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

by Diane Fanning

  AT first, Susan Wofford was angry. Bobbie Lynn had violated her trust by not returning home when she was expected. Initially, the authorities treated the disappearance as a runaway. But the community gathered around Susan, searching for her daughter, passing out fliers and assuring her that everything would turn out okay.

  When the police listed her daughter as a missing person, her ire had long ago been set aside, leaving a heavy lump of anxiety in its stead. The waiting game began in earnest. July crawled by. Susan’s phone rang frequently with callers informing her that Bobbie Lynn had been seen riding with someone in a pick-up truck, with reports that her body had been found at Canton Lake. They were all mind-numbing calls without any basis in fact.

  Susan did anything she could to try to distract herself— she played solitaire till the cards turned limp from overuse. She paced from one end of the house to the other, wearing a visible path in the carpet. She tried to lie down and sleep or relax, but she could never get any rest. Toward the end of the month, Bobbie Lynn was added to the case files of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

  Unconfirmed sightings poured into the Kingfisher County Sheriff’s Department. Susan’s agony continued unabated through August, through September, through October. In November, a witness came forward with a description of the man he’d seen talking to Bobbie Lynn in the parking lot of Love’s. With the witness’ help, Harvey Pratt, a forensic artist with Oklahoma’s State Bureau of Investigation, drew a sketch of the suspect.

  The next day, hunters stumbled across a crushed tube of lipstick and a library card bearing the name “Bobbie Lynn Wofford.” They ended their hunting trip with this discovery so they could report what they found to the authorities.

  Sheriff Danny Graham arrived on the scene. It was a remote spot where teenagers commonly gathered after dark to drink and party. Bobbie Lynn had never been known to frequent this location.

  Graham found a tennis shoe, a yellow duffle bag and a black purse. He kept searching, his dread building. Finally, he uncovered a decomposed body that was not much more than a skeleton held together by stained green khaki pants and a dingy white tank top covered with dried blood. The decomposition was so advanced, it was not possible to be certain at the scene, but the massive trauma to the head indicated that she had died of a gunshot wound.

  SUSAN Wofford’s phone finally rang. It was not the call she wanted. Once the body was found, girls in Bobbie Lynn’s age group were rocked with fear. They would not walk to school anymore—not even two or three blocks. Parents, every bit as anxious as their daughters, provided rides to and from school with a smile.

  The community was flooded with high anxiety and mothers and fathers restricted freedoms with impunity. Previously flexible parents now demanded to know exactly where their children were every moment of the day. No longer confident of their children’s honesty or safety, they called often to check on their whereabouts.

  It was December before DNA tests verified what the sheriff and Susan instinctively knew: the bones belonged to 14-year-old Bobbie Lynn.

  The devastated mother stumbled through her grief, planning her daughter’s funeral. No one knew how Susan could possibly continue to function after this fourth tragedy. Local churches were too small to hold the large numbers of people wanting to stand by her side and mourn the death of the teenager. Ultimately, the funeral was held in the school gymnasium and that facility only barely contained the overwhelming crowd.

  AFTER receiving a tip, investigators centered their case on Deb’s Sports Bar, a Kingfisher tavern. Officers searched the bar, the bar owner’s residence and four vehicles. They obtained hair samples, drugs, adult videos and ammunition. They interviewed a man and woman who co-managed the bar, as well as two others. It was all to no avail.

  The hair samples gathered did not match Bobbie Lynn’s. The ammunition found could not be linked to the shooting. The case remained open.

  AFTER the funeral, Susan’s waiting began anew. This time, she waited for justice. She often thought about her daughter’s angel. Three years before she died, Bobbie Lynn had told her mother about the angel dressed in white that appeared to her in the garden. She showed her mother the exact spot where the apparition always presented itself, but Susan could never see it. As a service manager at a Ford dealership, she was a nuts-and-bolts kind of person, more used to finding answers to practical problems than in exploring otherworldly phenomena. She searched the garden many times for some trick of the light or other optical illusion that could logically explain this unearthly vision. She never found an answer. And she never saw Bobbie Lynn’s angel.

