Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Earn It is a financial technology company, not a bank. Subject to your available earnings, daily max, pay period max, and location. See earnit.com slash TOS for details. Bank products are issued by Evolve Bank and Trust, member FDIC. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Okay. Hey.
Everyone, happy new year. It is 2024. It is our year, baby. 2024. Never thought I'd live to see today. I know. I thought we were done in 2012. That's crazy. 2024. And if you're watching on YouTube, we do still have the tree up. Because it's January 1st. It'll be down next podcast, but one more with the tree. That's all we got. You can't. Like, we are not the people that take our tree down.
The day after Christmas. I would say it's not so much because of Christmas spirit and more because of laziness. For sure. But that's okay. You should have just picked the tree up and threw it. That would have been a mess. Yeah.
And then Daisy would have torn it apart. And actually, Daisy's great. She doesn't, as she's sitting here chewing on this, she doesn't like tear anything apart, furniture. She never has. Even as a puppy, she never ate any furniture. She never chewed any of our shoes, clothes, like anything. Like if there was something she was chewing, we don't want her. We'd be like, hey, no. And she'd be like, okay, I can't chew that again. Actually.
She did go through a rug phase. Oh, you're kind of right. It was only certain rugs. She did like a rug phase, but you're very correct in that if we said, no, you can't chew that. She only chews what she's allowed to chew. She loves to chew, but mainly her bones and her toys. Usually it's her bones or her bully bones and stuff like that. Or mom's clips. She does love my clips. Also, if you're watching, we are sorry. I know we keep staring to the...
It will be your left, but to the right of us. Because this Christmas tree is here, we can't see each other. Did we explain this? We did, but I got to knock it out. Because some people were commenting. Because this Christmas tree is here, we can't see each other. And so we have a TV to the right of us, which is plugged into our camera, where we can like viewfinder, basically. We can see ourselves. But we just keep staring at it because that's how we look at each other. And it's also like pretty big.
Like right there. So it's hard not to stare at. And so we're trying to,
stare at the camera, but this tree is just stare blocking us. It really is. So we do just keep looking. We're not looking at anyone. Someone's like, is someone else in the room? No, it's just me and Gary. For my 10 seconds, I'm just hopping into it. We are recording a little bit early so we can have the first and some days off. So I'm trying to think of a 10 seconds as we've been kind of recording back to back.
I'm not really sure how to say this. I was in the shower the other day and, you know, I was manscaping my legs or my thighs. If you listen with little kids, it's probably appropriate. So it's fine. But I have hairy legs and I have hairy thighs. Just get that out of the way right now. And I was like, oh, I'm going to trim my thighs a little bit. So I had my shaver, razor, basically they're just clippers.
And I started, you know, clipping my thighs a little bit, shaving them in the shower. And then I was like, oh, that line looks funny there. That looks funny there. Next thing you know, boom, my entire legs, all my thighs, all my legs. First time ever, I just trimmed them and basically clippered them all down. So it's the first time my legs have ever looked like this. It's weird. I can actually see my legs. I'm used to it just being filled with hair.
uncovered a scar we didn't know you had. I had a scar. I do have a little bit of, a little bit of muscles. Some of them are poking through some calf muscles. Yeah. What do you think about that, babe? You actually liked it, huh? I do like it, but it's definitely like a weird transition. It's just so weird to see your leg muscle and like your legs and your legs are tanner than I thought that they would be. Most of you don't know me in person.
And so I had hairy legs. Like it was like jungle status up in there. And so it's weird to see me without hairy legs. I look at my leg and I'm like, whoa, what is that? So yeah, that's my 10 seconds. If you've ever thought about it, go for it. I recommend it. Feels good. And again, that entire story, I looked at the TV.
It's hard not to. I'm sorry, everybody. I'm sorry, everyone who watches on YouTube. I apologize, but please like and subscribe and leave a comment. We love you. Bye.
