The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (81 page)

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SELLS, Tommy Lynn

since 1969, and pieces of I.D. belonging to vanished continents. . . . One whore drowned in her own vomit hitchhikers Collette Goodenough and Barbara Wilcox, while watching me disembowel her girlfriend. I’m not both 19. The two girls had last been seen alive on Janu-sure that counts as a valid kill. Did the pregnant ones ary 8, a week before Schaefer was sent to jail in Martin count as two kills? It can get confusing.”

County, and while their skeletal remains were found in Years later, Schaefer’s letters came back to haunt him early 1977, no cause of death could be determined; thus when he was described in several true-crime books as a no charges were filed.

prolific serial killer. His response, a series of lawsuits As for the news clips, one referred to the February filed against various authors for libel, were uniformly 1969 disappearance of waitress Carmen Hallock, seem-dismissed by the courts. In one such case, Judge ingly abducted from her home. Items of her jewelry William Steckler officially branded Schaefer a serial were found in Schafer’s hoard, along with a gold-filled killer, finding him “undeniably linked” to numerous tooth identified by Hallock’s dentist, but once again no murders beyond the two for which he stood convicted.

charges were filed. The second missing woman, Leigh

“He boasts of the private and public associations he has Bonadies, had been a neighbor of Schaefer’s when she based on the reports that he is a serial killer of world-disappeared in September 1969. He had complained of class proportions,” Steckler wrote, “and it is only arro-her “taunting” him by undressing with her curtains gant perversity which propels him toward this and open, and a piece of her jewelry was found among his similarly meritless lawsuits in which he claims other-belongings, but no charges were filed when her skeletal wise.”

remains were finally recovered in 1978. More jewelry Schaefer’s luck ran out on December 3, 1995, when linked Schaefer to the disappearance of 14-year-old another inmate barged into his cell, slashed Schaefer’s Mary Briscolina, who vanished from Broward County throat, and stabbed him in both eyes. Prison officials with 13-year-old Elsie Farmer in October 1972. Their named the killer as inmate Vincent Rivera, serving life skeletons were found in early 1973, but once again no plus 20 years for two murders in Tampa, but no specific cause of death could be determined, and no charges motive has been offered. It appears that Schaefer’s repu-were filed.

tation as a “rat” and troublemaker in the joint caught The list of suspected victims would grow over time, up with him at last.

but Schaefer faced charges in only two murders. He was And with the threat of nuisance litigation buried, indicted on May 18, 1973, for the slayings of Jessup gun-shy law enforcement officers felt free to air their and Place. Held without bond pending trial, he was views on Schaefer. Bill Hagerty, an ex-FBI agent who convicted on two counts of first-degree murder in Octo-studied Schaefer for VICAP in the early 1980s, called ber 1973, drawing concurrent terms of life imprison-him “one of the sickest. If I had a list of the top five, ment. Numerous appeals, some 20 in all, were

which would include all of the serial killers I have inter-uniformly rejected by various state and federal courts.

viewed throughout the country, he would definitely be Schaefer was nearly forgotten by 1990, when former in the top five.” For Shirley Jessup, still mourning her high school girlfriend Sondra London published a col-daughter, Schaefer’s murder was simply a case of over-lection of his stories under the title
Killer Fiction.
More due justice. “I’d like to send a present to the guy who volumes followed, Schaefer insisting that his stories killed him,” she told reporters. “I’ve always believed he were art, police and prosecutors describing them as was going to get his. I just wish it would have been thinly veiled descriptions of actual crimes. In private let-sooner than later.”

ters to attorneys and acquaintances, Schaefer admitted as much, himself. Witness his reference to a story titled

“Murder Demons,” in a letter dated April 9, 1991:
SELLS, Tommy Lynn

“What crimes am I supposed to confess? Farmer?

Transient serial killer Tommy Sells was born in Oak-Briscolina? What do you think [“Murder Demons”] is?

land, California, on June 28, 1964. With his twin sister, You want confessions but don’t recognize them when I he brought to five the number of children borne by his anoint you with them and we’ve just gotten started.”

unmarried mother, variously known as Nina Sells or Other correspondence swiftly raised the body count.

