Through the Window: The Terrifying True Story of Cross-Country Killer Tommy Lynn Sells (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

by Diane Fanning

  She ran toward him, her personal safety irrelevant in the face of her fear for her son. She grappled with him briefly until he pushed her off and headed toward the back of the house. She chased him through the glass doors and into the backyard, screaming inarticulate pleas for help.

  Outside, Julie tripped over an insignificant obstruction, invisible in the night, and fell face first on the ground. The intruder doubled back, hitting her in the head, hoping to delay her pursuit.

  She was too dazed to move—or even to think for a brief moment. Then, she raised herself on her arms and saw the fleeing man again. He pulled the hood down, revealing his face under a streetlight.

  She jumped to her feet, torn between chasing after him and running for help. She chose the latter and rushed to Lesa Bridgett’s house on the other side of the street and pounded on the door. Once inside, she called the police and reported her son’s abduction.

  In minutes, officers were on the scene. They found 10-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick in his bedroom. His small body was crumpled like a discarded tissue used to stanch a bloody nose. He was clothed in a blood-drenched tee shirt. The shirt was marred by a multitude of angry stab wounds.

  His mother, Julie, was taken to the emergency room with a black eye, scratches and abrasions on the tops of her feet, her knees and inside her legs, wounds on both shoulders, internal bruising and a laceration on her right arm requiring five sutures.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  TOMMY Lynn Sells was on the move, headed for Springfield, Missouri.

  As he haunted its streets, a young brown-haired woman captured his attention. He followed her, watching and waiting—waiting for the moment he could lure her from her safe world and into his. Unfruitful stalking drove Sells’ to a fever pitch.

  From his vantage point in his parked van, he sought a more vulnerable target. He saw a man and three children enter an apartment. The oldest child was 13 years old, with auburn hair, a freckled nose and a toothy grin. Her name was Stephanie Mahaney. Sells turned his focus and his fantasies to the potential victim in that apartment.

  Suzette Carlisle, the mother of these children, was not at home. She had been admitted to the hospital with a life-threatening bout of pneumonia. Her fiance, Rob Martin, had brought the children to the hospital to visit her that night. Upon returning home, he played video games with them and stayed in the apartment on North Robberson until all the children were asleep. Stephanie was so tired, she collapsed on the bed fully clothed in a gray tee shirt with a full-length Bugs Bunny on the front, a pair of jeans and her shoes.

  At 11 o’clock, Sells saw the man leave by the back door, locking it behind him before returning to sit by Su-zette’s side. Rob had assumed the front door was locked, since it was rarely used.

  Sells crept through the night as silent as an alley cat intent on its hunt for an unsuspecting mouse. He slipped through the front door into the quiet home. He went room to room seeking his next victim. He looked in on the 8-year-old and the 9-year-old. Then he found Stephanie.

  Stephanie’s eyes flew open as a wide piece of tape slapped across her mouth, partially blocking her nose and making it difficult to breathe. Sells jerked her out of bed, dragging her to the front door. With her glasses abandoned on the nightstand, her world was a blur.

  She struggled to free herself from his tight grip. She merely made her abductor angrier and the intensity of his hold more painful. He tossed her into the front seat of the van. Whimpering, she lurched toward the door to try to escape.

  “Shut up,” he said, smashing the back of his hand across her face.

  They drove into the countryside. Stephanie was afraid to make another attempt at escape. Afraid to leap from a moving van. Afraid to stay where she was. But every time she mounted the courage to make a move to freedom, she was smacked back into the seat.

  Finally, Sells parked just off of Missouri 266 on Greene County Farm Road 99. To make her more malleable, he injected her with a large dose of cocaine. He forced off her shoes and jeans, hitting her in the face whenever she struggled. She cringed when his hand moved toward her face again. He grabbed the edge of the tape and ripped it off her face in one swift movement, bringing tears to her eyes. Putting his hand behind her head, he pushed her down to penetrate her mouth. Then, he raped her. When he was through, he pressed down on her, his hands enclosed around her throat. He squeezed tightly, his arms shaking with the effort. Beneath him, her arms and legs twitched, her torso bucked. His fingers turned white as he applied the pressure for five long minutes. First, Stephanie lost consciousness— and then she lost her life.

