Alex Campbell
We have to get over this misconception that 16 year olds and 17 year olds don't know what murder is, that they are not totally confronted with this every day of their lives. Go play any video game that's big amongst teenagers. Listen to their music, watch their TV shows, watch their TikTok and you
will see that they're inundated with various types of crime. Murders, killings, suicides. Like it's there.
Nadine J. Cohen
Welcome to Grave Matters. a lively look at death.
Anthony Levin
All of us at Grave Matters would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are recording from. We pay our respects to the Cammaraygal people and their elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the traditional owners from all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands and other
First Nations territories from which you are listening.
Nadine J. Cohen
A warning. This episode contains references to murder, death and other themes related to dying. Please take care.
Anthony Levin
Nadine J. Cohen. Good morning.
Nadine J. Cohen
Anthony Levin. Yasou. So, Lev, you're a lawyer?
Nadine J. Cohen
A human rights lawyer. But have you ever been involved in a criminal investigation?
Anthony Levin
No, but close. I was involved in running a large malicious prosecution case over 10 years ago in. And it is basically a retrial of criminal law issues by proxy because one of the things you have to do is step into the mind of the police officers and prove that they did not have reasonable and
probable cause to charge the person. And that's basically one of the key things in the case. It was a case that came out of the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption in the 80s and 90s. But what made it notable was that there were figures in the case who were being depicted on
"Underbelly", the Australian crime drama. And so we had our head in the books whilst this show was playing. And, you know, it actually really was a good opportunity to get into the investigation mindset for me. And how about you, Nadine? Have you dipped your toe into the bloody pool of true crime?
Nadine J. Cohen
Look, not exactly, but the closest I've come was when I was living in Chile in, my early twenties for uni, and I, like, in a weird, roundabout way, I found out that there was a Nazi torture cult an hour and a half from my town. That is not hyperbole. That's literally what it was. And I started
researching it and I ended up in contact with this journalist who'd written a book about it. And then he put me in touch with this lawyer who was running a criminal or I can't remember if it was a criminal or civil case on behalf of a bunch of boys who grew up in the compound who had been molested
by the leader of the cult. Anyway, like, I ended up in this, like, bus station having this clandestine meeting with this lawyer and he showed me blueprints of the compound and then he put me in touch with this woman whose brother had gone missing in the 70s or the 80s. Like, and they thought the
cult did it. Like, it was just this bizarre situation. But there are documentaries on it. There's a Netflix documentary, it's six part. It's harrowing, but it's a - The place was called Colonia Dignidad. Yeah. So that's my story.
Anthony Levin
That's wild.
So it's time to talk true crime and specifically what happened when a group of unlikely citizen sleuths set their sights on solving a string of cold cases in the hope of bringing justice to the long ignored victims and their families. In today's episode, we ask who is allowed to solve crime? Are all
murder victims treated equally? And is trying to shelter today's teenagers from death or anything, a losing game? Today we're speaking with Tennessee high school sociology teacher, education advocate, and true crime hero, Alex Campbell. A multiple Teacher of the Year recipient, Campbell travels the
United States sharing his passion for project based learning and is widely regarded as a creative innovator. In 2016 he published the book "10 Lessons That Will Get You Fired: (But You Must Teach Immediately)". And his unconventional teaching methods are the subject of the chart topping "Murder 101"
podcast. Alex Campbell, welcome to Grave Matters.
Alex Campbell
Thank you for having me. It is my pleasure to be here.
Nadine J. Cohen
So for listeners who might not be familiar with your podcast, can you tell us the true story behind "Murder 101"?
Alex Campbell
Well, about seven years ago, we or I, ah, noticed that there were a lot of murders in and around our state here in the 1970s and 80s, maybe into the early 90s. And what I saw in the news, papers and things at the time was that they were not sure if this was the work of a serial killer or maybe a
couple of serial killers or maybe just one off murders. So it kind of intrigued me that they had never come to a consensus on that. And so I thought, wow, what if I just let my students look into it and see if, they could, you know, come to some type of consensus now that it's been a few decades.
And, and so that's really how the project got started in 2018. And the students worked with an FBI profiler and did the work to basically show that it did appear that there was a serial offender operating in and around our home state, back in the 70s and 80s.
Nadine J. Cohen
And your students gave this suspected killer a nickname, right?
Alex Campbell
It's like in science, you know, if you find that you get to name it. So since the students were the first ones to ever say this, they named him the Bible Belt Strangler. And this was to kind of separate the fact that there were some murders that appeared to be linked to one offender. And there were
also, you know, some other one off murders kind of mixed in there as well.
