The Youngest Killer On Death Row

It's a typical day in Oklahoma City. Children are in school. Everything feels good here. Comfortable, safe. This is Sean Seller's neighborhood, and this is the house where he lived. Bright, intelligent, athletic, handsome, clean cut. Sean looks like the All-American boy. Your next door neighbor, the football captain. So when you'd like to have as a friend or date, but Sean is a killer, and he's on death row. A blood-drinking teenage sataness living in small town America in the midst of the Satanic panic. I didn't care about anybody else or anything else except myself. And I wanted to be powerful. I wanted power. I wanted to be controlled others. I liked it when people were afraid of me. And a lot of people were. And for good reason, I was dangerous. 16-year-old Sean Seller's was going down a terrifying path. And by the time this case is over, four people will be dead. Sean Seller's that young man that turned into a killer. I walked up to his bed, and I pointed to the gun, and I squeezed the trigger. This is the disturbing mind and crimes of Sean Seller's the only person in the United States under the age of 17 years old to be sentenced to death after the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. And my name is Brianna, and I'm hot on the case. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you so much for joining me for this week's investigation. If you've been here before, welcome back. If this is your first time ever joining me for an investigation. Here at Hot and the Kays, we talk all things with True Crime every single Friday. So please make sure that you're subscribed on YouTube following the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And like, rate, and review the show, because that's what truly helps out the show and helps push out these episodes and these cases to more and more people. If you've been here before, you've heard me say this before. Here at Hot and the Kays, we cover a lot of lesser-known true crime cases, and because of that, information on these cases tends to be conflicting. There's a lot of conflicting sources on information on this case. And specifically, with this case, when it came to different sources during my research, I found a lot of conflicting timelines. So like, always, I did my best to gather the information that I believe to be the most accurate. But if you think that I got anything wrong or maybe missed out something you think is really important, please just let me and your fellow detectives know down in the comments. We're talking about a very disturbed individual today, so viewer discretion is definitely always advised. Sean Sellers was born in California on May 18, 1969, to his father and his mother, Vonda. Sean's mother was actually only freshly 16 years old by the time that she gave birth to Sean. Sean's biological father was an unstable man and an alcoholic, and shortly after Sean was born, he pretty much just got up, he took off and abandoned the family because he wasn't quite ready to be a man and be a father. So by the time Sean was three years old, him and his mother returned to his mother's hometown in Oklahoma, so the young single mother would have some more support. But his mother would not be alone for long, not long later, Vonda met Paul Leon Belifardo, who went by Lee and the two quickly married on New Year's Day in 1977. Lee was also divorced and he was a father, but his two children primarily lived with their mother, so Sean was raised by his mother and his stepfather as an only child. And Sean's new stepfather Lee would be the only father that he ever knew. During the economic recession in the 1970s, Lee lost his job and was forced to take any work that would have him, which led him to take a position as a truck driver, which obviously includes a lot of traveling, a lot of time on the road away from family. So Sean's mother actually went on the road with her new husband, they would take turns driving, kind of work the job as a team. But now Sean's mother Vonda would be leaving her very young son, Sean, home with his grandparents. And they did this for a very long time. For four entire years, Sean only saw his mom a couple times a month. And when Sean's mother and stepfather finally came back for Sean, they picked him up and moved him across the entire country. They took him away from his school, his home, his grandparents. And he was only eight years old when that happened. Sean's mother saw her son as the perfect child. Sean was respectful, kind, a good student. He was sweet and gentle. He always did what was expected of him. He loved to read and he loved to draw. But very slowly, that image of the perfect, sweet, all-American child began to crack. The family moved out west to California because Sean's stepfather believed that there was more money to be made out west. And they wouldn't have to live that trucker lifestyle anymore. Out west, Sean had a babysitter that was really in to the occult and into satanism. And this babysitter would bring over books and show Sean these topics that he was definitely way too young to be seeing. And this was the beginning of a life-long obsession with some pretty dark things. And I know that a majority of people that are into the occult and into satanism are not involved in like violent interests. I'm definitely aware that that is more of a stereotype. And that's not actually what satanism and the occult and wikens are really