The Redhead Murders is the name that has stuck to a group of unsolved killings of young women in the American South and Appalachia in the mid-1980s. Between February 1983 and April 1985, the bodies of at least six women were found near major highways in West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, and further cases in Mississippi and elsewhere have since been drawn into the count. Most of the women were found far from home. Several of them had red or auburn hair, which gave the cases their name. For decades most of them had no names at all.
No one has ever been charged with or convicted of any of these killings. Law enforcement agencies have never confirmed that the deaths are connected, and over the years investigators have described some of the cases as probably linked and others as separate. The one name attached to any of them is Jerry Leon Johns, a long-haul trucker. In December 2019 a grand jury in Campbell County, Tennessee, found that Johns would have been indicted for first-degree murder in the death of Tina Marie McKenney Farmer had he been alive. He had died in prison in December 2015, so the case could never be tried. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) said at the time that it had no evidence linking him to any other case in the group.
Since 2018, fingerprint comparison, DNA databases and genetic genealogy have given names to most of the women who had been buried or stored as Jane Does.
The grouping rests on a pattern rather than on physical evidence. In 2018 reporting, the cases most often listed together involved young women, most of them strangled, whose bodies were left near interstates or highways and who were not quickly identified. WBIR, the NBC station in Knoxville, wrote that investigators had long suspected a truck driver because of where the bodies were found. After the 2019 grand jury finding, WBIR reported that police had said a truck driver could plausibly be responsible, because the women were found in scattered places, often near roads.
The name itself came from the press and from people outside law enforcement. In 2018 a sociology class at Elizabethton High School in East Tennessee spent a semester on the cases, called them the "Red Headed Murders," and named the man they believed responsible the "Bible Belt Strangler." A podcaster from Indiana, Shane Waters, of the program "Out of the Shadows," had researched the same cases for years and worked with the students at times. Neither the class nor the podcaster had access to the investigative files beyond what investigators chose to share.
The number of victims varies by who is counting. The students linked six women. A 2018 WKRN report spoke of seven. A 2024 Fox News report gave a range of six to 11, and up to 14 on the widest count. The Greeneville Sun reported in 2023 that some believe the killings may run from 1978 to possibly 1992 and reach into Pennsylvania and Mississippi as well as Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia. WBOY, a West Virginia station, gave the same 1978 to 1992 span in 2025.
The earliest case in the group most often cited is a woman found on February 13, 1983, at Littleton, in Wetzel County, West Virginia. WBOY, which reviewed the case in March 2025, reported that she had been dead for two or three days. Her cause of death was never determined. Strangulation was ruled out, but suffocation was not.
She had auburn, medium-length hair and was estimated to be between 30 and 45 years old, older than most of the women later linked to the series. Nothing she had with her could identify her. A possible witness, interviewed under forensic hypnosis, described a white man in his 40s, about five feet ten. WBOY reported that an unnamed suspect was already serving a life sentence on another matter, but that he could not be prosecuted without knowing who the woman was. She was not considered part of the redhead series until about two years after she was found, and investigators from several states have pointed to differences between her case and the others as well as similarities. As of March 2025 she had still not been identified.
The first woman in the group to be identified was Lisa Ann Nichols, who also used the surnames Jarvis and Fuller. She was 28 and lived in West Virginia. She was found on September 16, 1984, near West Memphis, in Crittenden County, Arkansas. Investigators believed she had been trying to hitchhike, WBIR reported in 2018. WBOY described her hair as strawberry blonde. For many years she was the only woman in the original group with a name; when the Elizabethton students presented their work in May 2018, five of the six women they studied were still Jane Does.
On January 1, 1985, a woman's body was found in Campbell County, Tennessee, near Jellico and a few miles south of the Kentucky line. The Campbell County Sheriff's Department called in the TBI. An autopsy found that she had been strangled and had probably died several days before she was found. She was pregnant. No one could say who she was, and she was entered in the records as a Jane Doe. Her remains went to the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center in Knoxville, the research facility known as the Body Farm, where researchers estimated her age at about 20. Her fingerprints and a description were kept on file.
