Post by SoulTrainOz on Jul 18, 2006 5:00:13 GMT -5
By Kevin McDermott, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
CARLYLE, ILL. - On Jan. 2, 2000, in Del Rio, Texas, sheriff's Lt. Larry Pope was questioning a drifter suspected in the New Year's Eve stabbing death of a 13-year-old girl. As Pope and a colleague asked the 35-year-old bearded man about the girl's death, he stunned them by calmly asking: "I guess you want to know about the other ones."
"I had no idea what he meant," Pope recalled in a telephone interview last week, "but I thought 'yes' would be a better answer than 'no.' "
So began the long retracing of former St. Louis resident Tommy Lynn Sells' chilling career as a roving serial killer - a twisting journey that has involved a dozen or more murders around the country, and figured in a murder trial last week at the Clinton County courthouse here.
The question now before an Illinois jury is whether Sells' "other ones" included 10-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick, fatally stabbed in his bed on Oct. 13, 1997. Joel's mother, Julie Rea Harper, is on trial for the murder, but her attorneys are suggesting it was Sells who killed the boy.
Pope, one of the arresting officers who helped put Sells on Texas' death row, has interviewed him numerous times and doesn't think so. He cited the fact that most of Sells' child-victims were girls - and that he tended not to leave witnesses alive.
Harper has claimed for years that a masked intruder killed Joel in her home in Lawrenceville, Ill., then fought her off and fled, making no attempt to kill her.
"That m.o. doesn't fit, in my opinion," Pope said. He noted that among Sells' probable victims was the entire family of a man he'd earlier killed. "He's always saying, 'My daddy told me the dead tell no tales,' " Pope said.
But the defense's case in the Harper trial, outlined in opening arguments last week, will use Sells' known movements around the country to show how Lawrenceville, a town in southern Illinois near the Indiana border, could have been on that path.
For example, authorities have long believed Sells killed a girl in
Springfield, Mo., on Oct. 15, 1997, two days after Joel was killed. And a family Sells is believed to have murdered a decade earlier lived in Ina, Ill., about 130 miles from Lawrenceville.
Perhaps most startling is the defense promise to bring to the stand a ticket agent from a bus terminal near Lawrenceville who will testify that shortly after Joel's murder, a man fitting Sells' description paid $135 for a ticket to Winnemucca, Nev. The town of 7,000, in northern Nevada, is so obscure that the agent had never before sold a ticket to that destination, defense attorney Jeff Urdangen told the jury.
Urdangen then disclosed (to the wide-eyed surprise of several jurors) one of the few undisputed facts of Sells' wandering life: He lived in Winnemucca in late 1997.
Such "uncanny circumstances and similarities" should in themselves create reasonable doubt about Harper's guilt, Urdangen said. "We don't have to prove that Tommy Lynn Sells committed this murder, but we think he did."
Sells was born in Oakland, Calif., on June 28, 1964. A year later, his family moved to St. Louis. According to media accounts shortly after his arrest in Texas in 2000, he still had relatives in the St. Louis area at that time - his mother, a sister and a brother. No relatives could be found last week.
Sells has said he left home at 13 and spent the next two decades roaming the country, picking up odd jobs as a carnival worker, day laborer or mechanic. Along the way he amassed a series of short-term jail sentences for public intoxication, assault and theft - and, unknown to authorities, built a list of random thrill-killings.
It may never be known how many people Sells killed because, in addition to being a serial killer, he's also a serial confessor to crimes he didn't commit.
"He claimed a lot he didn't do," said Pope, the Texas sheriff's lieutenant who arrested Sells in 2000. "Tommy is very crafty. He will take pieces of things and learn from you." Sells' motive for confessions that have turned out to be phony, he once told Pope, was: " 'They messed with me, so I mess with them.' "
Prosecutors in Harper's trial in Illinois claim Sells' confession in that case is among the phony ones. They have alleged that he is merely trying to stall his execution in Texas by becoming the subject of an on-going investigation in another state.
