Serial killer Israel Keyes

Israel Keyes

Israel Keyes (January 7, 1978 – December 2, 2012) was an American criminal who committed suicide in his Anchorage, Alaska jail cell after confessing to being a serial killer, rapist, arsonist, burglar, and bank robber.

The earliest crime to which Keyes admitted was the violent sexual assault of a teenage girl in Oregon, sometime between 1996 and 1998. He was captured and being held in custody, awaiting trial for the murder of Samantha Koenig, when he committed suicide in prison.

Early life

Keyes was born in Richmond, Utah in 1978. He was raised in a Mormon family, and was homeschooled.His family moved to the Aladdin Road area, north of Colville, Washington, where they became neighbors and friends with the family of Chevie Kehoe, and occasionally attended a Christian Identity church. Eventually, however, Keyes rejected religion entirely, identifying as an atheist shortly before his arrest.

Keyes served in the U.S. Army from 1998 through 2000 at Fort Lewis, Fort Hood, and in Egypt. He started a construction business in 2007 in Alaska, Keyes Construction, working as a handyman, contractor, and construction worker.

Victims

Keyes’ first victims were in Washington state in the late 1990s. Keyes admitted to investigators that he killed four people in Washington State, claims which are the subject of an active investigation by the FBI as well as police in that state. He lived in several places in the state from the late 1990s until about 2008.

As a specialist in the U.S. Army, he was stationed at Fort Lewis sometime between 1998 to 2001. Keyes also lived in the small city of Colville in Eastern Washington and in the Makah Reservation community of Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula. Keyes did not have a felony criminal record in Washington, although he had been cited in Thurston County (in or near Olympia) for driving without a valid license and, in an earlier incident, pleaded guilty to driving under the influence. Authorities are reviewing unsolved murder and missing persons cases to determine which cases, if any, may link to Keyes.

He confessed to at least one murder in New York State. Authorities have not determined the identity, age, or gender of the victim, or when and where the murder may have occurred, but regard the confession as credible. Keyes had ties to New York State, he owned 10 acres and a run down cabin in the Town of Constable. Keyes also confessed to bank robberies in New York and Texas. The FBI later confirmed that Keyes robbed the Community Bank branch in Tupper Lake, New York in April 2009. The FBI said that Keyes threatened people in the bank with a handgun, although there were no injuries. He also told authorities that he burglarized a Texas home and set it on fire.



Two years prior to the Curriers’ deaths, Keyes hid a “murder kit” near their home, which included a hand gun and various supplies. Keyes used these supplies during the murder of the Curriers. After the murders, he moved most of the items to a new hiding place in Parrishville, New York, where they remained until after his arrest.

Keyes’ last known murder was the kidnapping and murder of 18-year-old Samantha Koenig, a barista working in Anchorage, Alaska. Authorities said that Keyes kidnapped her from her place of employment, stole her debit card and other property, then murdered her the following day. Police stated that Keyes sexually assaulted Koenig before he murdered her. After Koenig’s death, Keyes left on a cruise out of New Orleans, leaving Koenig’s body in a shed. When he returned home, he took a photograph of her body with a 4-day-old issue of the Anchorage Daily News, maintaining the illusion that she was still alive in his ransom demand. After demanding US$30,000 in ransom, Keyes dismembered Koenig and disposed of her body in Matanuska Lake north of Anchorage.view the fbi timeline of keyes travels

 Keyes was also linked to the deaths of Bill and Lorraine Currier of Essex, Vermont. Along with his confession, authorities say they have enough evidence to link Keyes to the murders. The Vermont couple was last seen after leaving work in June, 2011. Keyes reportedly broke into the Curriers’ home on the night of June 8th and tied them up before driving to an abandoned farmhouse, where he shot Bill Currier before sexually assaulting and strangling Lorraine Currier.

However, their bodies have not been found.

Investigation and arrest

After the murder of Koenig, Keyes’ demanded ransom was paid. Police tracked withdrawals from the account as Keyes moved throughout the American Southwest. During that time, in a controvesial move, the police refused to release surveillance video of Koenig’s abduction.

Keyes was arrested in Texas after using Koenig’s debit card, which he had previously used in New Mexico and Arizona. Keyes was subsequently extradited to Alaska, where he confessed to Koenig’s murder. He was indicted in the case, and his trial was scheduled to begin in March 2013.

Modus operandi

Keyes planned murders long ahead of time and took extraordinary action to avoid detection. Unlike most serial killers, he didn’t have a victim profile. He always killed far from home, and never in the same area twice. On his murder trips, he kept his mobile phone turned off and paid for items with cash. He had no connection to any of his victims. In the Currier murders, he flew to Chicago, and there rented a car to drive the 1000 additional miles to Vermont. He then used the murder kit he had hidden two years earlier to perform the murders.

Keyes admired Ted Bundy and shared several similarities with him: Both were heavy drinkers, methodical, intelligent and felt a possession over their victims. However, there are notable differences. Bundy’s murders were spread throughout the country, mainly because he lived in many different areas, and not as an intentional effort to avoid detection as was the case with Keyes. Bundy only targeted attractive young women, usually with hair parted down the middle, while Keyes had no particular type of victim.

Death

While being held in jail at the Anchorage Correctional Complex on suspicion of murder, he committed suicide on December 2, 2012, via self-inflicted wrist cuts and strangulation. He was survived by at least one child, a school-age daughter.

The murder of Kelsey Smith

Edwin R. Hall was near the jewelry counter in Target when he spotted Kelsey Smith.

She was there buying a present for her boyfriend. He was there looking for a victim.