She was Tina Marie McKenney Farmer, born March 7, 1963, according to the TBI. She was married and living in Indianapolis in 1984, WTHR, the Indianapolis NBC station, reported. Her family looked for her for decades. In November 2017 a woman who said she was her sister posted on a Facebook page for unidentified and unclaimed people, "I Miss My Sister!"
The break came from a website. In August 2018 TBI agents learned of a blog about missing persons that listed Farmer as missing from Indiana, and her description matched the woman found in Campbell County. A TBI intelligence analyst, Amy Emberton, found a card of Farmer's fingerprints from the early 1980s. The University of Tennessee said the card came from a 1983 arrest in Marion County, Indiana. When it was compared with the Jane Doe's prints taken after death, the two matched. The identification was announced in early September 2018.
Lee Meadows Jantz, associate director of the Forensic Anthropology Center, used the case to point to a weakness in the national databases. Some of them, she said, require missing and unidentified person records to be updated regularly to stay active, and the yearly updates required by the National Crime Information Center are "a very time- and resource-consuming task."
The Elizabethton class had included the Campbell County woman among its six victims in May 2018. The TBI said the students had raised awareness but had not contributed to the identification. The podcaster Shane Waters had placed a red cross where she was found and had been in touch with her sister for 12 weeks by then. He said the sister now knew where Farmer was but still did not know how she had come to be there.
Investigators believe Farmer was seen at a truck stop near her hometown in Indiana before her death, though they have said they cannot be certain. How she traveled from Indiana to Tennessee is one of the questions the TBI asked the public to help answer.
On January 24, 1985, a southbound truck driver found a woman's body at Olive Branch, in DeSoto County, Mississippi. The DeSoto County Sheriff's Department responded. She had been strangled. She was estimated to be 20 to 35 years old, and her hair was described as light red to blonde. She was entered in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), but no match came, and the case went cold for nearly 40 years.
In 2023 Amber Edlin, an evidence clerk and crime scene technician with the sheriff's department, took up the file. She followed tips, including one that the woman was a missing relative of a caller, until DNA ruled that out. She then sent evidence to Othram, a Houston company that uses forensic genetic genealogy, with funding from Carla Davis, a Mississippi philanthropist working on the state's cold case backlog. On March 1, 2024, Othram returned a lead. The sheriff's department announced in early March 2024 that the woman was Lorie Ann Mealer Pennell, a native of Missouri who had last been seen at a truck stop in West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1982. Her brother in California, her only known living relative, confirmed the identification. The department said it would keep working to find whoever was responsible and that "justice has no time restrictions." The DeSoto County announcements did not mention the redhead series.
In March 1985 skeletal remains were found in Cheatham County, Tennessee, near Pleasant View, northwest of Nashville. Forensic anthropologists at the University of Tennessee determined that the remains were those of a white woman who had been dead for two to five months. WBIR's 2018 list of the cases gives the date as March 31, 1985. Investigators exhausted their leads and could not identify her.
The TBI worked the case with the Cheatham County Sheriff's Office. In April 2018 the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification developed a DNA profile from a sample of the remains. Under the TBI's Unidentified Human Remains DNA Initiative, a sample was later sent to Othram, which provided information about possible relatives. A TBI intelligence analyst traced family members in Virginia, and an agent reached a man who had a sister he had not heard from in more than four decades. His DNA was compared, and in early July 2023 Othram confirmed the identification. The TBI announced on July 21, 2023, that the woman was Michelle Lavone Inman of Nashville, born April 17, 1961. WSMV, the Nashville station, gave her age as 23.
The TBI reclassified the case as a homicide investigation and asked the public for information about people she may have been with before her death, and for anyone who recognized clothing found with her. A 2018 WKRN report described that clothing: a light pink shirt with pink flowers, a pink sweater with blue dots and a hat with a palm tree.
