Through the Window (7 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

NOTHING earth-shattering ever happened in the sleepy town of Ina in southern Illinois. The small village was home to a gas station, a bank, a store, a post office, a fire-house and just enough houses and trailers for its 475 residents. On the night of November 17, 1987, a deadly fear and uncertainty was born in the hearts of the citizens of Ina that will haunt them all for the rest of their lives.

Of the four people present in the house on the southern edge of town that night, only Tommy Lynn Sells remains alive. And he has told three different stories about his fatal encounter with the family. In one version, Keith Dardeen picked him up while he was hitchhiking and brought him home. In another, he met Keith at the pool hall and was invited to his house. In the third, he knocked on the front door and forced his way inside. In the first two versions, he claims the two of them were driving down the road later in the evening, when Keith made a homosexual advance. That threw Sells into a blind rage.

By most accounts, Keith was not the type of man to pick up hitchhikers or to bring a stranger home to his family. He was very protective of his house, his wife and his son. He was not likely to allow entry to a stranger at the door. There is also no evidence pointing to any homosexual activity or fantasy in any corner of Keith’s life. The conclusions of authorities and others close to the case were blended with portions of Sells’ recollections to reconstruct the most likely sequence of events that night.

Riding the rails through Illinois, Tommy Lynn Sells jumped off the train in Ina near Route 57, a major highway
running north to south through the state. To the north, it passes by Champaign-Urbana and Kankakee, and then into Chicago. Where he disembarked, the highway passes south through a series of small whistle-stop towns until it ends near the Kentucky state line.

Like any predator, his eyes constantly sought signs of vulnerability, open doors to opportunity. The modest trailer beckoned to him. It had a “for sale” sign propped in the window—a perfect prop for Sells. The Dardeens rented the property from Lloyd and Joann Settle, who farmed the land near the house site. But, though the Dardeens owned the trailer, it was beginning to feel too small for their now-growing family. Their new baby was due early in the new year.

Sells sat in the darkness overlooking the home, waiting, watching and drinking one beer after another. When he determined the time was ripe, he approached the home with caution, his hand wrapped tightly around the gun he had stolen in Nevada, which was now securely concealed in his pocket. He knocked on the door as he shivered on the doorstep. When Keith opened it, he asked the stranger what he wanted. Sells said he was interested in buying the mobile home.

Keith had not heard a car pull up. Looking over the stranger’s shoulder, he would have seen that only his own vehicles were parked in the drive. Aware of his responsibility to his pregnant wife, Eileen, and his three-year-old son, Peter, Keith suppressed his desire for a sale. He refused to let Sells come in and look at the trailer. As he closed the door, Sells threw his body into the open gap, pulled his gun and pointed it at Keith’s head.

Sells shouted threats and obscenities and Keith backed up, his hands raised above his head. A few yards away, Eileen clutched little Peter to her side, frozen in fear. At a shout from Keith, she turned to flee to the bedroom with her son. Sells was too quick. He grabbed Peter and held the gun to his head.

“Shut up. Everything’s gonna be fine so long as you
all do what I say,” Sells reassured them. Motioning to Keith he said, “You got any rope?”

“I don’t think so,” Keith stammered.

Sells jerked the gun against little Peter’s head, causing the boy to emit a shrieking sob. He gave him a shake. “Shut up.” Then he turned to Keith and ordered, “Find something to tie them up.”

After fumbling through kitchen drawers, Keith produced a roll of duct tape. Without moving the gun from the little boy’s head, Sells bound Peter’s feet, hands and mouth with the tape. Dragging the constrained boy with him, he ordered Eileen to the floor, where he repeated the binding process with her. This would be Keith and Eileen’s last chance to see one another—to exchange eye contact, to see the tears in one another’s eyes. Sells told Eileen that if she moved, her husband was dead.

Then, he turned to Keith and threatened to kill his wife and child if he did not obey, and forced him out of the home at gunpoint. With a gun to his head, Keith drove his car a mile away to an empty field full of left-over stubble on the campus of Rend Lake College. When the car stopped, Keith knew he had to wrest the gun away. If he did not, he would be dead. If he died, there would be no one to protect his beloved Eileen and Peter. He made his first move. Tommy countered with a gunshot into his cheek. Keith slumped back.

Sells dragged his limp body from the car and threw him on the ground. Keith made weak protests and feeble gestures of struggle. Sells unzipped Keith’s pants, pulled out the man’s penis and cut it from his body. He waved it in his face and said, “I’m taking this to your wife.”

Sells then shot the dying man twice—in the side of his face and in the side of his head.

SOAKED in the bloodlust of the moment, Sells jumped into Keith’s car and drove back to the trailer. When the door flew open, Eileen’s eyes registered hope. When she saw who walked through the door, hope turned to horror.

Sells unbound her feet in order to rape her. Using scissors, he cut off her clothing. When she struggled, he threatened to kill her son if she did not cooperate. Instantly, she became still and accepted the assault with barely a whimper behind the duct tape that sealed her mouth shut.

While she lay on the floor, used and helpless, Sells roamed through the trailer. Her mind raced—wondering what had happened to Keith and seeking a means of escape, a way to get help. Peter was crying uncontrollably. His sobs stuck to the back of the tape. She wanted to speak words of comfort to him, to touch him, to hold him. All she could do was send a message of love from her eyes to his.

Sells raised little Peter’s baseball bat high in the air and slammed it into the head of the three-year-old lying small and bound at his feet. Eileen struggled to her feet and rushed at her tormentor just as he raised the bat again. This time, he only grazed Peter’s head.

