“Where are you headed?” she asked.
“Where you want to go?” he answered.
“Reno.”
“Hop in. I’m heading that way.”
Stefanie swiveled into the passenger seat, filled with relief. Near Lovelock, Sells turned off the highway with an invitation instead of an explanation. “I’ve got some acid. You want to drop some with me?”
Since she had already taken major risks hitchhiking across the country, drug experimentation in the desert no longer seemed extreme. While waiting for the effects of the drug to transport her to another place, she regaled Sells with tales of Paris. Then, high on LSD in the surreal environment of the desert, her life crystallized and shattered into pieces as Sells choked her to death.
In the stolen truck Sells drove that day, the vehicle’s owner had a convenient washtub and a bag of quick-mix concrete. Sells placed Stefanie’s feet into the tub, mixed up and poured in the concrete and left her hanging off the tailgate of the pick-up overnight while the concrete hardened.
In the morning, he dragged her weighted body, her gray backpack and other belongings over to a thirty-foot-wide hot spring. It was not one of the tame bodies of water that attracted droves of people to soak in comforting warmth. Anyone sticking their toes in this spring would deeply regret their recklessness. He dropped her in feet-first, watched her sink into the bubbling water and drove out of the desert.
THREE days later, when their daughter had not arrived home and had not called, Stefanie’s mother and stepfather, Joni and Grant Settlemeir, called the Winnemucca Police Department and filed a missing persons report. When authorities ascertained that Stefanie had been hitchhiking across the country, it was easy to jump to the conclusion that she had been abducted across state lines. Because of this assumption, the FBI was on the case by mid-November.
In no time, Marvin Stroh, Stefanie’s father, was on the scene with nine friends and family members. They traveled from the airport straight to the Chrysler dealership. Stroh purchased eight Jeeps outright and set out to find his daughter. Because the last call received from Stefanie came from Wells in Elko County, the search began there. Then they got word about Stefanie’s presence in Winnemucca and turned their attention to Humboldt County.
Ranger Coy Smith, long familiar with the desolation of West Texas, was amazed by the emptiness he found in this part of Nevada. “It is the end of the world out there,” the Ranger said. “You can drive for days and there ain’t nothing.”
And drive for days they did—into the desert and down Route 80 to Reno. All along the way, they plastered up posters and asked questions. Then they focused on Reno itself, stopping at moderate- and low-priced hotels to see if Stefanie had ever made it that far down Route 80. Without success, they returned to the dealership, sold back the Jeeps and flew back to the West Coast.
The search fliers were posted everywhere in Winne-mucca and Reno as well as up and down the interstate for miles. Authorities conducted interviews at all the truck stops in Humboldt and surrounding counties. Motel 6, where she had stopped looking for a room, provided names and addresses of everyone staying there on October 16, in hopes that someone had seen her after she left the front desk. They asked questions at any other place someone might stop when traveling through the area. Joni Settlemeir made television appearances pleading for information about Stefanie. Any resident of Nevada would have been hard-pressed not to be aware of her disappearance.
But the task of law enforcement was onerous. Route 80 is the most well-traveled truck route in the country with 32,000 to 36,000 vehicles passing through every twenty-four hours. The isolation in the surrounding countryside complicated their search even more. “You could go one quarter of a mile off the freeway and never see another person walking or a cowboy on horseback,” said former Humboldt County Sheriff James Bagwell. “You could hide a body out there and nobody would find it—ever.”
The city of San Francisco offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Stefanie, or to the person or persons responsible for her disappearance.
The Stroh family hired a psychic to aid in their search. They were told that they could find Stefanie’s body in the bottom of a well or a mine near an eastern Nevada town with four syllables in its name. Both Winnemucca and Battle Mountain fit that description. There would be a white building, a ravine and strip mining nearby. And finally, the psychic said, “I see her feet in concrete.”