On April 1, 1985, a woman's body was found in Knox County, Kentucky, near Barbourville. An autopsy found that she had died of asphyxiation. She wore two gold chains, one with an eagle pendant and one with a heart, and she had a distinctive birthmark. No one came forward for her. The town of Barbourville adopted her, donated a casket, and hundreds of people attended her funeral. For more than 30 years she was known locally as the "Red-Headed Jane Doe," the last unidentified person in the files of Kentucky State Police Post 10.
In June 2017 the state police published a rendering of how she may have looked and a photograph of the necklaces. A relative in North Carolina saw a social media post and thought she might be a mother who had disappeared when her daughter was about six weeks old. The family contacted Post 10 in October 2017. Detectives traveled to North Carolina to take DNA from her children, and the samples were compared through NamUs. Kentucky State Police announced the match in a press release reported on October 2, 2018: the woman was Espy Regina Black-Pilgrim, of Spindale, North Carolina. (Some reports spell her first name Epsy.) Police said she may have been at a truck stop trying to get a ride to North Carolina the day before she was killed.
Her son told WLOS, the Asheville station, that he loved her, that she had been taken too early and that he wished she were still alive. Her daughter wrote her a letter that was read aloud at the Elizabethton students' 2018 news conference: "All my life I hoped to find you alive and well." The investigators on the case were Detective Aaron Frederick and Intelligence Analyst Chris Daniels of Post 10. In October 2018 Frederick told UPI that the cases were "probably connected," but that there was still too little evidence to link them officially.
Skeletal remains were found in Campbell County, Tennessee, in early April 1985; the TBI's account gives the date as April 3, and a FOX 17 report gives April 1. Forensic anthropologists estimated that the remains were those of a white girl between 10 and 15 years old. Investigators could not identify her and called her "Baby Girl."
A sample went to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification in 2007, and her DNA profile was entered in the national DNA index, CODIS, and in NamUs. In 2013 a TBI agent and an intelligence analyst reopened the case without a breakthrough. In 2022, working with the University of Tennessee's anthropology department, the TBI sent a sample to Othram, which in June identified a possible relative in Indiana. A TBI analyst located family members in the Lafayette, Indiana, area, who confirmed that a relative had gone missing from there in 1978. With help from the Lafayette Police Department, agents obtained DNA from possible siblings. On August 30, 2022, the TBI announced that the girl was Tracy Sue Walker, born June 2, 1963. NBC News reported that she was about 15 when she disappeared.
The official announcements about Walker do not mention the redhead series. She was later counted among the identified victims by the Elizabethton students, according to Fox News in 2024. In May 2025 Governor Bill Lee announced a $10,000 reward, at the request of District Attorney General Jared Effler of the 8th Judicial District, for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever was responsible for her death. TBI agents said they believed someone in Campbell County had crucial information about who was responsible and how she came to be there. "We are determined to bring justice to Tracy Sue's case," Effler said.
On April 14, 1985, the body of a young woman was found near Greeneville, in Greene County, Tennessee. An autopsy found that she had died about three weeks earlier and that the cause was blunt force trauma; the death was ruled a homicide. She was estimated to be 15 to 20 years old, with brown hair and red highlights. The TBI and the Greene County Sheriff's Office investigated, and searches of the national crime database and the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program found no match. Her remains were kept at the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center, and a DNA sample was submitted to NamUs in 2006.
She was Elizabeth "Liz" Lamotte, 17, of Manchester, New Hampshire. She had been placed at the state's Youth Development Center, and on November 22, 1984, she left on a furlough and did not return. The center discharged her case on her 18th birthday, July 27, 1985, with her whereabouts still unknown. She was not reported missing to Manchester police until 2017.
That report came about through another case. After a January 2017 news conference by the New Hampshire Attorney General about unidentified victims found in Allenstown, a tipster told Manchester Detective Lucas Hobbs that Lamotte had been missing since the early 1980s. Police confirmed her disappearance with staff at the center, her family and friends, and entered her in the National Crime Information Center. Two of her brothers gave DNA samples, and on November 13, 2018, the University of North Texas center reported a mitochondrial DNA match. The TBI and the New Hampshire Attorney General announced the identification the next day.
