In the summer of 1983, a horrific crime cut short the life of 4-year-old Tiffany Gill, a white female, and her mother, Colleen Gill. The family had recently settled into a new home in St. Louis, Missouri, and were known in the community as the proprietors of a hair salon in the nearby suburb of Des Peres. On July 31, 1983, both Tiffany and her mother were found brutally murdered in their residence, a shocking event that left a lasting scar on their family and the local community.
Tiffany was survived by her father, Thomas Gill, and her one-year-old brother, Sean.
For many years, the brutal double homicide remained a cold case, a painful and unresolved chapter for the Gill family. The trail for investigators grew cold, and the community was left with the fear that a killer was still at large. The profound loss and the absence of justice weighed heavily on those who knew the young girl and her mother. The years stretched into decades with no answers and no one held accountable for the senseless act of violence that took two lives.
A significant breakthrough in the long-dormant case finally came with the confessions of a notorious serial killer, Tommy Lynn Sells, who was known as the 'Coast to Coast Killer.' While Sells was not formally tried for the murders of Tiffany and Colleen Gill, law enforcement officials were able to definitively link him to their deaths through his own admissions and investigative work. Sells had a long and bloody history of violence across the United States. His eventual capture and subsequent confessions brought an unexpected resolution to a number of unsolved murders, including the tragic case of the Gills. Tommy Lynn Sells was ultimately convicted for other murders and was executed by lethal injection in Texas on April 3, 2014, bringing a measure of closure to the families of his many victims after decades of waiting.
