Through the Window (11 page)

SELLS, however, had brushed the memories of that night right out of his mind. He returned to his mother and wife in St. Louis and continued working at the same auto shop until he took off again.

On December 15, he was back in Winnemucca, Nevada, but he stayed just one night, at the Overland Hotel. Before leaving the area, he drove out to the desolate spot where he’d left Stefanie Stroh’s body in 1987—reliving his
fond memories of that fatal night. He was back in St. Louis in time to get another traffic ticket on December 29, 1997. That day he left town and Nora never saw the father of her unborn child again.

Sells was not happy when he left St. Louis. Nora would give birth to his progeny in three months’ time. He did not feel equipped or inclined to take care of a wife and a baby. He had hoped his younger brother, Randy, would raise the child. But Randy did not really want any children. He feared, too, that if he took in Tommy’s child, his brother would be hitting him up for cash and favors constantly.

Nina knew that Nora did not have the ability to care for a child on her own, and Tommy was not responsible or stable enough to help. At her age, she did not feel capable of raising any child—not even her own grandchild. With the help of a sister in Jonesboro, Arkansas, she contacted an attorney to arrange for an adoption. He came to her home with a schoolteacher to evaluate Nora and to be certain she did want to give up her baby.

In April 1998, in a hospital in Jonesboro, Nora gave birth to a baby boy by caesarean section. She never saw her child. He was immediately placed with a family in that town, where he lived for the next four years.

Nina was determined not to have to go through this ordeal one more time. “To keep Nora from getting pregnant again, Nina had her get fixed,” Sells said.

Nora returned to St. Louis to live with her mother-in-law. Sells was nowhere near Jonesboro when his son was born. He had pawned his mechanic’s tools in Little Rock, Arkansas, on January 19, 1998, and traveled south.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CARNIVAL season started early every year in South Texas—1998 was not an exception. Sells hooked up with the Heart of America outfit in Aransas Pass. He drove the truck that hauled the Ferris wheel, and also operated the ride. The carnival moved from town to town down Highway 90 as it runs west from San Antonio to the border. On the way, it passed a multitude of small towns like Castro-ville, a community of dramatic hills and valleys founded by immigrants from the Alsace–Lorraine region between Germany and France. Then they rolled through Hondo, a town with an Old West feel and a road sign that read, “Hondo is a little bit of heaven so don’t drive through it like hell.” Farther along they hit Knippa, a tiny town with a welcome sign that reassured all drivers passing through: “You can go ahead and blink. Knippa’s bigger than you think.” The last town they cut through on Route 90 was Uvalde, a quaint county seat with an inviting old-fashioned town square dominated by the no-nonsense architecture of its old courthouse.

After Uvalde, the carnival caravan headed south to La Pryor, then west again before coming to the scruffy border town of Eagle Pass, best known for a history of bizarrely crooked politicians. Across the Rio Grande is Piedras Negras, Mexico. Eagle Pass residents cross this border whenever they want a more elegant night on the town than Pizza Hut can offer. After a two-week stint there, the nomadic troupe moved north to Del Rio, a border town with a bit more polish than its southern neighbor. Del Rio and Ciudad Acunã strut their cultural diversity in unison with joint promotional
materials for tourists. Another influence in the shaping of this small city of 34,000 is Laughlin Air Force Base.

THE second week the carnival was in town, on the evening of March 5, 1998, Jessica Levrie brought her children to the bright lights and rides. It was an unusually cool night for March in this part of the country. While the kids rode the Ferris wheel, she stood on the sidelines enjoying their squeals and smiles. The green eyes and open, welcoming face of this Hispanic woman caught the interest of Tommy Lynn Sells.

“Wouldn’t it be a nice night for a cup of cocoa?” he asked.

The children disembarked the ride and begged to go around again. While they soared back into the air, Jessica invited the ride operator to her home for a warm cup. Sells ended up spending that night and subsequent ones at her home while he finished up his run in Del Rio. On the day the carnival packed up to leave, Jessica popped in and out of the grounds, grabbing a word here and there with Tommy as he worked with the crew preparing to travel.

