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

by Diane Fanning

  BY the time Mary Bea’s body was found and her family’s grieving could begin, Sells had returned his truck to Del Rio and shifted his hunting grounds to Lexington, Kentucky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  RIDING the rails, Sells traveled to Lexington and signed up at Labor Ready. He lived on the streets for a couple of weeks, occasionally renting a room for a day from a woman who worked at a fast-food chicken restaurant on the next street over from the Labor Ready office. He got day jobs at Excel Building Services and the Lexington recycling center. On May 13, he clocked in at Transylvania University.

  THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD Haley McHone was a troubled young girl. Outside of her home, she was known as a sunny child who had never met a stranger and was always willing to lend a hand. She approached life with a boundless energy. She seemed to get along with everyone, except her immediate family. There, she felt like a cowbird in a cardinal’s nest. Her family’s authoritarian dynamic was alien to her.

  Her incompatibility with her immediate family often left her feeling hurt, isolated and alone. Luckily, she had a refuge nearby. She’d zip up the road to the house where her grandmother, Anna Walker, lived. In fact, Haley wanted to move in with her. Anna told her she could when school was out for the summer.

  According to her grandmother, “She rebelled against direct orders, but if you asked her to do something, she would do it.”

  To make a little spending money, Haley would babysit, walk dogs and pull weeds all over her neighborhood near the University of Kentucky. When her grandmother was in the hospital, Haley pedaled miles on her bicycle to visit her. If anything at all was in bloom, she always picked a bouquet of flowers to bring to her grandmother wherever she was.

  Haley’s real problems at home started, her grandmother said, after her stay at Charter Ridge, an adolescent psychiatric facility. Since then, she had been under the care of a psychiatrist and taking the anti-depressant drug Zoloft. Authorities reported that her stay at the facility was prompted by the emotional damage done by an incident of sexual abuse.

  On May 13, she was not in school because she had an appointment with her psychiatrist. First thing in the morning, she went up to her grandmother’s house for breakfast. Afterwards, she stopped by her home to play a few video games. Then she mounted her silver-gray mountain bike with Day-Glo orange spray-painted grips and headed for Elizabeth Street Park.

  As she rode to the park, she kept a sharp eye out for stray dogs. Haley had become very wary of them since she was bitten nearly a month earlier. She was nearing the end of the series of painful shots she needed to guard against the possibility of rabies.

  She propped her bike against the end of a set of swings. She pushed off in the dirt beneath a swing, pumping her legs harder and harder to achieve the greatest height possible. Lost in the sensation of the ride, the cooling breeze racing through her hair, she was unprepared for what happened next.

  SELLS’ predatory instincts ignited when he saw the girl all alone on the swing. He scanned the park—no one was there. His eyes drifted over to the overgrown, wooded section behind the park. Another opportunity presented itself, and he snatched it up.

  He shoved her off the swing. One rough hand slapped over her mouth and held on tight. The other arm squeezed her tightly to his side as she struggled. He dragged her kicking and squirming out of the park and out of sight. He dumped her in the undergrowth and debris. Demanding oral sex, he told her if she did what he said, she would not be hurt. Fearful, she obeyed.

  Sells then removed her shirt and, sitting behind her, pulled her to his chest. When he heard the sound of voices coming their way, his hand flew back over her mouth. He gripped her securely, keeping her silent and still until a man and woman strolled by on their walk through the park. Haley did not struggle to escape. She thought she would be safer if she didn’t put up a fight. She’d already learned that she could survive unpleasant experiences like this one. She just had to do what she was told and she would be okay.

  Once the couple was out of hearing distance, Sells yanked off Haley’s remaining clothing, pushed her down into a bed of dried leaves and discarded beer cans and raped her. The cans crushed beneath her naked back. The edges of their rims dug into her skin. She fought to hold in the tears, to hold her emotions in check until he was finished and would leave her alone. But her previous experience had not prepared her for what would happen next.

