IN San Antonio, Texas, in the summer of 2002, the trial for the murder of Mary Bea Perez still awaited a date. Many attorneys and members of the law enforcement community speculated that it would never be tried in a courtroom. Then, at the end of July, a bench warrant brought Tommy Lynn Sells back to Bexar County to consult with his attorneys. The district attorney’s office wanted to deal. If Sells would plead guilty to capital murder, the D.A. would not pursue the death penalty.
Sells rejected their offer and the case is expected to come to trial in the spring of 2003. The defense plans to call two alibi witnesses for the day that Mary Bea Perez was abducted and murdered. One of these witnesses is Jessica Levrie, who will testify that Sells was in Del Rio on April 18, 1999.
SELLS was charged by the police department in Lexington, Kentucky, for the murder of Haley McHone. The case had not yet been presented to a grand jury.
Lieutenant Jimmy Hand of the Gibson County Sheriff’s Department does not believe Tommy Lynn Sells is their man. He doubts his confession because Sells had no motive for the crime. In response, Sells wrote, “I can tell you from A to Z about what happened to that mother and kid and Gibson County, Tennessee, but you said they don’t believe I did it. You know what I have to say. I, me, Tommy Lynn, don’t have to prove I did it, they have to prove I did not do it. And they can’t.” The small details from that home provided by Sells have convinced the Texas Rangers of his guilt.
Detective Jeffery Stone of the Metropolitan Police Department in St. Louis, Missouri, has waited for the moment Sells will agree to talk to him about the three murders in his city. He said Sells wrote that he was reluctant to discuss those crimes because he had so many family members in the area. Stone insisted that he would not charge Sells if he is the perpetrator. He just wants to close the cases that have moldered unsolved for nearly twenty years.
LT. Larry Pope of the Val Verde County Sheriff’s Department was named Texas Lawman of the Year 2001 by the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas for his work in the apprehension of Tommy Lynn Sells. About his infamous prisoner he said, “Tommy doesn’t get upset, ticked off and mad like everybody else does. He gets upset and he goes to murder.”
SHIRLEY Timmons, once Department of Public Safety secretary, had turned her drawing hobby into a promotion to forensic artist in 1998. She was presented the Medal of Merit for the twenty-four suspects identified and nineteen arrests made with the help of her drawings over the preceding two years. Her most notable composite was the one she drew from the notes of Krystal Surles that had led to the arrest of Sells. She is only the seventeenth recipient of this honor in DPS history.
AGENT Steve Tanio with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation was given the 2001 Agent of the Year Award in February 2002. He was cited for his two years of intense investigation on the Bobbie Lynn Wofford homicide that resulted in a suspect and a confession. Additionally, he was noted for opening thirty-seven cases, filing fifty-two charges and performing forty polygraph investigations.
SINCE the arrest and conviction of Sells, Rangers Coy Smith and Johnny Allen have both had more than enough cases to keep them busy. Still, they can’t help thinking about this one. They are haunted by the confessions that will never have resolution. The mother and child in Idaho who held up panhandling signs with Sells on the highway are still unidentified—Sells claimed he killed them and threw their bodies in the Snake River. These bodies have never been found. There was the nameless black man in Chicago whom Sells said he murdered at 48th and State Streets and then discarded in a Dumpster. Sells also bragged of bodies dumped in the alligator bayous off Interstate 10 and of a series of rest stop killings of homosexuals along the interstate in Pennsylvania. Smith and Allen badly want, but know they never will have, an accurate account of all of the victims of this one man.
In the summer of 2002, no other charges had been filed against Tommy Lynn Sells. In some cases, jurisdictions consider it a moot point.
“You can’t execute the guy more than once,” said Don Swan, former lead investigator in the Ena Cordt case.
