199. Backwoods Horror: The Appalachian Serial Killer Caught by Teenagers

Go to https://kachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off your first order. Open your SoFi Checking & Savings account today - head to https://sofi.com/HeartStarts to get started In the 1980s, women with red hair kept turning up dead along Appalachian highways. Police held a six-hour summit, decided there was no serial killer, and shelved the cases for decades. Then a high school sociology class in East Tennessee picked them back up and did what no investigator could. TW: Mention of SA Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon. Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet. Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kaelyn Moore?

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• 0:43Kaelyn Moore?

  To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/hsp and use code HSP. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash HSP. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by GU Skincare. GU just launched their Heal and Seal Trio, a simple three-step Korean skincare routine that replaces those complicated seven-step regimens. Polish pads to exfoliate, toner pads for dark spots and redness, and NAD Plus Cream to lock in hydration overnight. These three products, three minutes a day. Dermatologist tested with over 650,000 happy customers and a 90-day money-back guarantee. Recently, I've been using their NAD Plus Cream, which has been so nice to put on at

• 1:28Kaelyn Moore?

  night. I really love it. It's not super heavy, which I love, but it still feels very moisturizing. It doesn't have a lot of scent, which I'm really sensitive to, which is why it works great in my routine. For a limited time, GU is having a crazy deal for our listeners. Their Heal and Seal Trio is already up to 50% off right now, but our listeners can now get an additional 20% off plus free shipping with code HSP at J-I-Y-U skin dot com. That's J-I-Y-U skin dot com and use code HSP for an additional 20% off. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. Welcome back to another episode of Heart Starts Pounding. As always, I'm your host, Kaelyn Moore. We are now officially moving out of spooky season into the rest of the year.

• 2:11Kaelyn Moore?

  I truly can't believe this year is already almost over. It's both flown by and has also been the longest year of my life. I guess having a baby really does that to you. The other day, my baby was actually standing without holding on to anything. And I was like, oh, so you're a grown up now. Got it, got it, got it, got it. Cool, cool, cool. I spent a lot of time, though, thinking about the programming that I wanted to do for the rest of the year, and I'm really excited to share that with you guys. We have a lot of great episodes coming up, a lot of year-end reviews, like big mysteries that were solved this year, cold cases that were solved this year, even the most viral and unexplained paranormal encounters of the year. I think you guys are gonna really, really enjoy it. But today, I want to share with you a story that I actually found while I was looking

• 2:56Kaelyn Moore?

  up scary things that have happened in Appalachia one night about 2:00 AM. It's a story about how bodies kept turning up on the side of the road in Appalachia in the 80s. Police pretty much wrote it off, but almost 40 years later, a high school class noticed something that no one else had. And as always, if you want to join me over on Patreon, you can sign up at the $5 tier and we'll send you a sticker after three months. And if you sign up for three months at the High Council tier, we're gonna send you a limited edition Rogue Detecting Society mug. And you can also listen to our most recent bonus episode that we released on terrifying trucker encounters. You're not gonna want to miss it. But for now, let's get into the episode. This story starts, like many Heart Starts Pounding stories, in the dark backwoods

• 3:41Kaelyn Moore?

  of Appalachia. There are legends about what lurks at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Eyes in the trees that watch you, a whistling song to lure travelers off of the path. Well, 40 years ago, a different kind of prowler stalked the dark woods, an all-too-human terror. It's the morning of April 1st, 1985. Two men are ambling along a back road in their pickup just outside of Gray, Kentucky. It's a place that's so small, it's technically not even a town. It's just a dot on the map lucky enough to have a post office. These men are scavenging. They're looking for discarded appliances on the side of the road that they can take home. The town doesn't have a proper junkyard, so locals have turned the roadside into their own dumping ground.

• 4:26Kaelyn Moore?

  Their truck rumbles down Highway 25, but all of a sudden, they see it. Jackpot. In the middle of the heap of discarded appliances stands a white Admiral refrigerator. It's an older model. It's a little dinged up, but they can strip it for copper and make some cash. They scramble down to inspect it. It definitely hasn't been here long. There was rain the previous day, and there's fresh dirt on the metal handle. Without any ceremony, they yank on that handle, springing the door free, and they freeze. Any excitement they had about this find has dried up, because what they see inside is a woman's body. Knox County authorities arrive on the scene a little after 9:00 AM.

• 5:10Kaelyn Moore?

  They dusted the refrigerator for prints, and they searched the area for any clues as to who the woman was, what happened to her, and how she ended up there. Nothing at the scene identified her, though. She was a Jane Doe. They could see that she was naked, except for short, white socks. She wore two on each foot, and she also wore two gold necklaces, one with an eagle pendant and the other a heart. She was petite, under five feet tall, about 100 pounds, and had reddish auburn hair. The police found a pair of boots in the junk pile that might have belonged to her, but it was only a guess based on the shoe size. They found nothing else, though, that might help identify this woman.

• 5:53Kaelyn Moore?

