Ep. 136 | 3 Kidnapping Survivors Who Saved Themselves

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  In January 1992, a young real estate agent in England set out to show a house. And in the summer of 1995, a 13-year-old boy in Wisconsin fell asleep on his family's couch. And in the last days of 1999, a 10-year-old girl climbed into the top bunk at a friend's house in Texas. Within hours, each of them would be fighting to stay alive. And each of them would get away. But it would take everything they had. But not everyone in these stories would make it home. These are the stories of Stephanie Slater, Thad Phillips, and Crystal Searls. Crime, conspiracy, gulps, serial killers, and murder.

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  And that's nearly half the way to your first cash out before you've really even started. But I'm already on my phone playing games, so might as well get something back for it. Links at the top of the description and in the pinned comments. They get Free Cash for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel, and let's get back to it. Warren and Betty Slater were a working-class couple from Birmingham, a city in England's West Midlands. And their adopted daughter, Stephanie, was born in 1966. Stephanie had a good home life with them, and at 25 years old, she was still living under their roof. By then, the family's house was in Great Bar, a sprawling suburban district on Birmingham's northwest side. Now, it had been mostly countryside until the early 1900s and kept growing after World War II.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  But Stephanie was bright, sociable, and well-liked. And people described her as "the life of the party." So in December of 1991, she landed the job she'd been dreaming of. She joined Shipways as an estate agent, which is what the British call a "real estate agent." And she worked out of its Great Bar Ranch on Walsall Road. She would do really well at Shipwell's, winning over her coworkers and the branch manager, Kevin Watts. Stephanie said of her life back then, quote, "I had a boyfriend, a job, and a company car. I had loads of friends and a great social life," unquote. So by late January 1992, she'd been with Shipways for six weeks.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  On Wednesday, January 22, 1992, Stephanie's first appointment of the day was to show a house in Turnberry Road in Great Bar. And it was a winter morning, cold enough for frost. The house was a two-story semi-detached, meaning it shared one wall with the house next door. And it had been up for sale for several months at this point, and the heat was off. Now, the would-be buyer had booked the appointment by letter rather than calling the office, which was pretty unusual. He'd given his name as Mr. Southwall from Wakefield. Still, Stephanie had no reason to think twice, as this was all part of her job. So a short, middle-aged man with dark hair was waiting at the front door when she arrived.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  He didn't make much of an impression on her, except maybe the slight limp he walked with. So they went inside, and Stephanie began the tour. She recalled, quote, "He was looking around the house. I didn't think he was that interested, so I waited in one of the rooms. It was one of those mornings. You want to get back to the warm office and a cup of coffee," unquote. So to wrap things up faster, she suggested he go and look at the top floor. So with the tour finished, she started back down the stairs toward the door. Then, the man asked her, quote-unquote, "What's that up there?" To look, she had to go back up and pass him on the stairs. It was nothing but a wall hook. And at that moment, the man turned on her.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Stephanie said, quote, "He seemed to be flying through the air at me. His face was all contorted. There were flashes of silver in his hands. The flashes were weapons," unquote. He was carrying a knife and a chisel. She continued, quote, "I was in a fight with a grubby little man. I thought he was going to cut or rape me," unquote. So Stephanie fought him, bending the chisel and grabbing hold of the knife. And he ordered her to let go, then dragged the blade back through her hand. And the knife left shallow cuts in several places on her face. And she watched strands of her own hair fall where it had been sliced through. Then he leapt on her, seized her by the hair, and forced her down over the edge of the

• 8:09Speaker 02

  upstairs bathtub. She remembered, quote, "He said, 'If you move again, I'll slit your throat,'" unquote. So from the tub, she could see herself in a mirror mounted up high, and she understood how much danger she was in. He covered her eyes with a blindfold and looped a rope around her neck. Then he demanded her car keys, and at that point, Stephanie believed the car was all he was after. And he also added a pair of sunglasses on top of the blindfold, and he kept the knife pushed against her side. And she described, quote, "I'd gone into shock so much, I couldn't feel my legs," unquote. So he walked her out of the house and forced her into his own car, holding the knife at her throat as he got her secured inside. And then, he drove off with her.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  And at one point, he had her sit up, then took the gag out of her mouth, and he told her, quote, "I don't know if you realize it or not, but you've been kidnapped," unquote. But Stephanie told him her family had no money. He answered that her employer, Shipways, would be paying instead. He drove to Bescot Railway Station in Walsall, a town bordering Birmingham, and stopped on a vacant lot, where he made her record a message on tape. He then made a call from a payphone outside the station. From there, he drove her about 70 miles to Newark in Nottinghamshire. So blindfolded, she just tried to make sense of what she could during the trip, like the sounds of passing trains.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  And he waited until it was dark before bringing her in. So at about 6:00 PM, the car made its final stop, when he brought her into a grimy workshop. And inside the workshop, the man sat Stephanie down in a chair, handcuffed, and tied her upper body with a thick rope. Then he offered her a sandwich. She recalled, quote, "I thought you've done all this to me, and now..." You're offering me a bloody picnic? Unquote. And unfortunately, on the first night, he would sexually assault her. And she later said, quote, "This changed me, the rape, because I wasn't scared anymore. I wasn't frightened because I felt so dead inside. As a woman, he had done everything he could to me to hurt me. There's nothing else." Unquote. Then he put her in the box he'd built for her.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  It was a crude wooden coffin, sitting inside a trash can, lying on its side in one corner of the workshop. And with her wrists still cuffed, they were fastened to a bar above her head, with heavy bricks and rocks weighing the outside of the trash can down. She recounted, quote, "He said, 'If you pull your arms down to try to escape, the boulder will crush your skull in.'" Unquote. And he also slid something sharp up the leg of her pants, saying they were electrodes that would electrocute her if she moved. And her legs were tied too, and she was blindfolded and then gagged. And then he would padlock the lid of a trash can, which had a few small holes in it for air.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  So as the night wore on, Stephanie stopped caring whether she lived or died. By the next morning, however, the man seemed concerned about how she was doing, rubbing her arms where they'd gone numb. To Stephanie, it seemed like a glint of compassion, and she saw a chance to work on him. And for the next eight days, she would live in that box. And her only time out of the box was about an hour each day for meals and bathroom, and she stayed blindfolded the entire time. She was fed soup, porridge, and Kit Kat bars. But Stephanie used those breaks to talk to him. She told him about her family, her childhood, and her dreams, trying to make him see her