Okay, our sources for this episode are Through the Window by Diane Fanning, CBS News, ABC 7, Chicago, The Guardian, Dallas News, Medium.com, All That's Interesting.com, CrimeLibrary.org, ABC News, ThoughtCo.com, CrimeAndCoffeeCouple.com. Trigger warning, this episode includes discussions of sexual abuse and abuse of a minor, so please listen with care. So we see a lot of cases on this show that
never get solved, particularly with serial killers where there's no real pattern, no direct connection to the victims, no identifiable motive.
Even when local police combine their resources with federal agencies like the FBI, there's still a lot of cases that go without answers, no matter how much money and manpower they put into it. Which would have been exactly what happened in today's case. A serial murderer, the self-proclaimed coast-to-coast killer, would probably still be at large claiming more and more victims had it not been for the most unexpected eyewitnesses.
Because in today's case, our killer isn't taken down by local authorities or the FBI. His entire operation comes crashing down all thanks to a 10-year-old little girl. Okay. So it's December 1999 in the small city of Del Rio, Texas, just outside of San Antonio near the Mexican border. There, 10-year-old Crystal Searles and her 7-year-old sister, Mark, were
are staying at a family friend's house while they wait for the rest of their family to finish packing up their home in Kansas to move down to the Lone Star State to join them. The Harrises, the couple who've taken the two girls in in the meantime, have been mortgaging
more than welcoming. Crystal Harris, the mother, already has a full house of young kids, her stepson Sean and her own children, Justin, Lori, and Kayleen, or Katie. She figures, what's two more kids while these kids wait for their parents to get into town? Katie, at 13 years old, is the closest in age to the Searles sisters, and she's become particularly close with 10-year-old Crystal.
And it's a relationship that Crystal's protective of. Katie is definitely one of the more popular girls in school, so getting to spend such quality time with her is probably something that's important to Crystal, which is why she kind of keeps her younger sister out of their business much of the time, particularly on that night, December 30th,
1999 because Katie and Crystal wanted to stay up late and make plans for the little New Year's Eve party they were throwing the following night. If you haven't put two and two together, it is New Year's and we are now in a case that is...
New Year's Eve. Katie had mentioned having a few friends over so that Crystal could meet them before school started in the new year. It was an exciting time for the 10-year-old Crystal, but of course, Mark felt a little left out. She was relegated to the spare bedroom across the hall while Katie and Crystal shared the bunk beds in the other room. And it's like,
It's so sad to be the younger sister when you hit that certain age where the older sister no longer wants the younger sister around. I wouldn't know. And that night, Mark went to bed steaming with anger, perhaps missing the life or at least the relationship she and her sister had had back in Kansas. But the early years weren't necessarily easy for the Searles family. In many ways, Crystal in particular was forced to grow up quickly, making her much more mature for her age.
Throughout the earlier half of her life, Crystal's parents, Pam and Mark, battled with substance abuse, which meant some of the time Crystal, Mark, and their younger sister, Amber, were left to fend for themselves. That's horrible. Crystal admitted that she had to take on the role of caretaker, changing her sister's diapers,
feeding them making sure they got to school or daycare on time cooking cleaning whatever it was crystal did a lot of the work don't do drugs and she hadn't even hit double digits yet
Around the same time Crystal was about eight, her mother Pam decided it was time to turn her life around. She got clean, got a divorce from father Mark, took the girls and left. But this didn't incentivize Mark to clean up his act. Instead, shortly after losing his family, he was arrested on drug charges.
And come that December 1999, he was still facing time behind bars in County Jell, which may be why Pam Searles felt it was a good time to just move her family, herself and her three girls to Texas for a fresh start. It seemed to have worked out well for her old friend from Kansas, Crystal Harris. Plus, she'd promised to help them out with the transition, which is why the girls are even staying at Crystal's house.
Okay.
Then she got pregnant with Lori only a month after Katie was born. By the time Crystal was 20, she had three young children and was filing for divorce from her abusive husband. So like Pam, she moved the kids out of the house, found a place for the four of them, and in 1990 met a charming neighbor named Terry Harris. Five years later, Terry, along with his son Sean and Crystal with her three kids, decided to move south to Del Rio, Texas, where they finally tied the knot.