IN Del Rio, Texas Rangers recovered a pair of earrings from a woman who claimed Tommy Lynn Sells had given them to her. This was the same woman who gave Sells a wedding band for Jessica when they got married. The earrings matched a necklace owned by Bobbie Lynn Wofford in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. The police, the sheriff’s department and FBI agents involved in this case wanted to go to trial. But the prosecuting attorney, Ard Gates, was dragging his feet. He’d learned his caution the hard way. When he first took the job, he spent two frustrating years running down the facts in a false confession made by Henry Lee Lucas, the notorious eternal confessor in Texas. Gates did not want to be burned again.
In February 2002, Gates may have taken this determination a bit too far. He made a presentation at the local Rotary Club about the exculpatory evidence he saw in the case. He wanted to explain why he has not brought charges against Tommy Lynn Sells.
He contended, in direct contradiction to the mother of the victim, that the necklace and earrings did not match, since the two came from different manufacturers. He questioned the sincerity of the confession, since Sells would interview with OSBI Agent Steve Tanio, but not with Sheriff Graham. He also stated that he was disturbed by the lack of forensic evidence. And he suggested that the real killer could be walking the streets.
In the small town of Kingfisher, these comments were reported in the twice-weekly local, the Kingfisher Times & Free Press. The story ricocheted across the town faster than a Ping-Pong ball in a bingo machine.
In the next issue the following Sunday, the newspaper reported the reaction of other law enforcement officials who were disturbed that Gates had made any public comments, since all had agreed not to do so. OSBI and the sheriff’s department referred to his statements as one man’s opinion. Susan Wofford, the victim’s mother, alleged that Gates simply does not want to prosecute because he does not support the death penalty. Gates denied her contention. Gates also came under attack for stirring up fear in the community by insinuating that a murderer was still at large.
The sheriff’s department and OSBI are convinced that Tommy Lynn Sells is their man. He’d picked Bobbie Lynn out of a photo line-up, he’d described the rural location and the route he took with her that night, he’d picked the large-caliber gun out of a line-up of different sized weapons, and they have recovered evidence from his ‘79 Dodge L’il Red Express. The current owner of the vehicle even confirmed the persistent slow leak in the right rear tire. Additionally, the eyewitness provided a composite of the man seen talking to Bobbie Lynn and the truck he was driving—both fit Sells and his truck. There was no evidence, however, that Bobbie Lynn had been assaulted by Sells’ ratchet as he had claimed. The decomposition of her body was so advanced when she was found, that any possible evidence of this injury could have deteriorated.
IN the disappearance of Stefanie Stroh, many sources reported that the FBI no longer considered Sells a viable suspect. Of course, if they did believe his version of events, they would have to accept that they never had the authority to be involved in the case in the first place. A close friend, Caroline Waters, a Norwegian singer and performer living in Los Angeles, said that she put her faith in what has been told to her by the FBI. Additionally, Caroline said that Stefanie did not own clothing as described by Sells, and would not use drugs. But Stefanie had traveled through Europe and Asia over the preceding ten months and then embarked on a cross-country hitchhiking adventure begun in New York. Even staying at home, a 20-year-old can change a lot in a few months.
On her web site, www.carolinewaters.com, Caroline stated that she had followed up on the police investigation for four months. “I stuck my nose in everything. Found lots of dirt, corrupted police departments, among other things. I finally was told to stop playing detective, that it was too dangerous for me. I had to make a choice: Should I stay a frustrated detective, or get out there and create something?”
The result of her choice was Compassion, a
self-produced album released in 1992 under her birth name, Caroline Asplin. Her song, “Missing,” was written in memory of Stefanie Stroh. Caroline wrote that she had composed the song as she sat in the car crying, and called it “a scream with no words.”
Joni Settlemeir, Stefanie’s mother, did not know what to believe. She only knew that she desperately ached for an answer to what happened to her child.
IN many other cases, like the murders of the Dardeen family, prosecutors were reluctant to bring charges and start the “speedy trial” clock running until they were certain the case was strong enough for conviction.
