Speaker 1: A group of high school student High school.
Speaker 2: Students Elizabeth and high school students started a project to research.
Speaker 3: A string of unsolved murders.
Speaker 2: Their research led to the identification of the killer.
Speaker 4: Investigators now have an answer to a thirty four year
Speaker 4: old question.
Speaker 5: Once you start getting a few tips, or a few leads,
Speaker 5: or few identifications, then the cold case isn't so cold anymore.
Speaker 5: There's a pretty good chance he's still alive. Everything that
Speaker 5: the students predicted through their profile turned out to be accurate.
Speaker 6: Redhead Killer profile male Caucasian, five nine, six hundred and
Speaker 6: seventy pounds, unstable home, absent father, and a domineering mother,
Speaker 6: right handed, i Q above one hundred, most likely heterosexual.
Speaker 5: There is no profile of this killer except for the
Speaker 5: ones the students created.
Speaker 7: Just because some of these women no longer have people
Speaker 7: to speak for them does not mean that they deserve
Speaker 7: to not be so anymore.
Speaker 3: What if this guy's still alive? Like, what if becomes
Speaker 3: after us?
Speaker 8: You're gonna kill me?
Speaker 5: Who's a Yeah?
Speaker 9: This is Murder one oh one, Season one, Episode four,
Speaker 9: Major Breaks. I'm Jeff Shane, a television and podcast producer
Speaker 9: at Katie Studios with Stephanie Leidecker, Courtney Armstrong, and Andrew Arnoult.
Speaker 9: The semester may have been over, but the mystery was
Speaker 9: just beginning to unravel.
Speaker 5: So what happened was the students had tried to bring
Speaker 5: the case back up. It had this media blitz, It'd
Speaker 5: been featured all over the nation. They have a name
Speaker 5: for the killer, they have a way to separate these
Speaker 5: six out from the rest of the victims, and I
Speaker 5: think it just really got a media firestorm really going,
Speaker 5: and it brought up a lot of attention back to
Speaker 5: these cases.
Speaker 9: In the fall of twenty eighteen, with the Campbell County
Speaker 9: Jane Doe identified as Tina Farmer, mister Campbell got incredible
Speaker 9: news that officials were retesting the DNA of yet another case.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you what's so crazy is that we knew
Speaker 5: they were testing the DNA of the Knox County chained up,
Speaker 5: and we knew that had been they had collected the
Speaker 5: DNA because we talked to the woman who they felt
Speaker 5: was her daughter. So we had we'd talked to her
Speaker 5: and I talked to her, and she had written this
Speaker 5: letters and so we had communicated with her. So we
Speaker 5: were just waiting on that DNA because the Kentucky State
Speaker 5: Police are like, we submitted it. It's going to be
Speaker 5: any day. We don't know when, but like it could
Speaker 5: be a day.
Speaker 9: The alleged daughter of the Knox County Jane Doe, a
Speaker 9: woman named Elizabeth Pilgrim, spoke about how she felt about
Speaker 9: the whole situation.
Speaker 8: I think it's her the necklaces, my brother recognizing the birthmark,
Speaker 8: the stay, you know, the two's, the scar, like it
Speaker 8: just fits into place. Not knowing is like the worst part.
Speaker 8: And then you got to keep being put on hold
Speaker 8: and put on hold. You know, it's heartbreaking a little bit.
Speaker 8: And when that is her is a major part. But
Speaker 8: I don't think that's gonna be fully all my closure.
Speaker 9: As it turned out, Elizabeth's mother, Apsey, was in fact
Speaker 9: the Knox County Jane Doe.
Speaker 5: You have two identifications by in rapid succession. And now
Speaker 5: what happens is the media frenzy is going even more
Speaker 5: right because of course people start calling the TBI, and
Speaker 5: they start calling the local police agencies and they start saying, well,
Speaker 5: what does this mean? Are we looking at other cases?
Speaker 5: Are these related to any others? Could she have been killed,
Speaker 5: you know, by the same person? As somebody else. So
Speaker 5: within six months of the press conference, we now have
Speaker 5: four of the victims identified.
Speaker 9: Here's what we know about each victim, according to mister
Speaker 9: Campbell's classes research.
