A fact from Redhead murders appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 January 2015 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that the perpetrator(s) of the Redhead murders have never been identified, nor have most of the victims?
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I looked for other information on the web related to this topic and there exists very little of it.
1- that does not have with all other known serial killings, where there exists tons of information on every killing and each victim.
2 - Gingers are less than 1 in 50 people on Earth. That means that in every two homeroom classes in our schools, there was probably only one Ginger. Each of us can likely name that person because they are rare. But somehow this particular killer managed to find six to twelve Gingers who just disappeared in the South for 30 years, and no one knows who they were? With basic footwork, police could have easily compiled a list of every Ginger in Tenessee by now, for example, and then seen who is not accounted for. It would be a small list, and that would render the names of these alleged victims.
3 - if these were marginalized Gingers, though, how did this serial killer manage to find only the unaccounted for ones? Did he or she have an internalized rage for only marginalized Gingers, and did he or she carry a questionnaire while on the hunt to be sure they were estranged from all other living humans? What happened to those he encountered who were still in touch with family... Let them go? Have any of them come forward to tell of their harrowing experience and describe the questionnaire and the killer?
3 - there are absolutely no other clues listed or discussed other than 'the interstate'. Did the vehicle leave tire tread marks? Did the killer get gas anywhere on this muti-state trek?
4- did police look at the date of the last known alleged killing and then look at death records of, say, men who died in the surrounding states over the following two years to see if perhaps the killer died (ie, ending the killings)? Did that produce a list of suspects?
5- Why is no official quoted at all? Supposedly the police in many states just Gomer Pyled it after coming up with a total of ZERO suspects and tossed it to the FBI?. Did the FBI also come up with zero suspects? How is that possible? This Ginger hater managed to conceal his hatred so well that only these unidentified victims knew who he was? That does not seem plausible.
6 - Why did these states wait so many years before getting federal authorities involved? Who are the lead detectives from each state? Have they been contacted for input? Why have they not trolled this article to add credence? Did the cases go into the cold car files and is anyone at all still looking at it?
7 - if the victims were unidentified, and they were found along the interstate, why does this article assume they were sex workers? How would they know? Did they interview sex workers and ask about the Ginger sex workers and corroborate that, and wouldn't that have yielded some identity clues? How did they know that an unidentidied naked body took money for sex? How did the killer know? Was it part of the Red Headed Marginalization Questionnaire they apparently filled out before they got killed??
There are many other holes here and implausibilities that make this story very difficult to be believed. This article should be removed from Wikipedia unless it can be substantiated.
(There is also a line of thinking that someone made this story up so they would have something to point to in order to say, "I'm innocent!!" Or that it was made up, someone was actually of being that killer, and then the accused found themselves saying "I'm innocent" to something that never happened in order to make them appear to be obfuscating and misdirecting away from some other nefarious deed that they actually did commit. Both motives are horrid and this article needs to be removed.) Keithmyer2 (talk) 06:22, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In a similar vein to the article about the Oakland County Child Killer, should a section for disproven victims be included? With the identification of Stacy Chahorski and Donna Sue Nelton, authorities have indicated that the main suspects in murders of both are completely unrelated to one another and thus definitively unrelated to the Redhead murders. If anybody thinks that this is unnecessary, I'd like to hear why. Haunted Spy (talk) 05:55, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"In 2018 an Elizabethton, Tn teacher named Alex Campbell offered a sociology class studying the murders. The class potentially identified 3 new victims and developed a profile of the killer." is unsourced up to date. As a user from the German-speaking countries, i know a German language source: https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/panorama/id_100330722/usa-schueler-loesen-serienmorde-aus-den-80er-jahren.html. Better a foreign source than no source? The source has additional info:
The former high school class was supported by a FBI psychological case analyst
The class identified a suspect, a convicted strangler (named Jerry J.) who was in prison since 1985 and died there in 2015
The class has a podcast on apple.com named "murder101"
nypost.com (non-top source) has an article on that subject named "High schoolers ID possible serial killer in 40-year-old cold case — reveal their findings on true crime podcast". t-online mainly relies on the podcast an on the nypost article.
After publication of the podcast, the Tennessee bureau of investigations announced to carry on investigating these cases. They did not mention the class.