• 11:48Speaker 02

  as a person rather than an object. And the longer she kept him talking, the longer she stayed out of the box. And she admitted, quote, "Don't get me wrong, I was terrified every single time I spoke to him. I thought, 'I hope I don't say the wrong thing and make him angry.'" Unquote. And back inside the box, she kept herself calm by replaying old TV shows just inside of her head. During the day, the workshop was open for business, because the man ran a tool repair and rental shop there, and customers came and went, picking up and returning equipment just feet from where she lay. And even his wife stopped in to bring him lunch. Stephanie thought about screaming for help, but she believed he'd kill her if she did.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Quote, "One wrong move, and that was it." Unquote, she would say. So as she sat in the box, she could also hear trains going by and people working nearby. And each evening, he left her there and went home to have dinner with his wife, who obviously knew nothing about the truth of what her husband was up to. Back in Birmingham, Stephanie's coworkers had started to worry by lunchtime on that first day. The house viewing should have taken all but like half an hour at most. Kevin and Jane, her colleagues, drove past the house and saw her company car still parked outside, so they assumed she'd turn up at the office sooner or later. And then, at 12:22 PM, the receptionist picked up a call on the office line. The caller said, quote, "Stephanie's been kidnapped.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  A ransom demand will be in the post tomorrow. If you contact police, she will die." Kevin called his boss right away, and the two of them decided to go to the police anyway. West Midlands Police knew that publicity could get Stephanie killed, so Deputy Chief Constable Richard Adams gathered about 50 journalists in Birmingham and told them her only hope was a total news blackout. Quote, "If it is broken, a life may be forfeit." Unquote, he would warn them. And in exchange, he promised them full daily briefings. I love how he has to make a deal with the media because they're that much of scum of human beings. It's disgusting. But anyway, he would say, as long as nothing was published until Stephanie was free, he would give them those briefings.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  So the kidnapper expected his letter to reach shipways by 9:00 AM the next day. Instead, police would send a team to the Royal Mail Sorting Office in Birmingham, where they went through an estimated 2 million letters and found it on the day it was mailed. The letter demanded 175,000 euros and warned again that she'd die the moment police were brought in. It seemed to have been written ahead of time, and it didn't even say whether the hostage was a man or a woman.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Hello, have you got the money? Who is this, please? Never mind, have you got the money? For tomorrow? For tomorrow? Yeah. Have you got it? I'm getting it, yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  And tucked in with the letter was a cassette tape of Stephanie's voice. Quote, "This is Stephanie Slater. The time is 11:45. I can assure you I am okay and unharmed, providing these instructions are carried out. I will be released on Friday 31st, January." So police put listening devices on the Slater's home phone and on shipways' lines, and a family liaison officer stayed with Warren and Betty. And by that Sunday, the kidnapper had also called Warren and played him a recording of Stephanie. On it, Stephanie told her parents she was okay and that she loved them, and she asked them to take care of the cats at home. Now, police took the call as a sign that the blackout was working.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  So detectives immediately connected Stephanie's kidnapping to another case, because six months earlier, an 18-year-old from Leeds named Julie Dart had been kidnapped and held for ransom, but her body was later found in a field. Consequently, West Midlands Police brought in West Yorkshire Police, who had handled the Dart case, to work together on Stephanie's case. So shipways said yes to the ransom right from the start, and Kevin Watts, the branch manager, would be the one to hand it over. Now, the plan was to wire him with a microphone and have officers follow at a distance. And once the money was dropped, they'd trail the kidnapper back to wherever he was holding Stephanie and arrest him once they had secured her safely.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Now, the fog was so thick on the night of the drop that you could barely see five feet in front of you. And Kevin left the office carrying the money, panicking, and in his own words, quote-unquote, "extremely frightened." Now, unfortunately, the radio wire that police had fitted him with didn't work. The kidnapper sent him on a trail from one phone booth to the next, and it started with a call to Kevin where the man told him, quote, "You go to Glossop Station. The telephone box inside the entrance hall, only one, and you'll get a further message at 7 o'clock." And after that, some of the instructions came by phone and others were on handwritten notes taped under the shelves inside the booths themselves.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  So at about 9:00 PM, Kevin ended up on a narrow horse path near Ox Spring in South Yorkshire. And stuck in the ground were several signs reading, quote-unquote, "shipways," along with a traffic cone. And the note on the cone had his next orders: "Put the cash in a cloth bag, then set the bag on the tray the kidnapper had left on a nearby low wall." It promised that nobody would collect the cash until after he'd left. Now, in the dark and the fog, Kevin didn't realize the low wall was the edge of a bridge and that an old railway line ran 60 feet below it. The man was waiting down there with a fishing line running from the tray down to him, like

• 17:32Speaker 02

  a fucking troll under a bridge. Now, once the money was placed on it, one tug brought the cash over the side and he was gone. He dropped some of the money as he fled, but he escaped with the rest. And the officers running the operation had come in from across the region, so they didn't quite know the ins and outs of the local area the way the kidnapper did. But now, the man had the money, and he still had Stephanie. And in Newark, about 50 miles away, Stephanie had been locked in the box since 8:00 that morning. So this had been the longest stretch during a day she'd been in that box since she'd been put in that box. And he promised her he would be back by 9:30 that night, once he picked up the money.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  And when he didn't come, she became convinced she'd been left there to die, and she tried to smother herself with her blanket. Quote, "I tried to commit suicide that night because I was so frightened." Unquote, she would say. But at around 11:00 PM, he returned to the workshop, opened the padlock, and got her out of the box. Crying and hyperventilating, Stephanie collapsed into the arms of the man who had taken her. He said he'd take her home, though nothing gave her a reason to think he meant it. He just seemed sure he'd gotten away with it at this point. Now, just after 1:00 AM on January 30th, he pulled up in Great Bar, within walking distance of her parents' house.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  He got her out, helped her into her coat, and took away the blindfold. And he told her, quote, "Get back to your normal life as soon as possible. I'm really sorry it had to be you. Give me a kiss then." Unquote. Stephanie recalled, quote, "Then he said, 'Don't look back at the car. I fell out onto the pavement, and the door shut behind me, and he drove off at speed. When I opened my eyes, I was partially blind. The pressure of the blindfold for eight days and nights had damaged my eyes. All I could see were the swirling orange street lamps, and I could hardly walk." Unquote. Somehow, she made it home and rang the doorbell.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  She described, quote, "A guy opened the door, and I didn't recognize him. I thought I had come to the wrong house. It turned out, he was my mom and dad's family liaison officer. He had been there for eight days, but had never seen a photograph of me, so he didn't recognize me. Over his shoulder, my dad appeared and screamed, 'It's Steph- Stephanie, Stephanie's back, and he hauled me into the porch, unquote. But the officer wouldn't let her hug her mom and dad because she might be carrying evidence. She said, quote, "He pushed me to the back of the room, sat me in a chair and said, 'You stay there, don't touch the arms of the chair, you sit there and don't do anything.'" To a police officer, you are a walking crime scene, but I should never have been denied

• 20:23Speaker 02

  just a hold of a hand to know that I was home, unquote. Then, a police doctor had her undress in the family's living room, standing on a big sheet of brown paper. Her best friend, Stacy Ketner, said, quote, "There was no empathy. It was kind of right, next thing. They pulled some hair out without saying that it was going to happen," unquote. Within 12 hours of getting home, before any officer had formally interviewed her, Stephanie was facing the press. And she told reporters, quote, "It has been hard, but I am feeling a lot better now. I don't know how I kept going, I just tried not to think about what was happening to me," unquote. With Stephanie home, the news blackout was lifted, and the manhunt for the man who took her went public.

