persists, demanding that Nikki enter the neighbors’ crawlspace even though Nikki can’t hear anything the family says from in there. Shelly wants to run the family out of town and intimidate them into silence despite the fact that there is no evidence that they know about Kathy. Nikki is desperate to leave home yet is still reluctant to leave, telling Shane “her mom was a monster, but she was the only mom she’d ever had” (188).

Shelly’s paranoid about Kathy persists for the next year, causing her to quiz the kids on their Rocky cover story and punish Shane and Nikki constantly for small “mistakes.” Sami and Nikki try their best to live as normal a life as they can at school, but Shane struggles to stay in their home until he graduates high school. Shelly, meanwhile, tries to convince Dave that Shane will rat them out to the police. She goes so far as to tell Dave she found a pair of Tori’s bloody underwear in the shed, arguing that Shane must be molesting her. Dave beats up Shane at Shelly’s insistence. Shane informs Nikki that he’s had enough and needs to leave.

In February 1995, Shelly and Dave inform the girls one morning that Shane has run away but that they will go look for him. Shelly also tells them Shane left her a birdhouse he made for a woodworking class as a parting gift with a note saying that he loves her, but no one ever saw such a note. Nikki is doubtful that any of this is true, but Sami wants to believe their mother. They join their mother in the car to go search for Shane, but despite hours of driving, they rarely stop to look for him. One week later, Shelly takes the family on a spontaneous mini-vacation.

Time passes, and Shelly tells the girls that Shane is fishing on Kodiak Island. Mysteriously, they have always just missed his calls, or he calls while the girls are at school. They never have a chance to speak to him. 

Nikki only again becomes the main target once again for Shelly’s abuse. One night, she is locked outside in freezing cold weather. Other times, she is forced to sleep in the cold outbuildings on their property. Nikki, Sami, and Tori store coats and warm clothes in the outbuildings for occasions when their mother locks them out of the house.

Shelly also becomes more violent towards Nikki, running at her with a knife after forcing her to do yard work in her underwear. She stabs Nikki in the leg, but Nikki knows she can’t get stitches without fear of the authorities intervening, so she sleeps in the woods for the night. Growing desperate and afraid she can never leave, Nikki eats poisonous berries in a suicide attempt, but the berries fail to work. In September 1996, Shelly applies for jobs teaching special needs children.

Sami copes with her mother’s abuse using humor to divert her friends’ and peers’ attention, as well as her younger sister Tori’s attention, since she is too young to understand what has been happening around her. Shelly harbors suspicions about her two older daughters, who are growing into young women. She tells Sami that Nikki is a bad influence on her, discouraging the two of them from spending time alone with one another.

Shelly loses weight and gives herself a makeover. She tells her daughters she’s made “friends” with a male airline pilot, inviting him over while Dave is away and telling the girls to stay out of the house.

Lara worries about her grandson Shane and is unable to reach him at Shelly’s house but assumes he is being a typical teenage boy, especially when Shelly repeatedly tells her that he just walked out the door. Months later and after some pushing, Shelly says that Shane went to Alaska. Skeptical, Lara tries to ask for more information, but Shelly will only tell her that Shane was obsessed with making money.

Nikki graduates high school in 1993 and is determined to get a college degree and move away from her family. Excited for the future, she secures financial aid to enroll in community college, where she wants to pursue a degree in criminal justice. Shelly sabotages Nikki’s efforts to make a future for herself, stealing her clothes, taking away her bedroom, and cutting her off from any money or transportation she will need to get to school.

Trapped at the house, Nikki is barraged by insults and meaningless chores. Shelly tells her she is lazy and needs a job but won’t let her use any form of transportation. Nikki’s sense of hope and optimism help her gather the emotional and physical strength she needs to fight back against her mother when she grows more violent. Shelly sends Nikki to live with her Aunt Trish, Dave’s sister whom she barely knows and who lives four hours away. The trip is meant to last 10 days as a cool-off period, but Aunt Trish ends up saving Nikki, letting her stay for months and helping her find odd jobs to make money. Nikki confides in her aunt that things have gone awry at home.

Tori, now six years old, is confused by Nikki’s decision to leave and writes a note saying she feels it must have been due to their mother’s bad behavior. Shelly wakes her that night by punching her in the face. Afterwards, Shelly continually tells Tori about how Nikki is bad and cannot be trusted and that she does not love her. Eventually, no one in the house even mentions Nikki anymore.

Nikki eventually moves back to Washington, to a neighboring tent on Dave’s construction site on Whidbey Island. Disgusted by Dave’s behavior over the past years, Nikki confronts Dave and asks him why he won’t leave Shelly. He tells her he stays because he loves her and the girls. When Nikki visits, Shelly asks if she has learned her lesson and wants to return home. Instead, Kathy finds two jobs in another town and a room to stay in.

