Prepare yourself for a chilling journey into the life of Tommy Sells, a man whose horrific crimes had a disastrous impact on countless lives. Today, we're unraveling the dark story of this notorious killer, starting with his early abandonment and neglect at the age of seven, leading to a life marred by substance abuse, molestation, and murder. Hear the alarming account of his first kill at the tender age of 16, and his subsequent life on the run, leaving a trail of terror and devastation across the nation.
Get to grips with the tragedies inflicted by Sells, from Julie Rea and her son Joel Kirkpatrick's brutal murder to Stephanie Mahaney, Debbie Harris, Ambria, Haley McHone, and Bobbie Lynn Wofford's untimely demise. The tale takes a fateful turn on New Year's Eve of 1999, when Sells invaded the home of Katy Harris, launching a ruthless attack on her and her friend. This ill-fated evening eventually led to his capture and execution in 2014. As we discuss the harrowing impact of Sells' deeds on his victims' relatives and the criminal justice system, this episode serves as a grim reminder of the darkness within humanity and the lingering consequences of child abuse and neglect.
Prepare yourself for a chilling journey into the life of Tommy Sells, a man whose horrific crimes had a disastrous impact on countless lives. Today, we're unraveling the dark story of this notorious killer, starting with his early abandonment and neglect at the age of seven, leading to a life marred by substance abuse, molestation, and murder. Hear the alarming account of his first kill at the tender age of 16, and his subsequent life on the run, leaving a trail of terror and devastation across the nation.
Get to grips with the tragedies inflicted by Sells, from Julie Rea and her son Joel Kirkpatrick's brutal murder to Stephanie Mahaney, Debbie Harris, Ambria, Haley McHone, and Bobbie Lynn Wofford's untimely demise. The tale takes a fateful turn on New Year's Eve of 1999, when Sells invaded the home of Katy Harris, launching a ruthless attack on her and her friend. This ill-fated evening eventually led to his capture and execution in 2014. As we discuss the harrowing impact of Sells' deeds on his victims' relatives and the criminal justice system, this episode serves as a grim reminder of the darkness within humanity and the lingering consequences of child abuse and neglect.
Hey everyone, I'm Lekta here and welcome to Murder in the Mountain. This week we are doing something a little bit different. I will not have a co-host. I will be doing this episode all by myself. So I took to Instagram and did a poll to see if you guys would be interested in hearing something like this, and the results were very close to yes try it by yourself. And yes, we enjoyed co-hosts. So I'm going to try it out and you guys just let me know what you all think, either on Instagram or on our level review, so I know which direction to continue going.
Speaker 1:
So let's jump right in Part of the routine in the vaccines. Until the 1980s so when Tommy and Tammy were babies they probably weren't vaccinated against it. So Tommy's early life was not a storybook childhood, as we just discussed. His twin sister died at only a year and a half years old, and shortly after that Tommy went to live with his aunt, bonnie in Missouri. It was only after finding out that Bonnie wanted to adopt Tommy five years later that his mom decided that she wanted him back, left to basically fend for himself.
Speaker 1:
At only seven years old, tommy began to drink alcohol on a regular basis that he stole from his grandpa's stash. Where were the adults? I don't know, not there. So when he was eight years old, he began hanging out with an older neighborhood man known to be friend young boys named Willis Clark. Willis would shower Tommy with attention and gifts, something he did not receive at home. We know these behaviors are behaviors of grooming and he did end up molesting Tommy repeatedly. Even after finding out about the abuse, tommy's mother supported the relationship between him and her son. How freaking, traumatizing. I think she was just very, I think she was just very neglectful and maybe didn't believe him or didn't care, because she was off doing her own thing and he was like supervising him, so she didn't have to. I'm not sure. Well, you'll just have to wait and see. So not surprising that, given his alcohol consumption at a young age and the abuse he was suffering at the age of 10, tommy began to smoke, weed and use other drugs by the time he was 13,. He dropped out of school and would do odd jobs like day labor, but spent most of his time involved in petty crimes and car theft.
