True Crime Society - Tommy Lynn Sells and his reign of terror

Tommy Lynn Sells was a drifter whose crimes stretched across multiple U.S. states. Known as the “Coast-to-Coast Killer,” Sells claimed responsibility for dozens of murders, though he was only convicted in two cases. His transient lifestyle, violent childhood, and habit of targeting vulnerable victims made him one of the most elusive and disturbing killers of his era.

Quote from him – ‘I am hatred. When you look at me, you look at hate. I don’t know what love is. Two words I don’t like to use are ‘love’ and ‘sorry,’ because I’m about hate.

Tommy Lynn Sells and his twin sister Tammy Jean were born in Oakland, California on June 28, 1964. They were two of five children born to Nina, who was an unwed mother. His other siblings included brothers Jerry Kelvin and Charles. An insurance agent named William Sells was said to be the father of the children, but there have been claims about the genuine parentage. Tommy and Tammy’s biological father is thought to be a man named Joe Lovins, who died when his son was 11.

True-crime author Diane Fanning, who wrote about Tommy in “Through the Window,” alleges that Joe bailed William Sells out of financial difficulty and William then agreed to claim the children as his own as part of an insurance scam. William’s job also meant that the children were provided with health insurance.

When the twins were 18 months old, they contracted meningitis. Tammy passed away from the illness. Shortly after this, Tommy was sent to live with his aunt Bonnie in Missouri. His mother sent for him when he was five years old, after discovering that Bonnie wanted to adopt him.

Tommy’s life of neglect and delinquency began very early. At the crazy age of SEVEN, he began drinking alcohol. The alcohol was given to him by his maternal grandfather. According to ClarkProsecutor.org, he began smoking ditch-weed marijuana and narcotics at the age of 10.

“The first time I did a shot of dope, it was the best feeling I ever had in my life. The first time I killed somebody, it was such a rush,” he would later tell ABC News. “It was just like that, a shot of dope every time I did it, it was that rush again. And I started chasing that high.”

Within a year after that, he began socialising with a man named Willis Clark. Tommy alleged that Willis molested him. Tommy would claim that Nina encouraged this relationship which caused him great trauma.

When Tommy was 13, he entered his grandmother’s bed while she was sleeping. He was nude at the time. This incident led to him being banned from her home. Shortly after this, Nina and his siblings left town and Tommy was left to fend for himself.

At this time, Tommy obtained access to a gun. He shot a woman and assaulted her – she survived the attack.

By the age of 14, Tommy was living as a nomad. In 1981, when he was 16, Tommy visited his family who were living in Little Rock, Arkansas by that time. His mother evicted him from the home after he tried to molest her in the shower.

His mental health continued to deteriorate and his first arrest came in 1982 when he was arrested for public intoxication.

Tommy made his way across the United States – hitchhiking and train hopping. He would hold multiple short term jobs between 1978-1999 including manual labor roles and barber jobs. He was an alcoholic and a drug addict. He was imprisoned several times. In 1990, he stole a truck in Wyoming and was put away for 16 months.

According to the ‘Murder Interrupted’ article from CrimeLibrary.com, Tommy was diagnosed with personality disorders, addiction and psychosis.

In May 1992, Tommy was panhandling under an overpass in Charleston, WV. He had a sign that said ‘ I will work for food.’ A woman named Fabienne Witherspoon (19) took pity on him. She took Tommy to her home and asked him to wait outside while she went in to get food for him. By the time she got back to the front door, he had unsurprisingly entered the home. He took a knife from her kitchen, trapped her in the bathroom and attempted to rape her. Fabienne got hold of a ceramic duck and she hit Tommy in the head multiple times. She managed to get the knife off of him and stabbed him – nicking his kidney and liver and his testicle. Tommy then started to beat her over the head with a piano stool. He tried to escape the home but he ended up in police custody and in the ICU. Fabienne also obtained serious injuries including a head wound and a hand injury that required surgery.

“I just wanted to get away, and I didn’t realize I had stabbed him,” Fabienne told “20/20.” “It was very, very, very hard to know that I had the capability of hurting someone like that… I always felt if something like that ever happened to me… I would just — I would faint and die. I would not fight. But I found out that I was somebody different.”

Tommy was charged with malicious wounding and he took a plea deal which meant that he was to serve five years in prison.

While he was in prison, he married a woman named Nora Price. Tommy was released from prison in 1997. He moved to Tennessee to be with Nora. Their marriage did not last long once he was out of custody. He left her that same year and started going cross-country again. Nora did give birth to Tommy’s son around that time and she gave the child up for adoption.

