RedHanded - Episode 127 - Tommy Lynn Sells: The Coast to Coast Killer

Episode Date: January 2, 2020

On the 31 of December 1999 10 year old Krystal Surles woke up to find a man standing in her room. She watched in horror as he killed her friend Katy, slit her own throat and then walked out.�� Somehow Krystal survived and went on to testify against her attacker; he turned out to be one of America’s most prolific serial killers. Sources: https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/sells-tommy-lynn.htm ABC News created a 10-minute mini-documentary 'Tommy Lynn Sells - The Mind of a Psychopath'.[ https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2014-04-02/death-watch-most-notorious/ https://latterly.org/reasonable-doubt/ https://www.thoughtco.com/serial-killer-tommy-lynn-sells-973154 Poems http://minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com/2014/04/in-memory-of-tommy.html  https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/sells-tommy-lynn.htm   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome to Red Handed. And Happy New Year! Happy New Year, I know. Welcome to 2020. The made-up mystical year of yore that no one ever thought would happen, but apparently it has. It is apparently very much happening. Very much is happening. We're still in 2019. We're from the past.

Don't destroy the illusion. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Suspend your disbelief, everyone. Immediately, I order you. So to keep us all festive, because we are most definitely in the new year, we're kind of doing a bit of a New Year's Eve case. On the 31st of December 1999, in Del Rio, Texas, a 10-year-old girl, Crystal Searles, was having a sleepover with her new friend, 13-year-old Katie Harris. Shit, the turn of the millennium, not just any new year. Oh, God, yeah. End of a century. End of a millennium, thousand million years.

I don't know. It's a thousand, isn't it? Oh, yeah. You're right. I forgot about that. I mean, I did fuck all. I was like, what? Ten.

I'm pretty sure I went to a party wore my sparkly boob tube that I saw in fucking top shop the other day I was like how has this come around again I'm officially old like I owned that I feel I physically owned that item of clothing oh yeah sparkly boob tubes and white pedal pushers they're all making a comeback get ready I don't think even as a child I was ever brave enough for white pedal pushers. They're all making a comeback. Get ready. I don't think even as a child I was ever brave enough for white pedal pushers. That is quite the statement. I definitely wore white pedal pushers. There was a time that that occurred. But on this particular turn of the millennia, New Year's Eve, Crystal and Katie were having a sleepover. Suddenly that night, Crystal heard a scream. She woke up and as she lay in the top bunk of the bed that she and Katie were sharing, Crystal realized in horror that there was a man standing in the room.

He was stood at the end of the bed, and in his hand he had a knife. Crystal watched in horror as the man slashed her friend Katie's neck wide open. Crystal froze, clutching her own neck, trying to stay flat. The man, seemingly transfixed by what he was doing, didn't notice Crystal on the bunk just above Katie. The man in the room had come in. He'd laid down next to Katie on the bottom bunk. He had cut Katie's, and I put knickers here, but I'm just going to say it because if I say pants, they're going to think I mean trousers, aren't they? Just say underwear. He had cut Katie aren't they just say underwear he had cut katie's underwear off and then he had begun to grope the sleeping girl when he digitally penetrated katie

and in the court records they actually say what he actually did and i was like i feel very uncomfortable saying that i'm gonna say digitally penetrated i'm not i'm not into this how much worse is it no i mean not i mean they say he inserted his finger into her vagina. And I guess they have to spell it out like that. But I was like, ooh, I hate it. But there you go, we've said it now anyway. And when he did this, Katie woke up and screamed. This was the scream that had woken Crystal up.

In the following attack, the man stabbed Katie a total of 16 times before he finally slit her throat. He then rushed towards the bedroom door, and with one hand on the doorknob and another on the light switch, he turned his head to take one last look into the room. Crystal held her breath, but the man saw her staring at him. He took his hand off the doorknob and moved back into the room and towards Crystal. He grabbed Crystal and pulled her out of the top bunk,

and just like that, he slit her throat from ear to ear. As Crystal fell to the floor, the man left the room. Crystal and her two younger sisters had been staying with Katie's family in Texas while they waited for their mum to wrap things up at their old home in Kansas. And after she'd done that, she was scheduled to come down to Texas and see them. So that night, as Crystal lay there bleeding, she thought about everybody else in the house. Katie's mum, Katie's three other siblings, and as well as her own two sisters, who had all been sleeping in another room just across the corridor. Had they all been attacked too? Were they all dead? Crystal forced herself up, one hand around her neck, slick with gushing blood.

She crawled on her free hand and knees to Katie, who was lying on the floor of the bedroom covered in blood. She was making gurgling noises. Crystal tried to speak to her to say that it would be all right, but when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. The man had cut through Crystal's windpipe and nicked her vocal cords. Unable to speak but desperate to comfort her friend, Crystal just lay next to Katie and rubbed her back. Eventually, Katie stopped making any noise and Crystal knew that she was gone. And at that point, Crystal heard a voice telling her don't lay here get up get out go i have to say with this case more than any other we've covered feels like a compilation story of loads of other

episodes we've done and i'm gonna pepper them as we go through that one mary vincent that's exactly what she heard you're so right it is like a fucking horrible greatest hits of all of the hideous things that we can do to each other. It is a train crash of a fucking horror show of a disgusting piece of shit. Happy New Year! Crystal was obviously terrified to stay in the house at this point. What if the man was still there? She knew that she needed to run for help, so she went outside and saw a light in the distance. The Harris's, Katie's family, lived in a very remote area of Texas. It was

essentially just desert surrounding them. But luckily, there was one property nearby, and Crystal ran to it. She banged on the door, and when the people who lived there opened up, she obviously still couldn't speak. The family dialed 911, and Crystal, still bleeding heavily from the neck, wrote them a note to explain. She wrote down just three lines. The Harris's are hurt, please tell them to hurry.

My neck needs help, and will I live? That just broke my heart. And I've seen pictures of the note that she writes. It is, the paper is fucking covered in her blood, as it obviously would be. And thankfully, and miraculously, Crystal, who was wondering if she would live, did live. And she would actually go on to bring down the man who had attacked her that night, who turned out to be one of America's most prolific serial killers. After the attack,

Crystal was airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio. And when she came around from surgery, the very first thing she asked was if Katie was okay. But Katie was gone. Later, Crystal would say that it was Katie who had helped her survive. She said, quote, her soul came up and stayed with me. That day, Texas Ranger Johnny Allen was placed on the case. He visited the bloodbath of a crime scene, and he knew immediately they were not dealing with an ordinary killer. Ranger Johnny had crystal work with a sketch artist, and the man she described had a thick head of dark curly hair cut into a gross mullet. There really is nothing quite like a mullet

especially this isn't like i i don't know when was the mullet in fashion this crime because of pictures of the killer make it seem so fucking old and timey this was 2000 yeah mullets were not for the 2000s i don't think no that was a time for white beddle bushes. And along with his offensive mullets, he had dark eyes and a big bushy beard. Using this, Ranger Johnny showed Crystal a photo line-up. And within seconds, Crystal was pointing at a photo of Tommy Lynn Sells. At 5.30am on January 2nd, 2000, so that's just two days after the murder of Katie Harris and the attack on Crystal, Ranger Johnny and his team were at Tommy Lynn Sell's door. The trailer was open, so they walked right in.