"Nice legs, " Hall thought when he noticed the girl who had graduated from high school 10 days before.

When she turned and he saw her face, he thought she looked liked a 12-year-old. It was early in the evening of June 2, 2007. He narrowed

in.

On Wednesday, a packed Johnson County courtroom heard vivid details of what happened to the 18-year-old Overland Park girl, as Hall

unexpectedly pleaded guilty to kidnapping her, raping and sodomizing her and then strangling her with her own belt.

As Hall stood and said "guilty" to each of the charges -- capital murder, aggravated kidnapping, rape and aggravated sodomy -- Missey

Smith clutched pictures of her slain daughter.

When Hall said "guilty" the first time, she collapsed on the shoulder of her husband, Greg. After the fourth time, the two hugged and cried.

District Judge Peter Ruddick plans to sentence Hall on Sept. 16. The 27-year-old Olathe man will spend his life in prison with no chance of

parole.

After the pleas, District Attorney Phill Kline laid out the evidence he would have presented at a trial. Smith’s DNA was found on a stain

inside the zipper flap of Hall’s shorts. The chance that the DNA was anyone but Smith’s was one in over 280 billion.

Kline obtained the plea by taking the death penalty off the table. Hall also has waived all of his appeal rights, Kline said.

As part of the deal, prosecutors will dismiss charges in an unrelated case they filed against Hall in July 2007. In that case, Hall is

charged with two counts of aggravated indecent liberties for his alleged involvement in a consensual sexual relationship in 2004 with a

girl who was 14 at the time.

"Today is a victory for justice, but it’s not a cause for celebration," Kline said afterward at a news conference. "My hope is that Mr.

Hall’s name will be forgotten and the name of Kelsey Smith, who she was and what she did, will live on."

Smith’s family agreed. Her parents and three sisters -- she also has a younger brother -- stood with two dozen of Kelsey’s friends after the

hearing. It was just 13 months ago that the family searched for Kelsey for nearly four days before authorities found her body near Longview

Lake.

"Justice isn’t always fair, " Greg Smith said. "If it were fair, we’d have Kelsey back."

The hearing was supposed to be a routine one in which attorneys would argue whether the mid-September trial should be delayed. But after the

judge ruled Tuesday that prosecutors could seek the death penalty, ongoing discussions over a plea became more serious.

Hall’s wife, Aletha, was in the courtroom Wednesday, as she has been for most of his hearings. When Hall walked into the room, he looked at

her and smiled slightly.

The two have a young son whom neighbors said Hall was always attentive to before his arrest. Aletha Hall declined to comment after the

hearing.

Defense attorney Paul Cramm, whom Hall called even before he was arrested, said Hall was "very remorseful." He declined to elaborate.

Co-counsel Carl Cornwell said he and Cramm represented Hall for free. When Ruddick asked Hall if he felt he had effective counsel, he

answered yes.

Hall’s adoptive mother, Carol Hall, who has seen Hall twice since his arrest, said the plea was "a shock to us." A friend called her at her

Emporia, Kan., home Wednesday afternoon and told her the hearing was on television.

"I’m almost sick to my stomach, " she said in a telephone interview. "I feel for those people and I feel for his (Hall’s) son. I’m just

sick. He said he didn’t do it -- obviously he did. ... I pray for him."

Kline outlined for the court what happened the day Smith was kidnapped and killed.

Smith’s friends and family, and police officers from Overland Park and other agencies, filled the seats and stood in the aisle and against

the wall.

As Kline spoke, Smith’s family repeatedly cried. So did her friends, many of whom leaned on one another or clasped hands as new details

came out.

Hall dined alone at a Mexican restaurant near Oak Park Mall late that Saturday afternoon and left without paying. Just after 5 p.m., he went

to the Dillard’s at the mall. He later told authorities he was shopping for a gift for his wife.

"However, Mr. Hall was without monies, and the video does not show any shopping activity, " Kline told the court. Surveillance video from

Dillard’s shows Hall for the last time at 5:50 p.m.

A little more than an hour later, Smith pulled into the Target parking lot across the street from the mall. Seconds later, Hall’s truck

pulled into the same lot.

At 6:55 p.m., Smith entered the store. Not long after, Hall followed.

One minute later, Smith called her mother wanting to know where in the store the picture frames were. While she was shopping, Hall went near

the jewelry counter and noticed her, Kline said.

Then he followed her.

Hall saw Smith in the checkout line and left the store. He waited outside.

Surveillance video showed Smith walking to her car with packages and putting them in the passenger side. Then she walked behind her car to

the driver’s side.

After Smith opened the driver’s door, Hall ran up behind her and forced her into the car.

The car left the lot and turned west. Kline told the court that Hall threatened Smith by holding an air gun to the back of her head.

From Target, Hall took Smith to a wooded area near Longview Lake in southern Jackson County. Authorities found that location by tracking

pings on Smith’s cell phone.

He raped and sodomized Smith while she was alive, Kline said, citing previous testimony from Mary Dudley, the Jackson County medical

examiner who performed the autopsy.

Hall strangled her with the belt she wore as part of her uniform at a movie theater.

Defensive wounds showed Smith fought for her life.

"The death was particularly cruel and heinous in that death by strangulation requires several minutes during which the victim is

fearful of impending death, " Kline said.

The afternoon after Smith disappeared, a Missouri couple walking near Longview Lake were startled when a man matching Hall’s description

emerged from the woods near the walking path, Kline said. The site is about 45 yards west of where Smith’s body was found three days later.

The man was carrying a blue duffel bag, the couple said, and walked to a black pickup that had several wooden sticks, stripped of branches

and leaves, in the back.