Terry legally adopted Crystal's three children, making them his own, a move that the children were more than thrilled about. They really admired Terry and were happy to have a reliable father figure in their lives. However, on the night of December 30th, 1999, Crystal was alone with her hands full. Terry had just gone out of town earlier that day on a business trip and wasn't due back for a few more days, which meant Crystal only had so much bandwidth to reason with a house full of young kids.
She let the girls work out their own sleeping arrangements for the night, tucked Justin into bed, and said goodnight to the others. Tomorrow was the last day of the year, the last day of the millennium, in fact, so there was a lot worth celebrating. They'd close the night out watching fireworks, maybe sipping a little sparkling apple cider. Crystal Harris went to bed thinking tomorrow was going to be a good day. But that all changed in the early morning hours after the calendar changed from
from December 30th to December 31st. It was around 4 a.m. when someone approached the outside of the Harris home. The family Rottweiler, a sleepout back, started barking. But a gentle pat on the head was the only thing required to calm the dog back down. This, that is one of my, I think that's the hard thing about having a dog unless they're extremely aggressive or they are trained dogs.
to know who to attack, when to attack. I feel like most of the time, like Daisy, I mean, Daisy's small, but she wouldn't.
If he came up to her and started patting her head, she'd be like, oh, okay, that's great. No. She just barked. Did you hear her? Good job, Daisy. Good job. She'd run away. I think especially in the middle of the night, she'd be like, no one's supposed to be here. True. Yeah, I guess that's true. But yeah, anyways, keep going. But Daisy's also not asleep outside. She's asleep in our bedroom. That's true, too.
So the window to 14-year-old Justin's bedroom was open, allowing the cool winter air to come in through his screen, which the stranger popped out of its frame easily before crawling his way into the home. And remember, dad is not home. Yeah. And she's got other girls staying with her, a house full of children, if you will. Yeah.
Once inside, the stranger noticed Justin squirm. The boy, still half asleep, said into the darkness, will you all stop coming into my room? Remember, Justin's been blind since birth. So he's thinking it's just one of his siblings playing a prank on him. So sad. But the stranger stood frozen there until he was certain Justin had rolled over and gone back to sleep.
Then he continued creeping down the hallway, light on his feet, passing the bedroom of the sleeping Mark. Remember, Mark is the daughter as well as the dad, but she's also the daughter here. And into the room with the bunk beds filled with two sleeping young girls, Katie Harris and her friend Crystal Searles.
The man snuck inside, softly closing the door behind him before turning on the light. Then he stood over the 13-year-old Katie, still asleep in the lower bunk, and whispered, Wake up. Oh, this is horrible. That's when Katie opened her eyes to find a 35-year-old man hovering over her bed. Dude, we got to... These people, man. People are just evil. People are evil and...
I know a lot of people don't agree with me, but like an evil way to go about it, then, oh, let's just put them in prison for life. It's just what he's doing right now is the most evil thing you can possibly do. He had scruffy dark hair and a huge bushy beard. With the light now on, she could see the evil behind his eyes. But the scariest part was the 12-inch blade he was clutching in his hand, pointing in her direction. All Katie could muster were the words, what are you doing here?
And that's when the stranger attacked. He began slicing Katie's clothes away with his knife as she screamed, waking up 10-year-old Crystal, who'd been sleeping in the bunk bed above her. Crystal stayed frozen in fear, praying to God that the intruder didn't see her there. Meanwhile, he continued stabbing Katie repeatedly before slicing her throat. The 13-year-old Katie fell out of the bed, gasping for dear life as the man turned to leave the room, seemingly satisfied with his work.
But just as he was about to shut off the light, he heard a noise. He looked back, scanning the room one more time. And that's when he saw Crystal, like a deer in headlights, peeking out over the railing of the top bunk. It was a tiny witness, one the man couldn't let escape.