And there was Sell's. His first words to the officers weren't a surprise or shock. He just said, I'm glad I finally got caught. I'm tired of doing this. Just like Ed Kemper. Yes, he had the greatest hits. Yeah.

But unlike Ed Kemper. Yes, he had the greatest hits to 2020. But unlike Ed Kemper, here was fucking bushy, bearded, bloody Tommy Lynn cells with his gross big curly mullet standing in his trailer.

So when Johnny, when Johnny Ranger, when Power Ranger Johnny, the Green Power Ranger, returned to the scene of the Power Ranger battle with his sword. Amazing. So when the Green Power Ranger and his team searched the scene of the Power Ranger battle with his sword. Amazing.

So when the Green Power Ranger and his team searched the back of the property, they found an 11-inch butcher knife. It had clearly been this killer's quote-unquote favourite. It had been sharpened so many times over the years that the knife was paper thin and curved. One of the reporters who worked this case, Harold Dow, who we do go on to talk about, actually, he describes it really well. He says, it was the ugliest looking knife I've ever seen. And that's it. I never thought about that

until he said it. It is such an ugly, terrifying murder weapon. And if you think that maybe it was just a bit of bravado that when the Rangers had come into his trailer and Tommy Lynn Sells was like, yeah, I'm so glad you finally caught me. I was getting sick of this. Oh, no. Tommy Lynn Sells fucking loved talking to the police. He was unbelievably, quote unquote, cooperative. Just like Ed Kemper. Oh, yeah.

He loves it. He loves it he loves it and investigators were surprised when he even agreed to go with them to do a walkthrough of the crime scene at the harris house in the video footage of it you can see that tommy lindsell's is just really fucking enjoying himself and i don't mean in like a sexually gratifying kind of way he's not like standing in a corner wanking off while they're all like walking around this crime scene it's more like in a kind of matter-of's not like standing in a corner wanking off while they're all like walking around this crime scene. It's more like in a kind of matter of fact way. I feel like he's enjoying it because he's the expert. I think he loves being asked all these questions and being the only one that has all of the answers. I think he's relishing it because he's the only one firstly that knew

exactly what happened that night and here he has an entire team of investigators hanging on his every word so when they take him to do this walkthrough he walks them from room to room in this house pointing into the various bedrooms and he actually was telling the investigators who was asleep in each one so we'd walk past and be like there were two little girls asleep in here there was a boy and a woman asleep in here. This was the room that Katie and that other girl were asleep in. I mean, he remembers it absolutely perfectly. And also, obviously I don't know if any of these kids ever saw that walkthrough footage, but imagine if they did, the feeling of knowing that while they were asleep that night, this man had walked through the house and looked in on them and seen them sleeping.

And that he had bypassed all of them and kept going because he was specifically looking for Katie. Sells knew the Harris family. He'd met Katie's stepdad at church and it's clear that she was his target all along. And of course there's definitely the sexual element to the crime because he'd cut off Katie's bra and her underwear just before he cut her throat. And perhaps with so many people in the house, he didn't feel he had the time or space to carry out a full sexual assault, so he killed her.

In some cases, we know that stabbing and slashing can be, sort of, in air quotes, enough for a killer. Sexually, they get off on that. Knives are very phallic. The motion is very sexual. It's very close quarters when you stab someone and killers that are impotent are sometimes more drawn towards that method of killing than others yeah it's like penetration isn't it the only penetration they can achieve and their knife is now like you

said their dick i mean you put it more eloquently saying it was a phallic. Just a knife dick. It's their dick. Tommy Lynn Sells had a record. He'd previously been convicted of rape and spent four years in prison. And that, by no means, was his only run-in with the law. The rest of his rap sheet consisted mainly of burglary, auto theft, drug possession and drunkenness. I knew you could get charged with being, like, drunk and disorderly or, or like drunk in public, but can you, is just being drunk an offence? I don't know. When you go through his rap sheet, which I have done, it's a lot of like, it's a lot of like drunken disorderly. It's a lot of like anti-social behaviour.

So he's like drunk in the street. Right, because if drunkenness is illegal, I am in trouble. During the walkthrough of the crime scene, the police realised, we think, that they had a dangerous man on their hands. But I don't think anybody knew the extent of what was about to come next. But it wouldn't be long before they did. In the car on the way back to the station after the Harris house, Sells leaned forward and said to Ranger Johnny, I guess you'll want to know about the others. He loves this so much. He really does. It's the Ed Kemper effect. It's the being in control of

your own narrative. Like you're stringing the police along by giving them all of this information and you're completely taking control of the way you want your arrest to go down definitely and if you don't know about ed kemper we'll never do an episode on it because it's the live show so sorry you'll just have to come by tickets to the live show when it eventually goes on its worldwide tour full stop stay tuned but with tommy lindsell's i just hate the way he does it. Like when he leans, I can just imagine him leaning forward in this police car to whisper at Johnny, Ranger Johnny, like brushing his mullet out of his face. I mean, that is all very dramatized. I don't know if that's actually what happened, but that's what I'm going to pretend happened. So after hearing this, Ranger Johnny took Tommy Lynn Sells into an interrogation room, and a shocking story soon

came spilling out. And at this point, the investigators did something very unusual. They invited veteran journalist Harold Dow, the man I mentioned earlier, who made the point about the knife. They invited him to join them in the interrogation. And they did this because Ranger Johnny said that when Sells started speaking, he knew that there would be countless other victims out there. And he knew that he needed to get the word out as quickly as possible to find other potential survivors or maybe even just shake loose any leads that could help them solve some maybe long forgotten cold case out there. And over the next few months, Tommy Linssell's recounted in extensive detail, and always in his very cool matter-of-fact way, all the people that he'd ever killed. It's like that book, To All The Boys I've Ever Loved. This is Tommy Linssell's fucking audiobook, To All The People I Ever Raped, Tortured, and Murdered. And his his stories as they came spilling out filled a map of the US

with pins that spread to every corner of the country. Tommy Lynn Sells would later go on to be known under the moniker of the Coast to Coast Killer. Sells told Ranger Johnny about his entire life, starting with his predictably sad childhood. So let's go back to Oakland, California in 1964. Where on the 28th of June, Tommy Lynn and his twin sister, Tammy Jean, were born to single mother Nina Sells. Why, why, why, why is his middle name Lynn? They're just like, Tommy, good solid name. Lynn, let's give him the name of, you know, the 50-year-old woman who works in accounts.