• 21:07Speaker 04

  The voice of the man who kidnapped Stephanie Slater. It's the voice of someone who may well have been involved in other major crimes, of course, including murder.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  On February 20th, 1992, police played the kidnappers' recorded calls with Kevin Watts on the BBC's Crime Watch, a national TV show that asks viewers to help solve crimes. And more than 1,100 calls came in, naming 35 suspects. One caller recognized the voice immediately. It was her ex-husband. His name was Michael Sams. Now, at first, Birmingham detectives ruled him out because of his disability. Cancer had cost him his leg. However, Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Taylor of West Yorkshire Police, who'd worked on the Julie Dart case, saw too much else that fit the profile and ordered the arrest.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  So the next morning, on February 21st, officers raided Sams' tool repair shop at 11:25, in a yard tucked behind the Swan and Salmon pub in Newark. Now, the yard was near the main rail lines, which explained the trains Stephanie had heard from inside the box for those eight days. Now, Sams had been born on August 11th, 1941, in Keighley, a town in West Yorkshire. And he'd left school, signed on with Merchant Navy at 20 years old, and later worked as an elevator engineer. And in 1965, he married Susan Oak, and they had two sons while he ran a heating business in Leeds. Now, she was the ex-wife who would one day recognize his voice on Crime Watch.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Now, Sams then started spending time with small-time crooks, and once authorities found out what he was up to, he ended up becoming a police informant. And in response to helping the police, his house was firebombed, and he hurt his leg jumping from an upstairs window, which is fucking crazy. Then in 1976, car theft and insurance fraud put him behind bars for nine months. And in prison, the pain in his leg became unbearable, but it took six months before doctors found that cancer had eaten away the bone above his right knee. Karma's a bitch, ain't it? Now, surgeons amputated the leg, and as a former athlete, Sams came out deeply bitter toward the law.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, Susan walked out on him for a police sergeant, and their marriage ended in a divorce in 1977. After prison, his business failed, and a second marriage to Jane Marks was over by 1981. And he married a third time to Tina Cooper, and around 1990, they moved to a cottage in Sutton-on-Trent, a village near Newark, right by a major rail line. Sams was a train enthusiast, and neighbors said he kept as many as 20 model railway layouts in the garage. He and Tina opened the tool repair and rental business in Newark, but by 1991, it was reportedly struggling. And that summer, Sams turned to kidnapping. Quite the escalation, if you ask me.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  And on July 9th, 1991, he drove into Chapel Town, the red light district of Leeds, and picked up 18-year-old Julie Dart. It was Julie's first night working there. She wanted to join the army, and she'd already gotten through its medical and entry tests, but she had debts to clear before she could sign up. Sams overpowered her in his car and took her to the Newark workshop, where he held her in the same box Stephanie would later be locked inside. Julie managed to get out of the box once while he left, but she wasn't able to get out of the room. And an alarm he wired to the box brought him back to the shop, and he restrained her once more, this time to a roof support.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  The next day, he forced her to write her mother and boyfriend, and the letter demanded 140 pounds from the police, or, quote-unquote, "The hostage would never be seen again." He never went through with collecting the money, and Sams later admitted he'd meant to kill Julie from the moment she got into his car. And he killed her with a hammer and kept her body at the workshop for days, and then left it in a field in Lincolnshire. The clinical psychologist Paul Britton, who advised the investigation, believes Sams chose Julie because she'd been an easy target and, quote-unquote, "good practice," and that killing her would make police take his demands seriously the next time when he kidnapped Stephanie.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Now, he went after British Rail, too, demanding 200,000 pounds, under threat of wrecking an express train. And to prove it, he hung a sandstone block off a bridge in Staffordshire. Now, his trial at Nottingham Crown Court began in June 1993, and he pleaded guilty to kidnapping Stephanie, but denied the murder charge and the British Rail demand. The court heard how he had disguised himself for the house viewing, with makeup, latex around his eyes, dyed hair, and glasses. Stephanie testified, describing how she'd tried to win him over so he'd find it harder to hurt her. Sams, meanwhile, claimed an unnamed friend had confessed to killing Julie after a kidnapping of the friend's own had gone wrong.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Now, the jury only needed three and a half hours to deliberate, and on July 8th, 1993, the jury convicted Sams of murdering Julie and kidnapping Stephanie. He was given four life sentences plus 10 years for four charges of blackmail to run at the same time. And within days, Sam asked to see Detective Chief Superintendent Taylor. And sitting across from Taylor at Full Sutton Prison in East Yorkshire, Sams confessed to killing Julie, calling her kidnapping a "dummy run" for the next one. Quote, "When I went out to kidnap Julie Dart, there was only one intention, and that was to kill her. There was no intention whatsoever to keep her alive," unquote. And he also described what he told Stephanie.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Quote, "I said she was going to be held kidnapped, and I was going to get some money for her release. She was frightened of me. She was terrified. She's the first person in my life that's ever been frightened of me," unquote. Just a sick fuck. Now, Taylor had a tape recorder hidden in his briefcase, and the recording stayed private for nearly 30 years, until it aired in a 2022 documentary. But prison didn't end Sams' violence. And in October of 1995, at Wakefield Prison, he assaulted a probation officer, Julia Flack, armed with a sharpened rod and a length of tape. And he was cleared of attempted murder, but convicted of false imprisonment, and he was sentenced to eight years.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  And from prison, he also denied ever raping Stephanie, claiming instead that they'd had an affair, and he sued her for libel, a case he obviously lost. Now, Sams has been held at prisons, including Wakefield, Full Sutton, and White More. And in June 2020, at 78 years old, he was refused parole as too dangerous to release. Thank God. And in April 2023, the parole board refused again and also turned down a move to an open prison. And in July 2026, at 84 years old, he was referred to the board for another review, and no hearing date has been set. And my hope for Sams is that he rots in prison like the dirty, disgusting rat that he is.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Now, before letting her go, Sams had told Stephanie to get back to her, quote, "normal life as soon as possible," unquote. And she tried to do just that, going back to her job at Shipways. However, within three days, she quit after a series of panic attacks. She and her boyfriend broke up as well. And after Sams was sentenced, she reflected, saying, quote, "The old me died in the coffin that bastard locked me in. When I wake up in the morning, I see a stranger. My face is the same, my shape is the same, my clothes are the same, but I'm not there behind my eyes," unquote. Now, she never received any counseling that we know of, so she and her family were left to deal with what happened on their own.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  And in 1993, she moved to the Isle of Wight, an island off England's south coast, and her best friend Stacy moved there with her. And for a while, Stephanie was "broken," in her own words, and struggled to put a new life together. Hoping for a fresh start, she even changed her name to Phoenix Rhiannon. And in time, she opened a gift shop on the island. And she once admitted, quote, "I was famous for something I didn't want to be famous for. It was very daunting and frightening. People recognized me in the streets. Everyone knew my name. I hated it," unquote. And then a chance introduction to a police officer gave her a new purpose. And Stacy recalled, quote, "He was like, 'Oh, gosh, it would have been so interesting during training to talk to someone or hear about this from someone.'"

