Through the Window (3 page)

The investigators protected the exterior of the scene and waited for the forensic specialists to arrive. After a few hours, a team consisting of a photographer, a person responsible for trace evidence, an individual assigned to DNA and a latent print examiner arrived on the scene. They gathered evidence that day until after dark.

When they had finished, Deputy Larry Stamps called the funeral home. They transported Katy Harris to the autopsy table in San Antonio. Krystal Surles was already in the San Antonio hospital, desperately clinging to life. Against all odds, doctors there struggled to prevent her from joining her friend.

CHAPTER FOUR

UPON arrival at University Hospital, Krystal was rushed into surgery. The knife wound had nicked the sheath on her carotid artery, but the artery itself was uncut. Del Rio medical personnel had intubated her prior to her arrival in San Antonio. Now, the most urgent task for the staff here was to maintain her airway. Massive swelling and distortion in the area complicated their objective. Untreated, this swelling would have caused her to suffocate slowly.

Their second concern was the blood draining into her lungs. Although the five-inch slice spared her carotid artery, it did sever many other vessels in the area. She could have drowned in her own blood from this seepage.

Finally, they labored to repair her severed larynx. They had saved her life, but would not know for days whether their efforts had been completely successful—they would not know until little Krystal could talk again.

AT 5 A.M. on New Year’s Day, Allen and Pope left Del Rio. Texas Ranger Coy Smith from Uvalde joined them in San Antonio. At the side of Dr. Jan Garavaglia, they viewed the autopsy of Katy Harris at the Bexar County Forensic Center. Her carotid artery had been severed, as had her jugular vein. The wound to her neck went all the way down to her vertebrae. In addition to having her throat cut, she had suffered sixteen stab wounds—three of them going all the way through her body and exiting on the other side.

THE moment she regained consciousness, 10-year-old Krystal sought justice. Determined to put her attacker behind bars, her hands and arms scribed stubborn, nearly violent
gestures in the air to indicate her demand for a pen and paper.

A call came from the hospital to the forensic center. Dr. Cynthia Beamer informed Val Verde Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant Larry Pope, “Krystal wants to talk.”

“Krystal’s talking?”

“No, she’s writing.” And she wanted investigators there right away.

POPE and Allen rushed to University Hospital. In the intensive care unit, they attempted to gently ease their young witness into the questioning about the night’s events. Krys-tal would have none of that—she wanted to get straight to the point, scrawling out vivid details on her notepad. She started writing with her right hand, then she shifted to her left—forming words as easily with one hand as with the other.

She had seen her attacker and remembered what he looked like. Unbelievable, the two men thought. Ranger Allen grabbed a telephone and called the Department of Public Safety’s forensic artist, Shirley Timmons, at her home in Midland. Without hesitation, she cut her holiday weekend short, grabbed her supplies and flew down to San Antonio.

KRYSTAL’S mother, Pam, was at her daughter’s side as the girl communicated the harrowing experience. Pam and Doug Luker had driven thirteen hours from Kansas to the hospital the day before, arriving just in time to ring in the New Year. Before the artist arrived, the investigators asked Luker about a likely suspect. Krystal’s written description reminded him of a man he and Terry Harris had talked to at the convenience store next to Ram Country on the evening they left for Kansas.

AFTER introducing Shirley Timmons and Krystal Surles, the investigators left the two alone. Timmons’ work was interrupted by the young girl’s exhaustion. She would drift
into a short nap, then wake and work with the artist again. When they were finished, they had a detailed drawing of the bearded, long-haired man in question.

By this time, Luker was nearly in Del Rio. Contacting him by cell phone, Allen made arrangements to meet him in Uvalde. When shown the artist sketch, he was certain the drawing looked like the man they had seen at the Pico Convenience Store parking lot as they prepared to leave town on December 30. He thought that the man’s name was Tom or Tommy and that he worked at Amigo Auto Sales.

From the Uvalde DPS office, Ranger Allen called Bill Hughes, the owner of the dealership. Hughes would not give him a name. As soon as he hung up the phone, though, Hughes dialed the number for the Val Verde County Sheriff’s Department and talked to Sheriff D’Wayne Jernigan. “The man you’re looking for,” he said, “is Tommy Lynn Sells.”

