The Cross Country Killer – Life of Serial Killer Tommy Lynn Sells –6.Drifting and Killing

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Drifting and Killing
Knowing he had to get out of the area fast, Sells took a job with R.B. Patasnic, a Cape Girardeau, Missouri company. They wanted men to work construction on a two-lane state road in Florida. It was Road 84, also known as Alligator Alley. When it was finished, it was renamed Interstate 75. It went directly from the Atlantic Coast to the Gulf Coast through the Everglades.

As Sells was working in Florida, his legal father passed away, a fact unnoticed by Sells. Hip-deep in the murky water and holding a measuring rod, Sells stood very still as a snake swam past his legs. That was the end of his working with the construction crew. He wasn't willing to risk his life like that.

In St. Louis, he was arrested again for stealing a vehicle on January 13th.

In September of 1988, he headed north. That same month, Melissa Ann Trembley disappeared. She was eleven years old and lived in Salem, New Hampshire. She had last been spotted at a convenience store parking lot talking to a man with dark hair who was in desperate need of a shave.

They found her body face down on the railroad tracks between two trains at a Boston and Maine freight terminal in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on September 12. She'd been sexually assaulted before she was stabbed to death. Blood and footprints sixty-five feet from where her body had been found suggested she'd struggled with her attacker.

Unfortunately, a slow-moving freight train had rolled across her body, destroying much of the evidence.

~

That fall, in Salt Lake City, Utah, a woman and her three-year-old son fell under Tommy Sells' spell. He put them out on the streets by his side as they held signs that said 'Homeless and hungry. Please help.' He coached the boy to make sad faces and sad smiles, and after a few weeks, it was time for them to go on a road trip. The mother and child piled into the back of a stolen Dodge van and went to Idaho to spend the night along the Snake River in Gooding County. The mother and her son never returned from that trip. Sells confessed to killing them both and dumping their bodies in the river. He walked away with his pockets lined with the cash he'd accumulated from the passersby who had taken pity on the woman and small child.

~

Tucson drew Sells south. In mid-December, he crossed paths with a homeless man by the name of Kent Alan Lauten, a native of Phoenix who was bouncing back and forth between the two cities.

Sells sold a bag of marijuana to Kent, who promised to give Sells money later on that day. When they met up again, Kent taunted Sells and refused to pay. Sells couldn't do anything about the taunts at the time because Kent's friends were around, and he was outnumbered. However, he knew where Kent slept.

Sells crept up to Kent's sleeping quarters that night and found him in the arms of another man. Sells was on top of Kent in no time with a pocketknife in his hand. The other man fled from the scene in the dark, and Kent locked eyes with Sells. Sells stabbed him multiple times, and Kent bled to death alone.

With his pocketknife and hands, Sells scratched a shallow grave in the ground and rolled the body in. He scattered a pile of dirt over it, and then piled dead leaves and other debris on top. He covered it all with a tarp and tamped it down with his feet.

Then he slunk off into the night and slept.

Two days later, a twelve-year-old boy wandered into the homeless camp to find a good spot to dig sand for his grandfather. His quickly forgot his plans when he found Kent's remains poking out from beneath the ground. Sells was in San Bernardino, California by that point.

He was arrested on Christmas Eve for assault with a deadly weapon, but the police were unable to locate the victim, so Sells was released.

He went north on Interstate 5, stopping in Berkeley next. On January 27, 1989, he got into a fight with a ticket agent at a BART train station. The police report of that incident confirms he was in the area, and Sells later claimed to have killed a twenty-year-old prostitute while he was there.

According to his story, it was a drug deal gone bad. He originally thought he was bargaining with a man, and when he discovered the prostitute's gender, he killed her. Police found an unidentified body near the area where he claimed to have left her, just north of Lake Tahoe in a town called Truckee.

Sells made a trip to Colorado in March, and then continued north on Route 5 until he came to Roseburg, Oregon, a small town an hour south of Eugene. He worked for a small woodcutting business and lived at a local couple's home.