Speaker 1:
In addition to his other crimes, 13-year-old Tommy climbed into bed naked with his grandmother. I am not entirely sure what came of that, if anything happened or if his grandma was like what the heck? I'm sure she was, but you know. But this is what sent his mom over the edge. She was tired of putting up with Tommy getting into trouble and just being too much that she packed up his three other siblings and left town without even telling her 13-year-old son where she was going. She literally just left him. And let's remember that her sister, that his mom's sister, tommy's aunt, wanted to adopt Tommy. Like he lived with her for five years. But his mom was like no, I'll take him back. And then she just neglected him and then literally abandoned him. I'm sure she was neglectful to them all, but maybe he was the only one acting out, you know. So she was just like this is too much. I'll just kind of wash my hands of you. Essentially, according to Tommy himself, he committed his first murder when he was 16 years old so there's your answer when he broke into a home and saw someone performing oral sex on a young boy. So he killed him. So there is no report of this actually happening, but I guess it's possible. Or maybe he was just saying like what he wishes he did to his own abuser, who knows.
Speaker 1:
In May of 1981, 18-year-old Tommy reunited with his mother, nina, in Littlerock, arkansas, and moved in with her. It was not a warm and fuzzy family reunion that one would dream of. However, it was very short-lived, because Tommy attempted to have sex with his mother while she was in the shower. This obviously did not fly and he was promptly kicked out of the house. Three years later, in May of 1984, tommy was convicted of car theft and served two years in prison.
Speaker 1:
After his release, he headed to Missouri where he worked at a traveling carnival and county fairs. It was at a county fair that he met 35-year-old Nina Cournt in her four-year-old son Rory, also known as Willie, according to sales. He met Nina at the fair and she invited him back to her house for a home-cooked meal. They then had consensual sex and went to sleep. When Tommy woke up in the middle of the night he found Nina stealing from his backpack. He then took Willie's baseball bat and beat her to death. To get rid of all witnesses, he then beat four-year-old Willie with his own bat. He said he killed him as an act of mercy so he wouldn't grow up an orphan. Nina had an eight-year-old daughter that luckily was not home that night and their bodies were discovered three days later. So that was Tommy's own account of events. What really could have happened is that he saw her at the fair, followed her home, raped her and then killed her and her son. So nobody actually knows the truth, unfortunately. You know, that's just his word and that's it so, because he was literally just a transient worker, he was gone before anyone even knew anything had happened to them.
Speaker 1:
By September 1984, he was once again arrested, this time for drunk driving, in which he crashed his car, but luckily did not hurt anybody. This arrest landed him in jail until May of 1986. Once released, he headed to Texas where he was hospitalized for a heroin overdose, and, upon his release, he stole a car and headed towards Fremont, california. While Tommy was in Fremont, the bodies of two best friends, 20-year-old Jennifer Dewey and 19-year-old Michelle Xavier, were found on the side of the road, both nude. Jennifer had been shot and Michelle had her throat slit Up until police made the arrest, david Misch, in 2018.
Speaker 1:
Based on DNA evidence, tommy was suspected of having been the culprit, but apparently there were two serial killers in Fremont, california, at that time, which is terrifying because the other guy was a serial killer, but Tommy was just moseying along at the same time. But that really wasn't him. It really was not him. He was just suspected of it for literally forever. Oh that's crazy. Yeah, that was in 1986 and he was suspected of being the killer until 28.
Speaker 1:
So after a short stint in Fremont, cells headed to Winamooka, nevada, in October of 1987, where he ran into 20-year-old Stephanie Stroh at a truck stop, she needed a ride back home to Reno, nevada, and cells offered to drive her there. She had called her parents at the truck stop to let them know that she had a ride and would be home the next day. So that was the last time she was ever heard from. Cells claimed that he drugged her with LSD and then strangled her and tied a concrete block to her feet and dropped her in a hot spring in the desert. However, the crime was never confirmed because there was nobody ever recovered and no evidence confirming his story. Stephanie's disappearance is still considered unsolved. So I'm sharing all of his locations and alleged crimes to really paint the picture of how awful this man was and how he was literally just gallivanting around the country on a crime spree, completely undetected. So from Nevada, he added to Ina Illinois. So trigger warning for everyone. This crime is very graphic and disturbing, so less than X-ray.
