Every Town - The Horrifying Crimes Of Tommy Lynn Sells: A Chilling True Crime Story

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

“I am hatred." These were the words of a young serial killer who’s said to be responsible for the death of over 70 people in the United States. The media referred to him as the coast-to-coast killer and the details of what this individual was capable of will leave you speechless. 💥 Watch On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries🎧 Our Other Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1235579💀 Follow Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries 💀 Follow Our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg👁 Follow Our TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald💥 Follow Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial🗣 Business Inquiries: [e-mail] Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with a morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything in between.

With over 20 million downloads, Morning Cup of Murder has something for every true crime lover. One listener describes the show as a small package with a powerful punch of crime. Another writes that the show is an absolute delight in the morning. Support yourself a piping hot cup of murder every single morning with Morning Cup of Murder. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everytown has a dark side. 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. These were the words of a young serial killer who said to be responsible for the death of over 70 people in the United States. The media referred to him as the coast-to-coast killer. The details of what this individual was capable of will leave you speechless. Some of the details, in fact, I've had to leave out because they're just that gruesome. So welcome back, guys, to another episode of Everytown. I'm Hannah Fitzgerald, and today we're talking about Tommy Lynn Sells,

a psychopath with no remorse for his victims. Cells claims he was just 15 when he started his killing, so let's head on over to Oakland, California, where this all started, and learn about how little Tommy grew up to be one of America's most prolific. serial killers. Sells was born on June 28, 1964 in Oakland, California. He had a twin sister named Tammy Jean, and they were two of the five children in his family. Their mother, Nina, was unmarried. Just a few months after they were born, Sells and his sister contracted meningitis. Fortunately for Tommy, he survived, but sadly his sister died. Then a short while, after his

recovery with Nina having her hands full. She sent him to go live with his aunt. Two years later, though, Nina brought him back home when she learned that his aunt wanted to adopt him. So his life started rocky, and without any real parental figure as a foundation in his life, things only went downhill from there. By age seven, he had started drinking alcohol, and when he was eight, he was molested by a man which Nina let happen. It's believed she got paid by that man to allow such a twisted thing to take place. So by 10 years old, he was then taking drugs and three years later, while his grandmother was fast asleep, Salves climbed into the bed naked. This incident got him banned from the house completely, and not long after that, his mother and siblings abruptly left

town, abandoning him. So in 1978 at just 14 years old, cells was alone and wandering around, living a nomadic lifestyle, trying to figure out his lonely existence. In May of 81, cells reunite, with his family for a short stint in Little Rock, Arkansas. But Nina threw him out after he stripped naked and attempted to join her in the shower. Clearly something was wrong with the boy, but after failing to get help at a mental health clinic, cells began drinking more, eventually leading to his first arrest in 1982 for public drunkenness, and this was when he had just turned 18. cells then committed a number of unrelated crimes over the next few years including theft drunk driving and assault but when did his killings really start well according to him he was just fifteen when he committed his first murder his story is that he broke into a random house and there discovered the owner sexually abusing a boy this enraged cells after recalling what had happened to him when he was eight and so he shot the man though it's never been confirmed if this was in fact a true story But what we do know is that in 1983 he moved himself to St. Louis, Missouri, and there he murdered

a woman and her daughter by beating them with a baseball bat. On October 15th of 1987, Salis picked up a hitchhiker named Stephanie Stroh in Nevada, and the two took some LSD together. After that, he strangled her to death before covering her feet in concrete and dumping the body into a mine shaft. However, her body has never been recovered. Salz was hitchhiking him just about a month later in Ena, Illinois on November 17th and 18th. When a man named Keith Dardine was nice enough to pick him up, and even offered to take him back to his house for a nice hot meal. Little did he know, though, that he was inviting a stone code killer to dinner.

