[5] At the age of 7, Sells began regularly drinking alcohol obtained from a supply stash belonging to his maternal grandfather.

[6] Within a year, he was socializing with an adult man named Willis Clark, who Sells alleged began molesting him.

Thereafter, he failed to receive mental health assistance, his drinking worsened, and ultimately led to his first arrest in 1982 for public intoxication.

[10][11] On May 13, 1992, Fabienne Witherspoon,[12] a 19-year-old woman in Charleston, West Virginia, was driving when she saw Sells panhandling under an overpass with a sign that said, "I will work for food.

Witherspoon sustained significant injuries herself including a gaping head wound and a severe hand laceration that required surgery.

[11] Furthermore, Sells claimed he killed a man in 1980 with an ice pick near a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles which has also never been confirmed.

On December 31, 1999, in the Guajia Bay subdivision, west of Del Rio, Texas, Sells sexually assaulted, stabbed and killed 13-year-old Kaylene "Katy" Harris before slitting the throat of 10-year-old Krystal Surles.

[31] In 2004, Sells confessed that on October 13, 1997, he broke into a home, took a knife from a butcher block in the kitchen, stabbed a little boy to death, and scuffled with a woman.

Law enforcement chose not to explore the deep quarry lake Sells led them to due to financial concerns.

Sells also divulged that in 1988 he met a woman and her son in Salt Lake City, Utah, and travelled with them to go on a camping trip.

Sells claimed he killed her and her son by an unclear method and dumped both of their bodies in the Snake River in Gooding County, Idaho.

[4] Sells also claimed he killed a 20-year-old woman, who he originally thought was a man, in a drug deal gone wrong in Truckee, California on January 27, 1989.

Finally, Sells referenced other additional victims whom he was said to have killed and dumped in the Florida swamps while he worked there as well as several gay men at various rest stops along the interstate in Pennsylvania.

The state's attorney in Jefferson County, Illinois, declined to charge Sells with the Dardeen family homicides in 1987 because his confession to the quadruple killing, while generally consistent with the facts of the case as reported in the media, was inaccurate with concern to some details that had not been made public.

[34] Investigators wanted to bring Sells to Illinois to resolve their doubts, but Texas refused, due to its law forbidding death-row prisoners from leaving the state.

[1] Eight years before his execution, Sells was one of the featured interviewees on episode two ("Cold-Blooded Killers") of season one on the Investigation Discovery documentary series, Most Evil.