about. But certainly at this time in the late '70s, early '80s, they were definitely seen as one and the same. If you were into wearing the color black, then you might as well have been Richard Romirez. After six months in California, the family moved back to Oklahoma after his stepfather was offered a new trucking job with a different company. Sean's family would move around a lot during his entire childhood with his mother going back and forth between being a stay at home mom and going on the road with her new husband. According to many sources, Sean sellers before he was even 16 years old, moved 30 times. So Sean was always the weird kid at school. He was living out of boxes. By the time he unpacked his room, it would be time to move again. He stopped trying to make friends because by the time he did, it would be time to move again. The first couple of times that they moved, Sean believed his mom and stepfather when they said that this was the last time that this was their home. So Sean would still try in school. He would try to get good grades. He would try to fit in. He would join sports. He would join clubs. He would make friends. And he would cover his bedroom walls in all the things that he liked. But every single time, Sean started to get happy and comfortable in a new place. It would be time to get up and go again. So after a while of this, Sean stopped trying to fit in. He stopped trying to make friends because what was the point? After every single time the family moved, the ones happy, Sean became more and more unrecognizable. Sean was depressed. He was angry. He was lonely. Growing up, Sean's parents were never around. And even when they were, their accusations that both his stepfather and his mother Vanda were emotionally verbally and physically abusive towards Sean. During one of the times that that Sean's mother left him behind so she could go on the road with her husband, she left him with his aunt and his uncle. And Sean's uncle was not a very nice man. Sean was about 13 years old at this time. And even as a young teenage boy, Sean was still wetting the bed. His uncle frustrated with the constant laundry would force his nephew to wear a diaper to bed and to further humiliate the young Sean. When Sean did wet the bed, his uncle would force him to wear the soiled diaper on his head. Interesting fact though, bed wetting is one of three characteristics that many people believe can predict if a young child will grow up to become a serial killer along with fire sarding and cruelty to animals. And the torment with living with his uncle did not end there. Sean's uncle wanted to make a man out of Sean. He wanted to toughen him up and to do that. He thought the best way would be to force Sean to go hunting with him. And Sean loved animals. He did not want to kill anything. And his uncle would still force him to kill deers and raccoons. And then he would force Sean to disembowel or decapitate these animals or even cut off their genitals. Now I've never been hunting, so I don't know if that is a necessary step, but I'm sure for a child that's already struggling with a lot, clearly. Being forced to do that probably did something to him. You know, interestingly enough, as awful as Sean's uncle was to him, Sean remembers his aunt and his uncle being very loving and supportive parents to their children, to Sean's cousins. And seeing this love that his cousins were getting from their parents, when he wasn't getting that from his mom and his stepfather, his mom and stepfather were never even around. I think that that probably did more damage than the diaper or the hunting even did. When Sean was still trying to fit in and make friends, one of the ways that he tried to connect with his peers was by playing the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons with them. And Dungeons and Dragons would later be linked to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. We've discussed the Satanic Panic at least once before in an episode of "Hot in the Case" maybe even twice. I would definitely be interested in doing a deep dive into the Satanic Panic, how it started and what happened because of it. But I might actually save that for a future episode, maybe an episode on the West Memphis 3. Let me know what you think. But when Sean was interviewed later on, he was adamant that his interest in Satanism and murder had nothing to do with him playing Dungeons and Dragons. The very depressed and angry Sean moved to Colorado with his parents when he was around 14 years old. And I actually saw a lot of reports that at 14 years old when his mom and stepfather would go on the road, they would just leave Sean behind. He wasn't left with a babysitter, he wasn't left with any family members. So this very lonely child is just completely abandoned at this point. But for the first time in a really long time, Sean was actually happy in Colorado. He'd let his guard down, he started to make friends, and an old interest came back to find him. One day in school, a classmate showed Sean a homemade magazine that he made about the occult and about Satanism. The magazine included information on black magic, Satanic rituals, different hardcore metal bands, the devil, Satanism, stuff on serial killers that had links to Satanism like Richard Vermeer's The Night Stalker. The next stuff really peaked Sean's interest just like when his babysitter showed him those magazines, those books when he was eight