Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Geesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening. He was unassuming, sweet and friendly. Saved in
Speaker 2: church as a teen, He never caused trouble In the navy,
Speaker 2: they called them Opie. Though he was a big guy,
Speaker 2: he had a soft, boyish demeanor. The boy next door,
Speaker 2: said those who work with him and knew him. But
Speaker 2: John Eric Armstrong had a very dark secret, hidden even
Speaker 2: from those closest to him. Prowling Detroit's well known pocket
Speaker 2: of prostitution on historic Michigan Avenue, this young husband and
Speaker 2: father picked up unsuspecting women who thought they were simply
Speaker 2: meeting a john. He seemed innocent, even driving a jeep
Speaker 2: with a front plate reading baby Doll, but they soon
Speaker 2: discovered he could turn on a dime and fly into
Speaker 2: a rage. Some of his victims survived to tell the
Speaker 2: tale of their near death encounter, and when police finally
Speaker 2: elicited the serial killer's confession, details emerged regarding necrophilia. In
Speaker 2: The Baby Doll serial Killer, The John Eric Armstrong Homicides,
Speaker 2: journalist B. R. Bates lays out the gripping story of
Speaker 2: this chameleon of a serial killer through his horrific crimes,
Speaker 2: with a compassionate look at the life of each one
Speaker 2: of his victims and the heroic efforts of law enforcement
Speaker 2: to catch him. The book that were featuring this evening
Speaker 2: is The Baby Doll serial Killer, The John Eric Armstrong
Speaker 2: Homicides with my special guests retire Detroit Police commander and
Speaker 2: author Jerry Cliff and journalist and author br Baits. Welcome
Speaker 2: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 2: Br Baits and Jerry Cliff.
Speaker 3: Thank you for the opportunity. Great to be here.
Speaker 4: We appreciate the invitation.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. And congratulations on the Baby Doll
Speaker 2: serial Killer.
Speaker 3: Thank you. We're excited.
Speaker 2: Thanks Now, Jerry, tell us about your involvement in the
Speaker 2: Detroit Police Department and the Violent Crime Section. Tell us
Speaker 2: the year that you were years that you were involved,
Speaker 2: and tell us a little bit about Detroit Police Department
Speaker 2: and Detroit in the turn of the century.
Speaker 5: Well, we were at the point that this case came
Speaker 5: about and I got promoted and put in charge of
Speaker 5: the Violent Crime Section. Detroit was one of the ten
Speaker 5: most violent cities in the nation, usually in competition for
Speaker 5: a first or second. I think that year we had
Speaker 5: a homicide rate of about four hundred, which for a
Speaker 5: city of about at that time seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: to one thousand and two about a million population, we
Speaker 5: were way up there. The Violent Crime Section was created
Speaker 5: after a big case prior to this, but basically what
Speaker 5: it was is it's a multi jurisdictional task force headed
Speaker 5: by the Detroit Police Department, housed in Detroit Police Headquarters,
Speaker 5: but it was comprised of Michigan State police representatives. We
Speaker 5: had Wayne County sheriff's representatives. We had FBI agents assigned
Speaker 5: to us and a supervisory FBI agent. We had an
Speaker 5: IRS agent, we had a State Attorney General investigator working
Speaker 5: with us.
Speaker 4: And the idea behind it all was to.
Speaker 5: Make a borderless investigative entity that could handle any type
Speaker 5: of a case that came along that the specialized units
Speaker 5: within the department, like homic side or sex crimes, just
Speaker 5: weren't capable of dealing with the selection process for this
Speaker 5: entire organization was separate from our contractual arrangements for assignment.
Speaker 5: We were a unionized police department. To get a transfer
Speaker 5: into or out of a unit, you submitted a transfer request,
Speaker 5: waited your turn based on your seniority. In this case,
Speaker 5: the chief and the union agreed that we could pick
Speaker 5: and choose based on productivity and demonstrated talents, so we
Speaker 5: could go out and we could basically cherry pick the
Speaker 5: best detectives in the entire department, which at the time
Speaker 5: was about five and a half thousand officers. Violent crimes
Speaker 5: was around one hundred or so people follow those entities involved.
Speaker 5: We also had prime Analysis unit as part of it,
Speaker 5: but our job was to be the go to unit
Speaker 5: for the chief when something came along that the bigger
Speaker 5: investigative units weren't.
Speaker 4: Capable of, and usually it ended up being surreal crime.
Speaker 2: Now b R tell us about Monica Johnson December two,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine and her boyfriend Cliff and Michigan Avenue.
Speaker 3: Yeah went to Michigan Avenue the night of December second
Speaker 3: with her boyfriend Cliff. He drove her there and he
Speaker 3: parked the car near Michigan and Sharon Street, and she
Speaker 3: got out of the car and he stayed in the car.
Speaker 3: He was going to wait for her. This seemed to
Speaker 3: have been perhaps a regular occurrence for them. She was
Speaker 3: walking off to turn some tricks and he was waiting
Speaker 3: for her in the car. But the thing was, he waited.
