The only surviving victim of the “Bible Belt Strangler” has spoken out for the first time to a Tennessee high school teacher – whose students helped solve the 40-year-old’s murder mystery.
The survivor, identified only as “L,” was attacked in the early 1980s by Jerry Johns, a deceased trucker investigators now believe may be responsible for a string of unsolved murders in the decade known as the Redhead Murders.
For the first time since his attack nearly four decades ago, he sat down with Elizabethton High School sociology teacher Alex Campbell to talk about his experience on the Murder 101 podcast.
“There’s no reason for me to live except that the good Lord let me live,” he told Campbell on the iHeartRadio podcast in an exclusive clip obtained by The Post.
The grandmother said she could only come forward because she knew it would “save women’s lives.”
The survivor didn’t even know Johns was tied to another murder until an FBI agent called her “a few years ago and told me,” she admitted.
“I didn’t even know Jerry Johns was dead, but he called me and told me they used DNA and proved that he killed this other girl,” she said.
The survivor, known only as “L,” was attacked by truck driver Jerry Johns in the 1980s. ” TBI “There is no reason for me to live unless the good Lord allows me to live,” he said. via WBIR News 10
Tina McKenney-Farmer was linked to Johns in 2018 through DNA evidence. The 20-year-old was found in December 1984 off Interstate 75 near Jellico, Tenn.
As for Johns, he died in prison in 2015 after being convicted of strangling a prostitute in Knox County, Kentucky in 1985.
“They questioned me when it happened,” the survivor admitted on a podcast about her own encounters with suspected serial killers.
More murders continue and the sole survivor notices one of the girls “looks a lot like me.”
“This is a terrible and tragic story for a lot of people and a lot of families, but if there’s a hero, it’s you,” teacher Alex Campbell told “L.” “Your will to live is what got him arrested and kept off the streets.”
Farmer is one of six victims in the class of 2018 Campbell has linked to possible victims killed by the same killer, with Johns as a suspect.
“There was a whole bunch of them they were asking about me,” said L. “We were sitting at this big, big, long table and there were pictures of all these women and some of them looked like pictures of me.
“There are dozens of girls who look exactly like me, and they call them the Redhead Murders,” he said in the podcast, produced by KT Studios.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation later announced the passing trucker as a suspect, but did not give credit to the students, who Campbell said he took harder than them.
“I didn’t even know Jerry Johns was dead, but he called me and told me they used DNA and proved that he killed this other girl,” she said. Tina McKenney-Farmer (pictured) was linked to Johns in 2018 through DNA evidence. TBI
The TBI is investigating to see if Johns can be tied to the other Redhead Murders.
Campbell — who said he “poured his life” into the case trying to prove Johns was connected for the past six years — called L a “hero.”
“This is a terrible and tragic story for many people and many families, but if there is a hero, it is you,” she told him through tears.
“Your will to live is what got him arrested and kept off the streets.”
Since the tragedy, L has not kept a high profile, but KT Studios’ Gabriel Castillo said the retired nurse was a “loving mother and grandmother” who “volunteered her time for various Christian charities.”
Now, Campbell’s former students reveal their collection of evidence in a 10-episode Murder 101 podcast, where they reveal how they connected the six women, who they call their “sisters,” and Johns.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