Maybe Nina was very progressive. And you've got guys who are called Lindsay. They are. Maybe Lynn is secretly a unisex name and we don't know. Or maybe she just really wanted a girl. I mean, we've seen that before. We can't chuck that in on The Greatest Hits because we don't know that that's what happened, but that does happen. Now, soon after the twins were born, Nina and her now five children, because she already had three before these two were born,

moved to St. Louis, Missouri. And here, at just 18 months old, both Tammy and Tommy got spinal meningitis. And we can add this to the greatest hits list, I reckon, because we usually see with killers, especially serial killers, that there is some maybe like severe blow to the head or sometimes a serious childhood illness that changes them. And also Paul Ingram's daughter had spinal meningitis and then he put her in a home. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. This is so self-referencing. It's

like a Kurt Vonnegut book. She didn't do any murders, though. No, no, she didn't. Arguably, neither did Paul Ingram. How 2019 of you. 2019, the year we learned about defamation lawsuits. 2019, the year we finally had so many listeners listeners we had to worry about defamation lawsuits tommy was so young that when he had spinal meningitis we can't say for sure that it changed him but it can cause severe brain damage and obviously not all babies and children who get meningitis are destined to become killers it It's the interplay between many different elements, genetic and environmental, that lead to the formation of a dangerous person. Spinal meningitis is very serious though and it most certainly has the potential to have been a factor

in who cells went on to become. Spinal meningitis is an infection of the fluid and membrane around the brain and spinal cord. It can lead to death, loss of limbs, and brain damage. Tragically, baby Tammy Jean died of the infection, but Tommy Lynn lived. His mother, who was struggling to raise the kids, gave baby Tommy to his aunt, a lady named Bonnie Walpole. And Tommy lived with his aunt Bonnie until he was five. Bonnie was a good woman and Tommy was happy living with her. She even wanted to adopt the little boy and raise him as her own, but Nina wouldn't allow it, so she took Tommy back. And after this, it's basically all downhill

for little Tommy. By age seven, he was regularly drinking alcohol and barely attending school. And by all accounts, it doesn't really seem like his mum Nina was around much. She does have three other kids, but like, I don't really know what's sort of going on with her. In fact, like it's not just Nina. Really, no adults seem to have been around. Except one particularly ominous adult, that is. Because there was a local man who started showing an interest in young Tommy. He groomed the boy with gifts and attention. And I'm sure as a largely neglected child, Tommy would have, of course, been overjoyed. But it was later revealed, unsurprisingly,

that this man had been sexually abusing Tommy from the age of eight. Just like Snowtown. This is great. I am taking this seriously, I promise. No, I am. I am. This is great. This is not this is great. This is awful. But he is like a... I don't even know how to explain. He's like a perfect storm of all of the things that happen that make someone a zero.

Yeah, exactly. By 10 years old, Tommy had totally fucked off school and he started smoking weed and drinking on a daily basis. And at home, he was starting to show erratic behavior. He climbed into his grandmother's bed with her, naked. And that was about it for Nina. She was done. So she took the other kids and left Tommy on his own. And he had no idea where she went. She literally just vanished. And all of the records just say that he climbed into bed with his grandmother naked. But I'm

guessing there was a bit more than that, that he did. I think that's kind of enough yeah yeah how old's a 10 year old i don't even i can't even imagine oh they're big they can have like full conversations and stuff and they have like opinions i thought you were gonna be like the look on your face when you said that was like i thought you'd be like they can have herpes they bloody can speaking of herpes did you see the news stuff about why astronauts keep getting herpes when they go to space no i don't know why i brought this up because i didn't read the article so i don't know why i'll find out i'll tell you guys next week i did read

that they have to do six hours of exercise every day to stop their muscles from atrophying oh yeah god yeah fuck because all of the anti-gravity your muscles are just like oh so you don't need me then bye and apparently there's a point called point nemo which is in the all of the anti-gravity, your muscles are just like, oh, so you don't need me then. Bye. And apparently there's a point called Point Nemo, which is in the middle of the ocean, and it's like the furthest point from any other piece of land. And you are closer to the people on the International Space Station than you are to anyone on Earth.

God, facts. That's fucking crazy. Save them for when we get to a particularly horrible bit and then we'll do another facts break. Okay, I've got my fact bank. Cracked file. Tommy is evidently an incredibly damaged child at this stage in the game and his mother abandoning him did not calm his rage at all. The sexual abuse Sel suffered went on until he was 14 years old, at which point he says that he tried to reach out to a school counsellor. According to Sells, that counsellor, while making notes, wrote down, quote, if you don't help this kid, we're gonna lose him. But nobody helped. And I can believe that the

counsellor did this and that no one helped. But also, Sells is very much a storyteller. And you do have to wonder what's true and what's not basically throughout this entire case that's what you need to keep wondering what's true and what's not he's just painting himself as this sort of desperate waif and it's absolutely none of it is his fault and how could he possibly have come out of those circumstances normal which might be completely true but it also might not no totally i think like everything that happens to him as a child is not his responsibility. He can't do anything about it. But obviously, that doesn't excuse his future behavior. I just

don't know if the counsellor thing is true. He stops going to school when he's like seven. So what, randomly at 14, he just pops in to speak to a counsellor. I don't know. I don't know. But whether the counsellor wrote it down or not, it was certainly true. As a preteen, Tommy Lincels became a drifter. He started moving around all over the country, taking whatever work he could and engaging in petty crime to get by. He told Ranger Johnny that until then, he was just trying to survive. But at the age of 15 or 16, he killed his first person. He's our first drifter killer, isn't he? Which is quite interesting. I think so. I was having a think about this this that this morning and i couldn't um

couldn't think of another one so i think you i think he is our first drifter killer they're quite difficult to catch so that's probably why very very difficult to catch i mean as you'll go on to see tommy confessed to a lot of murders and if even half of these are true he got away with a fucking lot because he confessed to over 70 different like murders rapes assaults attacks all of this between 1978 and 1999 so in 20 years he's saying he's done this to like 70 plus people but the thing is that a lot of the stuff that tommy confessed to just couldn't be confirmed by police. And of course, some of this could simply be because they happened a long time ago. By the time the police interrogate him

in 1999, well, not even 1999, in 2000, some of the confessed murders that he told them about took place up to 30 years before. But also, Sells is definitely making shit up. And the police thought so too. Because after listening to confession after confession and investigating his claims, police started to suspect Sells of confessing to murders that he hadn't actually committed. So what's his motive here? Why is he confessing to murders that he possibly didn't commit? It could obviously be that he possibly didn't commit? It could obviously be that he's just trying to eat up more and more time. The more time he gets the police investigating bogus claims,

of course it's going to delay legal proceedings against him. And also, it just gets him a lot of fucking attention, doesn't it? Like, Sells loves attention. Oh yeah, he's in love with it. He loves it. I've got all of these. I've been on my own my entire life and now I have a whole room of people who've got degrees and are in law enforcement and they're listening to me. Definitely. And if you think about his childhood, nobody cared. Nobody paid any attention to him. Nobody was listening to him. His mum wasn't even looking at him by the sounds of it.