  And the coroner wasn't any more successful in answering what had happened to her. The only thing he knew for certain was that she had been asphyxiated. But how was a total mystery. There were no marks on her neck to imply strangulation, no broken blood vessels around her nose that indicated she had been smothered. Now, it was possible that she suffocated inside the sealed refrigerator, but there were no scratch marks on the inside of the door like she had tried to escape. So the coroner figured that she was either incapacitated when she was placed inside or she was already dead. A toxicology screen showed no drugs or alcohol in her system, though. This whole situation was baffling, and not just for the officials that were grasping

• 6:38Kaelyn Moore?

  at straws in their investigation. The surrounding community was deeply shaken by the gruesome discovery. In an attempt to identify her, police released a postmortem photograph of Jane Doe's face in the local newspaper, but no one recognized her. I mean, of course, they didn't. This was a really small town. Everyone knew everyone. If she was from around here, someone would have spoken up the day that she was discovered. And the article also listed some identifying marks. There was a small mole on her neck, a birthmark on her left ankle, stretch marks on her abdomen that suggested she had given birth. She was probably a mother. But without an identity, there was not much the police could do to solve her murder.

• 7:20Kaelyn Moore?

  They only had one bare scrap of a lead. There was a report that there was a red-haired woman at a truck stop off of I-75 trying to hitch a ride to North Carolina. She was last seen around 2:00 AM, six hours before Jane Doe was found in the refrigerator. If that was Jane Doe, she was probably picked up by her killer. It's not enough to solve the case, not by a long shot, but it's at least something. And this piece of information actually gives the investigators pause, because in April of 1985, their Jane Doe isn't the only dead woman linked to I-75.

• 8:02Kaelyn Moore?

  See, over the last six months, nearly a dozen women had been found murdered alongside major highways, four of them on I-75. And some of these women had been found within a few miles of each other. They were all white, petite, young, and all of them had red hair. Now, this suggests the unthinkable, that there is a serial killer down in Appalachia. The murders eventually got the name "The Redhead Murders." Now, Steve Watson with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations hated that nickname when he started looking into the murders, but despite his personal feelings, that name

• 8:45Kaelyn Moore?

  had stuck, and the public was now really wanting answers. So on the morning of April 24th, 1985, Watson sat at the head of a conference table in the TBI office in Nashville with one item on the agenda: the Redhead Murders. Twenty investigators filled the chairs around him, a few representatives from each state that this killer had struck: Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Now, they needed to figure out if this was just a coincidence or if there really was a serial killer. Throughout their six-hour summit meeting, investigators compared notes on eight Jane Doe cases that they thought might be related, might all have been committed by the same

• 9:30Kaelyn Moore?

  person. So on October 22nd, 1983, a woman was found on a river bluff about a mile off of I-40 outside of Memphis, Tennessee. She had strawberry blonde hair, and she had been strangled. Almost a year later, on September 16th, 1984, another woman was found off of I-40 by a hitchhiker. She had also been strangled. Now, she was a natural blonde, but her hair had previously been dyed red and washed out. On December 23rd, another woman was found wrapped in a blanket near Highway 222 outside of Reading, Pennsylvania. And again, she had been strangled, but she was a brunette.

• 10:10Kaelyn Moore?

  Then, on New Year's Day in 1985, a couple from Florida had stopped along the shoulder of I-75 in Tennessee to take some pictures of the mountains, a little souvenir from their holiday trip. Once they stepped over the guardrail, they were able to see clearly down the steep embankment, and there was something wedged up against the trees below. It looked like a sleeping bag or a bedroll, but then they realized there was a barefoot sticking out of the bottom. When the police arrived, they found a woman wrapped in a thick green blanket, wearing a tan velour blouse and blue jeans. She had been dead for a few days, strangled with a strip of cloth that was still knotted around her neck. Her hands and feet were bound with the same material.

• 10:55Kaelyn Moore?

  She was petite, five foot four, 110 pounds, and she had curly, red hair. She was the fourth woman that was found. The fifth was found on January 24th along Highway 78. She had strawberry blonde hair and had been strangled with a twisted cord, possibly her own shoelaces. And then, on March 31st, a couple from Indiana was driving west on I-24 when their engine overheated. They pulled onto the shoulder and they saw a creek at the bottom of the steep embankment. They carefully trekked down to get some water to cool off their engine. And on the way down, they saw scattered pieces of women's clothing. A white blouse with small red flowers, a cable knit sweater, a pair of jeans, a black bra.

• 11:38Kaelyn Moore?

