The Next Generation

A group of high school students.

High school students Elizabeth and high school students started a project to research a string of unsolved murders.

Their research led to the identification of the killer. Investigators now have an answer to a thirty four year old question.

Once you start getting a few tips, or a few leads, or few identifications, then the cold case isn't so cold anymore.

There's a pretty good chance he's still alive.

Everything that the students predicted through their profile turned out to be accurate.

Redhead Killer profile mail Caucasian, five nine six, two hundred and seventy pounds, unstable home, absent father, and a domineering mother, right handed, IQ above one hundred, most likely heterosexual.

There is no profile of this killer except for the ones the students created.

Just because some of these women no longer have people to speak for them does not mean that they deserve to.

Not be so anymore.

What if this guy's still alive?

Like, what if becomes after us?

You're gonna kill me? Who's a year? This is Murder one oh one, Season one, Episode five, The Next Generation. I'm Jeff Shane, a television and podcast producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Leidecker, Courtney Armstrong, and Andrew Arnold. It had been four and a half years since the original assignment wrapped up, but mister Campbell always felt there was more to uncover. While scheduling and timing made it challenging for mister Campbell to teach another sociology class, something even

I mean, who says it has to be them to do the work? I mean, you know, I mean, this class did this work four or five years ago, but I have students now that could do the work too, and may want to do the work. For example, had two young ladies basically begged me to teach each a class on criminal psychology. And it's so funny because I don't even think they knew really all the background of things I did years ago. They weren't even at the

So if there's a world where we can bring current high school students in and have then kind of be a part of these group meets where you assign things and we talk about it and exciten me up.

We had a teacher gets sick and so we're short of subs that you know, teachers helped cover each other's classes. So I went into that classroom and it was a you know, it was a health science class or something, and I don't know how it came up, but you know, they got their work done. There was a few minutes at the end, and I'm just in there to make sure everything's kind of calm. I don't have anything new to teach them or anything. And they started talking about it,

A few days later, mister Campbell officially enlisted juniors. Riley Whitson and Marlee Mathena to help work the case. The plan was for the two teens to start meeting mister Campbell before school to see what they could find.

Okay, so, originally the students from about four or five years ago were looking at six different victims, but because of their work, a lot of stuff has.

Really been coming out in the last few years.

So why don't you ladies tell me what you've been working on. Marley, why don't you go first.

I've been working on the de Putto County Jane Doe and she was found January twenty fourth. I'm in nineteen eighty five. She was adjacent Tiway seventy eight in all of Rinch, Mississippi. And she was white with red or strawberry blonde hair. She was about twenty to thirty five years old. She was kind of smaller lady. There's only one hundred and ten pounds, about five two to five four. She was wearing a top, some jeans, but she had no underwear, socks, shoes, broad jewelry, any of that. They

So you fel the DeSoto County Jane do deserves to be included with the other six that the students had found a few years back.

Yeah, I think she does.

What.

I don't know, what is it that jumps out about that case that makes you think it needs to be included.

With that list.

Well, it just kind of lines up with everything, like the strangulation and that she's smaller, has red hair, and that she was dumped off on a highway.

Now you said it was in Mississippi, Yes, and Mississippi doesn't seem to fit the kind of East Well forty corridor kind of thing. Where's that at in Mississippi?

It's in Olive Branch, but I think that's where his sister lives.

Jerry John's sister.

Yes, he did have a sister that live in Batesville, which I think was kind of just south of the Tennessee state line. So maybe we need to look at that and let's see how far this victim was found from West Memphis, where Lisa Nichols was found, and then let's see how far that is from his sister's hometown there in Mississippi, So maybe we can do that by next week.

That sound good, Riley, What have you been digging into?

I've been looking at the case of baby girl Jane Doe, who has now been identified as Tracy Sue Walker.

Walker was born.

June second, nineteen sixty three and reportedly went missing from tip A Canoe Mall in nineteen seventy eight, which made her around fifteen years old at the time her disappearance. Her mother also reported her as running away a couple of times, so this made people believe that she had just run away until she was identified in twenty twenty two.