He shoved Eileen backwards. Hands bound, she lost her balance and fell to the floor. He raised the bat over Peter and hit him again and again until he was certain the child was dead. Then, he turned back to Eileen. He hit her once, then raised the bat, ready to hit her again. He paused. Something unusual was happening. Eileen had gone into premature labor. Before his eyes, a three-pound, thirteen-ounce baby girl was being born. Coldly he watched until the infant had emerged.

He looked at Eileen. He saw the desperate pleading in her eyes. He smiled. A sharp intake of hope caught in her throat. From somewhere he picked up a knife. He wielded it now, slicing into her breasts. Then, he turned to the baby, who was still attached to her mother through the umbilical cord. He raised his bat high and beat her until she was dead.

Now, all Eileen wanted was to die. Tommy Lynn Sells obliged her. He beat her in the head, fracturing her skull. As the last breath of life fled her body and dissipated into the night, he sexually assaulted her with the bat, leaving it lodged deep inside her.

THE night was over for the Dardeens. But not for their killer. He had work to do. He had evidence to eliminate. He carried the bodies of Eileen, Peter and Casey into the master bedroom and laid them carefully on the bed. He removed all but the most microscopic traces of duct tape from their cooling bodies. He stuffed all the pieces into his pockets.

He cleaned up after himself, going room to room. On the coat rack, a Toucan Sam painter’s cap hung, bearing silent witness to his efforts. He wiped surfaces for fingerprints, cleaned up puddles of blood, sought any place that identifying traces could hide, and sanitized them. It was a slow, meticulous process. It spoke of a man who had killed before. It warned of a man who would kill again.

WHEN he was satisfied that the job was complete, he climbed back into Keith’s blood-spattered, red 1981 Plymouth and headed south on Highway 57.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ON Wednesday, when Keith Dardeen did not show up for work at the treatment plant for Rend Lake Water Conservancy District, his supervisor called his home. When he got no answer there all day, he was concerned. Keith was a responsible and dependable employee. That evening, he called Keith’s father. Don Dardeen was just as puzzled as he was. Although Don was divorced from Keith’s mother, Joeann Dardeen, he lived near her in the neighboring town of Mount Carmel.

He went over to her home where his daughter, Anita Knapp, and her two sons, 7-year-old Eddie and 4-year-old Robbie, had come over for pizza. Joeann knew an unexplained absence was out of character for her son. She called the sheriff’s office and Don drove to Ina to meet them with the house key.

AS the door swung open, what they found sent waves of fear crashing on the village of Ina. But there was only one adult body laid out on the bed. Not two. The missing person was Keith Dardeen, and he instantly became a suspect. Many minds in the community came to the same conclusion. It was only natural. Statistically, it was logical. And for the residents of Jefferson County, it dredged up the memory of a not-too-distant event.

Just four-and-a-half years earlier, and only ten miles up Route 57, in the town of Mount Vernon, another family had been visited by unspeakable tragedy: 19-year-old Thomas Odle had murdered his parents and his three siblings. He quietly ambushed them one by one as they arrived home
from work or school. Many wondered and others assumed that one more man had erupted in a rage that sent his family to the grave.

WHEN the doorbell rang at Joeann’s house, Eddie and Robbie ran to answer it. When they did, they looked into the muzzles of guns held by four police officers.

Upon hearing the news of the discovery at her son’s home, Joeann paced the room. “Oh, God! Oh, God! Where’s Keith?”

Officers escorted Joeann into her bedroom and questioned her about Keith’s whereabouts. They asked her about the baby in the house. She insisted there was no baby, unaware of the brutal birth of her only granddaughter.

No matter how much law enforcement pushed and accused, Keith’s family and friends were adamant. They knew it was impossible for Keith to commit such a callous and violent act. They spurred the sheriff’s department to find the man they hoped was still alive, but now feared was dead. Late the next night, hunters discovered Keith’s brutalized body, abandoned and discarded in a lonely wheat field just over the Franklin County Line. Then, his car was found. It was as if the killer was thumbing his nose at the authorities and the community. The bloodstained Plymouth was parked with impudence near the police station in Benton, eleven miles away.

Overnight, shotguns popped up in pick-up truck racks all over the county. It was basketball season, and post-game normally meant a gaggle of loud teenagers gathered outside the high school making plans, waiting for rides and just horsing around. Now all that changed. When the game ended, all of the kids huddled inside the building. They did not exit until parents came in and escorted them to their cars.

Rumors raced rampant throughout the area. There was a serial killer stalking southern Illinois. It must have been satanic ritual because of what was done to the mother and
the baby. It had to be someone they knew and trusted— There is a killer among us, and it could be my neighbor.

AT the viewing, Anita reflected back on the short, sweet life of Peter. She smiled softly to herself as she recalled that sometimes, he called his mother “Wayne,” since that was as close as he could come to pronouncing “Elaine.” When Elaine turned thirty, Peter carried a sign around the town square and into his mother’s office at Davenport Office Supply. Anyone who knew the family laughed as soon as they read, “My mommy is 30 today. Happy Birthday Wayne!”

Anita’s eyes focused back on the tiny body in front of her and no longer could see that little boy. “He looked like a very old person who had abused his life and body to the maximum. He did not look like a three-and-a-half-year-old. Whatever [the killer] did to the child that night, he stripped him of every feeling and emotion. Whatever innocence was in that three-and-a-half-year-old was gone.”

Joann Settle remembered her former tenants as a likeable, friendly couple. They were very active in the community and in the small church, where Elaine played the piano and Keith led the singing. Her favorite memory of the family was Halloween, 1996, at the Fall Festival in Ina. One of the highlights of that celebration is the annual costume competition. The multi-talented Elaine had created a trio of costumes that year based on
The Wizard of Oz
. Keith was decked out as the Tin Man, Peter as the Cowardly Lion and Elaine, the Scarecrow. Her efforts were rewarded with the “Best Costume” ribbon that year.