  He gathered up the girl’s discarded clothing and her abused body and walked toward a field that pastured cows. He juggled his burden as he unlatched the gate. He moved farther from the road, dropping her jeans and a shoe along the way. When he reached the farm pond, he dropped her body into the water like unwanted trash into a garbage chute. He sluiced the cleansing wetness over his sweaty face, shook his head and drove away.

  ROB Martin returned to the apartment at 5:30 the next morning. He’d planned to make breakfast for the three children and make sure they got to school on time. He unlocked the back door and heard the sound of an alarm clock. He went into Stephanie’s room to shut it off and coax her out of bed. She was not there. He checked on the other two children. They were both sound asleep. He looked in every room. He called out her name. He woke the other two and questioned them. Stephanie was nowhere to be found.

  Within hours, Suzette filed a missing persons report. She did not believe her daughter had run away. Stephanie was a real homebody. She took care of her younger siblings like a mother hen—her developing maternal instincts at an all-time high in the face of her mother’s serious illness. Instead of running around with her friends, she was more likely to sit with them on the front porch engaged in hours of conversation. For a thirteen-year-old, she was very responsible. At the time, though, Stephanie was one of twenty-six runaway or missing girls reported in the area.

  In the weeks that followed her disappearance, investigators talked to more than thirty people and searched six homes. They were unable to confirm any of the reported sightings of the young girl.

  Thirty-four days passed with no word of Stephanie. Then, on Tuesday, November 18, 1997, a group of hunters wandering through a field discovered the partially clothed body of a young teenaged girl submerged in the pond. When investigators arrived at the scene, they found a pair of jeans and one shoe nearby.

  The body was too decomposed to make visual identification possible. Greene County Sheriff’s Department detectives called all twenty-six families of missing girls to inform them of their discovery, and to obtain dental records and refine any descriptions they had on file.

  LATE Wednesday, November 19, 1997, the unknown body had a name—Stephanie Mahaney. The Greene County Medical Examiner, James Spindler, identified her through her dental records and a birthmark on her right ear.

  Information about her disappearance was sparse. Investigators received only fifteen calls reporting tips after the body was found—an all-time low. Twenty members of the Green County Sheriff’s Department and volunteer high school Explorer Scouts returned to the scene for a grid-by-grid search.

  Wrapped up warmly against the cold and wind, they marched in a determined line, halting the moment someone shouted, “Stop!” Once the found item was bagged as possible evidence, the line moved forward.

  On Christmas Eve, the results of the autopsy were made public. The decompression of the tissues in her throat showed that Stephanie had died of strangulation. Additionally, signs of trauma were noted on the face. Decomposition was too far advanced to determine whether or not a sexual assault had occurred.

  A picture of Stephanie became a permanent fixture on the bulletin board of one detective, Jim Arnott. It was the only unsolved murder in twenty years or more in Greene County. He also carried a picture of her in his notebook and another in his car. He never stopped thinking about what had happened to Stephanie M
ahaney.

  SELLS, however, had brushed the memories of that night right out of his mind. He returned to his mother and wife in St. Louis and continued working at the same auto shop until he took off again.

  On December 15, he was back in Winnemucca, Nevada, but he stayed just one night, at the Overland Hotel. Before leaving the area, he drove out to the desolate spot where he’d left Stefanie Stroh’s body in 1987—reliving his fond memories of that fatal night. He was back in St. Louis in time to get another traffic ticket on December 29, 1997. That day he left town and Nora never saw the father of her unborn child again.

  Sells was not happy when he left St. Louis. Nora would give birth to his progeny in three months’ time. He did not feel equipped or inclined to take care of a wife and a baby. He had hoped his younger brother, Randy, would raise the child. But Randy did not really want any children. He feared, too, that if he took in Tommy’s child, his brother would be hitting him up for cash and favors constantly.