And now, yeah, like you said, here are all these people desperate to know everything about him. But despite all of his confessing, bizarrely, when you start to research this case, there isn't that much information out there about Tommy Lynn Sells. But if you are interested after listening to this episode to find out a bit more, there is a great book out there called Through the Window by Diane Fanning. It's pretty much like the only really, really comprehensive list of everything that Tommy Lynn Sells said that he's ever done. So I definitely recommend reading the book. And actually, Diane Fanning was writing directly to Sells when he was in prison. And even Sells read the book and said that Fanning was spot on. But then also, she puts down in the book what he tells her as well. So like, he could still be lying completely and for our

episode we are not going to cover every single claim that cells made partly because some of them are quite obviously not true and partly because we'd all die of boredom and we'd be here for about five hours because he confessed to 70 murders but some of them he well quite often actually he barely gives any details about his crimes so this could have been because what he was saying was not true or he simply killed so many people that he'd just forgotten. Or because he was off his tits when he did so many of his killings, the majority, in fact. He always died of heroin overdoses multiple times,

so he's not exactly the most reliable witness. And also, I was thinking about this, this morning, it's possible that he hallucinated killing people and took it as fact and that's why he only knows the place and not even the time or that's a really good point that i actually haven't seen anybody bring up and i hadn't thought of because when you say we would die of boredom if we went through all of his confessions you're so right because literally the list is like unknown place, unknown time, unknown location, unknown victim, suspected, murdered, question mark. Unless, yeah, you want to listen to an hour of us reading that out.

There's not much point. So we're not ignoring victims on purpose. Just know that. We literally don't know if they're true. And if we do know, they're unknown people, unknown places. So let's go through the key confessions. Like he said he was 15 or 16 when he killed his first person according to cells he was at a house that he planned to break into

as he looked through the window he saw a man sexually abusing a young boy by forcing the child to perform oral sex on him cell said that when he saw this he lost it and went into the house and killed the man just like robertaudsley. But then he was never really able to provide any proper details. Like he doesn't really say where this happened or when it happened or specifically who the man was that he killed. So the police weren't able to say that this actually happened at all. I was like, what are the fucking chances? He just looks through a window and happens to see this is the difference between him and robert maudsley robert maudsley did actually do that him i don't even know if this is just him sort of painting himself with a bit of a hero complex you know very true indeed

and also if he's saying you know this was my my trigger killing like this is what started it all off i was so horribly abused and then i witnessed it and that flicks a switch in me that's a little bit more of a sympathetic story than I just kill people because I like it exactly I don't know that that's not what happened because the police can never find this case they can never track it back they never say this is the man that he said that he killed so I wouldn't put it past cells for just having fabricated it to make himself seem more sympathetic. So of all the things that we don't know at this point about what Tommy is saying, one thing that we do know is that in 1981,

so after this alleged first murder, Tommy reunited very briefly with his mother. He moved to Little Rock in Arkansas and moved in with her. Can we also just say how fucking Arkansas is spelt versus how it's said arkansas why isn't it car arkansas there is a kansas like why let's just call it arkansas from now on fuck you guys oh my god i i saw this amazing tweet i'm sure everyone's already seen it and it's probably really bait but it was like what's the hardest thing you've ever had to say?

And someone was like, tweeted it, replied to it and was like, oh, telling my brother that our dad had killed himself. And then the one underneath was Worcestershire. Because obviously Worcestershire sauce is a thing that they have in America. Yeah. And I've heard Americans say, call it Worchester. Yeah, they call it Worchester. Or Worcester.

It's Worcestershire. I can't even say it wrong. Or Worcester. It's Worcestershire. I can't even say it wrong pretending. It's just Worcestershire. What's the other? Oh, Lichester. They say that. That's stupid.

So if you're over there and you want a good Bloody Mary and you ask them for Worcestershire just say Worchester apparently. You want a nice

piece of Red Leicester. I've never had a fucking good Bloody Mary in the States states i'll say that oh yeah guys aren't the best at making cocktails i'm sorry it's just true it's not the best not the best at making cocktails i'm sorry about that because they think a gin and tonic is a cocktail that's a short friend well they just call it a tom collins no like i when i used to work in a bar they'd be like how much for a cocktail and i was like well depends which one

you want they're like no just like a gin and tonic. I was like, that's not cocktail. That's a fucking spirit mixer, mate. What's a Tom Collins? Is that not just a gin and tonic? No, no. Oh, I don't know. Whatever.

I've worked in a bar for three years. In a cocktail bar. Anyway, every time somebody picked up the black cocktail menu, I used to go and hide. I can't remember what's in a Tom Collins, but it's definitely more things than just gin and tonic, I think. Whoops. You've just been serving gin and tonics all these years. That's all the people that ever got served by me got anyway. Anyway, my manager shouldn't have shouted at me

and told me not to hide every time somebody picked up the menu. I'm quite good. I used to be quite good at cocktails. I can make a Long Island iced tea and I can separate the Coke and the spirit. So it's like white and brown. Oh, that's foul. I hate Long Island iced teas. I can separate the Coke and the spirit. So it's like white and brown. That's foul. I hate Long Island iced teas.

They just make me want to retch. I think my like favorite at the moment, which is just so terrible, is I just love a Pornstar martini. Can't get enough. Can't get enough. I've definitely started drinking more cocktails the more I hang out with you. I know. I am a bit of a cocktail fiend.

So it's because I've got such a sweet tooth. I just want to like fucking suck on a sweet all the time yeah it's dangerous though because they don't last very long and I have like me and my cousin Eve have the same thing where we have an inability to not have a drink in our hand if I'm drinking pints I know that over the the evening I'm going to be drinking less alcohol than if I'm drinking something that takes a short amount of time to drink because I'll just knock them back. Yeah you're a very fast drinker whereas I'm quite a slow drinker so I think yeah if I have a pint I'll just be nursing it forever. God I used to be able to though when I was like fresh out of uni I used to go out drink like five six pints a night and be fine. God now I can't even manage one but, happy new year. Back to Arkansas.

Yeah, Tommy at this point, he reunites. He moves back in with his mum who's living in Arkansas. But he soon sours the situation because one day he tried to rape his mum. And that'll do it. We must have had someone before who raped his mum. Come on. Ed Gein wanted to. True.

But we haven't covered him um god it's like the big fat quiz of the year it literally is the big fat quiz of the year Tommy the big fat quiz of the year

colon Tommy Lynn sells the ghost killer um oh my god who have we covered that raped their mum or wanted to rape their mum

how many times you can't even cover what was who did you did for Halloween? It wasn't rape. It was like consensual mum and son sex. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Blakeland.

Bakeland. Yeah. That's the one. Tick. Bingo. That'll count. Points. Half a point.

