Ученики школы в Теннесси расследуют серию убийств, чтобы понять ценность человеческой жизни

Reel Rundown: ‘Murder 101’ class isn’t about solving a crime, but learning a lifelong lesson Many of us had that one instructor who made a difference in our lives. For me, it was an English teacher who managed to ignite my love of literature. For the students of Tennessee’s Elisabethton High School, that teacher is a guy named Alex Campbell. He teaches sociology, and he does so in a strictly non-traditional manner. Instead of having his students adhere to a standard sociology curriculum, which would mean poring over dry textbooks and reports that reflect how humans interact in their various social groupings, Campbell opts for real-world experience. And the area of study that he focuses on is readily identified in the title of a three-episode HBO Max documentary series, “Murder 101.” To be specific, Campbell – whose story was the subject of a popular 2024 podcast – has his class investigate murders that have happened in and around the region in which they live. Though he began such class projects in 2018, the HBO series centers mostly on what happens during the 2024-25 school year. And the main goal is to solve what they see as the work of a serial killer, whose crimes have becomes known as the “Redhead Murders.” Anyone familiar with true-crime documentaries, whether aimed at the big screen or among the many shows that air on television networks and numerous online podcasts, knows how such projects go. Campbell has his students do the grunt work, tracking down information any way they can. That might mean spending time looking up decades-old stories that were reported by various news sources, either newspaper or television. It might also mean filing freedom of information (or FOIA) requests, which seldom get resolved. For Campbell’s class, it also means meeting with an officer of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, brainstorming a number of innovative ways to get more information about the crimes and, ultimately, taking a field trip to an actual murder site. Over the course of the three episodes, we meet several of the students, from the glasses-wearing girl who seeks emancipation from her drug-using mother to the boy who ends up being elected the high school’s prom king. All end up working together, despite their differences, to gather as much information as they can – just as if they were actual adult investigators. Along the way, Campbell is there to guide them. While he comes across initially as just another good old country boy – a middle-age, balding weight-lifter who lives on a farm – he shows the kind of compassion and empathy of a born mentor. He makes every effort to push his students, chiding them to do their best but never adopting a negative tone. His empathy shows the most during one sequence when, after much effort, it appears the students have linked a suspect to a specific crime. When new evidence contradicts that conclusion, Campbell uses it as a teaching lesson – about the frustrations implicit in criminal investigation and about how life in general isn’t always fair. The best lesson of all, he says, is not whether the class is ever able to actually solve anything. It’s more that the students learn that the women targeted for murder were actual people with family members who loved them instead of mere names on a police blotter. Learning that, Campbell says, “is just part of what’s needed for the students to go on and succeed in life.” “This class has never been about the students changing the case,” he says. “It’s been more about how the case changes the students.”