Nina Lovins. Although he used the name Sells, Tommy

“As you know,” he wrote on January 20, 1991, “I’ve grew up believing that his father was Joseph Lovins, a always harped on [District Attorney Robert] Stone’s list gambler who sometimes shared his mother’s bed. Nina of 34. In 1973 I sat down and drew up a list of my own.

moved her children to Missouri a year after the twins As I recall, my list was just over 80.” The next day, were born. Six months later, both infants were stricken given more time to reflect, Schafer went on: “I’m not with spinal meningitis, which proved fatal for Tommy’s claiming a huge number. . . . I would say it runs sister. Later, he would wear a tombstone with her name between 80 and 110. But over eight years and three tattooed on his left arm.

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Life went from bad to worse for Tommy Sells after tember 1985 prompted authorities to revoke Sell’s his brush with death. His mother left him in the care of parole, and he finished his sentence in full, released an aunt for two years before taking him home. Sells once again on May 16, 1986.

began drinking liquor at age seven, was molested by a Sells kept drifting, working odd jobs. In St. Louis, he neighbor at eight, and smoked his first marijuana joint shot a stranger and left him for dead, claiming self-at age 10. Three years later, Sells climbed naked into his defense in the face of an unprovoked assault. Sells was grandmother’s bed while she slept, and was banned jailed for theft in a suburb of St. Louis, but the charge from the house. A short time later, his mother and sib-was dismissed. At Aransas Pass, Texas, he spent two lings left town without notice, stranding him alone.

days in the hospital for a near-fatal heroin overdose.

Days later, Sells pistol-whipped his first female victim in The year 1986 took Sells to Fremont, California, where a fit of rage. By age 14, in 1978, he was on the road, liv-he is now suspected in the double murder of 20-year-ing the life of a permanent drifter.

old Jennifer Duey and 19-year-old Michelle Xavier. One By his own account, Sells committed his first murder victim was shot in the head and the other’s throat was in Port Gibson, Mississippi, on July 5, 1979. He shot slashed. Susan Korcz vanished from Niagara, New 39-year-old John Cade Sr. with a .32-caliber pistol after York, on May 1, 1987, following a barroom spat with Cade surprised Sells in the act of burglarizing his home.

her boyfriend. Sells says he does not recall the crime per In 1980, he allegedly killed one man with an ice pick, se, but claims he woke from an alcoholic blackout on outside a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles, then May 3, to find himself aboard a freight train near the moved north to Oakland and became embroiled in gang crime scene, wearing clothes stained with someone warfare. Sells stabbed another man “a bunch of times,”

else’s blood. Korcz’s skeletal remains were found in a while suffering a stab wound that barely missed his shallow grave at Lockport, New York, on September 5, spine.

1995.

May 1981 found Sells reunited with his family in Lit-October 1987 found Sells in Winnemucca, Nevada, tle Rock, Arkansas, but Nina threw him out after he working for a roofing company. He bounced a worth-stripped and tried to join her in the shower. Sells less check on October 15, then compounded the prob-checked into a mental health clinic at Jonesboro, telling lem two weeks later by stealing his boss’s pistol, cash, staff psychologists, “I don’t know who I am. I don’t and credit card. Sells used the card to rent a motel understand anything anymore.” They had no help to room, which he shared with new acquaintance Stefanie offer, so he turned back to the bottle, logging his first Stroh, a 20-year-old college student hitchhiking across arrest for public drunkenness at Little Rock in March the United States after 10 months in Europe. Sells later 1982. Sells later confessed two Arkansas murders dur-confessed to feeding Stroh a dose of LSD and strangling ing the same period, but only one—the shooting of Hal her, then weighting her feet with a tub of concrete and Akins at his Saline County home—has been confirmed.

dropping her into a desert hot spring before he left Win-The second case, Sells says, involved a woman kid-nemucca on November 3.

napped by himself and an unnamed accomplice. She On November 17, 1987, Keith Dardeen found Sells was raped, murdered, and dumped into a flooded hitchhiking through Ina, Illinois, and took him home quarry in Pulaski County.

for dinner. Sells repaid the hospitality by shooting Sells moved to St. Louis in 1983. On July 31 of that Dardeen in the head and severing his penis, then ham-year, Thomas Gill came home from work and glimpsed mering young Peter Dardeen to death with a baseball a man fleeing from his home. Inside, Gill found his wife bat. Finally, he attempted to rape Keith’s pregnant wife Colleen and four-year-old daughter Tiffany beaten to Eileen, but the assault induced labor. In a frenzy, Sells death. Sells would confess to the murders 18 years later.

clubbed both mother and newborn until they were life-Meanwhile, he was jailed for auto theft at Benton, Mis-less, then left the bat protruding from Eileen’s vagina.