He spent his workdays chopping felled trees into firewood for his employers' roadside stand. He said that while he was in the area, he kidnapped a girl with long hair who was in her twenties, and then he raped and killed her.

On May 9th, he met a hitchhiker who was looking to go up to Washington State. When she tried to steal his drugs, he murdered her, too. He left both the bodies in the forest where he was cutting trees. Later that day, he was arrested for second-degree theft for stealing thirty dollars from the firewood stand.

He served fifteen days in the Roseburg jail, and then he was a free man again.

~

Sells had made a short stop in Berkeley before he journeyed east to Arkansas. On August 16, 1989, he was charged with theft and arrested in North Little Rock. On the 23rd, the charges were dropped, and he was free again.

He went back to Oakland for a brief time and then went to Montana for a short visit with a girlfriend in Missoula.

He returned to Oakland in time to experience the earthquake on October 17. Shortly before it happened, he got off the commuter train and went into a restroom to shoot up some heroin. He was standing outside the facilities when the tremors hit and the lights went out. He grabbed a pole and hung on, thinking at first that his years of alcohol and drug abuse had finally caught up with. Then he noticed that the light pole was swaying back and forth and heard the sound of the roads and buildings collapsing.

He didn't wait for the aftershocks. He hurried south to Reno, where he was arrested the following night and put into a detox center.

Once again, the rehabilitation was a wasted effort. He was soon arrested in Carson City, Nevada, and put into another rehabilitation center for thirty days. In December, he overdosed on heroin and was hospitalized in Phoenix for two days.

In January of 1990, he returned to Salt Lake City, where he was arrested for possession of cocaine and for stealing a vehicle on the 7th. When the crime lab results showed the substance wasn't cocaine, he was released, and he headed off to Wyoming. His activities there earned him an extended stay in prison.

On January 12, in Rawlings, Wyoming, he struck up a conversation with a young couple. Both of them were around eighteen. The woman was very pregnant, and the tires on their truck were very bald. Sells offered to help them with their transportation issue.

He looked around the area until he found a 1978 Dodge pickup truck with the proper sized tires, and then he stole the truck. The owner, Bobby Daniels, bolted from his house in pursuit of the runaway vehicle, and when it drove out of sight, he returned to the house where he and his wife lived. He called the police to report the theft.

Sells took the tires off the stolen pickup truck and put them on the desperate couple's truck. Taking a duffle bag from the interior, he abandoned Bobby's truck and went in search of his own transportation.

While Bobby and his wife were describing the man wearing a green shirt and red hat they'd seen just before their truck was stolen, Tony Selzer was protecting his own pickup truck. He confronted a similarly dressed man carrying a dark duffel bag who had been climbing into the cab. Sells made a retreat, ditching the duffel bag on his way.

Police spotted the couple's truck with the new tires in no time. They told their tale and offered a third description of the truck thief.

Sells hid four blocks away from the scene of the crime, waiting for a train to come through and give him a ride out of town. An hour after the truck theft, he ran out to jump a freight car. Officer Anderson saw him before he made the getaway, and arrested him for public intoxication.

Once the car theft came to light, they held him on a ten thousand dollar bond. Deeming him needy, the Carbon County judge appointed a public defender, John Hoke. On February 2nd, Hoke filed a motion to suspend proceedings until the accused could be examined for mental illness or deficiency. The court complied and ordered Sells to be transported to the Wyoming State Hospital.

The medical personnel had thirty days to assess and evaluate his mental condition and file a written report about any deficiency they discovered.

In his intake report, Dr. Howard Winkler described Tommy Lynn Sells as a well-nourished, well-developed twenty-five-year-old white male who looked like Charles Manson with his black beard, shoulder-length brown hair, and dirty complexion. He listed Sells' mood as flat. He described Sells' thoughts as bizarre. Sells stated that he heard the tattoos on his arms – a bird, a wolf, and a dragon – talking to him, telling him to do things. Dr. Winkler concluded that Sells did not understand that anything was wrong with him and that his outlook was poor.