  Nina knew that Nora did not have the ability to care for a child on her own, and Tommy was not responsible or stable enough to help. At her age, she did not feel capable of raising any child—not even her own grandchild. With the help of a sister in Jonesboro, Arkansas, she contacted an attorney to arrange for an adoption. He came to her home with a schoolteacher to evaluate Nora and to be certain she did want to give up her baby.

  In April 1998, in a hospital in Jonesboro, Nora gave birth to a baby boy by caesarean section. She never saw her child. He was immediately placed with a family in that town, where he lived for the next four years.

  Nina was determined not to have to go through this ordeal one more time. “To keep Nora from getting pregnant again, Nina had her get fixed,” Sells said.

  Nora returned to St. Louis to live with her mother-in-law. Sells was nowhere near Jonesboro when his son was born. He had pawned his mechanic’s tools in Little Rock, Arkansas, on January 19, 1998, and traveled south.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CARNIVAL season started early every year in South Texas—1998 was not an exception. Sells hooked up with the Heart of America outfit in Aransas Pass. He drove the truck that hauled the Ferris wheel, and also operated the ride. The carnival moved from town to town down Highway 90 as it runs west from San Antonio to the border. On the way, it passed a multitude of small towns like Castro-ville, a community of dramatic hills and valleys founded by immigrants from the Alsace–Lorraine region between Germany and France. Then they rolled through Hondo, a town with an Old West feel and a road sign that read, “Hondo is a little bit of heaven so don’t drive through it like hell.” Farther along they hit Knippa, a tiny town with a welcome sign that reassured all drivers passing through: “You can go ahead and blink. Knippa’s bigger than you think.” The last town they cut through on Route 90 was Uvalde, a quaint county seat with an inviting old-fashioned town square dominated by the no-nonsense architecture of its old courthouse.

  After Uvalde, the carnival caravan headed south to La Pryor, then west again before coming to the scruffy border town of Eagle Pass, best known for a history of bizarrely crooked politicians. Across the Rio Grande is Piedras Negras, Mexico. Eagle Pass residents cross this border whenever they want a more elegant night on the town than Pizza Hut can offer. After a two-week stint there, the nomadic troupe moved north to Del Rio, a border town with a bit more polish than its southern neighbor. Del Rio and Ciudad Acunã strut their cultural diversity in unison with joint promotional materials for tourists. Another influence in the shaping of this small city of 34,000 is Laughlin Air Force Base.

  THE second week the carnival was in town, on the evening of March 5, 1998, Jessica Levrie brought her children to the bright lights and rides. It was an unusually cool night for March in this part of the country. While the kids rode the Ferris wheel, she stood on the sidelines enjoying their squeals and smiles. The green eyes and open, welcoming face of this Hispanic woman caught the interest of Tommy Lynn Sells.

  “Wouldn’t it be a nice night for a cup of cocoa?” he asked.

  The children disembarked the ride and begged to go around again. While they soared back into the air, Jessica invited the ride operator to her home for a warm cup. Sells ended up spending that night and subsequent ones at her home while he finished up his run in Del Rio. On the day the carnival packed up to leave, Jessica popped in and out of the grounds, grabbing a word here and there with Tommy as he worked with the crew preparing to travel.

  Tommy sat in the rig in the parking lot ready to go— just waiting for the signal to roll out. Jessica showed up one more time. He was smitten by her beauty and her sense of style, but most of all, he was rocked by the love that emanated from her like heat from a campfire on a cold and dreary night.

  “Do you want to ride with me to Corpus Christi?” he asked her.

  A grin split her face and her head bobbled “yes.” She hopped in the truck for the fourteen-hour drive to the Gulf Coast.

  Jessica spent two days in the seaside city. Then, Tommy put her on a bus back home to Del Rio. She returned in her Olds ‘88 two days later.

  With her hands on her hips, she looked Tommy in the eye and said, “Well, are you ready to come home?”

  Home was a magic word to this rootless man. The word embodied everything he had missed in life. He clutched it to his heart and accepted her offer.

  They traveled back in her car and began living together with Jessica’s two teenaged daughters and two younger boys in Del Rio. On March 31, Sells reported to the local unemployment office looking for a job.