Speaker 3: He fell asleep while he was waiting, and then she
Speaker 3: didn't come back, and so it was a few hours
Speaker 3: later he woke up he realized, okay, I haven't heard
Speaker 3: from her, and he went home and then he did
Speaker 3: not see her again. After that, she had encountered someone
Speaker 3: who strangled her and left her at a service drive
Speaker 3: off I ninety four in Detroit.
Speaker 2: Now, tell us a little bit about Monica Johnson. She's
Speaker 2: a black female. You say she's about five four eight,
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty pounds, maybe, but tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about her and a little bit about Michigan Avenue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Monica was born and raised in Detroit. Her family
Speaker 3: moved around a little bit when she was growing up.
Speaker 3: She had siblings, mostly East side of Detroit is where
Speaker 3: they lived. And then Monica herself was in her thirties
Speaker 3: and she had four kids. They were all aged ten
Speaker 3: and under, and we don't know why she was out
Speaker 3: on the streets. That's a difficult thing about all of this.
Speaker 3: You know, each one of the females in this story
Speaker 3: has her own story, and for Monica, you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of the time with these females, it is drugs
Speaker 3: that puts them out on the street. They got to
Speaker 3: pay for drugs. That leads a lot of people into
Speaker 3: prostitution and puts them at risk on the streets. But
Speaker 3: with Monica, it just wasn't clear. It just wasn't clear
Speaker 3: what took her out there. But Michigan Avenue in Detroit
Speaker 3: is one of the pockets. It's a very thriving area
Speaker 3: of prostitution. Even to this day. You can drive and
Speaker 3: I've actually done this recently a couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: You can drive down Michigan Avenue in broad daylight, you know,
Speaker 3: two o'clock in the afternoon, and you can be you
Speaker 3: can see females working the street, or you can even
Speaker 3: be flagged down by one. So it's crazy. Michigan Avenue
Speaker 3: seems to always be thriving with prostitution. Another area of
Speaker 3: prostitution in Detroit as Woodward Avenue, and then there's the
Speaker 3: Cast Corridor. So there's different areas around Detroit, but Michigan
Speaker 3: Avenue is the central focus of the central geographic area
Speaker 3: of this story. I guess you'd say.
Speaker 2: Now you're right. Then a man named Alan was driving
Speaker 2: home and saw a person lying on the street, and
Speaker 2: he called nine one one and ems arrived. What do
Speaker 2: police from the fourth District who arrived around three or
Speaker 2: four am? What did they find?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy. Monica was alive, was lying on the sidewalk,
Speaker 3: and it was near an alley. The name of this
Speaker 3: short little street off I ninety four this, I guess
Speaker 3: the service drive is how it's referred to with spring
Speaker 3: Wells and just a tiny little like a block or so.
Speaker 3: Service driver went there to visit and to take photos
Speaker 3: of the site where Monica was found. There's an alley
Speaker 3: there between a couple buildings, and we presume that when
Speaker 3: Monica encountered her last John, I guess you would say,
Speaker 3: they were in the alley and then he left her
Speaker 3: on the sidewalk. And so, yes, there was someone driving
Speaker 3: to work in the early hours of the morning and
Speaker 3: he spotted someone lying on the sidewalk and he wondered,
Speaker 3: what on earth is going on that looks like a
Speaker 3: woman lying on the sidewalk, and so he called nine
Speaker 3: one one and he waited there for the police and
Speaker 3: the emergency personnel to arrive, and she was alive. And
Speaker 3: so they arrived and they loaded Monica into the ambulance
Speaker 3: and they took her to the hospital. But unfortunately, by
Speaker 3: the time they got there, she had died.
Speaker 2: Now you say, too very sad. But the mother had
Speaker 2: to identify her daughter at the morgue.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that's what happened in a lot of these cases.
Speaker 3: You know, as a mom, you certainly don't figure you're
Speaker 3: going to outlive your child. But yes, her mother did
Speaker 3: have to idea.
Speaker 2: Now let's talk about Wendy Jordan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wendy Jordan. Okay, So Monica was killed on December second,
Speaker 3: and almost a month later, on January, like actually New Year's,
Speaker 3: Wendy was out and she also occasionally worked the streets.
Speaker 3: But Wendy, Wendy is an interesting case because Wendy had sisters,
Speaker 3: had a family, grew up at a fairy nor normal
Speaker 3: seeming family what some people would call normal. I mean,
Speaker 3: you wonder, okay, really what is normal? But Wendy's parents,
Speaker 3: her dad had a good job. He supported the family well.
Speaker 3: Her parents were together. It was a nuclear family. It
Speaker 3: was a good situation. But after Wendy graduated from high school,
Speaker 3: she left Michigan and went to New York City for
Speaker 3: a while and she worked there, and she was kind
Speaker 3: of living the high life there a little bit, and
Speaker 3: she got probably introduced to the wrong people, it sounds
Speaker 3: like from what her sister told me, and so she
Speaker 3: got into a lifestyle that wasn't healthy. And she did
Speaker 3: come back to Michigan after a short period of time.
