Redhead Murders (Unsolved Serial Murders)

In the mid 1980’s the bodies of numerous murdered women and girls were found alongside  Interstates across the Bible Belt. Many of the victims remained Jane Does for decades, and even today some are unidentified. Most were vulnerable individuals, hitchhiking far from home. The most striking commonality was that they all had red hair. There has been much debate over whether this may be coincidence or if it is the work of an unknown serial killer. Thirty years later, answers are finally beginning to be uncovered , in no small part thanks to the work of a high school sociology class.

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Sources 

• www.wbir.com/amp/article/news/investigations/appalachian-unsolved/appalachian-unsolved-the-trucker-intrigued-by-serial-killers/51-624ef38c-0372-42a4-8bee-25b2b1647c95
• www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/shadow-boxing/201805/redheads-and-serial-killers%3famp
• https://medium.com/the-true-crime-edition/the-forgotten-redhead-murders-a3bbb39691bd
• www.upi.com/amp/Top_News/US/2018/10/09/Police-hunt-for-possible-serial-killer-in-1980s-redhead-murders/1571539111438/
• www.insidehook.com/article/crime/cold-case-redhead-murders/amp
• peoplepill.com/amp/people/redhead-murders
• https://grimhappenings.com/the-redhead-murders
• metro.co.uk/2018/04/30/serial-killer-feared-to-be-decapitating-ginger-women-after-two-heads-found-7510839/amp/
• www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1985-04-21-0290210184-story,amp.html
• https://theghostinmymachine.com/2018/08/27/unresolved-redhead-murders-bible-belt-strangler-inexact-art-identifying-serial-murder/
• fox17.com/amp/news/ferrier-files/ferrier-files-high-school-class-identif

Transcript

The Redhead Murders

High school sociology teacher Alex Campbell was passionate about his pupils and the subject he taught. He loved to see young people challenged academically and he especially enjoyed encouraging teenagers to engage in issues of social justice. In the Spring of 2018 he decided to give his students an assignment that would stretch them individually and collectively. Alex was interested in true crime and had become aware that there was only one unsolved murder in Carter County, East Tennessee, where the high school resided. He set the students the daunting task of doing something law enforcement had failed to do in over thirty years: find the killer. The murder in question was that of an unidentified teenage girl with red hair who was strangled and left in a forest near the slopes of Roan Mountain. The class got to work, putting hours of research and study into the case in an attempt to find any leads that could identify the girl, a motive and a suspect. The students were unable to come up with any clear answers to solve their local case but inadvertently they stumbled upon a serial killer and reignited a cold case which had lain dormant for decades. 

Persons Unknown is a true crime podcast dedicated to unsolved murders and disappearances. The podcast is based in Wales, UK and covers cases from Wales, the rest of the UK and the wider world. New episodes are released every other Monday. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Persons Unknown Podcast. For a list of sources please see the episode notes on your app. If you enjoy the podcast please give us a review and you can help others get to hear about Persons Unknown by sharing and recommending on social media. Thank you so much for listening. Now back to this week’s case.

Between 1983 and 1985 numerous young women and girls were murdered, usually by strangulation, and their bodies dumped along highways in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi. Some reports even suggest these murders go back as far as 1978 and continue until the early 1990s. The exact number of reported victims also varies but is most often stated as between 11 and 14. The women seem to have had some common traits. They all appear to have lacked close family ties, which explains why many of them were classified as Jane Does and several remain unidentified to this day. Most of them were thought to have been hitchhiking and therefore far from where they originated from. Many are known to have been involved in sex work and the majority could have been described as vulnerable or homeless. A significant commonality, and the link that gives this series of murders its name, is the fact that all the victims are said to have had red or auburn hair. Was this just a coincidence or was there an unidentified serial killer targeting red headed women who had remained unnoticed for decades?

The mystery of the Redhead murders is one of the most complex cases I have covered on Persons Unknown simply because there is so little information on the victims. There has been much debate and disagreement over the years about whether or not a single person is responsible for these crimes or if they are individual cases with multiple killers being involved. There are also discrepancies in reports regarding which unsolved cases are redhead murders. There is no official list. I will detail the seven women victims most often connected with the Redhead murders. 