Speaker 1:
A 29 year old Keith Darden and his wife, 30 year old Elaine, who was pregnant with their second child, lived just outside Ina Illinois with their two year old son Peter. Keith worked at a treatment plant and Elaine worked at a local store. They were active in their church's music group and they were just your happy, average family. They lived in a trailer sitting on land that they rented from a local farmer but decided to list the trailer for sale so they can move to a safer town. There was a recent string of homicides, 15 to be exact. Not sure if they were related to each other, but nonetheless Keith made Keith extremely uneasy and, wanting to protect his family at all costs, he even refused to help a young woman that came to his door one night asking to use the phone. So on November 18th 1987, keith failed to show up for work, which was extremely unlike him. His boss called the home, but there was no answer, so they called his emergency contact his parents. They hadn't heard from Keith either, so they called the sheriff's office and asked them to do a welfare check, and they said they would meet them there with the key.
Speaker 1:
When police entered the home, they found the bodies of Elaine, peter and their newborn baby girl they planned to name Casey, all in one bed. Elaine and Peter had been bound with duct tape around their mouths, wrists and ankles, and both had been beaten with a baseball bat that the killer then put into Elaine. So the beating was so intense that it caused Elaine to go until labor, delivering her daughter, who the killer then also beat to death. I literally cannot imagine or fathom or anything, what Elaine and Peter must have been going through. Like a moment that's supposed to be so happy, enjoy, filled, the best day of your life, like having your baby is a literal nightmare Like I just can't even imagine. Like the terror.
Speaker 1:
So Keith was not found in the house with his family and his car was missing. This initially led police to think that Keith had killed his family and fled. However, the next day, some hunters found his body not far from the trailer and he had been shot three times and the head and his genitals were severely mutilated. Interestingly, though, keith's car was found parked at a police station 11 miles away from the home in Benton Illinois. It's like the cops were being taunted like hey, here it is, I'm parking it right in front of your face and you don't even know. So evidence in the trailer showed that Keith had been murdered there and then his body was moved, but they couldn't show who was killed. First it was determined that they were all killed within an hour or two of each other. Murders had no physical evidence or even any motives as to why anyone would want to harm this family. They had no enemies, they weren't involved in anything shady, nobody was having an affair, they were just living their lives.
Speaker 1:
The case remained cold until 2000 when Tommy Sells confessed to the murders. He gave police statements in a confession, but he couldn't be officially linked to the crime. He also gave details that were inconsistent with the evidence. He claimed that Keith saw him hitchhiking and offered him a ride back to their home for a home coach meal and then propositioned him for a threesome with his wife. Their family knows this is not true. He wouldn't bring home some strange man. Elaine was very pregnant, but even if she wasn't, family and friends say they would never be interested in a threesome, especially with some rando. So for the police the crime remained officially open, and it still does to this day, sells said.
Speaker 1:
I know people have their doubts. They say there's no physical evidence tying me to the Dardens. But there wasn't any for any of them because they weren't looking for me. I moved. I was always transient. So after the murders of the Dardens in 1987, sells went on to kill numerous people across the country, along with being arrested for drug-related charges and public intoxication, but he was not on their radar for murder. So imagine being the cops after finding all this out and being like we literally have this guy in custody multiple times. But we had no idea who he really was and in their defense they didn't know. And even if they did, they didn't have any evidence that they could hold him on. So Tommy Sells eventually landed in Charleston, west Virginia, on May 13, 1992.
Speaker 1:
On that day, 19-year-old Fabian Witherspoon was walking to her friend's apartment when she saw a man standing under a bridge with a sign saying he was hungry and needed food. Fabian approached the man, who of course was Tommy Sells, and he began showing her photos of his wife and kids quote unquote to get sympathy. It worked and Fabian told him that she would get him some food and clothes from her friend's place. She told him to wait outside while she gathered the items, but, not surprisingly, he didn't listen. He snuck into the house, locked the door behind him and got a knife from her kitchen. Her friend was at home, so they were alone in the apartment. Sells told her to do what he said and she wouldn't get hurt Anything, to do everything she could to survive. Fabian complied. Sells then told her that he was going to rape her and she thought there is no way I'm going to let that happen. And she decided right then she was going to fight back.
