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

by Diane Fanning

  “When I went out the back door, I know I took the screens off. The back one, I grabbed it and walked back around to the front. I, like, don’t think you found any of my prints out there, you might’ve, but I doubt it. I was pretty careful about that.”

  “Were you careful about not touching something, or did you wipe them off?”

  “Wipe them off.”

  After Pope and Allen elicited all the details they could about the disposal of the screens, Allen asked, “You said you were in the van?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Which van is that?”

  In response, Sells’ face expressed the first sign of genuine concern during the confession. “My wife’s van. It’s all she’s got. Please don’t take it from her.”

  “Back up a minute, Tommy,” Allen said. “What reason would there have been to cut that girl’s underwear?”

  “Just to make it look like that.”

  “Look like what?”

  “Like a rape scene or something, I don’t know, like . . .”

  Allen interrupted. “Was there ever any attempt at any kind of sexual assault?”

  “No,” Sells insisted. “I didn’t touch her or nothing. I’m telling you I done it right? That’s the way it happened. I didn’t try to screw her or nothing. I didn’t.”

  “It’s like I told you,” Pope said. “All I want is the truth. If you get some part of it you don’t want to answer, just say, ‘I don’t want to answer that.’ “

  “I’ll tell you, I don’t mind. I’m glad it’s over with.”

  “Why are you glad it’s over with?” Allen asked.

  “Hurting people ain’t good.”

  “Do you think, Tommy, you would have continued?”

  “I know without a doubt, I wouldn’t have stopped.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  EARLY in the afternoon of January 2, Pope, Allen and Sells went out to the Harris home to videotape a walk-through of the crime scene. Allen operated the camera. Pope did the questioning. They started down at the spot where Sells had parked the van that night. They walked up the path he’d followed to the trailer. Sells circled the home, showing them the door he’d attempted to jimmy, the window he’d tried to open and where he’d actually entered the home.

  He crawled back in through that window again and casually revisited the site of the carnage. He re-enacted all his movements through the home and into Kaylene’s bedroom. “She tried to come over here.” He stood in the spot by the bedroom door. “And I stabbed her like right here somewhere.”

  He moved to the end of the bunk bed and said, “I stabbed her here and she, like, jumped back, and I cut her like this right here.” He nonchalantly demonstrated the flick of a knife blade across the girl’s throat. “She fell down right here,” he said as he bent down to the floor, “and I think I reached down there and done it one more time.”

  He walked over to the side of the top bunk. “And this little girl up here, and I walked over her and went like this.” His hand made a puny flip of the wrist over the spot where Krystal’s neck had lain that night.

  “This girl just fell down? There was no more struggle or anything?” Pope asked. “ ‘Cause I’m looking at this room and I see blood over here, here, here.” As he pointed out the blood, Allen scanned the area with the camera. “Is there any more movement than that?” Pope continued,

  “Now, I know you may not remember everything but do you know how some of this blood may have gotten around this room?”

  “Maybe when the little girl got up. Right here”—he moved to the foot of the bunk bed and pointed to the floor—”was the main conflict. And I walked over here”— he returned to the side of the bed—”and I cut this one. Then I was getting a little nervous.”

  Before returning to the Val Verde Correctional Center, the officers and Sells stopped by Val Verde Regional Medical Center and drew up blood samples for forensic testing.

  Lieutenant Pope had videotaped a confession and a walk-through of the crime scene. The district attorney wanted more—he requested a written confession, too.

  In that session with Sells, Pope asked, “Tommy, did you take a souvenir or something?”

  “No, I don’t ever take anything,” Sells answered.

  With that denial, there was no evidence of felony theft, since the family could not identify any items missing from their home except for the two window screens.

  Pope typed up the confession with a standard phrase establishing Sells’ identity and a list of his constitutional rights. Sells initialed each of the rights and signed each page. One statement was made in this confession that differed from his videotaped accounts. Sells said, “I touched her between the legs and I touched her breast.”

