Free Through the Window by Diane Fanning

struck, Sells disembarked from the commuter train and went into a restroom to shoot up heroin. He was standing just outside the facilities with a pocket rocket of Night Train pressed firmly to his lips when the tremors hit and the lights went out. He grabbed a light pole and hung on. At first, he was certain he was experiencing the negative side effects of his drug and alcohol abuse. Then, he noticed the light pole swaying back and forth and heard the sound of buildings and roads collapsing.
    Sells didn’t wait for the aftershocks. He raced south to Reno. The next night, he was arrested and put into a detox center.
    Once again, rehabilitation was a wasted effort. He was arrested in Carson City, Nevada, and yet another rehab center housed him for an additional thirty days. In December of that year, he overdosed on heroin and was hospitalized in Phoenix for forty-eight hours.
    In January 1990, Sells returned to Salt Lake City. Onthe 7th, he was arrested for possession of cocaine and for vehicle burglary. When the crime lab results showed that the substance was not cocaine, he was released. He shuffled off to Wyoming. His activities there would earn him an extended stay in prison.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    IN Rawlings, Wyoming, on January 12, 1990, Sells struck up a conversation with a young couple, both about 18. The woman was in the late stages of pregnancy. The tires on their truck were as bald as a baby’s head. Sells offered to help them out with their transportation problem.
    He prowled around the area until he found a 1978 Dodge four-wheel-drive pick-up with the right size tires. Then, he stole it.
    Bobby Daniels bolted out of his house in pursuit of his runaway vehicle. When it drove out of sight, Daniels returned to the house where he and Athena Davis lived and called 9-1-1 to report the theft.
    Sells removed the tires from the stolen pick-up and put them on the desperate couple’s truck. Taking a duffle bag out of its interior, Sells abandoned the tire-stripped truck and went in search of alternate transportation.
    As Bobby and Athena described the man in the green shirt and red hat they had seen shortly before the truck was stolen, Tony Selzer was protecting his pick-up from certain theft. He confronted a similarly dressed man carrying a dark duffle bag when he caught him climbing into his truck. Sells made a hasty retreat, ditching the duffle on his way.
    Police spotted the young pair’s truck, with the hot, nearly new tires, in no time. They told their tale and offered yet a third, corroborating description of the truck thief.
    Sells hid, four blocks from the scene of the crime, waiting for a train to glide through and give him a ride out of town. One hour after the truck theft, he ran out to jump a freight car. Officer David Anderson saw him before hemade his getaway, and arrested him for public intoxication.
    He was held on $10,000 bond once the car theft charge came to light. Deeming him indigent, the Carbon County judge appointed John Hoke as public defender. The case was bound over to the court for the Second Judicial District.
    On February 2, Hoke filed a motion to suspend further proceeds until the accused could be examined for any mental illness or deficiency. The court complied, ordering Sells to be transported to the Wyoming State Hospital.
    The medical personnel there were given thirty days to assess and evaluate Sells’ mental condition and file a written report about any mental illness or deficiency, his capacity to comprehend the nature of the proceedings and his ability to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.
    On arrival at the Wyoming State Hospital, admitting physician Dr. Howard Winkler described him as “[ . . . ] a well-developed, well-nourished, twenty-five-year-old white male who looks very much like Charles Manson with heavy, unkempt black beard, long shoulder length brownish-black hair. [ . . . ] He looks dirty and disheveled. [ . . . ] His mood is flattened.”
    He further stated