Speaker 10: On October first, twenty eighteen, the Knox County Sheriff's Office
Speaker 10: now this woman had been positively identified as Esbi Regina
Speaker 10: Black Pilgrim of western North Carolina. A DNA match was
Speaker 10: made between her and her grown daughter, who said her
Speaker 10: mother disappeared when the girl was six weeks old. Pilgrim
Speaker 10: also had four older children. A friend of Pilgrim's had
Speaker 10: noticed the case when the Kentucky State Police posted about
Speaker 10: unidentified victims on social media sites, and she contacted the
Speaker 10: daughter saying she felt it was her missing mother. They
Speaker 10: both contacted authorities with the information Esbee was a stay
Speaker 10: at home mom. The husband came home for lunch only
Speaker 10: to find his wife missing and the youngest child crying
Speaker 10: in the crib. The husband went to authorities, but it
Speaker 10: appears it was not taken seriously as she had left
Speaker 10: the home many times before.
Speaker 7: The Green County Jane Doe was not identified until November
Speaker 7: twenty eighteen, when officials announced that the victim was new
Speaker 7: Hampshire native Elizabeth Lamont at the time of her death.
Speaker 7: Lamont had disappeared on April sixth, nineteen eighty four, after
Speaker 7: gaining lead from her youth facility to attend a football
Speaker 7: game at the local high school, but never returned to
Speaker 7: the group home where she resided in Manchester. She was
Speaker 7: identified through a DNA magic.
Speaker 9: But identifying the victim wasn't the biggest break in the case.
Speaker 9: Mister Campbell spoke about the investigation into Tina Farmer's murder.
Speaker 5: Once she's identified, of course, there's like this renewed interest
Speaker 5: and maybe we should look at things, and they resubmit,
Speaker 5: or maybe for the first time they submitted, because DNA
Speaker 5: really wasn't much of an investigative tool at that time,
Speaker 5: but they submit some of the evidence from her case.
Speaker 5: In this case, it was a blanket and they find
Speaker 5: DNA on it that's in you know, the database for offenders.
Speaker 5: When they found out that he was the killer man,
Speaker 5: the case just went crazy because now instead of all
Speaker 5: of us having all that we had was victimology, now
Speaker 5: we actually had a suspect. So not only can we
Speaker 5: look at the victims and say where were they, when
Speaker 5: were they there? We can begin to look at the
Speaker 5: suspect and say where was he?
Speaker 4: Investigators now have an answer to a thirty four year
Speaker 4: old question. The TBI says it knows who killed Tina
Speaker 4: Marie Farmer.
Speaker 9: In December of twenty eighteen, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigators
Speaker 9: otherwise known as the TBI, held a surprise press conference.
Speaker 11: Good afternoon, I'm Jared Efler, the elected District Attorney for
Speaker 11: Tennessee's eighth Judicial District, of which Campbell County is a
Speaker 11: part of. On January the first, nineteen eighty five, an
Speaker 11: unidentified female body was discovered murdered along Interstate seventy five
Speaker 11: in Campbell County, Tennessee. At that time, an investigation was
Speaker 11: launched by the TBI to determine two things, the identity
Speaker 11: of the unknown female and who was responsible for her debt. Yesterday,
Speaker 11: the results of that investigation were presented to the Campbell
Speaker 11: County Grand Jury.
Speaker 12: The grand jury.
Speaker 11: Found that the unidentified body was that of Tina Marie
Speaker 11: Farmer of Marion County, Indiana. Additionally, the grand jury found
Speaker 11: that there was affiicient proof to believe that Jerry Johns
Speaker 11: of Cleveland, Tennessee, caused her death.
Speaker 9: Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
Speaker 9: a moment. Murder one on one.
Speaker 12: I'm Brad Neeland, Deputy director for the Tennessee Girl Investigation.
Speaker 12: We'd like to thank General Efforts in his office for
Speaker 12: their efforts and support on this case. Hasn't been easy,
Speaker 12: but we never gave up, and that represents our commitment
Speaker 12: to all cases, even those deemed cold. Our agency exists
Speaker 12: that ghilpshall askate, no insocence, suffer, and we're gratified that
Speaker 12: we can now provide some answers to the family of
Speaker 12: Tina Farmer. DNA was found on items that was analyzed.
