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

by Diane Fanning

  He left the property when the woman’s son, visiting his mother for the holidays, pulled up to the house. Sells stopped by his trailer and picked up one of his long-bladed knives that sat outside. Jessica was never aware of his presence.

  SELLS drove Jessica’s van east on Route 90 toward Del Rio. Just before he reached Lake Amistad, he turned left and drove through the stone arch to Guajia Bay. After curving left and right, the road dipped down before heading up to the homes on the hill. Sells parked the van at the lowest point and went the rest of the way on foot.

  He approached the house as quietly as any four-legged predator on the prowl, but it was not noiseless enough for the Harrises’ dog. Sells had to pause and pet him before he could break into the trailer and murder Katy Harris and slice the throat of Krystal Surles.

  Down the hall, a noise woke up Justin. He didn’t know what he had heard but, unconcerned, he got up and went to the bathroom. Sells emerged in the living room and headed for the back door. Justin’s alarm had been set to help him avoid wetting the bed. It chose that moment to blare out its obnoxious wake-up signal. Sells slipped down the hall, shut off the alarm and then left the trailer by the back door. Justin returned to his room, still unaware of the intruder’s presence. He assumed one of his sisters had cut off the alarm and he went back to sleep.

  Sells took his bloody knife with him when he left the house. He stopped outside to snatch up the two screens he’d removed from the windows earlier and drove farther down Route 90 to the lake. On the bridge, he threw the screens as far as he could and listened until they splashed in the water.

  At home, he washed the blood off of his hands, undressed and crawled into his king-size waterbed. He pleaded with Jessica to hold him. She wrapped her arms around his body and clutched him tight until he drifted off to sleep.

  He awoke at noon and Jessica was already up and gone. He arranged for the sale of his truck, but would have to wait until Monday when the credit union opened to get the money. He decided there was one more thing to do before he left town. He had to get back at Frances Cuzak, an attorney and federal public defender who had ticked him off. A short time before, he had met her son at a bar and gone with him to Frances’ home. He’d monopolized the telephone all evening until she’d told him she had calls to make. Her attitude deeply offended Sells. He planned to kill her on Sunday night.

  His future settled, he walked up to the house of the friend he’d run into at the bar the night before. They drank whiskey and beer and shot up cocaine. He staggered home from Sonny’s at one point, but an angry Jessica threw his clean clothes out in the yard and told him not to come back until he sobered up. She slammed the door in his face and locked it. Sells returned to Sonny’s house.

  AFTER Sells was inside Sonny’s place, the sheriff set up surveillance of the trailer where Sells lived. Not wanting to make him aware of their presence before they had a warrant, they stayed on the other side of the street. Ironically, Sells was not in his home, but at Sonny’s, on the same side of the street where the officer had set up to watch him.

  Sells got busy working the phone. He made several threatening calls to his mother-in-law, Virginia Blanco. She reported these messages to the sheriff’s department. When asked by deputies if they should move in and take Sells now, Pope said, “Put the mother-in-law in a motel. Don’t park her car there, just put her in a motel. Make sure her car’s nowhere near that motel. Then she’s safe, forget it and just keep watching that trailer.”

  Many hours later, he did return. Although he was still under the influence of drugs and alcohol, Jessica unlocked the door and let him in.

  A deputy placed an urgent call to Pope soon after Sells’ arrival home. “Somebody screamed in the trailer, we want to go in.”

  “No, no, don’t. Did you hear one scream?”

  “Just one.”

  “Well, one of two things happened. Somebody stubbed their toe and yelled, or somebody cut somebody’s throat, in which case you’re too late. You hear any more screams, then you can get in there. Just watch it—watch the trailer.”

  Unaware of the concern outside, Sells went to bed and slept until the authorities arrived with an arrest warrant for capital murder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  AFTER Sells was booked at the Val Verde Correctional Center, he sat down with Lieutenant Larry Pope and Texas Ranger Johnny Allen while the video camera rolled. Sells’ tough-guy demeanor softened considerably once that little red light went on.

  Pope stated that the date and time was January 2, 2000, at 8:06:46 A.M.. “Okay, let’s introduce ourselves around here. I’m Larry Pope, Lieutenant with the Val Verde Sheriff’s Department, Criminal Investigations Division.”

  “My name is Allen, John Allen with the Texas Rangers, stationed here in Del Rio.”

  “And I’m Tommy Sells. They put me under arrest for a murder we just talked about.”

  “You’ve been read your rights once tonight already and I want to take this opportunity to read them to you again,” Pope began.

  “I understand that, and I waived all my rights,” Sells said.

  “Well, let me read them to you,” Pope said and continued on with the standard recitation.

  Sells seemed distracted, fiddling with the watchband on his arm.

  Pope warned him, “If there’s something you don’t want to talk about, you should not lie about it. You should just say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ It’s your right. Now I advise you, if you lie about it, if it came out, it would just make you look bad.”

  “I understand.”

  The preliminaries finished, the questioning and official recorded confession began. “Tommy, you were arrested for the murder of . . .” Pope said.

