If You Tell by Gregg Olsen

No one ever really knows what goes on in a family once the doors are shut.  Sometimes things are wonderful and everyone gets their needs met and the family is a happy, supportive environment.  But sometimes that place that should be the happiest is a place of terror where everyone walks on tiptoes around an abuser who can go off at a moment's notice.  That was the case in the Knotek household

Shelley, the mother, was the queen bee, her every thought and word law to the rest of the household.  There were three children, Nikki, Sami and Tori, all by different husbands.  There was a nephew, Shane, who Shelley and Dave took in and raised.  Finally, there was Kathy and Ron, two people who were on their own.  Shelley insisted she was helping Kathy and Ron but in reality, she used them as slaves around the house and property and over months, slowly tortured them until they died.  Her husband lived away, just supplying his paycheck to Shelley and coming home on some weekends where she used him as an enforcer.

The girls were all subjected to abuse.  Beatings were routine and they always wore long sleeves and pants to school.  Shelley would tear up their homework, burn their books.  She would wake them from sleep and push them outside, nude, to spend the night in the cold Washington weather.  She tried to keep them from talking to each other, as isolation was one of her tools.  She told them lies and coached them until they could tell the stories as she had recreated them.

The girls kept their bond, even in secret, from Shelley.  After the first death, that of Kathy, Nikki was old enough to get away.  She told her grandmother and then the police about what was happening but nothing seemed to get done.  Shane disappeared and none of the girls believed Shelley's story about that.  Finally, after Ron's death, all the girls came forward and finally the police got involved.

Shelley and Dave were both jailed.  Dave has been paroled and Shelley has a release date of 2022.  Doctors believe that her sadistic, narcissistic personality won't have changed and worry for the next isolated person Shelley comes across.  Olsen has written a chilling narrative of a true American monster, one who managed to evade the law for years and will be released back on society in the future.  The sisters have managed to create successful lives for themselves and that is another take away from the book.  This book is recommended for true crime readers.