Speaker 12: As a result, a DNA profile was entered into combined
Speaker 12: DNA index system, resulting in a match that profile mastered
Speaker 12: out of Jerry John's.
Speaker 1: It's a major break. TBI agents say they now know
Speaker 1: who killed Tina Farmer in nineteen eighty four and then
Speaker 1: dump that redhead on the side of I seventy five
Speaker 1: in Campbell County. Investigators today named the suspect in the
Speaker 1: death of Tina Farmer. It could also be the break
Speaker 1: agents need to close a half dozen other murder cases.
Speaker 1: This is a key step for an investigation spanning more
Speaker 1: than three decades.
Speaker 3: Since these students started connecting the dots, the name of
Speaker 3: another victim was identified, and TBI investigators now say Jerry
Speaker 3: Leon Johns is believed to be the killer of at
Speaker 3: least one of the victims.
Speaker 2: You know, the killer behind an infamous three decade old
Speaker 2: murdering Campbell County. The TBI says Jerry Johns from Cleveland, Tennessee,
Speaker 2: killed Tina Farmer and dumped her body a long eye
Speaker 2: seventy five.
Speaker 9: During the press conference, a reporter asked the connection between
Speaker 9: Tina Farmer and Jerry Johns.
Speaker 12: How john happening?
Speaker 4: Is there any kind of insight you have on what
Speaker 4: might have.
Speaker 12: Happened to lead to this.
Speaker 13: You know that she had been at a truck stop
Speaker 13: near her hometown, and mister Johns was a long haul
Speaker 13: truck driver, and we believe the connection lies somewhere in there.
Speaker 5: Everything that the students predicted through their profile turned out
Speaker 5: to be accurate. What jumped out to us immediately is
Speaker 5: that Jerry Johns was a trucker. Now, that really blew
Speaker 5: the case wide opened, because you're not just working it
Speaker 5: from the angle of the victim, You're working it from
Speaker 5: the angle of the perpetrator as will.
Speaker 9: During his investigative work on the story, Shane Waters was
Speaker 9: able to track down Jerry John's ex wife. She provided
Speaker 9: shocking details about the man that would eventually become the
Speaker 9: Bible Belt strangler. The following is based off of Shane's
Speaker 9: recollection of his conversation.
Speaker 14: Well, when I met with Jerry Johnson's ex wife, she
Speaker 14: tells me the story about when they first met. He
Speaker 14: was I think twenty one, and he was a wall
Speaker 14: from the military hiding out in her parents's at it.
Speaker 14: They were his neighbors, his parents's neighbors, so he was
Speaker 14: a wall from the military hiding out in her attic.
Speaker 14: She was very young. I think she said that she
Speaker 14: was twelve, and they end up having a sexual relationship.
Speaker 14: And when she told me that at this moment where
Speaker 14: I thought he may be even more of a monster
Speaker 14: than I realized. So they end up getting married, he
Speaker 14: ends up getting her pregnant, and you know, she's only
Speaker 14: at that point where she gets pregnant. She says she
Speaker 14: was thirteen, and she goes to her dad and she
Speaker 14: tells him that she's pregnant, and that is when Jerry
Speaker 14: Johnson her learns that they're actually half brother and sister
Speaker 14: because Jerry Johns's mom, she was a prostitute and she
Speaker 14: slept with her neighbor's dad, and because of that, Jerry
Speaker 14: Johns was actually his son. So when they learned that
Speaker 14: her dad was trying to convince them to have an
Speaker 14: abortion to abort that child, they refuse to do that.
Speaker 14: And so what they ended up doing was moving down
Speaker 14: to Texas with his mom for a few reasons. One
Speaker 14: because she was so young, even in Tennessee at that time,
Speaker 14: that was not acceptable for him being over twenty one
Speaker 14: in her only being thirteen.
Speaker 9: To clarify, Jerry Johns's ex wife told Shane that she
Speaker 9: had inadvertently married and gotten pregnant with her half brother's baby.
