January 20, 2022 • 51 mins
Melissa is convinced serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells is the one behind the sadistic attack on her family. Crime writer Diane Fanning, who interviewed Sells at length, says the JoAnn Tate murder has his name written all over it; however, Sells’ whereabouts at the time of murder is hotly debated. But, there is someone else, someone much closer to home, who many say may have done it… and even confessed.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A warning. This episode contains content that may be disturbing
to some listeners. Some names are censored for privacy reasons.
Killing Joeyne the way she was killed, somebody with a
sexual dysfunction ended up in that apartment and it just
didn't go well. For decades, Melissa da Bore believed that
(00:21):
somebody was Rodney Lincoln since late she says she knows
with every fiber of her being it's not him, it's
somebody else. Who do you think killed your mom? Tomming
Lintels put out a doubt. I'm Leah Rothman. This is
(00:44):
the real killer? Episode seven Tommy or Who? Hello, Hello, Ianne,
how are you doing well? Thank you? I am definitely
(01:06):
not the first person who's asked who killed joe An
Tate and attacked young Melissa and Renee. But because Melissa
now believes Tommy land Sells as the perpetrator, I need
to learn more about him, so I go to Diane Fanning.
She's the author who was interviewed on Crime Watch Daily
in about her extensive research and six years worth of
(01:28):
phone calls, letters, and at least twenty in person interviews
she did with him for her book Through the Window.
It was Diane's interview, among other things that had such
a big impact on Melissa. Tell me a little bit
about your background when you how you became interested in
writing and becoming a true crime writer. I had been
(01:51):
um the victim of an abduction attempt when I was
nine years old. I was walking to the local um
little country store near where we lived. The man asked
for directions. He reached out when I came over to
(02:14):
look at his map, and he grabbed hold of my
upper arm. He tried to pull me in the car
I was fighting in, but it was it was a
losing battle. Just then, another car came over the hill
and laid on his horn. The guy took off with
his car door still open, and I memorized the license
(02:38):
plate number. When I went home, I told my mother.
She called the police and they stopped that man and
found the evidence in his trunk of the sexual assault
murder of an eight year old a month before. Oh
my god, that is terrifying. It was. It was weird
(02:58):
because instead of so much wallowing in that fear, my
way of coping was to get information. You know. I
was getting books out of library that were way above
my head about criminal psychology and stuff, and trying to
find answers to my two big questions, why me? And
(03:21):
how could anybody do this? Years later, questions like these
will come up again. I've been interested in writing for
quite some time since my eighth grade teacher told me
I had talent, but I didn't really get busy with
it till I spent a lot of time in radio,
(03:41):
television and advertising agency work, and then moved to nonprofit
and then a case came along that rang my chimes.
That case started in the middle of the night on
December thirty one outside Del Rio, Texas. A man comes
(04:04):
through an open window, and, although there's a house full
of people, he enters the room where two young girls
are sleeping. On the bottom bunk is thirteen year old
Kayleeen Katie Harris. The man sexually assaults her, slashes her
neck twice, and stabs her sixteen times. He then moves
(04:25):
on to her friend, who's on the top bunk, ten
year old Crystal Searles. He cuts her throat, She falls
to the ground and plays dead. The man eventually leaves,
and Crystal, believing everyone in the house has been murdered,
runs barefoot a quarter of a mile down the dirt
road to the nearest neighbor at the hospital with a
(04:46):
severed windpipe and grazed carotid artery. Crystal works with a
police sketch artist and comes up with a composite drawing
of the perpetrator. Within a day, Crystal has shown a
photo lineup and he picks out thirty six year old
Tommy land Cells. Cells, a used car salesman who had
(05:07):
met the Harris family at church and had been to
their home on multiple occasions, is apprehended and confesses that
they build the under rated or murdering. Later that day,
he agrees to go with investigators to the Harris house.
(05:27):
Dan Dank January second or two thousand, want to BM,
we're back at the crime scene. You're doing it well
through your own free will. Oh yeah. During the grainy
(05:50):
videotaped walk through of the crime scene, Tommy land Cells
is not handcuffed. He's husky, he's got a dark brown
curly mullet and a scruffy beer heard. He's wearing jeans
and a multicolored shirt. He shows investigators how he crawled
through the window, walked through the house, then chose Katie
and Crystal's room to enter. The video is chilling. From
(06:15):
time to time, Tommy Lincells looks directly into the camera.
His tone is a matter of fact. At one point,
he stops and ties his shoe. I'm stood a minute
and then I look in here. There's a two girls
sleeping in here. I woke this girl up. How did
(06:39):
you do that? Up? Up? I understand? And then she
jumped up. Well, no, no, before they I could have brow,
I couldn't say, uh what if she was wearing it?
(07:05):
And Georgia and and she jumped up and sought this
girl to go get her mom m. And when you
made this girl, when you say this girl was a
girl's leaping in the top potcoms and she tried to
come over here. When I stay right here somewhere, you
got a nice when you would just say what kind
(07:26):
of do you have? That big? But your knife time?
And then she got jumped back and then you know, ye,
no cut her flash right here. With an imaginary knife
in his right hand, Tommy land Cells slashes the throat
of the investigator and she fell down right here. And
(07:53):
then NA think I've reached down here and done it.
One more tag in this more a little girl. This
one now also here, standing to the left of the
top bunk where the pillow would be, Cells again uses
(08:15):
his right hand to make a slashing motion. This is
just well wearing. This girl still sleeping a lot. She moving,
trying to get away or something. He's completely cavalier. There's
(08:35):
no remorse in his voice. It's haunting. I'm glad this
is over with. I'm glad it's over. Do you think um,
you would continue me? Oh? I know what that there.
(08:57):
Over the next few months, Tommy Lynn Cells can fuss
to killing men, women, and children from New York to
Los Angeles using knives, guns, baseball bats, and his bare hands.
He gets by working as a mechanic, a carne and
a day labor. He also panhandles, and he evades capture
(09:19):
by hopping trains, hitchhiking, and stealing cars. In the course
of almost twenty years, the self proclaimed Coast to Coast
Killer confesses to more than seventy crimes. Texas Rangers can
only verify two. Diane Fanning learns about Tommulin Cells in
the year two thousand. Here's Diane again. I did not
(09:44):
find out about Crystal Searles and Katie Harris's harrowing experiences
until after Tommulan Cells had been convicted and was given
the death sentence, and that's when I wanted to write
about him. At first, all he wanted was money. I
(10:10):
also then went through a phase with him where all
he wanted to do was talk sex to me on
the phone, which was not something I was interested in.
Once I got to the point that he was calling
me his friend, I was able to get extensive information.
But the thing about Cells that I found very odd
(10:34):
is some days I had a hard time getting him
focusing on crimes because he just wanted to joke around.
And then other times he would go out of his
way to try to shock and disgust me. He would
become very very graphic with the description of how he
(10:57):
killed someone um and at other times he was just
very matter of fact talking about his crimes. And the
only time that I really he made me feel anything
other than kind of discussed was when he talked to
(11:21):
me about what happened to him in his childhood. It
was horrible how he grew up, and it was so
horrible I found it not to be very credible. So
I called his mother and I said listen. I want
to tell you what Tommy has said about his childhood,
(11:42):
and I want you to tell me you know what's
not right and what you remember. And we got all
through it and she did not once contradict anything that
he said. All she said at the end was, well,
(12:03):
there are a lot of kids that have it worse,
and they don't go out killing people. On June nineteen
sixty four, Tommy land Cells is born a twin. When
they're eighteen months old, his sister becomes ill and dies.
He sent to live with his aunt. Eventually his mom
(12:26):
wants him back, but that doesn't last long. She allowed
him to go live with a pedophile. And did she
know that this man was a pedophile? Or she claims
now that she didn't, but I it was a small town.