He returned to the bunk bed and reached over the railing, grabbing Crystal as tightly as he could. But Crystal was backed into a corner with nowhere to go. All she could do was plead for her life, promising to stay quiet, swearing that she wouldn't say a thing, vowing to not make a peep. But this man ignored her, refusing to show any mercy, and with one clean swipe, dragged it across Crystal's neck.
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Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash husband, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash husband now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash husband. Crystal lay there frozen, bleeding onto the bed as the man, satisfied with his work, finally left the room. This is something...
Not only should no one obviously ever have to go through, but little kids? It's just some pure, evil, unexplainable stuff. That's absolutely insane to me. He closed the door behind him, but as Crystal looked down at the blood on her hands and her friend's body on the floor below her, she was certain if they weren't dead now, they would be in a matter of minutes.
About an hour later, a team of Texas Rangers approached the Harris home. They knocked several times, but no one answered. With the front door unlocked, they made their way inside, announcing themselves loudly, praying that someone in the family would respond. That's when Crystal Harris, the mother, came out of her room with her daughter, Lori. She looked startled and confused as the police asked who else was in the house.
Crystal pointed towards the other end of the home where the rest of the children were sleeping, still oblivious to what has happened. As they wandered down the hall, the police checked the bedrooms one by one. Mark, Justin, and Sean were all still sound asleep, blissfully, unaware of the chaos that had unfolded on the other side of their wall.
But the further down the hall they got, the more police noticed. Streaks of blood covered the walls and the floor leading back to Katie and Crystal's room. They opened the final door carefully and inside spotted the lifeless body of Katie on the bedroom floor. But the 10-year-old, Crystal Searles, was no longer there.
So what had happened to Crystal? We need to back up about an hour to the moments right after Crystal's throat had been slashed. Knowing that one more wrong move could end everything for Crystal, she pretended to play dead as the man closed the bedroom door behind him. The truth was, though, the slice wasn't the fatal blow the killer had thought he'd delivered.
Crystal, bleeding profusely, mustered up the strength to get down from that bunk bed and check on her friend. At that point, Katie was still breathing and Crystal knew she had to go get help. Her first instinct was to stumble down the hallway into her sister's room. You have to think, she's 10 years old. She's in a...
not a stranger's home, but you're sleeping over at a friend's house. I would go check on my sister or go to my sister for help as well. But when she got there, she found that she couldn't wake Mark up because Crystal couldn't scream or make any sound for that matter. And that's when she thought she better leave the house altogether. She wondered what if everyone in the house was dead? I mean, this is what she's assuming, right? He came into our bedroom and he's also killed everyone else. Yep.
Or equally as disturbing, what if the man was still waiting for her, lingering somewhere in the shadows? So a very scared Crystal, barefoot in her pajamas and still holding the gaping wound at her neck, stumbled out of the front door.
Then she walked almost a quarter mile to the next home where she began banging on the door. Holy crap, how was a 10-year-old doing this? It was about 5 a.m. when Herb Betts tightened his robe and loudly asked who was on the other side. That's when he peeked out the window and saw a little girl bleeding from her neck. He frantically pulled her inside, screaming to his wife to come help.
He asked Crystal what had happened, but unable to speak, she signaled for a pen and paper. And that's when she started writing. The Harris's are hurt. Tell them to hurry. My neck needs help. And finally, she wrote, will I live? Oh, my gosh. This can't be real. And that's when Herb ran to the phone to dial 911 while his wife tended to Crystal's wound.
So as the police were discovering Katie's body back at the Harris household, Crystal was already being rushed to the hospital. The knife had cut the sheath around her artery, the major blood vessel that carries blood to the brain. But thanks to a miracle, the artery itself had not been damaged.
Doctors also worked to repair Crystal's larynx, but at the time of her surgery, they were unsure whether she would ever be able to speak again. Oh, wow. At around 6 a.m. that morning, Pam Searles, Crystal's mother, received the worst call of her life. Her daughter had been brutally attacked and her friend had lost her life. Luckily, the rest of the Harris family, along with her other daughter, Mark, had been spared.