Speaker 9: To avoid punishment, the couple moved to Texas to raise
Speaker 9: their child.
Speaker 14: He ended up having to go to prison because of
Speaker 14: going a wall from the military, and during that time
Speaker 14: she told me that his mom would take her to
Speaker 14: different bars in places and prostitute her out to help
Speaker 14: make aanes meet. His ex wife told me he developed
Speaker 14: a lot of resentment for his mom.
Speaker 9: Shane learned another seemingly important detail during his conversation with
Speaker 9: Jerry Johns's ex wife, his mom.
Speaker 14: And his wife was a redhead and though John's.
Speaker 5: Over the years, we learned that Jerry Johns have been
Speaker 5: arrested for a variety in fractions, everything from auto theft,
Speaker 5: caring concil weapon, obstructing an officer all the way to arson.
Speaker 5: So during our research we were able to find what
Speaker 5: a lot of law enforcement and medical officials said about
Speaker 5: Jerry Johns. And let me tell you the things that
Speaker 5: we read, it was just chilling how accurate they would
Speaker 5: come to be. Johns is conniving. He's a manipulating type
Speaker 5: of individual whose own self interest has played a large
Speaker 5: part in his arrival at this situation. Jerry Johns is
Speaker 5: viewed as immature, dissocial individual who admits to the use
Speaker 5: of depressants and hallucinogenic drugs. He has demonstrated a pattern
Speaker 5: of having escaped from the brig at Camp Pendleton and
Speaker 5: then escaping from an armed guard and plotting to escape
Speaker 5: from a county jail. Mister John's demonstrated inability to profit
Speaker 5: from experience, making him a prime candidate for continued criminal activity.
Speaker 5: He is considered by this writer to be criminally oriented,
Speaker 5: and a good prediction would be that this man will
Speaker 5: continue to be involved in law violations for a number
Speaker 5: of years to come. It is believed that Johns is
Speaker 5: just beginning a long career as a law violator. It
Speaker 5: is this writer's impression that John's is capable of serious crimes. However,
Speaker 5: it is noted that this opinion cannot be documented. It
Speaker 5: should be noted that he is considered a definite escape risk.
Speaker 5: John's is a very immature and responsible individual with a
Speaker 5: hot temper. He openly verbalizes anger and hostility toward authority
Speaker 5: figures his prognosis or community adjustment is guarded.
Speaker 9: The tbi's press conference revealed an update that would change
Speaker 9: the investigation.
Speaker 13: Obviously, the most challenging thing for me is just the
Speaker 13: fact that we're not able to charge this individual because
Speaker 13: he's already deceased.
Speaker 3: He died in prison in twenty fifteen, serving time for
Speaker 3: the attempted murderer of another redhead.
Speaker 1: Despite knowing her killer, agents say they can't charge him.
Speaker 1: The suspect died four years ago. Jerry Johns was serving
Speaker 1: time for trying to kill someone else.
Speaker 4: Both women had red hair, and he tried to kill
Speaker 4: them in the same way, leaving their bodies in the
Speaker 4: side of the interstate.
Speaker 9: Jerry Johns died in prison in twenty fifteen, where he
Speaker 9: was serving time for the attempted murder of another redheaded woman,
Speaker 9: a woman named Linda more On.
Speaker 11: Her later, had mister Johns been alive at the time
Speaker 11: the case was presented to the grand jury yesterday, he
Speaker 11: would have been charged for the first degree murder of
Speaker 11: Tana Marie Farmer. We are extremely disappointed that we're not
Speaker 11: able to prosecute mister Johns.
Speaker 5: Jerry Leon Johnson is dead, so they can't have a
Speaker 5: trial for a dead man. But the best thing they
Speaker 5: could do to consider the case closed was to take
Speaker 5: the information they had to a grand jury, and if
Speaker 5: the grand jury returned to Trouville, then they would consider
Speaker 5: this a closed case. When you go to a grand jury,
Speaker 5: they the return what's called a true bill if they
Speaker 5: feel there is enough evidence to proceed to a trial,
Speaker 5: or they return a no bill where there is not
Speaker 5: enough evidence that they think it should proceed to a trial.