In the late 1990’s, Tommy allegedly married a woman named Jessica Levrie in Del Rio, Texas. Some reports say that Jessica had four children and that Tommy moved into a trailer with her and the kids. The marriage was not legal as Tommy was still married to his first wife.

Tommy and Jessica began attending the Grace Community Church in Texas. He became friends with a couple named Terry and Crystal Harris. They had children – daughters named Kaylene ‘Katy’ (13) and Lori (12) and a son Justin (14). Justin was blind.

Tommy began going to the Harris’ double-wide. He went under the premise of asking Terry for help about his marriage troubles. It is believed he was really going to the property to creep on the young daughters and their mother.

On December 30, 1999, Tommy ran into Terry at a gas station. Terry told him that he was going on a trip to Kansas to help collect belongings for some friends – Pam Surles and her boyfriend Doug Lurker. They were moving to the area. This would prove to be a fatal comment.

Tommy spent the evening at Larry’s Lakeside Tavern. A bartender would later speak about how he harassed her all night. “He was obsessed with having sex with me. That’s all we talked about all night long,” she would later testify. At around 2am, Tommy was basically chased out of the bar by another patron who overheard the conversation.

As he knew that the Harris females would be home alone, Tommy headed to their address. He arrived there at around 4am. Also at the home were the Surles’ children.

Tommy entered the home through an open window.

He first went into Justin’s bedroom. As Justin was blind, he could sense someone in the room but thought it was one of his siblings. Justin called out, “Will y’all stop coming into my room!”

Tommy moved onto the next bedroom. He flicked his cigarette lighter to light the area. He found one of the Surles children – aged 7 – asleep. He moved onto the primary bedroom and found Crystal Harris asleep with Lori.

He went into a bedroom where Katy was sleeping in a bottom bunk. Krystal Surles (10) was asleep on the top bunk.

Tommy put his hand over Katy’s mouth and pulled out a 12 inch boning knife. He sliced off her shorts and underwear and began touching her. She managed to wriggle free and started screaming. Tommy turned on the light and moved to the door to block her escape.

Katy had been cut by the knife and she yelled ‘You cut me!’

“He had his hand over her mouth,” Krystal would later say. “She was struggling. She told me with her eyes to stay there and not move, and so I didn’t.”

Tommy went to her, covered her mouth and cut her throat twice. She fell to the floor and Tommy stabbed her 16 more times.

“She just fell,” said Krystal. “And then she started making really bad noises, like she was gagging for air but couldn’t get any because of the blood.”

He then started to move towards Krystal. She said “I’ll be quiet, I promise. I won’t say anything.’ He sliced her throat. She fell to the ground and pretended to be dead.

“He reached over and cut my throat,” Krystal said, according to Crime Library. “I just lay there and pretended I was dead. If he knew I was alive, he would come back and kill me for sure.”

Tommy left the home. Krystal assumed everyone in the home had been killed, so she ran to a neighbor’s house for help. She had a severed trachea.

Herb Betz was the neighbor. He heard a door knock and peered through the peephole. There stood Krystal in a T-shirt, boxer shorts and socks. She was covered in blood.

The child was unable to speak. The knife had severed her windpipe and grazed the sheathing of her carotid artery. She had come within a millimeter of death.

“Her little eyes were saying to me, ‘Help me,'” Betz told Texas journalist John MacCormack.

He dialed 911. As she lay waiting for help, Krystal asked for writing instruments, and she penned three brief notes:

“The Harrises are hurt.”

“Tell them to hurry.”

“Will I live?”

Herb said “I kissed her on the forehead and told her several times she’d be all right. I didn’t believe it. I thought she’d die on my kitchen floor.”

Krystal was able to provide a description of her attacker and a sketch was created. Tommy. Doug Lurker recalled that he had seen Tommy at the gas station before they left for Kansas and thought that the sketch resembled him.

Doug told Texas Ranger John Allen about this and he tracked a photo of Tommy down. Authorities went to Krystal’s hospital room and showed her photos of six men, one of which was Tommy. She identified him as the attacker,

Tommy was arrested on January 2 at the trailer that he lived in with Jessica and her four children.

While he was being taken to the sheriff’s office, he said “Well, I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Tommy told police that he killed people when they angered him: “I lose it. I lose control of my thoughts, I lose control of my emotions. When you’re not in control, bad things happen.”

Tommy also said that he had never left a witness alive before Krystal. Asked why he had been caught, he said: “‘Cause I left someone alive.”

“It took just 10 minutes for Sells to uproot our family,” Terry Harris, Katy’s father, told The Kansas City Star. “He stole our daughter’s accomplishments, every birthday, every holiday… It eats me up that I tried to help Tommy. I talked with him. He was a guy down on his luck that I tried to help. He repaid me by killing my daughter.”