The thing is, people listening will play this better than we are. Yeah, true. So obviously Nina, not being into all of this and finding it all pretty sour, kicked him out. And so Tommy Lynn Sells went back to his drifter lifestyle. And for the next two years, he carried on his life of stealing and train hopping. And during this time, he confessed to Ranger Johnny

that he had killed two people. But only one of these killings, that of a man named Hal akins has ever been confirmed now given all the murdering that he claimed to be doing tommy actually went to prison for a year in 1984 for stealing a car so this thing he goes to jail quite a lot intermittently between these 20 years but it's always for like drunkenness or stealing a car or possession of drugs he's fucking raping and murdering from coast to coast and that's all they ever get him on but or is that all he was actually doing i mean

maybe but then the katie harris murder isn't your first murder is it it's not my first no true good point no it's not the ladybird book my first exactly my first murder have you seen all the ladybird book classics that are now out just some horrible like child with a mullet on the front page with my first murder on it I thought you were going to say that

Lady Birds have released all of their first books and they're all super racist oh my god like what Disney and the song and the song of the south or something

is that Disney yeah and like most of Famous Five honestly oh yeah super racist if I ever have kids they will still be brown regardless of who the father is so Yeah, and like most of Famous Five, honestly. Oh, yeah. Super racist. If I ever have kids, they will still be brown,

regardless of who the father is. So I'm just going to have to do a lot of whitewashing. Not in that sense, in the sense of what they read. Just bleaching your kids. I'll have to whitewash them to me. Oh, this is miserable. No, don't bleach your skin. Embrace your lovely brown skin brown ladies this is a very hot topic in the world of brown-skinned ladies embrace it don't do it

you don't believe in ghosts i get it lots of people don't i didn't either until i came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul,

the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment,

charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy.

Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go.

A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider

some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Off topic, back onto topic. After he got out of jail for stealing this car, he was barely out when he claimed to have killed a lady named Ina Court and her four-year-old son, Rory. Your brother's called Rory, isn't he? He is. Shout out to my brother. And he says that he did this, so killing Ina and her son, because she had caught him stealing from her. So the way that this story apparently went down is that Tommy Linsdale was at a carnival,

he meets Ina, and then apparently she invites him back to her house where she catches him stealing from her. He does this a lot where he pretends like, or he says that the person invited them home. He's no fucking Ted Bundy in terms of like charisma levels. I think he fucking follows these people home and then kills them and then he says, oh no, they invited me back. Who's got a four-year-old kid with them?

And they're just like, yes, stranger with a mullet. Come back to my house. What? But this is the story that he tells. And after this incident, there is another little gap in Selza's crime CV because he ended up back in jail for another 18 months for drunk driving and causing an accident. When he got out of jail after this stint, he claims to have shot a man. But again, he barely gives any details. He doesn't really even say when

it exactly happened. So it couldn't really be verified. What we do know is that after this, he did steal a car and leave St. Louis for Fremont, California. Here in California, in February 1986, he claimed to have murdered 19-year-old Michelle Xavier and 20-year-old Jennifer Dewey. They had both been raped before being killed. Jennifer had been shot and Michelle had her throat slit. So now let's skip over to May 1987 and now we are in New York with Tommy Lynn Sells. Here, he confessed to murdering a woman that he met at a bar. So when investigators looked into Jane Doe's and murder victims in the area at the time that Tommy Lynn was claiming he was active,

so the information that Sells had given them, along with all of this investigation that they had done, led them to the unsolved murder of a 27-year-old woman called Susan Corks. She had gone missing from a bar, and her remains had been found in a shallow grave on the roadside seven years later. And Sells knew where the remains had been buried. So basically, like, he just sits there and confesses to all these crimes. The police, who must have a million,

well, not a million, but you know what I mean, fucking shitloads of unsolved murders and jane does and all of this in the area so it's like he just gives loads of information they try to match it up with crimes that they've got outstanding and i don't know if he just gets lucky quote unquote sometimes where his information matches up and they're like oh he killed her or if he actually did do it you know yeah i mean i I think I would buy that if it was like, oh, a woman leaves bar in 1987 or whatever, but because he knew where her remains were.

I think, like, in that case, I think I'm going to give him that one, but I know exactly what you mean, that, like, how many women get murdered walking home from bars in New York in the 80s? Quite a lot, I think. In October 1987, Sells told Ranger Johnny that he was now in oh yikes winamucca winamucca nevada and that sounds like i don't know what that sounds like it sounds like a drunk tank where you put drunk people who are pissed on themselves. Yeah, I mean, it's probably some incredibly sacred Native American word. Oh my god, you're right.

It's like some Native American thing. I'm so sorry. I apologise. So, apparently, in Wynermucka, Nevada, Tommy Lynn Sells confessed to drugging a 20-year-old woman named Stephanie Straw and strangling her and then dumping her body into a hot spring

with her feet covered in concrete. Where's he getting concrete from? Exactly. Exactly. I think he's just watching gangster movies. I think he's just watching gangster movies and saying shit like this because it's his fantasy. Yeah. And this crime was never confirmed because they never found Stephanie's body and cells didn't have enough information on the case to justify a diving team according to the police so they didn't even really look they didn't go into the into the lake slash like hot spring that he says that he dumped her body because they're like so much else of your

story doesn't fucking add up with her disappearance or with anybody we're not going to just like bring out an expensive diving team on your word because i also get that they might be getting a bit of a feeling that this guy is just on a fucking power trip. Imagine the feeling of like, oh, I've called out this diving team. They're here because I said so. But it is also conflicting because like maybe her body is there. I don't know. But they decide not to. After this, according to Sells, he left Nevada and headed to Illinois. Here in November 1987, according to Sells, he was hitchhiking when he met 29-year-old Keith Dardeen.

Word of warning, this next crime, as Sells describes it, is a pretty fucking savage. After I read about this that night, I had quite a few nightmares about somebody breaking into my house, and I sat with the lights on, so warning. Sells says that he met Keith on the side of the road when he was hitchhiking and that Keith picked him up and then invited him home for a shower and a hot meal. I don't believe that. I again we don't know what actually happened but that's what he says. So either Keith did invite him back or Sells forced Keith to take

him home. Either way, it does not end well for Keith or his family. When he got to the Dardene house, he cut Keith's penis off while he was still alive and then shot him. He then beat Keith's three-year-old son Pete to death with a hammer. Sells then raped Keith's pregnant wife Elaine and mutilated her breasts with a knife, again, while she was still alive. This caused Elaine, who was heavily pregnant, to go into labour. Sells then proceeded to beat the newborn baby to death

with a baseball bat in front of her mother. He then beat Elaine to death, And then he inserted the baseball bat that he'd used into her vagina before he put her into bed with all of her dead kids and tucked them in like they were asleep. And then he just left. Now, what we do know is that this crime definitely happened. Unlike some of the others where they don't find the body, this crime happened and it had sat unsolved for 12 years until Sells confessed. When police looked into the Dardine family killings, Sells' story on the points that weren't released to the press were not totally accurate. And also his story on how he had met Keith changed multiple times. So he might have just read it in the paper.

Exactly, exactly. I reckon it could have been like you said. He's fucking taken all this heroin. He reads about these killings in the paper. He fantasizes about doing it himself because he wants to. And then he says it was him. But again, we don't know. Maybe he's misremembering things because he was also fucking on heroin the whole time.

