The Cross Country Killer – Life of Serial Killer Tommy Lynn Sells –8.The Carnival and a Second Wedding

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The Carnival and a Second Wedding
Sells was on the move again, heading for Springfield, Missouri. As he walked the streets, he spotted a young woman with brown hair and followed her home. His unfruitful stalking drove him to a fever pitch. From his vantage point in a parked van, he sought someone who was a little more vulnerable. He saw a man with three children enter an apartment. The oldest was a thirteen-year-old girl with auburn hair, freckles on her nose, and a pretty grin. Her name was Stephanie Mehaney. Sells turned his focus and fantasies on this potential victim.

Suzette Carlisle, the mother, wasn't at home. She'd been admitted to the hospital with life-threatening pneumonia. Her fiancé, Rob Martin, had taken the children to the hospital to visit her that night. Once they returned home, he played video games with them and stayed in the apartment until they were asleep. Stephanie was so tired she collapsed on her bed in her clothes.

At eleven that evening, Sells saw the man leaving by the back door. Rob locked it behind him and then left to return to Suzette's side, assuming that the rarely used front door was already locked.

He was wrong.

Sells crept silently through the dark and then slipped through the front door into the quiet home. He went from room to room, looking for his next victim. He looked in on the eight-year-old and the nine-year-old, and then he found Stephanie.

Her eyes flew open as he slapped tape across her mouth, blocking her nose and making it hard for her to breathe. He jerked her out of bed and dragged her to the front door. With her glasses left behind on her nightstand, the world was blurry for Stephanie.

She tried to free herself from Sells' grip but just ended up making him angrier. He threw her into the front seat of the van, and Stephanie immediately tried to escape by grabbing for the door. Sells struck her across the face with the back of his hand, and she quieted down. She was afraid to make another attempt at escape as they drove through the countryside.

Sells finally parked off Missouri 266 on Road 99. To make her easier to handle, he injected Stephanie with a large dose of cocaine. He pulled off her shoes and jeans, hitting her when she struggled. When he brought his hand to her face, she cringed, and tears came to her eyes when he ripped off the tape. He raped Stephanie, and then he took her life by choking her to death.

He gathered her clothing and abused body and walked toward a cow pasture. He unlatched the gate, moved further from the road and dropping her jeans and shoe along the way. When he reached a pond, he dropped her body into the water.

Rob returned to the apartment at five thirty the following morning to make breakfast for the kids and make sure they got to school on time. He unlocked the back door, heard the sound of an alarm clock, and went to Stephanie's room to turn it off. When he went into the room, he found she wasn't there. He checked on the other two kids, and they were both asleep. He looked in all the rooms, and then woke the other two children to question them, but he wasn't able to find out where she'd gone.

Within hours, Stephanie's mother filed a missing person report. She didn't believe her daughter would have run away; Stephanie had been a homebody. She took care of her younger siblings while her mother wasn't around, and rather than running around with friends, she was more likely to sit with her siblings on the front porch. For a thirteen-year-old girl, she was pretty responsible. At the time, she was one of twenty-six runaway or missing girls who'd been reported in the area.

In the weeks following her disappearance, investigators talked to more than thirty people and searched six residences. They weren't able to confirm a reported sighting of Stephanie.

Thirty-four days passed without word from Stephanie. Then, on November 18, 1997, a group of hunters were walking through a field and discovered the partially clothed body of a teenage girl submerged in a pond. When police arrived at the scene, they found a shoe and a pair of jeans nearby.

The body was too decomposed to make a visual identification. Investigators called the families of all twenty-six missing girls to inform them of the discovery, and then they obtained dental records of all the girls.

Using those records, the unknown body was identified as Stephanie Mehaney the very next day. There was very little other information about her disappearance. Investigators received fifteen phone calls after the body was found, which was an all-time low.

Twenty members of the sheriff's department, accompanied by volunteer high school students, returned to the scene to do a grid-by-grid search. The line would stop when someone shouted 'stop', and the evidence would be bagged. Then, the line would move forward again.

On Christmas Eve, the results of Stephanie's autopsy were made public. Her body was too decomposed to determine whether she had been sexually assaulted.

