TBI asks Tennessee high school students for help solving nearly 50-year-old cold case

Yahoo

14-05-2025

The killer carried the body across the creek, along the mining road, out to the sticks.
The killer dumped her in Elk Valley, an unincorporated area about an hour north of Knoxville off Interstate 75. It was the last week of July in 1978 when she was abducted, but she wasn't discovered until 1985. Only about 30 bones were left of her.
"If you weren't from there, you wouldn't know how to find the spot where she was found," said Alex Campbell, a high school teacher from 2 1/2 hours away. He and his students are now involved in the search for the person who put her there.
Local law enforcement, at the time, called her Baby Girl Jane Doe. She wasn't a baby, however. She was a 15-year-old high school freshman, just like some of the kids at Elizabethton High where Campbell has become known as the sociology teacher whose classes solve murder cases.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, stymied in their Baby Girl investigation for 40 years, have turned to Campbell's class for help.
Campbell's students have a growing crime-solving reputation after a podcast (called "Murder 101") and a new movie (being developed by Spider-Man trilogy director Jon Watts) have focused on their cold case efforts. In the last few years, Campbell's students have helped solve the "Redhead Murders" case of missing girls that began in the 1970s and helped identify the killer, a man named Jerry Johns, whom they labeled the "Bible Belt Strangler."
In 2017, Campbell had noticed his sociology students becoming uninterested in the waning months of the school year, so he asked them if they wanted to do some detective work. At Campbell's urging, the students began looking at the unsolved "Redhead Murders" case, in which about a dozen girls across several states were missing.
Campbell's class not only linked many of the victims; they produced a profile of who might be the killer. They settled on truck driver Jerry Johns, who had died in prison. The bodies were usually discarded by the sides of interstate highways. Johns' DNA was eventually linked to a victim who had survived his attack.
During one of their non-serial-killer semesters, the Elizabethton High students took on the case of Suzanne Johnson, who was serving 25-years-to-life for child murder. A babysitter in 1997, Johnson said she was watching a baby who died when the high chair fell over. Johnson said it was an accident.
Police investigators said it was a case of shaken baby syndrome. The students found that the science behind shaken baby syndrome hasn't always been consistent, and has led to convictions being overturned. The students worked with the California Innocence Project and submitted their findings to both then-Gov. Jerry Brown and current Gov. Gavin Newsom.
One of the missing girls the class looked at in the "Redhead Murders" case was the Baby Girl Jane Doe found in Elk Valley in 1985. In 2022, the TBI positively identified the Baby Girl remains as those of Tracy Sue Walker of Lafayette, Indiana.
Since she wasn't discarded off an interstate, Campbell believes she doesn't fit with the "Redhead Murders," even though she had red hair.
"She probably wasn't part of a serial killing," Campbell said. "This was not the work of a truck driver from somewhere along the highway. How did she end up in Elk Valley?"
Campbell's class worked with the TBI to build a website called "Justice4TracySue.com." (There is also a tip line: 1-800-TBI-FIND.) The students wrote her story from her first-person point of view as if she were asking people to help find her killer 47 years after she disappeared.
The students made flyers, hired planes to fly banners, launched a direct-mail campaign and even tricked out a car with Walker's picture and a QR code. They focused their efforts on Campbell County, where Elk Valley is located and the bones were discovered in 1985.
'We hope that by sharing her story now, someone who knows something will come forward,' said EHS student Andrew Barnett. 'There are still people out there — even in Campbell County — who haven't heard her name or what happened. We want to change that. We want her story to be heard everywhere, in hopes that someone will come forward with the information the TBI needs to help solve this case.'
The theory is that someone in Campbell County saw something or knows something about the 1978 murder.
'In cold case homicides, we often find that relationships and relationship changes are the key to solving a case,' said TBI Special Agent Brandon Elkins in a news release. 'I believe those types of changes may now make it possible for people in this community to speak up and give us the clues we need in Tracy's case. Someone out there is Tracy's hero, and I just hope they have the courage to come forward.'
The TBI, which had always worked separately from Campbell's class, has now fully joined forces, apparently inspired by the media attention the class can generate.
Gov. Bill Lee has also offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the case.
"The TBI saw they (the students) were doing quality work," Campbell said. "It's the most attention the case has ever gotten. If (the killer) is still alive, they can be held accountable."
Walker's disappearance didn't receive much attention in 1978. She was last seen at the Tippecanoe Mall in Lafayette, Indiana.
She had been dropped off with a friend at McDonald's, and she was later seen outside JCPenney.
She was last seen getting into a car. The car was filled with a group of older men, who are believed to have been temporarily working in the area and to have left the state with Walker, the TBI said.
She later ended up in Elk Valley, where she was murdered. The TBI said this group of men may have been well organized, and Walker might not have been their only victim.
Walker's parents are both dead. Her brother, Randy, was contacted by the TBI when Walker's remains were identified.
'When Brandon called me with that information a couple of years ago, it was the happiest day of my life,' said Randy Walker in the news release. 'I never did forget about her. It was so hard not knowing.'
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: TBI asks Tennessee high school students for help in solving cold case