Authorities scouted the area. They found an old road-house that matched the psychic’s profile. The abandoned dry well there could have been a substitute for a ravine. Chief Mike Curti called in the city fire rescue truck with its powerful lights. He peered with binoculars down the shaft, but the light did not penetrate the depths.
The police chief called the sheriff’s department and they brought their video camera out to the old well. They lowered it down and got back tape of the scene below. Although the images were sharp enough to identify an old television antenna and other debris, there was no sign of Stefanie Stroh.
The family requested an aerial search of the area in hopes of finding elusive clues. A pilot on his way to California to pick up a prisoner was willing to do the job. Low and slow, with camera rolling, he scanned the area between Winnemucca and Lovelock on the chance the girl had been slain and thrown off the highway.
In late November, a Winnemucca resident reported an incident she’d observed around the time Stefanie disappeared. She said she was traveling along the frontage road when she saw a girl matching Stefanie’s description in a scuffle with a truck driver at the side of the highway. She stopped and asked if she should call the sheriff, but the girl did not respond. The man jumped into his rig and the woman walked westward on the highway.
In a few days, another woman stepped forward offering a different version of events. She claimed the man was walking along the highway and a woman drove up in a rig, got out of the truck and a scuffle ensued. This woman did get the name of the truck company, making it possible to track the identity of the driver. Soon, the FBI got a name from the Arkansas-based trucking firm. But the man was no longer employed by that business and his location was unknown.
From diner to lunch counter, Winnemucca buzzed about nothing else as they downed their cups of coffee. In time, no news was reported and interest waned in the community—no one there actually knew the girl. On several occasions, over the years, someone stumbled across unidentified human remains out in the desert. The buzz would pick up again and each time, the family and friends of Stefanie Stroh held their collective breaths. But Stefanie was never found. If she had been, the answers would be clear. As it now stands, some law enforcement officials believe Sells’ version of events. Others do not.
NEITHER his friends nor his employer knew of any plans to leave Winnemucca, but on November 3, Sells was heading out of town, trolling again. In a matter of days, he made it to Illinois and committed the most gruesome murders of his life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
NOTHING earth-shattering ever happened in the sleepy town of Ina in southern Illinois. The small village was home to a gas station, a bank, a store, a post office, a fire-house and just enough houses and trailers for its 475 residents. On the night of November 17, 1987, a deadly fear and uncertainty was born in the hearts of the citizens of Ina that will haunt them all for the rest of their lives.
Of the four people present in the house on the southern edge of town that night, only Tommy Lynn Sells remains alive. And he has told three different stories about his fatal encounter with the family. In one version, Keith Dardeen picked him up while he was hitchhiking and brought him home. In another, he met Keith at the pool hall and was invited to his house. In the third, he knocked on the front door and forced his way inside. In the first two versions, he claims the two of them were driving down the road later in the evening, when Keith made a homosexual advance. That threw Sells into a blind rage.
By most accounts, Keith was not the type of man to pick up hitchhikers or to bring
a stranger home to his family. He was very protective of his house, his wife and his son. He was not likely to allow entry to a stranger at the door. There is also no evidence pointing to any homosexual activity or fantasy in any corner of Keith’s life. The conclusions of authorities and others close to the case were blended with portions of Sells’ recollections to reconstruct the most likely sequence of events that night.
Riding the rails through Illinois, Tommy Lynn Sells jumped off the train in Ina near Route 57, a major highway running north to south through the state. To the north, it passes by Champaign-Urbana and Kankakee, and then into Chicago. Where he disembarked, the highway passes south through a series of small whistle-stop towns until it ends near the Kentucky state line.
Like any predator, his eyes constantly sought signs of vulnerability, open doors to opportunity. The modest trailer beckoned to him. It had a “for sale” sign propped in the window—a perfect prop for Sells. The Dardeens rented the property from Lloyd and Joann Settle, who farmed the land near the house site. But, though the Dardeens owned the trailer, it was beginning to feel too small for their now-growing family. Their new baby was due early in the new year.
