Through the Window (15 page)

Ashley turned sixteen on December 29. That night, Jeremy Hurst, Ashley’s boyfriend, delivered a birthday present
to her and stayed for a short visit. Ashley’s best friend, Lauria Bible, was spending the night.

While the four occupants of the trailer slept, a nightmare walked the Freeman property. He dodged between the many animal pens dotted across their land, moving ever closer to their home. When he got inside, finding a weapon was easy. Danny Freeman had hunted since he was a child, and his young daughter Ashley had already bagged a buck. From the more than fourteen firearms in the home, the intruder grabbed a shotgun.

He stalked into Danny and Kathy’s bedroom, where they rested on a waterbed. The butt of the shotgun slammed into Danny’s collarbone to get his attention. The shooter wanted him awake when he died. Then, the barrel was pointed at his head and the ensuing blast drove Danny’s body out of the bed and onto the floor. A second shot to Kathy’s head killed her where she lay. A knife flashed out, slicing across her nude abdomen. Her intestines disgorged at her side. The blade moved to Danny and he, too, was eviscerated. An axe slammed down once, twice, three times, severing both his forearms and his lower right leg from his body.

IN another bedroom, the first shot awakened Ashley and Lauria with a start. When the second shotgun blast echoed down the hall, Ashley recognized the sound as easily as a baby knows its mother’s voice. They huddled together, too afraid to move. They struggled to silence the gasps of fear that burst from their lungs with every breath they took. They strained to hear every sound. They struggled to identify the noises they heard, but could not make sense of them.

In the kitchen, the killer was pouring gasoline in a puddle on the floor in front of the wood stove. He splashed some of the flammable liquid on the front of the heater itself. It was a cold night. The stove had been banked well and was still radiant with heat. Smoke rose from its surface instantly; the flames followed in seconds.

Just as the two girls smelled the first faint whiffs of the fire, a figure with the eyes of a madman loomed in the doorway. He lunged toward them. His hands clutched a shotgun aimed at their heads. He ordered them out of the room and into the chilly night. Shoving, hitting, cursing, he herded them into his van. They took off in the darkness before the dawn.

Barreling southwest down Route 44, and then south on Interstate 35, the abductor tormented the two terrified girls and then ended their lives. Sells claimed that somewhere near the Red River, the border between Oklahoma and Texas, he brought the van to a stop and dumped the two teenagers in an isolated area before resuming south. Their bodies have never been found.

A neighbor on the way to work at 6:30 on the morning of December 30 noticed the fire at the Freemans’ trailer and called 9-1-1. The Welch Volunteer Fire Department raced to the scene, but the home was a total loss. The only portion of the home intact was the floor of the master bedroom. There, the ruptured waterbed had doused some of the flames.

When the home was searched, only one body was found, the charred remains of 37-year-old Kathy Freeman. Kathy was lying on the carcass of her waterbed. In addition to the absence of bodies, two other items appeared to be missing. Danny had a collection of arrowheads and rudimentary Indian tools that he had gathered since he was a child. His most rare pieces were framed in glass-covered boxes, some hanging on the wall, others stacked in anticipation of finding a spot to be displayed. The more common ones were stored in plastic buckets. Of the thousands of artifacts in Danny’s collection, only a handful of splintered shards were ever found.

The second item never recovered was Ashley’s savings. She had been working at Roscoes convenience store and squirreling away every penny she could. She had at least $1,100 and possibly as much as $4,000. That cash
was wrapped in foil, sealed in a Tupperware container and tucked away in the deep freeze among packages of frozen meat. Ashley’s nest egg was never found, but Lauria’s purse with her $200 of Christmas money was recovered at the scene.

All day, family and neighbors searched every inch of the Freemans’ forty-acre lot on foot and again on horseback. No signs of Danny, Ashley or Lauria were found.

At 5:30 that afternoon, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, convinced there were no more bodies, released the scene to Danny’s half-brother, Dwayne Vancil. At that time, the prevailing theory was that Danny had murdered his wife, torched his home and abducted the two girls. There was one inexplicable detail, though, casting doubt on this conclusion. All of the Freemans’ vehicles and Lauria Bible’s car were still sitting in the driveway of the Freeman home.