Authorities found Smith’s body in a small hollow. She was nude, with most of her clothes 100 feet north of her body. Her belt was around

her neck.

Smith’s pink shirt was near the body and stained with bleach, as if someone had tried to destroy evidence, Kline said.

Across her body, in a woven style, were sticks stripped of leaves and branches.

Prosecutors had DNA evidence beyond the stain on Hall’s shorts.

Hall’s DNA was found on the steering wheel of Smith’s car. There was a one in 5.3 million chance that it matched someone besides Hall.

A swab of the driver’s side seat belt guide showed a 1 in 923.4 million chance that the DNA did not belong to Hall.

Investigators found a bloodstain on Hall’s left shoe. DNA tests showed that Smith could not be excluded as a match.

Carol Hall and her husband Don, of Emporia, adopted Edwin Hall when he was 7. The couple read a newspaper article about children up for

adoption and wanted to give him a better life.

Eight years later, after Hall was convicted in juvenile court of threatening his adoptive sister with a knife, he went back into state

custody. He never returned to his adoptive home.

After leaving juvenile custody when he was 18, Hall moved around, living in different parts of Kansas. Within a year, he married Aletha.

The two eventually moved to the Kansas City area.

After Hall’s arrest, Carol Hall told the Emporia Gazette: "You think you can give them love and all those things they didn’t get, like

support. It works with some, but with him, it didn’t."

Many young people who walked neighborhoods last June looking for Smith were in the courtroom wearing light blue "Kelsey’s Army" T-shirts. The

backs of the shirts read "We’re Still Here."

"She was a bright crayon in the box, " said Chris Harvey, who was in band with Smith at Shawnee Mission West.

Smith always had people’s backs, and she stuck up for her friends and even people she didn’t know well, said Megan Daugherty.

"Now, Kelsey, we have your back, " Daugherty said after the hearing."... Thanks for being there for us, Kelse."

Kline thanked authorities involved in the case, especially Overland Park police. Chief John Douglass said he remembered speaking with

Smith’s family the night Hall was arrested.

"We promised while we couldn’t bring her back, we would bring them justice, " he said. "Today, that justice was delivered."

Since her death, Smith’s family has started the Kelsey Smith Foundation to carry on her legacy. Their goal is to educate young

adults on how to avoid becoming crime victims.

"We don’t want anybody else to feel this pain, this suffering, " Greg Smith said.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article10539872.html#storylink=cpy

Caylee

by Diane Fanning

Throughout the publication ofeight true crime books, I’ve heard from a lot of readers. Once in a while, I get what I consider is a slanted criticism. Some folks bash one of my books in an attempt to come to the defense of the perpetrator, telling me I am biased because I wrote that a convicted murderer is actually guilty. Other people simply do not want a book written about a particular case under any circumstances.

I collided with that reaction last week as I worked on a book about theCaylee Anthony case. I checked my inbox and found this email from Marty: “There is a rumor you have been given a contract to write a book on the Caylee Anthony story and her egg donor. Is this true?

If so, shame on you. Just another vulture profiting from this heinous crime. This poor child has not even been laid to rest and the vultures are circling. I will not purchase your books or anyone who tries to profit on the blood of sweet Caylee.”

I responded: “My objective in writing is to memorialize the victim so that all of my readers understand the great loss we as a society suffer when an innocent is killed through an act of violence. And to educate and empower my readers to limit the incidents of homicide.”

That’s when I learned why Marty was so distressed. She thought that the Anthony family would profit from my book and she suspected the family aided and abetted Casey. She was certain that I could not write about the story without the permission of the family.

That is one of the most persistent myths of true crime writing and it’s not true. When a story is news, a true crime writer, just like a newspaper or television journalist or a blogger can write about it—no permission needed.

Marty, though, did not believe me when I told her that I did not have a financial agreement with the Anthonys. Because of that, she was still angry and wrote: “Just disgusting. I intend on boycotting this particular book of yours, and any "sponsors" affiliated. I will also contact your publisher to convey my sentiments and I am gong to ask bloggers on "many" Internet sites to do the same. Get ready to be "bombarded". The public does not need you to tell us "Caylee's story".

Well, I was bombarded but not exactly as Marty imagined.

Only one other person sent a negative email. That woman wanted me to reconsider writing a book about Caylee. That’s another point where the reality of true crime writing calls the shots. I’d already signed a contract with my publisher. Once any writer signs, there is a legal obligation to produce a book. Changing your mind is not an option.

The rest of the flood of messages I received were positive—supportive not just of me but of the many other ethical people who write about crime in any medium. Stephanie’s email expressed that attitude but also praised this whole group: "I am a fan of Women in Crime Ink blog... I wanted you to know that I support your writing this book. Here's what I just recently posted:

‘This writer is a member of a fantastic group of women DEDICATED & DEVOTED to victims of crime.‘…I find it to be part of my personal integrity to financially support the work of highly devoted and ethical writers such as Diane Fanning. In other words, buying her book (or one like it that meets my standards) is my "vote" for responsible writing (and journalism) that is sensitive to the victim's sad story and attempts to explain in order to help others understand and be forewarned. I know that you would want some other family to gain insight that would prevent another precious little girl being murdered like Caylee, right? Well, only the GOOD books about this story will do so, not the shallow and sensationalized ones. And I believe D. Fanning is extremely ethical, responsible, and respectable. IMO.

