Serial Killer Theresa Knorr: The Disturbing Truth Behind The Afflicted

There are times when you watch a movie based on a true story, and you scratch your head and just say, "No way." Some of the depraved, disgusting, and violent acts depicted in movies just cannot be true. One such film that left me feeling this way was The Afflicted, originally released by Midnight Releasing. However, after a couple of emails with them about another subject, they passed along the name of the actual person and the case the movie was based on. Yes, it seems, as some of the movie was fictional (the ending), but the majority of the story was indeed based on fact.

This lady, Theresa Knorr, was immoral and evil. Born in 1946, Knorr was convicted of torturing and murdering two of her children and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences after pleading guilty to save herself from the Death Penalty. Incredibly, some of the most intense parts of the movie are in fact true. 

The story arc of the mother shooting her daughter, leaving her to rot in the bathtub handcuffed to the soap dish, nursing her back to health before torturing her by performing surgery to remove the bullet with alcohol and a box cutter- you guessed it, true- as was burning her body along the roadside. The same can be said of the death of another daughter, who was forced into prostitution by her mother, tortured, and locked in a closet until her death by dehydration and starvation some days later.

As a horror fan, I find stories like this, which are mostly true, much more disturbing than the slasher films I grew up on. In a weird twist, it seems like religious fanaticism lay at the heart of these and other torturous crimes that are too hard to even imagine. Unfortunately, these tales are truly the mantra behind the statement that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, especially when you consider she is eligible for parole in 2027. The Afflicted is a disturbing movie that honestly captures the darkness in this story.