If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood(13)

Later, Dave made a promise that he’d give the house back to Shelly, but in time, the house was lost to foreclosure.



As the new couple grew a little closer, Shelly tearfully confided after a doctor’s appointment that she had a bigger problem than merely trying to make ends meet for herself and her girls.

“I have cancer,” she said. “I probably won’t live to thirty.”

Dave was stunned. Shelly looked completely fine. Besides, by then he was in love with her. And now, he was held completely captive by her disclosure.

“I thought to myself,” he said many years later, “that she was going to probably die. And if she died, who was going to take care of Nikki and Sami? They really didn’t have anyone. The whole time we were together she played the cancer card. I should have known better, but I didn’t.”

After about a month in Dave’s studio apartment, the four of them moved into a red house on Fowler Street in Raymond’s Riverview neighborhood.

“I didn’t marry Shell because her kids needed me,” Dave said, “but I have to admit that was a pretty big reason behind my wanting to marry her.”

Indeed, they finally made it official in Raymond on December 28, 1987. One of the witnesses to the wedding was a young woman named Kathy Loreno, Shelly’s hairdresser and best friend. No one knew at the time that Kathy would eventually play a far bigger role in the Knotek marriage than anyone could have imagined.



Les Watson was only too glad to have his daughter get married for a third time. Indeed, he couldn’t have been more relieved. It meant that she’d probably not come around anymore for money. He’d never truly forgiven her for the rape story, though he’d learned to play nice. While her accusations hadn’t ruined him, they’d left a scar.

Shelly continued to bad-mouth her dad behind his back, though to his face she tried to worm her way back in with indirect apologies and promises to be a better person. She claimed she had cancer and she thought he’d want to know directly from her, not Lara, with whom she’d started a war over seeing the girls more frequently. When Les didn’t take her calls, Shelly wrote to him:

“I’ll always be so proud to have you as a Dad. The older I get the more I’ve realized how much I appreciate you. Dad, I’m so full of pain I just want out. You’ve known so little of my life for such a long time. Maybe the next time around . . . I won’t make the same mistakes. I’m not strong enough to go through the months ahead. But I love you, Dad, and I’ve missed you. Love, Shell.”





CHAPTER NINE

From Nikki’s perspective, it was like her mother and stepfather had started their life together with a poisoned kiss and a declaration of war. It was apparent to many, including Nikki, that Dave Knotek had been made less of a man by marrying Shelly. It was clear that her stepfather could barely function in his marriage to her mom.

Nikki recalled an incident she’d watched with the gaping eyes of a child—unblinking but petrified at the same time. Dave, thin with longish hair and tattoos that portrayed his love of the sea from his stint in the navy, was on the front porch of the Fowler house with a shotgun in suicide position. He was shaking and crying. It was after another row with her mother, another heavy spate of hatred and disgust directed at him because he didn’t make enough money or care enough about the kids.

Her mom hurled nasty invectives at him, one after another.

“You are a worthless excuse for a husband!” Shelly yelled before slamming the door with one last parting shot. “You don’t even love me or the girls! If you did, you’d work harder!”

Dave sat still and composed himself. He got in his truck and drove off like he always did after a big fight.

He was like that. Compliant. Passive. Submissive.

“I never once saw him strike her,” Nikki remembered later. “I mean rarely would he even use a cuss word toward her.”

The same couldn’t be said of Shelly.

“She’d get violent. Really violent. She’d slapped me around a few times and I didn’t hit her back because that’s not what a man does,” Dave recalled. “She’d push. Shove. Scream. Really violent. I wasn’t used to that.”

“We need to talk things out,” Shelly said more than one time, trying to keep him where she wanted him.

“I can’t be around you like this,” he said.

Shelly snuggled up to him. “This is normal. This is the way people work things out.”

“Not normal to me,” he told her.

The first time things got really bad was when Dave had a few too many drinks at a Christmas party at the Weyerhaeuser sorting yard. His coworkers brought him home to find Shelly at the door, angry as all get-out. Bugged eyes and red-faced. She pushed him and screamed so much that he ended up going to his folks and spending the night there. That, in turn, made Shelly even angrier. Shelly wanted her husband home to face the music for which she was the conductor. He had no place of refuge. After that, she did everything she could to separate Dave—and later the girls—from his family. She insisted on total control all the time, everywhere they went. If an argument ensued while they were in the car, Shelly would make Dave get out.

“Right now! Out!”

In time, Dave couldn’t function normally. It crept up on him. He didn’t know what was happening or why. He couldn’t sleep. He was always wondering when the other shoe would drop and Shelly would go into attack mode.