TOMMY and an accomplice kidnapped a woman seven miles southwest of Little Rock at a fast-food restaurant. They took her down a dirt road to a bluff overlooking a 100-foot-deep lake. The trilling songs of birds and the rustle of leaves caressed by a breeze provided a harmonic backdrop to the screams of a tormented young woman. When they were through with her, the scent of fear, seminal fluid and blood overwhelmed the fresh fragrance of the forest. One grabbed the arms, the other picked up the legs of the dead victim. They gave her body a swing and heaved her into one of the water-filled rock quarries that folks in southern Pulaski County call “blue holes.”
SELLS was fairly stationary in 1983, living in the 3300 block of Edmundson in Breckenridge Hills near St. Louis, Missouri. He managed to accumulate three traffic tickets in the area that year, in June, July and December.
Thomas and Colleen Gill and their two children were residents of the West End neighborhood of St. Louis at that same time. They owned and operated Colette & Thomas on Hair, Ltd., a beauty salon in Des Peres. They bought their large home at 23 Washington Terrace in need of repair and renovation in January 1983.
On July 31, a man matching Sells’ description was seen fleeing the Gill family home, just as Thomas Gill was pulling up to the house. When Gill walked inside, the bloody, bludgeoned bodies of his wife and his 4-year-old daughter, Tiffany, greeted him chillingly. He raced upstairs to his 1-year-old son, Sean. The boy was sleeping soundly, unaware of the insanity that had erupted downstairs.
The neighborhood had been plagued by burglaries, but Colleen still wore a generous diamond ring on her hand. Suspicions shifted to Thomas Gill because he had purchased a $600,000 life insurance policy on his wife only three weeks before. But suspicion never amounted to indictable proof—and Gill was never arrested.
ON May 8, 1984, Sells was under arrest by the Scott County Sheriff’s Department in Benton, Missouri. He was charged with stealing a Ford Mustang and released in custody to Dunklin County. There he pleaded guilty to the felony and was sentenced to two years in the state penitentiary system by a judge who was the father of one of Sells’ grade school friends. While serving his sentence, Sells’ daughter was born to Nicole Snow.
He entered the Missouri State Penitentiary, now known as the Jefferson City Correctional Center, on September 18, 1984. At the time, it was known as “The Walls.” Convicts simply called it “God’s bloodiest forty acres on earth.” Minor infractions for creating a disturbance bounced him to Algoa Correctional Center, then to Boonville and then back to Algoa. From there, he was paroled on February 18, 1985.
IN July, he stole another car, drove it to Rolla, Missouri, and abandoned it at a doughnut shop. On the 19th, he checked into the New Horizons Rehabilitation Center in Vichy, Missouri, fifteen miles to the north. Three days later, his mother informed law enforcement of his location, and an officer from Clayton, Missouri, interviewed him by telephone about the car theft. Soon another phone call came, this one from his parole officer. Concerned that he’d be picked up on a parole violation, Sells fled the rehab center. Days later a woman and her 5-year-old boy lay dead because Tommy Lynn Sells got angry.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN the southwestern corner of Missouri lies the city of Springfield. It bills itself as “The Gateway to the Ozarks.” Traveling south, the terrain gets hillier, the countryside less tame.
The Ozarks are an old range of mountains. The ragged peaks that once heaved up from the earth in a cataclysmic event have eroded with the passage of time. Now, the mountains are rolling pillows accented by dramatic valleys.
The White River raced through the Ozarks in Taney County where dams built between 1911 and 1958 created three lakes heralded for their bass fishing, and as a source for hydroelectric power. The county bordering the State of Arkansas had a population of less than 10,000 in the mid-eighties. It wasn’t a very diverse group—98 percent of the populace was white.
In the summertime, the sides of back roads are littered with wildflowers—the brilliant red of Indian paintbrush, the pulsating pink of dianthus, the golden glow of goat’s beard. The Mark Twain National Forest covers a large portion of the wild and beautiful county.
In the shadow of this forest, nestled at the mouth of Swan Creek, is the county seat of Forsyth. It is a town that clings fast to its past. It’s a place where you can still experience a flashback to the fifties in an old-fashioned cafe with red-and-white oilskin tablecloths and a worn linoleum floor.