In any case, the crimes for which Sells was either convicted, charged, or is believed to have committed are chilling, even within the realm of serial killers. Among them:
Ina, Ill., 1987: A family of four was murdered in the southern
Illinois town near Rend Lake with such ferocity that police on the scene initially labeled it a satanic ritual killing. Russell Keith Dardeen was shot and had his genitals cut off. Dardeen's pregnant wife, Ruby Elaine, and their 3-year-old son, Peter, were beaten to death with a baseball bat. During the attack, Elaine gave birth, and the assailant used the bat to kill the newborn baby.
After his arrest in Texas in 2000, Sells confessed to the killing. He has never offered a motive.
Springfield, Mo., 1997: Two days after Joel Kirkpatrick's murder in
Lawrenceville, and 380 miles to the west, 13-year-old Stephanie Mahaney disappeared from her home while baby-sitting. Her body was discovered in a pond a month later. She'd been raped, beaten and strangled. Sells would later confess to the killing, and a grand jury would indict him for it in 2003, while he was on death row in Texas.
Lexington, Ky., 1999: A 13-year-old girl, Haley McHone, disappeared from her home on the same day that Sells was scheduled to work a temporary job near in the area. Haley's body was later found in a weedy patch near her home, her throat slashed. Sells would confess, saying he'd gotten the idea to abduct, rape and kill the child while watching her play on a swing set.
Del Rio, Texas, 1999: Sells was arrested and sentenced to death for the motiveless murder of Kaylene Harris, 13, while she and a friend, Krystal
Surles, 10, slept in the Harris family's trailer home. Sells entered through a window, slit both girls' throats and fled.
Krystal survived, playing dead until she heard the assailant drive away; then she ran a quarter-mile to a neighbor's home, holding her hand to her slashed throat. Unable to speak, she wrote a description for police of a man with hazel eyes, long brown hair and a burly beard, which led to Sells' arrest.
Harper's trial in Carlyle continues this week.
It is her second trial. The first, in 2002, resulted in a conviction but was overturned on a technicality. In her first trial, Harper claimed that an unknown masked intruder had killed her son. Sells was not connected to the crime in the first trial.
Source : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/metroeast/story/4B2F064E91
CARLYLE, ILL. - On Jan. 2, 2000, in Del Rio, Texas, sheriff's Lt. Larry Pope was questioning a drifter suspected in the New Year's Eve stabbing death of a 13-year-old girl. As Pope and a colleague asked the 35-year-old bearded man about the girl's death, he stunned them by calmly asking: "I guess you want to know about the other ones."
"I had no idea what he meant," Pope recalled in a telephone interview last week, "but I thought 'yes' would be a better answer than 'no.' "
So began the long retracing of former St. Louis resident Tommy Lynn Sells' chilling career as a roving serial killer - a twisting journey that has involved a dozen or more murders around the country, and figured in a murder trial last week at the Clinton County courthouse here.
The question now before an Illinois jury is whether Sells' "other ones" included 10-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick, fatally stabbed in his bed on Oct. 13, 1997. Joel's mother, Julie Rea Harper, is on trial for the murder, but her attorneys are suggesting it was Sells who killed the boy.
Pope, one of the arresting officers who helped put Sells on Texas' death row, has interviewed him numerous times and doesn't think so. He cited the fact that most of Sells' child-victims were girls - and that he tended not to leave witnesses alive.
Harper has claimed for years that a masked intruder killed Joel in her home in Lawrenceville, Ill., then fought her off and fled, making no attempt to kill her.
"That m.o. doesn't fit, in my opinion," Pope said. He noted that among Sells' probable victims was the entire family of a man he'd earlier killed. "He's always saying, 'My daddy told me the dead tell no tales,' " Pope said.
But the defense's case in the Harper trial, outlined in opening arguments last week, will use Sells' known movements around the country to show how Lawrenceville, a town in southern Illinois near the Indiana border, could have been on that path.
For example, authorities have long believed Sells killed a girl in
Springfield, Mo., on Oct. 15, 1997, two days after Joel was killed. And a family Sells is believed to have murdered a decade earlier lived in Ina, Ill., about 130 miles from Lawrenceville.