years old. So Sean went to the local library and he stole a bunch of books on the occult and on Satanism and this consumed Sean. He very quickly became obsessed with Satan. Because he had no stability, he had no control over his life, and he thought that through Satanism that he would get that power, that control that he was so desperate for. Sean and a group of teenagers that he met in Colorado began dabbling in Satanic rituals. But that's all I know, I don't actually really know what consisted of these Satanic rituals, what they were exactly doing in these Satanic rituals. I do know that Sean started to drink blood, but from what I can tell he really only drank his own blood if that makes it any better. The blood always played a big part in our rituals. We always drink blood, you know, and always shed each other's blood. And he would wear a vials of blood around his neck and go to school and then he would drink the blood out of the vial in front of his classmates. From what I read during this time, it really did seem like Sean was just kind of rebelling and acting out. He came from a very religious family and a very religious small town. He was lonely a lot, his parents were never even around to pay attention to him. So it really does seem at this point that what Sean is doing is just acting out for attention. He was still a really nice kid, he was still getting really good grades in school and in comparison he really did seem happy in Colorado, which of course meant that the family would be moving again. This time they were once again heading back to Oklahoma. Sean, who his entire life felt abandoned by his parents for the first time actually begged to be left behind. He wanted to stay in Colorado, but he was only 15 years old. So his parents packed him up and brought him with them. And back in Oklahoma, this was the final straw for Sean. The resentment that he had been feeling towards his parents but especially towards his mother that had been building up his entire life was finally boiling over. Back in Oklahoma, Sean stopped trying in school. His grades started to drop. He was dropped from his honor roll standing that he held his entire life. Sean was dressing in all black. He was even painting his nails black, which is definitely not uncommon today, but you need to remember that this was a small Christian community in the 1980s. Sean was still very obsessed with Satanism, performing satanic rituals, harming himself and drinking his own blood. I can work black headband all the time. I had to take jewelry. I figured out this thing I was about that long and filed to a point and I kept polishing on them a lot so that it would be hard. And some of my other friends and stuff would have these three fingernails grow long and pointed or just those two for the sign of Satan. I got to the point where I didn't care anymore. I wanted power. I wanted to be control others. And for good reason I was dangerous. In Satanism there comes a point that you have to give them everything. Everything. The dark and disturbing things going on in Sean's mind were at a all-time low and all-time high. I don't even know exactly how to say it. And there was a secret that Sean had been hiding his entire life. According to Sean ever since he was six years old, he had been hearing voices in his head, voices telling him terrible, terrible things. As a young child, he thought that everyone else had these voices in their head. He thought that this was normal. It wasn't until he started school that he realized that he was the only person that heard things that weren't actually there. At first he didn't hear the voices too often and when he would, they would mainly just tell him bad things about him and they would tell him how bad he is, how worthless he was. But it was now that Sean was older that the voices were getting louder. When Sean became obsessed with Satan, the voices got louder. He was hearing them more often, they became more persistent and more violent. The voices were telling Sean to hurt the people around him, to commit a mass murder, to bring a gun to school and kill everyone around him. And at first, Sean was disturbed and scared of the thoughts that he was having. He confided in not one, but two of his teachers at school and nothing happened. So during one of the times when his mom was home and not on the road, Sean confided in his mother, he spoke to her about the terrible thoughts that he had in his head and she also dismissed him. While in Oklahoma, it's been years since Sean has actually lived in the state, but at this point he reconnects with an old friend he had from his childhood named Richard Howard. Now as a 15-16 year old Sean, Richard Howard became Sean's best friend, his only like real friend. So Sean confided in Richard about the voices in his head, the terrible things they told him to do about his obsession with Satan and Richard accepted this part of Sean. This was a turning point for Sean. Richard told him to embrace the darkness inside of him that he made him cool. Sean tried to reach out to three trusted adults for help and all of them dismissed him. So he reaches out to his best friend and his best friend tells him to accept these parts of him. I bet that would be really, really confusing. He spends his entire life ashamed of something just for three people to act like it's no big deal and then one person to tell him to embrace it to accept it that I made him really, really