Tommy Lynn Sells

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Tommy Lynn Sells (born June 28, 1964 in Oakland , California , † April 3, 2014 in Huntsville , Texas ) was an American serial killer who was charged with between 13 and 70 murders in various states . The Sells, known as the Coast to Coast Killer , is said to have committed the crimes over a period of 20 years and was executed in April 2014.

Early life

Tommy Sells was born with his twin sister Tammy in 1964 in Oakland, California. His mother Nina already had two sons. After 18 months, she and her children moved to live with relatives in St. Louis, where Tammy and Tommy developed meningitis and Tammy died in the process. His mother then gave Tommy to an aunt, with whom he lived from the age of two to five. When she wanted to keep the boy, as his mother hardly ever looked after him, there was an argument with Nina, who then picked Tommy up and forbade him to have any further contact with his aunt. At the age of seven, he became a chronic truant and spent significant time with a neighborhood man who was later identified as a pedophile and who was proven to have sexually abused several children, including Sells . Sells started consuming alcohol and marijuana early . After trying to rape his mother , he had to undergo a psychiatric examination.

At the age of 14 he ran away from home, pretended to be an adult and traveled across the United States. He made a living by stealing and doing odd jobs. He was sentenced to prison in 1990 for theft, which included addressing his drug addiction. In 1991, Sells attempted to rape and stab a young woman, but abandoned her because of her too strong resistance and was overwhelmed by passers-by while fleeing. He was re-sentenced to prison for attempted rape and attempted murder.

Series of murders

On the night of December 30-31, 1999, Sells broke into a house in Del Rio , Texas , sexually assaulted 13-year-old Kaylene Harris, and murdered her with knife wounds. When he then discovered her 10-year-old friend Krystal Surles, who was also in the room, he cut her throat and fled. Surles survived, however, and was able to call for help, and she also helped the police create a phantom image . A friend of the Harris family believed he recognized Tommy Sell in the picture, whom he knew from the local church. Investigators then showed Surles in the hospital a list of various photos from the criminal record, and they immediately identified Tommy Sells as the attacker. When the police picked up Sells for questioning, he immediately admitted the crime. Over time, he confessed to about 60 other homicides in various states. In some cases he led the investigators to the crime scenes , disclosed the perpetrators' knowledge and / or could be severely incriminated by evidence and DNA traces .

He confessed to murdering a man in a break-in in Mississippi in 1979 and murdering two other men in California in 1980 . He is also suspected of killing a woman and her daughter in 1983. He is also a possible suspect for the 1985 murder of Ena Cordt and her 4-year-old son in Missouri . Witnesses had testified that Sells was leaving a festival on the day of the murder with Ena, and his DNA traces were found on the corpses. Sells merely admitted that he had consensual sex with Ena Cordt that day and then left. He is also held responsible for the 1987 murder of the Dardeen family in Illinois ; Sells confessed to having killed the 3-year-old son while breaking into their house. His heavily pregnant mother experienced a premature birth as a result of this shock, whereupon he raped her, took a baseball bat and killed the newborn baby and the mother. He led his father into a field, killed him with a shot in the head and then mutilated his genitals. In the same year, the hitchhiker Stephanie Stroh, who was last seen getting into Sell's vehicle, disappeared. There is still no trace of her to this day. During the same period, he confessed to the murder of a youth in New Hampshire , a woman with her child in Idaho , a homeless man in Arizona , a prostitute in California, and another hitchhiker in Oregon . Shortly before he was convicted of attempted murder in Charleston , West Virginia , in 1991 , he allegedly murdered a woman with her daughter in the same city and confessed to the murder of 13-year-old Stephanie Mahaney in Minnesota .

Allan B. Polunsky Unit

On April 4, 1999, according to investigators in Tennessee , he should have broken into a trailer, raped a 32-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter, and then stabbed both of them. On April 18, he allegedly abducted, raped, tortured, murdered, and thrown 9-year-old Mary Perez in Texas , where she was found ten days later. He is also charged with raping and strangling 13-year-old Haley McHone in Kentucky on May 13th . Witnesses had seen him sell their bike.

Condemnation

Investigators attribute at least 13 murders to Sells in seven states, despite the fact that during an interview with forensic psychiatrist Michael Stone he said he killed around 50 to 70 people. He testified that because of his excessive drug and alcohol consumption, especially in the period before his first imprisonment, he could no longer remember exactly all the victims, and he committed the crimes in many different states over a period of 20 years, which made the investigation difficult.

On 20 September 2000 Tommy Sells became the murder of Kaylene Harris sentenced death and in the November 8 death row the Polunsky Unit moved to Livingston, Texas.

He was in on April 3, 2014 Huntsville Unit , Texas executed .

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personal data
SURNAME Sells, Tommy Lynn
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Coast to Coast Killer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American serial killer
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Oakland , California
DATE OF DEATH 3rd April 2014
Place of death Huntsville , Texas