A picture of Stephanie became the sole permanent fixture on the bulletin board of Detective Jim Arnott. It was the only unsolved murder in Greene County in more than twenty years. Arnott carried another picture of her in his notebook and yet another in his vehicle. He never stopped thinking about what had happened to her.

~

However, Sells did stop thinking about her. He brushed away the memories and returned to his mother and wife in St. Louis, where he worked at the same auto shop until he left again.

On December 15, Tommy Sells was back in Winnemucca, Nevada. He stayed only one night at the Overland Hotel, but before he left the area, he drove to the desolate location where he'd left Stefanie Stroh's body in 1978, reliving the fond memories of that night. He was back in St. Louis in time to get another traffic ticket on December 29, 1997. That day, he left town, and Nora never saw the father of her unborn child again.

Sells wasn't happy when he left St. Louis. Nora was going to give birth to his son in three months, and he didn't feel equipped or inclined to take care of a baby or a wife. He'd hoped his younger brother would raise the child, but Randy didn't want any children, either. He feared that if he took Sells' child, then his brother might hit him up for cash and favors all the time.

Nina knew that Nora couldn't care for a baby alone, and Sells wasn't responsible enough to help. At her age, she didn't feel capable of raising a child either, not even if it was her grandchild. With the help of her sister in Arkansas, she contacted an attorney to arrange for the child to be adopted. He came to her home with a schoolteacher to evaluate Nora and make certain she wanted to give up the baby.

In April of 1998, in Jonesboro, Nora gave birth to a little boy. She never saw the baby. He was immediately placed with a family in that town, where he lived for the following four years.

Nina was determined that she wasn't going to go through the process again, so she made sure Nora had her tubes tied.

Nora went back to St. Louis to live with her mother-in-law. Sells was nowhere near the area when his son was born. He'd sold his mechanic's tools in Little Rock and, on January 19, 1998, he traveled south.

~

Carnival season begins early in Texas, and Sells got a job driving the truck that hauled the Ferris wheel for Heat of America in Aransas Pass. He operated the ride, too.

The second week the carnival was in the town of Del Rio, on the evening of March 5, 1998, Jessica Levrie brought her kids to the fair. It was a cool night for March. While the kids rode the Ferris wheel, she stood on the sidelines enjoying their smiles. Her green eyes and her welcoming face caught Sells' interest.

He suggested it'd be a nice night for a cup of hot cocoa. The children got off the ride and begged to go on it again. While they went back into the air, Jessica invited Sells back to her home for a warm drink. Sells ended up spending that night and many other nights at her home while he finished up his tour in Del Rio. On the day the carnival packed up to leave, Jessica went to the grounds and grabbed a word here and there with Sells as he worked with the crew to prepare the caravan for travel.

Sells was sitting in the rig in the parking lot, ready to go with the rest of the crew, when Jessica showed up one final time. Enamored with her beauty and the love that seemed to emanate from her, he asked her if she wanted to ride with him to Corpus Christi.

Jessica told him yes, and they both climbed into the truck for the fourteen-hour drive to the Gulf Coast. She spent two days in the city, and then Sells put her on a bus back to Del Rio. She returned two days later. With her hands on her hips, she asked him if he was ready to come home. Sells was ecstatic and told her that yes, he wanted to go home with her.

They went back in her vehicle and began living together with her two teenaged daughters and two younger boys in Del Rio. On March 31, he reported to the local unemployment office to look for work.

Sells found a job as a salesman and mechanic at Amigo Auto Sales, and Jessica worked at a Chinese restaurant waiting tables. In his off time, Sells drew pictures of roses for Jessica. Just a few short years after he had learned to read and write, he was penning love poems for her.

Following her lead, he managed to shape an inkling of a normal life. They took turns driving the kids to school, and Sells took the boys fishing or worked on craft projects with them. He even ironed their clothes for school from time to time.

Pets were a big part of their family. At one point, they had two cats, three dogs, six birds, a guinea pig, two hamsters, a snake, and a turtle. With Jessica's encouragement, Sells managed to avoid drugs and alcohol for some time.