Okay, so what are some of the things you think make this case deserve to be included.

With the original six.

Obviously, she had red hair, she was younger, smaller girls, some of the previously mentioned similarities between all of these cases. But something very interesting we found in the last couple weeks of research was that there were similarities between the knots and cloth of Tina Farmer and the survivor Linda Show. So that's been a very interesting finding and pretty compelling as far as tying this all to Jerry Leon john did they.

Are you looking at there on your computer? Yes, let me see that.

You know, this is fascinating because a few years back we scoured the internet, the students scoured the internet looking for all this information. And I'm gonna be honest, this was not there a few years ago. And Holy Michael, I think this was big.

So let me tell you this. What's they set in?

I know it's up north a little bit. I think it was Indiana.

Hold on, yeah, Indiana.

Lafayette, Lafayette, Yeah, Lafayette, Indiana.

That is very interesting because I know that area, not because I've ever been up through there. But actually Tina Farmer, who was the other Campbell County Jane Doe, went missing from around Indianapolis, Yes, which is at that time probably close to a ten hour drive from Knoxville, which is where Jerry Leon Johns was spending a lot of time.

And so think about this. Think about this for a second.

Tina Farmer goes missing from around Indianapolis. This girl goes missing from Lafayette, which is about an hour from Indianapolis, and those are about ten hours away. And both of those girls end up dead within a mile of each other ten hour drive away. I think that's really big. What's the chance it.

Is the greatest coincidence of all time?

Or and they're both red headed, and they're both white, and they're both teenagers, and they both have the same body style and hete and wait and all those things.

That is crazy. And then also I know.

That by looking at the history of jer Leon Johns that the cops put together for the lend of share prosecution, that he had lived in Rockford.

Illinois, and he still had family in Rockford, Illinois.

And if you look on the interstate, you have to go through from from Tennessee, you have to go through Indianapolis and Lafayette to get to Rockford.

Which is about an hour away.

So if he's traveling back and forth from his family back down to areas here in Tennessee and East Tennessee, those interstates and those cities are on the is on that interstate, right on the way. And the fact that both those young ladies went went missing from so far away and then end up dead within a mile of each other, within a couple of years of each other, about thirty miles.

North of where Jerry Leon Johnson is hanging out. That's crazy.

And from what we've seen, I believe that Jerry Leon Johns. I believe he's a very opportunistic but also calculated killer. So I think wherever he's traveling, that's where we'll see the path of destruction, you know what I'm saying. So when we see these patterns of him traveling to these different places, you know he's bound to recavoc where he goes.

Yeah, so I think that's big. I definitely agree with you. We need to look at the Tracy Sue Walker case. And that's not because of bad work of the original students.

It's because it's new. Information's going right, and she.

Wasn't identified until August of this year.

You know, Okay, awesome, So I think you guys are doing a good job.

I think we definitely need to continue to look at.

These two victims and maybe they need to be included in the inner circle. And Marty, we'll go back to you, like, what do you think you need to do next to solidify the fact that you think she's connected with these other murders.

Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in a moment. Murder one O one.

I think I definitely need to figure out like the relationship between where she was found and where his sister lives, So definitely figure out that. So then it gives like a reason for why he would be going down there, and it just connects it, so it's not like it's crazy out of the way, And then I think look at the other victims a little bit more and try and find like connecting factors between this.

And an unfortunate fact too, is so many of these women were done injustice as far as the investigation goes, just because so many of them were transient or were a possible sex workers away from home. So many of them were done a disservice by the justice system and enough wasn't enough, attention wasn't given to them. Yeah, for Tina Farmer and Linda, they were cloth that had been tied around their necks and the knot was in the cloth around their necks.

So all right, So right here I have a huge three ring binder. This is all of the information that was collected for the Linda attempted murder.

By Jerry Leon Johnson.

