For serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells, the motivation to kill was like chasing a high. In an interview with ABC News, he said, “The first time I did a shot of dope, it was the best feeling I ever had in my life. The first time I killed somebody, it was such a rush. It was just like that, a shot of dope every time I did it, it was that rush again, and I started chasing that high.”

He also said that due to his own tumultuous childhood, Sells was fine with killing children. He thought that he was sparing them from the pain he experienced himself (via ABC News). In fact, there was only one person to survive an encounter with Sells, a 10-year-old girl named Krystal Surles, who awoke in terror to see her friend, 13-year-old Katy Harris, being stabbed to death. Sells then cut Surles’s throat, and she pretended to be dead until he fled the scene. Her testimony was crucial to finally putting Sells behind bars. 

The serial killer spoke of Surles in a 2010 interview with ABC News, “There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of her.” After being sentenced to death in 2000 for the murder and sexual assault of Katy Harris, Sells was executed by lethal injection in 2014, per Clark Prosecutor.