On September 16th 1984 a body was found alongside Interstate 40 near West Memphis in Arkansas. The woman was found wearing only a pink sweatshirt or pink knitted skirt, (reports vary on this point). She had strawberry blond hair and the cause of death was said to have been strangulation. Nine months following the discovery of the body the police were able to positively identify the woman using fingerprint records as 28 year old Lisa Nicholls (who also used the names Fuller and Jarvis). Lisa was estranged from her family but a couple from Florida who she had lodged with for a time came to identify her body.

Lisa Nichols, who’s street name was “Baby Doll” had been involved in sex work in Nashville, Tennessee. Several times she had found herself in trouble with the police and she had an addiction to drugs. When this information came out about Lisa, very little sympathy or compassion was afforded to her by the Tennessee press. Unfortunately this story emphasizes the way desperate and vulnerable people are so often portrayed as to blame for the crimes committed against them. The time Lisa was seen alive she was getting into the cab of a large truck at a service station not far from where her body was found. 

A little under four months later, on New Year's day 1985, another young woman was found on an embankment by the side of Interstate 75 near Jellico, in Campbell County Tennessee. She was around 5 feet 1 inch to 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighed approximately 70 kg. Her red hair was curly and she was wearing a light brown pullover, shirt and denim jeans when she was found. She had a noticeable chipped front tooth.  It was also confirmed that she was over ten weeks pregnant. She had been strangled and a  blanket had been rolled around her body. A semen stain was found on the blanket and taken into evidence. This woman remained unidentified for decades but in recent years there has been a major breakthrough in her case. More about that shortly. 

Two months later, on the thirty-first of March 1985, the badly decomposed body of another red haired woman was found alongside Interstate 24 in Cheatham County, Tennessee. Only a skeleton remained but she had been fully clothed when dumped at the location. She was wearing a pink shirt with a flower pattern and a pink jumper with blue spots. On her bottom half she wore a pair of trousers. She was also found with a distinctive blue and yellow cap. She was around 5 feet 2 inches to 5 feet 4 inches tall and forensic tests put her age at between thirty and forty. She had most likely been dead for three to five months. This woman remains unidentified.

A day later, on the first of April 1985, yet another body was discovered. This time the woman was found inside an old Admiral brand fridge alongside Route 25 in Knox County Kentucky. The fridge had a Superwoman sticker on the door. The woman had not been dead very long, only a matter of hours. She was naked except for two necklaces, one with a heart pendant, the other with an eagle, and she was wearing two pairs of socks. Through their enquiries investigators discovered that the woman had been attempting to hitchhike to North Carolina only a day or so before she was found and she had been using a CB radio to try and obtain a lift. Like the other victims she was small, standing at only four feet eleven inches. She had red hair. She was estimated to have been between 24 and 35 years old. The cause of death was said to be asphyxiation, though the police concluded by the lack of damage to the inside of the refrigerator that she was put inside after she had been killed.This woman also remained a Jane Doe for decades but has now been identified. Again we will come back to this a little later.

Later that week, on the third April, skeletonised remains were found near Big Gap Road, in Campbell County, just outside Jellico, Tennessee. This victim appears to be the youngest and is estimated to have been between nine and fifteen years of age. Her bones were found close to a disused mine and wild animals had dispersed the remains over a wide area. A homemade plastic necklace was found near the scene, along with a pair of size five boots, though it could not be determined conclusively that these belonged to the girl. I cannot find any mention that this victim had red hair but she has been linked to the other victims because of a piece of cloth that was tied around her neck and used to strangle her. I have read one source that says that this knot was found at the other crime scenes. Isotope testing indicated she most likely came from Texas or Florida and had lived at some point in the South west, Midwest, Rocky Mountain or Pacific coast. Forensics also determined that the body had laid at the scene for between one and four years. This young girl remains unidentified.

On the fourteenth of April 1985, the body of a young woman with long red hair was found near interstate 81 in Greeneville, Tennessee. She was naked and had been bludgeoned and stabbed. The unidentified female was 5 feet 5 inches tall and had pink nail polish on her fingernails. An examination of her teeth indicated that she had received some dental treatment. Forensics also showed that she had recently experienced a miscarriage. She was said to have been between fourteen and twenty years of age. Again, for many years this young woman remained a Jane Doe but in 2018 her identity was discovered. 

