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

Michelle “Shelly” Lynn Watson Rivardo Long Knotek’s hometown of Battle Ground, Washington, was named for a bloody battle between the indigenous Klickait nation and the United States Army, which seems fitting given Shelly’s violent disposition. In the 1950s, Battle Ground is a quintessential American small town. Shelly’s father, Les Watson, is well known in the community for his charm and his family-owned businesses, including nursing homes and a bowling alley. He meets 17-year-old Lara Stallings, who works at his bowling alley. He is a decade her senior but lies to her, telling her that she is four years his junior.

Lara Watson (nee Stallings) doesn’t learn that Les is older and has been married before and fathered three children in Alameda, California, until the two are wed. Two of the kids, Shelly and Chuck Watson, can no longer live with their mother, Sharon, who is a depressed alcoholic, and they come to live with Lara and Les. Shelly is difficult, often speaking for her brother Chuck and telling Lara every day that she hates her.

Sharon never calls or sends the kids cards or gifts. Les says this behavior is due to her severely dysfunctional childhood. In 1967, the Watsons are informed by a homicide detective in Los Angeles that Sharon has been murdered and her body was found in a seedy motel room. The Watsons will now take in the youngest boy, Paul. When 13-year-old Shelly is told about her mother’s fate, she does not seem saddened or interested, as if she and her mother never bonded at all.

When Paul arrives at the Watson house, he has no social skills, impulse control, or understanding of appropriate behavior. Lara, despite her best attempts at being a stepmother, realizes that she is in over her head with all three children, and Shelly is by far the most difficult. Despite Les and Lara’s attempts to create family bonding moments between their own children and Les’s children from his previous marriage, Shelly refuses to take part in anything that isn’t her idea. She picks fights, throws fits, and, when she does not get her way, refuses to go along with her family, lying and making up excuses. Lara and Shelly are constantly at odds, and Lara struggles to understand her.

As Shelly grows up, her attitude evolves from rage-induced disruption to vengeful and even violent acts, including grinding up glass and sticking it in the bottom of her siblings’ shoes. Lara learns that this behavior is actually not unheard of in the family as she gets to know Grandma Anna Watson, Shelly’s paternal grandmother.

Anna Watson is an intimidatingly large, tall North Dakota native who moved to Washington as a teen. Her presence is formidable, and she is never wrong about anything. She runs one of the family’s nursing homes and demands that everything be done her way. Her husband, George Watson, is sweet, quiet, and charming, yet Anna forces him to sleep in a shed outside of their house.

Anna’s cruelty as a supervisor was well-known, and she often treated employees as her “slaves,” according to Lara. She would beat them for not moving fast enough or doing something wrong. Her employees feared her, as Lara would learn when she began working at the nursing home herself.

Shelly’s school is adjacent to the nursing home, which means that she spends ample time with Grandma Anna, who has no problem telling Lara everything that she is doing wrong in raising her. Lara realizes that Grandma Anna finds happiness by making others unhappy. Shelly is Grandma Anna’s favorite and “mainly served the role of protégé” (16).

Just before Shelly turns 15, she does not return home from school one day. Lara calls the principal’s office and is informed that Shelly was taken to a juvenile hall detention center because she confided in a school counselor that something was going on at home. The Watsons head to the facility where Shelly is being held. The superintendent at the detention center denies them access to Shelly because she has accused Les of rape. Lara and Les are disgusted and appalled. Despite Shelly’s lies in the past, she has never told a lie this big. Les is heartbroken and begs the superintendent to allow the family’s doctor to examine her.

They return home and find a magazine article she had bookmarked in which a teenage girl discloses her experience of being molested by her father. The next day, the doctor examines Shelly and says there is no evidence of sexual assault. Les and Lara conclude that Shelly has crossed a boundary and the rest of their family’s safety and reputation are in danger. The superintendent informs Lara that Shelly requires serious psychological intervention.

