Through the Window: The Terrifying True Story of Cross-Country Killer Tommy Lynn Sells (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

by Diane Fanning

  TERESA did not report to work at the New Beginnings Clothing Shop in Marianna the next day. Linda Schack, owner of the store, tried to call her at home. The phone rang unanswered all day, so she called Teresa’s mother, Charlotte Mitchell.

  Angus Mitchell, Teresa’s stepfather, went to check on the family. His heart sank when he saw the damaged door. He entered with great trepidation and discovered the two battered bodies bathed in blood.

  A few minutes later, Brian Hall, Teresa’s husband and Tiffany’s father, returned home from a trip to Quitman, Georgia, where he had worked a carpet-laying job for the last two days. Once Brian’s alibi was verified, the police had no suspects and no answers for the bereaved family.

  Angel Maturino Resendiz would come under suspicion after his apprehension by Texas Rangers in 2000. Resendiz, dubbed “the Railway Killer,” had been linked to a string of murders occurring near railroad tracks across the south. Sells admitted committing the crimes; authorities, although suspicious, are uncertain.

  ON March 14, 1992, Tommy Lynn Sells was arrested in Charleston, South Carolina, for public drunkenness. He received a thirty-day suspended sentence. On April 2, he was arrested again on the same charge. As soon as he was released, he left town. The mountains of West Virginia would next embrace Sells. Their rugged, primitive beauty fueled his next act of violence.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  FABIENNE Witherspoon felt pretty confident of her ability to take care of herself at the age of 20. At five feet, eight inches, with a solid athletic body, she had a physical advantage many women lacked. Her attractive, oval-shaped face, with dark brown, nearly black eyes, had just enough of an edge of toughness that no one could ever accuse her of being cute. Thick, curly brown hair fell below her shoulders, its uninhibited style suggesting a streak of wildness lying just beneath the surface.

  On the 13th of May, she was house-sitting at 906 Grove Avenue in Charleston, West Virginia. It was an ordinary middle-class neighborhood where bad things normally did not happen. That day, she had only one worry on her mind as she walked a few blocks to the Women’s Health Clinic for a pregnancy test.

  On her stroll back to the house she was feeling benevolent toward the world, relieved at the negative result of her test. She saw a man in his mid-twenties with uncombed, matted hair, intriguing eyes and scruffy clothing at the corner of Washington Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. He held a sign that read, “Hungry. Will work for food.”

  He spun a tale of misery and woe in a softly beguiling voice with a barely Southern accent. Below his plea for pity lurked a scintilla of dangerous flirtation. He told her his name was Tommy Sells. He said that he and his wife lived under a bridge, and his children were so very hungry. A wave of compassion welled up in Fabienne, tinged with a drop of sexual attraction. She brought him to her home to scrounge up what she could. Once there, she grabbed two black trash bags. Into one, she threw graham crackers, Cheerios, scalloped potato mix, vanilla wafers and more until the bag bulged. Into the other, she stuffed folded, clean clothing. She smiled at him and asked if he needed anything else.

  “My wife really needs some underwear,” he said.

  Fabienne went into the back bedroom to find a few pair. As she turned from the chest of drawers, there he was, right behind her. And in his hand was a knife from her kitchen. Her gullibility gleamed on its blade.

  Sells brought the knife to her throat. “Take off your clothes,” he demanded.

  She hesitated, but the cold blade of the knife under her chin jerked her into action. With fumbling fingers, she removed her shirt and unfastened her bra. She kicked off her shoes and pushed off her socks with the toes of her opposite foot. She reached for the waistband of her pants, and froze.

  Sells clenched the knife between his teeth, pushed her hands away and pulled down her pants. As soon as he started to remove his clothing, Fabienne’s eyes looked away, riveting to the floor. Then, he shoved, smacked and threatened her into the bathroom and down to her knees. At the point of the knife, she took him into her mouth.

  He pushed her back on the floor, spread her legs and penetrated her vaginally. Fabienne just lay there, praying he would finish, just finish and leave her alone—wondering all the while how she could have been so stupid.