Speaker 3: And so back in Michigan, she really went in and
Speaker 3: out of sort of a legitimate life and then a
Speaker 3: non legitimate life living on the streets. She would have
Speaker 3: periods where she would be just fine in her life,
Speaker 3: she'd be cleaned up and she'd working a regular job,
Speaker 3: and then there would be times when she would fall
Speaker 3: back into addiction. And it was a matter of addiction
Speaker 3: for Wendy, and her family members knew it, and that
Speaker 3: was very heartbreaking. It was interesting to speak to her sister, Bonnie,
Speaker 3: because she really voiced what a lot of these family
Speaker 3: members feel when they have someone who's living and at
Speaker 3: risk life like that. You know, you feel helpless, you
Speaker 3: feel like you can't do anything about it. And even
Speaker 3: when your family member like your sister, comes back around
Speaker 3: and you know, can I sleep on your couch or
Speaker 3: can I stay with you again? You know you're almost
Speaker 3: I heard this at times, like almost a reluctance, like, okay,
Speaker 3: are you going to disappoint me again? Yes, of course
Speaker 3: you can come sleep on the couch, But what am
Speaker 3: I going to get? Am I going to wake up
Speaker 3: tomorrow morning and my purse is going to be lifted
Speaker 3: or something and you're going to be gone? You know,
Speaker 3: there's that kind of element in, you know, in having
Speaker 3: a family member who's living at risk like that. But
Speaker 3: one thing that Bonnie told me about Wendy is that
Speaker 3: she put it like she had an interesting way of
Speaker 3: putting it. She said, you know, some people, some family
Speaker 3: members with somebody who's living out on the street, they
Speaker 3: don't want to see him coming. You know, That's how
Speaker 3: she said it. They don't want to see him coming.
Speaker 3: It's like, okay, you're going to steal from me again,
Speaker 3: you know, as I said, or something even worse. But
Speaker 3: she said, with Wendy, we always wanted to see her coming.
Speaker 3: It didn't matter you know, we were always going to
Speaker 3: take her back. So that really said a lot to me.
Speaker 3: That was very meaningful to hear Bonnie say that. And
Speaker 3: so Wendy, you know, she would disappear for a while,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't know where she was. And at the time
Speaker 3: that she encountered her killer, she had been gone for
Speaker 3: a little bit and it wasn't unusual and so there
Speaker 3: really was not anything on their radar until she was
Speaker 3: identified and they got a call the day after or
Speaker 3: that I think it was the day after she was found.
Speaker 3: So really sad, sad story.
Speaker 2: You also write of again the information that you garnered
Speaker 2: from the family. You talk about a harrowing tale when
Speaker 2: they hadn't heard from her, and then you happened to
Speaker 2: be or pardon me, you her sister, Bonnie happened to
Speaker 2: be at the parents' home. Father's home answered the phone
Speaker 2: and the person said, do you have a sister named Wendy.
Speaker 2: She said why, He says, well, she's here. I know
Speaker 2: where she's at. And she went over to that house
Speaker 2: and got her sister, who was skin and bones, and
Speaker 2: took her home.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that was one of those times when Wendy
Speaker 3: would disappear, as Bonnie had said, and so as family
Speaker 3: members how Wendy, they were a little bit used to
Speaker 3: this this sort of thing unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you talk about that New Year's Eve nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: they had all the siblings had gotten together for a
Speaker 2: few hours on New Year's Eve and that was the
Speaker 2: last time they saw Wendy alive.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, and it was sad. It's interesting
Speaker 3: because that was New Year's Eve before the year two
Speaker 3: thousand and I remember back then, it's like we all
Speaker 3: were concerned. Y two K was a phrase, you remember that.
Speaker 3: It's like everybody was like, what's gonna happen on Y
Speaker 3: two K? Well, that was, you know, a sad coincidence
Speaker 3: that it was the Y two K when Wendy got killed.
Speaker 2: So tell us about the January second, Dearborn Heights Police
Speaker 2: Department nine one one call.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, So it's probably between four and four thirty
Speaker 3: pm when a man was coming home from work. He
Speaker 3: had been working at a retail store in Dearborn Heights
Speaker 3: and Dearborn Heights is on the west side of Metro Detroit. Right,
Speaker 3: he pulled over where the Rouge River crosses I think
Speaker 3: Ann Arbor Trail is over there in Dearborn Heights and
Speaker 3: pulled over. He was driving a GP. He pulled over
Speaker 3: and he looked over the side of the bridge and
Speaker 3: then there were a couple people across the street from
Speaker 3: where he was located, and a couple doors down there
Speaker 3: was a young man and his girlfriend and he was
Speaker 3: about to hop in the car and take his girlfriend home.
Speaker 3: They were at his place, and so she was visiting
Speaker 3: and he was going to take her home. And so
Speaker 3: they did hop in the car and they pulled out
Speaker 3: of the driveway and they started going to where the
Speaker 3: jeep was parked, and the man ran out and flagged
Speaker 3: them down and said, hey, there's a body in the river.