On March 1, Sells asked to be put back on Thorazine, stating that he was having trouble dealing with the difficulties of life and didn't know if he could handle them. Hospital records indicated that he was a heavy user of drugs and alcohol before he was arrested. He was almost always drunk or high on something. Total withdrawal could result in psychosis, the evaluation warned.

Sells had a history of mood swings over the years. His personality was labeled as being antisocial, self-destructive, and unpredictable. Outbursts of temper came from small provocations, and he was easily frustrated and impulsive. He wasn't able to read or write.

One Dr. Heinbecker issued a diagnosis of depressive disorder, severe alcohol and drug dependency, and personality disorder with antisocial, borderline schizoid features. After evaluation, he was prescribed five milligrams of Cogentin and five milligrams of Haldol. The first was to control his tremors, and the second was an antipsychotic.

Sells returned to the Carbon County jail in early March. Dr. Heinbecker's official report to the judge was that the defendant had the capacity to comprehend his position, understand the nature and object of the proceedings, and conduct his defense in a rational manner. He concluded that Sells could stand trial despite being mentally ill and that he would remain competent for the foreseeable future, even in the absence of specific treatment for his mental illness.

On March 12, Sells was rushed from the jail to the emergency room. He'd been having shakes and said he felt like he was bouncing off the walls. He was diagnosed as having a severe anxiety attack.

On the 18th, an ambulance raced him to the emergency room yet again. He was shaking again, but this time it was worse. His speech was slurred, he was having spasms, and he was stuttering uncontrollably. This time, suspicion fell on his medication. They changed his prescription to twenty-five milligrams of Elavil and eighty milligrams of Inderal SR for hypertension. Later, they added one hundred milligrams of Mellaril, an antipsychotic, and twenty-five milligrams of Valium for anxiety.

In custody, Sells was a model inmate. There were no disciplinary actions taken against him. He completed a 265-hour course in barbering and worked in the leather shop as an outside trustee at the Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp. In January 1991, he was released, and then he wandered first to Colorado and then back to Florida.

~

On December 9, in Marianna, Florida, the Christmas season was being celebrated with the annual parade. Twenty-five-year-old Teresa Hall attended the parade with her daughter Tiffany, who was five at the time.

The girl was exhausted by the end of the evening, and she was almost asleep by the time they returned home. The railroad tracks were a hundred feet from their front door. Teresa prepared her daughter for bed.

Their front door was kicked in, and all dreams of Christmas were gone. Sells raged through the home, knocking everything out of his way. He lifted a table above his head and smashed it on the floor, splintering it. Then he jerked loose one of the legs and bludgeoned Teresa to death. Her daughter suffered the same fate not long after. Sells fled the home still holding the table leg in his fist.

Obviously, Teresa didn't report to her job the following day. The owner of the store she worked at tried to contact her at her home, but the phone rang unanswered all day. Concerned, Teresa's boss called her mother, who sent Angus Mitchell, Teresa's stepfather, to check on her and her daughter. When he saw the broken down door, he knew something was wrong. He entered the home and discovered the two bodies.

A few minutes later, Teresa's husband returned home. He'd been working a job in Georgia and had been gone for two days. His alibi was air-tight, and the police didn't have any other suspects or answers.

Angel Maturino Resendiz came under suspicion after his arrest by the Texas Rangers in 2000. He'd been dubbed the Railway Killer and had been linked to a string of murders that happened near railroad tracks across the south. Sells admitted that he was the one who murdered Teresa, but authorities were never sure as there was no evidence to link him to the crime.

On March 4, 1992, Sells was arrested in Charleston, South Carolina, for public intoxication. He received a thirty-day sentence. On April 2, he was arrested again on the same charges. As soon as he was let out, he left. The mountains of West Virginia embraced Sells next. Their primitive, rugged beauty fueled his next act of violence.