Tommy was charged with first-degree murder, which warranted a possible death penalty being imposed. He went to trial in September 2000.

Tommy knew that the odds of a not-guilty verdict were not in his favor. He had a crude tattoo on his wrist and he was asked about it. ‘Asked about a tattoo on his wrist, the number “13 ½,” he said: “Twelve jurors, one judge, and a half-assed chance.”

Tommy was convicted and sentenced to death on September 20, 2000.

We are now going to detail the other crimes that Tommy either confessed to or is a suspect in. We will list these chronologically. His alleged crimes go all the way back to 1979. Some of the alleged crimes do not have specific dates attached to them, but we have noted them when they do.

When asked about why Tommy confessed, Ranger Allen said “He wants to clean the slate and get everything behind him. He’s told us he wants closure for himself and for the families of the victims he’s killed. Closure was his word.”

In July 1979 in Port Gibson, Mississippi, a man named John Cade (39) was shot and killed during a home invasion. A man who resembled Tommy was seen near the scene and it is believed he may have been in the area around this time frame.

In April 1982 in St Louis, Missouri, a woman named Joann Tate (35) was murdered in her home. Her daughter Melissa (7) was a witness and was also assaulted. A man named Rodney Lincoln was identified as the killer at the time. In 2015, Melissa contacted police after watching an episode of Crime Watch Daily which had a feature on Tommy. She believes that he was the person who killed her mother. In 2018, Governor Eric Greitens commuted Rodney’s sentence to time served and he was released from prison.

Again in St Louis, this time in July 1983. Colleen Gill (33) and her daughter Tiffany (4) were beaten to death with a blunt weapon in their home. A man who matched Tommy’s description was observed leaving the scene. Tommy had relatives who lived in the area that this murder happened in.

In July 1985, Tommy was working at a carnival in Springfield, Missouri. He met Ena Cordt (28) and her son Rory (4) while working there. Ena invited Tommy back to her home on July 26, 1985. Tommy said they had sex and he fell asleep. When he woke up, he said Ena was stealing from his backpack. He said he beat her to death with a baseball bat and murdered Rory as he was a witness. The bodies of the mother and son were found three days later and Tommy had left town by that time.

Tommy once said that in 1986 when he was working in St Louis as a tow truck driver, he received a call from a sex worker whose car had broken down. When he arrived to help her, he suggested sex in lieu of paying for the towing. She declined and Tommy said he shot her and threw her body in a river.

In May 1987, Suzanne Korcz (27) disappeared after leaving a nightclub in Lockport, New York. She remained missing until her body was found in September 1995, in an embankment near Niagara Falls. Her cause of death was not able to be established due to the state of her remains. In 2004, Tommy confessed that he had murdered a woman in that area at that time. It was confirmed that he was in the vicinity in May 1987. Tommy was able to identify Suzanne but was not prosecuted by that point as he had already been sentenced to death.

In October 1987 in Lovelock, Nevada, Stefanie Stroh (21) vanished from a truck stop. Tommy would confess to her murder. He said she was hitchhiking and he offered to give her a ride to Reno. They took LSD and he strangled her, covered her body in concrete and dumped her in a hot spring. Her remains have never been recovered.

Tommy also confessed to the murders of four people of the Dardeen family in Ina, Illinois in November 1987. Keith Dardeen (29) was shot three times in the head. Keith’s wife Elaine Dardeen (30) was pregnant at the time of the attack. She was so badly beaten that she went into labor and gave birth. Tommy beat both her and the newborn to death. He also beat Peter Dardeen (3) to death. The state’s attorney declined to prosecute Tommy in this case because some of the statements he gave about the circumstances of the murders were inaccurate. He changed his story about how he had met the family three times. Investigators eventually wanted to bring Tommy to Illinois to question him, but the request was refused by Texas officials. Death row prisoners are not allowed to leave the state.

Tommy claimed that in 1988, he met a woman and her son in Salt Lake City, Utah, He said they went on a camping trip together. Tommy confessed to murdering the mother and son and dumping their bodies in a river in Idaho.

Tommy also once confessed to killing a man in Chicago and disposing of his body in a dumpster. He named specific streets where this allegedly occurred but no evidence was ever recovered.

In December 1988, Tommy killed Kent Lauten (51) in Tucson, Arizona. He said he killed Kent because Kent refused to pay for drugs.

Tommy claimed that he killed a woman in Truckee, California in January 1989 after a drug deal went wrong. He also claimed to have killed two female hitchhikers in Roseburg, Oregon in May 1989. He claimed to have killed additional victims and dumped their bodies in swamps in Florida and at various rest stops along the Interstate in Pennsylvania.