Along with her undying grief, Joeanne Dardeen still carried a bucketful of bitterness in 2002. She continued to feel that she had been mistreated by a long list of media outlets; but most of all, she was angry that Sells had not been captured after he murdered Ena Cordt and her son, Willie, in Gibson County, Tennessee, in 1985. If he had been, she thought, her son would be alive today. She had been living for the moment she could face Tommy Lynn Sells in the courtroom and see him prosecuted for the murder of her son, Keith, and his family in Ina, Illinois, in 1987. Law enforcement and prosecutors still struggled to find just one piece of irrefutable physical evidence that could tie Sells to the scene of the crime. If his current conviction were reversed on appeal, they, like many others, would re-evaluate their hesitation.
THE living room of John and Mary Torres, grandparents of Mary Bea Perez, was dominated by a mural of a joyful Mary Bea resting in the arms of the Virgin Mary. They visited her gravesite in San Fernando Cemetery #2 every week. Plot 4–16, in section 37, was flanked with dark pink artificial flowers in the summer of 2002. Bright yellow silk daises added an exclamation point to the end of each row. Two angels in patriotic dress bearing the slogan, “Let Freedom Ring” were planted in the ground next to her prone headstone. An American flag waved at the top, with teddy bears attached to its pole. Stuffed bears and toy dogs cavorted on top of her grave, accented by the yellow daisies. Angel figurines, colored stones and coins surrounded the inscriptions on the stone that bears the picture of Mary Bea. Visitors left behind flowers, stuffed animals and a piece of their hearts. After her death, her baby brother, Gabriel Guerrero, went to live with his father.
CRYSTAL and Terry Harris moved out to the country near Neodesha, Kansas. They continued to struggle with their emotional recovery. It took two years for them to return to church. Crystal had lost forty pounds because of her incessant need to stay busy. She said that when she’s working, she doesn’t think as much.
Whenever she went into town, she had a panic attack. So she spent most of her time in her house or in her wild-flower garden. She missed the desert terrain of West Texas a lot, but she had brought a piece of it with her to Kansas. She’d dug up and transplanted her collection of barrel cacti. They were a lot of trouble in the cooler climate of Kansas. She had to dig them up every winter and store them indoors so that they would survive. But work was not something that Crystal avoided.
On Memorial Day, 2001, Crystal dreaded going to visit Katy’s grave. “You can’t hold her. You can’t touch her. You’re talking to a stone. It’s so unfair to have to visit your child that way,” she said. Still, she forced herself to fulfill an unspoken obligation. She brought flowers watered with tears and spoke to her Katy and hoped she would hear.
Later that day, a couple of friends dropped by, just passing through town. They wanted to visit Katy’s plot. As much as Crystal ached at the thought of returning there on the same day, she accompanied her friends to the side of her daughter’s cold grave.
Late in the afternoon, Crystal sat on the picnic bench trying to talk away her pain as Terry grilled dinner on the barbecue. Butterflies moved in slowly, one by one, until they encircled her head, fluttering around her, their wings brushing against her skin. The memory of Katy and her butterfly kisses lifted her out of her sorrow. And she knew that because she had been strong enough to visit Katy twice that day, God had allowed her to have those butterfly kisses once again.
The summer of 2002 was the happiest one for the two Harris children still living at home, 14-year-old Lori and 16-year-old Justin. Crystal had restricted their movements since that horrible night that Kaylene was murdered. She could not bear to have them out of her sight. This summer, she had forced herself to relax a bit. She still felt her fear, but allowed them a bit more freedom.
Unanswered questions still tormented Crystal. Why did he pick us? Why did he do that to Katy? How could God let me sleep through my daughter dying? She hushed these howling banshees with one thought: “God has a purpose in everything He does. And He knew the only way he could have been stopped was for someone to die and someone to see it and live.”
PAM Surles, her daughter, Krystal, and her other girls never moved to Del Rio, Texas. They now lived in Yates Center, Oklahoma. Krystal strived to put the ordeal of that life-transforming night out of her mind. She tried to lead a normal adolescent life. But every time she glimpsed her face in a mirror or her hand grazed across her neck, the long scar was there to remind her of the nightmare she would rather forget.
