CRIME HUNTER: Bible Belt Strangler’s penchant for redheads, sex and murder

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Published Aug 31, 2024  •  Last updated 0 minutes ago  •  4 minute read

REDHEAD: The serial killer had a penchant for gingers.

The Jane Does began turning up along the Interstate highways that weave through Dixie.

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Eventually, some of the dozen or so homicide victims got their names back.

One thing nearly all of them had in common was red hair. Most had been bound and strangled.

For decades, the mystery of the Redhead Murders or, as the suspected killer was known, the Bible Belt Strangler, has vexed detectives from West Virginia to Arkansas.

Was he one killer, or was he many?

Cops were looking for a link in the Redhead Murders. TBI

In addition to ginger hair, many of the victims were prostitutes who worked at the lonely truck stops throughout the south and were often estranged from their families. That made identifying the Does and capturing the killer tougher.

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Cops believe the murders started in the mid-1970s and appeared to stop suddenly in 1992.

Homicide detectives believe Priscilla Ann Blevins may have been the killer’s first victim. The 27-year-old’s skeletal remains were discovered along Interstate 40 near Waynesville, NC, on March 29, 1985, although cops believed she had been murdered in July 1975.

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Blevins had strawberry-blond hair.

By the mid-1980s, Blevins sadly had company as the bodies began piling up across the south.

From left, Michelle Inman, Elizabeth Lamotte, Tina McKenney-Farmer, Tracy Sue Walker. TBI

On New Year’s Day, 1985, near Jellico, Tennessee on the Kentucky state line, another murdered Jane Doe was found along the I-75. But investigators were unable to give the woman, who was pregnant, a name.

In 2018, she was finally identified as Tina Marie Farmer. DNA found on her clothes was linked in 2020 to the man considered to be the prime suspect.

“We started going to places all over Kentucky, trying to identify her and putting up posters,” former TBI investigator Dave Davenport told WBIR in 2021.

Was Jerry Johns a serial killer? TBI

“Then we started hearing from Kentucky state police who said, ‘Yeah, we have one [a female homicide victim] on the interstate.”

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Cops in Arkansas, Mississippi and Ohio were tackling similar homicides. A task force failed to move the needle.

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Jerry Johns, 36 at the time, was an independent Interstate trucker who was the proud owner of the Rebel Trucking Company out of Cleveland, Tenn.

On March 5, 1985, Johns and his brother Wayne were looking for action at the notorious Katch One watering hole on the outskirts of Knoxville. On the menu was sex and strippers and Johns even had a membership card.

Each red dot symbolizes the murder of a woman along the US Interstate highway system. FBI

One of the dancers was named “Tasha” and she was bringing in a solid $1,000 a week. Johns asked her to hook up for sex at a Holiday Inn and she agreed to the $200 price and provided another girl for sex with Johns’ brother.

After Johns and “Tasha” had sex, she took a bath and was getting ready to leave. Instead, he got in the driver’s seat and drove back to the peeler bar parking lot where he ripped her T-shirt into strips.

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He tied the terrified woman’s hands and feet and put a gag over her mouth. And he threatened to kill her if she screamed as they drove to a wooded area.

Tragic Tina Farmer. TBI

Tasha asked if he was going to kill her. Johns said yes. What bothered him was that he discovered she wasn’t a real redhead. And then he strangled her with a strip of her T-shirt until he thought she was dead.

Miraculously, the dancer survived and crawled to the Interstate where she got help.

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Jerry Leon Johns was arrested, charged and convicted in the attempted murder of Tasha. Of course, he told detectives he would “never hurt a woman”. Besides, he said, no one could prove otherwise.

But in 2020, a grand jury determined Johns was the man who murdered Farmer.

Cops liked Johns for a bunch of the other Redheaded Murders — but there just wasn’t enough evidence.

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Jerry Leon Johns died in prison. TDC

“Could he be involved in other cases?” TBI Special Agent Brandon Elkins asked. “I think it’s possible. Are we going to get there? I don’t know, but we’re not going to stop trying to connect anything we can connect.”

The ace up the sleeves of homicide detectives is rapidly changing technology.

One detective who interviewed Johns said the suspected serial killer exuded an air of someone who thought they could get away with murder. He was arrogant and condescending with detectives

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But was he a serial killer? Johns ain’t talking. He died in prison in 2015.

“You never know what evil lurks in people,” Davenport said.

“I’d like to have seen him alive and been there when they said, Jerry, we have your DNA on the blanket you wrapped (the victim) with. Your butt is going to jail, or the electric chair.

“I’d like to have seen that cocky smirk come off of his face.”

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