cool. Richard also came from a similar background. He was pretty much raised by his grandparents. Richard was also into Satanism and the occult and some other pretty dark things. Sean actually said that his best friend Richard was more evil than he was and the two really like fed off of each other together. They riled up a group of boys, outcasts in their town, and introduced them to Satan. Sean performed satanic baptisms on these boys, and together they would wear black hoods and do satanic rituals together, and they called their group the elimination, because they thought that it was their purpose to eliminate Christianity from the world. Sean claims that around this time he met a woman that claimed to be a witch, and she was going to help him strengthen his connection to Satan. She told him to once and for all, renounce God, and fully accept Satan and give his soul to the devil, and she gave him a spell to help him do this. So Sean went home that night, and he did what the witch told him to do, and then he laid in bed, and he read the incantation. With his eyes closed, laying in bed after renouncing God, and accepting the devil, and letting the demons in, and giving his soul to Satan, Sean claims to have experienced some sort of supernatural phenomenon. He said that immediately after he did this, the room got significantly colder, and he felt freezing cold, ice cold, claws, reach out, and touch his body. And after Sean said that, he let the demons in. And she knew that I was interested in the stuff, so she got her in touch with me. I said, "What's the first thing I have to do?" And she said, "She said pray to Satan, not flat." Pray to the devil, and no, not yet. Okay, so it took me a few days to really get to where I wanted to make that initial step. She told me how to do it, she told me how to set things up, you know, she gave me this incantation to say, you know, and everything, and when I did it, it was like something that I'd seen in all these movies that I was so interested in. It was an experience I'll never forget. I laid down, and I began to pray to Satan as she told me to, I had to renounce God, and pray to Satan, use in Satan's name, and then use this special incantation she told me, and use her satanic name, Glashion, to get through. And I did that. And the room got cold, I mean, cold, you know, like 10 degrees, 15 degrees, it just dropped. And I was thinking, "Exorcist type stuff," you know? And I clad my eyes, closed, and I was laying down, and I began to feel this lifting incantation, like I'd felt when I'd sometimes do some relaxation techniques and stuff, so that didn't really surprise me. But this lifting incantation kind of just, it increased, it got, should be more than it usually felt like, you know? And like I said, then the room got cold, and then it was like something reached out and touched me. You know, I mean, it was real, just like I'd reached out and touched you, these fingers, hands, something touched me, and I closed my eyes tight, you know, like, you know? And these, they felt like ice-cold claws, and that's real out of it, I know, but that's really what they felt like. And it was just like, touched me everywhere, all over my body, you know? And then I heard an honorable voice say, "I love you." And I opened my eyes, you know, because I thought someone was in the room, and all I saw were spots, because I had my eyes closed so tightly. And looking through the haze of the spots, there wasn't anyone in the room, and I could still feel these things. And so I closed my eyes again, and it was like one by one, these things just disappeared. Richard and Sean were fully into Satan at this point. They had a ritual where they drank each other's blood, and this made them like, demon blood brothers forever. They would fantasize and talk about some pretty dark, violent things. They would talk about murder and torture and raping different girls that went to their school. Sean said at first that this was a lot of, you know, talk, that this was all talk. It was just fantasies. It wasn't serious, it was just pretend. But we hear that a lot in cases, and at some point, those fantasies became real life plans to murder someone. Sean wanted to kill someone, and together, Sean and Richard began discussing different potential victims before finally picking the midnight shift worker at their local circle K. Do you remember at the beginning of this episode when I told you that I found very conflicting sources on information in this case? Well, this is one of those times. I found four different reasons why Richard and Sean, how and why Richard and Sean chose the cashier at the circle K to be their first victim. And instead of picking which one I think is most accurate, I'm going to tell them all to you because I feel like it's likely that it's a little bit of all four of those reasons, how and why they chose this particular man to be their first victim. So the first reason was that the circle K cashier did not sell Richard and Sean beer so that it was like more of a revenge killing. The second one was just because Sean wanted to know what it was like to kill someone, and they just chose the cashier at the circle K at random. The next one was that Richard actually was planning to kill someone else. Richard really did not like his girlfriend's father, so he was going to kill his girlfriend's father, but Richard thought that him and Sean should both make a sacrifice to Satan