‘Every time you read a news story about Caylee, someone is making money. Oh, well, news is different... No, it's not. It's just that news articles can only go so far. If you're like me, you hunt around for different sites, different articles, different authors of the articles to read about aspects of this case such as the psychology involved, about how the justice system in Florida works and is different from what I am used to, about the financial impact this case has had on the OCSO and the citizens of Orange County, about groups likeTX Equusearch, about the shadiness of Kid Finders, etc., etc. Well, a book can put this all together for us and perhaps draw some well-founded conclusions and thoughts and I am looking forward to reading such a book, by such a person as is a member of Women In Crime Ink.'”

Thank you, Stephanie! I’ve always been proud to be part of this incredible group of woman, but never more than now.

Writing true crime is challenging and, at times, heartbreaking work. We are often haunted by crime scene photographs, sickened by autopsy reports, threatened with law suits and revolted by some of the people we interview.
One of the things that keeps me going are readers like Stephanie who understand that knowledge is empowering and possesses the potential for saving lives. I write true crime books because I want to understand why these crimes happen and how I can protect myself and loved ones from becoming victims--and to share that information with my readers.

In short, I write true crime because I want to make a difference.

I can't do anything for Caylee but honor her memory with my words. But I hope that what I am writing about this little girl will one day be used by someone to protect the life of another innocent child.

Tommy Lynn Sells

by Diane FanningJust when I thought law enforcement had forgotten Tommy Lynn Sells, along comes a former deputy with Missouri's Cape Girardeau County Sheriff’s Department asking about a long forgotten body. And once again, Sells' name was dropped as a possible suspect. I thought by now he’d been considered in every single cold case that remained open in his home state in the 1980s and 1990s. Apparently not.

Back when Sells was arrested, on January 2, 2000, investigators across the country dusted off files of cold cases eager to see if Sells was a possible perpetrator. After 48 Hours aired the show about the serial killer, Texas Rangers Johnny Allen and Coy Smith came into their offices to discover hundreds of requests from detectives all across the country wanting to know if Sells could have been in the right place at the right time to commit an unsolved murder in their jurisdiction.

The inquiries and interview requests continued to flood into Texas up to Sells' trial in September 2000, when he was convicted of the murder and sexual assault of Katie Harris and the attempted murder of Krystal Surles in Del Rio, Texas. Sells was sentenced to death.

Some law enforcement agencies no longer wanted to waste resources on looking at Sells—after all, unlike some states, Texas is very serious about the enforcement of their death penalty. Other investigators, though, who hungered to find closure for family members and satisfaction in their quest for justice, continued travelling to Texas to question Sells.

I fielded a lot of requests for information, too. I heard from detectives, family members, prosecutors, defense attorneys, private investigators, and some from uninvolved but curious true-crime buffs. Among the latter group, I received hundreds of emails about the Darlie Routiercase. Although she sits on Death Row for the murder of her two sons, many people still believe in her innocence. They wanted to know if Tommy Lynn Sells was in the Dallas area at the time of that crime. While there may be doubts about Darlie’s guilt, Sells had an ironclad alibi—he sat behind bars in a West Virginia prison. There was no way he was responsible for killing those two boys.

This summer, though, as Sells approaches the eighth anniversary of his death sentence, interest in the Death Row inmate seemed to have died down. The only question most people still asked was: Have they killed him yet?

Until this month in the boot heel of Missouri, that is. Renewed interest in a 1981 homicide case raised his name again. The remains of an unknown white male, aged 20 to 40 and ranging from 5-feet-nine to five-feet-eleven inches tall, were found in a wooded area on April 6, 1981. The corpse was clothed in green pants, a short-sleeved khaki shirt (above) and a pair of black loafers adorned with a buckle. His skull, however, was missing.

Two years and one week later, a mushroom hunter found the missing head in a nearby creek. In the area, there were only three missing men who fit the description of the victim. A comparison of dental records discovered no match to any of them. So, the remains and the clothing moldered away in a basement closet archive at the Southeast Missouri State University for the next two decades. Forgotten by all but one man.

Now he’s come forward, resurrecting the case, looking for justice. Will the authorities be able to tie it to Tommy Lynn Sells? The odds are stacked against them. In 1979 and 1980, when Sells wasn’t on the road, he was in Missouri. In 1981, though, his home base was Little Rock, Arkansas and he was just 17 years old. He has confessed to committing homicide at that young age but he never mentioned this case.

If not Sells, will they be able to identify anyone as the killer? Will they even be able to give the victim a name? It sounds unlikely after 27 years but scientists make a habit of transforming the impossible into the routine every day.

Forensic Science is an amazing and rapidly expanding field. What seemed like fantasy five years ago is now common forensic investigative technique in labs across the country. Who knows what microscopic trace evidence is nestled in the folds of his shirt or on the buckle of his shoe (above), waiting for a diligent individual to uncover.

One day, the unknown man in green pants may find justice after all.