So after this, sometime between December and January 1988, again here he's not even able to give them the exact month he says that he does this next killing, Sells claims to have killed a woman and her three-year-old son in Idaho. And he says that he dumped their bodies in Snake River. But again, nothing could ever be verified and the bodies of these victims were never found. I do kind of get it though. Like if you're a drifter, like I'm a podcaster and I don't know what day of the week it is. I couldn't tell. If it wasn't nearly Christmas, I wouldn't know it was December genuinely. Like I judge what day of the week it is or what month it is by where we have to be and what I have to wear. That's true. My question around this was how cold does Idaho

get between December and January? Because he says that this mother and son were camping. Is it not freezing? Somebody from Idaho tell us. Like, I don't know, suspects. I don't know. I just know about potatoes. I don't know. No, I don't know either. Potatoes grow in any sort of climate, I think. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think so. They're like the only thing we can grow here. And so after he says that he had killed this mother and son and dumped their bodies in Snake River and their bodies were never found, he moved on. And next he confessed to the January 1988 rape and murder of 11-year-old Melissa Ann Tremblay. Her body was found and it had been left on train tracks where it had been run over by a train i know you're gonna say sugar baby with what oh what was her name sugar baby no sugar uh her name was vera joe recall thank you thank you i was just so excited that i knew it just to get in before get the points and then it just goes on and on and on and on. Tommy claimed to have killed and raped and tortured countless people year after year.

But most of them he doesn't even know the names for. And a lot of these crimes were either sat unsolved or other people were in prison for them. So, for example, cells confessed to attacking a woman in her flat in 1982 with a knife. The woman was Joanne Tate. He says that he broke in, attacked her and in 1982 with a knife. The woman was Joanne Tate. He says that he broke in, attacked her and raped her with a broomstick. And then Tommy says that he killed Joanne that night. And although he attacked her daughters, they survived. A man named Rodney Lee Lincoln was convicted of the murder and sent to prison for life.

But in 2015, when Melissa, one of the daughters who had survived, saw cells on TV after Katie's murder, she said that she knew it had been him and not Rodney Lincoln. Police, however, refuted this, saying that Sells' confession didn't match up with the police evidence. But all they ever had on Lincoln was the eyewitness testimony of the traumatised daughters, a lot of which had many discrepancies. And they also had a hair that prosecutors said was Lincoln's. All other DNA at the scene belonged to the victims. But the jury still convicted Lincoln. And actually, in 2010, DNA testing proved that the hair wasn't Lincoln's. But he remains in prison today. Of course, that doesn't mean that he didn't do it,

or that Tommy Lynn Sells did do it. But the jury convicted Lincoln on eyewitness testimony that has since been recanted and a hair that has now been proven not to be his. Another bizarre and tragic estuary that comes off the miserable river that is the life and crimes of Tommy Lynn Sells is that of Julia Harper and her son, Joel Kirkpatrick.rick and i'm gonna beat everybody to the buck here because this one is very reminiscent of the dali rutier case points in fact some people speculate that due to the striking similarities that maybe cells also in fact killed damon and devvin rutier and that dali is in fact innocent we have of course covered the rutier case back

in episode 72, so go check it out if you haven't already. But back to Julie Rhea Harper. She said that on the 13th of October 1997, a man came into her home and killed her son Joel. Julie had injuries, but they weren't enough. And despite protesting her innocence, she was convicted of the murder of her son, but she was finally exonerated in 2006 when cells confessed to it. And this is a really interesting story, especially given the evidence used to convict Julie. So if you want to go listen to a deep dive on that, then you're just gonna have to wait a week and tune in. Happy 2020. It's me, the brand new 2020 fact check fairy. We were a bit confused

when we recorded this. And actually, our Julia Rhea Harper episode is going to be the very next Patreon episode, which is coming out very soon. Keep an eye on it. Happy New Year. So after this, Selz moves on quickly. And that same month, he was in Springfield, Missouri. Here, he confessed to breaking into a house and kidnapping 13-year-old Stephanie Mahoney from her bed. He drove Stephanie to a nearby field where he injected her with cocaine and then raped and killed her. He then dumped Stephanie's body in a pond where she was found a month later. Sells knew enough about this crime for police to safely say that he was responsible. After the murder of Stephanie in 1997,

all the way up until he's climbing into Katie Harris's window in December 1999, there are even more rapes and murders. He just kept confessing and confessing and the police investigated each one of his claims. They took him all over the country, but often they couldn't connect what Sells was saying with anything that happened that was documented in official reports or records.

In some cases, he just didn't provide enough information for them to narrow it down. In some cases, his DNA doesn't match the DNA found at the scene of the crimes that he confesses to. In some cases, Sells says that he just shot or stabbed a person on the street, so it's completely anonymous, and he can't even say for sure if that person actually died. So it's all a big mess. I think this is the other thing that makes police suspicious because he's not in jail. He's not spending consistent time in jail.

He's like being taken all over the country. He's on all these day outs, going to these crime scenes. Either he did it and he's reliving it or he's just taking everybody on a wild goose chase because it keeps him out of prison. He's out in the open air, you know? But back to his confessions. Because his story, when he gets to 1999, so the year that he killed Katie Harris, things do seem to really start escalating. I think we can say that at this point, cells is probably devolving. And some of the kills that the police could confirm to be cells during that year include the following and here are just some of the kills that he says

occurred in 1999 he confessed to raping and murdering a 28 year old woman named debbie and her eight-year-old daughter ambria in march 1999 he then says that he raped and murdered nine-year-old Mary Perez in April 1999. So we can see that the calling off period between them is shrinking. I think that's why we can say that if this happened, he is devolving. And then he says that he raped and murdered 13-year-old Hayley Mahone. He also took her bicycle and apparently sold it for $20. And he said that this happened in May 1999.

In July 1999, he claims to have shot and killed 14-year-old Bobby Lynn Wofford. And to round off his year, he went after Katie Harris and Crystal Sells, his last ever victims. If he had killed Crystal that night, who knows how many more people Tommy Lynn Sells would have killed. Sells said it himself during his interrogation. Quote, my daddy told me a long time ago, dead men tell no tales. I really wanted to do it in his accent, but I kind of chickened out. He was like, my daddy told me dead men tell no tales. Is he also a rug rat? I think it's just the way he's like, my daddy. Shut up.