Speaker 1:
Tommy Sells had pushed Fabian up against the toilet and she saw a ceramic duck sitting on top of the toilet. She was like well in the movies, if you hit someone in the head, they'll get knocked out. Let's see. She grabbed the ceramic duck and began hitting Tommy in the head repeatedly. Unfortunately, he was still standing and did not get knocked out. However, during the struggle she was able to get the knife away from him and began stabbing him multiple times. So then he grabbed a piano bench and hit Fabian in the head with it, and she blacked out and did not come to until the police and paramedics were at the apartment. So he tried to get away. But he was literally just stabbed over and over and his wounds landed him in the ICU and arrested. This sounds an awful lot like attempted murder. So he ended up taking a plea deal and was only charged with malicious wounding. Her injuries from cells literally made her get surgery to repair. And we know who he is. We know he was planning on killing her, but as a result of the plea he only served five years in prison because they still did not know who he was or what he was capable of. Remember that was 1992. Five years later, when he got out in 1997, he ended up in Lorsville, illinois.
Speaker 1:
On October 13, 1997, julie Ray and her 10-year-old son, joel Kirkpatrick, ran into cells at a convenience store. According to cells, julie was rude to him, so he decided he was going to follow her home and murder her son as revenge. Completely logical, totally normal. His childhood means nothing Like. He's not some vigilante child savior. Whatever, he does not care. He became a predator as well.
Speaker 1:
So Julie Ray told police as she woke up to the sound of screaming. When she ran to her son's room, she did not see him in bed. When she turned around she was confronted by a man in a ski mask who she began struggling with all the way through the house and into the backyard, she said the man then backhanded her and fled. When police arrived. She told police as she thought Joel had been kidnapped. However, after investigating the scene, his murdered body was found on the other side of his bed. The murder weapon was a steak knife from Julie's own kitchen which was left on the floor by Joel's bed.
Speaker 1:
Quickly Julie became the prime suspect in her son's murder. Detectives said there was no evidence of the struggle that she said she had with a masked intruder. Nothing was stolen, the house was not in disarray, there was no sign of poor sanctuary and Joel's blood was on Julie's clothes. She didn't have a chance to look on his side of the bed because when she turned around she said there was an intruder. But police did not believe her story. They suspected the motive was that she was in a bad custody battle with her ex-husband and by killing Joel she would be getting back at her ex or make sure that if she can't have custody, nobody would.
Speaker 1:
She maintained her innocence for the entire time, but three years later, in 2000, she was indicted on first degree murder charges. Her attorney told her not to testify because the prosecution would just twist her words and make her look bad. She took his advice but was still found guilty of murder and sentenced to 65 years in prison. She remained in prison until Tommy Sells ended up confessing to the murder with details and everything, and she ended up being exonerated. But that's basically two lives taken Now. Traumatizing for Julie because she did not kill her son and happened to go through that trial and be blamed for murdering her son. Like get out of here, there's no way.
Speaker 1:
So with Tommy Sells, completely free of any suspicion, with the murder of Joel Kirkpatrick, he was able to move on and continue his cross-country crime spree. Later that same month he kidnapped, raped and strangled to death 13-year-old Stephanie Mahaney in Springfield, missouri. On March 30, 1999, he raped and murdered 28-year-old Debbie Harris and her 8-year-old daughter Amberia in Del Rio, texas. On May 13th 1999, he raped and murdered 13-year-old Haley MacCone in Lexington, kentucky. On July 3rd 1999, he shot and killed 14-year-old Bobby Lynn Wofford in Kingfisher, oklahoma. He was literally all over the dang country just killing people. With all these murders all over, he was able to continue because agencies weren't piecing it together as a serial killer and why would they? He was literally everywhere.