  He stopped, rose to his feet and ordered her into the shower. There, he inserted his fingers inside her, making her wince. Then he brutally penetrated her again.

  He shoved her out of the shower and onto her knees, once more demanding oral sex. Please, please let this end, she thought.

  He jerked her toward the toilet and made her bend over. She felt the pressure of the head of his penis against her anus. She spotted a ceramic duck on the back of the commode, and, grabbing it, smashed it into his head. Shards of duck flew around the bathroom and she pummeled him again and again with the remains of the figurine.

  In the struggle, she got a hand on the knife and wrested it out of Sells’ control. She stumbled out of the bathroom and toward the front door. But, he was on her again, manhandling her into the bedroom. She stabbed him. He grabbed her wrist and regained possession of the knife, jabbing at her. She jumped back and received a deep slice across her skin, but now, she was in control of the knife.

  They wrestled through the bedroom, alternating control and exchanging stabs, cuts and blows. Finally, he got her down on the floor and got on top of her. He strapped her wrists and ankles together with Scotch tape. Then he secured the bindings by tying strips of sheets he ripped from the bed over the tape.

  He raised an antique piano stool over his head and beat her scalp and body without mercy. The blows were so hard, the seat broke loose from its base. He made a half-hearted attempt to slit her throat, but by this time, he was in a panic. The cut he inflicted there only required three stitches.

  He grabbed a VCR and a boom-box and made his escape. He left behind the gifts of compassion, an overflowing bag of clothing and an equally stuffed bag of food.

  AS soon as Fabienne regained consciousness from the blow to her head, she fought her way out of her bonds. She wrapped herself in a blanket, picked up her portable phone and rushed outside, trailing Scotch tape in her wake.

  She called 9-1-1. Her descent down her front steps left a trail of dripping blood and crumpled tape.

  “I have never seen a person alive with so much blood on her,” said Sergeant Richard Westfall of the Charleston Police Department.

  Before leaving in the ambulance, Fabienne told investigators that the man who had assaulted her was Tommy Sells and that he slept by the river.

  Sgt. Westfall processed the crime scene with Detective H. S. Walker while Detective Rollins and Lieutenant Epperhart searched the riverbank for suspects. Sells was not an unknown quantity to the criminal investigation division. He had been observed for four or five weeks holding a sign at the corner of Quarrier and Clendenin Streets. In a short time, Detective Carl Hammons had an address for their suspect. He and Westfall went to 833A Bigley Avenue and questioned Sells’ former roommates, Curtis Sizemore, Rebecca Gibson and Karin Pamela Young.

  When the officers initiated the questioning, they were certain that they were talking to one man and two women. They were wrong. Karin Young was not a woman. By the end of the interview, they knew. Karin was a transvestite whose transformation was so complete and convincing, he fooled two men with extensive vice experience.

  When Sells had first met Karin, he was deceived as well. So much so that the first time he was intimate with Karin’s sister, Gina, he had a moment of doubt about her, too. “I’m going to put my hand down your pants, and if I find anything there that shouldn’t be, I’ll kill you,” he’d told her. He said it was a joke. He said Gina thought it was very funny.

  Curtis, Rebecca and Karin told the investigators that Sells had come to the apartment about 5 o’clock. He told them he was bleeding from a fight, but was not going to go to the hospital. While there, he had removed his shirt and stuffed it in a garbage bag. Westfall retrieved the shirt and bagged it as e
vidence.

  When asked if they knew where Sells had gone, Curtis volunteered that he had taken him to the place where Sells had been living for the past week. It was the apartment of his girlfriend’s daughter and Karin’s sister, Gina Young.

  AFTER arriving at Gina’s place, Sells called his mother to ask her how to butterfly a cut. She asked, “What kind of cut?”

  “Oh, a cut here and a cut there.”

  “How many cuts?” she insisted.

  He held the receiver to his chest and turned to his girlfriend, “Gina, Mom wants to know how many.”

  Gina looked him over and counted a total of twenty-three, but a few of those were only superficial wounds. Sells’ mother explained how to bandage his injuries and told him to get to a hospital. Instead of seeking medical attention, he sent Gina out to buy a fifth of Jim Beam and score some dope.