However, on June 28, Sells set off on another road trip north to Sonora, Texas. Then he went east to Beaumont. While he was in northeast Texas, he racked up two more traffic tickets. They were still outstanding a year and a half later when he was arrested for Kaylene Harris' murder.

Then he returned home, attempting to hang onto the normalcy of domestic existence. It only took one family crisis to undo Jessica's good influence and set him back on his usual path.

In August of 1998, twenty inches of rain fell quick and hard. The lights went out at 505 Andrade Street, and outside, a woman yelled. The San Felipe Creek had crested and was destroying the small neighborhood.

The woman, Jessica's mother Virginia, grabbed a flashlight and pointed it across the street to her daughter's house. Finally, her shouts caught the attention of the family. She pleaded with them to come over to her home, but Jessica said they would be okay.

Virginia insisted they would be safer with her, and the family relented. Sells and Jessica stood in the water, passing the children across the street. Virginia would put them safely indoors. Ten minutes later, she opened her front door to discover there was water in her yard. Jessica and Sells joined her on the porch and watched as the water rose.

In the street, a woman was grabbing for fences, bushes, and poles as she was swept away by the water. Sells jumped off the porch in an attempt to save her, but his clothing snagged on the front-yard fence, and the woman slipped away. He pulled himself back to safety.

The river running down the street carried the woman beneath a truck whose motor was running. They all screamed, fearing the truck would move and run her over. A man inside the truck heard the desperate warning and jumped out, struggling through the water to drag the woman to safety.

Many residents of the neighborhood were forced into the trees or up onto their roofs as the water consumed everything in its path. Inside Virginia's home, the children were put into the room that was highest above the ground. No one knew it was the most dangerous room in the house at the time.

Water was swirling around the garage and around a shack. The shack was swept away by the flood, and when Sells stepped out the front door to get cigarettes from a shop next door owned by Virginia's father, he closed the door and collapsed against it. He told them it was gone.

Screams erupted from the children when they heard the sound of a trapped cat. They thought it was beneath the washer at first, but it was beneath the floor where the water was rising. Sells desperately tried to save the cat by prying up the floorboard to get to it, but he wasn't quick enough. The four children had to listen to the cat drowning, screaming in terror.

The water kept rising, forcing the children to move to the back of the room. It didn't stop rising until it reached the level of Virginia's hips. Then it receded, leaving muck in its wake. Her bed was up high, and there was a dry spot on it where the children could lie down and go to sleep. Exhausted, Virginia collapsed onto the sofa and instantly fell asleep. Sells and Jessica found spots on the floor and settled down in the quiet.

The following morning, the water had receded further, bringing hope that the danger was over. But at around four in the afternoon, the Border Patrol went from door to door to warn the residents more water was coming. They transported everyone to the high school gym, but the shelter wasn't the refuge they thought it would be.

The water rose there, too. All the refugees were then sent to the civic center, which was on higher ground. Virginia, her ninety-year-old father, and her daughter's family stayed at the civic center for two weeks. Then they were moved to the Siesta Motel for a few days, and after that they were moved from place to place as they waited for the waters to recede.

The flood was traumatic for the entire community, this family included. Looking back, Sells stated that he knew the moment he was carrying those kids out of the flood that nothing would be the same with Jessica again.

Sells and Jessica eventually settled more permanently in a trailer at the American Campgrounds, about ten miles west of their original home. Soon after they moved in, Jessica and Sells were driving down Route 90. Sells pulled to the side of the road abruptly, and when Jessica asked him what was wrong, he asked her if she'd marry him.

She said yes. Plans for their wedding raced ahead, and they were married in a church in Del Rio on October 22, 1998. In late 1998, Sells worked for a few months at Ram County as a mechanic.

However, the aftereffects of the stress from their ordeal in the flood started to bear down on them. Again, Sells was abusing alcohol and drugs, and his work hours were erratic. Jessica couldn't understand the behavior, and it was intolerable.

Her nagging turned into arguments, which turned into fierce fights. On February 22, 1999, Sells left Del Rio. By March 5, he was in Pensacola, Florida. After a phone call from Jessica, he made his way home. He got his job back, but on March 28, he was thrown out again. Jessica demanded he get clean before he came home again, and Sells hit the road once more.