(12:47):
I think she had to know that. The only people
this man spent time with we're young boys. And um
Tommy told me about the experience of his first night
and when it was over, how he curled up in
his bed and cried and imagined himself on a rocket
(13:11):
ship shooting out into space. My heart broke listening to him.
I think it was the most genuine he ever was
with me, and So how long did this abuse go
on at the hands of this pedophile. I think it
was about three three and a half years. He was
(13:35):
about seven, and um, once he was ten, he sort
of outgrew his appeal to the pedophile mhm. And then
he went back with his mother for a while. And
at one point she was running a bar and she
was selling Tommy out of the bar. She was literally
(14:00):
her child. Yeah, she called him her little wore two
men and women. I think it was mostly two women
at that time. So what happens next? He leaves home
at fifteen and starts just wandering. Um he uh went
(14:25):
down to Mississippi and accidentally killed a man there. And
he was out in California and got into a fight
with another man and he had an ice pick and
he killed the man. Um. Neither one of those were
(14:47):
planned murders, but he found out from that experience how
satisfying was to him to be able to have the
power to take a person's life. Tell me about the Dardin's.
(15:09):
This is a particularly gruesome story. It takes place in
seven in Ana, Illinois, about ninety miles outside St. Louis, Oh.
The Dardin's were a horrible dark miserable case. I am
(15:30):
certain that Sells committed that crime. Uh. He told me
that the reason he targeted the Dardin's was because the
father in the family had sexually propositioned him. Now, Sells
(15:51):
imagines things from people. He assumes what they're thinking based
on the way his dis ordered mind works. There is
nothing and all the history of Mr Dardine that shows
any indication whatsoever that he had any interested men. It
(16:18):
just isn't there. He sat out not far from the
home on a little rise, and there was a whole
big patch of cigarette butts. The police could don't just
where the person sat. And the house was for sale
at the time, so Tommy approached the house as a
(16:42):
potential buyer. They let him in. He pulled it on.
He made Elayin Ruby Dardine tie up her husband. Now
she was very pregnant, like eight months pregnant, and he
(17:09):
he took her and tied her arms, tied up their
little three year old boy, and it said that they
better stay here or their father won't go back a lot.
So then he took Mr Jardine two location a little
(17:30):
ways away, and he shot him and cut off his penis.
He then returned to the house, where he let Elaine
watch while he used a baseball bat to beat the
(17:54):
three year old boy to death. Then he started beating Lane.
At some point in the middle of her beating, she
went into labor. Tommy sat back and watched, and once
the baby was born, he helped it up and beat
(18:17):
it with a baseball bat, while that poor mother had
to watch the depth of a child again. He then
beat her, wrote on her body with a pair of
scissors and cram the whole baseball bat insider before he left. God,
(18:41):
it's just so awful. There aren't even words. No, it
needs to be said that. Many believe a lot of
Tommy Lindsell's confessions are bs, and people are split on
whether or not he committed heinous acts in the Dardine case.
(19:02):
Some say he knew details which were never released to
the public, Others say that's not true. Reportedly, tommulin Cells
said he could lead investigators to missing evidence in the case,
but because the state of Texas doesn't allow death row
prisoners to be taken across state lines, that never happened.
(19:22):
Due to insufficient evidence. Tommulan Cells was never charged with
the Dardine murders. Cells only had one murder conviction, and
it was for that slaying of Katie Harris in Del Rio, Texas.
In two thousand three. Cells was indicted but never tried
for killing thirteen year old Stephanie Mahaney in Springfield, Missouri,
(19:46):
and he did plead guilty to capital murder for killing
another young girl, nine year old Mary Beatrice Perez. She
had been abducted, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death in
San Antonio in April, eight months before and a hundred
and fifty miles away from the Katie Harris and Crystal
Searle scene in Del Rio. And even though there was
(20:14):
a barrier between you two, you and Tommy them, cells,
did you feel? I never exactly knew which cells I
would see when I went into that of visitation room.
And one time I quoted something from a sheriff that
really made him angry, and he stood up. He pounded
(20:38):
with those with his fists on the little table surface
he had there, and he raised his head and looked
up at me and Leah. I swear the shape of
his face changed, the color of his eyes change. I
felt like I was looking at a different person, and
(20:58):
I realized at that moment that I was seeing what
is victim soul at the last moment before they died.
It was terribly frightening. Do you have any of Cells's
(21:25):
letters nearby? I got, I've got letters. Um. His his
writing is definitely not polished, but then he didn't learn
to read and write until he was in prison in
West Virginia, so it's understandable. Here's an example about how
(21:50):
did I know about that one murder, Diane. I know
about a lot more murder than we ever come close
to talk about. I can pull one a day out
and not be done for a long time. A murder
doesn't always have to do with sex or any of
the norms you all may want to label or tag
(22:11):
me with. Maybe someone just piss me off and I
did not want their child to be like them. That's cold.
I understand. Maybe a more than just one person is
in prison for the same thing. Wow. And there's something
else tommylin Sell says about people in prison. He said,
(22:34):
there are a whole lot of people sitting in prison
for crimes that I committed and I don't care, Which
brings us to Rodney Lincoln, Joe and Tate and crime
Watch Daily. I went on Crime Watch Daily to talk
about the Rodney Lincoln case. Here is what I think
(22:58):
about the possibility day of tommyline Cells committing this crime,
this murder of Joe and Tate it. Tommyline Cells told
me more than once. There are other crimes I've committed
I'm not going to talk about because they happened in
the area of St. Louis and I have family there.
I will not admit to any one of those. And
(23:21):
just to be clear, tommyland Cells was from St. Louis, Yes,
although he traveled all over the country. St Louis was
his home. That was where his family was, and he
would not give up any crimes in that area. And
if his confessions are to be believed, maybe there's more.
(23:44):
He um had inserted a baseball bat in the Dardine
case into the woman's body. He had done the same
with a ranch inside another victim's body. And there was
Joe Anne with a broomstick. That is a peculiarity of
(24:11):
a crime that points towards Cells. Melissa said that, you know,
she first said Bill did it, and then she started
to remember more details, like Bill drove a yellow taxi,
and then she said Bill worked on her mom's car,
(24:34):
and he also then drove a white v W. Any
of those details ring true with with Cells. Cells was
working at his uncle's the w dealership in um St. Louis,
repairing volkswagens. Cells was an expert car mechanic. He, even
(25:04):
when he was in the Del Rio jail, helped fix
cars for the Sheriff's department. And although Melissa said his
name was Bill, Cells often just dropped names that weren't
his and used them for the moment. His father was
named Williams, so it would be it would be a
(25:25):
natural thing for him to assume the name Bill. And
Tommy land Cells also spent time in Hollywood, Remember, Melissa
said Bill had to There are enough similarities two cells
means of operation, to cells behavioral patterns, and to the
(25:51):
connection with his father's name of William You throw all
these things together. This sounds so much like him. This
reeks of Tommy land Cells. Does that mean absolute positively
it was Tommy lynd Cells. No, but I think there's
(26:12):
a very high probability that Tommy land Cells is responsible
for the murder of Joey and Tate and the assault
of Melissa and Renee. On April three, at the age
of forty nine, tommyland Cells is executed by the State
of Texas. When asked if he wants to make a
(26:33):
final statement, he reportedly says no, then smiles. The lethal
injection begins, he closes his eyes and begins to snore.
Katie Harris's father, who's there that day, tells reporters quote basically,
the dude just took a nap. Tommyland Cells is pronounced
(26:53):
dead at six pm in after Melissa ricants the Attorney
General's Office while preparing for that evidentiary hearing in Coal
County does some digging into Tommy Lynn Cells too. Susan
(27:16):
Clevinger from the a g. S Office calls one of
Cells's brothers, Tim Cells. They discussed the Volkswagon repair shop
where they worked, whether or not Tommy has all of
his fingers, which he did, remember the funny finger story,
and they talked about where Cells was in late April
of nineteen two when Joe and Tate was murdered. Thirty
(27:39):
three years later, it's obviously hard for Tim to remember.