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Who has experienced this unquote. And he asked if she'd be willing to talk to a group of trainees. And she said, yes. And within months, that had grown into presentations and seminars about the way crime victims get treated. And Tanya Bridgman, formerly of the Association of Chief Police Officers, remembered the sessions, saying, quote, "The whole room, you could have just dropped a pin in the whole time." She presented the effect of the investigation afterwards and how really that was the thing that took the longest to get over, unquote. Stephanie called the work, quote, unquote, "The counseling I never had." And in 1995, she published her own account of what happened called, "Beyond Fear: My Will to Survive."

• 30:43Speaker 02

  And in it, she publicly disclosed for the first time that Sams had raped her. And she explained, quote, "I wrote the book for women who are in danger, and I'm trying to speak out for women who are taken by maniacs like Sams," unquote. And when Channel 5 first went on the air in 1997, a dramatization of the book was part of its first night with Gina McKee as Stephanie. And Keith Wilkinson, as ITV reporter, who made a documentary with her and became her friend, said she, quote, "could sometimes be hysterically funny," unquote. But he also said, quote, "Stephanie never got over what she went through. She suffered with terrible nightmares, great trauma. She lived in fear that one day Sams would be released on parole.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  She had a lot of backache and blamed this on the awful pains she felt during her abduction," unquote. And in 2011, she said of Sams, quote, "He took everything and destroyed the next 20 years of my life. Now I am ready to begin again. Most people begin their lives in their 20s or 30s, but those years of my life were destroyed," unquote. And on her personal life, she shared, quote, "I'm still hopeful of meeting someone special, someone loving and caring with a good sense of humor who can make me laugh. I'd love to get married one day, but I've had such a strange life," unquote. And in time, she went back to the name Stephanie Slater, explaining, quote, "I ran away from my name, Steph, for a long time.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  I ran headlong away from it because of everything it was attached to. This time round, I'm proud of what she's done, and I'm proud of what she's survived. I've embraced it again," unquote. Unfortunately, Stephanie would pass away on August 31st, 2017, only 11 days after she was diagnosed, and she was only 50 years old. And Stacy posted on Twitter, saying, quote, "It took him 25 years, but Michael Sams finally killed my best friend Stephanie Slater. I am heartbroken," unquote. Stephanie and Stacy had a 1966 VW camper of their own, and they loved taking it out for drives around the island. In tribute, a silver VW camper carried her coffin at her funeral on the Isle of Wight,

• 32:55Speaker 02

  where mourners travel to attend. And Stacy believes that Stephanie's conversations with Sams, which bought her time out of the box, may be why she survived. Quote, "The strength of that girl saved her own life," unquote.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Let's take a quick pause to talk about something that's really annoying. And that is that if you've tried to quit vaping or smoking and just keep ending up right back where you start, it can be really frustrating. But I have a solution, and that solution is Fume.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Thank you so much to Fume for sponsoring this video. So here's the thing, your willpower isn't always the problem. The way you're trying to quit is. Patches and gum go after the nicotine, but leave you hooked on it. And cold turkey means white knuckling every craving. Because vaping isn't just a nicotine problem, it's a habit problem. The hand-to-mouth motion, the stress break, the thing that you reach for without even thinking about it. And that's why Fume works. I know several people that have actually quit smoking or vaping because of Fume. And for me, it's just like a hand-to-mouth thing. I've not been a vapor or a smoker, but I really like the fresh minty taste that my Fume has. And you can also kind of chew on the end of it. It's kind of just a nice little fidget toy. So it's not just for people trying to quit.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Because it's a flavored air device made from real wood and metal, so there's no nicotine, no vapor, and no batteries. Third-party surveys rated it twice as effective as other quitting solutions. And when I got my first one, I expected it to be kind of a gimmick. But what I got is something I could fidget with all day long. And the mint just left my brain fresh with a little throat hit. Now, it's not as strong as a vape, and that's kind of the point, right? And over a million people have already chosen Fume. So head to tryfum.com/CCCM. That's T-R-Y-F-U-M dot com slash C-C-C-M. And use code C-C-C-M at checkout for a free silicone topper. Addiction is really good at saying later, but you need to quit now. So go try Fume.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Thank you so much to Fume for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel, and let's get back to it. On July 14th, 1995, Thaddeus, or Thad Phillips, and his family moved to Baraboo, Wisconsin. The small city of Baraboo is the administrative center of Sauk County, set in hilly country along the Baraboo River, about 35 miles northwest of Madison, the state capital. Now, the town is best known for the circus. And the five Ringling Brothers started their circus there in 1884, and it spent its winters in Baraboo until 1918. And other circuses settled there too, which earned Baraboo the nickname Circus City. And today, it's home to the Circus World Museum.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Now, Thad was 13 years old, the oldest of four kids, with a younger sister and a younger brother among them. And his parents were Connie and Donald Phillips. And people described Thad as very intelligent and, quote, unquote, "cheerfully cocky." He was into models, baseball cards, and football cards. He was also a baseball player. He was small, but he was fast and he was tough. And before the move, he'd been a standout third baseman for a Little League team called the Merrimack Flames. He was getting too old for Little League now, but soon after the family arrived, a local team called Baraboo White took him on as a pitcher. The Phillips family went out to dinner together on Friday, July 28th, 1995. Back home, they put on a movie, and eventually Thad's parents went to bed.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Now, Thad and his younger sister stayed on the couch in front of the TV, where both of them just dozed off. Believing their new town to be safer than most, the family hadn't locked the front door. It's a much different time. And sometime in the night, Thad half-woke to find someone carrying him. He recalled, quote, "And I opened up my eyes a little bit, and I'm being carried through the, my den in our new house. And it's nothing really new to me because my mom and dad carried me to bed when I'd fallen asleep before," unquote. But whoever had him didn't stop at his bedroom, and instead carried him right out of the house. Outside, Thad came around to find a teenager standing with him, older and much bigger

• 37:10Speaker 02

  than he was, someone he had never met before. The teenager said he needed help with his car. Still groggy, Thad figured he was a family friend with car trouble. Thad asked where it was, and the teenager said, "Just over the hill." The teenager appeared to be friendly, so Thad went along with him. And he later explained, quote, "It was dark. I didn't really know what was going on. I just moved there. I wasn't scared. I didn't know I should be scared," unquote. And they ended up at a rundown house about half a mile from Phillips' home. And the teenager said he and his brother lived there. And inside, the place was filthy, with trash, old food, and dirty dishes everywhere. And the teenager introduced himself as Joe.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  And Joe told Thad he was throwing a party, naming kids from school and around the neighborhood that Thad actually knew, and said they'd be all over really soon. And then he asked whether Thad wanted to go up to his room and see his model cars and trucks, and Thad followed him up because he loved that stuff. And looking back, he said, quote, "He was being the nicest guy in the world, talking about models and baseball cards and football cards. We were sitting on his bed, he was sitting next to me, and just all of a sudden, he stood up," unquote. And in an instant, Joe went from friendly to enraged, pushing Thad onto a bed where he twisted and broke Thad's ankle.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Then Joe stepped back, covering his face with his hands and mumbling to himself. And Thad seized the moment and ran for the stairs, but he couldn't move too quickly on a broken ankle. And Joe caught him in the kitchen and dragged him back to the living room. And there, Joe broke Thad's thigh and hip, and the pain knocked him out. Because those are some of the most painful bone breaks human beings can withstand. And when Thad came to, Joe was sitting beside him, relaxed and kind once more. Now, over nearly two days that followed, it went on just like that. Violence followed by calm. Thad asked him why he'd do something like this, and he recalled, quote, "He said he