Speaker 5: And then once that is returned, it's up to the
Speaker 5: DA's office to decide if they want to continue with charges.
Speaker 5: So it has happened at times that a true bill
Speaker 5: has been returned and the DA did not decide to
Speaker 5: take it to trial. That for example, happened in the
Speaker 5: John in a Ramsey case in case you're curious, but
Speaker 5: normally that is why das take it to a grand jury,
Speaker 5: to see if a jury of the peers would think
Speaker 5: that was enough evidence to go ahead and move forward
Speaker 5: with the trial. That's what they did in the Tena
Speaker 5: Farmer case, and they could presumably do that again in
Speaker 5: some of these other cases as well. Getting a true
Speaker 5: bill from a grand jury, especially against someone who's already
Speaker 5: dead and they can be punished in any way, may
Speaker 5: not feel like a priority for maybe law enforcement, but
Speaker 5: for these families know who is responsible for taking their
Speaker 5: loved one away, that would be very important for them.
Speaker 5: And then, of course also we have two victims that
Speaker 5: have not even been identified yet, so continuing to work
Speaker 5: on those cases and get their identifications would be very
Speaker 5: important for those families as well.
Speaker 9: The tbi's press conference also led to more questions.
Speaker 6: There's people who have.
Speaker 4: Drawn connections between Farmer's murderer and others.
Speaker 11: Is this potentially the person who.
Speaker 4: Did all of these crimes.
Speaker 13: We're open to options on that. We're still looking into
Speaker 13: other possibilities on other cases Right now, I can't tell
Speaker 13: you with any definitive proof that he's involved in any
Speaker 13: other cases.
Speaker 9: Despite mister Campbell's class having just presented their findings months
Speaker 9: earlier that helped lead to Tina Farmer's identification, the TBI
Speaker 9: made no mention of them during their press conference.
Speaker 12: I'd like to recognize Special Agent Brandon Alkins an intelligence
Speaker 12: analyst Amy Emberton for the work on this case years.
Speaker 12: Agan Elkins has been working this case for the last
Speaker 12: ten years. He was assigned the case as a detective
Speaker 12: while working for the Campbell County Sheriff's Department, and continued
Speaker 12: to work on the case after he was hired by
Speaker 12: the TBI. In twenty sixteen, Agan Elkins resubmitted evidence in
Speaker 12: this case to the TBI Crime Lavatory for examination.
Speaker 9: As a reminder, mister Campbell's students presented their findings in
Speaker 9: May of twenty eighteen.
Speaker 12: In August twenty eighteen, Agent Elkins was made aware of
Speaker 12: Elena Marie Ken McKinney Farmer, who was reportedly missing from Indiana.
Speaker 12: MSS Farmer matched description of the unidentified female found in
Speaker 12: Campbell County. TBI intelligence analyst Amy Emerton was able to
Speaker 12: track down a fingerprint card on Farmer from the early eighties.
Speaker 12: Those fingerprints were compared against the postmortem prints of the
Speaker 12: Campbell County Jane Do, resulting in a positive match. Since
Speaker 12: that time, Agan Elkins has been working diligently to put
Speaker 12: the missing pieces of this case together. This is a
Speaker 12: perfect example of how determination, combined the traditional police work
Speaker 12: and modern day science could lead to major developments in
Speaker 12: cold cases. We have more cases like this to pursue,
Speaker 12: and we will pursue them as time and resources allow,
Speaker 12: because we believe justice demands it.
Speaker 14: The TBI did all they could to make sure that
Speaker 14: Alex and I did not show up to that press comfort.
Speaker 14: So what happened was late the night before the press
Speaker 14: conference of the TV I was putting together, they put
Speaker 14: out a little fee to the local media and cannesee
Speaker 14: it letting them know that early the next morning, I
Speaker 14: think it was like an eight o'clock there is going
Speaker 14: to be a press conference in regards to Tina Farmer's case. Well,
Speaker 14: one of the local reporters who still have my number
Speaker 14: called me and to let me know, and he's like,
Speaker 14: this is very unusual and they did this. But he's like,
Speaker 14: I have a feeling that it's it's to keep someone
Speaker 14: from coming there, and I was like, well, I wonder
Speaker 14: who that is. So I called Alex to let him know,
Speaker 14: and he's like, well, I'm going to try to go.