  They were nearly in a line, like a makeshift trail that was leading them to the creek. And that is where they found the bones. Police were able to recover a woman's skull and several bones from the area, as well as scattered pieces of clothing. The sweater had a large bloody gash on one sleeve. And they found several strands of long, red hair at the scene. Now, with only the bones to examine, the coroner wasn't able to determine the cause of death, but it did seem like her clothes had been removed and then deliberately placed down the embankment. If she had been wearing them when she died, they would have been affected by her decomposing body,

• 12:19Kaelyn Moore?

  but instead, they were mostly intact, apart from the bloody gashes. And it was just one day later that the unidentified woman in the refrigerator was found, marking the seventh body. And as we know, she had red hair and was possibly last seen at a truck stop along I-75, and she died of asphyxiation, but the coroner said that she wasn't strangled. And finally, on April 14th, a woman was found 50 feet from I-81 in Greenville, Tennessee. She had been dead for several weeks, so it was difficult to determine an exact cause of death. However, she had been struck in the head and had stab wounds on her back. Her hair, though, was light brown. Now, when you hear all of those details together, it is pretty compelling.

• 13:04Kaelyn Moore?

  I mean, it sounds like they're linked in some way, right? But that's what the summit was called to determine. And they argued that, you know, while there's a lot of similarities, there also were a lot of inconsistencies. Now, physically, the women all resembled each other. All white, all petite, all in their twenties or thirties. But not all of them were redheads, no matter what the headlines claimed. They had all been murdered and left along major highways, suggesting a similar MO. But some had been found nude, some were still wearing clothes. Most had been strangled, but not all. And even among those, some had been strangled with rope or cord, and some hadn't. There was really only one thing that unified them all. They were all Jane Does.

• 13:48Kaelyn Moore?

  In every case, investigators had tried to identify them, published their descriptions in newspapers, compared them to hundreds of missing persons files, but they all came up empty. So this led them to the same conclusion, that they were probably unidentified for a reason. They were probably transient women who were maybe drug users or sex workers, who had found themselves untethered from society and estranged from their families. They weren't in the missing persons files because they had no one who would report them. And you and I, when we hear that, we think, oh, that's probably why they were targeted. But to a meeting of investigators in the 1980s,

• 14:28Kaelyn Moore?

  they figured that whether or not these women died at the hands of a serial killer was almost irrelevant. They had put themselves in harm's way, they said. And at the end of their six-hour summit, the officials denied the existence of such a killer. There were just too many differences between the cases to say otherwise. Each department remained committed to solving each murder, but any notion of a task force was totally dissolved. In public statements, they once again asked the public for help in identifying the murdered women, because that was key to solving these crimes. But then, for the next few months, the cases sat stagnant, growing colder. But then, that summer, they finally caught a break.

• 15:10Kaelyn Moore?

  In June of 1984, a tip came in about one of the Jane Does identities. A woman named Marie Williams came forward. She was a sex worker and she was living with a man named Thomas Gatewood. Marie told the Fort Lauderdale police that in the fall of 1984, she and Gatewood were living in West Memphis, Arkansas, with another woman, also a sex worker. And one night, that woman disappeared. The last time Marie saw the woman, she was at a truck stop climbing into the cab of a truck rig. And Marie remembered that there were two other men inside of the truck. A few days later, police found a murdered woman along I-40, only a few miles away from that truck stop.

• 15:52Kaelyn Moore?

  And Marie felt certain that it was her missing friend. So that was something. Police were then able to compare the West Memphis Jane Does fingerprints to an old arrest record of the woman that Marie told them about. And they got a hit. Authorities had confirmed their first identity. She was 26-year-old Lisa Ann Nichols. Lisa grew up in West Virginia with two older sisters and a brother. When she was nine, her home life splintered. Her parents got divorced, her sisters got married and moved out, and her mom started working nights at a bar to make ends meet. After running away from home, Lisa spent a few years in foster care. She was living with her grandma when she got pregnant.

• 16:35Kaelyn Moore?

  And at 19, she left home for good, her one-year-old son in tow. She eventually made her way to Nashville, but the only details of her time there came from her arrest record. Criminal trespassing, two counts of larceny, and at least five arrests for prostitution. Throughout the years, she kept in touch with one of her sisters through sporadic phone calls. But one day, those phone calls stopped, and her sister never knew what had happened to her. Now, she hadn't reported her sister missing, because the stretches in between their phone calls were getting longer and longer. And she figured that Lisa was living a life that she didn't want her sister to know about. So when Lisa went dark, her sister just thought she had cut her off.

• 17:18Kaelyn Moore?

  Until one day, when police arrived at her door to let her know that Lisa had been killed. This was devastating to hear, but it only got worse from there. See, Lisa was exactly who investigators already thought she was. Transient, drug user, sex worker. And rather than restart the conversation about a possible serial killer, reconsider the new links between the cases, they thought that it proved what they already thought. That Lisa Nichols willingly got into cars with strange men, and one night, she picked the wrong guy. That was the risk she took with the life she led. If anything, it made it less likely that there was a serial killer on the loose.

• 18:00Kaelyn Moore?

  It was just what happened to those kinds of women, is what they said. And so, investigators closed the book. And for decades, that was the end of the story. None of the other Jane Does were identified, eight cases were shelved, and seven women were left unidentified. Seven families had no idea why they had heard from their loved one for the last time. Some of the evidence was even discarded. The so-called redhead murders were relegated to blog posts and Reddit forums. But then, an unsuspecting group of teenagers did what no one else could. So I want to fast forward to 2018, 34 years later.