  This molester did not use her and then simply walk away. He snatched her shirt off of the ground and wrapped it around her throat. He twisted it tight, exerting pressure to cut off her supply of air. Her hands clawed at the fabric tourniquet around her neck, trying to loosen its grip. He pulled the shirt tighter. Her ragged little fingernails scraped across the back of his hands, but barely left a mark. She reached up, stretching as far as she could, aiming for his eyes. Before her fingers could reach their target, though, Haley passed out. Her hands fell limp as wilted flowers to the ground. Sells maintained his choke hold on her neck without letting up. He knew it would take a few more minutes before the job was done. Long after the last breath of life whispered out of her body, he released his grip.

  He pushed her into an indented contour in the ground and shoveled debris over her with his hands. Brushing the leaves off his clothing and running his fingers through his hair, he emerged from the woods. He jumped on Haley’s mountain bike and pedaled his way to the projects. There, he sold her bicycle to a Hispanic man for twenty dollars without a second thought.

  IT was time for Haley’s appointment with her psychiatrist, but her mother, Reba McHone, could not find her anywhere. Reba went to her mother’s house, but Anna had not seen Haley since breakfast. The rest of that day, Reba, Haley’s father, Michael, and the three older children in the home scoured the neighborhood in search of the young girl. They roamed the streets until well after dark.

  AT 11:52 that night, a Lexington police officer found Sells, passed out and drunk, lying in a heap at the foot of a lamppost. He prodded him awake and arrested him for public intoxication. He was released the next morning. Without picking up his last paycheck, he hopped a freight train and disembarked near the Indiana border. He stole a truck near the tracks and drove off. When it broke down, he broke into a small business office, stole some cash, ripped off another truck and headed north.

  FOR ten interminable days, Haley’s family and the police department stuck up posters about the missing child in an ever-widening circle from her home. Sightings of Haley were reported, but could never be confirmed. Every one ushered in a swell of hope. Each disappointment laid another brick of despair on their chests.

  Then, a dog walking with his owner in Elizabeth Street Park picked up a scent. He pulled his owner into the woods. The poor man did not know what had gotten into his pet. He was normally a well-behaved animal, but no amount of tugging or scolding could keep him from this quest. By the time they reached the source of the dog’s concern, the smell was overwhelming. The man rushed home and called police. Haley’s body had been found.

  Soon, the neighborhood was swirling with red and blue lights, police on bicycles and on foot. After hearing the tragic news, Anna Walker approached one of the officers and said, “It’s a little late to be policing the park, isn’t it?”

  ONCE the yellow crime-scene tape came down, it was replaced with flower bouquets, potted blooming plants and heartfelt notes as a memorial to the slain child. On the evening of May 27, a crowd of 200 teenagers, neighbors, college students and faculty, family and friends gathered in somber reverence for a candlelight vigil.

  Haley’s body had been found just a hundred yards from the spot on the railroad tracks where another body was found twenty-one months earlier. Christopher Maier, a 21-year-old University of Kentucky student, was beaten to death and left on the tracks. His girlfriend was raped, beaten, cut across her neck and discarded by his side. But she survived. At the time of Haley’s death, that case was still unsolved. Then, in June, the murderer of the student was identified as Angel Matur
ino Resendiz, the man the media had dubbed “the Railway Killer.”

  Speculation that Resendiz was also guilty of Haley’s murder bubbled through Lexington. The Lexington Police Department pursued that possibility, but found it groundless.

  In the coming weeks, the community joined hands to landscape the park, clean up the overgrown woods and erect a fence. They also banded together to form a neighborhood watch—vigilance replacing their previous illusions of safety.

  Anna Walker grieved deeply at the loss of her grand-child—the girl she called “the soul of my life.” From the day the body was found, she continued to spend a part of each day talking to Haley. In an irony unnoticed at the time, a photo of a distraught Anna in Elizabeth Street Park was published in the Lexington Herald-Leader seven weeks after Haley’s body was discovered. In it, Anna wore a tee shirt that bore two words: “Tommy Girl.”