souri, in May 1984 and pleaded guilty as charged, Back in St. Louis, Sells was arrested for auto theft in receiving a two-year prison term. Paroled in February January 1988, but he fled town in September, before the 1985, Sells stole another car five months later. His case went to trial. Days later, 11-year-old Melissa Trem-mother reported Sells to police on July 22, and he fled a bley disappeared from Salem, New Hampshire. Last prison halfway house after being questioned by his seen in the parking lot of a convenience store, talking to parole officer. On July 26, Sells met 28-year-old Ena a man who resembled Sells, Trembley was found dead Cordt and her four-year-old son at a county fair in on September 12, raped and stabbed in a freight yard, Forsyth, Missouri. The lonely divorcée invited Sells where a train had run over her corpse.

home, then made the fatal error of searching his knap-Sells next roamed westward. He claims his next vic-sack. Sells caught her at it, and killed Ena and young tims were an unnamed woman and her three-year-old Rory with a baseball bat. A drunken car wreck in Sep-son, whom he met in Salt Lake City, Utah. Sells put
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them to work begging cash on the street, then set off for Two months later, on July 29, Sells was ticketed for Idaho in a stolen car. Along the way, Sells says he killed driving without a license in Cleveland, Tennessee. In mother and child, dumping their bodies into the Snake October 1997 he left a pregnant girlfriend with his River. Settled briefly in Tucson by December 1988, Sells mother, in St. Louis, then moved on to Illinois alone. In fatally stabbed transient Kent Lauten, allegedly after a Lawrenceville, on October 13, Sells invaded the home drug deal went sour. Lauten’s body was found on of Julie Rea, claiming that she insulted him at a nearby December 18, and although Tucson police had no leads convenience store. Sells later confessed to punching and in that case, they jailed Sells for assault with a deadly slashing Rea with a knife, then fatally stabbing her son, weapon in a separate incident. That case was dismissed 10-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick. Surfacing next in Spring-when the victim dropped from sight.

field, Missouri, Sells snatched teenager Stephanie On January 27, 1989, Sells quarreled with a ticket Mahaney from her bedroom, then raped and strangled agent on a train in Berkeley, California, then killed a her, dumping her body in a farmer’s pond where streetwalker in another botched drug deal, dumping her hunters found it on November 18, 1997. Sells returned body at Truckee, near Lake Tahoe. Police confirmed briefly to St. Louis, then left again in January 1998, discovery of a “Jane Doe” corpse, still unidentified. In three months before his son was born.

April 1989, Sells claims, he killed a woman in her twen-In Texas, Sells joined the staff of a traveling carnities at Roseburg, Oregon. On May 9, he allegedly mur-val. He met a divorcée with three children in Del Rio, dered a female hitchhiker who tried to steal his drug and married her in October 1998, but drink and stash, dumping her body in a wooded area near the drugs made the relationship a stormy one. Sells left April victim. That same afternoon, Sells was jailed for alone for Florida in February 1999, then returned two theft after his employer at a Roseburg firewood stand weeks later, and was thrown out by his wife again on caught him tapping the till. Sells served 15 days, then March 28. Two days later, he invaded the trailer home left town. Police in North Little Rock, Arkansas, of 28-year-old Debbie Harris, raping and fatally stab-charged Sells with theft on August 16, 1989, then bing her before he murdered 8-year-old Ambria Har-released him one week later without prosecution. Oak-ris, leaving the knife in her chest. On April 18, Sells land authorities placed him in detox for public drunk-raped and strangled nine-year-old Mary Perez in San enness on October 18, 1989, and he logged an identical Antonio. One month later, on May 13, he repeated charge one month later, in Carson City, Nevada.

his crime with 13-year-old Haley McHone in Lexing-December 1989 found Sells hospitalized in Phoenix, ton, Kentucky. Sells hid her body in a park, where it Arizona, for another heroin overdose. Police in Salt remained concealed for 10 days, and sold her bicycle Lake City held Sells for cocaine possession on January to a stranger for $20. Before McHone’s body was 7, 1990, then released him on discovering that he had found, Sells was jailed for drunk and disorderly con-purchased harmless powder. Five days later, Sells was duct in Madison, Wisconsin. Released on June 24, he arrested for auto theft in Rawlings, Wyoming. Staffers returned to Del Rio for another battle with his wife, at Wyoming State Hospital noted that he “looks much quelled only when police were summoned to the