Michelle ‘Shelly’ Knotek was convicted in 2004 of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the death of Kathy Loreno and Ronald Woodworth, who were guests at the family’s home in Raymond, Washington. America’s ‘evilest mother’, Michelle ‘Crazy Shelly’ Knotek, has been released from prison nearly two decades after she murdered at least two people and tortured others, including her own daughters and her’ nephew. she.
Her husband, David ‘Dave’ Knotek, was found guilty of murdering their 17-year-old nephew Shane Watson, whom the couple tortured while living with them. Dave was paroled in 2016 and in June 2022 he filed a protective order against Knotek, the month he was scheduled to be released. She was released on November 8, which caused outrage among the residents of the rural community.
It’s unclear where Shelly was released, but she will remain under court-ordered supervision for at least a year. The Knoteks’ horrific crimes have attracted national media attention for decades due to allegations of abuse and torture dating back years within their own family.
Michelle ‘Shelly’ Knotek’s Age
Michelle ‘Shelly’ Knotek is 68 years old.
Michelle ‘Shelly’ Knotek Released from Prison after two decades
From the outside, the Knoteks looked like a normal, happy family. Dave was a Navy veteran who worked construction to support his growing family. He married Michelle ‘Shelly’ in 1987, who already had two daughters, Nikki and Sami.
The couple then had a daughter, Tori, in 1989. The girls always dressed in their best manners and had good manners. The family even opened their home to family, friends, and locals who had nowhere else to go. They took in their 17-year-old nephew Shane in 1988 after his parents were unable to care for him.
Later that year, Shelly’s friend and hairdresser, Kathy Loreno, moved in after she lost her job. When military veteran Ronald Woodworth lost his home in 1999, he, too, was given shelter in the Knoteks’ home. But then, the house guests started to disappear one by one.
When family members asked, Shelly always had a reason for her disappearance. One had simply run off with a man. Another had moved to another city for a job. For years, the whereabouts of the guests remained a mystery. Until 2003, when the three daughters of the Knoteks were encouraged to go to the authorities. A search of the property led to the discovery of a man’s body and revealed years of horror the family had kept hidden.
Shelly, then 50, was convicted of torturing and killing her victims in the early 1990s, but her reign of terror began years earlier, with her own family. As she would with her victims, her mother would shower her children with love and affection, then go berserk and beat and demean them as punishment.
Details of the horrific abuse her daughters endured were laid out in the book: ‘If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood’ by author Gregg Olsen, which was published years later.
The daughters reached out to Olsen to tell their story for one reason: to prevent their mother from killing again.
In November, Shelly was granted early release and her 22-year sentence ended after 18 years. She had initially been charged with first-degree murder, but she accepted a plea deal that resulted in lesser charges through the Alford Plea. Under the terms of an Alford plea, a person can plead guilty but maintain their innocence. Shelly’s daughters told the New York Post in 2019 that they feared for the safety of others if they released her mother.
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Shelly was scheduled to be released from the Washington Correctional Center for Women in June 2022 but was delayed until November. When the author of the book Olsen posted on social media about her release on November 9, residents of the rural community were stunned. ‘Evil is without and among us,’ one person said in the post, while another said, ‘how is this possible?’
It’s unclear where Shelly ended up after she was released from prison, but many people posted on social media that they believed she should have stayed locked up forever. A former neighbor noted that she was in poor health, adding that it is unlikely that she would be able to resume her killing spree.
In Olsen’s book published in 2019, Shelly’s daughters spoke about how they were emotionally and physically abused by her mother. If they used the bathroom without permission, they could be severely beaten.
However, Shelly’s favorite punishment was known as “rolling,” in which her mother would force her children to strip naked in the middle of the night and roll around in the mud while she washed them in cold water, according to the report. book.
One part of the book recalls a time when Shelly pushed Nikki’s head through a glass door and said ‘Look what you made me do’, as blood dripped from the girl’s face.
When Shelly’s nephew Shane came to live with the family in 1988, he forced Nikki, who was only 13 at the time, to slow dance with him in the living room nude.
“It worked like any abusive relationship,” Nikki recalls in the book, “and then the abuser gently stops them.” ‘My mother was like a time bomb. She never knew when she would leave.
Finally, she did. And it started with Shelly’s friend, Kathy Loreno, who was tortured to death after she moved in with the family in 1988. The daughters witnessed some of the abuse but said in the book that while they regret not intervening there was little they could do..
“[If] mom was grounding Kathy, she was ignoring us,” Nikki added, noting that she took the heat off of them. ‘As sickly as she was…we were glad mom wasn’t doing it to us.’
After Loreno’s murder in 1994, Shelly warned her family that “all of us will be in jail if anyone finds out what happened to Kathy.” The family kept their mouths shut and went on with their lives. But the torture and murder in the house in the rural village continued.
Two more people were killed during Shelly’s spree: her nephew, 19-year-old Shane Watson, and a 57-year-old local man, Ronald Woodworth. “They were innocent people who got caught up in Shelly’s evil web,” Olsen told The Post.
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