  BEFORE the body was found, Tommy Lynn Sells was under arrest again. He was picked up this time in Madison, Wisconsin, for being drunk and waving around a box-cutter in a threatening manner. The weapon earned him more than his typical overnight stay in the drunk tank. In custody, he assaulted another inmate at the Dade County jail. He slammed the man’s face into a table and ground it into the surface until guards restrained him. Sells had not liked what the man had to say.

  By June 10, he had come down from the frenzy that consumed him when he attacked his fellow prisoner. In the aftermath, he swam in the depths of despondency. He gave the jailer a handmade hangman’s noose and told him, “I want to kill myself.”

  Released from the county jail on June 24, he raced home to Del Rio. His arrival was greeted with discord. He could not get his job back at Ram Country. He and Jessica fought so ferociously over one of her girls that law enforcement was called to their home. Lieutenant Larry Pope of the Val Verde Sheriff’s Department arrived there with a woman from the Texas Department of Protective Services. The allegation had been made that Tommy had molested Jessica’s daughter, Samantha. The social worker made it clear: Jessica and her four children could not stay in the trailer with him.

  Jessica took her family to her mother’s home. On July 3, Sells drove north—next stop, Oklahoma.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  1998 had been a harrowing year for Susan Wofford and her family in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Fred and Susan had been living in the rural area, thirty miles northwest of Oklahoma City, for twelve years. Before that, they’d lived in the southern outskirts of the city in the town of Norman, where all three of their children had been born.

  Ricky was 17, Michael, 14, and their daughter, Bobbie Lynn, had just turned 13 when their troubles began. A phone call from the hospital heralded a season of tragic events. Ricky had been admitted with severe injuries from an automobile accident. He had been sitting in the back seat of a car driven by a friend. That entire seat flew forward through the windshield on impact. The broken glass ripped Ricky’s face to shreds, permanently altering his features.

  Ricky had healed enough two months later to go out to a basketball game with his brother, Michael. Their father Fred dropped them off at the high school, then disappeared. For two confusing weeks, Susan wondered and worried. She did not know whether Fred was dead or alive. Her mind toyed with every possible scenario. Then law enforcement located his vehicle on a dead-end street very close to their home. His body was sprawled behind the steering wheel with a gunshot wound to his head. Fred had committed suicide.

  Only a month later, Susan’s son, Michael, was sitting in the passenger seat of a van as it rolled down the highway. The vehicle went out of control. It rolled over in the median strip, sliding to a stop upside down. The roof was smashed down into the tops of the seats. Michael survived only because he had been thrown clear of the van before it rolled onto its roof. But he had sustained serious injuries—broken ribs, a fractured collarbone and punctured lungs. He was barely able to breathe when paramedics arrived. He was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

  Throughout all this turmoil, Bobbie Lynn was the bright spot in Susan’s life. She was a joyful, creative girl who was a straight-A student and the comedian of her class. She played baritone sax and trumpet in the school band and competed on the basketball team.

  At home, she loved to read and play with her cats. Like many homes out in the country, they had more felines prowling around than would be considered normal in an urban or suburban setting. But Bobbie Lynn knew every single one of them by name. She was more than willing to play mother to a kitten when its real mother disappeared from the scene—nursing it with a bottle until it was ready for solid food.

  After all the misery of 1998, Susan Wofford deserved a break. She was not going to get one in 1999.

  IN the spring of that year, Bobbie Lynn hit that difficult stage that all parents dread. As her body underwent its natural metamorphosis, her relationship with her mother transformed as well. Susan was used to her daughter trailing her around the house chattering non-stop about everything in her life and every thought that crossed her mind. To Susan, it seemed as if the change in her daughter happened overnight. She became quiet and wanted to spend more time alone in her room. Socializing with friends became far more important than hanging with her family and her passel of cats.

  On July 2, 1999, the 14-year-old told her Mom she was going with friends to Canton Lake in Blaine County for the weekend. Susan gave Bobbie Lynn ten dollars spending money for the trip. She watched as her daughter got into their car. She hated to see her going anywhere in an automobile—last year’s accidents were still so vivid in her mind. She knew, though that if she stifled the girl, she would surely lose her. So she held her peace while Bobbie Lynn drove away.

