Sheila Sanders

Sheila Sanders
Name	Sheila Sanders
Sex	Female
Found	June 24, 1985
Location	Truckee, California
Missing from	Sacramento, California
Identified	November 1993
Span	8 years
Age	21
Cause of death	Starvation (homicide)

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Sheila Gay Sanders (also known by her mother's last name Knorr) )was a woman killed by her mother in 1985, following the murder of her sister, Suesan Knorr a year before. The five siblings were subjected to severe abuse, focused on the three girls, one of which survived.

Case

After being forced into prostitution by her mother, Sheila allegedly contracted an infection which spread to her mother after using the same restroom. Sheila was forced to live in a closet in the family's apartment and was neglected until she starved to death. Three days after she died, her already badly decomposed body was packed into a large box obtained from her brother's place of employment and was disposed of near a lake in Truckee, California. The body was discovered hours afterward.

Identification

Both sisters remained unidentified until 1993 when their youngest sister contacted America's Most Wanted after authorities failed to believe her accounts of both murders. Neither body was forensically identified, but the circumstances surrounding their deaths as well as items found at both scenes corroborated their surviving sister's accounts, along with one of their brothers'.

At the time of her death, Sheila was known to have her front teeth broken due to abuse from her mother. The box containing her remains was identified to belong to the movie theater where her brother worked.

Links

• Theresa Knorr on Wikipedia