and Sean just decided to go first. And the last one was that Sean and Richard wanted to get closer to Satan, and they thought that they broke all 10 commandments in the Bible that this would give them power in the afterlife in hell for eternity, and so they start breaking the 10 commandments, and a lot of them were really easy. A lot of them were things that they've already done, like worship a different god, steal. They were just stuck on the last one, which was the sixth commandment that shall not murder. Like I said, I feel like it's probably a little bit of all of these reasons why they chose to murder Robert Bauer. Robert Bauer was a 36-year-old man who almost always worked the overnight shift at the local gas station circle K. Robert was a son, a father, a friend, but for the last handful of years, Robert wasn't making the greatest choices in life. He actually began dealing drugs on the side just to make ends meet. So Sean thought that he would be a good sacrifice to the devil, because no one would really miss him if he was gone. And on the night of September 8th, 1985, Richard stole two handguns from his grandfather's house, in his truck he drove over to pick up his best friend Sean, and together they drove over to the circle K. According to Richard, he never even went inside of the gas station, but Sean tells a very different story that they both went inside and they walked up and down the aisles of the gas station waiting for the perfect moment when it was just them and their victim in the store just alone. And when it was that time Sean took out the gun, he pointed it in Robert's face and he pulled the trigger. Sean actually missed and Robert tried it to escape, but Sean just kept firing and eventually those bullets did hit Robert, killing him. When I fired again, he was only about a foot and a half, two feet away from me. And he was holding up some kind of a coat and was bent down, and when the bullet hit him, it knocked him down and blood splattered all over the wall. So basically we went in there and we took nothing, took no merchandise, we took no money, we took nothing. Two teenage boys ran from the shop and into Richard's car and drove away just as fast as they came and apparently Sean was laughing the entire time. A few hours later a group of friends went into the gas station after a night out together and they found Robert cold to the touch and a pool of his own blood. Investigators were baffled, the gas station had no cameras, there were no witnesses and no apparent motive for wanting Robert dead. In most cases when a convenience clerk, a gas station, cashier is murdered on the job, it's usually a casualty of a robbery gone wrong. But there was nothing stolen from the shop. There was no money stolen out of the cash register. Robert himself even had about a hundred dollars cash in his wallet that was just left behind. There were no suspects in this murder, especially not two teenage boys that had no connection to Robert. So Sean and Richard weren't on the police radar at all and they just went back to living life and Sean was more empowered than ever. For the first time in Sean's entire life he had control over someone else's life instead of it being the other way around. In the months following the murder, Sean was happy. He actually started a relationship with a girl named Angel and he felt like head over heels her. And yes, I do see the irony in a boy being obsessed with the devil falling in love with a girl named Angel. Sean's mother, Vonda, did not approve of this relationship at all. Angel was about 14, 15 years old, sources say different things. And she's been described throughout all of these sources as a very troubled girl for different reasons. Vonda still saw Sean throughout all of this as like the perfect All-American child. So she did not approve of Angel, did not think that Angel was right for her son. And she was terrified that Angel would get pregnant. So Vonda urged her son Sean to end the relationship. And it wasn't just that. Vonda would like really bad mouth Angel in front of Sean. He would call Angel this like 14-year-old girl a slut and things like that. And this infuriated Sean. And unfortunately he was left to really figure out all this anger by himself in the months following the murder of Robert Bauer. Richard took off with his girlfriend to go get married. They eventually did come back to their hometown now husband and wife. But for a while Sean's best friend was gone and he was just alone with all of these dark violent thoughts and all this anger that he had. And he started to truly believe that he would just be better off without his parents. Sean was very angry and a lot of it was directed at his mother, Vonda specifically. In his English class Sean turned in an essay where he wrote about some really inappropriate things like sex and satanism and he actually wrote that he could kill without remorse and he would feel no regret or sorrow. For the first time in this entire case one of Sean's teachers were actually disturbed by something that Sean did enough that they reported the issue to his mother. And after Vonda got off that call with her son's English teacher she was so distraught over what she was just told that Vonda sat down and she wrote her son a letter. She wrote, "My dearest and most precious son, I love you so much and I would give my life up for you without a second thought." Little did Vonda know her 16 year old son was