Speaker 3: You got to call nine one one. Evidently he didn't
Speaker 3: have a cell phone on him, so he wanted them
Speaker 3: to call nine one one and report this body. And
Speaker 3: so the call came in to Dearborn Heights police who
Speaker 3: arrived at the scene and they started speaking to everyone
Speaker 3: at the scene. By this time, the young man's dad
Speaker 3: at the house had come out, you know, to see
Speaker 3: what was going on. There was another family member there
Speaker 3: who had come out. Probably people from nearby had wandered over,
Speaker 3: and so the police began to speak to everyone at
Speaker 3: the scene, and they began to close off the scene
Speaker 3: and process the scene for per normal procedure. The man
Speaker 3: who had flagged down the young man to call nine
Speaker 3: to one one his story seemed strange to them. He
Speaker 3: said that he was coming home from work, he wasn't
Speaker 3: feeling well, and he had pulled over on the side
Speaker 3: of the road because he felt like he was going
Speaker 3: to throw up, and so he went over to the
Speaker 3: bridge to throw up over the bridge. Well, he didn't
Speaker 3: throw up, and as one police officer who was investigating
Speaker 3: the case remarked later told me, he said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're driving home from work and you're feeling sick,
Speaker 3: and you pull over and you look over a bridge
Speaker 3: and you see someone lying on the combination of ice
Speaker 3: and water it was at the time, because this was January, Michigan.
Speaker 3: You see someone who's clearly deceased lying there. Wouldn't that
Speaker 3: make you want to throw up? All the more so
Speaker 3: wouldn't there be vomited the scene? And plus another strange
Speaker 3: aspect of this is the man who had pulled over
Speaker 3: was only about a block from home from where he
Speaker 3: was living, so when he really stop the jeep and
Speaker 3: get out of the jeep and walk over the bridge
Speaker 3: when he's so close to home, only like a block away.
Speaker 3: But he just seemed suspicious to them, and so they
Speaker 3: asked him to come to the station in Dearborn Heights
Speaker 3: to give his statement and to give more details. And
Speaker 3: so that evening, it was probably I think around seven
Speaker 3: o'clock when they started interviewing him at the station and
Speaker 3: just went through the whole thing. Tell us, you know,
Speaker 3: tell us what the deal is with us? What were
Speaker 3: you doing driving home from work? But they leaned on
Speaker 3: him pretty hard because they were very suspicious. Have you
Speaker 3: ever seen this woman? Did you know her? Did you
Speaker 3: have anything to do with this? You can tell us,
Speaker 3: you know, you can get this off your chest. They
Speaker 3: really leaned into it, and they were having a lot
Speaker 3: of trouble getting anywhere because the man did sit there,
Speaker 3: lie and lie and lie and tell story after story.
Speaker 3: Because the man was the one who strangled Wendy just
Speaker 3: hours earlier. So it was crazy.
Speaker 2: That's just as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: Now police are suspicious of this man's story. They also
Speaker 2: speak to those witnesses that described his behavior on that bridge,
Speaker 2: and then did they get an opportunity to speak to
Speaker 2: him again, and do they look into his previous record
Speaker 2: if he has any previous record.
Speaker 3: Okay, talking about the vomit thing. You know, I pulled
Speaker 3: over because I thought I was going to be sick. Well,
Speaker 3: I think it was the dad of the young man
Speaker 3: who was watching this guy who had flagged down his son.
Speaker 3: He was watching him and just he seems strange to
Speaker 3: the day because it's like he was almost putting on
Speaker 3: a show because he noticed this dad watching him, and
Speaker 3: then he started to act like he was going to
Speaker 3: be sick or something, and it seemed kind of fake
Speaker 3: to the dad, and so there was that aspect of it.
Speaker 3: So they know this person's name who evidently discovered the
Speaker 3: body on the river. And in the time between their
Speaker 3: arrival at the scene, which like I said, was probably
Speaker 3: around four thirty, it was getting dark out maybe between
Speaker 3: four thirty and five, and the man didn't come to
Speaker 3: the station until like seven o'clock, and so they did
Speaker 3: have a little bit of lead time where they poked
Speaker 3: around a little bit in his background. They did find
Speaker 3: something come up. He had worked in Nova, which is
Speaker 3: another suburb of Western Metro Detroit, not too far away
Speaker 3: from where they were in Dearborn Heights. He had been
Speaker 3: working in Nova as a security guard at a health
Speaker 3: facility and there had been an incident, and this was
Speaker 3: a couple months before. This was like November nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 3: and Armstrong had reported an incident where someone had tried
Speaker 3: to break into the facility and he claimed that he
Speaker 3: had a weapon and he fought this guy off and
Speaker 3: he ran away. Well, as they investigated this alleged incident,
Speaker 3: they discovered that it was all a story. At least
Speaker 3: Armstrong then did admit that he had made it up.
Speaker 3: He had even cut himself with a knife to make
Speaker 3: it look like he was in a scuffle with this
Speaker 3: intruder at the facility. And so this was all on record,
Speaker 3: this strange incident. And in the wake of this incident,
Speaker 3: when police were investigating it, and you know, they told Armstrong,
Speaker 3: you realize that, you know, we can charge you with
Speaker 3: a crime over this, and it made Armstrong very no
Speaker 3: nervous and actually put him in a little bit of
Speaker 3: a tailspin to where he threatened to commit suicide. And
Speaker 3: he attempted, actually with some medication to od and left
Speaker 3: a note to his wife and you know, said he
Speaker 3: was going to end it all and all that. So
Speaker 3: they realized back in Dearborn Heights, Okay, there's some weird
Speaker 3: stuff going on with this guy's background. This guy's got
Speaker 3: some stuff going on. And that was part of the
Speaker 3: reason too. I think that they leaned pretty hard on him,
Speaker 3: at least one of the two interrogating officers or questioning
Speaker 3: officers I'll say, not interrogating, but questioning this witness in quotes.
