Kriti Mehrotra
Amazon Prime Video’s ‘Murder 101’ is a docu-series delving into the way a high school sociology class in Elizabethton, Tennessee, reignited interest in the Redhead Murders. This epithet is used to refer to a series of unsolved homicides of red-haired young females between October 1978 and 1992, who are all believed to have been victims of an unidentified male serial killer. A violent convicted felon named Jerry Leon Johns was long considered a suspect in many of these murders, but he was never formally indicted for any of them before his passing.
Jerry Leon Johns Has a History of Criminality
Born on November 16, 1968, to a young mother and an unnamed father in Cleveland, Tennessee, Jerry Leon John’s early years and childhood were not comfortable or happy. In fact, as per the show, his mother was a drug user who often slept around, making him feel as if he never really had a base or a home, making him act out at an early age. He was convicted of arson when he was merely a teenager in the early 1970s, before eventually finding himself enlisted in the military services. However, he only served for a few months before leaving.
Jerry was 19 when he found himself back in Tennessee, where he pursued a young red-haired girl by the name of Phyllis Ogdin. As per the show, she was merely 12 years old at the time. What’s worse is that they were half-siblings, but by the time people found out about their romantic relationship and objected to it, it was too late, as they were in love. Jerry and Phyllis eventually tied the knot and welcomed a few children into this world, with Phyllis once admitting in a police interview that she was worried about her kids’ health, but the doctors ensured they were all healthy.
As the years passed, the couple settled down, and John established a trucking company that distributed coal mining equipment along the bible belt, meaning he spent long days on the road. According to records, his most visited places were between Tennessee and Texas, which is where the remains of at least six red-haired women were found. Yet, it wasn’t until 1985 that the 37-year-old emerged as a suspect in the Redhead Murder cases, when he attempted to kill a young red-haired girl named Linda Schacke. As per records, after picking her up in Knox County, he choked her with a piece of her own ripped t-shirt, bound her, and left her for dead inside a storm drain under Interstate 40, near Watt Road.
Jerry Leon Johns Passed Away While Incarcerated in Prison in 2015
According to court records, Linda was unconscious when Jerry got back into his truck and drove away, but she came to sometime later. She could barely see anything owing to injuries to her eyes, but she followed the sound of the traffic and crawled all the way to the highway. Thankfully, it was a patrol officer who found her and rushed her to the hospital, where she relayed who she had met and what had happened to her. Her statements helped authorities identify and arrest Jerry Leon John on the charges of attempted murder, aggravated kidnapping, assault, and a few additional counts.
That’s when Jerry was also looked into in connection with the Redhead Murders, resulting in the interview of him, his now-estranged wife, and other loved ones. When Phyllis spoke to investigators, she revealed they had separated just a few months prior, rather casually stating that when she heard the news and saw the photos, she wondered if he “was trying to kill her.” She made this comment because of how eerily similar she and Linda looked – they were both petite, red-haired, young, bubbly women. However, owing to a lack of evidence, Jerry was never connected to any other crime at the time.
In the end, with the help of Linda’s testimony in court, Jerry was convicted of attempted murder, aggravated kidnapping, assault, and additional counts in 1987. He appealed the matter several times over the years, proclaiming his innocence, but they were all denied. According to records, he passed away while incarcerated inside a Tennessee State Prison in 2015 – he was 67 at the time. It was roughly 3 years later that the remains of 21-year-old Tina Farmer were identified, who had been found bound down an embankment off Interstate 75 near Jellico, Tennessee, on January 1, 1985. The young woman had been strangled to death roughly 72 hours before she was found, and she had short, curly red hair too. According to records, this was 6 weeks after Jerry and Phyllis’ separation. However, it was DNA evidence that connected him to the crime scene and homicide, making a grand jury in Campbell County, Tennessee, rule in 2019 that if he were still alive, he would have been indicted for Tina’s murder.
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