• 18:41Kaelyn Moore?

  A teacher named Alex Campbell had taught sociology at Elizabethson High School in East Tennessee for the last 10 years. And he had been noticing a disappointing trend amongst his students: apathy. They just weren't engaged. The school system was more obsessed with passing tests than actually learning anything. And over time, that disaffected attitude started to creep up on Mr. Campbell, too. He lost his own excitement for learning and teaching. But Mr. Campbell was like you and I. He was obsessed with true crime, specifically cold cases, and he loved when justice was served after years of a case sitting on a shelf. So when the semester resumed in January of 2018, he asked his students a question.

• 19:25Kaelyn Moore?

  How do you identify one person out of 250 million? Now, it does sound like a weird riddle that a teacher would ask you, but he was serious. He was talking about the redhead murders. That's what he wanted the class to work on that semester. Could they find the person responsible for these crimes? The one person out of 250 million in America? And they would do it through the tenants of sociology. Society, family, patterns of behavior, interpersonal relationships. But also through the lens of these 30-year-old cold cases. Real people who had died in their own backyard that they had a chance to help. And it worked. The whole dynamic of Mr. Campbell's classroom changed.

• 20:07Kaelyn Moore?

  His students were more than engaged, they were passionate in their search for answers. Their eyes all lit back up. They became advocates for the women who, for way too long, had all remained Jane Does. And that's where this class started. They needed to identify their victim pool. At the law enforcement summit back in 1985, officials had considered eight cases for possible links. And in the years since, the number of suspected redhead victims had actually doubled as more information came to light. The cases now Ranged from 1978 to 2001, and they shared familiar characteristics, the physicality of the victims, how they had died, and where their bodies were found. But after researching each one of these cases,

• 20:53Kaelyn Moore?

  Mr. Campbell's class decided to focus on six of them that they believed had enough evidence to be linked. Five of the six I have already mentioned to you in this episode, as they were part of the official summit meeting, but I'll summarize them again here. So there was Lisa Nichols, found in September of 1984 in West Memphis, Arkansas, the only victim to have been identified so far. The victim that we started our story with, found on April 1st in the refrigerator along Highway 25. There was also the Campbell County victim, found on New Year's Day, 1985, wrapped in a blanket off of I-75. Then there was also the Cheatham County victim, found on March 31st near I-24. She had been dead for several months and her body was mostly decomposed.

• 21:36Kaelyn Moore?

  There was also the Jane Doe, found in Green County on April 14th, next to I-81. She had been dragged 50 feet through the grass, stabbed and suffered a blunt force blow to the head, perhaps because she was trying to fight off her attacker. And finally, the woman that was discovered on February 13th, 1983, earlier than the other ones. She was found off of Highway 250 in West Virginia. The students believed that these six cases represented a compelling pattern, a signature, one that was sort of disregarded by the original investigators, who thought that these women brought their deaths upon themselves because of their lifestyles. But these students were not buying that.

• 22:19Kaelyn Moore?

  These women looked like each other, they had similar backgrounds, they had been killed in similar ways and died during a discreet period of time in a close geographical area. Yes, they were discovered in different states, but the highways that they were found beside provided nearly direct routes to one another. So they believed it was the hunting ground of a serial killer. And they even gave that serial killer a name, because catchy names unfortunately are usually what helps bring more attention to cases. They named him the Bible Belt Strangler. So the class then does all of this research. They have consultations with law enforcement and they go through old FBI profiling techniques.

• 23:00Kaelyn Moore?

  And they actually identify 21 characteristics that they believe the Bible Belt Strangler has in an attempt to unmask him. They say that he was probably a white heterosexual male, born between 1936 and 1962, which would have made him roughly early twenties to late forties at the times that the murder started. He was of average or slightly above average height, like 5'9" to 6'2". He was also between 180 to 270 pounds. He was strong enough to physically overpower his victims without the use of a weapon and carry their bodies to a different location to dispose of them. And they got even more specific. They believed he either lived in or worked out of Knoxville, Tennessee,

• 23:44Kaelyn Moore?

  the geographical center of the six cases. I-40 ran through the city as a main artery. The other relevant highways all branched off of it. For this and other reasons, he probably worked as a truck driver. Rest stops and gas stations gave him ready access to his preferred victim pool, sex workers and hitchhikers. Trucking also provided cover when disposing of bodies. No one thought twice about a big rig pulled over on the side of a highway. They also said that the Bible Belt Strangler was a mission-oriented killer, meaning he had taken up a personal crusade against an identifiable group. It's possible that he felt like he was ridding the world of undesirable women, as he mostly targeted sex workers.

• 24:29Kaelyn Moore?

  However, given the overwhelming similarities between the victims' physical appearance, it's also possible that they were surrogates for another figure in his life that he hated. Possibly a redheaded mother, or maybe a wife. They said he was an organized killer, smart enough to acquire and dispose of his victims without drawing suspicion, careful enough to not leave any evidence behind for police, but he also would leave his victims out in the open because he wanted them to be discovered. Remember, one victim had a trail of clothing that led to her remains. And most importantly, the students described him as probably being an average Joe. He wasn't obviously a psychopath.