Nadine J. Cohen
A little backstory here. Alex initially presented the students with 14 or so cold cases from the 70s and 80s, all from within and around Tennessee, known as the Redhead murders. They had been grouped together for their similarities. All were young, most had red or reddish hair, many were sex
workers, and almost all were abducted and discarded along Bible Belt motorways. The students work led them to believe that six or so were the victims of one killer.
Anthony Levin
And Alex, can you tell me a bit about the victims?
Alex Campbell
Yeah. So at the time in 2018, only one of these six victims, which my students identified as probably being killed by the same person, was even identified. We had no suspects really, and we had no access to police documents. So really what we had was the victims. So we really had to start with
victimology, which our FBI profiler said is where you should start anyway, so we actually start with victimology first. And that's one of the things we noticed is with these, these victims shared a lot of similarities. And of course victim acquisition, is one of the very important parts of trying to
look to see if you have, you know, one offender. So that's where we started. But really, what it was was young, white, small, red or reddish headed women many times. And they were usually transient, involved in sex trafficking, away from support system, working at truck stops, maybe hitchhiking, you
know, things like that. So they were also usually acquired along the interstate, and their bodies were also left along the interstate and usually through strangulation.
Nadine J. Cohen
Okay, so warning, spoiler alert for "Murder 101" But I have to ask up front, did you identify the murderer?
Alex Campbell
So we now know that there is one person who did kill one victim. We know that for sure because of DNA. Her name is now Tina Farmer. And we also know that he attempted to kill another victim named Linda Shockey, and he did both of those the very last days of 1984 through March of 1985. We also know
that he matches every single one of the 17 characteristics laid out by my students years before we even knew of his existence.
Student
Redhead killer profile: male, Caucasian, 5'9" - 6'2", 180-270 pounds, unstable home, absent father and a domineering mother. Right handed, IQ above 100, most likely heterosexual.
Alex Campbell
I don't claim to be an FBI profiler, but yeah, I had, you know, 14 or 15 year olds in there and they learned well and they worked hard. And of course, you know, a profile is a tool. It's not some magic thing. I don't think any crime has ever been solved purely by a profile. But if you have a list of
suspects, or if you have a list of crimes, then maybe it can guide you to say this suspect might be considered in these crimes or, or these crimes might be tied to one suspect. And I feel the fact that it was so accurate has helped in that area.
Nadine J. Cohen
And it's also helped identify almost all of the suspected victims, yes?
Alex Campbell
First we had six "Jane Does", or victims, that we thought were linked to this killer. And then now what's happened is more documents have come out and as we've gained more information, we actually ruled two of those original ones out. Because as we learn more about the crime, not just what we could
find online, but from the police or from their family members, different detectives we interviewed, etcetera, we ruled two of those out that they didn't really continue to fit, and we actually ruled two more in. So we still have six. But of the original six, there is only one that is now not
identified and that's known as the Wetzel County, West Virginia Jane Doe. What I would like to say is that there's usually two reasons that cold cases get solved, and that's usually either an advance in science or renewed attention to the case. And of course forensic genetic genealogy came around
Anthony Levin
Forensic genetic genealogy combined new DNA analysis techniques and traditional genealogy to identify suspects and, and unidentified remains using commercial DNA databases. Once investigators find relatives of the unknown individual on such databases, they build family trees to identify potential
Alex Campbell
But also what my students did was they helped keep the attention on these cases. They used the media in a really savvy way that had not been done up to that point.
Anthony Levin
That's really interesting because one of the things we wanted to talk to you about is how inequitable the distribution of attention can be sometimes, based on the resource allocations of law enforcement agencies. For example, who decides which particular cold cases receive prolonged attention. And
usually that's law enforcement themselves. But what your students did was kind of turn the tables on the discretion of these agencies and say, hey, we think this is important. And that's pretty rare. And actually just such an astounding feature of this story.
Alex Campbell
I don't know what time it is there, but has anybody told you you are astute yet? Am I the first one to tell you you're astute this morning?
Nadine J. Cohen
Surprisingly, Alex was the first person to tell Anthony he was astute that morning.
Alex Campbell
I don't know if people aren't familiar with how, the United States works. Multiple overlapping jurisdictions. You have counties, you have cities. They will have their own law enforcement. Counties are always sheriff's departments. Cities are always more what we call police departments. And then you
also have state law enforcement. So here in Tennessee, it's the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. So really it was between local, you know, county and city law enforcement and the state. And usually the local law enforcement have to ask for those resources from the state as well. So it really just
depends on the jurisdiction. I mean, we're actually looking at about five different states. And so all those states have their own ways of doing things. You're talking about 13 different jurisdictions for just six to eight cases that we looked at. So it is very complicated. And some of those
counties are very rural. They're not really designed to work serial offenders. They also don't think about across state or jurisdiction lines. So even when we work with the TBI, they're only thinking about 3 of our cases. They don't really care about the other cases so much because that's not who
they're responsible to. And depending on the county you're in or the city you're in, or is it a large city versus a small rural area, it really will determine how much time, money and effort that some of these law enforcement agencies can spend on them. And then also there's other things, such as
the type of victim they are, are the type of victims that tend to get the least amount of coverage.