How she came to Tennessee, and who killed her, remain unknown. The Greeneville Sun reported in 2023 that a TBI agent had stressed in 2018 that investigators had not linked her death to the wider string of homicides, and that another agent had said the Tennessee killings were not considered connected and were being investigated separately.
Jerry Leon Johns was born on November 16, 1948, according to the TBI. WBIR described him as a man from Rockford, Illinois, who worked as an independent trucker in the 1970s and 1980s and ran a small trucking company of his own out of Cleveland, Tennessee. He had a felony record from Mississippi, which, WBIR reported, was barely mentioned when he was later sentenced in Tennessee. He liked to say that he had never hurt a woman.
On March 5, 1985, about two months after Tina Farmer's body was found, Johns was in Knoxville with his brother. According to court records described by WBIR, he met a woman there that night, carried a gun, and falsely told her he was an undercover Texas Ranger. Later he took control of her car, drove her outside the city, and strangled her until she lost consciousness. He left her for dead. She came to, got herself to help, and gave troopers his description and the details of where he was staying. Officers found his pickup and then saw her car, which sped away. A chase ended when the car crashed, and Johns was arrested. His loaded gun was in the car.
The TBI later described the woman as resembling Farmer and the two cases as strikingly similar. She survived, and her statement led to his arrest. She is not named here.
A Knox County jury convicted Johns in 1987. The convictions reported include aggravated kidnapping and attempted first-degree murder; WATE, the Knoxville ABC station, described the main offense as felonious assault with intent to commit first-degree murder with bodily injury. He was sentenced to 73 years. On appeal, according to WBIR, the court found the evidence more than sufficient to support the convictions.
Johns never left prison. WBIR reported that over the years he filed handwritten petitions insisting that the authorities had the wrong man. He died in custody in December 2015, at 67.
At the time of his arrest, investigators suspected him in the Campbell County death as well, because of its likeness to the Knox County attack, TBI Deputy Director Brad Nealon said in 2019. He was never charged with it. According to an Associated Press story from 1985, cited by WATE in 2019, Knox County detectives had initially ruled him out. TBI Special Agent Brandon Elkins put it differently in 2019: Johns, he said, "was never really ruled out."
Elkins had worked the Campbell County case for more than a decade. In November 2016 he sent the woman's clothing and the blanket found with her body back to the TBI crime lab. DNA technology had not been available when she was found in 1985. The lab found biological evidence on both items and developed a DNA profile, which, entered in CODIS, matched Johns. The match came while the woman was still unidentified; her name was not known until the fingerprint comparison of August 2018.
On Wednesday, December 18, 2019, the evidence was presented to a Campbell County grand jury, which found that Johns, if he were alive, would be indicted for first-degree murder in the death of Tina Marie McKenney Farmer. The TBI and District Attorney General Jared Effler announced the finding at a news conference the next day.
"While I am extremely disappointed that this case has not ended in the prosecution of Jerry Johns," Effler said, he was pleased that the investigation had answered questions that Farmer's family had carried for more than 34 years. TBI Director David Rausch said he hoped the result would bring long-sought answers to her family and hope to other families in Tennessee still waiting for answers. "Our team will never give up on unsolved cases like this one as long as there are viable leads to follow," he said. Nealon said the case showed what determination, traditional police work and modern science could do together. "We were able to use today's technology to solve yesterday's crime," Elkins said, adding that it had been very rewarding to tell the family the mystery was solved.
A grand jury finding of this kind is not a conviction. Johns was never charged, never tried and never had the chance to answer the evidence. In law he died unconvicted of Farmer's death.
The TBI was careful about the wider series. At the December 2019 announcement it said there was "no evidence at this time" tying Johns to the other killings, and that it would keep working with other agencies to look for links. "Right now we have no definitive proof he's involved in any other cases," Elkins said. WBIR reported that the bureau considered it "possible" that he had killed others and was reviewing other unsolved cases, but that the evidence did not all point to him and no other case had been linked to him by forensic evidence.