  The comment did not resonate then with the sleep-deprived investigator. The next morning, however, Pope could not shake it out of his mind.

  He had the prisoner brought from his cell to Pope’s office and said to him, “Look, in the State of Texas, when you’re under arrest, anything you tell me can’t be used in court unless you write it down and sign it, or it’s recorded somehow or another. So I want to ask you something. What did you mean when you said you touched her between the legs? Did you rub her? Did you put your fingers inside her? What did you do?”

  “I put my finger inside her,” Sells admitted.

  “Now, I’m going to tell you something. In the State of Texas, that is rape. With a rape and a killing, that’s a capital punishment. That means you get the death sentence.”

  Sells looked at Pope, but said nothing.

  “What I want you to do is give me a statement that says that, but I told you what it can do.”

  “Well, it’s the truth.”

  “Okay. I’ll take it.”

  Pope prepared and Sells signed the following statement on January 7, 2000, at 5:04 P.M..

  Last night, I gave Inv. Pope a written statement. In that statement, I told him I touched the Harris girl between her legs before I cut her with the knife I had.

  Today Inv. Pope called me into his office and told me he wanted to know more details about this touching, if I was willing to tell him. He wanted to know if I rubbed her between the legs or patted her or if I put my finger in her vagina. I told him I put my finger in her vagina. He then told me he could not repeat what I told him in court.

  He then asks me if I was willing to put it in writing and sign it. He said if I did that it could be used in court and the fact that I had put my finger in her vagina against her will, would be a rape and this would result in me being charged in CAPITAL MURDER and this would probably result in me be [sic] sentenced to DEATH.

  I told him it was the truth and I was willing to give a written statement. When I went into the bedroom where the murder happened, I got in the bottom bunk bed with the Harris girl. I don’t know her first name but I knew she was kin to Terry Harris. I don’t know what I said but I threatened her with the knife to keep her quiet. I cut her panties off and I cut or pulled her bra off. I touched her breast and I put my hand between her legs and I put my finger in her vagina. Shortly after that she jumped out of bed and I have told the rest.

  I know this statement can result in me getting the death penalty. I don’t want to die but it’s the truth and I just don’t want to hurt anyone else.

  I am giving this statement of my own free will and it is true and correct to the best of my ability. I fully realize that I do not have to give any statement or talk to anyone and if I want to talk to anyone I can have an attorney present before I talk. I do not want an attorney present and I have not requested an attorney at any time since my arrest.

  And the confessions didn’t stop. One murder after another tripped off his tongue. Haley McHone, May 1999. When asked why he’d killed her, he said, “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The Dardeen family, November 1987. When describing Eileen, he said, “She was big in the front.” For some reason, he was uncomfortable saying that she was pregnant. Ena Cordt, July 1985. A forged do
cument surfaced and rumors swirled that a judge had paid for her murder because he was having an affair with her and she was causing trouble. Mary Bea Perez, April 1999. He sat on the floor of the rest room and demonstrated how he’d strangled her.

  The list went on and on. Some provided no easy means of verification. In St. Louis, for example, Sells claimed that when he worked for Atlas Towing in 1986, he’d received a call from a 25- to 30-year-old prostitute whose car had broken down. When he got to her disabled vehicle, she did not have any money. Sells suggested a trade: she would have sex with him and he would take care of her car. When she wasn’t interested in the deal, he shot her and threw her body in the river.

  Pope and Sells had frequent conversations outside of official interrogations during his time in the Val Verde Correction Center, which housed the jail as well as all the offices of the sheriff’s department.

  In one talk, Pope asked, “Tommy, I can see how you kill these girls. You’re stronger than them and stuff. But how do you kill those men and not get roughed up in the process?”

  Sells was on his feet before Pope’s lips had a chance to close. His hand flashed out and drew a line across the lieutenant’s throat. “Once you cut their throat,” he said, “their hands are at their throat and you’ve got no hands to worry about.”