Tommy Lynn Sells

At 4 a.m. on December   31, 1999, 20 hours before the turn of the millennium, a car rolled to a muted stop in the Guajia Bay subdivision, west of Del Rio, Texas.
A bearded man with a mullet haircut got out and padded quietly toward a double-wide trailer, home of Terry and Crystal Harris and their kids. He whispered reassurance to a caged pet Rottweiler in the backyard and approached the pen to allow the animal a whiff of his scent.
The man used the blade he was carrying, a 12-inch boning knife, to try to trip the lock on the back door. That failed, and so did an attempt to enter the home through a rear window that held an air conditioner.
He walked around to an open window on the front of the house. He tipped over a metal tub to use as a step, removed a screen and hoisted himself up and in.
The man found himself in the bedroom of Justin Harris, 14, who was blind. The boy was roused awake, but he thought the noise was his siblings horsing around.
Justin called out, "Will y'all stop coming into my room!"
The man moved out of Justin's room to the next bedroom. He opened the door and flicked a flame to his cigarette lighter. There slept a Harris family friend, Marque Surles, 7. In the master bedroom, he flicked his lighter again and found Crystal Harris asleep with her daughter Lori, 12.
Finally, in the fourth bedroom he found what he was looking for.
In the bottom rack of a bunk bed lay Kaylene "Katy" Harris, 13.
The man lay down beside the girl and nudged her awake.
She looked at him sleepily and said, "What are you doing here?"
The man held a hand over her mouth and menaced Katy with the knife.
He drew the blade down her body and deftly sliced off her shorts, panties and bra, as if he'd done that sort of thing before.
When the man began fondling her, Katy wiggled free, stood up and screamed, "Go get mama!"
Only then did the intruder realize that a second girl, Krystal Surles, 10 years old and 80 pounds, was asleep on the top bunk.
The man poked his knife at Katy and turned on the bedroom light. Seeing blood, the girl said, "You cut me!"
The intruder moved in behind Katy.

Krystal Surles, survivor

"He had his hand over her mouth," Krystal Surles would later say. "She was struggling. She told me with her eyes to stay there and not move, and so I didn't."As Krystal watched, the man dragged the blade of his knife across Katy's throat once, and then repeated the motion a second time.
"She just fell," said Krystal. "And then she started making really bad noises, like she was gagging for air but couldn't get any because of the blood."
The man continued his knife work after Katy collapsed. A coroner would catalogue 16 stab wounds, three of which went all the way through her body, in addition to the two gashes to the throat.
The intruder moved toward Krystal Surles.
"I told him, 'I'll be quiet. I promise. I won't say anything. It's Katy making the noise,'" she would later say.
But the intruder showed no mercy.
"He reached over and cut my throat," she said. "I just lay there and pretended I was dead. If he knew I was alive, he would come back and kill me for sure."
The assailant switched off the light and walked out, leaving through the front door. After a minute, Krystal heard a car start and drive off. She put a hand to her throat and ran outdoors. Assuming that everyone in the house had been killed, she made her way to a neighbor's house a quarter-mile away.
There, retiree Herb Betz was up early to watch TV coverage of the arrival of the millennium in Australia. He heard a door knock and peered through the peephole. There stood Krystal Surles in a T-shirt, boxer shorts and socks. She was awash in blood.
The child was unable to speak. The knife had severed her windpipe and grazed the sheathing of her carotid artery. She had come within a millimeter of Katy Harris' fate.
"Her little eyes were saying to me, 'Help me,'" Betz told Texas journalist John MacCormack.
Betz dialed 911. As she lay waiting for help, Krystal asked for writing instruments, and she penned three brief notes:

• "The Harrises are hurt."
• "Tell them to hurry."
• "Will I live?"

Betz said, "I kissed her on the forehead and told her several times she'd be all right. I didn't believe it. I thought she'd die on my kitchen floor."
Medical rescuers found the girl in shock, her body convulsing.
She was raced to a Del Rio hospital, and then flown by helicopter to University Hospital in San Antonio, where surgeons worked for hours to repair the damage done by the five-inch cut across her throat.
Back at the Guajia Bay subdivision, rescuers found Katy Harris dead, although the others in the house were unharmed.

The Suspect

Krystal Surles awoke groggy on New Year's Day, her throat heavily bandaged. Texas rangers and county sheriff's investigators were anxious to debrief the girl about her attacker, but they were careful to allow her time to recover.
But soon after regaining consciousness, Krystal was ready to get to work. She used gestures to demand a pen and paper and began writing descriptions of her assailant.
Authorities called in Shirley Timmons, a forensic artist, from her home in Midland to work with Krystal from her San Antonio hospital bed.

Sketch of killer from description

The first sketch showed a dark-eyed, round-faced man with long brown hair and a full beard. The image resembled a swarthy Chuck Norris.
Cops quickly distributed the description and image, and they pressed the Harris family to mull over friends and acquaintances for a match.
Nothing was missing from the home. Law enforcers assumed the murder was motivated by sexual deviance, not robbery. And they suspected the killer was acquainted with the Harrises before climbing in the window—and that Katy Harris had been his intended target.
The two Surles girls were staying with the Harrises while her mother, Pam, was moving from Kansas to Del Rio over the holiday. The families had been friends in Kansas before the Harrises moved to Texas in 1995, and Pam Surles and her daughters were now joining them there.
A group left Del Rio at 6 p.m. December 30 for the 13-hour drive north to collect Surles' belongings. Those on the trip included Terry Harris, adoptive father of the murder victim, Pam Surles and her boyfriend, Doug Luker.
They turned around and rushed back to Texas when they were informed of the murder and assault.
When Luker heard the description and saw the sketch, it reminded him of a man the moving group had seen at a Del Rio gas station just before they left for Kansas.
He remembered the man's name as Tom or Tommy. He seemed to be a friend of Terry Harris, Luker said, and he worked as a salesman at Amigo Auto Sales.
Luker shared his recollections with Texas Ranger John Allen, who tracked down the owner of the car lot by phone. The man was uncooperative with Allen, but he quickly reconsidered.

Texas Ranger John Allen

He phoned the Val Verde County Sheriff's Office and gave a friend there the name of the employee. Rangers searched state crime files and came up with a picture of the man—beardless, but it was the best they could do.
They went to Krystal Surles' hospital room and showed her a photo array of six men. She studied the pictures purposefully, and then pointed at one as the intruder.
It was the used-car salesman from Del Rio. His name was Tommy Lynn Sells.
Investigators prepared an arrest warrant and paid a visit early on January 2 to the trailer Sells shared with his wife, Jessica Levrie, and her four children.
He went along without rancor. He didn't ask why he was being taken in, and investigators didn't offer to tell him.
But during the ride to the sheriff's office, Sells turned to Val Verde County Sheriff's Lt. Larry Pope and said, "Well, I guess we've got a lot to talk about."

