Texas Drifter Said Linked to at Least Nine Murders

Updated 6:40 AM ET March 4, 2000

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A drifter now jailed in Del Rio, Texas, has confessed to being a serial killer responsible for at least nine murders in five states, Texas authorities said Friday.

Tommy Lynn Sells, 35, has been charged in two of the deaths, including the murder of a girl whose throat was slashed in Del Rio on New Year's Eve, and likely faces more indictments, said Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange.

"The nine murders we've talked about so far are ones we feel quite comfortable that he did commit. There were others he said he was connected with, but we have not been able to establish to our satisfaction that he was involved," she said.

Mange said Sells had been linked to murders that dated as far back as 1985.

They included a quadruple murder in Ina, Illinois, in 1987 when Sells said he shot Russell Dardeen and beat his wife and their two children to death. One of the children that died was born during the attack on the mother.

Mange said investigators from Illinois and other states were interviewing Sells, who began cooperating with police after his arrest for the Del Rio killing.

Sells, who was born in Oakland, California, said he committed the murders as he drifted around the country working occasionally for carnivals and bumming rides on railroads. Why he killed and why he was now confessing were not clear, Mange said.

"He's 35 years old and he's apparently killed a large number of people and I would suspect that would start weighing very heavily on you," she said.

Sells was arrested in Del Rio, which is on the U.S.-Mexico border in southwestern Texas, for killing 13-year-old Kaylene Harris and badly wounding 10-year-old Krystal Surles when he slashed their throats while they slept in Harris' home.

The younger girl survived and ran away. She gave police a description that led them to Sells, who had married a Del Rio woman and was selling used cars.

He has also been charged with the May 1999 murder of a 13-year-old girl in Lexington, Kentucky, Mange said.

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