  TOMMY Lynn Sells returned to Del Rio. After two rounds of interviews, the charge that Sells had molested Jessica’s daughter was ruled unfounded. Jessica and her children were able to move back in with Sells. He remained at home for a few months with his family and worked for Amigo Auto Sales.

  Bill Hughes, Sells’ employer, invited Tommy and Jessica to go to services with him at Grace Community Church. Terry and Crystal Harris and their children were at the services, too, that Sunday.

  When Terry Harris needed a new vehicle, he wanted to go to a dealership he could trust. He chose Amigo Auto Sales because a fellow church member owned it. The salesman who assisted him in the purchase of the truck was Tommy Lynn Sells.

  One evening, Sells showed up at the Harris home and Terry invited him inside. Crystal took one look at his scruffy hair, his beard and his rampant tattoos and uneasiness swept over her. She chided herself for this unChristian attitude of judging an individual by his appearance. Curiosity compelled her to join the men in the living room and listen in on the conversation.

  Sells admitted that he had been in prison. He also said he had an alcohol problem and that it was tearing his marriage apart. He confessed that he did not know what to do to save his relationship with Jessica. “Terry, you are so lucky. You have such a good family. Your children listen. You have a nice wife. A nice home.”

  Terry listened and offered what advice he could. While the two talked, the children milled about the house in their typical fashion, crossing the living room from time to time, but never seeming to pay much attention to the adults.

  Down the hall in their bedroom, Katy confided to Lori, “I don’t like the way that man looks at me.”

  “You oughta tell Dad,” Lori said.

  “No. He’ll just get mad.”

  “Then tell Mom, Katy.”

  “She’ll just tell Dad,” Katy said with that note of exasperation that an older sister always cultivates to use on the younger siblings.

  “You oughta tell them anyway.”

  “If I tell, Dad will beat him up. Then Dad will be in trouble.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Lori conceded. Lori never repeated this conversation to anyone while Katy was still alive.

  As Crystal sat with the men in the living room, she developed a morbid fascination with Sells’ tattoos—partic-ularly the one poking out of the neck line of his shirt. In a lull in the conversation she could not resist injecting a question: “I’ve heard that all those prison tattoos have special meaning. What do yours symbolize?”

  He turned toward her. His eyes pinned her to the back of the sofa like a specimen to a mounting board. “Lady,” he said, “you don’t want to know.”

  These words, and the expression on his face, still dance an ugly rhythm through Crystal’s sleepless nights.

  ON December 27, 1999, customs reported that Sells had crossed the border from Mexico into the United States. He had a load of drugs and was making a run north.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  SELLS confessed to committing this crime, but also claimed an inability to remember details because his mind blacked out. What follows is a thoughtful blend of information and conclusions gathered in interviews with law enforcement personnel and with the family and friends of the victims with what was learned from Tommy Lynn Sells—both his recollections of the night and the facts of the case he ferreted out after the
fact.

  ROUTE 44 runs through Joplin, Missouri, and across the state line into Oklahoma. Less than ten miles from the boundary, State Route 59 cuts west to the small town of Welch.

  Down a long driveway off a country road, less than five miles northwest of Welch, was the modest trailer of Danny and Kathy Freeman. They lived there with their daughter, Ashley. An addition built by Danny had doubled the size of the original mobile home. A rock foundation and a walkway dressed up its appearance. Their home had the convenience of telephone service and electricity, but the Freemans did not have running water and used a wood stove to heat their home.

  Christmas 1999 was a somber affair for the family, since it was the first one they had celebrated since the death of their only son, 17-year-old Shane. Earlier that year, in a confrontation with Craig County Deputy David Hayes, Shane had been shot to death.

  Ashley turned sixteen on December 29. That night, Jeremy Hurst, Ashley’s boyfriend, delivered a birthday present to her and stayed for a short visit. Ashley’s best friend, Lauria Bible, was spending the night.