Over the next few months, Sells talked and talked about a singular life of killing.

Tommy Lynn Sells, mugshot

The lifelong transient admitted the murder of Katy Harris and the throat-slashing of her friend. He said he killed an entire family in Illinois, a mother and daughter in Missouri, a teenage girl in Lexington, Ky., a drifter in Arizona, a child in San Antonio. And there were many more—a string of perhaps 20 murders across America that spanned three decades, by Sells' account.
Sells began using the nickname "Coast to Coast," the geographic spread of his carnage.
"He wants to clean the slate and get everything behind him," Ranger Allen told reporters. "He's told us he wants closure for himself and for the families of the victims he's killed. Closure was his word."
Sells' court-appointed attorney, Victor Garcia, said he advised his client to stop talking.
"I said, 'Well, I understand you've already confessed to everything but the kitchen sink,' and he said, 'Yeah. I want this over,'" Garcia told journalist MacCormack. "I suggested to him that he not talk anymore, and he said, 'I'm not going to stop. I don't need a lawyer.'"
The country has had more prolific--perhaps even more depraved--serial killers.
But several features of his work make Tommy Lynn Sells standout in the pantheon of American murderers.
Sells, nearly illiterate with an eighth-grade education, spent his life as a boozy, doped-up drifter. Yet he managed to fly beneath the radar of law enforcement for 20 years—particularly unusual in that most of his victims were not hobos and hookers, who typically occupy the lowest-priority slot at the back of the homicide-investigation file drawer.
He spent time in prisons for a number of other offenses, and that crime pedigree was readily available to law enforcers. But he was never even a suspect in a murder until he failed in his attempt to kill Krystal Surles.
His pattern, to the extent that he had one, was simple: kill and move on.
Bud Cooper, a Missouri police investigator, explained to a San Antonio reporter why Sells escaped detection: "If you or I drove across the United States, we'd be fairly easy to follow. We use credit cards and telephones. But this guy takes trains, uses no credit cards, doesn't use checks. It's kind of like chasing a ghost."
The American fascination with crimes and criminals often centers on the workings of the criminal mind. But Sells exhibited none of the evil genius of a Ted Bundy or a Charles Manson.
"He wasn't some strange, far-out-type person," said Sgt. Terry Ward of the Pulaski County Sheriff's Department in Little Rock, Ark., told the Arkansas Democrat. "He was just a normal person who loved to kill. If you made him mad, he'd kill."
Motivation has been a muddy issue as investigators have reconstructed Sells' life of crime. Some investigators termed him an "opportunist" criminal who would strike when a likely victim appeared.

Through the Window

True-crime author Diane Fanning, who wrote about Sells in "Through the Window," claimed that he killed "with no apparent motive and no common pattern."
Yet the evidence shows that Sells was a sexual predator. Many of his crimes included rape and sexual mutilation, and most of his murders began as deviant assaults, including the murder of Katy Harris.
It is true that Sells killed with many implements, including knives, guns, a baseball bat and various garrotes. And it may be true that some of his crimes were spontaneous rather than calculated.
But his sexual predatory urges became more acute over time, as adolescent girls and petite women—often lonely single mothers—became his victims of choice. His body of criminal work makes one pattern, one motive all too clear: Tommy Lynn Sells was a sexual psychopath who stalked, raped and murdered women and girls.

Texas Equusearch

In 1984, Tim Miller's life was profoundly altered. His daughter, Laura, was missing. The last time anyone had seen the 16-year-old was at a local convenience store, talking on the phone. When Miller discusses what happened to Laura, he likes to start at the beginning, because she did not have an easy time in this world and her murder was just one of many things that had happened to her.

Laura Miller

"Laura had a lot of struggles in her life," he says. "When she was six months old, she got very sick and we almost lost her. She was in a coma for a day and a half, but then she came out of that and her fever went down. She seemed all right, but years later she had a seizure, because the fever had left scar tissue in her brain. So for about seven years we struggled with her seizure problem. Then eventually she grew out of it and became an A and B student. She loved music and sang all the time. She was popular in school and had a lot of friends. It looked like she would be all right."
But she wasn't. When Laura was eleven, she came down with the flu, which gave her yet another high fever, with the return of the seizures. "Her whole life was kind of stripped away from her," Miller muses. The family felt disheartened by this set-back. But the worst was yet to come.
The Millers moved to a new house, and Tim and his wife worked different shifts. One day he went to work, while Laura's mother took Laura to the payphone at the local convenience store so she could talk with her boyfriend, Vernon. When her mother asked her to hurry up because she'd be late for work, Laura wanted to continue talking. "It's only half a mile," she said. "I'll walk."
That seemed all right. It was the middle of the day and Laura knew her way back. But she didn't come back. When her parents returned home from work, she wasn't there.
"We didn't think a lot about it," says Miller. "We just figured Laura got home early, and her and Vernon took a walk. But then Vernon showed up without her and we asked where Laura was. He said he had talked to her on the phone, but he hadn't heard from her since. That's when we started getting concerned. We looked all over that night, and then we drove all over the neighborhood."
The next morning they went to the police department to file a missing person's report, but the officers dismissed Laura as a probable runaway. Miller said that was out of character for her and also noted that she had a serious seizure disorder and needed her medication. The officers had a response: girls her age were smart and could find what they needed on the street. That made little sense to Miller, but he did not know how to get them to do something.
As he looked frantically for possible avenues, he learned about a girl whom the police had found six months earlier, murdered and dumped somewhere off Calder Drive. He returned to the police station, and the officer with whom he spoke assured him that the murdered girl, Heidi, had worked in a bar, implying that whatever she got she was asking for. To them, it had been an isolated incident.
"Well, then about three days later," Miller says, "I found out that Heidi had lived only four blocks away from us." So he went back to the police and asked if they could at least tell him where Heidi had been found so he could go there and search the area himself. They refused to provide information, saying it was private property.
After five days without hearing from Laura, Miller knew in his heart that she was dead. "I didn't have a clue what to do. I think I tried to drink myself to death. I couldn't work. I lost my job. Laura's mother and I didn't have the best relationship and it certainly got worse. Every time our phone would ring, or someone would drive by the house slowly or knock on our door, I got heart palpitations. I didn't know if they were bringing me good news, that they'd found Laura and were bringing her home, or if they were bringing bad news that she was dead."
But for more than a year and a half, no one brought any news. 