• 39:20Speaker 02

  was fascinated with the sound of breaking bones," unquote. Now, that night, Joe stretched out on the couch and told Thad to get some sleep. And once Joe was asleep, Thad looked around for a weapon, but all he could find was trash, moldy food, and dirty clothes. His one try at getting up made his whole body shake with pain, and he lay awake until morning. Thad said, quote, "A little bit of me maybe thought that maybe he was gonna let me go the next morning, but that was never his intention. I was pretty much aware that there was people like that in the world, but I didn't think they'd live half a mile away from me," unquote. In the morning, Thad asked to call his parents and Joe agreed, actually.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Thad dialed home, but the line stayed silent while Joe giggled in the corner of the room because Joe had cut the cord before he ever gave the phone to him. So Thad attempted to befriend him in hopes that Joe wouldn't want to hurt him anymore if they became friends. And he explained further, quote, "I was just hoping to hear a knock on the door and it'd be my dad at the door, but that never happened," unquote. Half a mile away, the Phillips family had been searching for Thad since early that morning. Donald had woken up around 4:00 a.m. to find only his daughter asleep on the couch and there were no signs anyone had broken in. And the only thing at a place was the kitchen light still on.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  And with a fair happening that weekend, the family wondered if Thad had gone off with friends, maybe? So they searched the town themselves, from the river to the fairgrounds. But Donald later admitted, quote, "I just never thought to check house to house because we didn't know any of the neighbors very close. So if I would've, I would've probably found him before he was hurt as bad as he was," unquote. And back at Joe's house, after a couple of hours of TV, Joe turned on Thad again, carried him upstairs and did the same thing to his left leg. Thad actually fought back and he would say, quote, "I punched him in the back and he turned around and put a pillow over my face and told me that if I didn't stop fighting, he's gonna break my back or my neck," unquote.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  And then Joe began patching Thad up, wrapping his leg in elastic bandages and strapping a pair of leg braces on him. Thad described, quote, "He had socks and he put layers and layers of socks on my feet and it had to be just perfect, every single sock," unquote. Now that Saturday evening, the second day, Joe got ready to go out. Thad heard him downstairs talking to someone who never answered. Thad realized there had to be a working phone down there, that he had to be talking on the phone. So before he left, Joe made sure Thad wouldn't follow, saying, quote, "He busted me up pretty good so that I wouldn't try to leave," unquote. But once the house went quiet, though, Thad crawled off the bed and made it over to the stairs.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  And sliding down was too painful, so he threw himself down the stairs, doing everything he could to drag himself along. Quote, "And this took, I don't know how many hours it took, but I kept passing in and out, in and out. And I got almost to the kitchen doorway right before it. And then he came in with his girlfriend," unquote. Thad lay there without a sound until she left and then Joe found him. And the next morning, the Phillips family went to the county police and filed a missing persons report. Back at Joe's house, meanwhile, Joe made Thad pay for trying to get away.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  And Thad recalled, quote, "He's really trying to do some damage now because of what I did the night before. I almost got away. I asked him if he'd done this to anybody else and he said, 'Yeah,'" unquote. Joe then went on to name two other victims. Joe was expecting his girlfriend back and Thad used that to buy rest time in between beatings, quote, "And I'd say, 'Oh, I hear, I can hear something, I can hear something.' He'd jump up, he'd go run over to another window and go look out. Oh, she wasn't there," unquote. But when she really did pull into the driveway, Joe would just put Thad into a closet. So Joe went out after her arrival, leaving Thad shut inside that closet.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  And an hour or so in, Thad's legs were hurting worse by the minute. Thad would say, quote, "I wanted to get out of the closet to get back down the stairs to the phone," unquote. So digging through the junk piled around him in the dark, he came across an old electric guitar. He smashed a panel out of the door with it and managed to get the door unlocked. And he remembered, quote, "First thing that went through my head was, 'Oh, you busted the door. No hesitation about making a break for it,'" unquote. And then he went down the stairs the same way he had the night before, throwing himself from the top. And from there, he dragged himself toward the kitchen. Quote, "Moved myself a foot, pass out.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Moved myself a foot, pass out. Finally, I'm into the kitchen," unquote. The kitchen phone had a long, winding cord that hung low. And Thad jiggled it hard until the receiver came down to him. And then he dialed 911 and told the dispatcher, quote, "Help, someone kidnapped me." And calmly, he explained that he was trapped in a house with both of his legs broken. The dispatcher traced the call and officers were at the house within a couple of minutes, thankfully.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  And inside, they found Thad on the floor of the kitchen. Blood had been pooling inside his broken legs.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  And in the ambulance, he learned that without treatment, the bleeding would have killed him within about two hours. And Donald and Connie rushed to meet him at the hospital. And almost right away, Thad told them he hadn't been Joe's first victim. And out of the names Joe had given him, one had partly stuck. Quote, "I think I remembered it was Chris and it started with an S. So me and my dad were flipping through the phone book and he's reading off all the S last names and he said Steiner," unquote. And I said, "Yep, that's it. That's the one." Now, Chris Steiner was a 14-year-old from Baraboo who had gone missing from his home