literally dreaming at night about murdering her and he actually had real life plans to kill both of his parents. Vonda never had a chance to give her son that letter because later that same night he killed her. At one point while both of his parents were out of the room Sean snuck into his mother and stepfather's bedroom and took out a rifle that his stepfather had hidden away in the bedroom for protection and once his parents fell asleep Sean stripped down to just his underwear so he wouldn't get any blood on his clothing. He snuck back into his parents' bedroom. He walked right up to his sleeping stepfather Lee who he perceived to be the bigger threat and then he pointed the gun at his stepfather and he pulled the trigger killing him instantly. The sound of the shot ringing out immediately woke up Vonda. Sean shot his mother without a second thought likely before she even knew what was happening. Sean said that he laughed throughout the entire thing. His parents' blood was just splattered across his face. "I walked up to his bed and I pointed the gun at my father's head and I squeezed the trigger and I immediately looked at the gun where I knew my mother's head was. I couldn't see anymore because the flash had blinded me but I knew where it was and I squeezed the trigger killing him and the blood was pouring out of a hole in my mother's face and it was pulling with the water in the water bed which had been pierced by the bullet and I remember feeling like someone had just picked this big rock above my shoulders like all the burdens of the world had been gone from me like relief you know and I laughed and giggled hysterically." He got into the shower to wash his parents blood off of him and then he began to stage the scene rummaging through drawers throwing things around making a huge mess to stage his parents' murders as a robbery gone wrong and then later that next morning Sean went to the home of his best friend Richard who at this point was back in town with his now wife and he told Richard that he needed an alibi and he gave him the murder weapon for his best friend to hide. Sean's plan was that he was going to claim that he had a sleepover with his best friend Richard that he was staying the night over at Richard's house and then he planned to go to the pizza parlour that him and his mother Vanda both worked at because Vanda had a shift that morning so Sean's plan was to say that he was stopping by because he needed to say something to his mom but obviously his mom would not be there but this would give Sean's story more credibility and then Sean returned back to his home. He entered the front door and a few moments later he ran out of the house screaming he ran to a neighbor's house screaming for them to call for help that his parents were dead. When the investigators began arriving at the scene they immediately felt like something was very wrong. The scene was clearly a wreck, things were thrown all around a wood block that was meant to keep the sliding screen door from opening all the way to keep people out of the home was removed from its place and the victim's teenage son was pointing out all the things that implied that this was the act of an intruder. But the actual murders did not line up with what you typically see in a robbery-gone-wrong scenario. Vanda and Lee were clearly killed in their sleep which is not what you see in robberies gone wrong. Typically burglars are not also cold-blooded killers and when a burglar does become a killer it's because they enter a home where they expect no one else to be but someone is in the home upstairs sleeping they hear the robbers downstairs they go downstairs to confront the intruder the burglar panics and shoots and kills them and runs runs out. Also the investigators noticed that there was a huge mess in this home things were thrown all around things were out of place but there actually wasn't a single thing missing from the home. They had TVs they had other expensive belongings they had cash and it was all just left behind. So it seemed like a burglar came into the home went into Vanda and Lee's bedroom murdered them and then just made a big mess before leaving. Sean was certainly playing the role of the grieving son he was seen by plenty of people being very upset being very confused why his parents were killed but as investigators began to interview people that knew Sean they became very suspicious of 16-year-old Sean Sellers. They heard from his English teacher that he had just that same week hand in an essay about how he could kill and not feel any remorse afterwards a lot of Sean's classmates overheard him saying that he would be better off if his parents were dead and then Sean's very own best friend and alleged partner in crime turned on him. Richard told his new wife everything that Sean had killed his parents and hid the murder weapon at their house. Both Richard and Sean were asked to come in to be interviewed by the police. Sean was late that day leaving his best friend Richard alone with the investigators to be interrogated alone and he cracked. Richard told the police everything where they could find the murder weapon and how they could solve another unsolved murder in their town. By the time that Sean finally arrived at the police station he was arrested on three counts of first degree murder. Richard Howard was also arrested on one count of first degree murder for his part in the murder of Robert Bauer although