The slow, peaceful environs of Forsyth and the breath taking beauty of its surroundings were permanently scarred when the carnival came to town.
ON Friday, July 26, 1985, Rory “Willie” Cordt was excited about turning five in eight days. He was a cute boy with a bowl-shaped haircut and a smile that seemed two sizes too big for his little face. He was looking forward to starting kindergarten in the fall. At the moment, though, he was just about beside himself because he was going to the carnival at the Taney County Fair with his mother, Ena Cordt, a pretty and petite woman with brown hair and dark eyes. Willie thrilled at the lights, the rides, the games he could only dream of winning. And dream he did, like any other little boy: visions of being older and bigger; hopes of one day winning that enormous teddy bear and giving it to his mommy with pride.
Awestruck, he clutched his mother’s hand, reveling in the dirt and sawdust underfoot, the smell of cotton candy and popcorn in the air and the roar of the crowd and the machinery. He immersed himself in a wild, wonderful world of 4-year-old fantasy. Reality, though, was waiting at that carnival for Willie and Ena: waiting in the shape of a man—a man named Tommy Lynn Sells.
Life gets a little lonely for a divorced mother in a small town. After years as a maintenance worker at Skaggs Hospital in Branson, she now toiled away at a car wash in Forsyth during the day and cared for her son at night. Maybe she was looking for a little excitement. Maybe she just took pity on a young man and invited him over for a home-cooked meal. Or maybe she thought she’d seen the last of him after some harmless flirtation on the carnival grounds and had no idea he was coming to visit that night. Ena can no longer let us know.
The seductive words he whispered to her in the shadow of the Ferris wheel that night led her to the worst decision in her twenty-eight years of life. Like a leaf in a whirlpool, she was drawn into his world of uncontrollable violence.
THE yard of the split-level home on Willow Lane was littered with balls, toys and other signs of a child. Inside, the rooms were clean but slightly disheveled. It was late when Tommy arrived, and little Willie was in bed.
According to Tommy it was a pleasant visit, up to a point. He excused himself to use the bathroom.
While he was out of the room, Ena looked through Tommy’s knapsack. Perhaps she was just curious and wanted to know a bit more about the stranger in her home. Had he given her his real name? Was he really from Missouri? Show me.
Unfortunately, she took too long in her inspection. When Tommy emerged from the bathroom, he caught her pink negligee–clad body bent over his bag. Without a moment’s doubt, he concluded that she was after his stash of cocaine. Convinced she was trying to steal his drugs, he flew into a rage. No one steals from Tommy Lynn Sells. No one treats him like a punk.
He roared down the hallway, spotted little Willie’s baseball bat along the way and snatched it up without slowing his pace in his race toward Ena. She froze in the icy glare of his cold eyes. He lifted the bat high in the air and slammed it down with fury. Viciously he beat her on the head, on her upraised arms, on her bowed back. She screamed. She begged for help. She prayed for her neighbors to hear. And then her horror intensified, multiplied. Willie stood framed in the doorway, frightened and powerless, crying and pleading for it all to stop. But it was too late for Ena. She could not comfort her son. She was not able to put up much of a struggle. She could not escape. The blows were too hard, too fast, too final. Her skull was fractured. And now Sells brandished a knife from her kitchen. One quick slice to her throat and Ena was gone. Her bod
y slumped by the end table.
Sells noticed Willie, too. He stepped over the battered, lifeless body of Ena. And in two strides, his hand grasped the scrawny little arm of the 4-year-old boy and dragged him into the living room. All the while, he beat Willie on the head with the boy’s own baseball bat, then slit his throat with his mother’s knife and dropped the still body to the floor by the couch. It did not matter that Willie was only 4. All that mattered was that he was a witness. And Joe Lovins had warned Tommy that a witness should never be left alive.
When his rage was spent, Sells calmly removed all identifying traces of his presence from the home, wiping away fingerprints and gathering his belongings. Carrying Willie’s bat, he forced his way out of the bloody house through a seldom-used door and fled anonymously into the night. Carnival workers often disappeared on a whim. His absence raised no suspicions.