  While the four occupants of the trailer slept, a nightmare walked the Freeman property. He dodged between the many animal pens dotted across their land, moving ever closer to their home. When he got inside, finding a weapon was easy. Danny Freeman had hunted since he was a child, and his young daughter Ashley had already bagged a buck. From the more than fourteen firearms in the home, the intruder grabbed a shotgun.

  He stalked into Danny and Kathy’s bedroom, where they rested on a waterbed. The butt of the shotgun slammed into Danny’s collarbone to get his attention. The shooter wanted him awake when he died. Then, the barrel was pointed at his head and the ensuing blast drove Danny’s body out of the bed and onto the floor. A second shot to Kathy’s head killed her where she lay. A knife flashed out, slicing across her nude abdomen. Her intestines disgorged at her side. The blade moved to Danny and he, too, was eviscerated. An axe slammed down once, twice, three times, severing both his forearms and his lower right leg from his body.

  IN another bedroom, the first shot awakened Ashley and Lauria with a start. When the second shotgun blast echoed down the hall, Ashley recognized the sound as easily as a baby knows its mother’s voice. They huddled together, too afraid to move. They struggled to silence the gasps of fear that burst from their lungs with every breath they took. They strained to hear every sound. They struggled to identify the noises they heard, but could not make sense of them.

  In the kitchen, the killer was pouring gasoline in a puddle on the floor in front of the wood stove. He splashed some of the flammable liquid on the front of the heater itself. It was a cold night. The stove had been banked well and was still radiant with heat. Smoke rose from its surface instantly; the flames followed in seconds.

  Just as the two girls smelled the first faint whiffs of the fire, a figure with the eyes of a madman loomed in the doorway. He lunged toward them. His hands clutched a shotgun aimed at their heads. He ordered them out of the room and into the chilly night. Shoving, hitting, cursing, he herded them into his van. They took off in the darkness before the dawn.

  Barreling southwest down Route 44, and then south on Interstate 35, the abductor tormented the two terrified girls and then ended their lives. Sells claimed that somewhere near the Red River, the border between Oklahoma and Texas, he brought the van to a stop and dumped the two teenagers in an isolated area before resuming south. Their bodies have never been found.

  A neighbor on the way to work at 6:30 on the morning of December 30 noticed the fire at the Freemans’ trailer and called 9-1-1. The Welch Volunteer Fire Department raced to the scene, but the home was a total loss. The only portion of the home intact was the floor of the master bedroom. There, the ruptured waterbed had doused some of the flames.

  When the home was searched, only one body was found, the charred remains of 37-year-old Kathy Freeman. Kathy was lying on the carcass of her waterbed. In addition to the absence of bodies, two other items appeared to be missing. Danny had a collection of arrowheads and rudimentary Indian tools that he had gathered since he was a child. His most rare pieces were framed in glass-covered boxes, some hanging on the wall, others stacked in anticipation of finding a spot to be displayed. The more common ones were stored in plastic buckets. Of the thousands of artifacts in Danny’s collection, only a handful of splintered shards were ever found.

  The second item never recovered was Ashley’s savings. She had been working at Roscoes convenience store and squirreling away every penny she could. She had at least $1,100 and possibly as much as $4,000. That cash was wrapped in foil, sealed in a Tupperware container and tucked away in the deep freeze among packages of frozen meat. Ashley’s nest egg was never found, but Lauria’s purse with her $200 of Christmas money was recovered at the scene.

  All day, family and neighbors searched every inch of the Freemans’ forty-acre lot on foot and again on horseback. No signs of Danny, Ashley or Lauria were found.

  At 5:30 that afternoon, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, convinced there were no more bodies, released the scene to Danny’s half-brother, Dwayne Vancil. At that time, the prevailing theory was that Danny had murdered his wife, torched his home and abducted the two girls. There was one inexplicable detail, though, casting doubt on this conclusion. All of the Freemans’ vehicles and Lauria Bible’s car were still sitting in the driveway of the Freeman home.