• 45:58Speaker 02

  about a year earlier and whose body turned up days later in the Wisconsin River. Joe hadn't been at the house when police arrived, but they arrested him later that same night. His name was Joseph Clark and he was 17 years old. Now, Joseph Clark lived with his parents, Ron and Bertha, in the house half a mile from the Phillips home. In the weekend Thad was taken, they were away in Portage, visiting their daughter. And Joe had the house to himself. And in May 1993, a motorcycle accident had thrown Clark 30 to 40 feet and he landed on his head. And his father thought it may have caused him to snap and said he'd been hot-tempered ever since.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  And he'd also gotten in trouble at school punching another student and threatening to kill a teacher. And early on July 4th, 1994, Chris Steiner's bed was empty when his parents came to get him up for work at his new job. Someone had sliced open a window screen and there were muddy footprints on the carpets. And once his body was found, his death was treated as an accident. Clark was among the few people investigators questioned, but his mother said he'd been home in bed that night. And Chris's mother, Kathy, suspected him from the start, pointing out that Clark had been the last person to speak with her son that night. And kids at Baraboo High taunted Clark that he'd done it and his parents took him out of school before he could finish his senior year.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  And a year later, questioned after his arrest, Clark admitted taking Thad, but claimed he'd only wanted to "hang out" and had no memory of the injuries because he'd, quote-unquote, "kind of blacked out." Meanwhile, Thad's statements sent investigators back to Chris and they exhumed his body. And this time, it was x-rayed. His legs had been broken as well. In Clark's home, police found three lists of local boys' names and phone numbers, featuring headings saying "Get to Now," "Can Wait," and "Leg Thing." And Clark had told Thad about two boys before him, but the second one was never identified. And a judge decided Clark should be tried as an adult.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  And on September 7th, 1995, he was charged with eight crimes. And in September 1996, Clark stopped fighting the charges themselves and pleaded no contest to five of them. But he paired that with an insanity plea, so that left a jury to decide only whether he'd been mentally responsible. And his defense leaned on the head injury, but none of the four psychologists who'd examined him would support a diminished capacity defense. So Thad took the stand and told the jury what had happened in the house. And forensic psychiatrist Patrick Dietz testified that Clark was a sadist who was faking his amnesia. And the jury only took about an hour to deliberate and find him responsible.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  And the judge gave him 100 years. Less than a week after that verdict, the Columbia County District Attorney said he'd charged Clark with murdering Chris. And at the trial in November 1997, Thad testified again. And a surgeon compared his injuries with Chris's. And Clark's parents told the jury he'd been asleep at home the night Chris vanished. But the prosecutor confronted his mother with evidence of the heavy drinking in the house. And jurors convicted Clark on all three counts of first-degree homicide, mayhem, and causing great bodily harm to a child. And the judge gave him life with no chance of parole for 60 years and added 40 more years for the mayhem to be served consecutively.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  Before the sentence came down, Clark told the judge he'd done nothing wrong and that the court was sentencing an innocent person. Yeah, fucking right. Now, Clark appealed in Thad's case, arguing that the mayhem charge required permanent damage done to the victim. And in 1998, the Court of Appeals rejected that, thankfully, writing, quote, "Permanency of injury is not a statutory..." requirement, unquote. His appeal in Chris's case was turned down the following year, and he has maintained his innocence in Chris's murder, and he remains in prison today. Now Thad needed several surgeries spread across years to rebuild his legs and hips, and he had to learn how to walk again. In October of 1996,

• 50:21Speaker 02

  a few days before Clark's first hearing in Chris's case, a 15-year-old boy shot Thad twice in the back. And accounts differ on why. Some say the shooter was a friend of Clark's, while others describe a fight between the two boys. The hearing was delayed, and Thad luckily recovered within about a month. In October of 1997, a judge ordered Clark to pay Thad $21 million in damages. And Clark had no money, but Judge Virginia Wolf explained her reasoning, saying, quote, "Given the sensational nature of this case, it is entirely possible that the defendant could reap some financial gain through media coverage in the future." Now by 2023,

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Thad said he still hadn't seen a dime of it. And that year, after hearing his story, a local couple, Olga Johnson and her husband, set up a GoFundMe for him with his permission. Johnson said, quote, "He saved the community, and I wanted to say thank you to Thad. He brought peace to Chris's family." And so far, it has raised more than $40,000 toward a $100,000 goal. And this podcast, myself, has made a donation to this GoFundMe, and I will absolutely link that down below if you could spare anything toward Thad's recovery. Now Thad has told his story publicly in TV interviews and on the series I Survived. And now in his 40s, he has children of his own

• 51:48Speaker 02

  and a slight limp that never left him.

• 51:50Speaker 05

  I survived because I wanted to be with my family. I didn't want to leave my family, and I know they wouldn't want to lose me.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Let's take a quick pause to talk about my favorite season. October is one of my favorite months, all right? I love the Halloween decorations, the crisp fall air, and just wearing sweaters. So the last thing I want is to spend it in bed because I couldn't get in to see anyone, which has happened in the past. Last year, I had this awful cold that I just kept thinking was going to go away, but it lasted for months. And I went through the rigmarole of calling different doctors after so long, and then it taking way too long to get in. So I was like, I'm not even going to bother going in. But then I found Zocdoc. Thank you to Zocdoc for sponsoring this video. Now Zocdoc is a free app and website

• 52:40Speaker 02

  where I can search and compare local in-network doctors. I read reviews from real patients, look at detailed profiles, and pick the one that fits me. And then I see actual appointment openings and book instantly. And most happen within 24 to 72 hours, or even on the same day. So there's no voicemails, and there's no three-week wait. But your health matters, and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. So if you're ready to be seen, you can head to zocdoc.com/CCCM and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's z-o-c-d-o-c.com/CCCM. Thank you so much to Zocdoc for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel, and let's get back to it.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  In December of 1999, Crystal Searls was 10 years old, the oldest of Pam and Mark Searls' three daughters. Her younger sisters were Mark and Amber. Now by the mid-1990s, both of her parents were using drugs, fighting badly, and getting into trouble with the law. Pam wanted out of the situation, so she filed for divorce, moved away, and got clean, leaving the girls with Mark. From an early age, Crystal was the one who kept the house running. Mark recalled, quote, "Crystal was amazing. She just, from age six, seven, she was the mom. She took care of everybody." And Crystal described, quote, "My dad would sleep for days at times,

• 54:04Speaker 02

  and I had to take care of my little sisters. I say it as a joke, but it's true. I was the stinky kid in class. I mean, I was late to school every day." Now, once Pam was sober, she came back for the girls. Mark kept using and dealing, and by the end of 1999, he was in jail. And Crystal stayed angry at her father for a long time and refused his phone calls. Mark, who was seven that winter, thought her big sister was "kind of bossy," her words, and they didn't get along super well. But she also said of Crystal, quote, "She was the backbone in our family for a really long time. She was the strong one, and she was little." Now Pam and the girls had been living in Kansas,

• 54:47Speaker 02

  but she decided to move the family to Del Rio, Texas. Del Rio was a laid-back border town, about 30,000 people on the Rio Grande. And old friends of hers from Kansas, Terry and Crystal Harris, had moved there in 1995, and the Searlses now headed down to start a new life. So that December, she brought Crystal and Mark down and left them with the Harrises while she went back to Kansas for the family's belongings. And the youngest, Amber, was still in Kansas. Now, the Harrises lived in a trailer outside town in an area called Guajia Bay. And Mark described the place as, quote, "They lived kind of out in the desert, like there wasn't a lot of people close to them. It was off in the middle of nowhere."

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Now Kayleen, who went by Katie, was the 13-year-old daughter of Terry and Crystal Harris. Now Katie lived at home with her brother Justin, who was 14 years old and blind, and her sister Lori, who was 12. And she also had an older brother, Sean. The family attended Grace Community Church in Del Rio. And at school, Katie was popular, and the other students liked her. So at around 6:00 PM on December 30th, Pam and her boyfriend Doug Luker started the trip back to Kansas, and Terry Harris went along with them. So that left Crystal at home with Justin, Lori, and Katie, along with Crystal and Mark. Now Crystal and Katie shared a room with a bunk bed, with Katie on the bottom and Crystal on the top.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  And Mark wanted to sleep on the floor beside them, but they didn't want her in there, so she ended up in a room across the hall. And she recalled, quote, "When I couldn't sleep in the room, I was so mad. I remember I just laid in bed for like two hours just fuming." So Crystal and Katie didn't go to bed until pretty late. But a man would come to the trailer that night, a man that the Harrises knew. He'd met Terry and Crystal at their church, and he'd been out to the trailer several times to talk to Terry about trouble in his marriage and at work. And on the way out of town that evening, Terry had run into him at a convenience store where the man asked about the luggage Terry had in his truck. And Terry said he, quote, "Was taking a short trip up north and would be back soon."