Early the next morning, Lauria’s parents, Lorene and Jay Bible, not satisfied with the search of the house, were determined to find some clue to the whereabouts of their daughter. Trudging through the ashes and rubble, it only took five minutes for them to make a startling discovery. Sissy, Ashley’s rottweiler, lay on the blackened floor next to the waterbed. When she stood to greet the Bibles, it appeared that she had been lying on the shattered remains of Danny’s head. When Lorene pulled back the carpet by that spot, they clearly saw the outline of a second body.

When the sheriff’s department and OSBI returned to the scene, they ordered Jay and Lorene off the premises so that they could resume their search. The Bibles refused to leave until the investigators had sifted through every small piece of debris.

Danny Freeman was taken off the list of suspects. Investigators entertained the possibility that Ashley and Lauria were the perpetrators. To the families, it did not quite add up. Lauria’s car was out front and her purse with her money and her identification was found in the rubble. Interviews
with those who knew the girls, and a search into their backgrounds further diminished the probability of their involvement.

Speculation then centered on three different fronts. The relatives of the Freemans were certain that the crime was connected to Shane’s death and Danny’s threatened civil suit against the Craig County Sheriff’s Department. Even after Deputy David Hayes and his brother, Undersheriff Mark Hayes, passed polygraph tests, the family’s suspicions were still firmly entrenched.

Lorene and Jay believed the tragedy was somehow tied to drug trafficking. Although Danny was known to have smoked marijuana and suspected of growing some for his personal use, he’d had no record of drug offenses, and law enforcement had no evidence that he’d sold drugs.

Investigators then set their sights on Steven Ray Thacker, a known killer who was on the run. He was apprehended in early January and put on death row in Tennessee for a stabbing death in Dyersburg. He was also charged with other murders in Oklahoma and Missouri. They could not connect Thacker to the carnage in Welch.

OSBI investigated thirty leads in the murders of Danny and Kathy Freeman and abductions of Lauria Bible and Ashley Freeman. None of the leads solved the case.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

WHEN Sells returned home, he faced the wrath of an irate Jessica the second he pulled open the door. He had been gone with her van for days. He’d missed work, and money was needed for household necessities. They drove to the Pico Convenience Store, where Sells tried to get in contact with Bill Hughes on the pay phone to arrange to pick up his last paycheck. He went into the store for a pack of smokes and ran into Terry Harris. The two men talked for about five minutes. Back home, a fight ensued, and Sells left to escape Jessica’s anger.

He took refuge at Larry’s Lakefront Tavern. There he drank Jim Beam and Coke and chatted up the barmaid, Noel Houchin. According to Noel, Sells was a major nuisance that night. He asked her for sex. He asked her where she lived. He asked her for sex again. When she mentioned that her car was broken down, he offered to pay to have it fixed if she would have sex with him. Finally, he told her that he owned Amigo Auto Sales and she could have any vehicle on the lot if she’d have sex with him.

According to Sells, he did tell her that he worked at Amigo Auto. He also said he was not interested in her himself, but told her that the owner, Bill Hughes, was a “horny old son-of-a-bitch. If she batted her eyes right, he would help her.”

At one point in the evening, Sells took a break from drinking and left the bar to change from the shorts he was wearing to a pair of pants. When he emptied the pockets of his shorts, he realized he must have grabbed someone else’s money, too, when he scooped up his change.

He returned to the tavern and discovered that the money belonged to Sonny, a friend and neighbor of his at American Campgrounds. He turned it over and sat down for another Jim Beam and Coke. He was one of the last two patrons to leave the bar after it closed at 2 A.M..

Sells stopped on his way home near the flea market, where an older woman had an outside refrigerator. He reached inside and pulled out some venison and a beer. While he ate, he decided he’d go down to Terry Harris’ house and get the money he claimed was owed to him. Sells insisted, after his arrest, that he had fronted cocaine to Terry Harris in exchange for a promised $5,000. No corroborating evidence has surfaced to support this allegation.

He left the property when the woman’s son, visiting his mother for the holidays, pulled up to the house. Sells stopped by his trailer and picked up one of his long-bladed knives that sat outside. Jessica was never aware of his presence.