Nadine J. Cohen
By type of victims, Alex means sex workers. A victim demographic historically and sadly still often currently ignored by authorities and overrepresented in cold cases worldwide. Because of this and the locations where the victim's remains were found, the students hypothesised that the killer may
have been a truck driver or someone who frequently travelled for work along interstate motorways across the Bible Belt.
Alex Campbell
If people are not familiar with the geography of the United States, the Bible Belt is a region kind of in the mid south. Nashville is sometimes thought of as the buckle of the Bible Belt, it's kind of in the middle. And if you look at I40, that's really the interstate that runs right through
Nashville. It runs east to west across, across the mid south. And a lot of these crimes were committed along or interstates that kind of branch off of I40. So that was one reason why the students felt that that was good. The other one was it, it does appear that almost all these murders were caused
by strangulation. So we felt it was an accurate depiction of the person. And then also, this is sociology. We're trying to learn, you know, what draws attention, how people's minds work. And so we found that putting two things, one that seems very innocent and pure with something that seems very
evil drew a lot of attention. And so we put together Bible Belt and Strangler, and we actually consulted with local media on that and said we actually had a lot of different names that we were considering. And we said, hey, which one would you be most excited to write a headline about? And we felt
that would draw the most attention.
Nadine J. Cohen
That's brilliant.
Anthony Levin
Very savvy. And really speaks to the fact that you were working with the kind of TikTok generation, people who are immersed in social media and, the media landscape all the time. But just to, kind of return to a maybe very practical point, what did it take to get this over the line because this is
not your run of the mill project?
Alex Campbell
Well, the fact that we are a smaller school. And so I have a good relationship with the principal, you know, the director of schools. I text him probably once or twice a week. That wouldn't happen in maybe a city like New York. So, hey, I just went to the principal and said, this is my idea. What do
you think? And we just talked about it for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. And, you know, he understood that I was using this to teach. And, I do projects in all my classes. So he was kind of used to that idea. I've done some out of the box things over the years. So once he understood the parameters and,
you know, the guardrails we'd put in place and what the real idea was, he was very supportive. I mean, the first thing you have to think about as a teacher is, you know, how am I going to keep my kids safe no matter what you do? So we do, we go over parameters. Like we don't go knock on people's
doors, we don't contact people online. You got to pick certain cases that are safer as well. I don't pick a case where somebody in our town got killed two weeks ago because the killer could be in our school or live next door. So we, we like to pick cases that are old, that there's, like, geographic
distance. But also, I try to keep the parents involved. And, you know, a lot of people ask a lot of questions about parents. You know, they say, well, how'd you get the parents on board? Never had a problem with parents. They, they totally get it. They understand that I'm not glorifying violence.
I'm trying to equip our younger generation with the skills they need to be creative problem solvers and to give back to their communities.
Nadine J. Cohen
That's so awesome. But when you and I spoke earlier, I told you that it's probably unlikely that this sort of project would ever be allowed in Australian high schools. I haven't been able to get a comment from the education overlords, but I've spoken to teachers and educators who pretty much share
my view. I think it's just one of these fundamental cultural differences between our countries.
Anthony Levin
We live in a bit of a nanny state here, though. You're not really allowed to, you know, breathe or drink milk or anything without a licence or a permission slip.
Alex Campbell
And I'll say I've had people, when I present at conferences and things, they say that probably couldn't happen, you know, maybe where they teach. But what I try to tell them is we don't, we don't look at serial killers every class, every year. True crime can be used in a lot of ways. You know, kids
love animals. You know, when you see that dog in the airport, what is it doing? You know, how do they train that dog? You could just learn about that aspect. You could raise money for some, you know, a protective vest for a police canine. It doesn't always have to be a serial killer case, but true
crime is one of the most popular genres in the world. And so if there's something that really intrigues people and gets them to work hard and think hard, then I think that teachers should consider using it.
Nadine J. Cohen
Alex, how did the podcast come about?
Alex Campbell
So KT Studios, they were really just kind of looking for unique ideas in the true crime space. And I think they just came across some of the news articles about my class's work in 2018. And so they just contacted me and said, hey, would you be willing to just let us kind of pitch it and see if
anybody picks it up? It took over a year, I believe, year and a half for anybody to pick it up. And then, of course, it took us about a year to record it, and then it took another eight months for them distribute it. So they came in three years or so, two years after the original work and then it
spanned another two and a half or three years after we started. But hey, eventually it worked out.