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Now this let the man know that Terry wouldn't be home. Later that night, the man went to Larry's Lakeside Tavern, a bar close to where he lived. And he kept pressing the bartender for sex until another customer made him leave around closing time at 2:00 AM. And at around 4:30 that morning, he got into the Harris trailer through a window that had been left open. Now the window let him into Justin's room. Justin couldn't see him. And thinking it was just his sisters playing around, he called out, "Well, y'all stop coming into my room." So the man moved on, using a cigarette lighter to see. Passed Mark asleep in one room, and the other Crystal and Lori asleep in the other. And in a fourth bedroom, he found Katie on the bottom bunk.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  And he never noticed Crystal sleeping above her. And he laid down beside Katie and began to sexually assault her. Katie woke up, broke free, and screamed to Crystal, "Go get mama." The man switched on the light and put himself between Katie and the door. And the scream woke Crystal. Quote, "I was on the top bunk of the bed and just popped my head up a little bit, and I was looking around. I never sat up fully or anything, but the light was on, so I could see. He had scruffy hair, long, dark curly hair, and a big, scary, long, bushy beard that, you know, just took over his whole face. And then his eyes were just dark and mean." Now he was holding a butcher knife to Katie's throat

• 58:29Speaker 02

  with his other hand over her mouth. And Crystal described, quote, "She was struggling, and she told me with her eyes to stay there and not to move. So I did. I lay there, but I could still see. He took the knife and slit her throat. She just fell." And in all, he stabbed Katie 16 times. And at this point, the man still hadn't seen Crystal, and he was about to leave. And she remembered, quote, "He opened the door, almost had the light off, looked one last time, and, and he saw me looking at him." And Crystal begged him, telling him she'd stay quiet and that it was Katie making the noise. She tried to slide away from him to the far side of the bed,

• 59:14Speaker 02

  but the man never said a word. And she said, quote, "He just reached over and cut my throat." Now Crystal didn't move or make a sound. And she said later, quote, "I just laid there and pretended I was dead. If he knew I was alive, he would have come back and killed me for sure." And the man turned the light off, and Crystal heard the door close behind him. And soon after, she heard a car engine start, and then it pulled away. And the knife had gone through her windpipe, leaving her unable to speak and into the sheath around her carotid artery. Any deeper, and she would have bled to death very quickly. In the dark, Crystal got down on her hands and knees and crawled across the bedroom floor until she found Katie. And Crystal described, quote,

• 59:59Speaker 02

  "She was kind of making..." making a gasping noise, or maybe she was choking. But then I was trying to comfort her. I laid next to her, rubbing her back. And that's when I realized I couldn't talk. Because all I wanted to say was, everything's gonna be okay. Everything's gonna be okay. But I couldn't. And then, I mean, as soon as she stopped making those noises, I had this feeling, you know, get out of here, get up, come on, go, don't lay here, go, unquote. And believing everyone else in the trailer was dead, Crystal held her throat with one hand and made her way outside. It was dark, and she was in her pajamas with no shoes on. And off in the distance, she could see a light, and she made it her goal to reach it.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  And Crystal walked slowly toward the light, and it turned out to be a house a quarter mile away along the dark road. Now Herb Betts, who'd retired from the military, was already up inside with his alarm set early so he could watch the new millennium arrive in Australia on TV. And he heard a knock on the door, and there was a little girl standing on his porch when he checked the peephole. And he opened up to find her covered in blood, pointing at her throat. And he recalled, quote, unquote, "Her little eyes were saying to me, 'Help me.'" And a few minutes after 5:00 AM, Betts called 911 to report that a little girl's throat had been cut. And Crystal still couldn't speak at this point,

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  so she asked for something to write with and wrote three notes. One of them was, "The Harrises are hurt." And the other two were, "Tell them to hurry, will I live?" Crystal started going into shock, lying on the floor. And Betts remembered, quote, "I kissed her on her forehead and told her several times she'd be all right. I didn't believe it. I thought she'd die on my kitchen floor." unquote.

• 1:01:49Speaker 06

  What is your emergency?

• 1:01:50Speaker 07

  I have a little girl just rang my doorbell.

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  And back at the trailer, help arrived to find Katie deceased. And no one else was hurt. And there was nothing missing but two window screens. And Crystal had slept through the whole ordeal and woke up to a home full of police. And across the hall from the girls' room, Mark woke to find a stranger in her room who handed her some clothes and told her they had to go. And just outside her door, Mark found a trail of blood that led out of the house and down the front steps. Quote, "It looked like somebody was stumbling, was holding on to things." unquote. So paramedics took Crystal to the hospital in Del Rio. And close to 6:00 AM, the emergency room reached Pam by phone, asking her for permission to fly Crystal to San Antonio.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  And Pam told them, absolutely, life flight her. So at the University Hospital in San Antonio, surgeons spent hours repairing the damage to her windpipe and vocal cords. And Pam recalled, quote, "When I got in her room, I saw this little girl with all of these tubes. And one of the machines was breathing for her. She looked like this baby in this humongous bed. And then she kept asking me, 'Is Katie okay? Is Katie okay?'" And I couldn't tell her, I couldn't tell her anything." unquote. So from the hospital bed, still unable to speak, Crystal wrote down what the man looked like. And a forensic artist drew a sketch from the description. And she said, quote, "I couldn't get the picture out of my head. And it amazes me how good that they sketched it

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  compared to how he really looked at the time, because it was so perfect." unquote. So Terry, Pam, and Doug Luker had turned straight back for Texas when they heard the news while on the road. And to Luker, the sketch looked like the man they'd run into their way out of town. A used car salesman, whose first name, he thought, was Tom or Tommy. And Texas Ranger Johnny Allen tracked down the full name through the owner of the car lot and brought Crystal a lineup of six photos. And Allen recalled, quote, "And Crystal took her right index finger and put it on the photograph of Tommy Lynn Sells." unquote. So at around 5:30 on the morning of Sunday, January 2, officers reached Sells' trailer in Del Rio.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  And Allen says Sells met them near the doorway with, quote, "I'm glad I finally got caught. I was tired of doing this." unquote. And he told police he was about to leave town as soon as he got the money for a car he'd sold. And on the ride into town, Sells told Lieutenant Larry Pope, quote, "Well, I guess we've got a lot to talk about." unquote. And that same day, he confessed to killing Katie and attacking Crystal. And then walked investigators through the trailer on video. And he'd taken the two window screens, worried they'd held his fingerprints, and dumped them with a knife on his way home. And the knife was found in the bush past his house, right where he told police it would be.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  Later, of Crystal, he told police, quote, unquote, "I thought I killed her too." So Sells was the son of a single mother of seven. And he was born on June 28, 1964, in Oakland, California. His twin sister died of spinal meningitis when they were toddlers. And he had it too, but he lived, unfortunately. And then the family later settled in St. Louis, and Sells hinted at being sexually abused as a boy, without ever saying anymore. And by 13 or 14 years old, he'd left home for good, stopping his education at the eighth grade. And for some 20 years after that, he drifted around the country, riding freight trains, stealing cars, drinking, doing drugs, and doing time in prison. And in 1992, in West Virginia,