Sells sat in the darkness overlooking the home, waiting, watching and drinking one beer after another. When he determined the time was ripe, he approached the home with caution, his hand wrapped tightly around the gun he had stolen in Nevada, which was now securely concealed in his pocket. He knocked on the door as he shivered on the doorstep. When Keith opened it, he asked the stranger what he wanted. Sells said he was interested in buying the mobile home.
Keith had not heard a car pull up. Looking over the stranger’s shoulder, he would have seen that only his own vehicles were parked in the drive. Aware of his responsibility to his pregnant wife, Eileen, and his three-year-old son, Peter, Keith suppressed his desire for a sale. He refused to let Sells come in and look at the trailer. As he closed the door, Sells threw his body into the open gap, pulled his gun and pointed it at Keith’s head.
Sells shouted threats and obscenities and Keith backed up, his hands raised above his head. A few yards away, Eileen clutched little Peter to her side, frozen in fear. At a shout from Keith, she turned to flee to the bedroom with her son. Sells was too quick. He grabbed Peter and held the gun to his head.
“Shut up. Everything’s gonna be fine so long as you all do what I say,” Sells reassured them. Motioning to Keith he said, “You got any rope?”
“I don’t think so,” Keith stammered.
Sells jerked the gun against little Peter’s head, causing the boy to emit a shrieking sob. He gave him a shake. “Shut up.” Then he turned to Keith and ordered, “Find something to tie them up.”
After fumbling through kitchen drawers, Keith produced a roll of duct tape. Without moving the gun from the little boy’s head, Sells bound Peter’s feet, hands and mouth with the tape. Dragging the constrained boy with him, he ordered Eileen to the floor, where he repeated the binding process with her. This would be Keith and Eileen’s last chance to see one another—to exchange eye contact, to see the tears in one another’s eyes. Sells told Eileen that if she moved, her husband was dead.
Then, he turned to Keith and threatened to kill his wife and child if he did not obey, and forced him out of the home at gunpoint. With a gun to his head, Keith drove his car a mile away to an empty field full of left-over stubble on the campus of Rend Lake College. When the car stopped, Keith knew he had to wrest the gun away. If he did not, he would be dead. If he died, there would be no one to protect his beloved Eileen and Peter. He made his first move. Tommy countered with a gunshot into his cheek. Keith slumped back.
Sells dragged his limp body from the car and threw him on the ground. Keith made weak protests and feeble gestures of struggle. Sells unzipped Keith’s pants, pulled out the man’s penis and cut it from his body. He waved it in his face and said, “I’m taking this to your wife.”
Sells then shot the dying man twice—in the side of his face and in the side of his head.
SOAKED in the bloodlust of the moment, Sells jumped into Keith’s car and drove back to the trailer. When the door flew open, Eileen’s eyes registered hope. When she saw who walked through the door, hope turned to horror.
Sells unbound her feet in order to rape her. Using scissors, he cut off her clothing. When she struggled, he threatened to kill her son if she did not cooperate. Instantly, she became still and accepted the assault with barely a whimper behind the duct tape that sealed her mouth shut.
While she lay on the floor, used and helpless, Sells roamed through the trailer. Her mind raced—wondering what had happened to Keith and seeking a means of escape, a way to get help. Peter was crying uncontrollably. His sobs stuck to the back of the tape. She wanted to speak words of comfort to him, to touch him, to hold him. All she could do was send a message of love from her eyes to his.
Sells raised little Peter’s baseball bat high in the air and slammed it into the head of the three-year-old lying small and bound at his feet. Eileen struggled to her feet and rushed at her tormentor just as he raised the bat again. This time, he only grazed Peter’s head.
He shoved Eileen backwards. Hands bound, she lost her balance and fell to the floor. He raised the bat over Peter and hit him again and again until he was certain the child was dead. Then, he turned back to Eileen. He hit her once, then raised the bat, ready to hit her again. He paused. Something unusual was happening. Eileen had gone into premature labor. Before his eyes, a three-pound, thirteen-ounce baby girl was being born. Coldly he watched until the infant had emerged.
