Did a group of Tennessee students really catch a killer?

When sociology teacher Alex Campbell asked his students to look at the unsolved case of ‘the redhead murders’, he told them to ‘prepare to fail’.

After all, if police officers and all their resources, expertise and technology can’t catch the bad guy, how can anyone else?

‌The mystery the teacher was talking about involved a series of unsolved attacks that took place in Tennessee (where the students lived) and Kentucky between 1978 and 1992. It was an era of serial killings; Ted Bundy, the Zodiac Killer and the East Area Rapist had terrorised women and left them fearful to go out alone at night.

‌And when decomposed bodies of ginger women were found by the side of the road across the southern States, the ‘Redheaded Taskforce’, a crack team of detectives from across the South proved unable to identify the murderer.

With no witnesses and because the women’s bodies were found over such a huge area, often a long time after the victim had died, they drew a blank.

Meanwhile, Elizabethton – a small town with a strong sense of community – had been overshadowed by the unsolved murder of redheaded teen Cynthia Taylor in 1983.

It was unclear if Cynthia’s death was related to the string of attacks, but true crime fan Alex wanted to find out more, and in January 2018, he decided to take the case to his Elizabethton High School students to help engage them in sociology classes.

‌Since then their investigation has not only been dissected itself in hit true crime podcast Murder 101, which looks into how the group of high school students attempted to solve the crimes of a local serial killer, but also now being made into a movie by Amazon MGM Studies, directed by Jon Watts of Wolfs and Spider-Man fame.

‌Talking on the podcast, Alex explains: ‘I became intrigued by [the murders] and I felt like next semester it would be a project we could work on. I noticed in my sociology class that if we ever talked about a serial killer or a psychopath the students were mesmerised. They paid more attention and wanted to learn.’

‌So he told his class about the ‘redhead murders’ case and introduced them to the notion of profiling, which involves the analysis of a person’s psychological and behavioural characteristics to predict their actions. ‘I thought I could do a unit on serial killers and profiling and we could look to see if any of these murders are related,’ he adds.

‌The class of students, aged between 15 and 17, soon became invested in the project and with the help of FBI visiting behavioural analyst Scott Barker they seemed to make inroads into the mystery that had bamboozled officers for years.

Barker told the students that in order to confirm their connection they had to identify four aspects: timeframe, geography, a modus operandi and a signature. Armed only with newspaper clippings and the internet, the students analysed dozens of victims and found that six fitted a clear pattern; they were women with red hair in their twenties and thirties, who were strangled to death and dumped on interstate highways across the region.

‌The state in which the women were recovered was distressing and heart-breaking. One of the women was found nude in a refrigerator, another was a skeleton when she was found by a driver months after going missing, and a third was found over roadside railings and wrapped in a blanket, beaten and strangled and 10-12 weeks pregnant at the time.

‌Five of the women, who the class dubbed as ‘the six sisters’, were unnamed at the time, but have since been identified as Lisa Nichols, Michelle Inman, Tina Farmer, Elizabeth Lamotte and Tracy Walker – with one identity still unknown.

‌Through their findings, the students also decided the killer was likely a lorry driver, who deliberately targeted vulnerable women who would not be reported missing.

The killer trucker is a common trope in crime, according to psychologist Craig Jackson, from Birmingham City University, who studies the links between crime and occupation. He explains that murderers are often attracted to a job that allows life on the road as it allows them to get away with their evil deeds.

‘The FBI have recorded 850 bodies that can be attributed to people who drive as a living in the US,’ Craig tells Metro. ‘Since the 1980s when haulage became unregulated, a lot of smaller trucking companies could enter the market which wouldn’t have satellite technology and tracking.

‘The truckers didn’t always have to declare their routes and their schedules, so this meant that if you wanted to do harm to people, a job on the road was more attractive than ever before. Which is why this particular killer was able to fly under the radar – and many others.’

‌Targeting sex workers and women who are vulnerable for other reasons such as substance abuse, is also a common modus operandi – as they aren’t so readily reported missing.

‌Craig adds: ‘The killer chose women who weren’t very valuable to society, that we generally don’t look after as much as we should. If this had been six young, beautiful college girls from nice backgrounds, it would have made national news and the FBI would have become involved. But because they were sex workers who were using substances, it pretty much stayed local.’

And the women’s bodies were found across a huge geographical area, which made the investigation harder.

‌Eager to identify them, the students created a profile of their killer; male, Caucasian, an absent father, IQ above 100; tall, right-handed and muscular and most likely heterosexual. Calling him ‘the Bible Belt Strangler’, they speculated that he preyed on vulnerable young redheaded women because of experiences in his past.

However, for Craig; their profile was ‘too fanciful’.

‘They posited he was likely from an unstable home with an absent dad and a domineering mother. They said he drove an 18-Wheeler semi and he’s possibly a Christian. The problem is every time you add something into the profile, it gets a little bit weaker,’ he explains.

‌Nonetheless, in May 2018 the sociology class took their findings to the public so that other victims could be identified via a press conference with the support of local police.

‌Junior student William Bowers told members of the media, police officers and locals at the conference: ‘This started 37 years ago when a man murdered an unknown woman and laid her body beside an interstate. Four years later, five more women shared the same fate.

‌‘Those women would be found along interstates and highways along multiple states. At the time of the death, the women were found with reddish hair. The cases became cold for 35 years, until a few people asked why the murderer or the women haven’t been identified.’

‌‘We spent months learning about the redheaded murderers. We learned what a serial killer is. We looked into the lines of some of the most infamous serial killers, like Ted Bundy and Richard Chase. With the information provided and what we have learned, we have managed to create an MO, a signature and a profile for the murderer.’

‌Intrigued by the team of teen investigators, news spread and new tips from the public started rolling in to the police.

‌As a result, in December 2018, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced a breakthrough in the case. It had identified victim Tina Farmer, 21, from Indiana. Using DNA technology that hadn’t been around at the time she was killed, detectives had a match for DNA found on her body: Jerry Johns, a trucker from near Knoxville, with a horrendous family background. He matched the students’ profile.

‌Solving the crime was an amazing moment for Campbell and his investigators. But sadly, Johns will never be tried for these crimes as died in prison in December 2015, aged 67, two years before the pupils began their investigation. He’d been convicted of kidnapping, assaulting and attempting to kill Linda Schacke, a red headed dancer, in Knox County, Kentucky, in 1985.

‌His death means Johns can only be linked to the two victims, but is the teens’ investigation enough to assume he killed the other five women – or even more?

‌For Craig, it’s a no. ‘All I would say, is that even if Jerry Johns matches that profile that the kids came up with – it doesn’t mean he did it. Because there will be thousands of other truckers in just a few southern States alone that will match that profile.

‘It’s a lovely idea and it makes great TV, but in investigative terms, psychological profiles do not necessarily lead to individuals being identified and captured.

‘Just because the suspect matches the profile, they think it means he’s guilty. But the killer could still be alive, and statistically, it’s highly possible that they are still out there.’

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