ENA and Willie’s bodies lay cold and unnoticed for three days. At seven in the evening on July 30, 1985, Ena’s parents, Bob and Jill McIntosh, made the gruesome discovery. Her red car was parked out front, but not a sound came from inside the house when they knocked on the door. They pushed it open and the smell of rotting flesh assaulted their nostrils. Then their eyes consumed the blood spattered on the walls and puddled on the floor. In the midst of all this carnage, the battered and bloated bodies of their daughter and grandson lay crumpled on the floor.
On the day Willie should have been celebrating his fifth birthday, he was instead buried in the ground beside his mother at Snapps cemetery in rural Taney County. To the relief of the family, Ena’s other child, 8-year-old Peggy, was still alive. She had spent that part of her summer vacation visiting her father.
LAW enforcement was left with no motive, no firm suspects, and no solution to a double homicide in a small town. And Tommy Lynn Sells was left on the loose.
CHAPTER NINE
IT was soon obvious that Sells’ visit to the rehabilitation center had not been a success. On September 4, 1985, Sells, drunk and drugged, drove down the road with two underage girls. He lost control of his vehicle, causing it to flip and roll three times. All three occupants walked away from the scene with only minor injuries. Because of this incident, Sells was arrested in Missouri for driving while intoxicated and for charges related to the minor girls. Thirty days later, the court dropped the charges related to his driving companions for time served.
On October 15, his parole revoked, he returned to Missouri State Penitentiary. On the 29th of October, he transferred back to Boonville Correctional Center. His violations behind bars were infrequent and minor—creating a disturbance and self-mutilation. He was released with his sentence served in full on May 16, 1986.
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN Crystal Harris was a teenager in Kansas, she made a number of foolish decisions. Early in 1985, she got pregnant and married the father of the child she was carrying. In November, at the age of 17, she became the mother of Justin. He was blind from birth. Ten months later, her daughter, Kaylene, was born. Lori came next, just sixteen months later.
One month after Lori’s debut into the world, the 20-year-old Crystal filed for divorce. She packed up her meager belongings and removed her brood from the explosive atmosphere of an abusive home.
She bought a place of her own and settled into a lively home that bounced with the kinetic presence of three toddlers. In 1990, she met a neighbor, Terry Harris. Their relationship started as a friendship, but soon spilled over into romance. Gun-shy from her first encounter with matrimony, Crystal was reluctant to even discuss walking down the aisle until she was certain she was not making another mistake. Instead, she invited Terry and Shawn, his first-grade son, to move in with her nest of rug rats. This decision horrified her parents but, since it didn’t cause a permanent family rift, it suited Crystal well.
The blended family built a foundation of trust and love in Kansas for the next five years. When Katy went off to kindergarten, she became aware that she was different from the other children in her class. They all had a mommy and a daddy. She had a mommy and a Terry. She crawled into his lap one evening and asked, “Would you be my Daddy?”
“Yes,” Terry said, smothering her with an emotional hug.
Crystal raised an eyebrow at his response. She and Terry had not yet discussed marriage.
AFTER leaving prison, Sells worked for Atlas Towing in St. Louis for a short time. He drove a one-ton tow truck and a big tow rig, hauling vehicles and making emergency roadside repairs. While employed in this capacity, he met and married a woman named Sandy who has since died of breast cancer.
One night, about five minutes from the Arch just off Broadway in downtown St. Louis, he was repairing the vehicle of a stranded motorist. Without provocation, he claimed, the man kicked him. Sells pulled his gun, shot the man and left him for dead. Before he could leave the area, he was arrested in Pagedale Township just outside of St. Louis for stealing a light bar from one of the tow trucks. The charges were dropped and Sells resumed his nomadic existence, criss-crossing the country.
SELLS meandered south until he reached Aransas Pass, Texas, a seedy little fishing town separated from the Gulf of Mexico by the outlying Mustang Island. There, he got a job with Gulf Team Shrimp. Their shrimping boats went out to sea for thirty days at a stretch. On one of these trips, he overdosed on heroin. He turned blue and passed out before he could push all of the heroin. He was discovered with the needle still stuck in his arm. When James, the rig man, found him, his breathing was labored. Since the boat was two-and-a-half days from the dock—and proper medical care—his survival was questionable. Bobby, the captain, called the Coast Guard. Before they arrived, Sells regained consciousness. He was still alive when the boat reached shore.