Other investigators have spoken more loosely. In 2018 Todd Matthews, then case management director for NamUs, told WBIR that he thought it "a very strong possibility that these cases are connected." Detective Frederick of the Kentucky State Police called them "probably connected." At the same time, TBI spokeswoman Leslie Earhart declined to confirm any connection between Farmer's death and the others, and UPI reported that the agencies were not working together on a joint case, though they had agreed to share relevant new information. When the Elizabethton students presented their profile in May 2018, the reporting noted that law enforcement had never confirmed that the murders were related.
The renewed public attention began in a classroom. In 2018 Alex Campbell, who teaches sociology and history at Elizabethton High School, assigned his sociology students to study the cases as a semester project. About 20 students took part; one report counted 23. Campbell said he wanted to keep the students engaged and give them experience of the real world, and that they wanted to speak for victims who had no family speaking for them. The students called the women their "six sisters."
On May 15, 2018, the class presented an eight-page profile with 21 characteristics and a timeline, prepared with guidance from professional profilers and law enforcement. They believed the man responsible was a white commercial truck driver who often drove the interstate near Knoxville and lived in or around Knoxville or Nashville in the 1980s, and that he might still be alive. One student explained the nickname: Nashville is called the buckle of the Bible Belt, and the cases surrounded it. Representatives of the Kentucky State Police and the TBI attended and praised the work. "We know that catching the killer is a long shot," Campbell said, but he urged anyone with knowledge to come forward. A Kentucky trooper, Shane Jacobs, called it "very remarkable and exciting" that young people had taken it on.
Students returned to the cases in later years. In 2023 two Elizabethton students presented new research, with Campbell's help, at the Elizabethton/Carter County Chamber of Commerce; Campbell said their findings suggested "that several of these murders appear more connected than ever considering the most recent developments." In January 2024 the class's work became a 10-episode podcast, "Murder 101." In July 2026 a documentary series of the same name about the class and its investigation was released on Amazon Prime Video. Campbell told WVLT that the series was "victim forward" and meant to avoid glorifying whoever was responsible. The WVLT report on the release noted no new developments in the cases.
As of October 2026 no one has been arrested or charged in any of the deaths. The TBI describes its Tennessee cases as active and continues to ask for tips through 1-800-TBI-FIND, especially about who each woman was with in the days before she died. Kentucky State Police called the Pilgrim case an ongoing murder investigation when she was identified. The DeSoto County Sheriff's Department said in 2024 that it would keep working to find whoever killed Lorie Pennell. The Wetzel County woman had still not been identified as of March 2025.
The Farmer case is the only one in which investigators have named anyone. Even there, the grand jury's finding was the end of the legal road, because the man it pointed to was dead.
Whether there was one killer. No law enforcement agency has confirmed that the deaths were committed by one person. The Elizabethton students, the podcaster Shane Waters, Todd Matthews of NamUs and Detective Frederick of the Kentucky State Police have each said that some or all of the cases are probably connected. TBI agents said in 2018 that the Tennessee deaths were being investigated separately, and in 2019 the bureau said it had no evidence tying Johns to any case other than Farmer's.
Which cases belong. Lists differ. The core group in 2018 reporting was six women: the Wetzel County woman, Lisa Nichols, and the women found in Campbell, Cheatham and Greene counties, Tennessee, and Knox County, Kentucky. The DeSoto County, Mississippi, case and Tracy Sue Walker's death appear on later lists, but the official announcements about them do not mention the series. Counts run from six to 14, and the widest span, 1978 to 1992, comes from researchers rather than investigators.
The Wetzel County case. West Virginia's case was linked to the others only about two years after it happened, and law enforcement officers from several states have noted dissimilarities as well as similarities, WBOY reported. The woman was older than most of the others, her cause of death was never determined, and a possible witness described a man in his 40s.