He suggests Susan Clevinger speak with his ex wife, Tracy Cells. Hello, Hey, Tracy,
This is Susan clevinger Um from the Attorney General's Office
m H. Like with Tim Sell, they spent a lot
(28:01):
of time trying to nail down whether or not Tommy
Lindcells was in St. Louis late April. Tracy doesn't remember
exactly what month in nineteen eight two Tommy was in town,
but she does remember when he was there. He was
living at another brother's house. This brother's name is Terry,
(28:24):
and she remembers one day in particular, they had all
planned to go to the zoo together. Well, I can
tell you since there was this this time, and it
was probably I would say early okay, and Tommy was
always worn that wanted to go, go, go, and for
(28:46):
some reason he didn't want to go. And I thought
that was really that stood out in my mind, because
he always wanted to go, and this time you couldn't
get him to go. In that evening when we came home,
his Terry's wife found her nightgown covered in seaman and
Terry took him down in the basement and whipped him
(29:09):
with about And they had a little dog that wouldn't
come out from under the couch for two weeks. And
it's his bottom was bleeding, and there's more a lot
of people just didn't mourn him around. How did you
How did you feel when he was I mean, what
what what was your thought process whenever whenever he was
(29:31):
coming around or he thought he might be staying. Well,
when I first met him, I just felt like something
was wearing creepy about him. And I started dating Tim,
and his mother came to me one night and told
me that he had tried to get in the shower
with her and that each after on the shoulder, It
(29:52):
got in naked and caped her on the shoulder and
said I'm going to have you. And he tried the
raper and she fought him off, and the windows were
open and she was screaming, and he said, all right,
I'll let you go. I'll let you go, but don't
tell anyone. And he ran off and he was gone
for two weeks, and then he came back and everyone
(30:13):
just acted like nothing ever happened. Yeah, so of course
naturally you were keeping your guard up whenever he was around,
or make him or someone else was around. Yeah, then
it was only something. You know, he would get with
some girl on and she'd say she's trying to molest
her child and nobody ever called the police. So nobody
(30:35):
ever reported that stuff. But I know about you know
a few different incidents at least um probably five incident
instances where he molested someone's kid and they didn't even
report it. Vile and disturbing to say the very least.
(30:59):
But all that horrendousness aside, the question still remains where
was tommulin Cells On April nineteen eighty two. According to
police reports and court documents from Paragold, Jonesboro, and Greene County, Arkansas,
(31:20):
Tommulan Cells was arrested on April third, n for stealing
a car. At the time, he's seventeen years old, five
eight and a hundred and twenty pounds, brown hair, and
hazel eese. On April fourteen, he pleads guilty and is
sentenced to two months at Consolidated Youth Services c y
(31:41):
S in Jonesboro, Arkansas, basically a juvenile hall. This is
where the controversy comes in. The Attorney General's Office believes
Tommulin Cells was at c y S serving his two
months at the time of Joanne's murder. Others say so fast,
there's no proof he was actually there, so I called
(32:05):
Consolidated Youth Services and was told they won't go on
the record to talk about Tommy land Cells because he
was a miner at the time. The woman refers me
to the documents handed over to the Attorney General's office.
I have those documents, and while they say Tommy lind
Cells was arrested and sentenced to two months at c
(32:25):
y S, there's no documentation saying he actually arrived, served
his time and left two months later. Here's Rodney's attorney,
Shawn O'Brien. He was supposed to have been in a
juvenile facility in jones Borough. And I actually talked to
his lawyer, a man named Harry Truman Moore, who is
(32:47):
still in the practice of law, who said, who represented
Tommy Cells on that uh? And he said, yeah, he
was let out of court and he was supposed to
show up at that facility, but there's no guarantee that
he did. Tommulin Sells attorney h. T. More, wrote enoffidavit
(33:07):
about this, which was submitted to the court. I have
it and it reads in part this quote. The court
file does not reflect that Mr Sells was delivered to
c y S. And I doubt that was done. The
Sheriff's office was very lax in those days. Even if
Mr Sells had been delivered to c y s, the
(33:28):
program was about as secure as a sieve. It was
overloaded and understaffed. Teenagers walked away all the time, and
authorities would rarely pursue them. Based on my review of
the court file and my knowledge of local law enforcement
institutions and their practices in nineteen eighty two, the only
(33:50):
conclusion that one can definitely reach from the court file
in State v. Cells is that he was released from
the Greene County jail on April fourteen. Anything beyond that
is speculation. So where was Tommulin Cells on April two?
(34:14):
Is it possible he left the courthouse on April fourteen
and stole a car or hitch hiked the roughly two
and twenty miles back to his hometown of St. Louis
in those thirteen days before the murder. We may never know.
(34:44):
Besides Tommulin Cells, there's someone else another potential person of
interest in joe An Tate's murder and her daughter's brutal attacks.
Steve Yancey. Remember he was Joanne's seventeen year old neighbor
who came to the house that morning and talked with police.
I was reading old newspaper articles about the crime, and
(35:07):
I had, you know, the police reports sitting next to
me at the same time, and and this name came
up in both. In two thousand eleven, Nadia Flam journalist
and brand new Midwest Innocence Project investigator is asked to
look at Rodney Lincoln's case fresh Eyes. Right, Well, she
(35:28):
sees something that immediately catches her attention. Steve and see
a neighbor, a teenage neighbor, and he's interviewed and then
to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, he said, um, that
he knew Joeyan and that she was perfect. And I
was like, that is weird, Like that's a really weird
(35:50):
thing to say. Well, so, based on just how weird
that struck me, I was like, well, this guy was
like seventeen at the time, Um, but where is he out?
And lo and behold Steve Yancy, who was in a
prison in Norton, Kansas. And I was like, Wow, that's interesting.
So Nadia writes to him requesting an interview, but through
(36:14):
his attorney, he declines that does not stop. Nadia turns
out since two thousand eight, Steve Yancy has been in
prison for a crime he committed with his wife, Tara Yancy.
And I was like, I wonder what she has to say.
And so she had no idea what we were there for,
(36:34):
and she was like, I don't know what this is about.
But she was perfectly cheerful and nice um, And she
wasn't like suspicious and weirded out by us at all.
She just like sat right down and was like, Okay,
let's go describe her for me. She's like a pleaser,
like she wants to do what you want her to do.
(36:54):
She was kind of willing to tell us anything she could.
And so that when I realized that we needed to
be really careful about not giving away too much about
too many details, just to see what she organically knows.
What did Terry Yancy tell you about her crimes? Why
(37:16):
she was in prison? She um. She told us that
she and Steve when they got married, they lived in
a house that was just a couple of houses down
or a block away from her family and some young cousins.