Tommy sat in the rig in the parking lot ready to go— just waiting for the signal to roll out. Jessica showed up one more time. He was smitten by her beauty and her sense of style, but most of all, he was rocked by the love that emanated from her like heat from a campfire on a cold and dreary night.

“Do you want to ride with me to Corpus Christi?” he asked her.

A grin split her face and her head bobbled “yes.” She hopped in the truck for the fourteen-hour drive to the Gulf Coast.

Jessica spent two days in the seaside city. Then, Tommy put her on a bus back home to Del Rio. She returned in her Olds ‘88 two days later.

With her hands on her hips, she looked Tommy in the eye and said, “Well, are you ready to come home?”

Home
was a magic word to this rootless man. The word embodied everything he had missed in life. He clutched it to his heart and accepted her offer.

They traveled back in her car and began living together with Jessica’s two teenaged daughters and two younger boys in Del Rio. On March 31, Sells reported to the local unemployment office looking for a job.

And he got one—working as a mechanic and salesman at Amigo Auto Sales. Jessica worked at a Chinese restaurant waiting tables. In his spare time, he drew pictures of roses for Jessica—he loved roses and their intricate beauty, because they reminded him of her. Just a few short years after learning to read and write, he penned love poems to Jessica pouring out his love and devotion.

Following Jessica’s lead, he molded and shaped a semblance of a normal life. He and Jessica took turns driving the kids to school. No matter what they tried, the children just could not wake up and get out the door in time to catch the school bus. Tommy took the boys fishing, worked on craft projects with them and occasionally ironed their clothes for school.

Pets were a big part of their family, too. At one point, they had three dogs, two cats, six birds, two hamsters, a guinea pig, a turtle and a snake. For a while, with Jessica’s encouragement, Tommy avoided drugs and alcohol and went to work faithfully.

Restless, Sells set off on another road trip on June 28— north to Sonora, Texas, then east to Beaumont. While in northeast Texas, he accumulated two more traffic tickets that were still outstanding a year and a half later when he was arrested for the murder of Kaylene Harris.

Then, he was back home, trying to hang onto the reins of a domestic existence. It only took one family crisis to undo Jessica’s good influence and set Sells back on the path he had always traveled.

TWENTY inches of rain fell fast and hard on Del Rio in late August 1998. At 505 Andrade Street in the San Felipe neighborhood, the lights went out. Outside, a woman
yelled, filling the air with echoes of her fear. Following the sound of her voice, Virginia Blanco stepped out onto her front porch. The San Felipe Creek had crested its banks and dedicated itself to the destruction of the sad little neighborhood near downtown.

She grabbed a flashlight and pointed its beam catty-corner across the street to the home of her daughter Jessica Levrie. Finally, her shouts and swinging light caught the attention of the family inside.

“C’mon. C’mon over here,” Virginia pleaded.

“No, we’ll be okay,” Jessica replied.

Virginia insisted that her home was safer, and the family relented. Tommy and Jessica stood in the water, passing the four children across the street, one by one. Like a mother hen, Virginia clucked them all safely indoors. Ten minutes later, Virginia opened the front door to discover that the water was already in her yard. Tommy and Jessica joined her on the porch and watched the rising water with a rising sense of dread.

In the street, a woman grabbed for fences, poles and bushes as the water swept her away. Tommy jumped off the porch and tried to save her as she sped past the house. But his clothing snagged on the front-yard fence and the woman slipped away. He pulled only himself to safety.

The raging river running down the street shoved the woman underneath a truck. The motor was running. The truck was full of people hoping to escape the city. Virginia, Tommy and Jessica screamed. They feared that the truck would move and run over her body. A man inside heard their desperate warnings and jumped out of the truck. He struggled through the water and dragged the woman to refuge.

Around the neighborhood, many had already been forced into trees and up on rooftops as liquid fury consumed all in its path. Inside Virginia’s house, all four children were put in the room that sat highest above ground level. No one knew at that time, but it was the least safe room in the house.

Water started swirling around Virginia’s garage, forming a sluice that swept behind the house and over to an old utility shack. Soon, the shack crashed down and was swept away by the flood.