When they got to Dardine's residence, cells pretty quickly pulled out a gun and shot Keith in the head twice. Then removed his genitals before finishing him off with one more shot to the head. Keith's son Peter, who was there didn't escape the wrath of cells, and he was bludging to death with a baseball bat. After that, he attacked Elaine, Keith's pregnant wife, with a beating so severe that she went into labor and gave birth to her daughter. As I mentioned, the exact details of what he did the rest of the way, I need to spare you from, but all four family members were killed. The scene was so disturbing that there was no question this man was deranged and out of his mind. His nomadic lifestyle continued on, and by now you're starting to understand why Sells was called the Coast to Coast Killer. In Charleston, West Virginia, kind-hearted, 19-year-old Fabian Witherspoon discovered cells begging on the streets on May 13, 1992.

She brought him into her house to try to help him, and that's when things turned bad. She survived the attack and spoke out about it for the first time in a 2020 interview five years later, when she detailed exactly what happened. Witherspoon was on her way to a friend's apartment when she saw a young man standing beneath a bridge with a sign asking for food and displaying a picture of his wife and kids. She had compassion for him and made the decision to give him food and clothing from her friend's apartment. At the home, while she gathered food from the pantry, she asked him to wait outside and said, I guess while I was doing that, he had come into the house and gotten a knife. Sells had, in fact, retrieved a knife from the kitchen, shut the door, and then approached the woman from behind.

They were alone in the apartment at the time, and he told her to follow his instruction so he wouldn't have to hurt her. At first, she complied to keep herself safe, and he led her down the hallway towards the bathroom. Shortly after that, when Sells threatened to rape her, she decided to fight back, and in the scuffle, Witherspoon managed to get the knife away from him and stabbed him repeatedly. and injured cells grabbed a piano stool and he hit her over the head. Cells then tried to get away, but his injuries landed him in the ICU and eventually in police custody. Witherspoon sustained significant injuries herself, including a gaping wound in her head and a cut on her hand that required surgery. Following the attack, Cells accepted a plea bargain on malicious wounding charges and then served five years in prison. At the time, law enforcement had no idea.

idea that this man was a serial killer, planning another attack, and Witherspoon couldn't do anything about his short sentence. She said, I felt like it was my fault that he only got five years. I've read that after he had his encounter with me, he never wanted to be stuck in that situation again where he could be at risk of being hurt. So he turned to smaller people or children after that. Once out of jail, cells Rome the country again, picking victim. at random, though he seemed to prefer couples, young to middle-aged women, and teenage girls. His victims were murdered using a 32-caliber revolver, bludgeoning, usually with a baseball bat, throat slashing, stabbing, and strangulation. Some of his victims were mutilated,

and the overwhelming majority of his female victims were raped or sexually assaulted. In post-mortem, one victim was run over by a train. He would also steal valuables from victims, but it was only on occasion, as his main focus was to kill. On December 31st, 1999 in Del Rio, Texas, 35-year-old cells entered the house of the Harris family with a 12-inch knife ready for his next victim. But this would be his last, and his murderous spree around the entire country was finally coming to an end. The Harris has lived in a trailer home west of San Antonio with their son and two daughters. They went to Gray's community church where they met Tommy Sell's, who was then a used car salesman and his wife.

Sell's was said to have visited the Harris home several times, asking Terry for counseling about his marital difficulties. One day while Terry was away to help a family friend, Sell saw the opportunity, since the only ones left at home were Terry's wife and children, and the Searle's children, kids of their family friend. After leaving a local bar, Salz went to the Harris house and tried to enter through an open window. He entered a bedroom, and there he saw a 13-year-old Kaleen Harris sleeping in the bottom bunk and Crystal Searles, who was 10 years old, sleeping in the top bunk. Cells placed his hand over Katie's mouth and grabbed the 12-inch boning knife he had brought with him. He caught her, she wiggled free, though, stood up and screamed, and that's when Cells turned on the light and moved to block the door. When Katie saw herself bleeding, Cells moved up behind her,

placed his hand over her mouth and killed her, before grabbing 10-year-old Crystal and slashing her throat. She collapsed to the gram, and Cells wiped away his fingerprints, before taking the two window screens with him that he suspected contained prints as well. Cells then drove back to his house, stopping in a field to throw away the knife and screens.

