WEBVTT

1
00:00:04.040 --> 00:00:09.919
This is Later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear Weekday

2
00:00:09.960 --> 00:00:14.640
Afternoon's on the Drive. Alex Campbell
is a multi time Teacher of the Year

3
00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:20.079
recipient. He lives with his family
in northeast Tennessee. He had the advantage

4
00:00:20.079 --> 00:00:25.879
of putting together a class that pieced
together a thirty year old mystery and identified

5
00:00:25.879 --> 00:00:30.960
a killer behind the at least six
brutal murders. It is all put together

6
00:00:31.079 --> 00:00:38.039
in Murder One and Alex Campbell's joining
us now, greeting sir, Hello,

7
00:00:38.920 --> 00:00:43.600
Well let's get Let's start at the
beginning. What when did it occur to

8
00:00:43.640 --> 00:00:47.799
you? Hey, let me put
together a class that's going to look into

9
00:00:47.799 --> 00:00:53.159
true crime. Yes, I mean, I'm always looking for projects in all

10
00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:58.600
my classes where students cannot just learn
but apply what they're learning. And there

11
00:00:58.679 --> 00:01:03.159
was a series of murder in and
around Tennessee, mostly in the eighties.

12
00:01:03.799 --> 00:01:07.120
Most of the women were redheaded,
white, small, young, strangled thrown

13
00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:11.239
out beside the road. But in
the eighties that the police never came to

14
00:01:11.280 --> 00:01:17.959
a determination if this was the work
of one person or maybe you know,

15
00:01:18.079 --> 00:01:22.200
just twelve different murders that had nothing
to do with each other. And I

16
00:01:22.239 --> 00:01:26.400
grew up in this area at that
time, and I didn't remember anything about

17
00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:30.000
these murders. It had been over
thirty years since anything had happened, and

18
00:01:30.040 --> 00:01:34.079
I thought, well, maybe my
students can use their sociology skills to take

19
00:01:34.079 --> 00:01:38.480
a look at these to maybe see
if there was a serial killer actually working

20
00:01:38.519 --> 00:01:42.879
in our state at the time,
and maybe bring these things back up and

21
00:01:42.879 --> 00:01:47.640
get some attention. That was my
next question. What was the class?

22
00:01:47.680 --> 00:01:53.159
So it was sociology you were teaching
at the time. Yeah, what about

23
00:01:53.239 --> 00:01:57.239
sociology is then applied to say true
crime? Do a lot of sociologists get

24
00:01:57.319 --> 00:02:04.400
involved in looking into criminals activity?
I don't know for sure. I would

25
00:02:04.400 --> 00:02:07.560
say many times they do. But
in sociology you really focus on what they

26
00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:13.759
call the five agents of socialization.
These are family, friends, peers,

27
00:02:13.960 --> 00:02:20.280
media, social structures that you know
societies create. And if you think about

28
00:02:20.280 --> 00:02:24.520
it, trying to see if six
different women are related to one person,

29
00:02:25.159 --> 00:02:29.639
why would that person do that?
Why does he want to harm this type

30
00:02:29.639 --> 00:02:35.159
of person? How do those women
go unidentified for three decades? Why aren't

31
00:02:35.159 --> 00:02:38.439
their families looking for them? Those
are all questions that we can answer by

32
00:02:38.479 --> 00:02:45.360
looking at those agents of socialization talking
to Professor Alex Campbell. He is the

33
00:02:45.400 --> 00:02:49.360
host of Murder one oh one,
which is about his class that solved a

34
00:02:49.400 --> 00:02:53.560
thirty year old mystery. So what
level of education was this? Was this

35
00:02:53.639 --> 00:02:59.479
college? No, actually it was
high school and it's just antle active and

36
00:02:59.560 --> 00:03:04.800
I had that year freshman, sophomore, and juniors in that class. They

37
00:03:05.120 --> 00:03:07.759
did you tell them right away we're
going to solve a murder? Or did

38
00:03:07.919 --> 00:03:12.360
the initial part of the are we
going to look into a murder? Or

39
00:03:12.439 --> 00:03:15.319
was it just did he just come
to you? Well? I like to

40
00:03:15.479 --> 00:03:19.680
under promise and over deliver, so
I never said we were going to catch

