Kriti Mehrotra
It was March 1985 when the entire world turned upside down for Linda Schacke as she found herself in a situation no one ever expects, as explored in Prime Video’s ‘Murder 101.’ The single mother was just trying to make ends meet when she was kidnapped, driven away, bound with her own clothes, and nearly strangled to death, but she fought for herself even when she could see no escape. Little did she know her will to live would culminate in the conviction of a suspected serial killer and, admittedly, give her life as a woman and survivor a whole new meaning.
Linda Schacke Still Remembers the Fateful Night that Changed Her Life
Linda was quite young by the time 1985 rolled around, but she had already managed to secure a certification as a registered nurse and escaped an allegedly troublesome relationship. She was a single mother trying to do her best to take care of herself and her 3 young children, so she ended up in Knox County, Tennessee, and hoped to continue her career. Unfortunately, the only hospital in the area did not require any more nurses, so she turned to waitressing and stripping to make ends meet, knowing she would do anything for her babies and their future.
According to Linda’s own account, a trucker stopped by her place of work one night and tipped her in torn $100 bills while stating she should come to his hotel room if she wanted the rest. She claimed she normally would never meet a customer outside, but she decided to follow him that evening because she could see the other half of the torn bills with him, and she really needed the money. Little did she know he would drug her almost as soon as she stepped into his room. By the time she came to, she was partially nude and could see strips of her t-shirt tied together.
Linda asked the stranger if he planned to kill her, which is when she claims his entire demeanor changed, and he roughly said yes. She was subsequently choked until she lost consciousness, left inside a water kennel along the side of Interstate 40, and left to die. When she came to again, she could not see anything because the blood vessels in her eyes had popped from the pressure with which she had been strangled. Nevertheless, she still crawled her way to the direction where she could hear traffic and managed to make it to the main road, where a patrol officer found her.
Linda Schacke Prefers to Keep Her Current Experiences and Life Private
According to Linda’s own account, she was subsequently rushed to a local hospital, where she was treated and asked several questions about her assailant. Her will to live, her anger about what had transpired, and the idea that the man could do this to other women, too, pushed her to fight for justice. Her description of the male, his truck, and the hotel room she had followed him to helped authorities identify him as Jerry Leon Jones, and she confirmed his identity in a lineup. She said on the show that at the time, she felt like she was speaking to investigators every single day while also focusing on her treatments, so she felt as if the incident had taken over her entire life.
In February 1986, while Jerry was already facing criminal charges, Linda filed a civil lawsuit against her assailant, suing him for emotional and physical suffering for what had transpired nearly a year prior. In response, he sued her in July 1986 on the grounds of her and her lawyers conspiring “to perpetrate a fraud upon the plaintiff…,” essentially claiming she had lied and he was innocent. In the end, though, in 1987, with the help of evidence and the survivor’s own testimony, he was convicted of aggravated kidnapping, assault, and other charges in connection with the matter. That’s when Linda chose to step away from the limelight, determined to move forward in her life to the best of her abilities and leave the past behind for good.
Since then, Linda has guarded her privacy to such an extent that her real name wasn’t known until a year or so ago – she was referred to as Tasha in court records. In fact, even when she agreed to be interviewed for the ‘Murder 101’ true-crime podcast in 2024, she preferred to only be referred to as “L.” She said on the podcast, “There’s no reason for me to be alive except the good Lord let me live. I didn’t even know Jerry Johns had died, but [in 2018, an FBI agent] called me and told me that they used DNA and proved that he killed this other girl.” She added that she had already been interviewed in 1985 because several remains of young red-haired women had been recovered from along the Bible Belt, so officials wondered if he was responsible for the Redhead Murders. However, until now, he has only been positively connected to the homicide of Time Farmer, who was found along Interstate 75 on January 1, 1985. “[She] looked very similar to me,” Linda admitted in the podcast. So, we understandably do not know anything about her recent personal or professional experiences, not even where she lives or if she has a family of her own.
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