Callum Jones
Think you did well at school? Well, this group of teens may have managed to crack a 40-year-old cold case in one of their classes and identified a possible serial killer.
Tennessee sociology and history teacher Alex Campbell is certainly proud of his class, and you can learn about what they discovered in the clip below:
In the spring of 2018, Campbell decided to have his students try to solve a series of cold case slayings, though he likely didn't expect the pupils to actually solve them.
Advert
Speaking to the New York Post, Campbell told his group of students that they should be 'prepared' to fail because top law enforcement officials had 'worked on this for years and they haven’t gotten anywhere'.
However, the more than 20 students worked on finding a potential connection between a long line of redheaded, white women who were murdered in the surrounding area, and they were not going to give up easily.
The mystifying crimes dubbed as the 'Redhead Murders' involved up to 14 possible victims whose bodies were found abandoned along major highways.
It is believed some of these women were prostitutes.
The highs school student began by working out how many of these victims could be connected to just one killer.
After much hard work, they agreed that six of the victims were potentially connected to the same killer, who they dubbed as 'Bible Belt Strangler'.
Those women have since been identified as Lisa Nichols, Michelle Inman, Tina McKenney-Farmer, Elizabeth Lamotte and Tracy Walker.
However, one of the victims, who was found in DeSolo County, remains unidentified.
Elizabethton High students have even managed to identity a potential suspect in the form of Jerry Johns.
Johns died in prison in 2015 after being found guilty of strangling a prostitute in Knox County, Kentucky, back in 1985.
For high school students, this is of course very serious stuff, though Campbell has been pleased at the 'empathy' all of his pupils have shown.
"You as a teacher plan out what you want your students to learn," the educator said.
"But you can never predict what the students really learn… And they learned so much more than I ever imagined.
"For 14 to 17-year-olds to think that way, it just really impressed me about the maturity of my students."
These students are now revealing their astonishing findings in a ten-episode podcast called Murder 101, where they will reveal how they obtained their evidence.
"My students have never ever disappointed me, I’ve given them some very hard things to do,” Campbell added to the New York Post.
"But when they know they’re helping people, they work very hard. They never cease to impress me."