  When she came back from her mission, Sells was dripping with fatalistic self-pity. “Gina, if I die, make sure I get back to Missouri.”

  An hour later, Detective Hammons and Sergeant Westfall arrived at the door of Apartment #4, 303 South Ranch Road in Elkview. Gina stepped back from the doorway and allowed the officers to enter. They found Sells lying on the living room floor in obvious pain, with multiple stab wounds to his abdomen. His external bleeding was minimal, but internally it was profuse. His spleen and kidney were nicked, a lung was partially collapsed and his testicles were sliced. The detectives called for an ambulance and rushed him to Charleston General Hospital for trauma surgery and a week-long stay.

  INITIALLY, the case appeared cut and dried, but when prosecutors prepared for trial, problems arose. It had not been long since Fabienne had filed another sexual assault charge that was never prosecuted. To the jury, the questionable nature of that charge could cast doubt on her current claim. To make matters worse, the defense uncovered psychological reports that reflected poorly on the victim. They threatened to use this information in court in defense of their client.

  In light of these revelations, the prosecution was no longer confident it could find Sells guilty and put him behind bars in a jury trial. They were ready to deal with the defense. Some jail time, they reasoned, was better than the chance of none at all. The two sides agreed on a plea bargain. The sexual assault charges were dropped. On June 25, 1993, Judge Tod J. Kaufman sentenced Sells to “an indeterminate term of not less than two years and not more than ten years” for malicious wounding. The judge gave him credit for four hundred and two days’ time already served. He was housed in the Northern Correctional Facility in Moundsville, West Virginia, just south of Wheeling.

  SELLS had one friend waiting for him behind bars: Billy Young, Gina’s heterosexual brother. Young watched Sells back from the moment the cell door clicked behind him until Sells left that facility.

  Sells started out his term as a model prisoner, earning the designation of trustee. He soon abused that position, though. He and another inmate named Gregory Carter found a .357 pistol on the inside. They planned to trade it for dope. For safekeeping until then, Sells hid the weapon in the warden’s office. Another trustee caught him in the act and reported him. Charges were filed and then dropped when Sells was moved to maximum security at Mt. Olive Prison.

  This time, while in prison in West Virginia, Sells taught himself to read with the help of a Bible. “I could not read ‘Run, Dick, run; run, Jane, run’ when I quit the ninth grade at the age of sixteen,” he admitted. He worked hard at his self-education, pushing himself to reach his goal—sending the first letter of his life.

  In 1994, Sells struck up a friendship with a newly arrived inmate, John Price. Price was a nurse who had been working for a home health service company based in Logan, West Virginia. Three of his friends were found dead after injections of Dilaudid, a morphine-based prescription drug that is ten to one hundred times as powerful as street heroin. It was without doubt that he was the source of the drug, but evidence of a more active role in their demise was weak. Facing the possibility of a life sentence, Price pled guilty to providing the drug and paraphernalia, but denied having administered the injections. He was behind bars for causing their deaths.

  He told Sells about his sister, Nora. She was 26 years old, a bit slow and childlike—a product of special education classes in the public school system. Most importantly, she got an SSI check every month. She often visited her brother and he introduced her to Sells.

  TERRY and Crystal Harris packed up their belongings, loaded up their four kids and moved to the Del Rio area in 1995. Just two days after their arrival in West Texas, the couple was married in a quiet ceremony.

  As soon as the vows were spoken and sealed with a kiss, Terry set the wheels in motion to keep his promise to Katy. He filed adoption papers for all three of Crystal’s children. The paperwork culminated in a family trip to the courthouse. When they emerged, Terry Harris was the legal father of all of them. The children formed a ring around their parents and burst into song: “We are the Harrises! We are the Harrises! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! We are the Harrises! We are the Harrises! Forever more today!”

  DURING her first visits with Sells, Nora Price sat on her side of the glass with a telephone receiver pressed to her ear. The cold barrier, the stale smell and the close proximity of other visitors did not create a very romantic ambiance. But romance sprung from this infertile ground nonetheless and wound its way around this simple woman’s heart. Later, contact visits enriched the encounters and sealed Nora’s fate.

