The Cross Country Killer – Life of Serial Killer Tommy Lynn Sells –2.The Early Years

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The Early Years
William Sells gave Tommy his surname, but not much else. Shortly after Randy Gene was born, he abandoned Nina and the children and was never heard from again.

The rest of the family moved to Missouri, and not long after, Tammy Jean – Tommy's twin sister – developed a high fever. Nina took her daughter to the hospital shortly after six AM. The doctors quickly diagnosed her with pneumonia. She was immediately admitted and placed in an isolation tent for treatment.

Nina stayed by her daughter's side until six thirty that evening, when Tammy Jean succumbed to the illness. Nina demanded an autopsy, not believing it was pneumonia, and she was proved correct: Little Tammy Jean had contracted spinal meningitis. Tommy later commemorated the death of his twin sister with a tattoo on his upper left arm. It was a tombstone with her name.

Tommy stayed with his mother's aunt while the rest of the family attended the funeral. As the service started, Nina received an urgent message that Tommy had developed a high fever, too. He was taken to the same hospital as his sister, and the same doctor gave the same diagnosis. Not trusting the hospital and fearing that her son would also die, Nina took Tommy to another hospital ninety miles away. Halfway there, Tommy sat up as if nothing was wrong; his fever had broken. Regardless, he spent five days in the hospital before he was released.

Soon after he recovered, his mother decided to rent a house from her aunt. When she checked out the place with her son in tow, the aunt offered to keep Tommy until the rest of the family was settled into their new home. For two and a half years, Tommy stayed with his Aunt Bonnie. He would later say they were the best two and a half years of his childhood.

Tommy received all the attention he needed from his aunt's two daughters, twelve-year-old Sandy and eight-year-old Kathie. Each day they went to school, he would walk out to meet them as they came home. The three of them would play until it was dinnertime, eat as quickly as they could, and then play some more until it was bedtime.

Bonnie and her girls loved Tommy so much she decided to offer to adopt him to make it a legally binding and permanent solution. Nina didn't agree. She yanked her son out of the only home he had felt safe in and brought him back to hers. Up until that point, she had acted as if he didn't exist.

Bonnie repeatedly tried to visit Tommy, but Nina refused to let her see him. Bonnie decided not to hire a lawyer to pursue the matter further – a decision she would later regret.

At seven, Tommy started abusing alcohol, drinking bourbon he found under his grandfather's truck seat. His attendance at school became sporadic. Tommy felt school was too much of a challenge, and so he did whatever he could to avoid it.

When he was eight, Tommy met a man from Frisbee, Missouri. The man started a systematic seduction of Tommy Lynn Sells. He took Tommy to Kennett, where he taught him to shoot pool and bought him gifts. The visits to the man's house lasted only a few days at a time at first. Then they steadily became longer and longer. Tommy would throw a fit each time Nina insisted he return home, and he wouldn't stop begging to go back. She gave in, and eventually, Tommy started living with the man full-time.

The man provided Tommy with an allowance. He loved that he had money to spend each day, but the money always came with a price; that price was sexual favors. The man sexually abused Tommy for years. After the first time, Tommy curled up in a ball and cried. He wanted to tell someone, but he didn't know who to tell. When the man was questioned in 2000, he denied the allegations.

At the age of ten, Tommy started smoking marijuana. Lovins, his biological father, died when Tommy was just eleven. He attended the funeral, and when he tried to tell his biological father he missed him, his grandmother told him to be quiet and sit down. They would have none of that.

At the age of thirteen, Tommy was staying at his grandmother's home overnight. She was asleep when she felt a movement in her bed. Tommy was naked and slipping beneath the covers with her. She told him to get out, and Tommy did as he was told. He never tried to climb into her bed again.

Later on, Tommy walked from his grandmother's house to his family's trailer to see his mother and brother. When he pulled on the knob, it was locked. When he knocked, no one responded. He looked inside the window and saw there was nothing inside. They had left without him.

Just a few days after he learned that his mother had left without him, he pistol-whipped a woman who angered him.

Tommy hit the road to live his life how he wanted when he was just fourteen years old. He had vivid memories of the places he'd visited, such as the Grand Canyon, Vegas, and Niagara Falls.

However, his memory of his first murder was vague. He wasn't sure who the victim was or what state the killing occurred in. He did recall that the first life he took was in self-defense, in Mississippi, but that was never proven.

Wherever it started, his murder spree would last for decades.