She said she had had a rough childhood and that
she told her little cousins that if they ever felt
(37:39):
unsafe at their house if they just wanted to get away, Like,
don't run away, just come over to my house and
you'll be safe here. So her cousins were used to
coming over and they were like, you know, eight and eleven,
like just younger kids. And according to Tara, Steve tells
her to have sex with her eleven year old male cousin,
and she just said, really, mad afactively, so I had
(38:02):
sex with my cousin. Tara Yancy's doing time for rape,
and Steve Yancy, whom investigators believed was the ringleader, is
serving time for kidnapping and sexual battery for the rape
of Tara's cousin. What else did Tara tell you about
her relationship with Steve? Had he ever been violent with
(38:24):
her physical? He said he tried to kill her. She
said that she was sitting at the computer and she
was looking something up and he came in and saw
her at the computer and just somehow like lost it
and like tossed the computer, grabbed her by a wrist,
like through her against the wall and put his hand
on her throat and then like and she just she said,
(38:46):
she looked at his face and she's like, he's gonna
kill me. And then some suddenly like that look past
and he like dropped her, but she was like, he
could have killed me. Tara shares more about her husband
and what she learned about him secondhand when she got
to know his mother. She found out that he had
(39:08):
raped his He he lived in a house with like
sisters and stepsisters and stepbrothers and brothers, and he had
been um like sexually molesting um had just been causing
really awful chaos at his mother's house, and rather than
(39:31):
called the police, his mother told Tara that she didn't
want testifying against him, so she just thought it would
be best to get him out of the house and
forget about it. So she sent Steve to live with
his grandmother on Ferrar Street, where joe Anne lived. And
(39:53):
so that explained why Stevency was joe Anne's neighbor, because
he was living with his grandmother because he had been
kicked out of his house for raping. Those crimes aren't reported,
but others are. In four in St. Louis County, just
(40:16):
two years after Joanne's murder and the attack on Melissa
and Renee, Steve Andy pleads guilty to sodomy and sexual
abuse in the first degree. Both victims are under fourteen
years old, and in Jefferson County, he pleads guilty to
sex abuse and forcible sodomy. He's sentenced to ten years
in prison, but Nadia wants to know if Steve himself
(40:39):
ever confessed to Terra he committed any crimes. Nadia is
in no way prepared for the answers she's about to get.
And she said, well, um, I know that he killed someone,
but I don't really I don't really know all the details.
(41:01):
And I'm like, well, how did that come out? And
she said, well, she had found out that he lied
to her, that he had a that he did have
a criminal record, and that his criminal record included child
molestation and she had a kid with him, and so
she starts poking him about it and bugging him about it,
(41:22):
and when he finally is like like, fine, I'll tell you. Um,
she says, he said that he was in a house
with a woman and two little girls, and in her head,
the woman seemed like it was a babysitter. But we did,
you know, we weren't correcting her and we were just
(41:42):
like a woman and two girls. And she said the woman,
um had to go out for a second, like run
an errand, and while she was gone, Steve started doing
something to one of the girls and was caught in
the act when she got home, and so we had
to kill her. And I was like, let else did
(42:08):
he say? And she's like, you know, he's the kind
of person if he's told you once, you don't ask again. Um,
but you know that stood out. I think she she
said that she did ask again, though, and he said
it was a bloody mess and if you had seen
the crime scene photos, you would know it was me.
(42:30):
And we asked her why she thought he said that,
and she didn't know. Um, you know, we asked her
really personal questions about whether he'd ever, during sex, used
an object on her, whether he was into anal sex,
whether he just you know, liked weird penetration, and she
(42:56):
said that once he put some markers in her vagina
to see how many would fit, and that it was
sort of came from the fact that he was ashamed
about his penis size. But you know, there's still no
smoking gun here, but it was it was you. I mean,
(43:19):
Marie and I looked at each other. Are paralegal and
I were doing this in this interview with Tara, and
when she said a woman and two little girls like
I know that, we just both looked at each other
like holy shit. And at that point I felt like,
(43:39):
this is the first time I've ever done this, not
as a reporter, but as you know, an extension of
a legal process. And I felt pretty like like a
pretty big novice, Like what do I do with this? Um?
So we wrote down with Tara kind of like a
basic um summary of what she had said, and she
(44:00):
signed it, and then, you know, I figured we'd take
this back to the office and let somebody with a
law degree go from there. Although Terry Yancey has interviewed
a second time, nothing substantial ever comes from those interviews
with her, it seems. In two thousand eleven, the Midwest
Innocence Project put their resources into focusing on the DNA motion,
(44:24):
not Steve Yancy. Then there is a changing of the
guard at m I P, and with a new attorney
in charge, they go back to investigate Terry Yancy's claims,
but before they know it, Melissa recants. So could it
be Steve Yancy? I mean, could he have been describing
(44:47):
the Joe and Tate murder scene to his wife Tara.
Sounds close, but it doesn't seem to totally fit Melissa's memory. Remember,
Melissa said she woke up to her mom lying on
the floor. The man then attacked her before moving on
to her little sister, Renee. Here's former m IP investigator
(45:07):
Dan Grosthouse. We know what Melissa recalled, we don't what
about her little sister. We don't know what happened to
her little sister before. That's such, never considered that because
Melissa right, we don't know what the perpetrator may have
done to Renee prior to what happened to Melissa. But
(45:27):
if Steveancy's the guy, why when Melissa's in the hospital
and shown his photo didn't she pick him out as
their attacker? And why didn't police look at him more closely?
Here's Nadia again. I think you know what really gets
me about Cedancy is that he um couldn't He was
(45:49):
just too young to be a suspect. But and so
he was easily overlooked at the time. Um, you know,
through no fault of investigators or detectives. Um, he didn't
come up on any radar and he's just a kid.
So I mean, to me, it's sort of like the
(46:09):
perfect opportunity to get away with something horrific. On the
other hand, it's not really his m o. You know,
he likes doing manipulating people, you know, assaulting children. Um,
but he's never There's no other murders he's suspected of.
(46:34):
There's not like anything extremely violent in his history that
I know of. Tera Yancy was released from prison in
I reached out to her to see if she'd be
willing to talk, but I haven't heard back, and I
(46:54):
wrote to Steve Yancy. He actually wrote me back about Joanne.
He writes, quote, yes, I knew her. I was just
a teenage kid dating a thirtysomething woman. It was only
a few weeks or so before the crime happened. Here's
(47:14):
Dan again. For him to say he dated Joanne is
a strong admission of a problem. He was some seventeen
year old kid and he had no business dating her.
But that was my suspicion, is that you know, they
were playing around. And there's more from Steve Acy. Quote, yes,
(47:39):
I was a friend of the family, and no, I
was never a babysitter. But remember Melissa said in that
deposition that a boy from the neighborhood named Stephen used
to watch her in Renee when Joanne went out, Here's
Naughtia Again. He babysat for the the girls and he
(48:01):
had played Uno with them, and that also freeped me
out because there was an Udo card on the floor
in one of the crime scene photos. Steveny goes on
to say, if you are with the Innocence Project trying
to help that guy get out of prison, then I
really have nothing to offer you. He concludes with even
(48:22):
after all these years, it is still a soft spot.
They were a shining spot in my young life that
became a painful memory. Respectfully yours, Steve and Yancy. So
I write him back asking if he'd be willing to
talk on the phone. No reply, I write again, this time,
(48:43):
he responds. Before reading the whole letter. My eyes quickly
scanned the page looking for keywords and phrases, and they
land on this quote. I'm going to add your number
and inform you as soon as it's approved so we
can work out a time best for you. Steve Yancey's
(49:04):
going to talk. You absolutely need to go talk to him. Yeah,
I mean that's crazy, get him talking. If you could
ask Steve and Yancy anything. What would you ask him?
(49:26):
Are he's a real killer? Next time on the Real Killer?
And I just remember thinking, if we can't bring Rodney home,
what are we even doing? Should I even be a
lawyer anymore? Then a controversy and a call no one
sees coming, like, what's wrong? She said, well, I just
(49:49):
called the prison to talk to your dad because he
never called this morning. And when I asked them why
my client had called, they told me he couldn't. What
is happening to Rodney Lincoln? Yeah, Dunmer more confused? Any
kind in model? I felt like a body in limbo.
Limbo works in a nice place. The Real Killer is
(50:18):
a production of a y R Media and I Heart Radio,
hosted by me Leah Rothman. Executive producers Leah Rothman and
Eliza Rosen for a y R Media. Written by me
Leah Rothman, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman, Editing and sound
design by Cameron Taggy, mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggi,
(50:41):
Audio engineering by Jesus c Mario, Studio engineering by Tom
Weir and Kelly McGrew. Legal counsel for a y R Media.
Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I Heart Radio Chandler Mayze.
