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

 

I have read a considerable number of true crime books over the years, and few of them have failed to fascinate me in one way or the other. Even fewer of them managed to simultaneously fascinate and repulse me the way that Gregg Olsen’s If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood did. The fascination comes from what Michelle “Shelly” Knotek was able to get away with for so long. The repulsion, maybe revulsion is an even better word, comes from having to be in her company for the three days it took me to read this account of how evil the woman was – and from all accounts, still is.

 

That Knotek’s three daughters (Nikki, Sami, and Tori) have managed to live relatively normal lives after the horrible physical and mental abuse they suffered at their mother’s hand and direction, is astounding. Although it is not addressed much in Olsen’s book, it is hard to believe that the three of them are not still suffering the consequences of the years their mother tortured them. Nikki, the oldest, is married and raising a family in Seattle; Sami, the middle daughter, is an elementary school teacher in a rural Washington town where much of the abuse happened; and Tori, the youngest is now in her early thirties and living somewhere in central Oregon.

 

Others of her mother’s victims were not so lucky.

 

Shelly Knotek was never happier than she was in the middle of physically torturing her victims. She lived for nothing more. And with the help of her third husband, Dave Knotek, a pathetically weak man who still defends his wife’s actions, she was able to hide what was happening from authorities for years. Ultimately, Shelly would be convicted of her crimes (via what is called an Alford plea agreement) and sentenced, after having talked herself into an extra 5 years for arrogantly denying everything at her formal sentencing, to 22 years in prison. It appears that she will be released sometime in 2022 after having served about 18 years of the sentence. Dave Knotek was sentenced to just under 15 years in 2004 and was released from prison in 2016.  

 

If You Tell includes an Afterword by Katherine Ramsland that goes a long way in explaining  how Shelly Knotek so easily found victims outside her immediate family. In one heartbreaking  passage, Ramsland sums it up this way:

 

“First, they look for compliant people with few resources: their own children or elderly parents, friends in need, homeless people, the mentally ill, or those without family ties. Then they pursue a program of steady erosion of their victims’ ability to resist. Even in the face of outrageous behavior, such people will be too frightened, docile, confused, or incapacitated to retaliate or seek help.”

 

But it is Nikki, Sami, and Tori who are given the last word, a warning to the public, especially to those who are vulnerable to people like their mother, that she will be released soon – and that she will do it again.

Michelle and David Knotek