So that's the only one that went to court. So we have all this information and I have it right here, and in this stack of a couple hundred pages, we actually went down to Nashville, and here are some pictures

Yes, they found cloth that had been ripped up and tied around the neck of her as well.

So very very similar, as.

You've said too, and just something interesting that when we were personally into this case, it just kind of blew my mind and shows you the ruthless, the ruthlessness and the savageness of Jerry Leon Johns. Whenever Linda was choked, she was choked so hard that she was blind for three days after the assault, and the whites of her eyes we've seen the pictures from the hospital. The whites in her eyes were completely red, as deep as red

I almost say something else like that.

Information about Tina Farmer being strangled with a cloth was not out there either.

It didn't say anything like that when we were looking.

And I didn't even know that she was found in a blanket until it came out that she was identified. And they knew that Jerr Lee on John has killed her because his DNA was found on the blanket, So they didn't even release that. So the fact that now we know that she was strangled with a.

Cloth shirt from a.

T shirts, from her T shirt.

Okay, from her T shirt, very very similar to Linda. And then this girl Tracy Walker, who disappeared about an hour from Tina Farmer up in Indianapolis, ends up about a mile away from her. She also has been They found the T shirt that survived, yes, I believe, so they have strips of cloth with a knot in there. And then we know for a fact on the Linden case that he tied her and then strangled her with

And I believe we should look and see what we can find on other victims to see if there's that possible Samemo. I mean, if he did something so similar for these three victims, he's bound to do it for others.

You know, is there anything else we need to do this week? You know, just kind of research and see if we can continue to pull these together.

Like I said, just I think looking more into I mean, we know some of these small details that may seem insignificant, but these are the type of details that we're going to put together to really make a compelling case for ourselves. You know.

Yeah, well, girls, great job. I know it's almost time to go to class. I appreciate y'all coming in early. I know you got your busy, you got basketball, you got school. But I appreciate y'all coming in before school and working on this in your spare time.

I really think we've come a long way. I can't wait to see what else you guys find.

So who are the young women going above and beyond in the search of justice.

I'm Riley Wits, and obviously I'm sixteen. I'll be seventeen the day before, no two days before Halloween, so I've kind of always had that spooky ambiance follow me around everywhere I go. But yeah, I've always been very interested, morbidly and fascinated with stuff that most people are like, Wow, You're either going to be a serial killer or a brain surgeon when you grow up.

Hi, I'm Malonsina. I'm a junior at elizabeth In High School and I'm sixteen.

Marley spoke about the extracurricular club.

We started, like a little club, which right now is just me and Riley, so we just started getting into it. I would say that it's definitely out there, like I'm not gonna take away from that, but like anyone's capable of anything.

So we decided, you know, to come in early few times a week and do some work on our own when we could. Me and Marley both play play basketball for the school, so we'll be in the locker room talking about it, and all our teammates are like, what the heck is going on?

The rest is history.

I guess Marley and Riley are best friends.

Riley's my best friend. She has been since like third grade, so we've always been close. Well in third grade, we met her basketball and we both still play basketball now and we go over to her or I used to go over to her house all the time and we just did everything together. And back then I used to be like really really quiet, like I would have a panic attack. Before I had this phone call and she was more outgoing. But she's still pullay the more the

We spoke to Riley's dad, mister Woodson.

I mean, they are literally best bff's best friends. Our families are best friends. We vacation together, like we go we go to Florida together every year. We you know, we travel, we stay together. We you know, we get together on the weekend's cookouts with them, hang by the pool where and she has a younger brother who is the same age as my youngest daughter, and their best friends.

We also got the chance to connect with Marley's mom, missus Mathena.

They are peanut, butter and jelly. Riley is much more. Riley is the extrovert. She's out going, she could talk to anyone. She's definitely not shy. She performs. She has a beautiful singing voice, and it's comfortable. She you know, at many events. She everything from performing with the praise band at her church, she sings at funeral she has sung from the very large crowds for community events, the national anthem. So Riley's there. Marley's more of the quiet

Aside from being on her students and star basketball players, what truly bonded the girls was their obsession with true crime, and I think.