If you're enjoying The Real Killer, tell your friends about
it and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or
(51:03):
wherever you get your podcasts. H m hm
A warning. This episode contains content that may be disturbing
to some listeners. Some names are censored for privacy reasons.
Killing Joeyne the way she was killed, somebody with a
sexual dysfunction ended up in that apartment and it just
didn't go well. For decades, Melissa da Bore believed that
(00:21):
somebody was Rodney Lincoln since late she says she knows
with every fiber of her being it's not him, it's
somebody else. Who do you think killed your mom? Tomming
Lintels put out a doubt. I'm Leah Rothman. This is
(00:44):
the real killer? Episode seven Tommy or Who? Hello, Hello, Ianne,
how are you doing well? Thank you? I am definitely
(01:06):
not the first person who's asked who killed joe An
Tate and attacked young Melissa and Renee. But because Melissa
now believes Tommy land Sells as the perpetrator, I need
to learn more about him, so I go to Diane Fanning.
She's the author who was interviewed on Crime Watch Daily
in about her extensive research and six years worth of
(01:28):
phone calls, letters, and at least twenty in person interviews
she did with him for her book Through the Window.
It was Diane's interview, among other things that had such
a big impact on Melissa. Tell me a little bit
about your background when you how you became interested in
writing and becoming a true crime writer. I had been
(01:51):
um the victim of an abduction attempt when I was
nine years old. I was walking to the local um
little country store near where we lived. The man asked
for directions. He reached out when I came over to
(02:14):
look at his map, and he grabbed hold of my
upper arm. He tried to pull me in the car
I was fighting in, but it was it was a
losing battle. Just then, another car came over the hill
and laid on his horn. The guy took off with
his car door still open, and I memorized the license
(02:38):
plate number. When I went home, I told my mother.
She called the police and they stopped that man and
found the evidence in his trunk of the sexual assault
murder of an eight year old a month before. Oh
my god, that is terrifying. It was. It was weird
(02:58):
because instead of so much wallowing in that fear, my
way of coping was to get information. You know. I
was getting books out of library that were way above
my head about criminal psychology and stuff, and trying to
find answers to my two big questions, why me? And
(03:21):
how could anybody do this? Years later, questions like these
will come up again. I've been interested in writing for
quite some time since my eighth grade teacher told me
I had talent, but I didn't really get busy with
it till I spent a lot of time in radio,
(03:41):
television and advertising agency work, and then moved to nonprofit
and then a case came along that rang my chimes.
That case started in the middle of the night on
December thirty one outside Del Rio, Texas. A man comes
(04:04):
through an open window, and, although there's a house full
of people, he enters the room where two young girls
are sleeping. On the bottom bunk is thirteen year old
Kayleeen Katie Harris. The man sexually assaults her, slashes her
neck twice, and stabs her sixteen times. He then moves
(04:25):
on to her friend, who's on the top bunk, ten
year old Crystal Searles. He cuts her throat, She falls
to the ground and plays dead. The man eventually leaves,
and Crystal, believing everyone in the house has been murdered,
runs barefoot a quarter of a mile down the dirt
road to the nearest neighbor at the hospital with a
(04:46):
severed windpipe and grazed carotid artery. Crystal works with a
police sketch artist and comes up with a composite drawing
of the perpetrator. Within a day, Crystal has shown a
photo lineup and he picks out thirty six year old
Tommy land Cells. Cells, a used car salesman who had
(05:07):
met the Harris family at church and had been to
their home on multiple occasions, is apprehended and confesses that
they build the under rated or murdering. Later that day,
he agrees to go with investigators to the Harris house.
(05:27):
Dan Dank January second or two thousand, want to BM,
we're back at the crime scene. You're doing it well
through your own free will. Oh yeah. During the grainy
(05:50):
videotaped walk through of the crime scene, Tommy land Cells
is not handcuffed. He's husky, he's got a dark brown
curly mullet and a scruffy beer heard. He's wearing jeans
and a multicolored shirt. He shows investigators how he crawled
through the window, walked through the house, then chose Katie
and Crystal's room to enter. The video is chilling. From
(06:15):
time to time, Tommy Lincells looks directly into the camera.
His tone is a matter of fact. At one point,
he stops and ties his shoe. I'm stood a minute
and then I look in here. There's a two girls
sleeping in here. I woke this girl up. How did
(06:39):
you do that? Up? Up? I understand? And then she
jumped up. Well, no, no, before they I could have brow,
I couldn't say, uh what if she was wearing it?
(07:05):
And Georgia and and she jumped up and sought this
girl to go get her mom m. And when you
made this girl, when you say this girl was a
girl's leaping in the top potcoms and she tried to
come over here. When I stay right here somewhere, you
got a nice when you would just say what kind
(07:26):
of do you have? That big? But your knife time?
And then she got jumped back and then you know, ye,
no cut her flash right here. With an imaginary knife
in his right hand, Tommy land Cells slashes the throat
of the investigator and she fell down right here. And
(07:53):
then NA think I've reached down here and done it.
One more tag in this more a little girl. This
one now also here, standing to the left of the
top bunk where the pillow would be, Cells again uses
(08:15):
his right hand to make a slashing motion. This is
just well wearing. This girl still sleeping a lot. She moving,
trying to get away or something. He's completely cavalier. There's
(08:35):
no remorse in his voice. It's haunting. I'm glad this
is over with. I'm glad it's over. Do you think um,
you would continue me? Oh? I know what that there.
(08:57):
Over the next few months, Tommy Lynn Cells can fuss
to killing men, women, and children from New York to
Los Angeles using knives, guns, baseball bats, and his bare hands.
He gets by working as a mechanic, a carne and
a day labor. He also panhandles, and he evades capture
(09:19):
by hopping trains, hitchhiking, and stealing cars. In the course
of almost twenty years, the self proclaimed Coast to Coast
Killer confesses to more than seventy crimes. Texas Rangers can
only verify two. Diane Fanning learns about Tommulin Cells in
the year two thousand. Here's Diane again. I did not
(09:44):
find out about Crystal Searles and Katie Harris's harrowing experiences
until after Tommulan Cells had been convicted and was given
the death sentence, and that's when I wanted to write
about him. At first, all he wanted was money. I
(10:10):
also then went through a phase with him where all
he wanted to do was talk sex to me on
the phone, which was not something I was interested in.
Once I got to the point that he was calling
me his friend, I was able to get extensive information.
But the thing about Cells that I found very odd
(10:34):
is some days I had a hard time getting him
focusing on crimes because he just wanted to joke around.
And then other times he would go out of his
way to try to shock and disgust me. He would
become very very graphic with the description of how he
(10:57):
killed someone um and at other times he was just
very matter of fact talking about his crimes. And the
only time that I really he made me feel anything
other than kind of discussed was when he talked to
(11:21):
me about what happened to him in his childhood. It
was horrible how he grew up, and it was so
horrible I found it not to be very credible. So
I called his mother and I said listen. I want
to tell you what Tommy has said about his childhood,
(11:42):
and I want you to tell me you know what's
not right and what you remember. And we got all
through it and she did not once contradict anything that
he said. All she said at the end was, well,
(12:03):
there are a lot of kids that have it worse,
and they don't go out killing people. On June nineteen
sixty four, Tommy land Cells is born a twin. When
they're eighteen months old, his sister becomes ill and dies.
He sent to live with his aunt. Eventually his mom
(12:26):
wants him back, but that doesn't last long. She allowed
him to go live with a pedophile. And did she
know that this man was a pedophile? Or she claims
now that she didn't, but I it was a small town.
(12:47):
I think she had to know that. The only people
this man spent time with we're young boys. And um
Tommy told me about the experience of his first night
and when it was over, how he curled up in
his bed and cried and imagined himself on a rocket
(13:11):
ship shooting out into space. My heart broke listening to him.
