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rarely got a proper meal at home. Other neighbors also felt sorry for them and would feed them regularly.
    Older sister Sheila was frequently dispatched by Theresa Knorr to pick up the children from neighbors’ homes. She was always very well-mannered and would turn up at the door and say: “Okay kids, time to come home.”
    Sean was in the same class at school as Robert for four years, but during that time the youngster was often absent. Robert also surprised his friend Sean by regularly referring to his mother in a detrimental fashion.
    “He said she was off her rocker. That she was a hermit with emotional problems. He just kept saying she was crazy,” recalled Sean.
    One time, Theresa Knorr set fire to the backyard of the house on Bellingham for no apparent reason. When Sean rushed over to see if he could help, he had to go through the garage to the back yard, and noticed hundreds of articles of clothing just ripped to shreds, lining the concrete floor. The fire destroyed the back fence, but Sean never forgot the sight of all those clothes. No one ever did find out why the fire occurred.
    All the Knorr children—except for Howard Sanders—were very skinny and undernourished-looking at this time. Neighbor Sean also noticed welts on Robert’s back from where his mom had beaten him with a belt.
    Sean and Robert regularly did drugs together. Sometimes they would sneak out and smoke pot in the nearby park. Later, they did some more serious stuff together.
    Some mornings, big brother Howard would drive the rest of the kids to school in Theresa Knorr’s Ford LTD. Sean would often go along for the ride. The children were always much friendlier in the car, out of reach of their mother.
    None of the sisters dated anyone on the street, as they were kept in the house because Theresa Knorr did not want them to get promiscuous. She also refused to give her daughters an allowance.
    Sean Martin—whose best friends in the family were Robert and Terry—never tried to date any of the Knorr girls, but his brother Chris was very keen on Sheila for a while, although she did not feel the same way about him. Chris and Sheila even went on a field trip with the school one time, but the relationship never got going.
    Sean’s family, taking pity on the Knorr children, used to hold birthday parties for them at their house because Theresa Knorr would not allow their friends inside her home.
    Inevitably, all the unhappiness inside the Knorr household resulted in Suesan running away from home on a regular basis. The neighbors always knew when she was on her way because there would be a loud commotion outside the house as Suesan ran down the garden path to a waiting gas guzzler filled with her biker-type friends, who would screech off down the street once she’d climbed in.
    One time, a bunch of her friends turned up in a station wagon with a Starsky and Hutch stripe down the side. They grabbed Suesan, pushed her in the car and took off at high speed. At first neighbors thought she had been kidnapped, but it later emerged that Suesan had happily gone with them because she could not stand life inside the Knorr house.
    Once, Suesan ran away with a practicing satanist. The rest of the family believe the man introduced Suesan to the occult, and that that contributed to her mother’s hatred toward her. But a lot of this information was supplied by Theresa Knorr to her children, tempered with exaggerations and lies to ensure that the other brothers and sisters stayed on their mother’s side.
    There were other recurring problems within the family, like Howard Sanders sexually abusing his half sister Suesan just to get back at his mother. It is not hard to imagine how much influence this had on the dysfunctional situation inside the Knorr household.
    Then there was the time all six children were in the backyard of the house on Bellingham, weeding the ground with just a teaspoon each. Howard and his siblings were ordered by Theresa Knorr to completely