Group of students think they’ve unmasked serial killer 40 years later and you’ll never believe how

A group of high school students may have managed to crack a four-decades old cold case – and it was all due to a sociology class project.

In 2018, the students from Elizabethton High School in Tennessee took a look at a case dubbed the ‘Redhead Murders’ at the encouragement of their sociology and history teacher, Alex Campbell.

Not thinking they’d be able to crack the case that cops had struggled to get their heads around, he also figured that his students would face a similar problem.

Earlier this year, he told PEOPLE that he likes ‘projects that get the students interested, projects where we can apply what we’re learning in our classes’, adding that he had ‘never heard about the murders even though I’ve lived here my entire life’.

Campbell continued: “They had these murders, but nobody had ever come to a consensus whether there was a person responsible for more than one of them, was there a serial killer active?”

The ‘Redhead Murders’ consist of a string of victims who were all dumped along major highways in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia.

The victims, who were initially unidentified, have since been identified as Lisa Nichols, Michelle Inman, Tina McKenney-Farmer, Elizabeth Lamotte and Tracy Walker – while one from DeSoto County still remains unconfirmed.

What made this case even more peculiar was the fact that all the victims were young women with reddish hair.

The murders are also believed to have taken place between 1978 and 1992, and it is also believed that some of the women were prostitutes.

To aid in their investigation, Campbell also brought in an ex-FBI agent to teach them how to profile a case.

Using their new skills to identify a ‘pattern’, the teenagers came to the conclusion that six of the victims could potentially be linked to one possible suspect – who they’d dubbed the ‘Bible Belt Strangler’.

They also put forth a potential suspect in Jerry Johns, whose DNA ended up being linked to McKenney-Farmer in 2018.

Johns died in prison in 2015 after being found guilty of strangling a prostitute in Knox County, Kentucky in 1985.

The group even ended up speaking to a survivor of the ‘Bible Belt Strangler’ on their podcast, Murder 101where they also put forth their potential findings.

While Campbell believes there is ‘plenty of evidence’ for his student’s theory, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesperson told PEOPLE that there is ‘no evidence to indicate that Jerry Johns is responsible for the deaths of Elizabeth Lamotte or Tracy Walker’, adding: “Michelle Inman was just recently identified, so at this stage, agents are still pursuing new leads and gathering information about who she may have had contact with before her death.”

They also confirmed that the investigation into Inman, Lamotte and Walker ‘remains active and ongoing’.

UNILAD has contacted the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for comment.