When sociology teacher Alex Campbell asked his students to look at the unsolved case of ‘the redhead murders’, he told them to ‘prepare to fail’. After all, if police officers and all their resources, expertise and technology can’t catch the bad guy, how can anyone else? The mystery the teacher was talking about involved a series of unsolved attacks that took place in Tennessee (where the students lived) and Kentucky between 1978 and 1992. It was an era of serial killings; Ted Bundy , the Zodiac Killer and the East Area Rapist had terrorised women and left them fearful to go out alone at night.
And when decomposed bodies of ginger women were found by the side of the road across the southern States, the ‘Redheaded Taskforce’, a crack team of detectives from across the South proved unable to identify the murderer. With no witnesses and because the women’s bodies were found over such a huge area, often a long time after the victim had died, they drew a blank. Meanwhile, Elizabethton – a small town with a strong sense of community – had been overshadowed by the unsolved murder of redheaded teen Cynthia Taylor in 1983.
It was unclear if Cynthia’s death was related to the string of attacks, but true crime fan Alex wanted to find out more, and in January 2018, he decided to take the case to his Elizabethton High School students to help engage them in sociology classes. Since then their investigation has not only been dissected itself in hit true crime .