Expanding its investigation, the FBI secretly taped six hours of conversations between the Sells and the other couple that winter. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who later listened to those tapes described them as "incriminating." The Sells were indicted for murder conspiracy in April 1998, and Mary Sell later pled guilty and implicated her husband in the alleged plot.
More than two years after his indictment, however, Tom Sell has yet to come to trial. During most of that time he has been held in a federal prison hospital in Springfield, Mo. The U.S. attorney in St. Louis says that psychiatric examinations of the dentist show that he is mentally ill and therefore unfit to stand trial.
But Dr. Sell, who insists he is both innocent and sane, has refused medication with anti-psychotic drugs that the government believes would make him fit for trial. During this lengthy legal standoff, Dr. Sell and his supporters have accused prison guards of "torturing" him with beatings, scalding water and long periods of shackling.