Retrospectively an earlier murder has been mentioned in connection with this series of crimes. An unidentified white woman whose naked body was found by an elderly couple on the side of highway Route 250 near the town of Littleton in Wetzel County West Virginia on the 13th February 1983. Police estimate she had been killed between 24 and 48 hours before she was found. She had not been hidden but was placed on top of the fresh snow. Her cause of death could not be determined though it was said she was likely suffocated. She had a scar from a caesarean and wore upper dentures.The woman was said to have had auburn hair. Witnesses came forward to say they had seen a white man they described as approximately 5 feet 6 inches hanging around the spot where the body was found. The man was never traced.

There is much debate on whether this woman is a victim of the Redhead murders and she isn't always mentioned in the list of victims. This is partly because she did not appear to be homeless or vulnerable, as she was well groomed and had neat short hair. Her age also doesn't fit with the other victims as she is described as being middle aged. Additionally, there was no evidence of sexual assault although she was found naked. The woman remains unidentified though it has been put forward that she may have been a sex worker form Pittsburg or possibly a member of a Hare Krishna commune from Marhall County in West Virginia.  

These are the seven female victims who are most often mentioned in relation to the Redhead murders. Numerous others have also been connected, such as twenty year old, red haired Nancy Lynn Blankenship who disappeared from her home in Lavina, Tennessee in December 1983. It didn't seem that Nancy had run away as she had been carrying out her usual chores that day, baking in her kitchen and playing with her new puppy. At the time she vanished Nancy was pregnant with her first child. An unfamiliar white car was spotted outside the house she shared with her husband Ken and provided the only clue to her disappearance. Unsurprisingly Ken came under suspicion early on, but no trace of Nancy could ever be found. Over a decade later in 1994 her remains were discovered in the Tennessee River. Forensic examination showed injuries to her throat and oddly that she had only been in the water for no longer than five years. Where had she been during the previous five? Jane Carlisle, author of the book “The RedHead Murders” says that Nancy doesn’t fit the profile of the majority of victims, as the killer targeted women he knew no one would come looking for. For this reason she is only tentatively listed with the other victims.

Other Jane Doe victims sometimes linked to the Redhead murders, usually by armchair detectives, include: 

• The Pemiscot Jane Doe, discovered in Missouri in 1978, now identified as Kimberlin Mills. 
• The Desoto county Jane Doe, found in Mississippi in 1985.
• The Pulaski Jane Doe, found in Arkansas 1985, identified in 2021 as being Kareen Kay Knippers.
  The Haywood County Jane Doe, found in North Carolina in 1985, now identified as Prescilla Ann Blevins. 
• The Roane County Jane Doe, Tennessee, who was found in 1987. 
• The Rising Fawn Doe, found in Georgia in 1988. 
• The Benton County, Indiana Jane Doe, found in 1990. 
• And finally the Simpson County Jane Doe, found in Tennessee in 2001. 

As early as February 1985 The Jackson Sun Newspaper was running stories suggesting a link between several murders across numerous states. The Orlando Sentinel featured a story in April 1985 that the police were looking for a serial killer who was targeting red headed female hitchhikers. In an article from the 21st April 1985 Chris Murphy of the Tennessee Bureau Of Investigation said he thought it was a case of serial murder and that he would be shocked to find out the killings were not related. At the time Murphy was working on an unrelated case involving the murder of a woman near Chattannooga suspected to be a victim of the infamous Henry Lee Lucas. Lucas and his accomplice Ottis Toole were not suspects in the Redhead murders as they were in prison at the time of the crimes. There were others in law enforcement, such as the Deputy Director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Stephen Watson, who weren't convinced that this was all the work of a single killer. He felt there were too many differences and the victims were spread over too large an area for the serial killer theory to be plausible. 

Nevertheless, investigators from several states did meet with the FBI to discuss the possibility of a serial killer. The group did not come to many conclusions, though they did rule out any links with the Buckskin Girl case from Ohio. Buckskin Girl was an unidentified woman whose body was found on the 22nd of April 1981 around two days after she had been murdered, and was so named because of the distinctive jacket she was wearing. She also had red hair. In 2018 Buckskin girl was finally identified through DNA testing and genetic genealogy as Marcia King from Arkansas. Her murder is still being investigated. The group also discounted any links with four murdered young women in Texas. 