I think it was the most genuine he ever was
with me, and So how long did this abuse go
on at the hands of this pedophile. I think it
was about three three and a half years. He was
(13:35):
about seven, and um, once he was ten, he sort
of outgrew his appeal to the pedophile mhm. And then
he went back with his mother for a while. And
at one point she was running a bar and she
was selling Tommy out of the bar. She was literally
(14:00):
her child. Yeah, she called him her little wore two
men and women. I think it was mostly two women
at that time. So what happens next? He leaves home
at fifteen and starts just wandering. Um he uh went
(14:25):
down to Mississippi and accidentally killed a man there. And
he was out in California and got into a fight
with another man and he had an ice pick and
he killed the man. Um. Neither one of those were
(14:47):
planned murders, but he found out from that experience how
satisfying was to him to be able to have the
power to take a person's life. Tell me about the Dardin's.
(15:09):
This is a particularly gruesome story. It takes place in
seven in Ana, Illinois, about ninety miles outside St. Louis, Oh.
The Dardin's were a horrible dark miserable case. I am
(15:30):
certain that Sells committed that crime. Uh. He told me
that the reason he targeted the Dardin's was because the
father in the family had sexually propositioned him. Now, Sells
(15:51):
imagines things from people. He assumes what they're thinking based
on the way his dis ordered mind works. There is
nothing and all the history of Mr Dardine that shows
any indication whatsoever that he had any interested men. It
(16:18):
just isn't there. He sat out not far from the
home on a little rise, and there was a whole
big patch of cigarette butts. The police could don't just
where the person sat. And the house was for sale
at the time, so Tommy approached the house as a
(16:42):
potential buyer. They let him in. He pulled it on.
He made Elayin Ruby Dardine tie up her husband. Now
she was very pregnant, like eight months pregnant, and he
(17:09):
he took her and tied her arms, tied up their
little three year old boy, and it said that they
better stay here or their father won't go back a lot.
So then he took Mr Jardine two location a little
(17:30):
ways away, and he shot him and cut off his penis.
He then returned to the house, where he let Elaine
watch while he used a baseball bat to beat the
(17:54):
three year old boy to death. Then he started beating Lane.
At some point in the middle of her beating, she
went into labor. Tommy sat back and watched, and once
the baby was born, he helped it up and beat
(18:17):
it with a baseball bat, while that poor mother had
to watch the depth of a child again. He then
beat her, wrote on her body with a pair of
scissors and cram the whole baseball bat insider before he left. God,
(18:41):
it's just so awful. There aren't even words. No, it
needs to be said that. Many believe a lot of
Tommy Lindsell's confessions are bs, and people are split on
whether or not he committed heinous acts in the Dardine case.
(19:02):
Some say he knew details which were never released to
the public, Others say that's not true. Reportedly, tommulin Cells
said he could lead investigators to missing evidence in the case,
but because the state of Texas doesn't allow death row
prisoners to be taken across state lines, that never happened.
(19:22):
Due to insufficient evidence. Tommulan Cells was never charged with
the Dardine murders. Cells only had one murder conviction, and
it was for that slaying of Katie Harris in Del Rio, Texas.
In two thousand three. Cells was indicted but never tried
for killing thirteen year old Stephanie Mahaney in Springfield, Missouri,
(19:46):
and he did plead guilty to capital murder for killing
another young girl, nine year old Mary Beatrice Perez. She
had been abducted, sexually assaulted, and strangled to death in
San Antonio in April, eight months before and a hundred
and fifty miles away from the Katie Harris and Crystal
Searle scene in Del Rio. And even though there was
(20:14):
a barrier between you two, you and Tommy them, cells,
did you feel? I never exactly knew which cells I
would see when I went into that of visitation room.
And one time I quoted something from a sheriff that
really made him angry, and he stood up. He pounded
(20:38):
with those with his fists on the little table surface
he had there, and he raised his head and looked
up at me and Leah. I swear the shape of
his face changed, the color of his eyes change. I
felt like I was looking at a different person, and
(20:58):
I realized at that moment that I was seeing what
is victim soul at the last moment before they died.
It was terribly frightening. Do you have any of Cells's
(21:25):
letters nearby? I got, I've got letters. Um. His his
writing is definitely not polished, but then he didn't learn
to read and write until he was in prison in
West Virginia, so it's understandable. Here's an example about how
(21:50):
did I know about that one murder, Diane. I know
about a lot more murder than we ever come close
to talk about. I can pull one a day out
and not be done for a long time. A murder
doesn't always have to do with sex or any of
the norms you all may want to label or tag
(22:11):
me with. Maybe someone just piss me off and I
did not want their child to be like them. That's cold.
I understand. Maybe a more than just one person is
in prison for the same thing. Wow. And there's something
else tommylin Sell says about people in prison. He said,
(22:34):
there are a whole lot of people sitting in prison
for crimes that I committed and I don't care, Which
brings us to Rodney Lincoln, Joe and Tate and crime
Watch Daily. I went on Crime Watch Daily to talk
about the Rodney Lincoln case. Here is what I think
(22:58):
about the possibility day of tommyline Cells committing this crime,
this murder of Joe and Tate it. Tommyline Cells told
me more than once. There are other crimes I've committed
I'm not going to talk about because they happened in
the area of St. Louis and I have family there.
I will not admit to any one of those. And
(23:21):
just to be clear, tommyland Cells was from St. Louis, Yes,
although he traveled all over the country. St Louis was
his home. That was where his family was, and he
would not give up any crimes in that area. And
if his confessions are to be believed, maybe there's more.
(23:44):
He um had inserted a baseball bat in the Dardine
case into the woman's body. He had done the same
with a ranch inside another victim's body. And there was
Joe Anne with a broomstick. That is a peculiarity of
(24:11):
a crime that points towards Cells. Melissa said that, you know,
she first said Bill did it, and then she started
to remember more details, like Bill drove a yellow taxi,
and then she said Bill worked on her mom's car,
(24:34):
and he also then drove a white v W. Any
of those details ring true with with Cells. Cells was
working at his uncle's the w dealership in um St. Louis,
repairing volkswagens. Cells was an expert car mechanic. He, even
(25:04):
when he was in the Del Rio jail, helped fix
cars for the Sheriff's department. And although Melissa said his
name was Bill, Cells often just dropped names that weren't
his and used them for the moment. His father was
named Williams, so it would be it would be a
(25:25):
natural thing for him to assume the name Bill. And
Tommy land Cells also spent time in Hollywood, Remember, Melissa
said Bill had to There are enough similarities two cells
means of operation, to cells behavioral patterns, and to the
(25:51):
connection with his father's name of William You throw all
these things together. This sounds so much like him. This
reeks of Tommy land Cells. Does that mean absolute positively
it was Tommy lynd Cells. No, but I think there's
(26:12):
a very high probability that Tommy land Cells is responsible
for the murder of Joey and Tate and the assault
of Melissa and Renee. On April three, at the age
of forty nine, tommyland Cells is executed by the State
of Texas. When asked if he wants to make a
(26:33):
final statement, he reportedly says no, then smiles. The lethal
injection begins, he closes his eyes and begins to snore.
Katie Harris's father, who's there that day, tells reporters quote basically,
the dude just took a nap. Tommyland Cells is pronounced
(26:53):
dead at six pm in after Melissa ricants the Attorney
General's Office while preparing for that evidentiary hearing in Coal
County does some digging into Tommy Lynn Cells too. Susan
(27:16):
Clevinger from the a g. S Office calls one of
Cells's brothers, Tim Cells. They discussed the Volkswagon repair shop
where they worked, whether or not Tommy has all of
his fingers, which he did, remember the funny finger story,
and they talked about where Cells was in late April
of nineteen two when Joe and Tate was murdered. Thirty
(27:39):
three years later, it's obviously hard for Tim to remember.