At the same time, Terry Harris was driving around Del Rio in his pick-up truck with a rifle by his side. Vowing revenge, he told all who would listen that he was going to kill the man who’d murdered his adopted daughter, Katy. Many believe without doubt that he’d known all along who that man was. Yet, he would tell the name to no one. And although he knew where the man lived, he never confronted him at his home.

ONCE Sheriff Jernigan gave them a name, Texas Rangers needed a six-pack of driver’s license photos to lay down for Krystal. Ranger Coy Smith was now at the hospital, too. He hated to disturb the DPS analyst, Alice Buchanon, at night on a holiday weekend, but he placed the call. Like Timmons, Buchanon did not hesitate for a moment. Reluctant to make the trip alone, she swung by and picked up her daughter to give her company on the more-than-fifty-mile drive from Thorndale to the headquarters in Austin.

At headquarters, she faced an additional challenge. It was January 1, 2000, and Y2K concerns permeated nearly
every office in America—the Texas Department of Public Safety was no exception. The entire computer system had been shut down as a safety precaution. Buchanon fired up the computers, hoped for the best and performed the state agency’s first post-Y2K system check.

In short time, she had the photos ready for San Antonio. The only shot she found of Tommy Lynn Sells was beardless. It would have to do. Austin-based Texas Ranger Jim Denman rushed the line-up down seventy-five miles of interstate 35 to the DPS office in San Antonio where he was met by Rangers Allen and Smith.

ALLEN and Pope laid the photo spread of six beardless men in front of their young survivor. She studied each photo, her brow furrowed, her eyes intense. Then, when she had completed her survey, she prodded the photo of Tommy Lynn Sells.

At that revelation, Allen and Pope wanted to caper around the hospital room, exchanging high fives. Instead, they maintained professional composure, not giving Krystal the slightest signal. They asked her again to look at the pictures and be certain she’d picked the right man.

Her chin jutted out like the prow of a boat. She slammed her finger into Sells’ picture and glared at the officers. When questioned again, she pounded her finger into the photo again. And again. And again. Krystal Surles had no doubts. The I.D. was positive.

CHAPTER FIVE

EVERY member of law enforcement in Del Rio was on high alert. Edginess sometimes overcame good police procedure. Deputy Larry Stamps prowled the streets and the back roads of the surrounding countryside looking for anything suspicious. At one trailer, he thought he saw someone— maybe Tommy Lynn Sells—lurking outside a window. Inside the home, a slumber party for a group of young girls was in full swing. Stamps pulled his gun and crept around the perimeter. When he turned the final corner, he looked straight into the barrels of a shotgun and sweated at the sound of a cocked lever.

The homeowner was taking no chances. Hearing stealthy movements outside, he was prepared. He did not lower his sights until he was convinced of Stamps’ official identity.

Meanwhile, serious preparations for the apprehension of Tommy Lynn Sells proceeded. He was located five miles from the Harris house in a trailer at the American Campgrounds and Mobile Park where he lived with his wife, Jessica, and his stepchildren.

Before six A.M., on January 2, 2000, law enforcement surrounded the modest home. In the early morning hours, they assumed their positions quietly—but not quietly enough for the dogs tied in front of the house. Sells stepped out on the front porch to hush them.

Lieutenant Pope and Deputy Stamps met Sells at his front door. “Have you been having trouble with your mother-in-law?” Pope asked. “Well, I got a call, same old
thing—bitching and complaining. Can I come in and talk to you?”

Sells held the door open. Once inside, Pope said, “I’m placing you under arrest. Turn around and put your hands on the counter.” Sells complied without argument as he was frisked and cuffed. He was no stranger to the procedure. Pope asked him if he knew why they were there.

“No,” he answered.

“It’s for murder, Tommy.”

“Okay.” He shrugged his shoulders.

Sells agreed to a voluntary search. He was unaware that an armed team in camouflage surrounded the house. Behind the trailer, one of those men streaked across the back, waving a gun. Sells spotted him out the window and poked his head out the back door. For a moment, Pope thought he was going to run for it, and that they would have to shoot him. Sells pulled his head back in, but now he was ticked off. He indicated he might withdraw his permission for the search.