In April 1985 the police did have one suspect who was already in jail for the attempted murder of a woman near Knoxville, Tennessee. The modus operandi of the suspect and the location of his crime meant police were extremely interested in talking further with 37 year old Jerry Leon Johns. The red haired Johns hailed from Rockford Illinois and was a self employed long distance truck driver throughout the 1970s and 1980s. 

In the mid 1980’s Johns was running a Trucking company called Rebel Trucking and was based in Cleveland, Tennessee. In March 1985, Jerry Johns was pulled over by police whilst driving the car of a woman he had met earlier that evening at a infamous strip club called the “Katch One” near the I-40 in Knoxville, Tennessee. The woman was not with him but had earlier gone to police saying that Johns had strangled her and left her for dead alongside the road. Earlier that night Johns’ had gone to the club, where he was a member, with his brother and had offered the woman, who went by the name “Tasha” $200 for sex. Her real name was Linda Schacke and she appeared to be a redhead. She agreed to the deal  arranged for someone to have sex with Jerry Johns ’ brother. They then left the club and headed to a motel nearby. According to a 2020 article in 10News by John North and Leslie Ackerson, Johns ripped two $100 dollar bills in half and gave her two of the pieces, saying she'd get the other two later.

When they got to the motel he showed Linda a gun and bragged that he was an undercover marshall. After they had sex at the motel Johns drove Linda back to the club in her car, but he refused to let her drive and he would not give her the other 2 halves of the bills. In the car park of the club he attacked her, ripping her t-shirt and using the strips to bind her hands and feet. He also gagged her and threatened to kill her if she made a noise.  

He drove her to some isolated woods just off Interstate 40 and got her out of the car. He apparently told her he was going to kill her for being an annoyance, he was angry that she used hair dye and wasn't a natural redhead. He threatened her with the gun but did not shoot her. Instead he took one of the strips of ripped t-shirt and strangled her with it until she was unconscious. Miraculously Linda survived and was able to get help from a passing truck driver. The police were called and after a high speed chase arrested Johns on the side of the road. In his possession they found the gun which was loaded, over $700 of cash, the membership card to the Katch One club and the key to the motel room. Linda Schake sued Jerry Johns for the emotional and physical harm he had caused her. Johns in turn counter sued claiming he had done nothing illegal and was being portrayed by the police in a negative light. Despite his pleas of innocence Johns was convicted for the attack and he went to prison in 1987.

Police at the time did look to see if they could link Jerry Johns to any of the  Redhead murders but soon discovered he had alibis for most of the other killings, including the fact that he was already in jail when the unidentified woman found in the refrigerator was killed. It's worth noting he didn't have alibis for every murder, which will be an extremely important point later in the story. 

A 32 year old truck driver from Pennsylavannia, Thomas Lee Elkins, was also a suspect during the mid 1980’s. He had kidnapped a twenty year old red haired woman from the side of the road in Indiana. He sexually assaulted the woman but she managed to escape and he was tracked down and arrested. He was questioned by Tennessee police officers but was never charged in conjunction with any of the Redhead murders. Over the years it seems Thomas Lee Elkins has continued to rack up numerous offences and was arrested in 2012 after he had removed an electronic monitoring ankle tag and left a half way house and program for sex offenders without permission.  

Over the next seven or eight years all the cases linked to the Redhead murders went cold, but just as the story was descending into myth and legend, in 1992 something happened to bring it back to the foreground. Vickie Sue Metzger was a nun who was found murdered close to a service station on Interstate 24. She had been travelling from her home in Jeffersonville, Indiana to a conference in Atlanta Georgia. She had been strangled and buried in a shallow grave under dried leaves. The doctor who performed the post mortem examination said there were similarities with the Redhead murders, which prompted a renewal of interest in the serial killer theory. Police detectives were not convinced and ultimately they were proved correct when John Allen Chapman, an employee of the service station, was arrested, charged and found guilty of the murders of Vickie Sue Metzgers and another woman, Susan Blake, whose body was found in Tennessee in 1990. John Allen Chapman is not suspected in the other Redhead murders. 