Shelly, however, does not believe she needs therapy or that anything she has done is her fault. The family’s attempts at group therapy and individual therapy for Shelly are unsuccessful. She also won’t admit that the rape story was a lie. Her school refuses to have Shelly back, and the Watsons struggle to find a school that will accept her. Eventually, they find a school for her in Hoodsport, Washington, where Lara’s parents live. They quickly realize, however, that Shelly is mean, erratic, and terrifying. She babysits for a neighboring family and traps the children in their room by pushing furniture in front of their bedroom doors. The final straw is when Shelly accuses Lara’s father of molestation. Lara is baffled and unsure what to do.

Lara and Les’s marriage is strained not only by the stress of Shelly’s bad behavior, but by their family businesses and raising their other four children. Chuck and Paul continue to behave poorly even after Shelly moves to Hoodsport.

When it becomes clear that Shelly can no longer live with Lara’s parents, Lara finds a boarding school that will take her. Within weeks, the Watsons receive a call asking if Shelly can be brought home on the weekends due to her behavioral issues. She stole from her peers, put glass in their shoes, and destroyed other girls’ homework. At the end of the year, the school tells the Watsons that Shelly will not be allowed to return the following year.

Shelly returns to Battle Ground. She tells Lara every day that she hates her and that “she wished Lara would curl up and die” (25). Les still loves and spoils his daughter despite her lies and bad behavior. Les’s sister, Katie, takes pity on Shelly, who knows how to charm her aunt. Shelly goes to stay with her, and Katie tells the Watsons after a few weeks that she wants Shelly to stay with her on the East Coast. Lara is relieved and believes God answered her prayers. However, Shelly’s presence soon becomes so stressful for Katie that it causes her to divorce her husband. Rather than feel or show remorse, Shelley is not concerned about the chaos left in her wake. In fact, though she is not yet 18, she has already met her first husband.

Randy Rivardo meets 17-year-old Shelly in 1971 while she is living with her aunt Katie in Murrysville, Pennsylvania. They part in 1972 after their high school graduation, when Shelly returns to the West Coast to work as a nurse’s aide at one of her family’s nursing homes. That summer, Shelly calls Randy to tell him she misses him and her father wants to offer him a job at one of his nursing homes and a rent-free apartment.

Upon arriving in Battle Ground, Randy is greeted by Les and the family’s warm reception. In hindsight, it is likely that Les was relieved he could soon pass off his daughter onto someone else. Randy and Shelly are quickly engaged and married in 1973 when Shelly is 19. None of Randy’s loved ones are at the wedding because Shelly never mailed their invitations.

The newlyweds live rent-free in a trailer that Les and Lara own, but Shelly hates it and declares that it is below her standards. Her poor work ethic and absenteeism cause her father to fire her from his nursing home, but she merely finds herself jumping between family nursing homes despite her bad attitude and reputation until she is finally terminated from the family businesses for good. She becomes a stay-at-home mom, though she is not willing to cook, clean, or tend to the home.

Shelly continues to rely upon her father, using emotional manipulation to try and get him to buy her a VW Beetle. Instead, Les brings her a Buick convertible to surprise her. Shelly is filled with rage and that night overdoses on alcohol and what appear to be sedatives. Randy rushes her to the emergency room to have her stomach pumped only to find out she has taken aspirin instead of sedatives.

Randy, who is taking college classes, returns home one day to find Shelly covered in blood and their trailer completely trashed. She tells him a man came in and raped her at gunpoint. Randy calls the county sheriff and Les, but the county sheriff quickly informs the family that her wounds are self-inflicted. The family realizes this is a ploy for Shelly to be given the money to move out of the trailer. Shelly continues to act spoiled and ungrateful, resorting to lying to get her way. In 1974, she and Randy announce that she is pregnant. Lara hopes that motherhood will calm Shelly down. Randy’s family visits, but Shelly says she doesn’t want them there, barricading herself in her room to avoid them and destroying the gifts they left for her and Randy.