• 25:13Kaelyn Moore?

  He was able to hold down a steady job, he was capable of long-term relationships. He might even be married with a family. He made sure to only kill while he was out on the road. His friends and loved ones would likely be shocked if they learned his true nature. The students went ahead and they compiled all of these details and the reasoning behind it into this seven-page profile. At the beginning of the semester, Mr. Campbell had asked them, "How do you identify one person out of 250 million?" And with this profile in hand, they were much closer to their goal. But now, what exactly were they supposed to do with that report? Well, on May 15th, 2018,

• 25:56Kaelyn Moore?

  Mr. Campbell's class held a televised press conference at their high school to present their profile of the Bible Belt Strangler. Standing behind them were officers from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations and the various county sheriff's departments with the six open Jane Doe cases. They made their objective clear. With enough public attention, someone will come forward with new information. They might recognize one of the Jane Does from their description. They might have seen something years ago that they thought wasn't important at the time, but now they understand that it's a vital clue. They might read the profile of the Bible Belt Strangler and realize that it sounds like someone they know.

• 26:37Kaelyn Moore?

  They urged the gathered journalists not to let these women's stories go silent again. They asked the people watching to share the details with friends and family. "Someone knows something, so we have to keep asking until we have answers," they said. And in a direct address to the killer, Mr. Campbell warned, "The Bible Belt Strangler, we know you're out there. We know somebody has information to help find you and hold you accountable. And after today, everyone knows that we're looking for you."

• 27:13Kaelyn Moore?

  And well, they found him.

• 27:19Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Kachava. Kachava has been my go-to for really years now. I think I've been drinking Kachava for two years. And I am so excited that they have a new flavor, Salted Caramel. It feels like it was made specifically for me. Me personally, my favorite types of sweet treats are always ones that have a little bit of salt to them, like a chocolate-covered pretzel or something. It's a perfect blend of buttery, salty, sweet, and none of the sugary drawbacks. And like every Kachava shake, two scoops gives you plant-based protein, fiber, greens, and so much more. No artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners, no fillers, just clean nutrition that actually satisfies a craving. And they have so many flavors now, flavors truly for any time of day.

• 28:01Kaelyn Moore?

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• 28:20Speaker 01

  The Unsolved Mysteries podcast is back. I'm Jordan Murphy, and each week I'll take you inside a new investigation. It could be an unsolved murder, an unexplained disappearance, the search for a wanted fugitive, any mystery that still needs answers. We'll follow every new lead, every break in the case, and the moments when a mystery is finally solved. Because after all these years, one thing hasn't changed. Someone, somewhere, knows the truth. Listen to and follow Unsolved Mysteries, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 28:50Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Minky Couture. Okay, I need to talk about this blanket that I am currently wrapped in. I genuinely don't want to give it up. I have probably three or four Minky Couture blankets now. I have them in every color, on every couch. I keep some in the office for when I'm cold. It is such a soft and lovely blanket. I'm truly obsessed. It's one of those gifts where someone opens it and they immediately know that you put real thought into it, which is perfect timing because Minky Couture is kicking off the holiday season with their annual White Glove Event on November 7th. It's early access to Black Friday pricing, some of the best deals of the entire season, both in-store and online. They're releasing exclusive Christmas prints alongside their signature blankets,

• 29:34Kaelyn Moore?

  and I honestly want to get one for everyone on my list. The best gifts are the ones that make people feel loved and wrapped in comfort. Join us in-store or online November 7th and find the best gifts ever.

• 29:47Kaelyn Moore?

  So 2018 had two things that the 1980s just didn't have when it came to the redhead murders. One, a group of teenagers who actually cared about the cases. And two, a boatload of new science. The student's profile said that the Bible Belt Strangler was an organized, methodical killer who removed any evidence from his victims. But this killer had made a mistake. Police did have some bodily fluids from the killer. They found semen on a blanket wrapped around one of the victims. But in 1985, they didn't have the technology to do anything with it. But now they did. The DNA was sequenced and it was uploaded to their system.

• 30:29Kaelyn Moore?

  Police waited eagerly to see if anything would come up. The students showed up to class every day, waiting for an update, knowing that there might just not be a match in the system. But then, one day, they got the call. There was a match. His name was Jerry Leon Johns. And once the police started looking into him, they could not believe how well he matched the Bible Belt Strangler profile. So he's a white heterosexual male. The students guessed that he was born between 1932 and 1951. Johns was born in 1948. They said that he would be slightly above average height.

• 31:11Kaelyn Moore?

  Johns, six foot two, 185 pounds. And not only all of that, there's also his profession. He was a truck driver. His company, Rebel Trucking, was based in Cleveland, Tennessee, roughly 80 miles south of Knoxville on I-70, the exact road several of the women had been found alongside and right where the students felt like he'd be based. The students also figured that he would be an average Joe. And from the research, Jerry Leon Johns was a family man. He had a wife, he had kids, though him and his wife did eventually separate. And who was his ex-wife, you might ask? The woman who had been married to this monster? Phyllis.