After that harrowing experience, he did not go back to sea. Instead, he floated across the nation, going wherever impulse led him. There were violent encounters along this journey. He may have killed 19-year-old Michelle Xavier and 20-year-old Jennifer Duey in Fremont, California, in 1986. Their bodies were discovered off Mill Creek Road. One was shot in the head, the other’s throat was sliced wide open.
IN late April 1987, Sells hopped a freight train and rode it as far north as he could go. He disembarked in Lockport, New York, near Niagara Falls. In that town, on May 1, Susan Korcz was in a local bar fighting with her boyfriend, Michael Mandell. She stomped out in disgust, heading in a direction that would not have taken her home. She was never seen again. She was listed as a missing person.
Leads were followed and suspects questioned with no results. Susan did not show up or call the hair salon where she worked as a beautician. There was no activity on her credit cards or in her bank account. She did not contact her family. Within weeks, Susan Korcz was presumed dead. Police conducted canal and waterway searches but did not find her body.
In the center of Lockport is the Niagara escarpment. Some of the hillsides take an abrupt fifty- to sixty-foot drop. Near the escarpment, a canal with a series of locks gives the town its name. More than seven years after Susan’s disappearance, a worker from a plant was sent up on the hill to clear off the debris. He saw what he initially thought was a piece of trash, but when he picked it up, he realized it was a human skull. Susan Korcz’s body had finally been found, 800 feet from the canal, near a railroad trestle. She had been buried in a shallow grave covered with debris. Due to the advanced state of decomposition, the cause of death was unknown.
On May 3, 1987, two days after Susan’s disappearance, and two states away, Sells awoke with blood all over his clothes.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SELLS wandered aimlessly toward the Southwest until he came to a stop in Humboldt County, Nevada. It is a desolate area where the largest employers are in the mining industry. Since the early 1800s, they’ve pulled silver, copper, molybdenum, tungsten, iron, bauxite, clay and mercury out of the ground. It’s a countryside spotted with hot springs and abandoned mines. To the south of the county, in the shadow of Bloody Run Peak, is the small town of Winnemu
cca, population nearly 13,000 in 1987.
Arriving in that town, Sells worked for the Raymond Lavoie Roofing company. But his expenses were bigger than his paycheck. He passed a bad check on October 28. Then on the 30th, he stole a bank bag and a handgun from his employer’s truck and used Raymond Lavoie’s credit card to rent a hotel room for a woman.
STEFANIE Stroh, a 20-year-old student at Reed College in Oregon and long-time resident of San Francisco, had just returned from her ten-month trip to Europe and Asia. When she flew into New York, she decided to fulfill her lifelong dream of hitchhiking across the United States with a friend. They traveled together as far as Salt Lake City. She called home nearly every day and her mother mentally plotted her cross-country progress. She was not too worried—Stefanie never told her she was hitchhiking.
On October 15, at Four Way Truck Stop in Wells, Nevada, Stefanie Stroh went to the pay phone and called her parents collect. After a breathless description of the sights she had seen since the last call, she told them where she was and assured them she would be home in a couple of days.
The next day, she was in Winnemucca at the Motel 6. No rooms were available and she asked about the possibility of accommodations in Reno, planning to continue her journey down Route 80.
AS Tommy Lynn Sells told the Texas Rangers, he zeroed in on the young woman on the side of the road. She looked better and better the closer he got to her. The 5’5” large-breasted woman with sun-bleached dark brown hair was dressed in hippie-style clothing, and carrying an orange sleeping bag roll and a gray backpack with two small drums attached. She stuck out her thumb as Sells approached, presenting him with an opportunity he could not resist. Coming to a stop, he pushed the passenger door open. Stefanie ran over to the pick-up truck and paused at the door.
Through the Window: The Terrifying True Story of Cross-Country Killer Tommy Lynn Sells (St. Martin's True Crime Library) Page 4