But young Crystal was just pretending to be dead, and fearing that the killer was still, inside outside of the bedroom. She crept out the window and made her way to a neighbor's house. Over there, she woke them up, all while holding onto her wound and asked for help over at the Harris house by writing that down, since she believed that everyone in that trailer was already dead. After she was given treatment for her injuries, Crystal was able to provide police with a description of her assailant. From a composite sketch, the attacker was quickly identified as Tommy Sells, and just two days later he was apprehended.

Somewhat oddly, without hesitation, Selz immediately confessed to the murder and said he was relieved to have been caught so that he couldn't harm others anymore. Sell then voluntarily accompanied police to the Harris residents that day and took them through a videotaped narrative reenactment of his crime, detailing how he murdered Kaleen Harris and attempted to murder Crystal Searle. Multiple pieces of evidence confirmed Selza's confession and crystals irrefutable testimony. This included the location of the murder weapon, medical examiner's testimony regarding Kaleen's injuries, and forensic tests confirming the presence of cells' blood and clothing fibers

on Kaleen. According to the state's expert witness, psychologist Dr. Frederick Gary Mears, cells was off the scale in terms of the likelihood of future violence, many he would almost definitely have killed again if he was ever set free. Also, Kaleen, Harris's autopsy, revealed a number of post-mortem wounds consistent with intentional body desecration and mutilation. The nature of many of Kaleen's non-fatal wounds suggested cells enjoyed the brutality of the murder. Cells had also qualified as highly manipulative and had an antisocial personality. Consistent with that, he displayed a dismissive attitude during his videotaped confessions and narrative reenactment of the capital crime that obviously lacked any emotion and an absolute

indifference to death. Over time, he made confessions about his murders, and the cases piled up. Some were confirmed, others were not. It was the murder of Kileen, as well as nine-year-old Mary Perez that got him the death penalty, and so it was only a matter of time before it happened. According to prison officials, Cell spent the majority of the three days leading up to his execution talking to visitors. He was described as reserved and packed his personal belongings early Thursday morning. His last meal was three pancakes, oatmeal, and applesauce. The execution took place despite last-minute litigation by attorneys for cells and another death row inmate asking the Supreme Court to intervene because Texas prison officials refused to reveal details about its

newest batch of lethal drugs. Texas officials claim that they are not required to disclose details about drug suppliers or other information because doing so would jeopardize supply chain security and exposed suppliers to harassment and threats. They stated that there is no evidence indicating the possibility of any severe pain. And so on April 3rd, 2014 at 6.14 p.m., cells was executed by lethal injection. During it, two of his friends came to watch in the enclosed viewing area where witnesses watched from just a few feet away. Cell smiled faintly at them before the drugs were administered into his body, which then put an end to his life. Kaleen's father, brother, and two grandmothers were there to watch, as well as Mary's mother and grandmother.

According to Mary's grandmother, Sells's execution went too quickly, and some said his death was far from cruel compared to how he treated his victims. Sean Harris, Kaleen's brother, said that he wanted to see him suffer and die. Tommy Lin-Sells murdered people from coast to coast for 20 years, and because of that, authorities never connected the dots. One of America's most notorious serial killers was apprehended thanks to a brave young girl who was able to play dead. If it hadn't been for her, who knows how many more victims, cells would have had, and how many more families would have to suffer the devastating loss of a loved one.

There is no doubt. The world is now a safer place. Now that Tommy Sells isn't a part of it. So that's going to do it, guys, for this week's episode of Everytown. Hope you enjoyed it. And remember to tune in next week for a... another scary, strange, and mysterious story because you never know. Maybe your town will be next.