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[Beth] It was the era of Ted Bundy, the Zodiac Killer, the East Area Rapist,
and a string of murders in the '80s across the South.
The killings drew speculation that another serial killer was on the hunt.
Leslie Ackerson has tonight's Appalachian Unsolved.
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[Reporter] Two weeks ago, authorities discovered
the badly decomposed body of a red-haired woman
in Cheatham County near Nashville.
Last week, another redhead was discovered near Corbin, Kentucky.
Now, authorities in Greene County discovered the body of yet another redheaded victim.
The string of homicides have become known as the Redhead Murders.
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[Brandon] In this case, more than any I've ever seen in my career,
was publicized just crazy.
[Reporter] All were discovered along major interstates.
[Brandon] There were some cases in Tennessee but also in Kentucky and in different parts of the country.
And they actually formed a task force.
[Reporter on TV] To discuss the string of murders...
[Dave] It was dubbed the Redheaded Task Force.
It was dubbed that by the media.
It wasn't dubbed that by us.
[Brandon] Public attention just really drew to this idea of one man killing all of these redheads.
[Dave] Let's face it, people are interested in mysteries
and people that commit those crimes
wanting to know what makes those people tick, who it is, and why they did it.
You never know what evil lurks in people.
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[Dave] It was New Year's Day and I was the only one that answered the telephone.
So I went up to the crime scene.
The body was found over a guardrail, down an embankment.
We recovered the blanket and what we felt was a body inside of it.
She had ligature marks around her neck,
which gives you a pretty good indication she'd been strangled.
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[Leslie] An unknown woman dumped off an interstate in 1985.
It was one of many similar stories stretching across the South.
Decades would pass until she'd be identified as Tina Marie Farmer.
And decades would pass until the blanket wrapped around her dead body gave the clues to her killer.
[Brandon] In December, we announced that we discovered that DNA located on her body
and material that she was wrapped in contained the DNA of Jerry Johns.
[Leslie] Jerry Johns has been dead since 2015.
But his name wasn't unfamiliar to law enforcement.
He'd been a top suspect in the '80s
after assaulting, kidnapping, and attempting to kill a young red-haired woman in Knoxville.
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[Dave] Johns had came into Knoxville with his brother and went to a strip club called The Katch.
And he had spent some money with a particular female down there
and had enticed her to come to his room.
[Brandon] Brought up this story that he gave her $200
and he took these two $100 bills and he ripped them in half
and he gave her half and said, "You'll get the rest later."
During that interaction, things went awry.
Took her hostage then used her own shirt to bind her by the hands.
[Dave] And he had a gun and pulled a gun on her and had taken her to a remote area.
[Brandon] She asked Johns, "Are you going to kill me?"
And he said, "Yes."
And she said, "Why?"
And he said, "Because you're a nuisance."
And then strangled her.
He then fled using her vehicle and left her for dead.
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[Leslie] She didn't die that night.
The evidence of that crime still sits in a vault today.
Her survival would mean a prison sentence for Johns
and a chance for investigators to learn more about who he was.
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[Brandon] You know, Johns was a very intelligent guy.
[Leslie] A military veteran with an above-average IQ and a family
who drove trucks for a living.
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[Dave] They did find out that he was well-read
and even bragged about reading about serial killings.
But he never admitted anything.
[Leslie] In prison, Johns wasn't quiet,
writing letters for his case.
His family wrote too.
A 9-year-old son asking for his father's release.
But suspicion of Johns faded from the public eye
until he was linked to Tina Farmer.
[Brandon] It was a surreal moment to discover after all those years
that we had identified, you know, who this killer was.
But it was deflating to know that he had died, you know, just shortly before our discovery of this DNA.
[Dave] But it would have done my heart good if all that were to come out and he was still living
because he was such an arrogant person.
A perfect fit as being a psychopath.
[Leslie] The mystery remains, who killed those other women?
Is Johns the answer?
[Dave] It would not surprise me that at least there's one or two more that Jerry Johns is involved in.
[Brandon] To be able to say that he is the guy, we're not there.
Just because the color of someone's hair is the same,
and even just because the cases are the same,
it doesn't always add up to enough.
We're definitely open to that possibility.
Are we gonna get there?
I don't know, but we're not gonna stop trying to connect anything that will connect.
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[Leslie] In Knoxville, Leslie Ackerson 10News
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[Beth] Well to learn about TBI's next steps and other details about the redhead cases head to WBIR.com.