A potential suspect who emerged in the 1990s is worth mentioning, although I’m not convinced he is responsible for the murders that have been discussed so far. Glen Rogers, otherwise known as the “Cassonova Killer” or “Cross Country killer”, is notorious for an interview he gave in prison in which he claimed to be the murderer of former professional American footballer OJ Simpson’s ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. 

Rogers has been behind bars since being arrested in November 1995. At the time he was on the FBI most wanted list due to a murderous spree that had begun in September that year. Glen Rogers had a low IQ but compensated for that with a charming persona with which he would manipulate his victims. 

In 1997 he was sentenced to death for the murder of Tina Marie Gibbs, who Rogers had met in a bar in Tampa, Florida in November 1995. Tina had been stabbed to death in a motel room. Two years later in 1999 he was also found guilty of the murder of Sarah Harrison in Los Angeles, California on the 28th September 1995. She had been strangled, burned and left in her car a short distance from where Rogers lived. He is suspected of the murders of Mark Peters in Kentucky in October 1993, Linda Price from Mississippi in October 1995 and Andy Jiles Sutton from Louisiana in November 1995. He is linked to a further twelve unsolved cases. He has made claims that he has seventy victims, though he later retracted the statement. Four of his five known victims were women with red or reddish blond hair. His brother has said that their mother had red hair and was abusive which may shed light on why he targeted his victims.  

Decades passed and the Redhead murders drifted into obscurity, with all the cases going cold. The passing of time led to great advancements in DNA technology, with major leaps happening over the last ten years. In 2017 the FBI began to take a new look at one of the cases in particular and unearthed some vital new evidence. The case was that of the unidentified woman with red hair who was discovered in a refrigerator off Route 25 in Knox County on the first of April 1985. The FBI claimed to have found a match for a fingerprint found on the refrigerator door and contacted Detective Aaron Frederick of the Kentucky State police to inform him of the significant development.

As it turned out the print was a red herring and did not prove significant in the case but the near miss sparked an interest in Detective Frederick to see the case solved. Whilst examining the case notes he could see that there had been no developments since the early 1990’s. He decided to get the information about the woman out to the press to try and drum up some publicity. This was in the summer of 2017, and by the autumn the police received a communication from a woman named Elizabeth Regina Pilgrim from North Carolina, who said she thought the unidentified woman could be her mother Espy Regina Black-Pilgrim, who had vanished without a trace thirty years earlier. The only way to prove this was by a DNA test. It was a nervous wait but a month later the results were back and it was confirmed. Espy had gone missing when her daughter was only a matter of weeks old and was a mother to a total of five children. Detetives continue to investigate her murder. 

The identification of Epsy Black-Pilgrim coincided with other developments, and during the autumn of 2018 two further victims were identified. In their research, teacher Alex Campbell’s high school sociology class came across a missing person report from Indianapolis about a woman named Tina Farmer who had a distinctive chipped tooth. Whilst on Reddit, they came across a discussion about an unidentified woman with red hair who was found on the first of April 1985 in Campbell County, Tennessee. This woman also had a chipped tooth. Just a few months later, thanks to some further work by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, fingerprint identification confirmed that the Jane Doe was indeed 21 year old Tina Marie McKenney Farmer from Indianapolis. Her family had been actively searching for her for decades but sadly her fingerprints had never been put into the national database by Indiana state police. There was no law at the time requiring them to do so. 

The second  victim to have their name returned to them in the autumn of 2018 was the teenage girl who was found at Greeneville Tennessee on the 14th April 1985. DNA analysis confirmed her identity as 17 year old Elizabeth Lamotte from New Hampshire. Elizabeth was in the care system and disappeared from a children's group home on the sixth of April 1984. She was due to go and stay with her family but she never showed up and they never saw her again. Over the years her family had continued to look for her and had not given up hope of finding out what had happened to her. 

The DNA match was found because the family had heard about the serial Killer Terry Rasmussen and wondered whether Elizabeth may be one of the unidentified victims found in Bear Brook State Park, New Hampshire. In 1985, the bodies of an unidentified adult and child were discovered in an oil barrel in woods near Allenstown. Fifteen years later another two female child victims were found. Three of the victims were related. Elizabeth's family were trying to rule out the possibility that Elizabeth was the adult Bear Brook victim. In 2019 the identities of three of the victims were uncovered. To find out more about this case and the crimes of the “Chameleon Killer” Terry Rasmussen, I can recommend Bear Brook Podcast by New Hampshire Public radio.

