'Murder 101' Review: Students Expose the Redhead Murders
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- "Murder 101" is a three-part Prime Video docuseries based on a 2024 podcast of the same name, now streaming on the platform and set at Elizabethton High School in rural Tennessee.
- Alex Campbell, a beloved sociology teacher at Elizabethton High, began having students investigate the cold case in 2018 using 1980s newspaper articles, uncovering what national media dubbed the "Redhead Murders."
- The investigation targets additional victims connected to Jerry Leon Johns, who was convicted of attempting to murder sole living victim Linda Schocee; the case went unsolved for four decades in part because the victims were sex workers and addicts.
- Featured students include foster child Crimson Lashorne, Hannah Metcalf (who took Campbell's class the previous year), and Lacey Campbell, who begins tracking down investigators assigned to her own mother's 2018 death.
- Director Stacey Lee's three-part format drew criticism from the reviewer, who argued the series would have packed a bigger punch as a two-hour film or with additional episodes, since episodes two and three felt like they were "filling in space."
Why it matters: The reviewer credits Campbell with proving that a single innovative public school teacher can still instill critical thinking and civic responsibility in students, countering the dominant narrative of educational decline. The series also elevates victims — women marginalized as sex workers and addicts — whose cases stalled for decades until high schoolers applied fresh scrutiny and pushed through institutional red tape.