Fuck off, Tommy, you prick. Despite his little motto of, you know, dead men telling no tales, since he hadn't killed Crystal, she was going to tell tales. The trial of Tommy Lynn Searles started nine months after Katie's murder in September 2000. So it's a pretty quick turnaround. And 11-year-old Crystal Searles was the prosecution's star witness. The police had obviously gone looking into every confession that Searles had made, but at the time, if they could get him for the murder of Katie Harris and the attempted murder of Crystal

Sells, that would be capital murder, and he would be looking at life in prison or death. Crystal, by the time of the trial, had physically recovered from her injuries, and she was ready to go. In interviews with her now, she says that she knew she had to do it. She wanted to. She had to do it for Katie. Everyone knew that he was guilty. Even Sells' own attorney seemed to be only building a case to keep him off death row. That day in court was the first time that Crystal had seen Sells since he'd cut her throat that night in December 1999. She told her mum to please not sit in the courtroom and cry,

saying that it would distract her. Crystal even chose to walk straight past Sells, even though they offered her another way into the dock. In the court footage, you can see her. She's tiny. She's only 11, but she walks so confidently. But then the nerves came. As she testified, Sells wouldn't even look at her, but she's forced to point right at him and recount what happened to her that night. She broke down on the stand, but she kept going. Crystal even had to walk up and down the jury, showing them the scar on her neck. In the court videos, you can see Sells' defense attorney sigh and wince as Crystal cries and tells the court her story. When the prosecution was done and the defence were invited to cross-examine Crystal,

Sells' attorney just gave her a small smile and told her, quote, You're a brave young woman. Thank you. No more questions. After this, the jury only deliberated for an hour and ten minutes. On a capital murder case, that's pretty quick. That is pretty speedy. I can't think of one that's quicker than that. No, and also if you think that probably a lot of the because you know they have to like assign a form and they have to do all of that there's quite a lot like procedural stuff they

have to get done so even if you say that took about half an hour they did it in about 40 minutes just a sharp 40 I suppose there are only two charges though I think sometimes it can take longer when they have to go through charge by charge. That's true. But you're still, I mean, it's still astonishing. No, that's true. And also like Tommy Linsdale, they don't, his defense was only that he was mentally like, you know, handicapped or that he was, his only defense was that he was sort of developmentally challenged. And that that was the reason that he wasn't sort of he couldn't be held responsible for his actions so they were saying just give him life just don't give him the death penalty but um yeah so i guess it wasn't really did he do it it was more like yes he did let's just go tell them

he's guilty and that's exactly what they did because when the jury came back out with their verdict it was of course guilty so on september 18th Searles was convicted of the capital murder of Katie Harris, an attempted murder of Crystal Searles. Now all that was left to decide was would he die or would he serve life? At sentencing again, the jury only took a few hours to deliberate and they came back to recommend the death penalty. Crystal said at first that she wanted him to get the death penalty, and who can blame her? But as time went on, Crystal said that she wasn't so sure anymore. She said that she didn't feel good about it. In interviews now, Crystal says that it made her feel bad and awkward. The problem now was that Sells had been convicted of capital murder in Texas,

but he confessed, as we said, to about 70-plus crimes. Investigators were able to confirm around 22 of the cases or so because they showed consistency with Sells' confessions. And they were able to say that maybe 15 of the cases would have enough evidence, along with his confession, to put Sells on trial and reasonably expect a conviction. So if you think even a 50% conviction rate of those 15, he would have got another seven convictions probably out

of the evidence they had. But they were in a tricky spot. Were they going to shop cells around from state to state and see what happens? Or just nail him for the capital murder of Katie Harris? Some investigators said that they had everything they needed from him. Fingerprints, DNA, and of course his story. They said there was nothing more they needed, at least from him. They said that the rest they could have got with him gone. But of course, many wanted him to stand trial for every single one of the cases that they could, so as to give the grieving family some justice. But you have to remember that there were a lot of jurisdictional issues involved with

Sells' confessions. Take, for example, the Keith Dardeen case, where he killed that whole family. That happened in Illinois. And despite his confession, it wasn't a slam dunk that it was Sells for sure. And Texas had a rock solid case against him for the Katie Harris murder. They're almost saying, like, we've got him here. He'll get life or he'll get death. Why fucking dig into all of these other ones and he's not even guaranteed to get a conviction? Like Aileen Warnock. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And once Tommy Lincels was convicted in Texas for the capital murder of Katie Harris, for capital murder, and put on death row, Illinois asked for him to be sent and to be questioned regarding the Dardine case, but Texas refused. They do not allow death row inmates to leave the state. But the story didn't end completely with Sells on death row, despite all of the cross-border shenanigans.

In September 2003, Sells was indicted, although importantly never tried, for the 1997 murder of Stephanie Mahaney. Also in 2003, Sells pleaded guilty to strangling to death a nine-year-old Mary B. Perez of San Antonio, for which he received a life sentence. And it still didn't end after this. Despite confessing to all of the crimes and saying that he was glad to be, quote, meeting his maker, Sells put up a fight about his execution, and it was marred with controversy.

In 2014, Sells sued the state of Texas for information about, quote, the purity and supplier of the drugs that would be used in executions. So the execution was halted because the state was refusing to reveal the source of the drug that was going to be used in the execution. And I didn't realize that this was a thing, but apparently states in America that use the lethal injection for capital punishment are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain the drugs i think i've actually read about this it they're really expensive and difficult to get hold of and i'm pretty sure it was ed kemper who tried to say that because he was so overweight they couldn't use lethal injection because it

wouldn't kill him straight away it is definitely because of the price because like the economy of like putting people to death it's expensive I mean it's not a cheap thing to do and there's loads and loads of appeals as well not even just the price of the drugs but apparently a big issue right now in the states around sort of using the lethal injection as a death penalty is because international pharmaceutical companies don't want to supply these lethal concoctions anymore at all they don't want their names to be dragged through the mud for some of them even more by supplying this kind of thing oh well they'll fucking charge a thousand dollars for aids medication yeah i don't buy that fucking defense at all no no no i get that what you're saying absolutely but the problem here is is I worked with a lot of life science companies in my old job,

and brand is big business for big pharma. They spend fucking shit tons of money on getting their brand right, and no one wants the death brand. So what's happening is that many corrections departments are actually now going to unregulated providers to obtain drugs, such as Phentobarbital because these drugs companies they're not even secretly selling it on the download they are have company policies put in place now that bans and forbids the sale of their like compounds or chemicals or drugs for the use

of ending a life so they're turning to fucking just like random suppliers who supplies dignitas they've got loads of life-ending drugs i guess that's like um if it's regulated and it's like oh this is consensual or you know what it like you know it's assisted but rather than this is just to kill people this is for the death penalty well i suppose the problem with like the lethal injection is you're not supposed to be relieving any pain and a lot of drugs that will kill you, like morphine, whatever, the right amount of that will make you feel okay, and then you die. Like, that's the difficult bit, I think.