SELLS drove Jessica’s van east on Route 90 toward Del Rio. Just before he reached Lake Amistad, he turned left and drove through the stone arch to Guajia Bay. After curving left and right, the road dipped down before heading up to the homes on the hill. Sells parked the van at the lowest point and went the rest of the way on foot.

He approached the house as quietly as any four-legged predator on the prowl, but it was not noiseless enough for the Harrises’ dog. Sells had to pause and pet him before he could break into the trailer and murder Katy Harris and slice the throat of Krystal Surles.

Down the hall, a noise woke up Justin. He didn’t know what he had heard but, unconcerned, he got up and went to the bathroom. Sells emerged in the living room and headed for the back door. Justin’s alarm had been set to help him avoid wetting the bed. It chose that moment to blare out its obnoxious wake-up signal. Sells slipped down the hall, shut off the alarm and then left the trailer by the back door. Justin returned to his room, still unaware of the
intruder’s presence. He assumed one of his sisters had cut off the alarm and he went back to sleep.

Sells took his bloody knife with him when he left the house. He stopped outside to snatch up the two screens he’d removed from the windows earlier and drove farther down Route 90 to the lake. On the bridge, he threw the screens as far as he could and listened until they splashed in the water.

At home, he washed the blood off of his hands, undressed and crawled into his king-size waterbed. He pleaded with Jessica to hold him. She wrapped her arms around his body and clutched him tight until he drifted off to sleep.

He awoke at noon and Jessica was already up and gone. He arranged for the sale of his truck, but would have to wait until Monday when the credit union opened to get the money. He decided there was one more thing to do before he left town. He had to get back at Frances Cuzak, an attorney and federal public defender who had ticked him off. A short time before, he had met her son at a bar and gone with him to Frances’ home. He’d monopolized the telephone all evening until she’d told him she had calls to make. Her attitude deeply offended Sells. He planned to kill her on Sunday night.

His future settled, he walked up to the house of the friend he’d run into at the bar the night before. They drank whiskey and beer and shot up cocaine. He staggered home from Sonny’s at one point, but an angry Jessica threw his clean clothes out in the yard and told him not to come back until he sobered up. She slammed the door in his face and locked it. Sells returned to Sonny’s house.

AFTER Sells was inside Sonny’s place, the sheriff set up surveillance of the trailer where Sells lived. Not wanting to make him aware of their presence before they had a warrant, they stayed on the other side of the street. Ironically, Sells was not in his home, but at Sonny’s, on the same side of the street where the officer had set up to watch him.

Sells got busy working the phone. He made several threatening calls to his mother-in-law, Virginia Blanco. She reported these messages to the sheriff’s department. When asked by deputies if they should move in and take Sells now, Pope said, “Put the mother-in-law in a motel. Don’t park her car there, just put her in a motel. Make sure her car’s nowhere near that motel. Then she’s safe, forget it and just keep watching that trailer.”

Many hours later, he did return. Although he was still under the influence of drugs and alcohol, Jessica unlocked the door and let him in.

A deputy placed an urgent call to Pope soon after Sells’ arrival home. “Somebody screamed in the trailer, we want to go in.”

“No, no, don’t. Did you hear one scream?”

“Just one.”

“Well, one of two things happened. Somebody stubbed their toe and yelled, or somebody cut somebody’s throat, in which case you’re too late. You hear any more screams, then you can get in there. Just watch it—watch the trailer.”

Unaware of the concern outside, Sells went to bed and slept until the authorities arrived with an arrest warrant for capital murder.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

AFTER Sells was booked at the Val Verde Correctional Center, he sat down with Lieutenant Larry Pope and Texas Ranger Johnny Allen while the video camera rolled. Sells’ tough-guy demeanor softened considerably once that little red light went on.

Pope stated that the date and time was January 2, 2000, at 8:06:46 A.M.. “Okay, let’s introduce ourselves around here. I’m Larry Pope, Lieutenant with the Val Verde Sheriff’s Department, Criminal Investigations Division.”

“My name is Allen, John Allen with the Texas Rangers, stationed here in Del Rio.”