• 31:56Kaelyn Moore?

  She was white, petite, and she had red hair. Now, Phyllis described Johns as unfailingly loyal, a wonderful father, and completely incapable of murder. But we know exactly the type of violence that he was capable of. Let me take you back to the night of March 5th, 1985. Jerry Leon Johns is out in Knoxville with his brother Wayne at a strip joint, the Catch One Club. He's a regular there and he even has a membership card. He pulls aside one of the dancers, a redhead named Linda, and he makes her an offer. His brother's been feeling a little bit blue and Jerry's trying to show him a good time, cheer him up a little bit.

• 32:38Kaelyn Moore?

  If she and a friend would come back to their motel, he would make it worth their while. And then, he flashed four $100 bills. Linda considered the money. It was more than she would make the rest of the night dancing, so she agreed. Jerry tore two of the bills in the middle and gave Linda the halves, promising the rest after she made good. So Linda grabbed a friend and the four of them drove to a Holiday Inn, each in their own cars. Jerry paid for two rooms and they coupled off. After Jerry and Linda had sex, Linda went and took a shower, but when she came out of the bathroom, Jerry was there, holding a gun. He claimed that he was actually an undercover Texas Ranger and said that if she didn't do exactly as he said, he would have her arrested.

• 33:23Kaelyn Moore?

  He told her to get dressed and then led her out to the parking lot at gunpoint, shoving her into the passenger seat of her own car. Jerry then ripped her t-shirt into strips and used the cloth to bind her hands and feet and gag her. He warned her, "Try to run or try to scream and he would shoot her in the head." Then he pulled out of the parking lot and onto the interstate. When he finally stopped, they were parked alongside a thick area of trees. Jerry forced Linda out of the car into the darkness and she pleaded with him. "Are you going to kill me?" she asked. "Yes," he said. She had become a nuisance to him. And then Jerry tied one of the t-shirt strips around Linda's neck and he strangled her.

• 34:08Kaelyn Moore?

  Eventually, she blacked out. But against all odds, Linda woke up. One corner of the collar on Linda's jacket had gotten wedged between her skin and the ligature, leaving her just enough space to breathe and regain consciousness. And when she came to, she was under the road in a drainage ditch. She managed to climb back up to the highway and flag down a passing car for help. While Linda was taken to the hospital, Knox County Police went to the Holiday Inn that she described. They were able to track down Jerry and he was still driving Linda's car, his gun sitting on the passenger seat. In his pockets, they found the motel room key and two halves of $100 bills. It was more than enough evidence to arrest him for the attack.

• 34:53Kaelyn Moore?

  And Jerry was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 73 years in prison. So let's just make this crystal clear. Jerry was a truck driver who had abducted a red-haired woman, strangled her, and left her body in a ditch off the side of the freeway. Does this sound familiar? I mean, of course it does. And the police investigating the murder cases recognized the similarities too. They strongly considered him as a suspect in the Campbell County Jane Doe murder as well. She was the one that was discovered on New Year's Day, 1985, just two months after Linda's attack alongside I-75 in Tennessee. She was found wrapped in a thick green blanket, strangled with a strip of cloth that was still knotted around her neck.

• 35:36Kaelyn Moore?

  Her hands and her feet were bound with the same material. And that knot that was used to strangle her was almost identical to the one that Jerry Johns used on Linda. And it turns out that at the time, investigators felt strongly that he was involved, but they just didn't have enough evidence to prove it. And you know, maybe they let themselves off the hook a little bit because Jerry had already been sentenced to spend the next seven decades behind bars. But luckily, science stepped up where they felt short. And in 2016, new analysis confirmed that Jerry's DNA was on both the blanket the Campbell County Jane Doe was wrapped in and the blouse that she was wearing.

• 36:18Kaelyn Moore?

  Finally, solid evidence that he was involved. But unfortunately, they still had no idea who this woman was. Fast forward to 2018. Thanks to the class's press conference for the Bible Belt Strangler, the cold cases were now fresh in everyone's minds. And the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations received a tip about a blog that published descriptions of missing persons. One of the descriptions seemed to match the Campbell County Jane Doe. Agents were able to obtain a fingerprint match from old records and finally confirm an identity. Tina Marie Farmer. She was last seen in November of 1984 at her family's Thanksgiving in Indianapolis.

• 37:01Kaelyn Moore?

  They actually had reported her missing, but for whatever reason, Tina's file was never registered in the National Missing Persons Database. So when investigators tried to compare their Jane Doe's description to open cases, she wasn't there. But now that she had been identified and Jerry Johns had been conclusively linked to her death, the wheels of justice could finally turn. In 2019, a grand jury ruled that there was sufficient evidence to indict Jerry for Tina's murder. And Mr. Campbell's class was really to thank for it. Except Jerry Leon Johns was dead. He had died in prison in 2015 while he was still serving time for Linda's attempted murder.