Red hair. Not every woman in the group had red hair. Elizabeth Lamotte's hair was brown with red highlights; Lisa Nichols's was described as strawberry blonde; Lorie Pennell's as light red to blonde. The name of the series is a label from the press, not a finding by investigators.
Jerry Leon Johns. A grand jury found in December 2019 that he would have been indicted for Tina Farmer's murder. He was never charged with any killing, never tried for one and never convicted of one. Fox News described him in 2024 as the main suspect in the series and said he died in a Kentucky prison serving a sentence for strangling a prostitute; Tennessee reports say he died in a Tennessee prison and was serving a sentence for the 1985 Knox County attack on a woman who survived. The TBI has not linked him to any other case.
Tina Farmer's age and home. The TBI gives her date of birth as March 7, 1963, and WLAF and UPI give her age as 21; WTVC gave it as 22 in 2019. WLAF called her a resident of Marion, Indiana; WTHR said she was living in Indianapolis, and the fingerprint card came from Marion County, which includes Indianapolis.
February 13, 1983: An unidentified woman is found at Littleton, Wetzel County, West Virginia; cause of death undetermined.
September 16, 1984: Lisa Ann Nichols, 28, of West Virginia, is found near West Memphis, Arkansas.
November 22, 1984: Elizabeth Lamotte, 17, leaves the Youth Development Center in Manchester, New Hampshire, on furlough and does not return.
January 1, 1985: A woman, later identified as Tina Marie McKenney Farmer, is found in Campbell County, Tennessee; she had been strangled several days earlier.
January 24, 1985: A woman, later identified as Lorie Ann Mealer Pennell, is found at Olive Branch, DeSoto County, Mississippi; she had been strangled.
March 5, 1985: Jerry Leon Johns attacks a woman in Knox County, Tennessee, who survives; he is arrested after a chase.
March 1985 (March 31 in WBIR's list): Skeletal remains, later identified as Michelle Lavone Inman's, are found in Cheatham County, Tennessee.
April 1, 1985: A woman, later identified as Espy Regina Black-Pilgrim, is found in Knox County, Kentucky.
Early April 1985 (April 3 per the TBI): Skeletal remains of a girl, later identified as Tracy Sue Walker, are found in Campbell County, Tennessee.
April 14, 1985: A young woman, later identified as Elizabeth Lamotte, is found near Greeneville, Greene County, Tennessee.
1987: Johns is convicted in Knox County and sentenced to 73 years.
2006: A DNA sample from the Greene County remains is submitted to NamUs.
2007: A DNA sample from the Campbell County girl's remains is submitted for testing.
December 2015: Johns dies in custody, aged 67.
November 2016: TBI Special Agent Brandon Elkins resubmits evidence from the Farmer case; the resulting DNA profile matches Johns in CODIS.
October 2017: A North Carolina family contacts Kentucky State Police about the Knox County woman.
May 15, 2018: Elizabethton High School students present their profile of the "Bible Belt Strangler."
August to September 2018: The TBI identifies the Campbell County woman as Tina Marie McKenney Farmer through a fingerprint card.
October 2, 2018: Kentucky State Police announce that the Knox County woman is Espy Regina Black-Pilgrim of Spindale, North Carolina.
November 14, 2018: The TBI and the New Hampshire Attorney General announce that the Greene County woman is Elizabeth Lamotte.
December 18, 2019: A Campbell County grand jury finds that Johns would have been indicted for first-degree murder in Farmer's death were he alive; the finding is announced the next day.
August 30, 2022: The TBI announces that the Campbell County girl is Tracy Sue Walker of the Lafayette, Indiana, area.
July 21, 2023: The TBI announces that the Cheatham County woman is Michelle Lavone Inman of Nashville.
March 2024: The DeSoto County Sheriff's Department announces that its Jane Doe is Lorie Ann Mealer Pennell.
May 2025: Governor Bill Lee announces a $10,000 reward in the Tracy Sue Walker case.
July 2026: The "Murder 101" documentary series about the Elizabethton class is released.