Speaker 14: And so Alex was able to maneuver himself to be
Speaker 14: able to get their time the next morning to get
Speaker 14: to this press conference. They get to the end, they
Speaker 14: allowed people to ask questions. So then I hear a
Speaker 14: very familiar with boys.
Speaker 12: Thanks guys.
Speaker 11: Yes, our PI has a copy of those, and you
Speaker 11: know that's like public record at this time, and she
Speaker 11: will distribute those at the conclusion of this conference.
Speaker 5: Okay, and you know the name of the family members
Speaker 5: that you spent with the verses the last fun.
Speaker 11: That's the question for Joel als.
Speaker 13: I don't feel comfortable releasing that information right now.
Speaker 9: Let's stop here for another quick break. Murder one O one.
Speaker 14: Immediately, I think that they realized that Alex was with
Speaker 14: the podcast group, and so they shut the whole thing down.
Speaker 14: The director of the TBI kind of steps in and
Speaker 14: he's like, all right, we're gonna end this here. Everyone
Speaker 14: have a good day, and they all walk out, and
Speaker 14: as they walk out, the director walks up to Alex
Speaker 14: and he's like, you must be with the podcast group.
Speaker 9: We've reached out to the TBI and they've to participate
Speaker 9: in this podcast.
Speaker 5: I mean, look, they're the cops. They test the DNA,
Speaker 5: they get the fingerprints, they go knock on the doors.
Speaker 5: They do very important work that you know, the students
Speaker 5: can't do. But you know, keeping this in the media
Speaker 5: spotlight and out there in the public and you know,
Speaker 5: on true crime websites and blogs and podcasts like that
Speaker 5: is actually how they got the tip about Tina Farmer
Speaker 5: from a woman who was looking at these true crime
Speaker 5: missing persons blogs. So we know that that's keeping it
Speaker 5: out there just kind of seems disingenuous to say, you know,
Speaker 5: we want the public to help us, and then you
Speaker 5: have these people that have probably worked harder than anybody
Speaker 5: except law enforcement, and they're not really recognized for that
Speaker 5: help that they request. There so much should happened, and
Speaker 5: we had so much new information to look at. It
Speaker 5: seemed like the perfect time to dive back into these cases.
Speaker 5: We really just needed to look at all the information
Speaker 5: kind of trickled out over the last five years, put
Speaker 5: that together and see, you know, are there some of
Speaker 5: these victims that need to be excluded redhead victims, yes,
Speaker 5: but maybe not victims of the Bible belt strangler. Or
Speaker 5: maybe there's some new victims that need to be included.
Speaker 5: Lots of new information that come out and it needed
Speaker 5: to be reanalyzed. In a lot of these kind of
Speaker 5: new developments, I mean, there's still victims out here that
Speaker 5: have not been identified, so there's still families that do
Speaker 5: not know what happened to their weapons. We also find
Speaker 5: out that maybe we need to relook at our list.
Speaker 5: So our list of six, for example, we just used
Speaker 5: open source information. We had nobody on the inside the
Speaker 5: police department's given us the information. So as the heat
Speaker 5: began to get turned back up on these cases, more
Speaker 5: information comes out that needs to be investigated. This class
Speaker 5: did this work four or five years ago, but I
Speaker 5: have students now that could do the work too, and
Speaker 5: they want to do the work. And I'm sitting here
Speaker 5: in the back of my mine thinking I've already got
Speaker 5: the project. I know exactly what we would do and
Speaker 5: where we would pick.
Speaker 9: Up more on that next time. Murder one oh one
Speaker 9: is executive produced by Stephanie Leidecker, Alex Campbell, Courtney Armstrong,
Speaker 9: Andrew Arnot and me Jeff Shane. Additional producing by Connor
Speaker 9: Powell and Gabriel Castillo. Editing by Jeff Twa and Davey
Speaker 9: Cooper Wasser, Music by Vanikor Music. Murder one oh one
Speaker 9: is a production of iHeartRadio and Katie Studios. For more
Speaker 9: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 9: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.