TWO and a half years after the fact, Herb Betz continued to break down and cry when he talked about the night Krys-tal showed up on his doorstep. He imagined he always would. He and Marlene ached for news about Krystal. They had not heard from her or her mother, Pam, in more than a year.
THE families and friends of the victims have not stopped feeling their sense of loss. Some are impatient for new trials to begin; others live only for the execution of Tommy Lynn Sells.
To them, Sells simply stated, “The truth is, I’ve done something wrong and I’m paying for it.”
AFTERWORD
“WHATEVER he does, he does for Tommy,” Johnny Allen said.
“Tommy is so far past the average criminal, and I think that’s what bumfuzzles so many law enforcement,” Coy Smith added. “He is so far past your average criminal— not in intellect or skills, but he is so manipulative and so cunning and so far past that, people don’t want to believe it. And he capitalizes on that. He capitalizes on the fact that he can tell you something, and make you believe it. Then, he can water it down or something and you question or wonder about your judgment.
“And all along while he’s doing that, he knows what he’s doing to you,” Johnny Allen concluded.
THE following is a statement written by Tommy Lynn Sells especially for this book.
What you have or are about to read in these pages of Ms. Fanning’s book about me, I’ve not seen nor read. But I’ve made a life out of trying to read people and I believe what she has put together is as close to the truth as it will ever get about me. Not only has Ms. Fanning spent countless hours with me trying to get as much details as she can but I believe she has taken the time to get to know me. I’ve put trust in her only a few ever have had. If anyone has a knowledge or right to say something about me, the rage I feel toward society, or of the hate I have felt for years, from where I stand it’s Ms. Fanning. And to that, I would have to say thank you for taking the time out of your life to try and get to know the web I live in.
I will not go into trying to defend myself or my outlook, the things I’ve done, the pain I’ve caused, the emptiness I’ve left in people living. Only a healing can take place now or they will let an anger eat away at their lives as it has at mine.
The press news people have become my new enemy. I see them as Jews trying to mislead the truth. Harold Dow with CBS’ 48 Hours asked me a question: “I’ve not heard you tell or give no one an apology.” I tried to explain to him saying sorry doesn’t work. When you do try to say it, they are always trying to show reasons why you’re not. If you left a tear fall, they will try to say that tear is for himself. If I smile at a kindness that was shown to me, they will say, “See, he doesn’t take nothing to heart.” I tried to explain this again to Laura Bauer Menner of a newspaper in Springfield, Missouri. She tried to change what I’ve said as well. The truth of the matter is that sorry is ju
st another word that I’ve been told all my life. It just don’t work.
I don’t believe that I am the same person today that I was ten years ago or five for that matter. I understand that it has come too late but I have come to believe in a higher power, a divine love. But no matter how much I try to talk of this, people want to have a one-track mind. People, “society,” want to use those five-dollar words to say how bad of a person I am. But I’ve seen this first hand for too long. Murder is not just murder. If you are just an everyday person that works hard, pays taxes, from six to whatever, 60 years and you get killed, murder, that is all it is. Oh well. But if you’re under six or a peace officer, then it’s capital murder. You have just been pushed to second class because for some reason we live in a society where we put people that put their pants on one leg at a time just as we do on a pedestal. If it is supposed to be capital murder for one then it should be for all.
Capital murder means one person, in my case, Attorney for the State Fred Hernandez, gets to become “super human” to decide if you live or die. When one person has the right to make that call, that in itself is pre-meditated murder, because what he wants is to see you killed. By the laws of Texas, Mr. Hernandez would have had me dead to rights had he charged me as the crime happened. Murder, the first crime; then burglary. But, no, he wanted to super-size the case so he went with murder and sexual assault. But the truth with this is that no evidence leads to that outcome and because Mr. Hernandez has decided to fabricate the truth, “mislead,” then he is no better than I. And if ever citizens of our society want to keep his or her rights then you will see and understand why I’ve let my attorneys do what they do best, stand up for our rights.
Through the Window: The Terrifying True Story of Cross-Country Killer Tommy Lynn Sells (St. Martin's True Crime Library) Page 22