he adamantly denied having any physical involvement in Robert's murder or even ever leaving his truck. Along with his full confession Richard also told the investigators that his best friend Sean told him that if he ever got caught that he would fake insanity and that's kind of what Sean ended up doing allegedly Sean claimed that he was blacked out at the time that his parents were killed at the time that Robert was killed and he said that was because he was being demonically possessed and although he claims that he was blacked out at the time that he committed these murders he somehow still knew all of the details of the murders. Ultimately Richard's first degree murder charge was dropped if he agreed to testify against his once best friend Sean. Sean was going to be tried as an adult for the three murders that he committed when he was only 16 years old. His defense was through his Satanism he was possessed by demons which led him to kill Robert, his mother, Vonda and his stepfather Lee. As far as I can tell through my limited research on the topic the defense of demonic possession. has never successfully resulted in an acquittal for a murder. Doesn't mean that people still don't try it and try it often they do. Throughout the entire trial process and even afterwards, experts could not agree if Sean was legally sane at the time that he committed the murders. From my understanding, the jury at Sean's murder trial understood that Sean was young, but they weren't actually told that he was only 16 years old at the time that he committed the murders, and the judge on the trial allegedly did not let the defense introduce expert testimony that juveniles are developmentally different than adults because the judge assumed that the jury should just know that. Sean sellers a year after killing three people, a total stranger and both of his parents was found guilty on three counts of first degree murder. At the time in Oklahoma, life without the possibility of parole was not an option when sentencing people for murder. You either had to choose life with the possibility of parole or death. The members of the jury were considering life with the possibility of parole after 17 years, but felt like that wasn't enough of a punishment for the crimes that Sean committed. So instead, in October of 1986, at only 17 years old, Sean sellers was sentenced to death for the murders that he committed when he was 16 years old. Which as you can imagine, was extremely controversial, even in 1986. He was the youngest person on death row at the time. Sean sellers is actually the first and only person in the United States to be sentenced to death for crimes that he committed under the age of 17 years old after the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States in 1976. Behind bars, Sean converted to Christianity, he said that God saved his life. A group of his friends championed behind him. They created a website to try and get Sean more support. They wanted him to be granted clemency a second chance because of his age and also his mental health. There were even members of the Christian community that were fighting for Sean to be taken off of death row. While awaiting his execution, Sean made many media appearances. He was on the Oprah Winfrey show. He was also on a lot of documentaries about satanism and murder. He did stuff with A&E, he did stuff with MSNBC and 48 hours where he would spread that satanism led him to commit murder. And that Christianity is what saved him. And for years, Sean thought to have his death row sentence overturned. "You've seen me, you see these handcuffs, you see where I'm at, this is where satanism put me, before the stories of other kids, where satanism put them, and it's not the way, why it's up. Listen to what I'm saying, I'm not some preacher, I'm some pedestal, I'm talking from experience, I've been there, I've walked where you are, listen to what I'm saying, and Jesus Christ is the only way, I didn't become a Christian because I was trying to escape penalty for what I did. I became a Christian because I hated who I was. I came to the point where I saw who I was and I said, I will not be that anymore. I will never be that again. And I reached out to God because I somehow, when I got in that cell and I was quiet and I couldn't pick up a cassette tape and put it in the stereo, and I couldn't pick up a cigarette, and I couldn't pick up a joint, I couldn't go be with my girlfriend, or I couldn't go be with my friends, or go somewhere, I could just walk in that little cell where I had to deal with that emptiness inside of me, and I couldn't get away from it. God was able to finally reach me and speak to me." But there were a lot of people, including Sean's stepsiblings, which were Lee's biological two children, that felt that Sean's change of heart, his conversion to Christianity was all a lie. He was speaking all of it because he wanted to be taken off of Death Row. He wanted to save himself from being executed. While on Death Row, Sean spoke with many psychiatrists, a group of psychiatrists actually diagnosed him with DID, dissociative identity disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder. They believed that he had up to eight altars in his head, which would explain why he claimed to hear voices in his head, why he claimed to have periods where he blacked out, why he felt like he was being possessed by demons, at the time that he committed the