  “I don’t know,” Sells interrupted.

  “You don’t know her first name? You know her nick-name—what they call her by? You don’t know who she is? You know she’s the Harris girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Terry Harris’ first girl?” Pope clarified.

  “Right.”

  “We know her as Kathleen or Kathy . . .” Pope began.

  “Kaylene,” Allen corrected.

  “Kaylene, excuse me, or Katy, and there was another girl there also. You were also arrested for attempted murder on her. Do you know that girl’s name or anything?”

  “No.”

  Pope and Allen established the identity of the second girl as Krystal Surles and confirmed that Sells agreed to talk about what happened.

  Sells said, “I was going to do a lawyer today. I was wanting to kill a lawyer.”

  “What lawyer?” Allen asked.

  “Lives across the street.”

  “From the campgrounds?”

  “Yeah, across the street from the campgrounds.”

  “What for?” Allen queried.

  “Well, I guess . . .”

  Pope interrupted, “When were you going to kill him?”

  “Her,” Sells clarified.

  “Her.”

  “Just . . . How can I explain this to make any sense? She stepped over my foot somewhere and I didn’t like it. I was going to get revenge on her.”

  After a break to light cigarettes and adjust the volume control on the microphone, Pope continued, “The point we agreed to start on, I believe, was the evening of December 30, 1999, when you meet in Del Rio some place with Terry Harris.”

  “Uh, okay.”

  “Tell me, who-all was there and where did you meet?”

  “We met at Pico’s station—I think it’s Pico’s, it’s . . .”

  Allen interjected, “It might be Shamrock or something?”

  “It’s right by Ram Country. Me and my wife were in there, I was buying a pack of cigarettes. Terry pulls up. Me and Terry went inside. I stopped to make a phone call, that’s the reason I was there. Uh, me and Terry goes inside for a little while—less than five minutes—We talked for less than five minutes. We came back out and he told me he was going to Kansas. I asked him when he was g
oing to pay me my money. He said his buddy had hit a deer with his car and he was going up to Kansas to get his truck or something.”

  “Did he owe you money?” Allen asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, how much money did he owe you?”

  “Less than five thousand dollars,” Sells said.

  “Why would he have owed you that?”

  “Cocaine,” he said.

  “Coke?” Pope asked.

  “Yeah, I guess coke fronted to me and I fronted to him. He never made payments since then.”

  “This is all five thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine at one time or over a period of time, how did that accumulate?”

  “No, it was just one time.”

  “One time?” Allen asked. “You gave him five thousand dollars’ worth at one time?”

  “Actually, I owed three thousand dollars on it and I charged him five.”

  “Okay.”

  “I had to make some money for me.”

  “Yeah, I understand business,” Allen responded. “How long ago?”

  “Oh, uh, two months ago.”

  “Two months ago?”

  “Yeah, give or take.” Sells shrugged his shoulders and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “All right. And he didn’t—did he or didn’t he—pay you that night?” Pope asked.

  “No.”

  “Okay. And what was your general consensus? What did you think? Was he handling it? Was he going to pay you something, or what? What was your opinion?”

  Sells shook his head. “It didn’t strike me then. It didn’t strike me.”

  “Well, did it upset you or anything?”

  “I didn’t give it much thought.”

  “Okay,” Pope conceded.

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember. I said, ‘I’ll see you later.’ “

  “Okay.”

  “And me and the wife went on and once there, we got into an argument and I went to the bar and got drunker than hell. And when I left the bar, I started, I stopped down at that there flea market a little up above the campgrounds.”

  Pope shook his head, “Yes. The one down in that hole.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Where the road goes way down?”

  “I stopped down there and ate some deer meat or something they had in the refrigerator back there. And then, it was just like a bell went off in my head. It’s just like it said, ‘That’s what you can do.’ “

  “Meaning what?” Allen asked. “What do you mean when you said, ‘That’s what I can do’?”

  “Go down to Terry’s place. I didn’t go down there to kill. I didn’t go down there to rape. I didn’t go down there—I just say—go down there. It wasn’t premeditated, you know. It’s like that girl in Kentucky, you know. I didn’t premeditate it. It just happened. And I went through the window where the little blind boy used to sleep. He said . . .”

  Pope broke in, “Let’s back up first. You talked a little earlier about, uh, the weapon that you chose to take.”

  “Well, it wasn’t chosen. It was what I had with me.”

  “When you left your house—Did you take anything with you when you left your house?” Allen asked.

  “Yeah, the knife.”

  “And, it was . . .”

  Sells held up his hands to demonstrate the length of the knife. “About that long.”

  “Handle and blade and all?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Allen said. “A little bit over twelve inches. What kind of blade did it have on it?”

  “A thin one, long one, with a little tip.”

  “So you eat deer meat and say, ‘That’s what I can do.’ So, where’d you go? What happened?”

  “Well, I go down to Terry’s house. I fuck around with the dog a little bit outside, then I figure out how to get in the trailer. I’m so drunk,” Sells said with a smile, “I’m surprised I didn’t wake up half of Del Rio, I’m so drunk. It’s like a blur. I finally figured out a way to get in the trailer.”