Like, because that happens in hospitals all over the place. But it's the not wanting them to feel nice before they go is the issue. I think so. But I think also, like, they do use, because they generally, in the lethal injection, I haven't looked into this in enough detail to go into it that much, but I believe that they use three different chemicals. One is to paralyze, one is to kill the pain, and one is to stop the heart. So, like, they can't do it to be like,

we're going to make this person feel awful before they die, because that's the, that's like cruel and unusual punishment, which is, you know, not, which is against the constitution or whatever they have. But like, yeah, I think they do have one that numbs the pain completely. Yeah, but it doesn't get you high. No, I mean, I don't know. It might be the phenobarbital. I don't know enough about this. We'll come back to it in another episode. We've done a bit more research, but I believe those are the three ways in which it works. The problem is that this is actually a huge issue now because

these drugs companies just don't want to supply it. And many of you will remember that in 2017, the Arkansas planned to execute seven men in just 11 days because they only had a limited supply of midazolam. And it was about to expire. And seven men in 11 days would have been the highest mass execution since the civil rights era in the US. And they were just going to do it because their drugs were running out. They were like, this is going to expire. We better make the most of it because it's really hard to get our hands on now. And the litigation fallout from this was very interesting because the two drugs manufacturers that made the compounds that the Arkansas state were planning to use. So they were Fresnes Cabby USA and Westwood Pharmaceuticals actually took the state to court to stop their drugs being used to kill those men.

And it wasn't just a publicity ploy because they actually had policies in their company that said they were not allowed to be sold and they had got their hands on them in some other way. So fair enough. I just find it really difficult to believe that Big Pharma has a code of ethics at all. I think it's like in the thing is we have to remember like in the States, you know, they don't have universal health care. It is like a bit more of a free market. It's very much a free market. And so drugs companies exploit that. But here, God knows for how much longer now

with Brexit, we do, you know, negotiate down reasonable drugs prices because the NHS pays for them. So I think it's difficult. They also do great work and save negotiate down reasonable drugs prices because the NHS pays for them. So I think it's difficult. They also do great work and save people's lives. But at the same time, they also, some people do terrible things. And also trial drugs on children in Nigeria. But enough. But regardless, Tommy Lynn Sells was executed by lethal injection in Texas on the 3rd of April 2014.

And he chose not to make a final statement. He simply smiled at the witnesses and then lay down while in prison he spent his time writing poems and I understand that the arts can be a great way to rehabilitate people and of course prisoners should have the right to do such things but uh fucking hell these poems are pretty bad and it's it is real um university spoken word society level twattery, I'm afraid. It really is. You know how you were like when, well, I don't remember what case we were doing, again, failing at the Big Fat Quiz, where you were like, oh, was it Billy Joe Jenkins? When

you were like, I hate it when they write books. I hate it when they write poems, because this is BTK all over. So for your listening pleasure, we have selected one of his poems and i'm going to read it to you putting to work my years of verse and prose competitions that was my version of pageantry literally just saying poems that i'd memorized into a room full of people and this one is called magic happens and i'm gonna get through it with a straight face i promise can you see the land of promise? Leads me to believe one day we can grab a rainbow,

hold each end as we jump, holding hands, then run and climbing on, sliding down, taking a ride, feeling so good with your back to my chest, feeling so good. There's nothing about you that I'm not able to close my eyes and dream. Gold medal, Watford Verse and Prose Competition 2019. Go through to the finals. Fuck off. One day.

He's such a bellend. Such a bellend. And if you want to read the rest of his poems, we'll leave a link to the full collection in the episode description. I'm not even joking,

we actually will go fucking have a ball if you want. And if you enter your child into verse and prose competitions i fucking dare you to send them off with one of tommy lynn sells poems to a competition please and then when they're done and people clap and give them like i don't know how like hold up a card that says 10 out of 10 i don't know how it works just be like um train your

child to also say uh well you guys are pretty fucking sick because the man who wrote that beat a newborn baby to death with a baseball bat in front of his mum. So, yeah, slow clap. Joke's on you, adjudicator. Pirouette, walk away. Pageant, close. Anyway, that was fucking grim. That was fucking grim. We're sorry about that. And we want to finish up by talking about Crystal's self. Honestly, I just couldn't stop thinking about her. I just think she's such a fucking great woman.

Because she's a woman now, she was 10 when this happened, but she's like a proper grown-up, lovely lady. Can't even see the scar. Good for her, man. And obviously what she went through that night was fucking awful. But what Crystal went through leading up to the attack, in terms of the years leading up to the attack itself, were also tragic. But I do think that what she went

through enabled her to fight the way she did from when she was a baby her parents mark and pam cells were addicted to drugs it took over and they lived a life of petty crime and drugs when crystal was six her mom pam left she said that she wanted to go and get clean but she left the three kids with mark who was dealing and doing a lot of drugs. Crystal, who was the eldest, had two little sisters, as they were just babies, so Crystal basically raised them. She was just in the second grade, but she was changing nappies, taking herself to school,

feeding the kids, basically doing everything. She was mum. She said that during this time, she was the dirty kid at school. She was always late, she that during this time, she was the dirty kid at school. She was always late. She turned up with no food. She walked to school and she would often be in dirty clothes. Her mum, Pam, did eventually come back. And when she did, she was clean. And she took the kids and she moved away from Mark, who by this point was in prison. And I just wanted to share this because while her parents were fucked up and just simply not there, Crystal saved her family. And then that night in December 1999, she tried to

save Katie. She saved herself and God knows how many other people she saved by putting cells away for good. Crystal's dad, Mark, also got out of prison a couple of years later. Well, a few years after the attack had happened and he got himself clean and now he's trying his best to make up for everything with crystal and her sisters who always complained that crystal was too bossy but now they say that their relationship is stronger than ever and they don't want to begrudge crystal and her bossiness anymore they now know that she did it all for them and in every interview from the age of 10 to now Crystal always says quote I don't think I'm a hero I'm just lucky really really lucky

and that is the story of Tommy Lynn Sells and all his fucking madness so yeah and the big fat quiz of the year and also cases that we haven't cussed 2019 we hope you guys enjoyed it play along if you think of any other little things

that lead off this case that we missed out that we have covered tell us about it on all the social medias at red handed the pod and also if you would like to help support the show you can do so on patreon.com slash red handed and here are some wonderful people who have done so right deep breaths. Koskinen, Erica, Carrie, Riley, Chelsea Wall, Abigail, Atabeth, Chantelle Baker, Lucinda Stroud, Eddie Rose, Fiona McDonald, Kristy, no, Kirstie, Kristy? No, Kristy. Winona, Sandra O'Donoghue, Brodie Duggan, and then Hannah. Natalie Christensen, Rachel Cox, Amanda Lear, Sophie Gee, Kai, Elizabeth, Louis Preetet louise preet i'm sorry for misgendering you louise sarah coopman rachel dempsey susan pritchard andrew bell

tess woodley kirsty shaw alexandria kendall sarah vince kababjan um mac simpson amy karmack lee ulstered christina poddock westley westby renee Renee Rogozinski, I think Laura Olenkito, Brooklyn, Brittany Elmer, Rivka Arbiter, Rachel Frisch, Alden Bahartia, Amanda Jarabeck-Lapierre, Rebecca Hoyseth, Leila Sloan, Katie Nankovich, Patricia Scott, Nicole Nelson, Shari Mandel, Happy New Year, everybody. Happy New Year. We'll see you next week. Goodbye. Bye. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal.

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