That falls in with wanting to solve the Jane Doe type stuff. She loves helping people less fortunate. It like at church before at church and there's kids in the youth who are kind of less fortunate, Riley will gravitate to those kids. She wants to love on those kids and help those kids, and I think they kind of really as part of her passion for one to solve the Jane Doe. She wants to help these ladies out, or these people, these victims who don't have a voice anymore.

On her phone a lot.

But I'm not kidding. If she's on her phone for five hours in her spare time of day, four and a half hours is with the crime podcasts.

For Marley's mom, the newfound interest came as a bit of a shock.

She is not the child that enjoys thrill rides. She has never watched scary movies, you know, and it's like, wows, And I'm interested in true crime. That's kind of surprising. But she's really interested into the scientific, the forensic, and she's like, to make big, big impacts in life, you kind of have to go outside the box.

The club took a few days to review the information before meeting back up.

So what have you been finding so like I said previously, we're just trying to tie Tracy Walker with the rest of these victims, and really because we feel that there's a lot of compelling evidence that ties her to Juy Lean Johns. So something very interesting I found here. I'm looking at my map. Tina Farmer was from Indianapolis and Indiana, and a Walker was from Lafayette in Indiana.

And that's about an hour or maybe yeah.

Round about something like that. Well, we've covered that Jerry Leon John was a trucker. Well, there's a highway or interstate that goes directly between these two and he would have taken this route so he didn't have to go through Chicago, which most truckers would not want to go through Chicago due to traffic obvious reasons. So there's a direct line between these two cities which he would have taken, which I think is very just give us a direct line.

It's highway of death. Yes, as sad as that he is.

So.

I mean, there's just so many similarities.

There's no way it's coincidental.

It's hard to say to people got kidnapped ten hours away and their bodies ended up within a mile of.

Each other, and it wasn't the same person. Everything else matches exactly it.

And this is actually pretty interesting. But her name is We figured out that the Desto count and Jane Doe was also strangled with the ligature?

Did it say anything about what type of ligature?

On?

NamUs didn't and just said that it was a ligature, but she was missing like a jacket and undergarments, which I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but he could use the jacket.

Yeah, that's a lot of good work for a couple of days. They got to give y' all a pretty good grade too. But you getting ready to have your big three day weekend, don't rub it in. These teachers have to work on Friday.

But what do you think we need to.

Do figure out more about the what the ligature could have been?

Riley? What are you going to be working?

I believe just again trying to tie more more of these cases together. Looking into specific small details, even if they seem insignificant, because I feel like those add up. Like just seeing that Tina Farm and Tracy Walker were from Lafayette and Indianapolis, you wouldn't think too much into that, But seeing that route to Rockford, I mean, that's just pretty compelling in my opinion. So maybe looking at some more geography, seeing if these would have been roots that he would have taken.

I think also we need to keep working on our timeline.

Yeah, where what was he doing when Tracy Walker disappears?

Maybe since that I've thought about too those intricate knots. Could he have got those from his military training? Yeah, in his boot camp. You know, it'd be interesting to see what those types of notes are used for, if we could identify them.

I would love to maybe show this to a not expert.

Absolutely, in between meetings, Riley spoke about why she was motivated to do this work.

These were people.

They weren't names, they weren't Jane Doe's, they weren't people who didn't They were loved and they were cherished at some point in their lives, and their family members have gone this long, maybe not even knowing if they're dead or alive, you know, just wondering if there's still out there and nobody wants to hear that their daughter or sister or cousin has been killed. But I think if we can bring closure to some of these people and to some of these families and say, you know, this

My sister, it could be them one day.