Speaker 1:
So on New Year's Eve 1999, tommy made his way back to Del Rio, texas. 10-year-old Crystal Searles and her 7-year-old sister Marquet were having a sleepover at their friend's 13-year-old Katie Harris's house. Of course, being the older sister who was closer and eggs to Katie, crystal told her little sister to go sleep in the other room so Crystal and Katie could have the bunk beds in Katie's room all to themselves Normal big sister stuff. Marquet was pissed, but she did what she was told. So after the New Year's Eve celebrations were over, katie's parents and siblings went to bed and the three girls did the same.
Speaker 1:
Around 3.50 am, 35-year-old Tommy Searles broke into their home and went into Katie's room. As he approached Katie in her bunk, she began fighting back. This woke up Crystal, who was in the bunk above her, but she remained frozen as she saw a tall, shadowy figure stab her friend 16 times. At this point Tommy hadn't noticed Crystal in the top bunk and she was lying as still as possible, hoping that he wouldn't see her. Just as he was about to leave the room, his eyes met hers. He then grabbed Crystal and tried to slit her throat, but she had her hands around her throat, trying to protect herself. Searles told her to move her hands and without even thinking she automatically complied.
Speaker 1:
Despite bleeding and being in excruciating pain, crystal knew she had to play dead, so she slumped forward and laid perfectly still on the floor. Crystal later said I just remember laying there and the light turning off and I heard the door shut and so I got on my hands and knees and was crawling across the floor on the bedroom and I came across Katie on the floor. She was kind of making a gasping noise or maybe she was choking. But then I remember trying to comfort her. I lay next to her, rubbing her back, and that's when I realized I couldn't talk because all I wanted to say was everything was going to be okay. But I couldn't. And then I mean, as soon as she stopped making those noises, I had this feeling you gotta get out of here, get up, come on, go, don't lay here, go.
Speaker 1:
Crystal then got up as quickly as possible and went to the room where her little sister was sleeping. She tried to wake her sister, but she couldn't speak or scream, and shaking her was not working. Crystal feared her sister and the rest of the Harris's were dead, so she decided to run to the neighbor's house for help. Barefoot and holding her bleeding throat, she ran a quarter of a mile to the nearest neighbor. She banged on their door and wrote them a note that said to call the police that there's trouble at the Harris's house. Help arrived and luckily Crystal's sister and the rest of the family were completely unharmed and were somehow able to sleep through the entire attack. Only Katie had been murdered and Crystal suffered from a sliced trachea but was stabilized in the hospital.
Speaker 1:
While there, she worked with police to get a sketch drawn at the suspect and within days police had told me cells in custody. She testified against him in his trial and he was found guilty and sentenced to death on September 18, 2000. Upon his arrest, cells confessed to over 70 murders. Some were able to be confirmed, but others were not. On September 17, 2000, tommy Sells was indicted for the murder of Stephanie Mahaney in Missouri, but he was never tried. That same year, he pleaded guilty to the murder of 9-year-old Mary Perez in San Antonio and he received a life sentence. Well, truly didn't matter, because he was already on death row.
Speaker 1:
On April 3, 2014, at 6.27 pm, tommy Sells was executed by lethal injection. Katie Harris's family, crystal Searles and the family of Mary Perez and two of Tommy's friends. His friends attended the execution and he shot them a smile when he was strapped to the table. Katie's father, terry, said it was a great day for the families of the victims and that's the end of the story, but wrapped up in a nice little bow, after he got away with it for far too long 20 years, essentially Because he was 35 when he killed Katie Absolutely insane.
Speaker 1:
And I had not even heard of him before. I just stumbled upon this case while researching other cases. It's crazy that I had never heard of him before. So anyway, if you guys could leave a review on Apple Podcast, share the podcast with your friends, comment on Instagram. Anyway, that you're able to support the show is greatly appreciated as we continue to grow, and let me know if you guys enjoyed this solo recording or if you want the co-host back or if you want a little mix of both. Either way, come back next week for another episode of Murder in the Mountains, see ya.