41
00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:22.759
a serial killer. What I wanted, you know, what I told them

42
00:03:22.800 --> 00:03:24.680
the first day was I put a
number on the board, two hundred and

43
00:03:24.759 --> 00:03:30.360
fifty million, which was approximately the
population of America in nineteen eighty and I

44
00:03:30.400 --> 00:03:36.199
said, look, how would you
find one person out of all of America

45
00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:39.000
that was responsible for this? That's
what we're going to do. We're going

46
00:03:39.039 --> 00:03:44.120
to learn how to profile, we're
going to use our sociology skills, and

47
00:03:44.159 --> 00:03:46.360
we're going to see if there was
this one person that was responsible for these

48
00:03:46.439 --> 00:03:51.840
murders. And I brought an FBI
profiler to help me, and it was

49
00:03:51.879 --> 00:03:55.759
amazing the work that a fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen year old student can do.

50
00:03:55.759 --> 00:04:00.039
Do you think that they're more observant
of human behavior at thee Maybe that

51
00:04:00.120 --> 00:04:06.840
gave them the advantage. You know, young people are very interesting that they

52
00:04:06.919 --> 00:04:12.080
have some things in spades. You
know, they've got energy, curiosity,

53
00:04:12.759 --> 00:04:17.160
lots of energy, hormones, those
type of things, right, Yeah,

54
00:04:17.240 --> 00:04:20.360
and they're just always full, they're
always up right that they always want to

55
00:04:20.399 --> 00:04:24.879
do something, they want to have
meaning to their life. And also they've

56
00:04:24.879 --> 00:04:29.040
been sitting around for like ten twelve
years being told that just learn this and

57
00:04:29.079 --> 00:04:31.000
one day you could use it.
I think what they really want to do

58
00:04:31.160 --> 00:04:34.439
is be allowed to use it.
So I just gave them a chance to

59
00:04:34.480 --> 00:04:38.040
put all these things they be learning, and all that energy and all that

60
00:04:38.079 --> 00:04:44.920
excitement into doing some meaningful work where
women had been forgotten. Families had lost

61
00:04:44.959 --> 00:04:47.319
loved ones and didn't know what happened
to them. Women had been treated like

62
00:04:47.399 --> 00:04:50.920
garbage and thrown out beside the road, and no one was fighting for them

63
00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:55.399
and their justice. So they were
really excited about doing the work. Now.

64
00:04:55.399 --> 00:04:59.920
The problem is they also have some
drawbacks. They don't have any naw

65
00:05:00.360 --> 00:05:04.399
about serial killers or being a profiler
or that kind of thing. So I

66
00:05:04.480 --> 00:05:08.720
just had to bring in the right
resources and people to help them, and

67
00:05:08.759 --> 00:05:11.639
they did a great job with it. Well, you sound like the kind

68
00:05:11.680 --> 00:05:14.959
of a professor I would have wanted. Alex Campbell Murder one oh one is

69
00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:16.680
the podcast. You can hear it
on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere you get

70
00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:21.439
podcasts. It's about his class solving
a murder back in nineteen eighty I've long

71
00:05:21.480 --> 00:05:26.600
said this about education. I'm no
expert at it, and I realize one

72
00:05:26.639 --> 00:05:30.600
size doesn't fit all. But as
far as looking back on my experience with

73
00:05:30.800 --> 00:05:34.439
primary, secondary and higher education,
my advice is, if you want to

74
00:05:34.480 --> 00:05:40.160
teach a kid about history, tell
it like like it was a story.

75
00:05:40.279 --> 00:05:43.360
Take them to the places where it
all happened. If you want to teach

76
00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:47.720
a kid math, tell them that
it's that everything in the world is measured,

77
00:05:47.759 --> 00:05:50.920
and it's the only way to improve
things is to measure them. You

78
00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:54.839
want to teach a kid geometry,
take them to the shop where they can

79
00:05:54.879 --> 00:05:58.879
cut angles and build things. You
want to teach a kid trigonometry, teach

80
00:05:58.920 --> 00:06:03.759
them celestial navigation because that was the
beginning of triggonometry and so on and so

81
00:06:03.800 --> 00:06:08.720
forth, to teach kids how they
can apply what it is they're learning in

82
00:06:08.759 --> 00:06:14.800
everyday world. Yeah, I totally
agree. Application is beginning of true knowledge.