Speaker 3: That's a big reason that they leaned on him pretty
Speaker 3: hard to try to get him to admit if there
Speaker 3: was something going on, you know, to find out what
Speaker 3: is the nature of all of this.
Speaker 2: You write about the tactics used by the detectives, one
Speaker 2: sort of playing a good cop bad cop, and Serverwatowski
Speaker 2: to some of the strategies, and Petrie left the room
Speaker 2: and he thought he was getting close. He was very
Speaker 2: emotional and he thought just from past experience that he
Speaker 2: might have something. But it wasn't to be. He said,
Speaker 2: I'm comfortable with the questions can we stop now? But
Speaker 2: he used this tactic to continue. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Yep, oh gosh. I love listening to the recording. I
Speaker 3: listen it's about our hour and a half or so.
Speaker 3: And it's so interesting from a psychological perspective. Armstrong sounds
Speaker 3: so innocent. You know, I was just coming home. I
Speaker 3: was just coming home. But they asked him about all
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff, like, you were in the navy, What
Speaker 3: did you do in the navy? How did you like it?
Speaker 3: How did you he grew up in Newbern, North Carolina,
Speaker 3: how did you like it there? You know, tell me
Speaker 3: about your family? And they were just making all kinds
Speaker 3: of small talk. Now, Mike Petrie was the other officer,
Speaker 3: and he had to leave the room. He actually was sick.
Speaker 3: He had like a flu that was coming on that night,
Speaker 3: and so we actually he actually had to perhaps go vomit.
Speaker 3: But he left the room for quite a while, and
Speaker 3: it left Saratowski alone with Armstrong just really chatting just gently.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's okay, er, Eric, Well we'll let
Speaker 3: you go home pretty soon. You know, we just need
Speaker 3: to know a few more things from you, you know,
Speaker 3: no big deal. He really really was playing the good
Speaker 3: cop angle. But then meanwhile, so, so what's it like
Speaker 3: We're going to Target? You know, I shop there, and
Speaker 3: you know, that kind of thing, just very very conversational
Speaker 3: buddy buddy, making it seem like he literally was just
Speaker 3: filling time while Petrie was out of the room, just
Speaker 3: chatting and making small talk. And I think it did
Speaker 3: help Armstrong to feel more comfortable because Armstrong, of course,
Speaker 3: you know, from his perspective, you realize, Okay, I killed
Speaker 3: this lady, and now they're questioning me. Why didn't they
Speaker 3: just assume that I found her and just let me
Speaker 3: go home. Why am I even here? Why didn't they
Speaker 3: just let me go? Because I'm just playing the good
Speaker 3: Samaritan role here. He of course is going to be
Speaker 3: antsy and he's going to be nervous, and Saratowski was
Speaker 3: just this gentle just you know, okay, well yeah, and
Speaker 3: what's it like doing this? And etc. It was very
Speaker 3: very interesting.
Speaker 2: Now we haven't talked about what the police found, but
Speaker 2: they found they bagged her her hands so that they
Speaker 2: could investigate do forensic testing on her nails. But also
Speaker 2: the state of DNA technology that time was that DNA
Speaker 2: results weren't going to be back immediately. So there was
Speaker 2: a search of the jeep, and then there was a
Speaker 2: subsequent another search of the jeep as well. What are
Speaker 2: the kinds of things that they did find in the
Speaker 2: search and tell us why DNA was so important in
Speaker 2: this case and why there was not an arrest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that is heartbreaking. Okay, they've got this guy,
Speaker 3: he claims he found this body's and they're suspicious of him.
Speaker 3: He's acting strange. So they're like, hey, can we can
Speaker 3: we just look in your jeep. He was fine with that.
Speaker 3: He let them look in the jeep at the scene
Speaker 3: and then he by the time he had gone to
Speaker 3: the station been interviewed at the station, his family had
Speaker 3: been contacted back in close to the scene in Dearborn Heights,
Speaker 3: and they sent over like a family friend who was
Speaker 3: an attorney, but not a criminal attorney, another kind of attorney.
Speaker 3: They just sent him over to the station to see
Speaker 3: if he could help out. But with that attorney showing up,
Speaker 3: that family friend, Ann Armstrong, they consented to the jeep
Speaker 3: being taken to the garage of the State Police for
Speaker 3: a closer look. So they examined the jeep at the
Speaker 3: scene and then they towed the jeep to a garage
Speaker 3: with the State Police where they could examine it further.
Speaker 3: And as far as what they found in the jeep,
Speaker 3: they did the usual testing wipes for forensic evidence, they
Speaker 3: did find like fibers and hares and things like that.
Speaker 3: They dusted for prints and they found the usual forensic stuff.
Speaker 3: But DNA, they did get a court order, they got
Speaker 3: warrants to collect Armstrong's DNA to test against Wendy's body.