  Early the next morning, Lauria’s parents, Lorene and Jay Bible, not satisfied with the search of the house, were determined to find some clue to the whereabouts of their daughter. Trudging through the ashes and rubble, it only took five minutes for them to make a startling discovery. Sissy, Ashley’s rottweiler, lay on the blackened floor next to the waterbed. When she stood to greet the Bibles, it appeared that she had been lying on the shattered remains of Danny’s head. When Lorene pulled back the carpet by that spot, they clearly saw the outline of a second body.

  When the sheriff’s department and OSBI returned to the scene, they ordered Jay and Lorene off the premises so that they could resume their search. The Bibles refused to leave until the investigators had sifted through every small piece of debris.

  Danny Freeman was taken off the list of suspects. Investigators entertained the possibility that Ashley and Lauria were the perpetrators. To the families, it did not quite add up. Lauria’s car was out front and her purse with her money and her identification was found in the rubble. Interviews with those who knew the girls, and a search into their backgrounds further diminished the probability of their involvement.

  Speculation then centered on three different fronts. The relatives of the Freemans were certain that the crime was connected to Shane’s death and Danny’s threatened civil suit against the Craig County Sheriff’s Department. Even after Deputy David Hayes and his brother, Undersheriff Mark Hayes, passed polygraph tests, the family’s suspicions were still firmly entrenched.

  Lorene and Jay believed the tragedy was somehow tied to drug trafficking. Although Danny was known to have smoked marijuana and suspected of growing some for his personal use, he’d had no record of drug offenses, and law enforcement had no evidence that he’d sold drugs.

  Investigators then set their sights on Steven Ray Thacker, a known killer who was on the run. He was apprehended in early January and put on death row in Tennessee for a stabbing death in Dyersburg. He was also charged with other murders in Oklahoma and Missouri. They could not connect Thacker to the carnage in Welch.

  OSBI investigated thirty leads in the murders of Danny and Kathy Freeman and abductions of Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman. None of the leads solved the case.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  WHEN Sells returned home, he faced the wrath of an irate Jessica the second he pulled open the door. He had been gone with her van for days. He’d missed work, and money was needed for household necessities. They drove to the Pico Convenience Store, where Sells tried to get in contact with Bill Hughes on the pay phone to arrange to pick up
his last paycheck. He went into the store for a pack of smokes and ran into Terry Harris. The two men talked for about five minutes. Back home, a fight ensued, and Sells left to escape Jessica’s anger.

  He took refuge at Larry’s Lakefront Tavern. There he drank Jim Beam and Coke and chatted up the barmaid, Noel Houchin. According to Noel, Sells was a major nuisance that night. He asked her for sex. He asked her where she lived. He asked her for sex again. When she mentioned that her car was broken down, he offered to pay to have it fixed if she would have sex with him. Finally, he told her that he owned Amigo Auto Sales and she could have any vehicle on the lot if she’d have sex with him.

  According to Sells, he did tell her that he worked at Amigo Auto. He also said he was not interested in her himself, but told her that the owner, Bill Hughes, was a “horny old son-of-a-bitch. If she batted her eyes right, he would help her.”

  At one point in the evening, Sells took a break from drinking and left the bar to change from the shorts he was wearing to a pair of pants. When he emptied the pockets of his shorts, he realized he must have grabbed someone else’s money, too, when he scooped up his change.

  He returned to the tavern and discovered that the money belonged to Sonny, a friend and neighbor of his at American Campgrounds. He turned it over and sat down for another Jim Beam and Coke. He was one of the last two patrons to leave the bar after it closed at 2 A.M..

  Sells stopped on his way home near the flea market, where an older woman had an outside refrigerator. He reached inside and pulled out some venison and a beer. While he ate, he decided he’d go down to Terry Harris’ house and get the money he claimed was owed to him. Sells insisted, after his arrest, that he had fronted cocaine to Terry Harris in exchange for a promised $5,000. No corroborating evidence has surfaced to support this allegation.