83
00:06:15.480 --> 00:06:18.360
So just sitting down a memorizing words
or whatever is not the answer.

84
00:06:19.199 --> 00:06:23.079
We I mean, I think most
people would agree the world has plenty of

85
00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:27.319
problems. So let's just put some
problems in front of students and let's give

86
00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:30.120
them the skills they need to start
working on some of these problems. Now,

87
00:06:30.480 --> 00:06:32.560
you might be surprised that's what they
can do. At what point we're

88
00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:36.240
talking to Alex Campbell of Murder one
oh one podcast, Did you realize,

89
00:06:36.480 --> 00:06:42.759
by jove, we've got them.
Yeah. So we worked with an FBI

90
00:06:42.839 --> 00:06:47.079
behavioral analyst, some people call him
a profiler, and he taught them how

91
00:06:47.120 --> 00:06:50.040
to profile. He taught them what
the four things they needed to do to

92
00:06:50.120 --> 00:06:55.319
prove that there was a serial killer
at work, and they felt like that's

93
00:06:55.399 --> 00:06:59.040
exactly what they found. And he
grated it for me. So I said,

94
00:06:59.040 --> 00:07:00.959
look, I can't great them criminal
profile. I said, take a

95
00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:03.240
look at it. Let me know
what you think the kids did. He

96
00:07:03.240 --> 00:07:08.240
said, I can't disagree with anything. They said, this is amazing work.

97
00:07:08.920 --> 00:07:11.720
And so once we knew that we
had the profile of this killer,

98
00:07:12.160 --> 00:07:15.800
it wasn't doing us any good to
just like let it sit in the classroom.

99
00:07:15.240 --> 00:07:18.000
We needed to get the word out. So the students decided to have

100
00:07:18.040 --> 00:07:24.319
a press conference where they would share
all this information. And then they also

101
00:07:24.600 --> 00:07:29.519
had coverage from the six different areas
where the women were found that they were

102
00:07:29.560 --> 00:07:32.199
believed were all related to the same
killer. And so there was also like

103
00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:38.680
this media blitz in several different states
in and around Tennessee. And so really

104
00:07:38.680 --> 00:07:43.519
what happened was they show that these
women could be connected to one person and

105
00:07:43.560 --> 00:07:46.759
basically reminded the world that there was
all these murders that had basically been forgotten.

106
00:07:47.160 --> 00:07:51.800
And within the next few months women
began to get identified, and then

107
00:07:51.839 --> 00:07:56.279
with that became, you know,
some momentum. I know that lots of

108
00:07:56.319 --> 00:08:01.000
tips were given to law enforcement.
I know that we helped identify Peenut Marie

109
00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:05.360
McKinney Farmer, and then I know
they retested some of the items that had

110
00:08:05.360 --> 00:08:09.720
been left to the crime scene,
which DNA wasn't really available back then,

111
00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:13.079
but because she was identified, they
were able to solve her murder and the

112
00:08:13.120 --> 00:08:20.560
guy who killed her matches every single
one of the characteristics the students predicted in

113
00:08:20.639 --> 00:08:24.639
the profile years earlier, and you
can hear more about it if you listen

114
00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:26.879
to Murder one on one, the
podcast from Alex Campbell, who is the

115
00:08:26.959 --> 00:08:31.240
Teacher of the Year recipient who put
together a class that solved a thirty year

116
00:08:31.279 --> 00:08:35.759
old mystery, and then some Murder
one on one available everywhere you get podcasts,

117
00:08:35.879 --> 00:08:41.200
including the iHeartRadio app. This is
a fascinating story and Alex Kimbell,

118
00:08:41.279 --> 00:08:46.840
I look forward to the movie is
that coming? I don't know about that.

119
00:08:46.960 --> 00:08:50.720
I'm just a school teacher and I've
always said I do have a face

120
00:08:50.799 --> 00:08:58.200
for the podcast. Thanks for listening
to Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews

121
00:08:58.240 --> 00:09:03.120
Podcast, and remember to listen to
The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to

122
00:09:03.200 --> 00:09:05.519
seven and iHeartMedia Presentation