By the time Pam finally arrived in Texas, Crystal was in recovery. She'd been given a tracheotomy so she could breathe and was hooked up to a bunch of tubes and machines. Pam said her daughter was nearly unrecognizable. But Crystal wasn't worried about any of that. She only had one thing on her mind. She was ready to identify her attacker.
Crystal couldn't get the man's face out of her head, and she wanted to give a description before that image began to fade. So Pam called the sheriff's department, saying her daughter was eager to speak with detectives, which is so brave. Crazy that she's, yeah, being that brave now.
And that outspoken about everything. Right. When police arrived that day, Crystal grabbed a pen and paper and began writing a physical description of the man. A sketch artist put together an image and Crystal approved of. Then they took their database to find previous offenders that might be a match. A
A day later, police came back to the hospital with a photo lineup to show Crystal. And she pointed aggressively at one image in particular, a 35-year-old man living just a few miles away from the Harris's in Del Rio. His name was Tommy Lynn Sells.
Not only did Sells live close to the Harris family, he knew them fairly well. He'd met them at a local church and had sold a car to Terry Harris at the dealership he worked at. How scary is that? That literally someone who's, for example, that's working at a car dealership.
And happens to also be an insane serial killer. You know, and we've seen this before with like Elizabeth Smart. The dad offered work on the home and then he targets Elizabeth. And I think it's pretty obvious that sells smart.
saw 13-year-old Katie and came into the house just to target her that night. 100%. In fact, he'd been to the family's home about three separate times. Tommy had developed a friendship with Crystal's husband, Terry, and would come over to confide in him about his job and marital problems with his wife. Which is crazy because...
That whole time he's just plotting this. It's just all fake. He'd met each of the Harris' children. Even the family's Rottweiler had taken a liking to Tommy Lynn's cells. But Crystal Harris, she always had a bad feeling about Tommy. He'd admitted to the couple that he'd been in prison before, had a drinking problem, and that his marriage was on the rocks. His unkempt appearance and abundance of tattoos made her uneasy.
When she asked what they symbolized, he looked Crystal dead in the eyes and said, lady, you don't want to know. Plus, her daughter Katie had said he'd made her uncomfortable with the looks he was giving her. When police heard this, they felt confident that Tommy had been targeting the Harris family and planning this break-in for some time. He just never expected Crystal to be there on the top of the bunk as well. Yeah.
So by January 2nd, 2000, authorities had a warrant for his arrest. At around 6 a.m. that morning, they surrounded the home he shared with his wife, Jessica, and his stepkids.
When they found his front door unlocked, they let themselves in to see that Tommy was already awaiting their arrival. The first words out of his mouth were, I'm glad I finally got caught. I was tired of doing this. Oh my gosh. The ego on these serial killers is next level. As Tommy was whisked away in handcuffs, detectives found a dirty hamper filled with bloody garments that would later prove to have traces of both Katie and Crystal's DNA on them. So this is open-ended.
shot tommy also told them about the murder weapon the 12-inch blade he'd hidden in the brush behind his house then on the way down to the precinct tommy dropped an even bigger bomb on the officers saying well i guess you want to know about the other murders which i've already hinted at yep
So I think this would be a good time to give you a little history lesson on Tommy Lynn's cells. He was born in California in 1964, and Tommy, like most serial killers, had a pretty rough childhood, but his began as early as 18 months old. That's when he and his twin sister caught spinal meningitis. While Tommy survived, she didn't. When
When he was just seven, he developed an alcohol abuse problem sneaking from his grandfather's stash. At seven? Yep. At age eight, he was sexually assaulted by a neighbor. This led to several disturbing incidents where he tried to recreate this behavior in his own home, particularly with his mother and his grandmother. This is very common, which was why at age 14, Tommy was kicked out of the house and forced to live on his own. It's hard because...
