In the spring of 2018, Elizabethton High School teacher Alex Campbell gave his sociology class a wildly ambitious assignment: He asked them to solve a case, gone cold for decades, involving a potential serial killer.
Elizabethton is a small city in Northeast Tennessee bordering the Appalachian Mountains. In the 1980s, a police task force was called to investigate the killings of several redheaded women whose bodies were found in Tennessee and neighboring states. But the crimes were never solved. Campbell thought revisiting them would make his sociology class more interesting for his students while also putting them on a mission.
Elizabethton High School students had been asking for more engaging classes and were instrumental in obtaining an award from the XQ, a nonprofit organization that develops programs for high schools, to reimagine teaching and learning.
Over the course of the semester, the students spoke with professional investigators, gathered evidence and pieced together a nearly 40-year-old mystery to identify the killer responsible for at least six murders of redheaded white women. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has agreed with the students’ theory, but no charges have yet been filed against the suspect.