He suggests Susan Clevinger speak with his ex wife, Tracy Cells. Hello, Hey, Tracy,
This is Susan clevinger Um from the Attorney General's Office
m H. Like with Tim Sell, they spent a lot
(28:01):
of time trying to nail down whether or not Tommy
Lindcells was in St. Louis late April. Tracy doesn't remember
exactly what month in nineteen eight two Tommy was in town,
but she does remember when he was there. He was
living at another brother's house. This brother's name is Terry,
(28:24):
and she remembers one day in particular, they had all
planned to go to the zoo together. Well, I can
tell you since there was this this time, and it
was probably I would say early okay, and Tommy was
always worn that wanted to go, go, go, and for
(28:46):
some reason he didn't want to go. And I thought
that was really that stood out in my mind, because
he always wanted to go, and this time you couldn't
get him to go. In that evening when we came home,
his Terry's wife found her nightgown covered in seaman and
Terry took him down in the basement and whipped him
(29:09):
with about And they had a little dog that wouldn't
come out from under the couch for two weeks. And
it's his bottom was bleeding, and there's more a lot
of people just didn't mourn him around. How did you
How did you feel when he was I mean, what
what what was your thought process whenever whenever he was
(29:31):
coming around or he thought he might be staying. Well,
when I first met him, I just felt like something
was wearing creepy about him. And I started dating Tim,
and his mother came to me one night and told
me that he had tried to get in the shower
with her and that each after on the shoulder, It
(29:52):
got in naked and caped her on the shoulder and
said I'm going to have you. And he tried the
raper and she fought him off, and the windows were
open and she was screaming, and he said, all right,
I'll let you go. I'll let you go, but don't
tell anyone. And he ran off and he was gone
for two weeks, and then he came back and everyone
(30:13):
just acted like nothing ever happened. Yeah, so of course
naturally you were keeping your guard up whenever he was around,
or make him or someone else was around. Yeah, then
it was only something. You know, he would get with
some girl on and she'd say she's trying to molest
her child and nobody ever called the police. So nobody
(30:35):
ever reported that stuff. But I know about you know
a few different incidents at least um probably five incident
instances where he molested someone's kid and they didn't even
report it. Vile and disturbing to say the very least.
(30:59):
But all that horrendousness aside, the question still remains where
was tommulin Cells On April nineteen eighty two. According to
police reports and court documents from Paragold, Jonesboro, and Greene County, Arkansas,
(31:20):
Tommulan Cells was arrested on April third, n for stealing
a car. At the time, he's seventeen years old, five
eight and a hundred and twenty pounds, brown hair, and
hazel eese. On April fourteen, he pleads guilty and is
sentenced to two months at Consolidated Youth Services c y
(31:41):
S in Jonesboro, Arkansas, basically a juvenile hall. This is
where the controversy comes in. The Attorney General's Office believes
Tommulin Cells was at c y S serving his two
months at the time of Joanne's murder. Others say so fast,
there's no proof he was actually there, so I called
(32:05):
Consolidated Youth Services and was told they won't go on
the record to talk about Tommy land Cells because he
was a miner at the time. The woman refers me
to the documents handed over to the Attorney General's office.
I have those documents, and while they say Tommy lind
Cells was arrested and sentenced to two months at c
(32:25):
y S, there's no documentation saying he actually arrived, served
his time and left two months later. Here's Rodney's attorney,
Shawn O'Brien. He was supposed to have been in a
juvenile facility in jones Borough. And I actually talked to
his lawyer, a man named Harry Truman Moore, who is
(32:47):
still in the practice of law, who said, who represented
Tommy Cells on that uh? And he said, yeah, he
was let out of court and he was supposed to
show up at that facility, but there's no guarantee that
he did. Tommulin Sells attorney h. T. More, wrote enoffidavit
(33:07):
about this, which was submitted to the court. I have
it and it reads in part this quote. The court
file does not reflect that Mr Sells was delivered to
c y S. And I doubt that was done. The
Sheriff's office was very lax in those days. Even if
Mr Sells had been delivered to c y s, the
(33:28):
program was about as secure as a sieve. It was
overloaded and understaffed. Teenagers walked away all the time, and
authorities would rarely pursue them. Based on my review of
the court file and my knowledge of local law enforcement
institutions and their practices in nineteen eighty two, the only
(33:50):
conclusion that one can definitely reach from the court file
in State v. Cells is that he was released from
the Greene County jail on April fourteen. Anything beyond that
is speculation. So where was Tommulin Cells on April two?
(34:14):
Is it possible he left the courthouse on April fourteen
and stole a car or hitch hiked the roughly two
and twenty miles back to his hometown of St. Louis
in those thirteen days before the murder. We may never know.
(34:44):
Besides Tommulin Cells, there's someone else another potential person of
interest in joe An Tate's murder and her daughter's brutal attacks.
Steve Yancey. Remember he was Joanne's seventeen year old neighbor
who came to the house that morning and talked with police.
I was reading old newspaper articles about the crime, and
(35:07):
I had, you know, the police reports sitting next to
me at the same time, and and this name came
up in both. In two thousand eleven, Nadia Flam journalist
and brand new Midwest Innocence Project investigator is asked to
look at Rodney Lincoln's case fresh Eyes. Right, Well, she
(35:28):
sees something that immediately catches her attention. Steve and see
a neighbor, a teenage neighbor, and he's interviewed and then
to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, he said, um, that
he knew Joeyan and that she was perfect. And I
was like, that is weird, Like that's a really weird
(35:50):
thing to say. Well, so, based on just how weird
that struck me, I was like, well, this guy was
like seventeen at the time, Um, but where is he out?
And lo and behold Steve Yancy, who was in a
prison in Norton, Kansas. And I was like, Wow, that's interesting.
So Nadia writes to him requesting an interview, but through
(36:14):
his attorney, he declines that does not stop. Nadia turns
out since two thousand eight, Steve Yancy has been in
prison for a crime he committed with his wife, Tara Yancy.
And I was like, I wonder what she has to say.
And so she had no idea what we were there for,
(36:34):
and she was like, I don't know what this is about.
But she was perfectly cheerful and nice um, And she
wasn't like suspicious and weirded out by us at all.
She just like sat right down and was like, Okay,
let's go describe her for me. She's like a pleaser,
like she wants to do what you want her to do.
(36:54):
She was kind of willing to tell us anything she could.
And so that when I realized that we needed to
be really careful about not giving away too much about
too many details, just to see what she organically knows.
What did Terry Yancy tell you about her crimes? Why
(37:16):
she was in prison? She um. She told us that
she and Steve when they got married, they lived in
a house that was just a couple of houses down
or a block away from her family and some young cousins.
She said she had had a rough childhood and that
she told her little cousins that if they ever felt
(37:39):
unsafe at their house if they just wanted to get away, Like,
don't run away, just come over to my house and
you'll be safe here. So her cousins were used to
coming over and they were like, you know, eight and eleven,
like just younger kids. And according to Tara, Steve tells
her to have sex with her eleven year old male cousin,
and she just said, really, mad afactively, so I had
(38:02):
sex with my cousin. Tara Yancy's doing time for rape,
and Steve Yancy, whom investigators believed was the ringleader, is
serving time for kidnapping and sexual battery for the rape
of Tara's cousin. What else did Tara tell you about
her relationship with Steve? Had he ever been violent with
(38:24):
her physical? He said he tried to kill her. She
said that she was sitting at the computer and she
was looking something up and he came in and saw
her at the computer and just somehow like lost it
and like tossed the computer, grabbed her by a wrist,
like through her against the wall and put his hand
on her throat and then like and she just she said,
(38:46):
she looked at his face and she's like, he's gonna
kill me. And then some suddenly like that look past
and he like dropped her, but she was like, he
could have killed me. Tara shares more about her husband
and what she learned about him secondhand when she got
to know his mother. She found out that he had
(39:08):
raped his He he lived in a house with like
sisters and stepsisters and stepbrothers and brothers, and he had
been um like sexually molesting um had just been causing
really awful chaos at his mother's house, and rather than
(39:31):
called the police, his mother told Tara that she didn't
want testifying against him, so she just thought it would
be best to get him out of the house and
forget about it. So she sent Steve to live with
his grandmother on Ferrar Street, where joe Anne lived. And
(39:53):
so that explained why Stevency was joe Anne's neighbor, because
he was living with his grandmother because he had been
kicked out of his house for raping. Those crimes aren't reported,
but others are. In four in St. Louis County, just
(40:16):
two years after Joanne's murder and the attack on Melissa
and Renee, Steve Andy pleads guilty to sodomy and sexual
abuse in the first degree. Both victims are under fourteen
years old, and in Jefferson County, he pleads guilty to
sex abuse and forcible sodomy. He's sentenced to ten years
in prison, but Nadia wants to know if Steve himself
(40:39):
ever confessed to Terra he committed any crimes. Nadia is
in no way prepared for the answers she's about to get.
