EDGAR CO.—The latest head-scratcher to emerge out of the deaths of a young couple in Paris in 1986 involves a well-known southern Illinois PI and a nutcase sitting on death row in Texas who has nothing better to do with his time than claim he committed America’s “unsolved murders.”
Tommy Lynn Sells, the aforementioned nutcase, was, without even being present in the courtroom to give testimony, pinned with killing
Julie Rea Kirkpatrick
Joel Kirkpatrick in Julie Rea Kirkpatrick’s second murder trial in 2006…one in which she was acquitted, after being convicted in 2002. Her ’02 conviction came upon the playing of a lengthy state police interview wherein her bizarre behavior and comments went a long way to proving the mental state of a woman able to kill her 10-year-old boy, over which she and her husband were embroiled in a custody battle that had reached the appellate court stage. When the defense—a bunch of screaming liberals out of the Chicagoland area—brought up Sells as the “one who really did it,” but of course had nothing but the word of a convicted killer who was largely whacked-out on drugs and mental problems (Sells), they created reasonable doubt. And a woman who was convicted of killing her child just a couple of years before, and got the case overturned and a new trial ordered on a tiny technicality, is now free.
Now, the investigator who worked the Rea case is on the Dyke and Karen Rhoads case.
Diane Fanning. Says she writes true crime. Actually writes fiction. Just doesn’t know it.
Tommy Lynn Sells, collector of information because everybody is looking for someone to blame.
And it looks like someone is up to his same old tactics.
The long and short of it is this: A pulp-level wannabe-true crime writer in Texas, Diane Fanning, wrote a simply awful book about Sells a few years ago. She gained access to Sells by writing to him frequently (can you say hug-a-thug? yes, that’s Fanning). Sells, being the grandiose pipsqueak that he is, was trying to claim to her that he was a serial killer, not just a sick pervert who killed two young girls in Texas before getting hemmed up for it and tossed into death row (in order to qualify as a “serial” killer, you have to kill in a…well…series, not just two opportunistic random murders). It so happened that Fanning, being one of these internet-searching crime-obsessed dingdongs who hang out on forums like WebSleuths and think they are solving crimes in other states from their home computers, knew about the Julie Rea issue, as well as a couple of other “unsolved” crimes here in Illinois, and ran those past Tommy Lynn. Sure enough, he knew allllllll about those. Because he did them, of course. Because he’s a big bad serial killer, a la Bundy/Dahmer/Gacy, etc.
Fanning wrote the book about Sells killing Joel Kirkpatrick, and of course the ABJ (Anybody But Julie) crowd in Lawrence County jumped on it, bringing the Fanning/Sells combo to the attention of the libwhack defense team, and viola! Acquittal in July 2006. Meaning nobody killed Joel Kirkpatrick. Because there’s not a shred of evidence to connect Sells to Joel’s murder, so no charges can be brought.
Same with the Rhoads deaths.
There is nothing real to make any connection between the Rhoads murders and Sells. There is no DNA. There is no one else who can definitively put him in Edgar County at that time, despite some wild story about him staying at a hotel under the name “Richard Smith.” There is precious little but the word of a proven nutcase who has gained a sort of infamy claiming to have murdered people in unsolved cases, thereby prompting poor folks who are desperate for answers (such as the Dardeen murders) to cling to his every misbegotten word….then in some cases, like in Julie Rea’s, send him ALL KINDS OF INFORMATION about the case in advance of him claiming he “did it”…now armed with details that he didn’t previously have. The problem isn’t just that Texas isn’t carefully monitoring his inmate mail, either (obviously they aren’t); it’s that privileged mail—media mail—is being claimed by unscrupulous people who are feeding him info, media people who are abusing their status as such, and are sometimes privy to inside information on such cases…and so Tommy Lynn comes away looking like he knows all because he committed the murders. And that’s simply not the case.
Randy Steidl
Herb Whitlock
Why Clutter did this now isn’t easy to understand. Herb Whitlock and Gordon Randy Steidl, the men accused and convicted of killing the Rhoads couple, have had their sentences overturned, have been released and they have been awarded, or are in the process of being awarded, huge settlements for wrongful conviction. Clutter lives up to his name; in his affidavit just turned over to Gov. Pat Quinn asking for clemency for Whitlock, he incorrectly calls the late former ISP investigator Jack Nolen “Sam Nolen,” refers to Sells’ ‘killing of Joel Kirkpatrick’ as if it’s already been tried, convicted and settled (it hasn’t been any one of them) and claims that various aspects of the Rhoads murder are Sells’ “modus operandi,” even though he only has been convicted of murdering two people, and both were murders of opportunity, which a person breaking into a home will tend to do—go for a knife in the kitchen if it’s readily available.
Nevertheless, here’s the originating story, on a TV station, of course, where it’s not explained at all why Clutter is involved in the matter nor why he issued the affidavit to Quinn, as Whitlock’s case has been nolle pros’d, and Steidl’s has too, with even his monetary litigation being over and done with. Might be for any federal proceedings that may come up, as Edgar County is pretty much on the hook for this mess thanks to their repugnant former prosecutor (something they excel in electing), but other than that….it’s unclear. Maybe Clutter’s just trying to jump on the Tommy Lynn Sells bandwagon, now that “nobody” killed Dyke and Karen Rhoads, too, like Joel Kirkpatrick…and Sells, being the attention wh0r3 he is, is trying to get as much of it as he can before tens of thousands of volts or a needle and syringe give us all a break from his useless @zz.