Tommy told authorities that in September 1991, he killed a woman named Margaret McClain and her daughter Pamela in Charleston, WV.

In December 1991 in Marianna, Florida, Teresa Hall (25) and her daughter Tiffany (5) were beaten to death in their home. The weapon used was a wooden table leg. The original suspect in this case was serial killer Ángel Maturino Reséndiz. He is suspected of carrying out 23 murders across the United States and Mexico during the 1990s, some of which involved sexual assault. Tommy would confess to being the perpetrator in this case.

In 2004, he confessed that in October 1997, he broke into a home in Lawrenceville, Illinois and took a knife from the kitchen. He said he stabbed Joel Kirkpatrick (10) to death as he slept in his bed. Joel’s mother Julie Rea heard the screams and rushed to his room. She fought with Tommy. He managed to flee on foot from the property.

Julie would end up being indicted for the murder of her son in 2000. Prosecutors alleged that her motive for killing her son was due to a custody battle. She did have Joel’s blood on her clothing which isn’t really too surprising.

Julie was found guilty in March 2002 and sentenced to 65 years in prison.

After Tommy confessed to this crime in 2004, Julie’s conviction was reversed and the case was remanded for retrial. Julie was granted a Certificate of Innocence on November 29, 2010, and was awarded $87,057 from the Illinois Court of Claims.

In October 1997, Stephanie Mahaney (13) was found dead in a pond west of Springfield, Missouri. Tommy said that he abducted her from her bed, drove her to a field and injected her with cocaine, before raping her and strangling her.

Yvette Mueller (19) vanished from an RV park in Las Vegas in December 1997. Tommy claims that he raped and killed a woman matching her description. He said he chopped up her body with an axe and buried her next to a river. The body was never found as there was a landslide in the area.

In April 1998, carnival worker Thomas Brose (40) was shot to death in his motorhome in San Antonio, Texas. Tommy would confess to this crime but later recanted.

In April 1999, Debra Harris (31) and her daughter Ambria Halliburton (8) were killed at their home in Gibson, Tennessee. Tommy broke into their home and raped Debra in her bed. She was stabbed with a kitchen knife which was left in her chest. Tommy then stabbed the child three times because she was a witness.

Mary Beatrice Perez (9) was kidnapped from a festival in San Antonio, Texas in April 1999. Tommy was convicted of her murder in 2003. It was established that he drove her a stockyard, raped her and strangled her to death with her t-shirt. He was sentenced to life for this murder..

In Lexington, Kentucky in May 1999, Tommy raped and strangled Haley McHone (13). Tommy was confirmed to be in the area as he was arrested for public intoxication and was released the next day.

In July 1999, Bobbie Lynn Wofford (14) was picked up from a convenience store in Kingfisher, Oklahoma by Tommy. He drove her to a remote area, sexually assaulted her and struck her multiple times with a hatchet. He shot her in the head when she tried to escape. Tommy dumped her body on the side of a road and kept her earrings as souvenirs.

The murder of Kaylene and the attack on Krystal happened in December 1999 and Tommy was finally arrested.

Tommy’s execution date was set for April 3, 2014.

This information is from Crime Library:

The average stay on Texas Death Row is 10 ½ years, at a cost to taxpayers of $55 per day, state officials said.

When his time comes, Sells will be given a dose of three drugs (cost: $86)–a deadly dose of the sedative sodium thiopental, a form of bromide muscle relaxant to collapse his lungs, and potassium chloride to stop his heart beat.

Katy Harris’ adoptive father says he looks forward to that day. Terry Harris says the family has saved a bottle of champagne they had intended to use to toast the new millennium. It will be uncorked the minute Tommy Lynn Sells is executed, Harris says.

While he was on Death Row, Tommy began to paint. His work was said to be ‘kindergarten quality’ and included manacled praying hands and a Texas flag with the message, “Gov. George Bush Killed 135, Still Going.”

As we mentioned, Tommy confessed many crimes to authorities. He stopped cooperating at one point and said “I’m taking some time off from working so close with the Rangers. As a matter of fact, I’ve stopped, for one or two reasons. Too much too fast. They are getting on my nerves as I was getting on theirs. Them Rangers want to rip my guts out because I’ve wanted a break.”

On April 3, 2014, Krystal Surles and members of both the Harris and Perez families traveled to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas to watch Tommy’s execution.

He was asked if he would like to make a final statement and he said ‘No.’ At this point in time, prisons in Texas had stopped the custom last meal requests, so Tommy’s final meal was standard prison fare:

Three pancakes

Oatmeal

Applesauce

He was given a lethal dose of pentobarbital. He took deep breaths, closed his eyes and began to snore. He stopped moving after one minute. He was pronounced dead 13 minutes later, at 6.27pm.