Unaware of the current state of destruction, Tommy stepped out the front door to get cigarettes from the shop next door owned by Virginia’s father. He quickly closed the door and collapsed against it. “It’s gone. It’s gone,” he said, shock etched in his face.

Screams erupted from the back room as the children heard the cries of a trapped cat. At first, they thought it was stuck under the washing machine. But it wasn’t there when they looked. Then the horror sunk into their numbed minds. The cat was under the floor, trapped in the rising waters. Tommy grabbed a crowbar and attempted to pull up the boards. The planks would not budge. He beat on them over and over and over again with brutal force. Still, the flooring remained solid. He did not give up while the cat’s cries ascended to a crescendo of terror. He did not stop trying until the agonizing screams had faded into the night. His shoulders slumped in defeat. Four pairs of eyes stared at him in disbelief.

The water continued to rise, forcing the children out of the back room. It did not stop rising in the house until it reached the crest of Virginia’s hip. Then it rapidly receded, leaving wet and muck in its wake. Virginia’s bed sat high and in its center was an oasis of dry. The children lay down there to go to sleep. Exhausted, Virginia collapsed on the soggy sofa and instantly drifted into dreams. Tommy, Jessica and Virginia’s 90-year-old father found spots on the soggy floor and settled down in an uneasy peace.

The next morning, the water began to recede, bringing hope to the besieged neighborhood. But around 4 o’clock the next afternoon, Border Patrol went door-to-door, knocking and warning all remaining residents that more water was coming. They transported the sodden survivors to the high school gym. But this shelter was not the refuge they
thought it would be. The water rose there as well. All the refugees were evacuated and moved to higher ground at the civic center. Virginia, her father and her daughter’s family remained there for two weeks. Authorities then moved the displaced family to the Siesta Motel for a couple of days.

“Then they moved us again. They moved us all over the place,” recalled Virginia Blanco.

The flood was a traumatic experience for the whole community. This family was no exception. Looking back on the experience, Sells said, “When I was carrying the kids out of the flood that Jessica and I was in, I knew then nothing, never would be the same again.”

Finally, Sells, Jessica and the children found a more permanent place to dwell in a trailer at the American Campgrounds, about ten miles west of Del Rio out past the lake. Soon after they settled in, Tommy and Jessica were driving down Route 90. Tommy abruptly pulled to the side of the road.

“What’s wrong, Tommy?” she asked.

“Will you marry me?” he blurted out.

She looked at him in disbelief. He asked her again.

“Are you serious?”

He repeated, “Will you marry me?”

At first she just nodded her head. Then she turned, put a hand on either side of his face and delicately kissed his lips. “Yes, Tommy, I will.”

Plans for their wedding raced forward. Jessica Levrie and Tommy Lynn Sells were united in marriage in a Del Rio church on October 22, 1998. Tommy smiled broadly in his rented tux. Jessica beamed in her new burgundy dress. Virginia Blanco, Jessica’s brother, her four children and her father were there to share the wedding cake.

In late 1998, Sells worked for several months at Ram Country as a midline mechanic. The aftereffects of the stress from the flood bore down on the newlyweds. Again, Sells was abusing drugs and alcohol, and his working hours became erratic. To Jessica, this behavior was intolerable. Her nagging turned to mutual squabbling. The squabbling
escalated to fierce fights. “What Jessica forgot about was, I was doing all this [drinking and drugs] before we met. I just tried to slow down for her. And that was one of our troubles. I should have been doing it for me. I was able to talk to Jessica. She made me feel not afraid. We done everything together when I was at home. Nothing was too good for each other,” Sells said.

On February 22, 1999, he left Del Rio. By March 5, he was in Pensacola, Florida. After a phone call to Jessica, he was soon on his way home to Del Rio. He got his job back at Ram Country. But on March 28, she threw him out again, demanding he clean up before he returned. Sells hit the road, hauling a big load of pent-up violence.

CHAPTER TWENTY

JAMIE and Debbie Harris and Debbie’s 8-year-old daughter, Ambria Halliburton, moved into a rented trailer in Gibson County, Tennessee in the beginning of January 1999. Their new home was situated in the Caraway Hills area, a sparsely populated community where thick clusters of trees separate neighbors and provide privacy.