  Sherrif D’Wayne Jernigan played a role in keeping the confessions flowing. He spent hours in the cell with his prisoner talking to him about his spiritual well-being. Another prisoner, Jose Cerveray, gave Sells a Bible that he just tossed on the floor. Jernigan picked the book up and encouraged him to read Isaiah 55:7. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and let the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

  The sheriff returned to the cell regularly, often bringing a tin of snuff. He always greeted the prisoner with a handshake and a hug. When Cerveray was shipped off to prison, he gave Sells a plant he had raised in his quarters. The sheriff’s wife brought in a second plant to adorn Sells’ room.

  Eventually, the religious exhortations of the sheriff, the neighboring inmate, his wife and his mother-in-law led Sells to believe he had found the Lord. In an outdoor, enclosed compound, a prison minister baptized him in a large tub.

  AS soon as Terry Harris could arrange for Kaylene’s body to be shipped to Kansas, the rest of the family followed. They lived with Crystal’s mother for most of January. Crystal and Terry knew they had to get the kids back in school. They left the warm embrace of family with great reluctance and moved back to their home near Del Rio at the end of the month.

  It was impossible to sleep in their old home. Every little bump or whisper in the night spiked the level of adrenaline in their bloodstreams. During the day, every room echoed with Katy’s presence.

  At work, Terry found that his ability to concentrate was impaired and the responsibilities of a familiar job were now overwhelming. One afternoon, two weeks after their return, Terry called Crystal from his office. “I want to go home.”

  “Come home. We’ll pack everything up and just go.”

  Crystal had understood without a word of explanation. They moved back to Kansas on Terry’s birthday, February 12.

  WHEN the body count from his confessions reached fifty, Sells claimed that he was only 70 percent finished.

  In the midst of all these confessions, Ranger Smith’s curiosity was piqued by Sells’ lifestyle. “Tommy, you go off on all these little adventures, you gotta eat. If you don’t want to eat, you gotta buy your dope. They’re not gonna give it to you. You ain’t gonna work. How do you make any money?”

  “Well, I can make three to five hundred dollars a day holding a sign that says, ‘Homeless. Please help. God Bless.’ I can make even more with a woman and a child with me,” Sells said. He expanded on this scam later in a letter. “I was thinking about some of the ways I made money as a homeless person. Was it a con? I don’t believe so. ‘Homeless will work for food. Please Help.’ Or be at spring break on some beach, Daytona’s one of the best, have a one-step camera, point, push the button. Or wash windows.” He added that homelessness was not a lifestyle he was forced to live. It was one he preferred.

  “Almost anyplace you put up that sign, you can get a fast 20 or so, you do it when the traffic is the heaviest, between lights. The same with the windows just steal a squeegee. And the camera thing is always good in a place: beach, riverwalk.”

  CALLS started coming in to the Texas Rangers from California to New England. After the calls, many came to talk to Sells in person about their cases. They listened to him with hope, relief and horror as he recounted details. Thirteen murders were confirmed in a short time.

  Not all seekers of justice found answers from Tommy Lynn Sells. On November 18, 1993, 9-year-old Angie Housman had been abducted from her home in O’Fallon, Missouri, near St. Louis. Her assailant had raped and tortured her, leaving her bound to a tree, where she died of exposure. An unidentified black teenaged girl was found in a boxcar on April 2, 1996. She was wrapped in sheets in the train when it stopped at the Tropicana Plant near Bra-denton in Manatee County, Florida. She died of suffocation. But their tormentor was not Tommy Lynn Sells. At the time of both these crimes, he was a guest of the penal system in West Virginia.