If this was anybody in my family, I would want everybody and anybody doing whatever they could to help out. If I can give a little bit of my time to, you know, honor these women and take back their names from Jerry Leon John's. It's just so heartbreaking to see these women die and no change come from it like this is the worst possible circumstance and the worst possible thing that could happened to a person, and there's not even change coming from that. They shouldn't have died at all,

Let's stop here for another quick break murder one on one. While Riley and Marley continued to research, mister Campbell set off to locate the only known surviving victim of the Bible Belt strangler. When the club reconvened, he had promising news.

Hey, good morning, ladies. How y'all doing. Yeah, yeah, this is our last.

Day before a little three day weekend, you guys get I appreciate y'all coming in early.

If this story had.

A hero, in my opinion, that is his final victim, which is Linn. She was the lady who was attacked left for dead beside the road. He knew what it was like to literally see the life go out of their eyes because he choked them, probably facing them with the ligature, and so he left her for dead beside the road. And we have to assume that she wasn't breathing, and she was, for all intentsive purposes dead but she

He wasn't going to stop.

So if there's anybody that's the hero in the story, it's Lindy. And I've been looking for her for a long time and what I found was she had gotten divorced a couple of years later, she had a child and then she moved. So whenever I found him, I started looking up his name, and then I found the death notice in the paper and down at the bottom had listed like a special friend and it mentioned Linda. So I was like, all right, not many people make

On Facebook? So I pulled out Facebook.

I started looking, and when I looked, I'm like, this is probably her.

So I began to dig through.

Her posts and I find that she had mentioned something about being with her son and his last name was so that was her first child. And then I find like all these kind of links to like Greenville, Green County, Washington County, Tennessee. And then that kind of falls off a few years ago and she appears and it looks like that's where one of her at least one of her children live, So I think I found her.

And it's kind of like.

The dog that you know, chased the car and then caught it, like, what are you going to do? You know, I've looked for so long and now I know where she's at and I have a way to.

Contact her, and she may not know the lives that she's possibly saved.

You know, well, that's true. You know, I was talking about her being like the hero of the story. If she doesn't have that will to live, if she doesn't call the police and go through with the prosecution, then he continues to hurt people and kill people.

So does she even know this?

I mean, it's been part.

She was just a few years older than you all.

So y'all have any advice for me as I reach out to her.

I wouldn't go into it as if you're don't make her feel she's on trial or like you're asking her questions questions. Get to know her first, ask her about, you know, her current interest, her family, how she likes. To Just get to know her first and get that personal connection. I think it'll be a lot easier for her to open up with you if she wants to. And at the same time, don't push obviously, you know, don't push if she if she doesn't want.

To send me a message to her instead of calling her, so that may be better than she can answer on her own time and not feel like pressured like she has to talk about it right then, like if you can, it's supposed to.

I mean, she might need a little bit to gather what she wants to say and what she doesn't want. So that's a good point, just really reinforcing the idea that her story could save even more lives. It's save the lives because she stopped Jay lean John in my opinion, but at the same time, she could bring so much justice and peace and closure to so many families.

Now I would think so too. Okay, well, hey, I think that's been a pretty good week. So what are you gonna do over your three day weekend?

Probably just research some more.

So y'all do school work even when you're off school.

Yeah, not like calculus there.

Oh no, I have to go do my calculus homework right now in first period because I was looking at this.

That's right.

The bell just rang right, So well, you guys, scurry on the class, But thank you for your works.

I think it's been a really good week, and we'll just keep working.

And see what we find, yeah for.

Sure, And then I'll see if I can get up the nerve to call into and see how she feels about.

That, crossing my fingers toes and eyes.

Yes, yes, all right.

Well, thank you guys, have a great day.

Okay, thank you too.

Hello?

Is this Lennon?

Yeah, more on that next time. Murder one oh one is executive produced by Stephanie Leidecker, Alex Campbell, Courtney Armstrong, Andrew Arnault and me Jeff Shane. Additional producing by Connor Powell and Gabriel Castillo. Editing by Jeff Twa and Davey Cooper Wasser. Music by Vancor Music. Murder one oh one is a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.