Sami takes great care to cover her bruises to avoid conversations she doesn’t wish to have. A beautiful and popular girl at school, she grows less concerned with protecting her mother, especially as she enters her senior year of high school. After Sami blames her mother for her bad grades and tardiness, a school counselor calls her in to discuss what is happening at home and see if she and Tori are in danger. Terrified at the prospect of being separated from her parents, she takes it all back.

Sami’s boyfriend, Kaley, knows to always wait for Sami to let herself into the house so that she won’t be left out in the cold if Shelly decides to lock her out. One night, Sami is kicked out of the house after being let in. Sami runs to Kaley’s house. Years later, Dave claims that while he was not home often, he was sure that Shelly would never intentionally hurt their daughters. 

Sami graduates high school in 1997 and is unsure what to do next. Shelly sabotages her chance to enroll in college, and she doesn’t want to stay in her hometown. Sami hatches a plan with two of her good friends to leave while Shelly takes Tori out on a shopping trip. Before they leave, Sami tells Tori that if she isn’t home later, she’ll leave a note for her. Sami writes a letter to her mother explaining why she left.

Kaley’s mother drives Sami to Bellingham, Washington, to Lara’s house. She stays at her grandmother’s house for the rest of the summer, and much like Nikki’s experience with Aunt Trish, it is one of the more pleasant times she has experienced.

Nikki misses being in touch with her sisters. Although she tries to send messages to Tori, Tori never receives them. Unwilling to reconcile with her mother, Nikki refuses to answer her calls until Shelly shows up unannounced, trying to persuade her to come home and go to college nearby. Nikki realizes they fear her independence because she could go to the authorities and tell them what happened to Kathy.

Shelly tries to sabotage Nikki at her job once again, leading Nikki to call Lara and ask if she knows of any work at the nursing home facilities. Lara tells Nikki that Sami is staying with her. The two of them have an emotional reunion for the first time in over a year. Nikki begins work as a nurse’s aide, but despite her good reputation at the facility, anonymous complaints are lodged against her, and the state is required to investigate. Dave begins parking in the facility’s parking lot, wanting Nikki to see him. She fears he may kidnap her, or worse.

During the summer of Sami’s disappearance, Shelly puts increasing pressure on Dave to figure out where their daughter had gone. Growing exhausted with Shelly’s need for drama, he tried to argue that the girls are adults now, but Shelly still fears one of them will talk.

Dave shows up to a summer camp event that Sami and Kaley attend. Sami is infuriated and tells him she knows that Kathy is dead and that Shelly doesn’t have cancer. Both of them begin to cry as they acknowledge that they’ve both always known the truth. Sami tells him that if Shelly fixes her botched college application paperwork, then she’ll return home. Shelly tries to shirk the responsibility, claiming that she and Dave are on the brink of divorce, but Sami uses her knowledge of Kathy’s death to back her mother into a corner. She keeps her renewed relationship with Nikki a secret.

Sami and Kaley visit Shelly, who tries to prove that her cancer has returned with the same gimmick she tried to use with Lara and Carol. Sami doesn’t buy it and reminds her mother that she knows about Kathy. Shelly breaks down and apologizes but quickly takes it all back. Sami enrolls in college and leaves her childhood home.

Shelly and Dave, having now taken on Sami’s college costs in addition to a number of outstanding debts, find themselves in even deeper financial trouble. This situation is also due to Shelly’s spending habits, particularly at the mall, and the $36,000 in personal loans she took out without Dave’s knowledge. Her checks often bounce, and she withdraws money from her daughters’ bank accounts. Sami is unable to sign a lease for an apartment because Shelly ruined her credit when she was a child.

Dave did not grow up with money and takes pride in being able to provide financially for his family. Despite Shelly’s spending, he is surprised by the financial chaos she has created behind his back.

In Sami’s absence, Tori is the sole focus of her mother’s ruthless abuse. She finds herself missing Dave when he is away at work even though Shelly picks fights with him when he is home. As Tori grows older, she notices that Shelly always starts the fights, while her father always seems sad. Alone and scared, Tori relishes weekends when Sami returns to the house. Still, however, Tori believes her mother’s lies about Nikki, Lara, and anyone who crosses her. 

While at college, Shelly intrudes in Sami’s life through threatening phone calls and visits at strange hours of the night. Despite Sami’s threats to talk if Shelly crosses her, Sami still returns home. This is in part due to Shelly’s ability to use illness and sympathy to get Sami’s attention, including telling her she has been diagnosed with lupus.

Sami begins to search for evidence in the house of her mother’s lies and finds some of Kathy’s remains. Dave no longer returns home after work. Unable to articulate exactly why he doesn’t want to be at home, he prays to God, who tells him that no matter what, he needs to make good on his vows and return to Shelly.