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.

The texas killing fields

The Texas Killing Fields

Since the 1970s, more than 30 young women have mysteriously disappeared or been found murdered along Texas’ Interstate 45, in what has become the state’s most notorious killing spree.


A mile from I-45, lies the 25-acre patch known as 'The Killing Fields', where the bodies of four young women have been found. Detectives have described the remote area as a perfect dumping ground for a serial killer, which has made investigating the cases so difficult.

Below is a list of possible suspects in the I-45 Corridor Killings.

Unknown Male-In March of 1986 a man who has never been identified attempted to abduct a 13-year-old girl at gunpoint as she was walking home from a shopping center in Seabrook. The girl jumped from the man's truck in nearby La Porte as a police officer was driving past. The officer's priority was to attend to the girl and the abductor escaped. He is described as being age 35 to 45, 6' to 6'2", with graying black hair and beard. The truck was a green Ford Ranger.

Anthony Shore-Convicted in October of 2004 in the murders of four young women and girls in Houston, three of which had been previously considered I-45 victims. Shore was sentenced to die for killing Laurie Tremblay, 16, Maria Del Carmen Estrada, 21, Diane Rebollar, 9, and Dana Sanchez, 16. The four killings spanned from 1986 through 1995.

Shore is reportedly a suspect in other I-45 slayings but apparently has not been linked to any of the other cases. Many things point to him as a good suspect, however. He once reportedly lived in League City, the city nearest the infamous 'Killing Fields' where four victims have been discovered. Also, his past jobs as a telephone service man and a tow truck driver took him far and wide in the Houston area, giving him ample freedom and opportunity to stalk or kill. Shore also abducted Robollar and Sanchez at or near convenience stores, an oddly common abduction method in the I-45 series.

Jonathan David Drew-Convicted of killing Houston waitress Tina Flood, 23, in December of 1988. Drew was pulled over by a police officer who found Flood beaten and barely alive in Drew's front passenger seat. She died soon afterwards. Drew is suspected of several sexual assaults and a private investigator has speculated Drew could be responsible for the slaying of Jessica Lee Cain. A search of Drew's former home in League City, where his parents still lived produced a vial containing several human teeth.

Mark Stallings-Became a suspect after confessing in 2001 to the 'Killing Fields' murders outside of League City but not much has been heard from him since. This confession can only be thought of as highly suspect since he would have been only 15 or 16 when the first Killing Fields victims disappeared. Assuming the four victims found dead there were all killed by the same man this would effectively rule Stallings out.

However, Stallings does have a history of violence. He is currently serving 489 years in prison for aggravated assault and an escape attempt. He also worked for a time on the property that encompassess the Killings Fields.

Probably the best evidence that Stallings' confessions may not be the real deal is the fact that he has still not been charged in any killings in the three years since his suprising confession.

William Ray Mathews-Led investigators to the body of Wanda May Pitts, an 18-year-old girl who was abducted from the lobby of a Motel in Willis in. A plea bargain prevents authorities from charging him in Pitts' murder but has him serving time for a similar crime, the attempted abduction a Willis office clerk who was forced to leap from Mathews' moving truck to save herself.

William Reece-Arrested after a botched abduction in 1997 and suspect in the murder of Laura Smither. Previously convicted of rape in Oklahoma. Reece worked at a construction site near the Smither home and was reportedly getting off work about the same time Laura Smither disappeared while jogging. A suspect in at least one additional slayings also.

Gabriel Soto-Prime suspect in Disappearance and probably murder of Rene Richerson in 1988. Died in 2002 without being charged but was at one time charged with retaliation against a potential witness in the Richerson case.

Robert Abel-A former NASA engineer who lived and operated a ranch near League City's 'Killing Fields', Able came under public scrutiny by that city's police in 1993 after he seemed to fit an FBI profile of the killer. A search of his property turned up nothing of value. Abel eventually passed a polygraph, courtesy of the show '20/20' after League City police refused to administer one, and the FBI subsequently admitted that the original profile was of poor quality and effectively eliminated him as a suspect. League City authorities appear unconvinced, however, and reportedly still consider him a suspect.

Walter Alexander Sorto, Edgardo Rafael Cubas, and Eduardo Navarro-This trio was arrested in February of 2003 for the rapes and shooting deaths of Roxana Capulin, 24, Teresa Rangel, 38, and 15-year-old Esmerelda Alvarado on the east side of Houston. Sorto has since been convicted in the slayings of Capulin and Rangel, who were abducted from the resteraunt where they worked on June 1, 2002. Thirteen-year-old Laura Ayala, missing since March 10, 2002, and previously listed as an I-45 victim has been linked to Sorto, Cubas, and Navarro after a drop of blood found in Cubas' father's SUV was linked to Ayala by DNA testing. They refuse to discuss their involvement in Ayala's murder and have not been charged in the case.

Dark Minds On Investigation Discovery