The juvenile investigator, brought along because of the children in the home, blurted out, “We’ll just get a search warrant, then.” Sells became angry at this retort and withdrew his permission. Then, he relented and gave his approval, but once a search warrant had been threatened, it had to be produced. They all waited for it to be delivered.

THEY found the clothes Sells had worn at the Harris home wadded up in a dirty clothesbasket. Jessica confirmed they were his. Where they lay, they were not visibly stained with blood. Later in the lab, though, the blood would be found and extracted. DNA tests would prove it was the blood of Katy Harris and Krystal Surles. The investigators also took a pair of tennis shoes to see if DPS could match them to a bloody footprint found on the linoleum in the Harris house. They did not match.

Pope and Stamps thought they’d found a possible murder weapon when they uncovered a twelve-inch boning
knife. Although it had no obvious signs of blood, it was bagged as evidence.

Sells, however, denied that it was the murder weapon. He explained that he had found two identical knives while cleaning up his father-in-law’s butcher shop after a flood. He was referring to the disaster in Del Rio, less than a year and a half earlier, that had killed twenty people, left hundreds homeless and caused monumental property damage throughout the area.

The other knife—the one used in the attack—was no longer in his house. Sells had brought it home with him from the murder. He’d tried to break it, but failed, cutting his own hand in the process. He tried to put it down a sewer pipe, but it was so badly twisted by his attempt to snap it in two that it would not fit. Finally, he threw it into the brush in the empty field by the trailer.

AS he left his home, he noticed Jessica being escorted into another patrol car. He demonstrated his first sign of distress. He pleaded for them not to arrest his wife. She’d had nothing to do with this. She knew nothing about it. Officers eased him into the back seat with assurances that they only planned to question Jessica, not charge her.

As soon as Lieutenant Pope pulled away from the house, headed toward the Val Verde County Correctional Center, confession flowed from the back seat. Pope interrupted him, “Do you understand your rights?”

“Yes.”

Since, in Texas, a confession must be videotaped or written to be admissible in court, Pope then urged him to wait till they arrived at his office.

After a mile of silence, Sells spoke up. “I guess we have a lot to talk about.”

Hoping he would say no more, Pope did not respond.

A moment later, Sells said, “I suppose you want me to tell you about the other one.”

Pope stopped breathing. Had he heard right?
“The other one”? What other one?
he wondered. His eyes flew up to the rearview mirror and locked in on the eyes reflected there—the cold, cold eyes of a predator.

CHAPTER SIX

SOME kids slip through the cracks. Others, like Tommy Lynn Sells, tumble into crevasses so deep and so cold, no light or warmth can get in. In Lieutenant Larry Pope’s words: “Tommy never had anything but the short end of the stick.”

He was born a twin on June 28, 1964, in Oakland, California, to Nina Sells, also known as Nina Lovins. His twin sister was Tammy Jean. Publicly, his father was William Sells. When the twins were born, they joined two other siblings, Terry Joe and Timothy Lee. The family was soon enriched with three more boys, twins Jerry Kevin and Jimmy Keith, and then Randy Gene. Tommy Lynn Sells swore that the biological father of all of these children was a man named Joe Lovins, but William Sells legally bore the title of father. He worked a regular job with benefits— most importantly, insurance coverage for a family. When William Sells had serious financial problems, he turned to Lovins, who bailed him out. Tommy Sells claimed, and his mother did not deny, that Lovins, a car salesman and gambler, took advantage of William Sells’ debt to force him to claim the children as his own. Joe Lovins is also the man who gave Sells the words that became his motto for two decades of mayhem: “Dead men tell no tales.”

Soon after the family moved back to Missouri from Oakland, California, crisis struck. The twins were eighteen months old when Tammy Jean developed an excessively high fever. Nina rushed her to the hospital, arriving at about 6 A.M. The doctor said that the baby had pneumonia, and put her in a plastic tent. Nina sat by her bedside watching
as beads of sweat formed and rolled across her little daughter’s face and plastered her hair to the top of her head. At 6:30 P.M., Tammy Jean died. Nina did not believe the diagnosis of pneumonia, and insisted on an autopsy. The cause of death was spinal meningitis. As an adult, Tommy commemorated his lost twin with a tattoo on his upper left arm—a tombstone bearing her name.