  “How did you get in?” Allen asked.

  “I tried to jimmy the back door at first. I tried to get into the back door to begin with and I was too drunk. I screwed that up.” Sells’ body language relaxed. His tone of voice became jocular. It was as if he were describing a high school prank. “I couldn’t get in there. And then I tried a window by the living room by the back side of the trailer. Couldn’t get in and actually I was walking around to leave and I noticed a window up. That’s by where the water tank was.”

  “On the back? Front? What?” The edginess in Allen’s voice reflected his discomfort.

  “The front.” Sells reacted to Allen’s tone and straightened in his seat.

  “I wondered, did you know whose window it was?”

  “I didn’t at the time. When I got in, I did. It was the little blind one.”

  “It was whose room?” Allen asked again.

  “Their little boy—the blind little boy.”

  “Okay. That’s where the water tank is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you get through that window?”

  “It was open. I took the screen off, but the window was open.”

  “Okay.”

  “I climbed in and went to . . .”

  Allen interrupted, “When you climbed in, did the little boy say anything?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I woke him up when I climbed in. He said, ‘I wish you all would stop coming in my room,’ and I walked on out of the room and stood.”

  “By that, you think he thought it was maybe his sisters in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t think he thought it was you.”

  “No,” Sells shook his head.

  “Okay, you walk out of that room and where do you go?”

  “Into the dining room. There’s the dining room, the kitchen and the front room. I stood in that room for a few minutes and said, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ And now, it’s like, at the point where you’re all pumped up, you know? It’s bad circumstances. I thought about doing them all.”

  He described his exploration of the bedrooms as he nervously played with his fingers. “I know it seems kind of bizarre that there’s no plan-out. It was on the spur.” He said that then he thought about raping the mother, but was too drunk to act upon it.

  When his description reached Kaylene’s bedroom, Pope asked, “First time you cut her or you stabbed her . . . ?”

  “I stabbed her, in the arm, I think. She started to say something and I poked the knife at her and I said, ‘Shut up.’ And she made some kind of comment like, ‘You didn’t have to cut me.’ And I said, ‘Shut the hell up.’ And she told that little girl to go get her mom.”

  “Does that little girl know you?” Allen asked. “Has she ever seen you before?”

  “Yeah, yeah, not the one on the top bunk, I don’t think.”

  “But the one standing by the bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Allen responded.

  “And, I, uh, cut her to shut her up,” Sells added.

  “Where did you cut her the next time?” Pope asked.

  “In the stomach,” Sells tossed off as casually as someone else would state the dressing preference for his salad.

  “With a lot of force?”

  “That damn knife was so sharp, it just didn’t take a lot of force. No, sir. I heard somebody say that I cut her fingers and shit off, but if I did, I didn’t mean to do that. I just slit her throat.”

  “Well, there’s an awful lot of rumors going on about everything,” Allen explained. “Now you said you cut her throat. Was she facing you? Was she away from you? Can you remember anything? If you’re not sure about something, you’re not sure. I understand that—a lot of things went fast.”

  “I just reached out and went psssht.” His face was devoid of every emotion but boredom. “That’s how sharp that knife was.”

  “Which hand would you have had the
knife in?” Allen asked.

  “I believe it was this one,” he said wriggling the appropriate wrist.

  “The right hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s in front of you?”

  “Uh-hunh. As me and you are looking at each other. I took the knife and it was dealt with. And she fell down and I . . .”

  “Stuck her?” Pope interjected.

  “No. Cut her some more again till I was sure it was all the way—It was a done deal.”

  “Was there much fighting in the area?”

  “Nah.”

  “Not really? All right. Okay. As long as that’s the best you remember.”

  “And the little girl in the top bunk was petrified. And I done dropped the first one and I started to walk out of the room. Then, I walked back over to the top bunk and I just psssht,” he said, making a slicing motion with his hand. “And I thought I killed her.”

  “She’s in the top bunk, did you reach up, jump up or crawl up on the bed?”

  “No, it was simple. I just reached over.”

  “How was she laying down? How was she in the bed?” Allen asked.

  “I believe she was on her back.”

  “Just not moving—petrified?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was she saying anything?” Allen continued.

  “Not a word. She didn’t scream. She didn’t do nothing, nothing,” he answered. “I’m sorry for giving you all so much hassle.”

  The officers assured him that they were just doing their job. They then proceeded to question him about what happened after he left Kaylene’s room.

  “I walked out of the room. I go to the back door,” he said.

  “Did you close the door or leave the door open?” Pope asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Still had the knife in your hand?”

  “Yeah,” he said. Then he added, “I still got the knife. Well, in a roundabout way, I know where it’s at. I don’t know why I didn’t throw that into the lake. But when I left, I just walked through the house and I think I went back to her mom’s room for a brief moment. And I was, like, ‘Just get out of here,’ you know? I think I was getting panicky. And then I just walked out the back door.”

  “You said, ‘I don’t know why I didn’t throw that knife in the lake,’ “ Allen said. “Did you throw something else in the lake?”