Four Dead Girls

A year and a half dragged by with no information, and Miller was so depressed he contemplated suicide. Finally, he checked himself into a hospital for six days. That's where he was when he finally received some information: In the newspaper was an article that reported the discovery in a local field of the remains of two females. Some kids riding dirt bikes had smelled a foul odor in the area of Calder Road. The corpse they found had been dead four or five weeks, so it was fairly decomposed. When the police went to investigate, about six feet from that body was a set of skeletal remains. That meant that within two years, three dead girls had been left there. Apparently a serial killer had used the area as a dumping ground.
Laura's mother went down to the police station and said, "One of those girls could be my daughter." They requested some of Laura's clothes for a hair sample and her dental X-rays. After an analysis, one set of remains proved to be Laura's.
"I blamed the cops," Miller remembers. "I didn't think they were doing their jobs. If they would have gone out there the first day I asked them to, Laura would still have been dead, but there might have been evidence."
Miller went into another tailspin. He felt angry and guilty all at once. "I was the father," he recalls about his state of mind, "I was supposed to protect her and take care of her, and I had failed. I failed by not doing the right job, by not searching. I failed by not going to Heidi's family's house to find out where they'd found her. If I would have done that, maybe I would have found Laura tied up; maybe she would have been alive and I could have saved her. Or maybe I would have found her and it wouldn't have been months after the animals got to her. I beat myself up because I didn't do enough while Laura was missing."
At the same time, he felt a sense of relief. "Now at least I knew. I didn't have to worry about the heart palpitations every time the phone rang."
Still, the discovery and identification were only the start. Next came the investigation. "We had to answer questions about who Laura's friends were and who she hung out with." Worse, the police withheld information. "Even at the time she was found, they would not tell us where. The newspapers said it was the same field where Heidi had been found, but they wouldn't show us where it was. So Laura's mother and I went out and we found it on our own. We walked the fields and finally saw the little flags marking the crime scene. I learned then that her body had been scattered over a twenty foot radius. I was speechless at that time, just numb. I just couldn't believe it."
Miller and his wife wanted Laura's remains for a burial, but the coroner asked to keep them a while longer, and Miller agreed. He wanted to learn how Laura had died, but to his chagrin, the police kept the remains for another three years. But that still wasn't the end of it.
 

Police Misconduct

The Millers were finally allowed to bury Laura, but when they received the autopsy report, they were concerned enough about what it said to exhume the remains. They discovered that they had received only 28 bones, and then realized that some of Laura's remains had been sent to a medical facility for research. Although the officials said the remains had been sent in error, it was clear that they had profited, so Miller hired an attorney and sued them for $16 million. He won, but they appealed. Miller just wanted all of Laura's remains for burial, so he agreed to drop the suit if they returned the bones. "Finally we got to bury her and really say goodbye." But it had been an emotionally draining ordeal, and yet one more episode of police misconduct in the case.

Tim Miller at Laura's grave

Miller also learned that Laura and Heidi had both disappeared from the same convenience store pay phone, which meant that, had the police paid attention to him when he'd first filed the missing person's report, Laura might have been found alive. This realization made the ordeal much more painful. The police response clearly had been unconscionable.
Then there was more turmoil. As often happens when a child dies, Miller and his wife separated and divorced. He entered Alcoholics Anonymous and received counseling. "It was very painful but each day got better, unless there was new information or there were new leads." Then he'd remember and feel the pain all over again.
By 1991, he had stabilized, but then another set of female remains was found in the same area off Calder Road. The police developed a suspect, who worked for NASA, but in the end, the case went nowhere. Miller did not get the resolution for which he hoped. But his ordeal did evolve into an unforeseen benefit to himself and many others

"After Laura was found," Miller recalls, "there was a rash of murders of young girls in the area and I would go to the spots where they had been found to see if there was any similarity in the area where Laura was found. Then I started meeting with several of the families. It was pretty painful."
The disappearance of Laura Smithers in 1997 in the next town gave Miller the idea for an organization that would assist the families over and above what the police were able to do. For a few days, he assisted in the Smithers search, but it was more than two weeks before a man walking his dog found her remains. Her family grieved and then founded the Laura Recovery Center, so Miller volunteered there. While working one day, he got into a discussion with the center's director, who suggested to Miller, a horseman, that he start a mounted search-and-rescue operation. Something like that would be quite helpful in a state like Texas.