He looked at Eileen. He saw the desperate pleading in her eyes. He smiled. A sharp intake of hope caught in her throat. From somewhere he picked up a knife. He wielded it now, slicing into her breasts. Then, he turned to the baby, who was still attached to her mother through the umbilical cord. He raised his bat high and beat her until she was dead.
Now, all Eileen wanted was to die. Tommy Lynn Sells obliged her. He beat her in the head, fracturing her skull. As the last breath of life fled her body and dissipated into the night, he sexually assaulted her with the bat, leaving it lodged deep inside her.
THE night was over for the Dardeens. But not for their killer. He had work to do. He had evidence to eliminate. He carried the bodies of Eileen, Peter and Casey into the master bedroom and laid them carefully on the bed. He removed all but the most microscopic traces of duct tape from their cooling bodies. He stuffed all the pieces into his pockets.
He cleaned up after himself, going room to room. On the coat rack, a Toucan Sam painter’s cap hung, bearing silent witness to his efforts. He wiped surfaces for fingerprints, cleaned up puddles of blood, sought any place that identifying traces could hide, and sanitized them. It was a slow, meticulous process. It spoke of a man who had killed before. It warned of a man who would kill again.
WHEN he was satisfied that the job was complete, he climbed back into Keith’s blood-spattered, red 1981 Plymouth and headed south on Highway 57.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ON Wednesday, when Keith Dardeen did not show up for work at the treatment plant for Rend Lake Water Conservancy District, his supervisor called his home. When he got no answer there all day, he was concerned. Keith was a responsible and dependable employee. That evening, he called Keith’s father. Don Dardeen was just as puzzled as he was. Although Don was divorced from Keith’s mother, Joeann Dardeen, he lived near her in the neighboring town of Mount Carmel.
He went over to her home where his daughter, Anita Knapp, and her two sons, 7-year-old Eddie and 4-year-old Robbie, had come over for pizza. Joeann knew an unexplained absence was out of character for her son. She called the sheriff’s office and Don drove to Ina to meet them with the house key.
AS the door swung open, what they found sent waves of fear crashing on the village of Ina. But there was only one adult body laid out on the bed. Not two. The missing person was Keith Dardeen, and he instantly became a suspect. Many minds in the community ca
me to the same conclusion. It was only natural. Statistically, it was logical. And for the residents of Jefferson County, it dredged up the memory of a not-too-distant event.
Just four-and-a-half years earlier, and only ten miles up Route 57, in the town of Mount Vernon, another family had been visited by unspeakable tragedy: 19-year-old Thomas Odle had murdered his parents and his three siblings. He quietly ambushed them one by one as they arrived home from work or school. Many wondered and others assumed that one more man had erupted in a rage that sent his family to the grave.
WHEN the doorbell rang at Joeann’s house, Eddie and Robbie ran to answer it. When they did, they looked into the muzzles of guns held by four police officers.
Upon hearing the news of the discovery at her son’s home, Joeann paced the room. “Oh, God! Oh, God! Where’s Keith?”
Officers escorted Joeann into her bedroom and questioned her about Keith’s whereabouts. They asked her about the baby in the house. She insisted there was no baby, unaware of the brutal birth of her only granddaughter.
No matter how much law enforcement pushed and accused, Keith’s family and friends were adamant. They knew it was impossible for Keith to commit such a callous and violent act. They spurred the sheriff’s department to find the man they hoped was still alive, but now feared was dead. Late the next night, hunters discovered Keith’s brutalized body, abandoned and discarded in a lonely wheat field just over the Franklin County Line. Then, his car was found. It was as if the killer was thumbing his nose at the authorities and the community. The bloodstained Plymouth was parked with impudence near the police station in Benton, eleven miles away.
Through the Window: The Terrifying True Story of Cross-Country Killer Tommy Lynn Sells (St. Martin's True Crime Library) Page 5