Anthony Levin
How did you manage the emotional or psychological weight of the material?
Alex Campbell
So talk about two issues there. Okay, number one, we have to get over this misconception that 16 year olds and 17 year olds don't know what murder is, that they are not totally confronted with this every day of their lives. Go play any video game that's big amongst teenagers. Listen to their music,
watch their TV shows, watch their TikTok and you will see that they're inundated with various types of crime. Murders, killings, suicides. Like it's, it's there. It's homelessness, people hitchhiking, runaways. Like it, it's all over. And that's one thing I've said over and over again is it's very
short sighted of us adults to say, oh, well, they don't know about that and they couldn't handle it. The truth is that my students know more about it than I do. One year we were trying to get a lady out of prison that we felt was unjustly convicted. And I just randomly asked a question. How many
students, you know, have somebody in their family in prison? One third of my students raised their hand. I think a lot of people who live a really good life think, oh, these kids don't know anything about being a teenage runaway with a drug problem. How are they going to deal with this? The truth is
they're dealing with it every day. And a couple of things are happening. Either they're dealing with it as a teenager without a lot of resources, and they don't know. They're ashamed. You know, my dad did this or, you know, my brother did that. They're ashamed. They don't talk about it, they don't
ask for help, they're trying to process it on their own. Or number two, they're seeing it glorified in the media and it's presented in a very unrealistic way and that's how they're learning about these issues. So what I get to do in my class is say I get to bring these issues to light. To say, like,
why would a teenager leave home? What kind of family wouldn't get a lot of attention if their child went missing? Why would a teenager, you know, go into foster care? What was going on at her home? Why would she think that, hitchhiking on the interstate was better than staying at home with her
family? We get to talk about those things. I have students that are in the foster care system. Some of our victims were in the foster care system. I have students that have run away from home. Some of our victims run away from home. So what happens is the students realise that this is real life and
instead of it being glorified like it is many times on music videos or TikTok videos or TV shows is we don't glorify it, you know, instead we make it reality and they understand, look, if I'm in the foster system, it doesn't make me a bad person, but I need to understand that my chance of something
bad happen to me is higher. I need to prepare for that. I need to make my decisions very wisely. I understand my home's not the best place in the world, but the road is a worst place in most cases.
Nadine J. Cohen
And what else are you hoping that the students take away from this experience?
Alex Campbell
The thing that drives me nuts is if you look at many podcasts or documentaries, the killer is the hero. Like they're the central focus. Anytime you make somebody the central focus, they become a little bit idealised. So we don't focus on the killer, we focus on the victims.
Student
If we could just give one of these victims justice, that would be more than has happened in the last 30 years. So I think we want all the victims eventually identified, but I think that our main goal was to just try to bring this story to light, try to give these victims a name, try to give them
family. And I think that we did that by considering them our sisters.
Alex Campbell
And so my students begin to understand, like, you know, John Wayne Gacy isn't cool. He's a terrible, horrible, evil person, you know, and what about these victims? So we get to focus on the victims. And these victims are the same age as some of my students. 14, 15, 17 year old, some of these women.
So they see a lot of familiarity in them. even the guys, you know, hey, that's my sister's age, you know, know what, what would happen to my mom? So really what we get to do is we get to look at the cops and what they're doing to try to help or maybe sometimes not help. What's the media doing? Why
do they pay attention or not pay attention to certain people? What kind of impact does this have on the family after they're gone? And then we even got close and we even got to speak with the only known survivor of a serial killer just actually a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, what does it do
to somebody 40 years later, even though they survive, how does it change their life? So really what I like to say is let's give kids some credit here. I mean, I had a student a few years back who was in Las Vegas when they had their school shooting out there. She saw that, that was in her school.
She saw dead bodies in her school. And then we come along and we say, well we shouldn't talk about death because you know, kids don't know what that's like and they can't understand it.
Nadine J. Cohen
Okay, so I think one of the big reasons that we find the project so shocking is American gun culture. And I know that the victims here were strangled, but I think it goes to violence in general and I guess to help you understand, gun crime here is so super low. So for example, when a man in Tasmania
in the 90s massacred like I think it was like 30 or 35 people, we banned semi automatic weapons, declared a gun amnesty and a buyback scheme and something like 650,000 guns were surrendered and destroyed. It's just not part of our culture. And I think that gun crime I read is actually decreasing.
Like we've only ever had one school shooting and nobody was even hurt.