There's never an excuse for anything, but it's also interesting and disappointing that all of these, usually serial killers, there's always sexual abuse or something. Mistreatment. Mistreatment or traumatic that happens to them as well. Right. Again, there's plenty of sexual abuse and mistreatment that happens to people who don't go on to become serial killers. No, he's still the most evil person ever, and I don't care about his life.
So shortly after that, at around age 16, Tommy claimed his first victim. He broke into a Mississippi home with plans to rob the place when he was spotted by the patriarch of the family. After a quick scuffle, Tommy shot the man and left him for dead. Shockingly, he was never caught for this crime. But in 1984, while living in Missouri, a 20-year-old Tommy was arrested for stealing a Ford Mustang.
That was when he first landed himself behind bars, serving two years in a state prison. Once he was out, Tommy was back on the road, traveling across the country, taking odd jobs, including that of a carnival worker. All of the while, he continued abusing drugs and alcohol. And he went on to target all types of people, male, female, children, claiming lives in around 10 different states over the next decade or so, and giving himself the nickname the
the coast to coast killer and no one has caught him in 1988 while living on the streets of salt lake city utah he befriended another unhoused woman and her son even coaching the little boy on how to panhandle a few weeks into their relationship tommy asked if they wanted to go for a little road trip to idaho a road trip garrett and i have taken many times by the way and
Instead, he killed them both and left their bodies in the Snake River before quickly hitting the road again. Oh, I know where the Snake River is. Uh-huh.
Tommy was never caught or arrested for that crime, but he went for another marginalized target just a year later, killing a sex worker and disposing of her body in Truckee, California. Oh, so he was caught for that? No. Oh, okay. In 1990, Tommy was arrested once more, but again, not for murder, just theft. So he's murdering all along
the way but what he's getting arrested for is theft yeah he's getting caught for theft but he's killing people and no one's finding out he spent another two years in jail where he was diagnosed with personality disorders like bipolar and major depressive disorder and by 1992 tommy lynn sells was back on the streets with little to no rehabilitation this time targeting young women who weren't necessarily living on the margins of society upping the challenge for himself
Like in May 1992, Tommy was living on the streets of Charleston, West Virginia, holding a sign that said, We'll work for food, when a young woman stopped and took notice. This is him obviously admitting all of this. Yes.
Fabian Witherspoon was no older than 20 and she was feeling charitable that day. Tommy brought her in with a fake sob story about how he and his wife and children were living under a bridge and starving and Fabian had no reason not to believe it. She invited Tommy to follow her back to the house she was staying at so she could gather a few food items and supplies for him.
But the big mistake was allowing him inside. As Fabian stuffed a sack of goods for Tommy to take, he grabbed a kitchen knife and attacked her. After sexually assaulting her, she tried to slither away, but Tommy came back with a vengeance. That's when Fabian grabbed a hold of the knife and gained control. She stabbed Tommy repeatedly before he was able to hit her over the head with a piano stool. Then he tried to slit her throat.
Luckily for Fabine, the wound was too shallow to do serious damage and by that point Tommy was racing out the front door. She gained her bearings, was able to die on 911 and did it with enough time to save her own life, making her one of Tommy's first victims who lived to tell the tale. But with such terrible wounds, Tommy had to get himself to a hospital for treatment, which was where he was discovered by police and arrested for the violent attack.
After securing himself a plea deal, however, Tommy only faced five years behind bars for this. Don't understand. Attempted murder is something in the justice system I don't get very much because you can attempt to murder somebody and get one to five years in prison. But if you murder someone, obviously... If he was just better at slicing a throat, he would have spent life in prison. Attempted murder in that sense...
should be like life in prison because they're gonna go kill someone yeah like how in the world do you think they're not going to go kill someone after they attempt to kill someone
And I don't know how you fix that. I don't know what you do, but it just sucks. And obviously police don't know at this time that he's also murdered other people. Yeah, true. But still. But in that, yeah, it sucks. Okay, most beauty brands just don't really understand my hair, but Proz does. They have a formula that specifically addresses my hair, which makes sense because it's tailored just for me. You literally get on, you take a quiz, Proz.