• 37:45Kaelyn Moore?

  Now, there are a lot of mixed feelings here. On one hand, Jerry died in prison, which is exactly where he should have been. But justice for one is not justice for all here because those women would have never been identified and those murders would have never been looked at again if not for Mr. Campbell's class. So now, we have to wonder, how many other women did Jerry kill? Eight years after their press conference, I'm happy to say that it had the exact effect Mr. Campbell's students intended. Tina Farmer was just the first domino to fall. Month after month, year after year, more and more victims were identified. Like the Chatham County Jane Doe.

• 38:28Kaelyn Moore?

  She was part of both the original summit meeting and the class grouping. On March 31st, 1985, she was found off of I-24 with her clothes deliberately removed. And thanks to advancements in genealogy sequencing, the Chatham County Jane Doe was finally identified as 24-year-old Michelle Inman. She lived in Nashville and like other Bible Belt victims, she was a sex worker. Evidence collected from Jerry Johns' truck, as well as statements that he made to the police back in 1985, placed him in the Nashville area at the same timeframe they estimated Michelle was killed. Her case is still open and under investigation. The TBI has published pictures of the clothing found with her body and they are still actively

• 39:13Kaelyn Moore?

  seeking information from anyone who recognizes Michelle, what she was wearing, or if they know anything about who she was last seen with. It does seem like this is one where there's just not DNA evidence that can be retested. After a hotline tip, the Green County Jane Doe was identified as 17-year-old Elizabeth Lamott. When her body was discovered on April 14th, 1985, she was a very long way from home. She was last seen on November 22nd, 1984 in New Hampshire. She was living in a group home at the time and she'd gotten permission to attend the high school football game. She left that afternoon and she never returned. It is possible that she was abducted.

• 39:54Kaelyn Moore?

  It's also possible that she used that opportunity to run away, which she had done in the past. The coroner estimated that Elizabeth had been dead for three to six weeks before she was found. So that still left several months between leaving the group home and her murder. If she had run away, it is possible that she spent that time hitchhiking, which might have put her in Jerry Johns' path. It is pure speculation, but investigators found a business card on Elizabeth's body for a motel in Houston, Texas. And when Jerry was arrested for attacking Linda, police recovered a recent receipt from a gas station just a few miles away from that motel.

• 40:39Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Rula. This time of year always kind of sneaks up on me. The days get shorter, the nights longer, the holidays start piling up. And sometimes I notice that I'm not quite myself, just a little bit more tired, a little bit more on edge. It can be easy to brush that feeling off, but talking to someone about it actually makes a real difference. And that's where Rula comes in. Rula is a healthcare company that helps you find a licensed therapist who takes your insurance. They work with over 120 plans and Rula patients typically pay around $15 a session, just $15. You don't have to spend weeks searching either. Sometimes that's the hardest part of the process. Rula helps you find providers accepting new patients with appointments available as soon as tomorrow.

• 41:21Kaelyn Moore?

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• 42:04Kaelyn Moore?

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• 42:45Kaelyn Moore?

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• 43:24Kaelyn Moore?

  This is a paid advertisement by SoFi Technologies and is not intended to be financial advice. Since 2018, new groups of Mr. Campbell's students continued to research the cold cases and their possible links to Jerry Johns. They added another potential victim found on April 1, 1985, in Jellico, Tennessee. Because of her young age, investigators referred to her as Baby Girl. Now, all that was left of Baby Girl was a skeleton. It was found by a local man near an abandoned strip mine. Baby Girl had been dead at least a year, and the suspected cause of death was strangulation. The case caught the students' attention because the bones were discovered only seven

• 44:09Kaelyn Moore?

  miles away from Tina Farmer. And DNA analysis eventually identified Baby Girl as 15-year-old Tracy Sue Walker. She was last seen in July of 1987, hanging out at the mall with her friends. She got into a car with a pair of men, which takes investigators back to Linda getting in the car with Jerry and his brother, but then she disappeared. Now, Jerry Johns often drove up to Illinois to visit his estranged wife and children. I-75 was a straight shot from Knoxville to home, and it passed right through Indiana, where Tracy vanished. It also passed Indianapolis, where Tina Farmer disappeared. Now, here's another kicker.

• 44:52Kaelyn Moore?

  Tracy was discovered in an abandoned strip mine. Jerry's trucking company had a contract with a manufacturer that supplied parts used in coal mining. So even if this dump site was a bit farther off the beaten path than his usual, it was entirely possible that he was already familiar with this area because of his work. In 2025, Mr. Campbell's class participated in a documentary series continuing the work of the students before them. In particular, they were focused now on Tracy Sue Walker, or Baby Girl. And this time, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations was right alongside them. Special Agent Brandon Elkins presented the class with newly discovered evidence from Tracy's case.

• 45:36Kaelyn Moore?