Anthony Levin
Nadine is referring to a 2023 incident when a 15 year old boy opened fire with a hunting rifle at the Atlantis Beach Baptist College in Perth. As Nadine said, thankfully the bullets didn't hit any staff or students and the shooter called the police himself. He was later sentenced to three years in
Alex Campbell
Yeah, well it happens. And it's not just, I mean guns is part of it. Yes, but really, remember we look at victims first, so what we really see in most of these victims is the traumatic home, the mental instability in the homes, the running away, the poverty, the lack of resources to help them when
they were young. And that's how they end up on the road, that's how they end up in sex trafficking, as most of them ended up in sex trafficking situations. Look, we live in one of the poorest parts of America. I don't know if you know, but southern Appalachia is traditionally been one of the poorest
parts of America. We've been totally decimated by opioid addiction. Families have been totally destroyed. A third of my kids are being raised by somebody other than a parent, whether that be the state, grandparents, brothers, sisters, whoever. The poverty here, the trauma at home, the instability at
home, the lack of resources, this is what the lives that those women were like. And so yeah, there's a crime culture in America. I mean, there's been more American serial killers than any other country. And yes, we have gun issues. We do. But really, I think what resonates with the students is the
home life of the victims.
Anthony Levin
It sounds like what you're saying is that because of your students lived experience, they were effectively the ideal group to profile and to build a picture of the victims, perhaps better than any other group you could have conceived. And that therefore they were able to build an empathic bridge
very quickly to the victims, which is why I understand they called them their six sisters.
Nadine J. Cohen
Ooh, there goes Astute Boy being all astute again.
Alex Campbell
Yeah. So you're exactly right. This is the perfect group. Nobody understands a teenage girl like another teenage girl. I had a student this last year whose mother was killed, possibly murdered. You know, it's undecided. So I'm literally sitting here with a student who thinks her mom was murdered and
thinks the police aren't doing very much to look into it because of certain decisions she had made in her life. And I remember her coming up to me after first couple days and saying, I know why I'm in your class. And I was like, why is that? And she said, so I can figure out what happened to my mom.
Alex Campbell
And so, you know, what am I supposed to do? Give out some worksheets and memorise some bold words and pretend like I'm doing a good job because I'm not. You know, these kids, they don't need to memorise bold words. What they need to learn is, is where they fit in society, that their life experiences
are validated and that they can learn to look around and see problems in the world and say, I don't have to wait till I'm 30 or 40. I can move to use whatever skills I have now to try to help these problems in the world. And I feel like these kind of projects are making the kind of young people that
Nadine J. Cohen
And I think just to take it back to the teaching and this happening in your classroom, you told me that the education system, was it the Rockefellers? The education system that America, and I'm sure Australia and the UK go by was designed 150 years ago and has not changed. And you're a very
passionate advocate of project based learning and different alternate ways of teaching. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Alex Campbell
The modern system that most people go by in the Western world, and that would include Australia, it was adapted from what Prussia was doing in Germany. And the reason they did it was produce great workers. That was part of the German economic miracle. You can go back and look that up. I'm a history
teacher at heart, by the way. And American industrialists adapted that very quickly. Carnegie, Rockefeller, et cetera, put lots of money into this to really build up the American workforce, which at the time was about 10 years old. You could know some type of repetitive skill where you go into a
factory and you could make something on an assembly line. Now even the Carnegie foundation, who, who actually helped establish this form of schooling known as the Carnegie Unit, has come out and disavowed it. They say that maybe it had a place for a lot of people in the late 18, early 1900s, but
whatever place it had is gone now. We don't need 10 year olds to do repetitive tasks on an assembly line. What we need are generative critical thinkers who can recognise what their skills are and fill those skills and then figure out how they can move to solve problems in the world. I mean, almost
every country in the world is trying to redo their educational system right now. And a lot of that has to do with the Internet and technology and how it's broken this kind of, you know, lock that certain, groups have access to this information. Now we all have access to this information. So
everybody's thinking about what they should do to better serve their young people and their countries and their future. And project based authentic learning is that answer.
Anthony Levin
I need no convincing on this point, Alex, because my son goes to a project based learning school where they use a Reggio Emilia style pedagogy. So yeah, ah, you're giving the big thumbs up there.
Nadine J. Cohen
You're teacher's pet right now.
Anthony Levin
I know, I know. And I think it is a wonderful way to immerse kids in learning in a really fun way. You mentioned that this pedagogical style is partly about problem solving, may be largely about problem solving, and in some ways an unsolved murder is perhaps the ultimate social problem. Did you
think when you designed this project that it would have the kind of restorative justice impact that it in fact seems to have had?