  Bobbie Lynn never made it to the lake. As planned beforehand, she left that bunch of friends and embarked on a reckless adventure with a group of kids she knew could not gain her mother’s approval. It was just another chapter in the common lying game played by teenagers in families across the country. But for Bobbie Lynn Wofford, it was a fatal deceit.

  TOMMY Lynn Sells arrived in Kingfisher that same weekend. While he drove up from Del Rio, he drank heavily and injected cocaine throughout the day and into the night. Despite his altered state of consciousness, Sells remembered the details of this night. And his memory marches to the cadence of the evidence uncovered by investigators. North of Oklahoma City, he drove up Route 81, to the town of Waukomis. There, he abruptly turned around and headed south. In the early hours of July 5, he pulled into the first convenience store he saw, Love’s in Kingfisher, to inflate a troublesome leaking tire on his ‘79 Dodge L’il Red Express and to take a look under the hood. The truck, a wedding present from his bride, was his pride and joy. It was an impressive pick-up, even by Oklahoma standards, sporting the shiny chrome stacks one normally sees only on a semi.

  At 4 A.M., after selling some cocaine to an older couple in the parking lot, he spotted a slender young woman about 5’5” with blonde hair and blue eyes and multiple earrings. She was using the phone and complaining bitterly about not being able to reach anyone.

  Sells saw his opportunity and approached the seventh-grade student. “Why’s a pretty woman such as yourself bitching so much?”

  She explained she needed a ride home and could not find one.

  Sells replied, “Cool. I’ll give you a ride. Hop in my truck.” Sells closed the hood and dropped his tools on the truck floor. Bobbie Lynn settled in the passenger seat. Her relief at going home was tinged by guilt about where she had been. She hoped her mother would never find out.

  Sells smiled at the girl and pulled out of the parking lot. “Want some coke? I’ve got some.”

  “I don’t have any money,” Bobbie Lynn stalled.

  “You have something worth a lot more than money,” he said.

  Second thoughts wrapped around Bobbie Lynn’s throat like a boa constrictor. “I better not go. Take me back to Love’s.”

  Sells’ hand flashed across the seat, back-handing the girl in the face wit
h shocking force. “Shut the fuck up!”

  Intimidated by the pain and fear, Bobbie Lynn did not move. She stared straight ahead as her mind raced down avenues of regret. Sells drove northwest of Kingfisher and pulled over on a dark, isolated road, near a creek and cemetery. He pulled off her clothes and forced her to perform oral sex while she whimpered and protested. He fondled her young body, intent on raping her. Before he could penetrate her, Bobbie Lynn’s desperation overcame her fear. She slapped and scratched her assailant, then aimed a kick at his genitals. Sells’ blood-red rage erupted. He grabbed a ratchet off the floor of the truck and rammed it inside her.

  Bobbie Lynn still fought back, jerking open the door of the truck, determined to escape into the night. But Sells had a gun. He shot her in the head and she fell from the truck into the dirt on the side of the lonely road.

  Now, it was time to clean up the scene before daybreak revealed his crime. He’d been here before. He knew what he had to do. He grabbed her yellow duffle bag and black purse and threw them as far as he could. In flight, the purse disgorged cosmetics and a public library card. The pair of earrings she wore caught his eye. He plucked them from her earlobes and slid them in his pocket.

  He also removed the ratchet—too valuable a tool for a car mechanic to leave behind—pulled her clothing back in place and lifted Bobbie Lynn’s lifeless body. At 115 pounds, she was an easy burden. Along the way, he lost her tennis shoes in the undergrowth. He disposed of her body in a less conspicuous spot well off the road. Although disheveled, Bobbie’s body was again clad in the green khaki pants and white tank top she’d worn when she met him at Love’s.

  His rage satisfied, the evidence hidden, he pointed his truck toward Texas and drove off into the first glow of dawn.