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Just four months after his release in 1997, Tommy Lynn Sells was back at it again, this time in Lawrenceville, Illinois. During what should have been an uneventful trip to a convenience store, Tommy had a run-in with a woman named Julie Ray and claimed she was rude to him. Immediately after that confrontation, Tommy developed an obsession with Julie, a burning desire for revenge. He followed her home. This is just...
Yeah. He followed her home, broke through her window and went straight to the kitchen to grab a knife. Then he went to the bedroom of her 10 year old son, Joel. Oh my. And stabbed him in his sleep.
Oh my gosh, this is horrible. Oh my gosh, this is horrible.
Julie was taken to the hospital and treated for her wounds, but in a completely mind-blowing turn of events, the police weren't buying her story because there was no forced entry or signs of a struggle elsewhere in the house. You're lying to me. And because Julie had her own son's blood on her from the altercation with Tommy. What the freak is wrong with people? They pegged her.
her as the primary suspect in court the prosecution pointed to a long-going custody battle over joel as motivation she was later charged with first-degree murder and sentenced to 65 years in prison for her son's death and tommy's crime which is any mother's worst nightmare so she's currently in prison until they until he admits this yes okay
But in 1999, Tommy committed another heinous act that would eventually come back to haunt him. On April 8th, during a street fair in San Antonio, Texas, Tommy Lynn Sells snatched a nine-year-old girl named Mary Beatrice Perez. He shoved her in his car and drove a mile and a half out of town where he proceeded to assault and strangle the girl to death. Ten days later, Mary's body was discovered in a nearby creek.
These were just a few of the crimes Tommy Lynn Sells admitted to after his arrest for Katie Harris's murder in 2000. In fact, he worked with investigators for the next nine months, confessing to over 22 different homicides. Police believed Tommy was able to fly under the radar for so long because of his drifter lifestyle, his unwillingness to stay in one place for very long.
Problem was, so many of those crimes were left without evidence and without a body. So for now, Tommy was just facing charges for Katie Harris's murder, at least until authorities could confirm more details of his past offenses. So on September 12th, 2000, the trial against Tommy Lynn Sells began. While he pleaded not guilty to the murder of Katie Harris, he did plead guilty to the attempted murder of Crystal Searles. What a loser, man. What an absolute...
there's so many words i could use which meant tommy would have to face the 11 year old crystal in court and this is like like come on man so frustrating to just re-victimize a victim see at this point it's i yeah exactly like you really need her like i get that you i get that you need her but it's just sucky there's got to be like there should be a way to do it
Like over Zoom, she doesn't have to go. You know, there's got to be another way. I mean, I guess Zoom wasn't really a thing back then, but still. Well, Crystal was as brave as ever when she stepped into the courtroom and took the witness stand. She told a journalist that she felt okay having to face her attacker because in that setting, he had no control over her.
Crystal knew that it was because of her that this man was finally facing the justice he deserved. And whenever she hesitated, she just thought of her dear friend, Katie. Thanks to Crystal's testimony, there was very little Tommy's defense team could do to get him from being found guilty. I feel like I'm sorry I keep interrupting. I got so many irks.
But also it's so hard because I know I get that guilty until proven innocent, but it's just frustrating that these people even get representation. Yeah. Like if you clearly and obviously kill someone and there's like no refutable evidence against it, it's just wasting money. It's wasting time. You just, you don't deserve that. And I wish there was another way we could go about it. Right. Yeah.