Alex Campbell
No. I mean, I thought it'd be a great project. I thought it would get the kids working. I thought it would, you know, let them apply some skills. First of all, I don't think I gave the kids full credit for what they could do. Not the work. I thought they could do the work. But really what surprised
me the most was how empathetic they were. And man, we give teenagers like a bad rap. We say, oh, they just want to play on their phones. They want to put their little ear buds in and just live in their own world. They don't want to talk to anybody. Well, maybe that's because you're giving them
boring regurgitated garbage all day. But when you have a victim's brother Zoom in with you the first week of school and say, look, my sister's been dead 40 years and I didn't know what happened to her til last year and you know, the police took her case and threw it in the garbage after two years
because they didn't feel that she was worth it. So can you help me? The police aren't going to help me. Nobody else is helping me. Can you help me? Man, let me tell you, that changes your classroom.
Nadine J. Cohen
So "Murder 101" revealed huge tensions with local law enforcement who clearly resented you and the students for doing what they maybe had failed to achieve, for maybe showing them up a little bit, whether through complacency, apathy or incompetence. Who do you think should be allowed to solve crime?
Alex Campbell
We've actually now begun to work with the TBI if you get on your magic Internet search engine, you'll find that my students teamed up with the TBI, for a massive media campaign about an almost 50 year old unsolved murder, which has been amazing.
Nadine J. Cohen
We did get on our magic Internet search engine and Alex and his students are indeed working with the TBI to bring attention to the 1978 unsolved murder of a 15 year old girl whose remains were found in 1985 just off Interstate 75. Known as Baby Girl Jane Doe, until she was ID'd in 2022 as Tracey Sue
Walker. Her case was initially included in the students Bible Belt investigation. However, after further digging they decided she was not one of the Strangler's victims. You can read all about it at justice4tracysue.com. Now back to the tensions with authorities.
Alex Campbell
A lot of that I will say, I think is because of bureaucracy. The larger the organisation, the more bureaucracy. So I called many times over seven years, but there was only one number to call. And they always sent me to the public information officer who was told to say, you know, we don't talk about
open cases and you know, we don't really work with the media. So the person I needed to talk to never even knew that I had called and asked to speak with somebody. That that's a problem of bureaucracy. And we talked about that. We had a really good frank conversation about it. So I believe that
sometimes the police apparatus is not set up to really work with the community. But I'm telling you, the police rarely solve any cases without the community's help. They need tips, they need people coming forward with information. When we were working in 2018, one case was being tested for DNA at
that time and they felt that they knew who it was and the DNA would confirm it. The only reason they had gotten this tip was because the guy who was over, he was a state policeman, but he was over his little post there in his region of the state and he was posting his unsolved murders onto Facebook
pages, hoping someone who was in the true crime community would see this and get it to the right person. And that's exactly what happened. Her neighbour saw it, contacted the daughter of, I think she was 10 weeks old when her mother disappeared and said, honey, this is your mama right here. This,
this is her picture. You don't remember her, but I'm telling you, that's your mama. So they contacted the state police and sure enough, it was her mother. So when you see police that are really doing a good job, they are embracing media and they know how to use it and they're embracing the
community. And the ones who don't do that usually don't solve any crimes, or at least the cold case crimes. And that, that's the big lesson I hope they take with them anytime in the future. When they see a problem, they don't say, well, I'm not an elected official or, or I'm not a CEO or I'm, not
rich or I'm not old or I'm not an expert. They just say, look, I'm a young person with some skills and some resources. What can I do? I'm telling you, it's addictive. I tell people all the time, I'm an addict. I am totally addicted and so are my students to having real experiences where you help
people. Once you help somebody and you have an experience like that, you don't want to go back to worksheets and bold words. You want to find somebody else to help.
Anthony Levin
So Alex, was project based learning always your passion? And when you first became a teacher, did you, did you ever imagine that this would be the kind of teaching you'd be doing?
Alex Campbell
No. I was a horrible teacher. I, I, I wake up in a cold sweat at night thinking about how bad of a teacher I was when I started 23 years ago. I wish I could just go find all my students and apologise to them for how terrible I was. But to be honest, that's how I was taught to teach in college. And
that's how everybody I knew that taught did it. Hey, let's look at the chapter. You know, read section one and do the section review questions. Tomorrow we'll read section two and do the section review question. At the end, we'll do the chapter review and, and then we'll move on.
Nadine J. Cohen
I've got chills from flashbacks to high school.
Alex Campbell
Yeah, right. Schools are so regulated. A lot of schools are just designed to break things down into some formulaic, over prescribed order and then just have the kids sit there and do it until they're like, you know, numb. But we're stuck in this archaic system. And I hope that the one thing this
does is show people that students can do better and they deserve better.