  And he got one—working as a mechanic and salesman at Amigo Auto Sales. Jessica worked at a Chinese restaurant waiting tables. In his spare time, he drew pictures of roses for Jessica—he loved roses and their intricate beauty, because they reminded him of her. Just a few short years after learning to read and write, he penned love poems to Jessica pouring out his love and devotion.

  Following Jessica’s lead, he molded and shaped a semblance of a normal life. He and Jessica took turns driving the kids to school. No matter what they tried, the children just could not wake up and get out the door in time to catch the school bus. Tommy took the boys fishing, worked on craft projects with them and occasionally ironed their clothes for school.

  Pets were a big part of their family, too. At one point, they had three dogs, two cats, six birds, two hamsters, a guinea pig, a turtle and a snake. For a while, with Jessica’s encouragement, Tommy avoided drugs and alcohol and went to work faithfully.

  Restless, Sells set off on another road trip on June 28— north to Sonora, Texas, then east to Beaumont. While in northeast Texas, he accumulated two more traffic tickets that were still outstanding a year and a half later when he was arrested for the murder of Kaylene Harris.

  Then, he was back home, trying to hang onto the reins of a domestic existence. It only took one family crisis to undo Jessica’s good influence and set Sells back on the path he had always traveled.

  TWENTY inches of rain fell fast and hard on Del Rio in late August 1998. At 505 Andrade Street in the San Felipe neighborhood, the lights went out. Outside, a womanyelled, filling the air with echoes of her fear. Following the sound of her voice, Virginia Blanco stepped out onto her front porch. The San Felipe Creek had crested its banks and dedicated itself to the destruction of the sad little neighborhood near downtown.

  She grabbed a flashlight and pointed its beam catty-corner across the street to the home of her daughter Jessica Levrie. Finally, her shouts and swinging light caught the attention of the family inside.

  “C’mon. C’mon over here,” Virginia pleaded.

  “No, we’ll be okay,” Jessica replied.

  Virginia insisted that her home was safer, and the family relented. Tommy and Jessica stood in the water, passing the four children across the street, one by one. Like a mother hen, Virginia clucked them all safely indoors. Ten minutes later, Virginia opened the front door to discover that the water was already in her yard. Tommy and Jessica joined her on the p
orch and watched the rising water with a rising sense of dread.

  In the street, a woman grabbed for fences, poles and bushes as the water swept her away. Tommy jumped off the porch and tried to save her as she sped past the house. But his clothing snagged on the front-yard fence and the woman slipped away. He pulled only himself to safety.

  The raging river running down the street shoved the woman underneath a truck. The motor was running. The truck was full of people hoping to escape the city. Virginia, Tommy and Jessica screamed. They feared that the truck would move and run over her body. A man inside heard their desperate warnings and jumped out of the truck. He struggled through the water and dragged the woman to refuge.

  Around the neighborhood, many had already been forced into trees and up on rooftops as liquid fury consumed all in its path. Inside Virginia’s house, all four children were put in the room that sat highest above ground level. No one knew at that time, but it was the least safe room in the house.

  Water started swirling around Virginia’s garage, forming a sluice that swept behind the house and over to an old utility shack. Soon, the shack crashed down and was swept away by the flood.

  Unaware of the current state of destruction, Tommy stepped out the front door to get cigarettes from the shop next door owned by Virginia’s father. He quickly closed the door and collapsed against it. “It’s gone. It’s gone,” he said, shock etched in his face.

  Screams erupted from the back room as the children heard the cries of a trapped cat. At first, they thought it was stuck under the washing machine. But it wasn’t there when they looked. Then the horror sunk into their numbed minds. The cat was under the floor, trapped in the rising waters. Tommy grabbed a crowbar and attempted to pull up the boards. The planks would not budge. He beat on them over and over and over again with brutal force. Still, the flooring remained solid. He did not give up while the cat’s cries ascended to a crescendo of terror. He did not stop trying until the agonizing screams had faded into the night. His shoulders slumped in defeat. Four pairs of eyes stared at him in disbelief.