  Sells told his questioners that he had a dream about the murders of Pamela Casteneda and her mother, Margaret McClain. The crime occurred in Charleston, West Virginia, on September 7, 1991. At first, it was considered a possibility that Sells was making an indirect confession with some wiggle room. The prosecution team in Del Rio nurtured this suspicion for quite some time. In fact, District Attorney Thomas Lee cited it in a response to the defendant’s pre-trial motion in July. It was one of the murders he listed as evidence of extraneous crime or bad acts. Nonetheless, another man, Dana December Smith, is still behind bars for this crime. His DNA was a match.

  San Francisco police wanted to know if Sells was responsible for the disappearance of 13-year-old Ilene Mish-eloff. She vanished without a trace as she walked home from school on January 30, 1989. They could uncover no clear connection to the man behind bars in Texas.

  Then there was the case of 40-year-old Thomas Brose. He, too, worked the carnival circuit. On April 15, 1998, his body was found in his motor home at the Marina Motel on Roosevelt Avenue in the south side of San Antonio. Based on an identification of Sells’ picture by a landlord in the Rio Grande Valley, the family of the victim believes Brose rented an apartment for other carnival workers, including Sells, in Mercedes, Texas, and that Sells moved with the carnival to San Antonio, where he shot Brose to death. San Antonio law enforcement, however, did not consider Sells a suspect. And, after initially agreeing with Brose’s family that he was responsible for the murder, Sells more recently said that he was in Del Rio all that month.

  But Lieutenant Larry Pope still wondered. “There’s a lot to indicate he did that one. He said a lot of things that really matched up. But he said he doesn’t want to tell about it ‘cause they [the State of Texas] ‘ll give you the death penalty.”

  In pursuit of corroborating evidence for some of the others, it was time for Tommy Lynn Sells to take his confessional on the road. In March, Rangers Allen and Smith made the arrangements for a visit to Arkansas, Idaho and Nevada.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE Rangers, Sells and two pilots flew off in the Department of Public Safety’s aircraft. Before they could go to any crime scenes, though, there was one additional stop to make. A small oil leak had been found in the plane during its annual check-up. The pilots needed to make a stop in Oklahoma City, the closest location where they could find mechanics capable of repairing that plane.

  The Rangers and their prisoner sat in the lounge of the repair shop. Two men with guns and a man in handcuffs created an uncomfortable time for all involved. Any distraction was a welcome diversion. They watched the coffee supply truck pull into the lot with uncommon interest. The woman driving the truc
k maintained their attention as she performed the mundane task of unloading supplies. They watched as she waved to the men who had helped her and jumped into the truck. All eyes were on her when she backed her vehicle up and ran into their plane. She hit one wing, bending up the tip so that it pointed straight to the sky. In that small fender-bender, she did a total of $25,000 to $30,000 worth of damage. They were now stranded before their trip had really begun.

  The pilots booked flights with Southwest Airlines and headed back to Austin. It wasn’t quite as simple for the Rangers. As Coy Smith put it, “To get a prisoner on a commercial flight and wear a gun, I’d rather nearly walk back to Texas.”

  Johnny Allen negotiated with the coffee company. Their insurance policies would cover most of the cost of the remainder of the Rangers’ exploratory trip; the company would cover the rest. Oklahoma Executive Jet Charters was hired, and they flew to Arkansas.

  THE stop in Little Rock started out looking like a waste of time. Local authorities had no record of a homicide in 1982 at the house Sells pointed out. But when Lieutenant Terry Ward of the Little Rock Police Department contacted the homeowner to see if he had any recollection of any unusual event, he did. It had happened to his tenant, only he did not die. He fell to the ground and played dead as Sells pulled the trigger.

  Sells then led investigators and the crew of 48 Hours down tiny country roads to the blue hole where he claimed to have left a woman’s body after he raped her. Local authorities, though, did not want to expend the funds necessary for an expensive underwater search to locate her body. That was where the mystery ended. Her name unknown. Her death uncertain.

  THE next stop was Twin Falls, Idaho. There, Sells led investigators to the site of a 1997 murder. He confessed to raping and killing a long-haired blonde woman, chopping her body up with an axe and burying her on the banks of the Snake River.