Nadine J. Cohen
So it's changed your teaching. How has it changed your life?
Alex Campbell
Oh, well, I have the greatest life in the world because I get to go along on these journeys every class, every semester, every year with my students. And, you know, I'm telling you what, I don't feel like a great teacher when I grade a quiz. I don't feel like a great teacher when I make some copies
of a worksheet. But I'll tell you, you ought to sit across the table from a woman who thought she was going to die in prison. And then she came all the way from California. That's 2500 miles she got out of prison. She came 2500 miles, sat down, had a coffee around the table with my students, and
said, thank you for helping to get me out of prison. I thought I was going to die in there for something I didn't do. And I get to sit there at the table with them.
Nadine J. Cohen
Alex is talking about Suzanne Johnson, who was serving 25 years to life for child murder in 1997. She was babysitting when a highchair toppled over, killing the baby in her care. Police investigators claimed it was a case of shaken baby syndrome. While children, Johnson has always maintained it was
a tragic accident. Alex's students worked with the California Innocence Project on a campaign that led directly to Johnson's exoneration and release from prison.
Alex Campbell
So I have a great life. My family, you know, my kids come down to the class. They're 18, 19. You know, my wife, she loves to come down to the classroom, see what the kids are doing, go on trips with us and just be a part of it. And that's the one thing about the podcast, is that, you know, everybody
gets to go on this trip with us and they get to see what I see, in the classroom. It's amazing.
Anthony Levin
Alex, have there been any further developments since the podcast wrapped up?
Alex Campbell
Oh, my gosh. So now all of our victims are identified. I think it was two victims were not identified during the podcast. I've been able to develop relationships with some of these victims families which have given us so much more information about them as a person and what was going on in their
lives. And also we developed new suspects by getting access to police documents. And each time we get some documents, we learn more and we have to go back and change our information and change our ideas and we have to update our work every semester. And then we vet it again with police experts to
say, are we on the right track? Are we doing the right thing?
Anthony Levin
And the police are more open to that now.
Alex Campbell
So actually we were asked by a local police agency to look into a possible suspect. This is how it works. We have this thing in America called ViCAP, Violent Offender Database. And a guy, his DNA linked him to four murders. So they put out a thing and said, look, you have a murder that looks similar
to his MO and so she said, look, I got this call from another state and they said there were some similarities, but it's a cold case. I don't have a lot of time, but would your students be willing to look at it and then report back to me on how, how many similarities are there? Is it worth me
looking into? Should I waste my time on this? Or is this just like going to go nowhere? So, you know, there's things students can do to help. So we, we've got a list of suspects we're going through. We're actually finding information that the police can't even find. Kids are really good on social
media. They can find the victim's, you know, brothers, sisters, kids, uncles, cousins, boy who posted up something from the 30 year old, you know, family get together and we can find pictures that help the cops that they don't even have. And also because we're working across state lines, we actually
find stuff in states that help other states. So there is new stuff all the time. Like when we started, the question was, was there a serial killer active and operating in and around our state in the 1980s? And now we know that's ridiculous. There was at least five and maybe more. We can't say for
sure which cases are definitely related to one person. That's why we have to keep digging and keep finding more information. I try to teach the kids to be scientific. Like new information means we have to go back and reevaluate everything we thought we knew. That's what scientists should do. That's
what investigators should do. I think in some way or another, I'll be working on these cases until I die.
Nadine J. Cohen
So I just want to clarify something. A suspect that your students identified, a truck driver named Jerry Johns, has been confirmed by police as responsible for one murder and one attempted murder so far. And he likely killed the others, but will never be brought to justice for arguably a very good
Attempted murder victim
When he took me down the hill, he pulled the gun on me. It's like, we were walking down or while we were there is when he pulled the gun on me. And I screamed, and he told me to shut up or he'd shoot me. And I shut up. To this day, I'm not sure how, but I, I did. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind
that he killed lots of women. We'll never know how many.
Alex Campbell
He did die in prison, for the attempted murder of one woman. And so, yeah, we're not going to dig him up and put him back in prison. But you will not even understand how much it means to a family to say, this person more than likely killed your sister. Uh-huh. Maybe the cops can't say it
definitively. Maybe they feel it, but they're not going to say it. But we can show you all the information and then let you decide for yourself. And you can't imagine the amount of closure that brings to them to know that the person who probably killed their loved one spent the rest of his life in
prison and is now dead. They think that, you know, they did this and they got to live their best life. You know, they got to go live on the country club and have their grandkids and be successful and got to live out their life. So just sometimes knowing who this person was and that they didn't get
to go and live that life, it brings a lot of healing.
Nadine J. Cohen
I wanted to ask, for me, mostly, will there be more seasons of "Murder 101"?
