On April 3, 2014, one of America’s top serial killers was executed by lethal injection. Tommy Lynn Sells, famously known as the “Coast to Coast Killer,” was convicted of two murders, but confessed to over 70. Sells was a vagabond for most of his life, hence why the killer was able to allude authorities for almost three decades. What crime or evidence led authorities to Sells? What drove Sells to commit more than 70 murders? Was Sells considered a psychopath? Let’s take a deeper look into the killer’s personal history, but I have to forewarn you… Tommy Lynn Sells is one of the most violent people I have ever encountered through research.

On December 31, 1999, Sells committed the crime that would seal his fate. That morning, Sells snuck into a trailer home in Del Rio, Texas. The trailer home belonged to Terry Harris, a “friend” of Sells. With a butcher knife in hand, Sells entered one of the rooms in the trailer home. In the room was Terry Harris’s 13-year-old daughter, Katy Harris, and 10-year-old Krystal Surles (one source claims Krystal was 11), a friend who had planned to spend the night with Katy. While Katy was sleeping, Sells approached her bedside and cut off all her clothes. Sells then started to touch the young girl inappropriately, which is when Katy jolted awake and yelled to her friend for help. At that instant, Sells blocked the doorway and brutally attacked Katy by slitting her throat more than once and stabbing her 16 times. Before leaving, Sells quickly slashed Krystal’s throat as she lay frozen in her top bunk. After Sells left, Krystal was miraculously still alive. Thinking that everyone else in the trailer home was dead, she ran to a nearby home for help. Shortly after, Sells was caught as a result of Krystal’s detailed descriptions, which she had to write on paper due to her severed windpipe.

Once Sells was apprehended, the killer calmly claimed to have murdered Katy and even showed authorities what he had done at the scene of the crime step-by-step. Sells’s cool, collected, and transparent attitude shocks me, but it becomes more understandable after listening to an interview that he had with ABC News. In the interview, Sells explained that he wanted a prison sentence to punish himself and that he was “‘raised to do time.'” A fascinating and bewildering confession. Sells revealed a lot of information during the interview, including a statement indicative of his psychopathic tendencies: “‘Two words I don’t like to use are love and sorry because I’m about hate.'” The psychologists involved in Sells’s case confirmed that he was indeed a psychopath. Like all the other psychopaths in my past blog posts, Sells also lacked sympathy for his victims and displayed no remorse over the grotesque crimes that he had committed; strongly correlates to Sells’s statement on feelings. Sells’s facial expressions also revealed his psychopathic tendencies. If you closely examine his face, you will notice that it appeared to be a blank slate. Facial features void of expressions are another staple characteristic of psychopaths and are present as a result of their inability to process normal emotions. Sells’s ease with confessing to murders and describing each one in full detail also played a role in his diagnosis as a psychopath.

After understanding Sells’s diagnosis, you’re probably wondering why Sells developed psychopathic habits in the first place, and so did I. Well, Sells’s psychopathy stems from his childhood. As a child, Sells frequently moved from home to home and he “was left mostly to fend for himself” (The link leads to an article on Sells…it is quite disturbing). By the age of seven, Sells was skipping school and drinking alcohol. Around the age of eight, Sells started visiting a neighbor and spent nights at his house. Unfortunately, the neighbor befriended Sells for the wrong reasons and sexually molested Sells on multiple occasions. As a young teenager, Sells dropped out of school and spent much of his time either smoking pot or drinking alcohol. As Sells matured, he became increasingly more violent, angry, sporadic, unpredictable, and sexual, which culminated in his killing spree for almost three decades. Based on Sells’s childhood, it is hard for me to believe that it did not cause the development of his psychopathic tendencies. In Sells’s interview with ABC News, he also happened to mention how he felt like he was taking out his rage on the neighbor who had molested him each time he murdered a victim. Such a powerful statement reveals the role Sells’s childhood played in the development of his mental illness.

In the end, I believe that Tommy Lynn Sells deserved his capital punishment. He shed no ounce of compassion for any person he came in contact with and pondered on murder with relish. Such individuals are dangerous and significant threats to society that should be dealt with accordingly.