Tommy Lynn Sells (June 28, 1964 – April 3, 2014) was an American serial killer, often referred to as "the Coast to Coast Killer" due to his claims of committing murders across the United States. Though convicted of only one murder, for which he received the death penalty and was eventually executed in 2014, he is believed to have committed at least 22 murders, with Sells himself claiming over 70 victims.

Early life

Sells was born in Oakland, California, on June 28, 1964, as one of five children to an unwed mother. Sells’ presumed biological father, Joe Lovins, died when Sells was 11. Sells and his twin sister, Tammy Jean, contracted meningitis when they were 18-months-old; Tammy died from the illness. Shortly thereafter, Sells was sent to live with his aunt, Bonnie Walpole, in Holcomb, Missouri. When he was 5, he was returned to his mother after she discovered that Walpole wanted to adopt him. At the age of 7, Sells began regularly drinking alcohol obtained from a supply stash belonging to his maternal grandfather. Within a year, he was socializing with an adult man named Willis Clark, who Sells alleged began molesting him. Sells also claimed his mother encouraged the relationship, which traumatized him greatly. Sells said he would later relive those experiences while committing his crimes. At age 10, Sells started using narcotics. Three years later, he entered his grandmother's bed nude while she was sleeping, leading to him being banned from the house. Shortly after that, his mother and siblings abandoned him by abruptly leaving town. A few days later, in a fit of rage, he shot a woman and assaulted her, although she survived. Sells began living as a nomad permanently in 1978, at the age of 14. When Sells visited family in Little Rock, Arkansas, in May 1981, his mother threw him out after he tried to molest her in the shower. Thereafter, he failed to receive mental health assistance, his drinking worsened, and ultimately led to his first arrest in 1982 for public intoxication.

Criminal history and psychology

Homeless, Sells hitchhiked and train-hopped across the United States from 1978 to 1999, committing various crimes along the way. He held several very short-term manual labor and barber jobs. He drank heavily, abused drugs, and was imprisoned several times. In 1990, Sells stole a truck in Wyoming and was sentenced to 16 months' imprisonment. He was diagnosed with a personality disorder consisting of antisocial, borderline, and schizoid features, substance use disorder (severe opioid, amphetamines, and alcohol dependence), bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, and psychosis. On May 13, 1992, Fabienne Witherspoon, a 19-year-old woman in Charleston, West Virginia, was driving when she saw Sells panhandling under an overpass with a sign that said, "I will work for food." She felt sorry for him and took him to her home, asking him to wait outside. She went into her home to get some food for him, and by the time she got back to her front door, he was inside. When she walked away to get something else, he got a knife from her kitchen, trapped her in a bathroom, and attempted to rape her. The woman fought back, hitting him in the head repeatedly with a ceramic duck, getting control of his knife, and stabbing him, nicking his kidney and liver. In addition, his testicle was sliced. In retaliation, Sells beat her over the head with a piano stool. Sells tried to get away but his injuries landed him in the ICU and in police custody. Witherspoon sustained significant injuries herself including a gaping head wound and a severe hand laceration that required surgery. After this attack, Sells took a plea deal on malicious wounding charges and served five years in prison. While serving this sentence, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and married Nora Price. He was released in 1997 and moved to Tennessee with his wife. He then left her that same year and resumed his cross-country travels.

Murders

Police investigators believe Sells murdered at least 22 people. Retired Texas Ranger John Allen said, "We did confirm 22... I know there's more. I know there's a lot more. Obviously, we won't ever know." Sells said he committed his first murder at age 15 in Mississippi, after breaking into a house. While in the house, Sells claimed to have discovered a man performing fellatio on a boy and killed the man in a fit of rage. This confessed crime has not been confirmed. Furthermore, Sells claimed he killed a man in 1980 with an ice pick near a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles which has also never been confirmed. Nonetheless, Sells has been linked or has confessed to multiple crimes.

Arrest and confessions

On December 31, 1999, in the Guajia Bay subdivision, west of Del Rio, Texas, Sells sexually assaulted, stabbed and killed 13-year-old Kaylene "Katy" Harris before slitting the throat of 10-year-old Krystal Surles. Krystal survived and received help from the neighbors after traveling a quarter-mile to their home with a severed trachea. Sells was apprehended after being identified from a sketch made from the victim's description. Sells was housed on death row in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice received him on November 8, 2000. In 2004, Sells confessed that on October 13, 1997, he broke into a home, took a knife from a butcher block in the kitchen, stabbed a little boy to death, and scuffled with a woman. Those details corroborated the account of Julie Rea Harper, who was initially convicted for the murder of her son, and then acquitted in 2006. Police over time came to suspect him of "working the system" by confessing to murders he had not committed. Sells confessed to a number of crimes and supposed murders which were never able to be corroborated. Sells said he and an accomplice kidnapped a woman in 1982 in Little Rock, Arkansas who Sells raped, tortured, and killed, then dumped her body in a quarry. Law enforcement chose not to explore the deep quarry lake Sells led them to due to financial concerns. Sells revealed that in 1986 while he was working for Atlas Towing in St. Louis, he received a call from a prostitute whose car had broken down. When he arrived at the vehicle, he suggested sex in lieu of paying for the towing cost. When she declined, Sells said he shot her and threw her body in a river. Sells also divulged that in 1988 he met a woman and her son in Salt Lake City, Utah, and travelled with them to go on a camping trip. Sells claimed he killed her and her son by an unclear method and dumped both of their bodies in the Snake River in Gooding County, Idaho. Sells once stated to investigators that he had killed a black man and dumped his body in a dumpster in Chicago. He named the specific street intersection this allegedly occurred at, but no such murder was ever discovered. Sells also claimed he killed a 20-year-old woman, who he originally thought was a man, in a drug deal gone wrong in Truckee, California on January 27, 1989. A report of an unrelated incident established that Sells was in the area and an unidentified female body was found in the area at that time. In addition, at one time Sells claimed to have killed two unidentified female hitchhikers in May 1989 in Roseburg, Oregon. Finally, Sells referenced other additional victims whom he was said to have killed and dumped in the Florida swamps while he worked there as well as several gay men at various rest stops along the interstate in Pennsylvania. The state's attorney in Jefferson County, Illinois, declined to charge Sells with the Dardeen family homicides in 1987 because his confession to the quadruple killing, while generally consistent with the facts of the case as reported in the media, was inaccurate with concern to some details that had not been made public. He also changed his account three times regarding how he had met the family. Investigators wanted to bring Sells to Illinois to resolve their doubts, but Texas refused, due to its law forbidding death-row prisoners from leaving the state.

Execution

On January 3, 2014, a Del Rio judge set Sells' execution date for April 3, 2014. Sells' death sentence was carried out at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. When asked if he would like to make a final statement, Sells replied, "No." As a lethal dose of pentobarbital was administered, he took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes, and began to snore. Less than a minute later, he stopped moving. Thirteen minutes later, at 6:27 p.m. (CDT), he was pronounced dead. Krystal Surles and members of both the Harris and Perez families attended the execution.

In media

Eight years before his execution, Sells was one of the featured interviewees on episode two ("Cold-Blooded Killers") of season one on the Investigation Discovery documentary series, Most Evil. The interview was done by forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Stone. In the interview, Sells claimed to have killed more than 70 people. ABC News created a 10-minute mini-documentary Tommy Lynn Sells – The Mind of a Psychopath. In 2021, A&E Networks original show I Survived A Serial Killer made an episode about the Fabienne Witherspoon story.

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