  Sells took advantage of the pretty girl’s intellectual deficiency. He sweet-talked Nora into falling in love with him. She was an easy mark. She’d had a rough, unhappy life and could not recall anyone ever being so nice to her. They talked and wrote about the day he would get out of jail and about all of the things they could do together. He conned her out of small amounts of cash for months. Then he moved in for the kill.

  He informally proposed to her by letter. Then came the big day. Mt. Olive Prison had an annual event where visitors can have a whole day with the prisoners.

  Out on the prison lawn, on a lovely spring day with the sun caressing their skin, Tommy asked, “You want to get married?”

  The warmth of the mellow sun competed with the warmth in Nora’s heart. She thought this was the most wonderful moment of her life. While still in prison, in April of 1996, Tommy Lynn Sells married Nora Price. From that day on, three-quarters of Nora’s SSI checks poured into Sells’ coffers at prison.

  In her honor, Sells got two tattoos with “Nora” written into their design. One was a rose on his neck. The other was a Harley-Davidson with a dragon on his right upper arm. Nora was delighted.

  In his time at this facility, mental health professionals diagnosed Sells as bi-polar. His illness went untreated. He was released into an unsuspecting world in May of 1997.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WITHIN days of his release, Tommy Sells left Nora behind in West Virginia. On June 1, he called her from Michigan and told her he wanted to get back together. She agreed, and he returned to West Virginia. Together they hit the road, hitchhiking and riding trains to Tennessee. They settled in the town of Cleveland at #2 Sunset Trail. Sells got a job at a car wash. On July 29, local police gave him a ticket for driving without a license.

  Sells abandoned Nora in Tennessee on August 18 and headed west. Nora, unable or unwilling to cope on her own, dragged her empty, broken heart back to her home state, West Virginia.

  On September 5, from Oregon Sells called his mother in St. Louis and Nora’s mother in Spurlockville, West Virginia. He traveled back east, retrieved Nora from the Mountain State and took her to his mother’s home in Missouri. By this time, Nora was pregnant.

  In October, Sells got a mechanic’s job at 360 Degree Auto. He stayed off drugs for three weeks. The family had high hopes that Tommy was going to settle down at last. But neither one of the women nor his job could keep Sells drug-free. “He came home one night higher than Georgia pine,” his mother said. In no time, tracks covered his
arms.

  Nothing could keep Sells tied to home. By mid-October, he was stalking fresh prey.

  SELLS privately admitted to the murder of Joel Kirkpatrick. He has never confessed to authorities and no one has undertaken an investigation into his possible involvement. The following is a combination of the facts of the crime and the details provided by Tommy Lynn Sells.

  Sells traveled east of St. Louis on Interstate 64. An exit onto Route 50 sent him straight across Illinois to Lawr-enceville near the Indiana border. Near this small town, October 13, 1997, felt like any other uneventful fall night. But it would soon brand itself into the community’s collective memory.

  Sells first met Julie Rea at a convenience store where, he said, she had treated him rudely. From that moment on, Sells was consumed with a desire for revenge.

  Anger drove him, fed him, led him straight to the front door of a house he’d never entered before. With great care, he broke the window, making no more noise than if he had crumpled up a sheet of cellophane. He slid toward the kitchen—such a wonderful place for a predator; always a weapon in easy reach. He picked up a knife and weighed its balance in his hand. He headed straight for the first bedroom door. There, 10-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick dreamed his last dream.

  Sells plunged the knife into Joel’s body, oblivious to the blood that splattered in his face and on his clothes. A scream pierced the quiet of Julie Rea’s home. It slapped her awake and lifted her out of bed.

  The killer left his victim lying at the foot of the bed and slipped from the boy’s room and away from the approaching woman. She raced up the hall to her son. “Joel? Joel?”

  She looked through the doorway of the dark room and saw an empty bed. She turned from the room, frantic. That is when she spotted him. The hood of his sweatshirt was pulled up and the drawstring tightened across his face concealing his features.