Perhaps most startling is the defense promise to bring to the stand a ticket agent from a bus terminal near Lawrenceville who will testify that shortly after Joel's murder, a man fitting Sells' description paid $135 for a ticket to Winnemucca, Nev. The town of 7,000, in northern Nevada, is so obscure that the agent had never before sold a ticket to that destination, defense attorney Jeff Urdangen told the jury.
Urdangen then disclosed (to the wide-eyed surprise of several jurors) one of the few undisputed facts of Sells' wandering life: He lived in Winnemucca in late 1997.
Such "uncanny circumstances and similarities" should in themselves create reasonable doubt about Harper's guilt, Urdangen said. "We don't have to prove that Tommy Lynn Sells committed this murder, but we think he did."
Sells was born in Oakland, Calif., on June 28, 1964. A year later, his family moved to St. Louis. According to media accounts shortly after his arrest in Texas in 2000, he still had relatives in the St. Louis area at that time - his mother, a sister and a brother. No relatives could be found last week.
Sells has said he left home at 13 and spent the next two decades roaming the country, picking up odd jobs as a carnival worker, day laborer or mechanic. Along the way he amassed a series of short-term jail sentences for public intoxication, assault and theft - and, unknown to authorities, built a list of random thrill-killings.
It may never be known how many people Sells killed because, in addition to being a serial killer, he's also a serial confessor to crimes he didn't commit.
"He claimed a lot he didn't do," said Pope, the Texas sheriff's lieutenant who arrested Sells in 2000. "Tommy is very crafty. He will take pieces of things and learn from you." Sells' motive for confessions that have turned out to be phony, he once told Pope, was: " 'They messed with me, so I mess with them.' "
Prosecutors in Harper's trial in Illinois claim Sells' confession in that case is among the phony ones. They have alleged that he is merely trying to stall his execution in Texas by becoming the subject of an on-going investigation in another state.
In any case, the crimes for which Sells was either convicted, charged, or is believed to have committed are chilling, even within the realm of serial killers. Among them:
Ina, Ill., 1987: A family of four was murdered in the southern
Illinois town near Rend Lake with such ferocity that police on the scene initially labeled it a satanic ritual killing. Russell Keith Dardeen was shot and had his genitals cut off. Dardeen's pregnant wife, Ruby Elaine, and their 3-year-old son, Peter, were beaten to death with a baseball bat. During the attack, Elaine gave birth, and the assailant used the bat to kill the newborn baby.
After his arrest in Texas in 2000, Sells confessed to the killing. He has never offered a motive.
Springfield, Mo., 1997: Two days after Joel Kirkpatrick's murder in
Lawrenceville, and 380 miles to the west, 13-year-old Stephanie Mahaney disappeared from her home while baby-sitting. Her body was discovered in a pond a month later. She'd been raped, beaten and strangled. Sells would later confess to the killing, and a grand jury would indict him for it in 2003, while he was on death row in Texas.
Lexington, Ky., 1999: A 13-year-old girl, Haley McHone, disappeared from her home on the same day that Sells was scheduled to work a temporary job near in the area. Haley's body was later found in a weedy patch near her home, her throat slashed. Sells would confess, saying he'd gotten the idea to abduct, rape and kill the child while watching her play on a swing set.
Del Rio, Texas, 1999: Sells was arrested and sentenced to death for the motiveless murder of Kaylene Harris, 13, while she and a friend, Krystal
Surles, 10, slept in the Harris family's trailer home. Sells entered through a window, slit both girls' throats and fled.
Krystal survived, playing dead until she heard the assailant drive away; then she ran a quarter-mile to a neighbor's home, holding her hand to her slashed throat. Unable to speak, she wrote a description for police of a man with hazel eyes, long brown hair and a burly beard, which led to Sells' arrest.
Harper's trial in Carlyle continues this week.
It is her second trial. The first, in 2002, resulted in a conviction but was overturned on a technicality. In her first trial, Harper claimed that an unknown masked intruder had killed her son. Sells was not connected to the crime in the first trial.
Source : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/metroeast/story/4B2F064E91