So instead of trying to get him acquitted of the charges, his team did their best to prove this wasn't a capital offense and that Tommy Lynn Sells didn't deserve to be on death row. But there was one detail that came up in trial that blew that possibility to bits. Tommy had a written confession to police stating that he did sexually assault Katie right before he killed her. And not to like bring everything down, but think of the reality that Crystal was unmarried
Yes. Up on top of the bed while all of this was happening, trying her best to stay quiet.
and in the state of texas rape compounded with murder that gets you the death sentence so for tommy there was no hitting the road and running away from this one nice after just an hour and 10 minutes of jury deliberations they found tommy guilty on all charges one count of attempted murder and two counts of capital murder which meant tommy lynn sells was headed to death row he was sent to polonsky unit in livingston texas where he wasn't allowed a television wasn't allowed any phone calls
and a shower only once every three days if he behaved. 23 hours of every day were spent in his six-by-six-foot cell. See, this is how I feel like everyone who has a murder charge on them should be in jail. Like, no TV, no fun, no nothing. You're just chilling there.
No friends. No friends. And I know a lot of people probably disagree with me because a lot of people probably believe in some sort of way to reform. But if you kill someone like that, you get nothing. You sit in a corner that is dark and you get cream of wheat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This is hard. This is a subject that Garrett and I agree to disagree on. No, I'm just upset. I'm upset too. It's horrible. It's just crazy that...
This is why I don't... Not that I don't like true crime, but I'm just like, what? Like, I just... And I just want to not do something about it, but like hearing just...
Not that he got off easy, but dude's still alive. He took someone's life and he's just he's hanging out in jail. Yeah. Like what? So in 2001, Tommy got to see the great outdoors once more when he found himself being called into court to face charges for the murder of nine year old Mary Beatrice Perez, the little girl that he had abducted and killed after that Texas street fair.
There, Tommy faced another count of capital murder, and this time he pleaded guilty. He was given an additional life sentence on top of the death penalty he was already facing, a conviction that brought relief to another family, the wrongfully convicted Julie Ray, who was charged and sentenced for her son Joel's murder back in 1997. Tommy's confession of the crime won Julie a retrial, which this
This time, she came prepared with a new defense team from the Center on Wrongful Convictions. Their key piece of evidence, an audio-taped confession from Tommy Lynn Sells himself, offering intimate details of the crime. During that trial in 2006, Julie was found not guilty and finally exonerated. Please tell me she got millions and millions of dollars. I would hope so.
Unfortunately, Tommy himself was never formally charged with Joel's death. Despite having confessed to over 22 different murders, Tommy was only convicted of killing Mary Beatrice Perez and Katie Harris. In 2010, he told ABC News how he felt about his life decisions, saying, "'I am hatred. When you look at me, you look at hate. I don't know what love is. Two words I don't like to use is love and sorry because I am about hate.'"
That was the sentiment Tommy Lentz held with him until April 3, 2014, when at the age of 49, he was given his last meal.
He declined to offer any final words before he was injected with a lethal dose of a sedative, which put him to sleep before he passed away 13 minutes later. Standing just a few feet away was Crystal Searles and members of the Harris family bearing witness. Had it not been for Crystal's courage that night, had she not stumbled out of the house, walking a quarter mile to the neighbors to ask for help, who knows whether Tommy Lynn Sells would have even found his seat on death row.
His fate and the fate of many others might have turned out a little differently had 10-year-old Crystal not played the role of a hero that New Year's Eve night. And that is the story of Crystal Searles. Horrible for everyone involved. Crystal is a hero. I'm feeling a little emotional because these cases that we cover, a lot of them just have so much darkness and him saying something
you know, I am hatred. And it's just the unfortunate things that happened to him as a child. And then he goes on and does these horrible, evil, evil things. And so many people are affected. And we could briefly cover it. Like if he really did murder 22 people, that is 22 families, 22 people who were taken unjustly, a lot of those children, like it's just...
a lot of darkness in one's story. And you were saying earlier that you just wish there was something you could do. And I just want to let everyone listening know that thinking about these victims as people and, you know, our Patreon donates every month to places like the wrongful convictions or getting rape kits tested, that is what we can do. And it doesn't right these wrongs. It doesn't give justice. It just...
is something we can do in the face of evil to try and help and I think that is it for this week so everyone we hope you have a good new year we know murder with my husband is going to be here all year and I can't wait to see the adventure we go on and I love it and I hate it goodbye