murders. Another psychiatrist that Sean spoke to said that he was chronically psychotic, and said that he showed symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, which wouldn't surprise me. I feel like that also makes a lot of sense. But Sean's diagnosis came in 1992, about six years after his trial, and many skeptics believed that Sean was faking mental illness. He was faking insanity because he wanted to get off of Death Row. Up until his very last days on Earth, Sean was fighting for an appeal. "Stop taking it, take it on you." You see, I don't think that being 16 years old is an excuse for what I did, and I don't think that MPD is an excuse for what I did, because there are plenty of people in the world who have MPD who didn't commit murder. I don't know why I did it, honestly. I've tried to come up with answers, I've searched my heart and tried my best to come up with the answers, and I never expected people to call me a liar whenever I did that. I know that if I die, it's not going to make a difference. But if I live, I promise you that I will spend every day of my life trying to make a difference in someone else's life. I don't think it will ever make up what I did. I'm not so allusioned that I think that I can make up for three people's lives. I have to try. I've been trying and I have to keep on from what I live. And every single time he was denied, so on February 4th, 1999, at the age of 29 years old, Sean Sellers was executed, he died by means of lethal injection. The blinds opened, and he popped his head up, and he looked any smile, and the warden asked, "Do you have any last words?" And Sean said yes, and he named four or five of the victims' family members, and he stated, "You will hate me again in the morning. This isn't going to solve your hatred, and don't go through life this way and to reach out to God." It was the only time in Oklahoma's history that they executed anyone for crimes they committed when they were under the age of 18 years old. Sean is also only one of 22 people in all of the United States to be executed for a crime that they committed when they were under the age of 18 years old after capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, and he was the only person to be executed for a crime that they committed under the age of 17 years old. And then in 2005, six years after Sean was executed, the United States Supreme Court banned executing people that committed crimes when they were juveniles, they actually deemed it unconstitutional to execute anyone for crimes committed when they were under the age of 18 years old. This is a very heavy topic. Lots of controversy in this one, and I can see a lot of people's different viewpoints when it comes to this case, so I'm extremely interested to hear all your thoughts on this case. Do you think that Sean Sellers was truly mentally ill when he committed these murders? I heard a lot of sources, people that were actually there, actually new Sean that said that he only started showing symptoms of mental illness after he was arrested, but not really before, but I would actually argue that I feel like a lot of things that we discussed Sean was doing and saying feels like someone who's experiencing a mental health crisis, but let me know your opinions. I'm also interested if there's any of you out there that actually believed that Sean Sellers was demonically possessed because there are actually a lot of people that do believe that the devil came to town when Sean Sellers killed three people in Oklahoma and do you think that Sean Sellers deserved the death penalty? Do you think that juvenile should ever be sentenced to death? We've talked a lot here and on TikTok if it even makes sense for someone under the age of 18 to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole if that's even right and I feel like I mean I really gotta say no on the death penalty thing I don't think we should be executing children 16 years old as a child in my opinion but I at least can understand people's viewpoints when they said like they don't believe that Sean Sellers could get a second chance that he was a danger to society always would be that it made no sense anything else and like I understand that to a certain point not really like I don't think we should execute anyone under the age of 18 but when it comes to giving juvenile a second chance I commit truly terrible crimes like mass shootings I mean you can't go back into society so life without the possibility of parole seems like the only option but when you're so young and you are developmentally different than adults do you deserve a second chance can you be rehabilitated a lot to discuss for sure a lot to discuss I feel like a really really interesting dialogue can happen in the comments so keep discussing this case and all of these different controversies in the comment section with me I truly read every single comment that comes in on YouTube Apple Podcast Spotify so let me know all your thoughts theories and opinions on this truly disturbing and controversial case but why are in the comments please remember to always be respectful the victims Robert Vanda and Paul Lee truly did not deserve what happened to them at all no matter your beliefs on anything they were people and they did not deserve for their lives to be stolen from them so please remember to be respectful in the comments and I will see you guys all next time when we are hot in the case once again