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  he attacked a 19-year-old woman, Fabian Witherspoon, who'd brought him home for a meal after seeing him holed up in "I Will Work For Food" sign. And she fought back and stabbed him. And like Crystal, she luckily lived. Sells went to prison for malicious wounding after accepting a plea bargain and was released in May 1997. And then in early 1998, a traveling carnival brought him to Del Rio. And he stayed on after it left, settling down with a local woman and her four children and selling cars. So in the county jail after his arrest, Sells spent months describing killings across the country to police. He claimed as many as 70 people and called himself coast to coast.

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  And in a 2010 interview with ABC News, he said, quote, "I am hatred. When you look at me, you look at hate." unquote. And at his trial in September 2000, Sells pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of Crystal. And it took the jury 70 minutes to convict him of Katie's murder. And after a separate punishment hearing, they sentenced him to death. And in 2003, Sells pleaded guilty to the April 1999 murder of Mary B. Perez, a nine-year-old taken from a festival in San Antonio and was given life. And that same year, his confession to the 1997 stabbing of 10-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick in Illinois cleared Joel's mother, Julie Rhea Harper, who had been wrongly convicted of killing him.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  And he also confessed to killing a family of four in Ina, Illinois, in 1987. But he was never charged. And investigators still disagree over whether his account is true. Because some of his confessions were proven false, and many were just never confirmed. And years later, Ranger Allen said, quote, "We did confirm 22. I know there's more. I know there's a lot more. Obviously, we won't ever know." unquote. And once his appeals ran out, Texas executed Sells by lethal injection in Huntsville on April 3, 2014, at the age of 49. And he declined to say any last words. And with a minute of the drug starting, he stopped moving.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  And at 6:27 PM, he was declared dead. And Crystal actually watched it happen, along with Katie's father and brother and relatives of Mary B. Perez. And Crystal later told reporters, quote, "It hurt and all, but I think that Katie, she helped me through with everything. Her soul came up and like, stayed with me." unquote. And her father, Mark, had been in jail for about three months when his mother and sister came to visit and told him what had happened. And he recalled, quote, "It's probably a good thing I was locked up, because I'd have killed that son of a bitch." unquote. And Crystal went back to Kansas with a five-inch scar across her throat. And for about two years, she slept in one bed with her mother and her two sisters.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  She'd often still be awake at 5:00 in the morning. And while the others slept, she would reach over and feel them, just to be sure they were still breathing. Nine months after that attack, Crystal, now 11 years old, returned to Texas to testify.

• 1:08:48Speaker 06

  I put my, my thoughts towards Katie. I just had such a mindset that this is what I wanted to do and this is what I had to do. This is for Katie. She deserves this.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  She was offered a way into the courtroom that didn't walk her past Sells, but turned it down. And she's, she's 11 years old. They said, "Do you want to walk by him? You could either walk by him or just walk through the door and..." Get on the stand and I said, "I want to walk by him. I'm not scared of him." But when she made it to the stand, having to point him out from there was too much, and she understandably broke down. So the court took a 15-minute recess. And then she went back out and finished, walking in front of the jury to show them her scar and lying on a table to show how she'd lifted her head from the top bunk. Victor Garcia, Sells's defense attorney, had only one thing to say to her,

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  "You're a brave young woman. Thank you. No more questions." And once the jury had returned its guilty verdict, Crystal said, "I wanted to be here to see him get what he deserved. Now, maybe I can sleep at night without nightmares." She and Pam went straight across the room to Terry and Crystal Harris, and Terry, sobbing, wrapped Crystal in a bear hug, unable to say anything. And later, he said, "If Kayleen's purpose on Earth was to get a murderer like this off the street, that's God's will." Crystal believed the death sentence was deserved, but it took her a long time to come to that. "I've never been the type of person to feel good about something so bad."

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Unable to keep living where Katie had been killed, the Harrises moved back to Kansas. Katie is still remembered by those close to her. And 10 years on, Ranger Johnny Allen still passed the Harris trailer almost every day on the way to his ranch. And he remembered Katie as "a young girl who fought very bravely for her life" and said he never went by without looking at the window Sells had climbed through. And Mark said of her sister, "I mean, no matter if she puts this man away, no matter if he's put to death, no matter what anything, Katie's still dead. And Crystal has done everything she can, but she can't change that." And Crystal said, "Of course I think about Katie. I think about, you know, if she was here,

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  what would she be doing? Maybe what would we be doing?" And looking back, Pam would say, "There's not a doubt in my mind that Crystal has lost a lot, if not most of her childhood. She really has been a survivor her whole entire life. I don't think that this tragedy would have turned out the way it did unless she was brought up the way she was." And Mark agreed that it had made her strong and that, when the time came, she knew what to do. Now, Mark would spend three years in jail, and when he got out, Crystal began to forgive him, and he came to her graduation, actually. And in 2009, at 20 years old, Crystal was living with her father in Idaho and had just been accepted into college. And of Sells, she said,

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  "I don't ever think about Tommy Lynn Sells. I don't ever, ever give him the time of day. It just, it makes me really thankful. That's what he did. He didn't ever bring me down at all." And Sells had been dead for two years when a man in Florida named Alvin Willie George, who had never met Crystal, found the case online. And starting in late 2016, he used fake Facebook accounts to send Crystal and her sisters photos of the crime scene and threatened to rape and kill them. And in 2021, George was sentenced in federal court to over four years for cyber stalking. And by then, Crystal and both of her sisters were living in Idaho, and she actually went on to have a son of her own.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  These are happy tears. Just, I'm just glad to be here. Now, there's a version of each of these stories where nobody comes home. For Julie Dart, Chris Steiner, and Katie Harris, that's the version that happened. Stephanie Slater, Thad Phillips, and Crystal Searls got the other one. Stephanie came home after eight days and spent much of the rest of her life helping police understand the people they were there to protect. Thad came home on two broken legs, and the name he remembered from the phone book brought Chris Steiner's family their answer. Crystal came home with a scar across her throat, and at 11, she walked right past the man who gave it to her on her way to the witness stand.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  Now, none of them chose to be a part of these stories, but all three got away, and all three lived to face the man who hurt them in court. But let's also remember the other people that lost their lives in these stories. But thank you so much to everybody that asked me to look into these cases. And if you have any other cases for me to look into, please let me know down below. I always read the comments. And until next time, please stay safe out there. Stay beautiful. All right? Bye.