Speaker 3: They got oral swabs and they got all different manner
Speaker 3: of DNA samples from him, and DNA did link him
Speaker 3: to Wendy. But the thing about DNA back then, and
Speaker 3: Jerry of course can talk to this as well, it
Speaker 3: did take quite a while to get results back. This
Speaker 3: was January and it was probably about mid January when
Speaker 3: they got the warrants, collected the samples and sent the
Speaker 3: DNA in to be tested, and the results did not
Speaker 3: come back until almost mid April, so three months they
Speaker 3: had to wait, and they knew they had to wait
Speaker 3: a while. And so that is the heartbreaking part because
Speaker 3: in those three months several more people were attacked, some
Speaker 3: people who survived and some who did not. In fact,
Speaker 3: there were i want to say three six more people
Speaker 3: were attacked, three who died and three who did not.
Speaker 3: So just really really sad that aspect that the DNA
Speaker 3: results that they could not arrest Armstrong until they really
Speaker 3: had an ironclad case with those DNA results, So that
Speaker 3: was a big thing. But back to the jeep. One
Speaker 3: interesting thing that one of the officers on the scene
Speaker 3: was thinking that he saw the jeep and this could
Speaker 3: have been what precipitated even just looking inside the jeep
Speaker 3: in the first place. They knew when they found Wendy
Speaker 3: on the river that there was a gold colored pump
Speaker 3: lying near her body. I don't know if they collected
Speaker 3: the other pomp and had both of them where they
Speaker 3: just had the one, but they knew what she was
Speaker 3: wearing that night. It was these this gold pair of pumps,
Speaker 3: gold colored almost like I've kind of said it before
Speaker 3: that they reminded me when I read the description of
Speaker 3: the kind of pumps that a bridesmaid would wear in
Speaker 3: a wedding and they dye them to batch the gown.
Speaker 3: You know, they could be any color. They could be gold,
Speaker 3: they could be sober, they could be pig or whatever.
Speaker 3: They found this gold pump, and the thing was inside
Speaker 3: the jeep. One of the officers thought he saw like
Speaker 3: some gold flex that looked like they would have come
Speaker 3: from the gold shoes. So that really played into the
Speaker 3: suspicion at the scene as well, one of the things
Speaker 3: found in the jeep. And then also they found a
Speaker 3: condom wrapper, which is, you know, perhaps suspicious in a vehicle,
Speaker 3: and other assorted things kind of typical things that you
Speaker 3: would find in a suburban guy's jeep. There were things
Speaker 3: that in the backseat that probably belonged to his kid.
Speaker 3: He at a toddler kid at the time, so just
Speaker 3: miscellaneous things that well as well that would not raise suspicion.
Speaker 2: That's just as as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now, just before we move on and talk
Speaker 2: about just how it became to be that he was
Speaker 2: under surveillance by a surveillance group of suspicious Dearborn Heights
Speaker 2: police officers. You say the assaults continue, So does he
Speaker 2: travel to another jurisdiction. How do you explain that under surveillance,
Speaker 2: under suspicion, his assaults continue, and then more than assaults.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. He did cool it for a while. He
Speaker 3: cooled it for the rest of January and through February
Speaker 3: into March. As far as we know, we don't know
Speaker 3: of any assaults in that timeframe. He knew they were
Speaker 3: following him around. He was telling people at work, they're
Speaker 3: following me around, and they're stealing the trash off my
Speaker 3: kerb At home, he was living with his in laws,
Speaker 3: and then they literally took the trash hands. Armstrong's in
Speaker 3: laws reported it to the police, ironically that their trash
Speaker 3: cans were stolen. Just kind of a funny element of
Speaker 3: the case. But he knew they were onto him, and
Speaker 3: they stayed on him, and he did cool it for
Speaker 3: a little while. But his next known encounter would have
Speaker 3: been mid March, and then from that point he escalated
Speaker 3: until April tenth or eleventh. He escalated with several more attacks.
Speaker 3: So it was getting pretty crazy, and it was in
Speaker 3: a different jurisdiction. It was Detroit. You know, he did
Speaker 3: his hunting in Detroit. He lived in Dearborn Heights, but
Speaker 3: he did his hunting in Detroit. For Wendy Jordan to
Speaker 3: be found in Dearborn Heights was highly unusual. The other
Speaker 3: females were all attacked and left in Detroit. But for
Speaker 3: whatever reason, we don't know what was going through his head.
Speaker 3: For whatever reason, when he killed Wendy, he took her
Speaker 3: in his jeep. Very very unusual. For him, took her
Speaker 3: in his jeep all almost all the way home and
Speaker 3: dropped her just like a block from home. So the
Speaker 3: Dearborn Heights case was an unusual aspect of this. The
Speaker 3: rest of it did happen in Detroit.
Speaker 2: Now, Jerry, let's talk to you because you were there
Speaker 2: that day. You say you were in a meeting and
Speaker 2: Monday morning briefing and there was a call interrupting that meeting.
Speaker 2: Tell us about that call, and tell us about the
Speaker 2: discovery at the tracks April tenths, two thousand, how the
Speaker 2: train conductor spots a dead woman. Tell us your involvement
Speaker 2: that phone call, and tell us about the investigation that ensues.
Speaker 5: There were three sections of the Major Crimes Division Investigative Arm.
Speaker 5: It was commanding officer of Homicide Division was in this meeting.