And she said, well, um, I know that he killed someone,
but I don't really I don't really know all the details.
(41:01):
And I'm like, well, how did that come out? And
she said, well, she had found out that he lied
to her, that he had a that he did have
a criminal record, and that his criminal record included child
molestation and she had a kid with him, and so
she starts poking him about it and bugging him about it,
(41:22):
and when he finally is like like, fine, I'll tell you. Um,
she says, he said that he was in a house
with a woman and two little girls, and in her head,
the woman seemed like it was a babysitter. But we did,
you know, we weren't correcting her and we were just
(41:42):
like a woman and two girls. And she said the woman,
um had to go out for a second, like run
an errand, and while she was gone, Steve started doing
something to one of the girls and was caught in
the act when she got home, and so we had
to kill her. And I was like, let else did
(42:08):
he say? And she's like, you know, he's the kind
of person if he's told you once, you don't ask again. Um,
but you know that stood out. I think she she
said that she did ask again, though, and he said
it was a bloody mess and if you had seen
the crime scene photos, you would know it was me.
(42:30):
And we asked her why she thought he said that,
and she didn't know. Um, you know, we asked her
really personal questions about whether he'd ever, during sex, used
an object on her, whether he was into anal sex,
whether he just you know, liked weird penetration, and she
(42:56):
said that once he put some markers in her vagina
to see how many would fit, and that it was
sort of came from the fact that he was ashamed
about his penis size. But you know, there's still no
smoking gun here, but it was it was you. I mean,
(43:19):
Marie and I looked at each other. Are paralegal and
I were doing this in this interview with Tara, and
when she said a woman and two little girls like
I know that, we just both looked at each other
like holy shit. And at that point I felt like,
(43:39):
this is the first time I've ever done this, not
as a reporter, but as you know, an extension of
a legal process. And I felt pretty like like a
pretty big novice, Like what do I do with this? Um?
So we wrote down with Tara kind of like a
basic um summary of what she had said, and she
(44:00):
signed it, and then, you know, I figured we'd take
this back to the office and let somebody with a
law degree go from there. Although Terry Yancey has interviewed
a second time, nothing substantial ever comes from those interviews
with her, it seems. In two thousand eleven, the Midwest
Innocence Project put their resources into focusing on the DNA motion,
(44:24):
not Steve Yancy. Then there is a changing of the
guard at m I P, and with a new attorney
in charge, they go back to investigate Terry Yancy's claims,
but before they know it, Melissa recants. So could it
be Steve Yancy? I mean, could he have been describing
(44:47):
the Joe and Tate murder scene to his wife Tara.
Sounds close, but it doesn't seem to totally fit Melissa's memory. Remember,
Melissa said she woke up to her mom lying on
the floor. The man then attacked her before moving on
to her little sister, Renee. Here's former m IP investigator
(45:07):
Dan Grosthouse. We know what Melissa recalled, we don't what
about her little sister. We don't know what happened to
her little sister before. That's such, never considered that because
Melissa right, we don't know what the perpetrator may have
done to Renee prior to what happened to Melissa. But
(45:27):
if Steveancy's the guy, why when Melissa's in the hospital
and shown his photo didn't she pick him out as
their attacker? And why didn't police look at him more closely?
Here's Nadia again. I think you know what really gets
me about Cedancy is that he um couldn't He was
(45:49):
just too young to be a suspect. But and so
he was easily overlooked at the time. Um, you know,
through no fault of investigators or detectives. Um, he didn't
come up on any radar and he's just a kid.
So I mean, to me, it's sort of like the
(46:09):
perfect opportunity to get away with something horrific. On the
other hand, it's not really his m o. You know,
he likes doing manipulating people, you know, assaulting children. Um,
but he's never There's no other murders he's suspected of.
(46:34):
There's not like anything extremely violent in his history that
I know of. Tera Yancy was released from prison in
I reached out to her to see if she'd be
willing to talk, but I haven't heard back, and I
(46:54):
wrote to Steve Yancy. He actually wrote me back about Joanne.
He writes, quote, yes, I knew her. I was just
a teenage kid dating a thirtysomething woman. It was only
a few weeks or so before the crime happened. Here's
(47:14):
Dan again. For him to say he dated Joanne is
a strong admission of a problem. He was some seventeen
year old kid and he had no business dating her.
But that was my suspicion, is that you know, they
were playing around. And there's more from Steve Acy. Quote, yes,
(47:39):
I was a friend of the family, and no, I
was never a babysitter. But remember Melissa said in that
deposition that a boy from the neighborhood named Stephen used
to watch her in Renee when Joanne went out, Here's
Naughtia Again. He babysat for the the girls and he
(48:01):
had played Uno with them, and that also freeped me
out because there was an Udo card on the floor
in one of the crime scene photos. Steveny goes on
to say, if you are with the Innocence Project trying
to help that guy get out of prison, then I
really have nothing to offer you. He concludes with even
(48:22):
after all these years, it is still a soft spot.
They were a shining spot in my young life that
became a painful memory. Respectfully yours, Steve and Yancy. So
I write him back asking if he'd be willing to
talk on the phone. No reply, I write again, this time,
(48:43):
he responds. Before reading the whole letter. My eyes quickly
scanned the page looking for keywords and phrases, and they
land on this quote. I'm going to add your number
and inform you as soon as it's approved so we
can work out a time best for you. Steve Yancey's
(49:04):
going to talk. You absolutely need to go talk to him. Yeah,
I mean that's crazy, get him talking. If you could
ask Steve and Yancy anything. What would you ask him?
(49:26):
Are he's a real killer? Next time on the Real Killer?
And I just remember thinking, if we can't bring Rodney home,
what are we even doing? Should I even be a
lawyer anymore? Then a controversy and a call no one
sees coming, like, what's wrong? She said, well, I just
(49:49):
called the prison to talk to your dad because he
never called this morning. And when I asked them why
my client had called, they told me he couldn't. What
is happening to Rodney Lincoln? Yeah, Dunmer more confused? Any
kind in model? I felt like a body in limbo.
Limbo works in a nice place. The Real Killer is
(50:18):
a production of a y R Media and I Heart Radio,
hosted by me Leah Rothman. Executive producers Leah Rothman and
Eliza Rosen for a y R Media. Written by me
Leah Rothman, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman, Editing and sound
design by Cameron Taggy, mixed and mastered by Cameron Taggi,
(50:41):
Audio engineering by Jesus c Mario, Studio engineering by Tom
Weir and Kelly McGrew. Legal counsel for a y R Media.
Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I Heart Radio Chandler Mayze.
If you're enjoying The Real Killer, tell your friends about
it and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or
(51:03):
wherever you get your podcasts. H m hm
Host
Leah Rothman
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.