Laura Smithers

Miller put out the word in August 2000 and within a few months, he had 45 members coming to meetings once a month. Most had horses. But as word about their activities spread, the organization shifted. "People started coming who had boats and who were certified rescue divers offering up their resources and wanting to join," says Miller. "People even came with planes, or a helicopter. Many people came with four wheelers, and then we got our own infrared and night-vision equipment. We grew past just the horses and ended up with more resources than most places have."
As more people learned about them, they received calls from all over the state and then from out of state. "Even after Laura's death I didn't realize just how many people were really missing," says Miller. "I remember the seventh or eighth search we got called into was for Julie Sanders, about 250 miles away. We were still fairly new and we had no money, but I went up there and put the search together. At the end of the first day we found Julie's body."

Tim Miller with horses

Texas EquuSearch (TES) is now among the few specialized volunteer teams that offer law enforcement assistance in undertaking searches for missing persons presumed to be dead. Another such team, based in Colorado, is NecroSearch, a group of engineers and scientists who also tackle cases in difficult terrain. However, TES is set apart from any other in that they utilize the skills and abilities of horseback riders, they can quickly marshal a large force of volunteers, and they're flexible enough to accept assistance from a variety of disciplines. Funded solely by donations, they sometimes operate at a deficit, but they keep going, because Tim Miller can't imagine telling a family in need that he does not have the resources to assist.
On the Web site, www.TexasequuSearch.org, the organization offers the following statement:
"You will find our organization to be compassionate, dedicated and professional. We believe that we can better ourselves by working together to help the community and people in need. Many of our members are trained in various rescue and life saving skills such as CPR, advanced lifesaving skills and field craft. Our members come from all walks of life. We have business owners, medics, firefighters, housewives, electricians and students on our team. Our resources range from horse and rider teams to foot searchers, water (divers, boats) air (planes, helicopters), dog teams (air scent, cadaver and tracking) and 4x4's. We have also utilized infrared cameras in some of our searches."
Sadly, they receive plenty of requests.

natalee holloway

Natalee Holloway, an 18-year-old graduate of Mountain Brook High School in Birmingham, Alabama, traveled to the Caribbean island of Aruba with 125 members of her senior class. On Monday, May 30, 2005, she did not show up for her flight back to the United States.

Witnesses said Natalee was last seen leaving a nightclub in a car with three males -- Joran Van Der Sloot, 17; Deepak Kalpoe, 21, and Satist Kalpoe, 18. The three originally told authorities that they dropped the Alabama honors student at the hotel where she was staying, but their story has changed many times since the early days in the search for Natalee Holloway.

Casey Anthony

ORLANDO, Fla. Casey Anthony waited at least a month before reporting that her daughter Caylee, 2, was missing. And even then, it wasn't Casey who called the Sheriff's Office to report that the toddler had been abducted. It was Casey's mother, Cynthia Anthony.


At 8:44 p.m. on July 15, 2008, Cindy Anthony called Orange County 911. After initially reporting that she wanted her 22-year-old daughter arrested for stealing her car, Cindy told the dispatcher, "I have a 3-year-old that's missing for a month." Caylee was then three weeks shy of her third birthday.


The dispatcher sounded shocked when she asked if Cindy had reported the missing baby.


"I'm trying to do that now, ma'am," Cindy said. She explained to the dispatcher that her daughter had stolen her car and some money and had disappeared four weeks ago. "She's been missing for a month," Cindy said. "I found her, but I can't find my granddaughter."

The dispatcher said she was sending a sheriff's unit to the Anthony's house on Hopespring Drive, just outside the city limits of Orlando.


An hour later, Cindy called 911 again. This time she sounded panicked. "There's something wrong," she told the dispatcher. "I found my daughter's car today. It smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car." Cindy said she had not seen her granddaughter since the middle of June.


The dispatcher asked to speak to Caylee's mother. Casey got on the line. "My daughter's been missing for 31 days," she said. "I know who has her. I've tried to contact her." Casey told the dispatcher she got a call from Caylee earlier that day, but the call only lasted a minute before someone hung up the phone. When she tried to call the number back, Casey said, it was out of service.


Casey claimed her nanny, a woman she identified as Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, whom she said had been babysitting Caylee for nearly two years, had kidnapped the little girl.


"Why are you calling now?" the incredulous dispatcher asked. "Why didn't you call 31 days ago?"


"I've been looking for her and going through other resources to try to find her, which was stupid," Casey said.


From the beginning, something about the story didn't sound right. A young mother waiting an entire month to report that her daughter, not quite 3 years old, had been kidnapped? Soon, though, the story would take an even more sinister turn and would capture the attention of the nation.

It has been almost exactly three years since Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murdering her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, but she is still essentially a prisoner, one of her lawyers says. Anthony, now 28, lives in an unnamed location in Florida and remains afraid to go out in public because of death threats, Cheney Mason tells CNN.

She does clerical work at home for various clients, but "she hasn't been freed from her incarceration yet 'cause she can't go out," the lawyer says. "She can't go to a beauty parlor, she can't go shopping to a department store, she can't go to a restaurant, she can't even go to McDonald's. She can't do anything."
The Orlando Sentinel notes that Mason says Anthony doesn't live alone, and isn't romantically involved with anyone.

Anthony — who accused her father of sexually abusing her — "does not have any blood family anymore" and the family she has now consists of members of her defense team.
Mason says he thinks she "wants to speak out"; Anthony declined CNN's request for an interview, however.
"I know she has very strong feelings for what has happened to her. I also know she's very saddened by her loss and she will never forget her daughter Caylee, ever," Mason says.
His book, Justice in America: How Prosecutors and the Media Conspire Against the Accused, will be released this summer. Mason— the third attorney associated with the case to write a book — says it will include information never revealed before, and will go beyond the Anthony case to explore broader legal issues.