  He had photographs of the original crime scene discovery. Her body had been discovered only 30 minutes away from their town, Elizabethon, and together they took a field trip and they walked through the overgrown woods where she was found. And here is where there's a little bit of a twist in the story, because this area was not at all what the students were expecting. The site was completely out of the way. It was down a steep hill, and it had been described in their research as an abandoned strip mine, but it was actually more like a junkyard. Agent Elkins introduced the students to some locals who said that the area had been a favorite spot for bootleggers who would make moonshine. And after seeing this area with their own eyes, they started to reconsider Jerry's

• 46:20Kaelyn Moore?

  involvement, because it was just too different from his normal MO. He liked to dump bodies out in the open, where he knew they would be discovered. It was only by chance that Tracy had been found. She was that concealed. But that didn't mean they were gonna give up on her case. Even if she wasn't a Bible Belt Strangler victim, she still deserved just as much attention. Mr. Campbell's students created a full-court press campaign centered around the tagline, "Someone knows who killed Tracy Sue. Is it you?" They created flyers, yard signs, and direct mailers with her photo, urging the public to contact the TBI with any tips. They even had an airplane fly a banner over the area with a hotline number.

• 47:02Kaelyn Moore?

  And they also created a website, justicefortracy sue.com, which has even more resources and material, and I strongly encourage you to check it out and share Tracy's story. I'll link it in the description of this episode. But Tracy's story wasn't the only one they were reconsidering when it came to Jerry's involvement. They had to accept the same conclusion for the Knox County Jane Doe, the woman who was found in the refrigerator that I told you about first in this episode. She had been killed on April 1, 1985. Jerry Johns was already in jail at that time, charged with attacking Linda on March 6. But even if she wasn't one of the Bible Belt Strangler victims, there is one bright spot in her story, and that is that her headstone finally has a name.

• 47:47Kaelyn Moore?

  She was identified as Espy Pilgrim, after a family member recognized an enhanced photo in a missing and unidentified persons group on Facebook. At the time of her disappearance, she left behind a six-week-old daughter. And while she doesn't know who stole her mother from her life, she at least has a small measure of closure. There is still a lot more to be done, but as heartbreaking as this episode is, I did want to end on a little bit of a positive note. After Espy Pilgrim's autopsy, while she was still unidentified, the Hampton Funeral Home volunteered to claim her body, footing the bill to transport her back from Lexington for a proper service burial.

• 48:29Kaelyn Moore?

  A department store donated clothes, a navy skirt, and a pale blue blouse. Dozens of other businesses and residents donated flower arrangements for the service, including a spray of red carnations to sit on top of her casket. About 60 mourners attended the funeral for a woman that they did not know. People did care about these women. The small Appalachian communities did, even when the police didn't. And that alone gives me hope. I've said it before on the show, but all it takes is for one person to care about it enough to continue to fight for justice. I've said it before, but you can stay annoying, and you can contact places, and you can fight to keep people's names alive.

• 49:12Kaelyn Moore?

  We are truly in a golden age of DNA testing right now, and there's gonna be a lot more stories like this making headlines, and I want Heart Starts Pounding to be there for every single one of them. I'm very, very curious to see where this next year takes us in terms of solving cold cases. And now I turn it over to you guys. What is the cold case that you want to see solved? Are there any cold cases from where you live that you're eager to see answers on? And maybe, maybe, maybe there's something that can be done in the near future to help bring justice. And if you want to hear more about this story, because there is more, you can join me on the high council tier over on Patreon, where on footnotes, I'm gonna be telling you about what didn't make it into the episode, and I want to find out as much information as I can on Jerry Johns's wife, and I'm gonna put that in the episode. So join me over there for more info.

• 49:57Kaelyn Moore?

  That is all I have for you today. I'm gonna be here next week with another episode for you guys. Thank you for joining me here, and I'll see you then. Until next time, stay annoying. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaila Moore. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Abigail Cannon. Design and mix by Red Rome Creative. Video editing by Creative Step. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jordan again, the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request, check out heartstarts pounding.com. This episode is brought to you by our partner, Vistaprint. If you run a small business, you know that there's a moment where you go from just doing

• 50:41Kaelyn Moore?

  the thing you love to realizing you need stuff, like physical stuff. Custom merch for an event, branded apparel for your team, business cards that actually look professional. That was definitely me with Heart Starts Pounding. What started as a podcast I made in my closet turned into something that had merch, had mugs, had stickers, had all of this stuff that I needed to get made. And Vistaprint made it so much less overwhelming. They are a true print expert. Premium quality products, fast turnaround, and design tools that actually make sense. I actually got custom mugs made from Vistaprint, and they are gorgeous and very, very good quality. The quality feels expensive without having an expensive price tag. There's a reason over 17 million businesses trust Vistaprint with their print needs. Vistaprint, print your possible.

• 51:25Kaelyn Moore?

  Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at vista print.com. That's 20% off at vista print.com using code NEW20. Do you want more Darkly Curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven-day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com backslash heart starts pounding. But whatever you do, stay curious.