Speaker 5: I was in the meeting as a commanding officer of
Speaker 5: the Violent Crime Task Force, and the commanding officer of
Speaker 5: the Special Investigations Division was in this meeting. And we
Speaker 5: were all meeting with the Deputy Chief and explaining basically
Speaker 5: giving him updates on our major major cases and the
Speaker 5: progress report that every Monday a regular meeting. During that meeting,
Speaker 5: this is before smartphones. We had pagers and flip phones.
Speaker 5: The commanding officer of the Home Side Division gets a
Speaker 5: text message that they needed him to call right away,
Speaker 5: which was, you know, not that unusual.
Speaker 4: He gets up, asks to go to.
Speaker 5: The next room, uses the phone, comes back a couple
Speaker 5: minutes later, and it was one of his crew telling
Speaker 5: him that they'd had a homicide reported. They were headed
Speaker 5: over to a body found along the tracks at Michigan
Speaker 5: and John Kronk. His typical response would have been okay, final,
Speaker 5: I let the boss now, just keep me posted. So
Speaker 5: he comes back, the meeting resumes, It goes on for
Speaker 5: about four or five more minutes. He gets another phone call.
Speaker 5: He excuses himself again, He goes over it takes the
Speaker 5: phone call. He comes back after a few minutes on
Speaker 5: the he says to the deputy chief. He says, Boss,
Speaker 5: we've got a problem. He says, they found three bodies
Speaker 5: and they're still looking. There may be more, we don't know,
Speaker 5: And all of a sudden something.
Speaker 4: Like that happens.
Speaker 5: Of course, it's it's, you know, all hands on deck.
Speaker 5: We can do this meeting later, and we all adjourn
Speaker 5: to the scene of the bodies to assess what was
Speaker 5: going on because the commander Major Crimes is is aware
Speaker 5: that this is a big, high priority issue. When we've
Speaker 5: got three dead bodies, we get out to the scene.
Speaker 5: We noticed that one of them is in plain sight
Speaker 5: and relatively fresh. It's obvious that there's been sexual assault
Speaker 5: because of the condition of the clothing and the position
Speaker 5: of the body. The responding officers from homicide take us
Speaker 5: to the other ones, and we're talking about along a
Speaker 5: railroad track and there's a depression on one side of it,
Speaker 5: almost like a deep culver that's kind of overgrown with
Speaker 5: weeds and brush. We find the second body has apparently
Speaker 5: been just basically discarded into that area, and as we
Speaker 5: move toward that when we see a third and the
Speaker 5: interesting thing about it, the alarming thing about it, was
Speaker 5: that they were all in varying states of decomposition. The
Speaker 5: third one that we found was was quite a ways long.
Speaker 5: She'd obviously been dead for several weeks. Second one that
Speaker 5: we found a little bit less decomposed, and then, of
Speaker 5: course the first one that was in plain sight was
Speaker 5: relatively fresh, probably.
Speaker 4: From the night before.
Speaker 5: At this point, our boss says, we have a cereal
Speaker 5: on our hands, which you know, by definition three takes.
Speaker 5: It takes three to be a cereals. He immediately mobilized
Speaker 5: literally the entire Major Crimes Investigative Division, which at that
Speaker 5: point would have been three or four hundred people, detective,
Speaker 5: surveillance people, you name it. And he says, we're we're
Speaker 5: we're going to work this.
Speaker 4: Do we catch them?
Speaker 5: And it went from there. We involved because, like I said,
Speaker 5: violent Prime Test Force involved multiple agencies, including the FBI.
Speaker 5: The first thing that we did from the scene was
Speaker 5: the boss called the psychological profiling unit at Quantico at
Speaker 5: the FBI Academy and he wanted to talk to somebody,
Speaker 5: and he talked to whoever was in charge, told him
Speaker 5: what we had and told them we would like to
Speaker 5: have somebody respond here. We will hold the scene as
Speaker 5: long as it takes. Well, you know we're talking, they're
Speaker 5: either going to have charter or a plane or they're
Speaker 5: going to have to drive for six hours in order
Speaker 5: to get to Michigan, and that wasn't practical. But what
Speaker 5: they did was they handle the investigation. They're part of
Speaker 5: the investigation over the phone basically, and they gave us
Speaker 5: some incredible information, the best tip that we could have
Speaker 5: ever had which I'm not saying we wouldn't have come
Speaker 5: up with it, but they made the comment, you're concentrating
Speaker 5: on his successes by looking at these bodies. They said,
Speaker 5: look for his failures. You know, for everyone that he's murdered,
Speaker 5: there's probably one that he's tried to murder and that's
Speaker 5: gotten away. So that gave us a direction to go.
Speaker 4: We went out.
Speaker 5: We started talking to everybody up and down Michigan Avenue,
Speaker 5: everybody up and down Woodward were more prostitution problems of
Speaker 5: everybody in the Cast Corridor again high prostitution traffic. And
Speaker 5: started interviewing everybody and anybody, and it didn't take long.
Speaker 5: We found someone that he had tried to assault a
Speaker 5: couple of people, if I remember correctly, and from that
Speaker 5: we were able to get a physical description, and the
Speaker 5: description was fairly good. They had described a white guy,
Speaker 5: fairly large, notable tattoos, red hair, driving a blue jeep.