Alex Campbell
Well, we don't know just yet. There has been some talk about it, but, MGM Amazon Studios, has announced a major motion picture, which will be based on the work of our students. And there might be some other projects which may be announced soon.
Anthony Levin
If you're on your deathbed, what would you confess?
Alex Campbell
Uh, that I'm embarrassed of the teacher that I used to be. And, you know, I hope I continue to learn and do better for my students. I saw a student last night. She's 37. Now she was in one of my first classes and, she was giving a little testimony about her life and what was going on in her home and
how hard her life was, you know, And I didn't have any idea, like, how can she sit in my classroom and be hungry and dirty and have all this stuff going on at home. And I didn't even notice, you know, what kind of terrible teacher was I? And I hope that if I have a student right now that I notice,
Anthony Levin
What would you like your family or your friends to say about you at your funeral?
Alex Campbell
Oh my gosh. Actually, the guy I student taught with told me one time, he said, you know, you're the most intense person I believe I've ever been around. And I was like 22 at the time. He's like, when you sneeze, it's the most intense sneeze I've ever heard. He's like, one time on like student, on
teacher work days, we went out to grab a meal and like I got like five hamburgers and ate them in like five minutes, you know, and he was like, that's the most intense hamburger eating I've ever seen. You know. So I've been known as an intense person, but I hope what people say is he was passionate.
He found something that he believed was true and he was very intentional and very passionate about defending it and standing up for it.
Nadine J. Cohen
Well, from one famously intense person to another, thank you, thank you for being on the show.
Alex Campbell
I want to thank you guys, for having me. Number one, I think people, I think they come to "Murder 101" for the true crime, but I hope they leave with something else. I hope they leave with greater thoughts about our young people and their capacities and what education can be for everybody. And then
remember what my students wanted to do originally was create the profile and then create a media kind of frenzy around it to see if it could help. So actually every interview I do is living out the dreams and desires of my original students. So I mean, think about this. People in Australia are going
to hear about some 17 year old girl that had the worst life you could imagine and left home because she thought something on the road's got to be better than this. And she ended up with the worst, most evil person you can imagine. And then sadly for the most part, police, the world forgot about her
and even blamed her. And now people in Australia are going to get to hear about her and her case. And so I really want to thank you guys for being part of the solution and being part of the dream that my students had seven years ago.
Nadine J. Cohen
Thank you so much again.
Anthony Levin
So, Nadine, what are you left with after that amazing conversation?
Nadine J. Cohen
Wow. He's just such an amazing guy with a voice I would like to hear all the time. I guess, like, one of the things that has stuck with me since I listened to this podcast back in the day is the way that victims are treated on a, you know, some sort of hierarchy of who's worthy of being investigated
and whose life is worthy of bringing justice. And that all of these women were, you know, leaving violent homes or bad situations and doing what they had to do to survive and, you know, they just were discarded by a man on a highway and no one thought it was worth investigating their deaths. Even
the fact that they weren't identified, none of them were identified, is horrific. And yeah, that, that's kind of what has stuck with me a lot this whole time.
Anthony Levin
The anonymity of their deaths is disturbing.
Anthony Levin
Ah. And I, I think you know this, but a lot of the legal work that I do is with cohorts of people that a lot of others would consider unpopular or unsavoury, but they still have rights and they still have dignity. And I am left just thinking how inspiring Alex is to be able to support these plucky
Anthony Levin
To achieve something, frankly, that you would think is well beyond their years.
Nadine J. Cohen
Yeah, absolutely.
Anthony Levin
Well, thanks again to Alex Campbell, whose passion and energy should be bottled and sold.
Next episode, philosopher Dr. Patrick Linden explains why death might be cancelled. And Nadine loses her mind a little.
Dr. Patrick Linden
Because I had thought that we all felt that time is too short, life is too short, and we don't want to go out of existence. And most people are quite, complacent about death. And so I started to look into the ideas here and, I discovered that there's a big tradition of accepting death. And so I
wrote about that in my book, "The Case Against Death".
Nadine J. Cohen
If this episode has raised issues for you and you'd like to seek mental health support, you can contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36 or visit beyondblue.org au. Also, Embrace Multicultural Mental Health supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Visit
embracementalhealth.org.au. For 24/7 crisis support call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Or in an emergency, please call 000.
Anthony Levin
Grave Matters is an SBS podcast written and hosted by me, Anthony Levin, Nadine J. Cohen and produced by Jeremy Wilmot. The SBS team is Joel Supple, Max Gosford, Bernadette Phuong, Nam Nguyen and Philip Soliman. If you'd like to get in touch, email audio@sbs.com.au Follow and review us wherever you