Elizabeth Lamotte’s murder is still under investigation.

Shortly before Tina Farmer and Elizabeth Lamotte were identified, Alex Campbell and his sociology class had called a press conference to disclose what they had found during their research. They had not discovered a great deal about the original local murder they had been set the challenge of solving, but had examined a total of thirteen murders that could potentially be linked. The crime the students were orginally given the task to solve was the 1983 murder of sixteen year old Cynthia Louise Taylor. Her murder does not appear to be linked to the redhead series despite the fact that Cynthia had red hair. This is because Cynthia does not match the victim type and was found in secluded woods away from an interstate.

The class concluded that six murders of the thirteen they examined were at the hands of the same unknown serial killer that they christened “The Bible Belt Strangler”. In the reports I’ve read they do not detail which six murders they are referencing. One article says that the students surmised that the first killing was of the unidentified woman in Cheatham County found on the 31st March. If that is the case, they obviously discount the murders of Lisa Nicholls and Tina Farmer as being connected to “The Bible Belt Strangler”. If I’m honest, the newspaper reports I’ve read do not make it clear and are ambiguous. 

The students came up with a profile of the killer. They believe him to be a truck driver who they say, judging from where the bodies were found, was most likely based in Knoxville Tennessee. They say he was white and between 5ft 11 and 6ft 2 tall, with a stocky build and aged 23-49 in the mid 1980’s. FBI profilers looked over their work and gave approval to their findings. Whether or not their theory was correct, it certainly led to a renewed zeal in law enforcement to see some results in these unsolved murders. The first step was identifying the Jane Doe victims, and as that began happening it gave hope that more clues could be found and the culprit or culprits could be caught. 

The renewed optimism bore fruit because in December 2019 Tennessee police were able to announce a breakthrough in one of the cases. DNA evidence confirmed, within reasonable doubt, that the killer of Tina Farmer was Jerry Leon Johns. The very man who attacked Linda Schacke in March 1985 and was then questioned in relation to the Redhead murders but dismissed as a suspect. In 2016 Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent Brandon Elkins retested the evidence found at Tina Farmers crime scene. He was able to develop a DNA profile from semen found on the  blanket that was wrapped around her body and an additional sample found on her clothes. Johns died in prison in 2015 so he will never be able to answer for Tina’s murder. Police said they would investigate links between Johns and any of the other Redhead murders. In 1985 the police discounted him due to albis he had provided but it seems they were not thorough enough. 

So where does this news leave us? It is difficult to draw too many conclusions from this story, as there is surely much that will come out over the next few years. Special agent Brandon Elkins says the TBI are working on possible links between Johns and the other murders. Dave Davenport is a  former Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent and someone who was involved in the multi agency discussions about the Redhead murders back in 1985. He doesn't know if they will be able to find links between Johns and the other murders. He does say that Johns certainly fits the profile of someone who killed more than once. He remembers him being extremely arrogant when interviewed and also having a knowledge of serial killers which he liked to show off. One thing both Davenport and Elkins agree on is that not all the killings that have been listed as part of the Redhead murders are connected, though they say that some probably are. They are awaiting hard evidence to prove this. Aaron Frederick from the Kentucky State police agrees and has stated that some of the cases are probably related.  As more unidentified bodies have their names returned, more information will come to light that may produce results. 

At the same time as Alex Campbell and his students began their deep dive into the Redhead murders, something happened which eerily echoed the story they were uncovering. In March 2018 a prisoner was out on special leave assisting the police to clear some swampland in Louisiana and happened upon a shocking discovery. There amongst the reeds and wrapped in a torn plastic bag was a severed human head. Forensic analysis showed that it was from a female aged 25-40 with reddish brown hair. A few weeks later another similar find occurred in Texas. The female victim this time had dyed red hair. Both victims were found near lakes and the heads had been wrapped in plastic bags. Witnesses in Louisiana came forward and said they saw a man in his twenties throwing plastic bags into the lake a few weeks before the head was found. Both these cases are unsolved, leaving a horrible feeling of deja vu.