Bible Belt Strangler: The 40-Year Hunt for a Killer Who Targeted Redheads
So there's this case that's been sitting in the shadows for over 40 years. Between 1978 and 1992, women with red hair started turning up dead along interstates across the South. Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi. All strangled or beaten. All dumped like they were nothing. The FBI task force called them the Redhead Murders. The media went with "Bible Belt Strangler." Most of these women stayed nameless for decades. Jane Does. Because they were hitchhikers, sex workers, women nobody was looking for. Then in 2018, forensic genealogy finally gave them their names back. Tina Farmer. Espy Pilgrim. Tracy Sue Walker. Michelle Inman. DNA pointed to a truck driver named Jerry Leon Johns for at least one of the murders. Investigators still don't know if he killed them all, or if there were multiple killers working the same routes, hunting the same type of woman. Before the cops even announced Johns' name, a group of Tennessee high school students profiled the killer in a sociology project and got it right. This is about women the system failed twice. Once when they were alive, and again when they died. And it's about how science finally forced us to remember them.
#RedheadMurders #BibleBeltStrangler #TinaFarmer #JerryLeonJohns #TrueCrime #ColdCase #ForensicGenealogy
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