Speaker 5: It's kind of easy to pick out in that part
Speaker 5: of the town. So we had something to go with,
Speaker 5: and like I said, we had a lot of people.
Speaker 5: We put out surveillance units watching for the guy. We
Speaker 5: made the information known to the uniforms in that precinct
Speaker 5: and throughout the city in fact, because like I said,
Speaker 5: there was more than one area of prostitution. And it
Speaker 5: didn't take long before a uniform car from the fourth
Speaker 5: Precinct spotted a vehicle matching the description and decided to
Speaker 5: make a traffic stop. Well, they were making a traffic stop,
Speaker 5: they thought, with just their two man car. But what
Speaker 5: they didn't know was that there were probably ten surveillance
Speaker 5: units watching the traffic stop.
Speaker 4: And the decision that the discussion.
Speaker 5: Came up, do we intervene now or do we wait
Speaker 5: and see what happens when they get the guy and
Speaker 5: talk to him, get him out of the car. Maybe
Speaker 5: the decision was made to let the uniforms handle it
Speaker 5: if he decides to run. The department pro call is
Speaker 5: you can't chase with an unmarked car.
Speaker 4: It's not safe.
Speaker 5: So you know it would take a uniform car to pursue.
Speaker 5: So during the traffic stop, they the officers talking to him,
Speaker 5: and young lady in the in the area having to
Speaker 5: walk by, and she points to him and she says,
Speaker 5: that's the guy that assaulted me the other night. And
Speaker 5: there in the conversation, Armstrong has heard to say words
Speaker 5: to the effect that I'm glad it's over that point,
Speaker 5: you know. The it happened to be at that at
Speaker 5: that precise moment that all of the surveillance units decided
Speaker 5: to converge on the traffic stop. Surprised the officers in
Speaker 5: the uniform. They didn't know we were there. Armstrong was
Speaker 5: basically taken into custody.
Speaker 2: You talked about who specifically we're referencing as a person
Speaker 2: named Devin Maris, a transgendered person that was actually said
Speaker 2: a lot of things to the police to informed them,
Speaker 2: Like you say, gave the description of the person, but
Speaker 2: also he had said that he had been wearing a
Speaker 2: work shirt, some kind of uniform with the name Eric
Speaker 2: on it. And also very importantly, he said while he
Speaker 2: was being choked, he said, this person yelled that he
Speaker 2: hated flip and prostitutes. So some important information.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're exactly right.
Speaker 5: This male posing as a female kind of think surprised Armstrong.
Speaker 4: He didn't have.
Speaker 5: As as weak a target as he thought he did
Speaker 5: when he tried to choke him. The guy had the
Speaker 5: strength of a man, and he was able to get
Speaker 5: away from break the grip and get away from the
Speaker 5: from from Armstrong before he succumbed. There was there was
Speaker 5: information provided about a work shirt with a name on it.
Speaker 5: At the time, I believe, if memory serves me, Armstrong
Speaker 5: was working as at at Detroit Mentro Airport is some
Speaker 5: some sort of a refueler, right, that was, he was
Speaker 5: still dressed from work kind of if he was coming
Speaker 5: from or going to. At that point we had more
Speaker 5: than enough put him in handcuffs and taken down to
Speaker 5: headquarters and start a conversation with him, which is what
Speaker 5: took place. From the conversation, after several hours of very
Speaker 5: skillful interrogation by or interviewed by a couple of our detectives, he.
Speaker 4: Began to give it all up.
Speaker 5: Confessed to the murders in Detroit, the one in Dearborn,
Speaker 5: and then talked about one that he had killed in Norfolk,
Speaker 5: Virginia when he was discharged from the Navy, and then
Speaker 5: began to expand into his travels in the Navy on
Speaker 5: the aircraft carrier Nimitz as they went from port to
Speaker 5: port and wherever he got shore leave, he seemed to
Speaker 5: go in and take advantage of the fact that whatever
Speaker 5: he did, he'd probably get away because all he had
Speaker 5: to do is leave the scene, get back on the ship,
Speaker 5: and leave the country.
Speaker 2: It was interesting that he just blurted out in that questioning.
Speaker 2: The interrogator asked, you left a lot of yourself on
Speaker 2: those victims, and then suddenly he blurted out, I killed them.
Speaker 2: I killed them, I killed them.
Speaker 5: What actually took place there was the investigators talked to
Speaker 5: him for quite a while. Like the story in Dearborn,
Speaker 5: they spent in this case several hours talking to him
Speaker 5: about his background, gaining his confidence.
Speaker 4: And getting him to kind of warm up to them.
Speaker 5: And at one point one of our detectives reached over
Speaker 5: and took the back of his hand and grasped it
Speaker 5: and almost like in a reassuring manner. As Armstrong was
Speaker 5: beginning to show signs that he was sort of trusting
Speaker 5: the officers, I guess you would say, and he asked him,
Speaker 5: he said, John, do you know what just happened? And
Speaker 5: Armstrong looked at him and he said, what are you
Speaker 5: talking about? He says, have you ever heard of DNA?
Speaker 5: And armsteng apparently wasn't that familiar with it because he'd
Speaker 5: been leaving traces all over the place. The officer explained
Speaker 5: to him, he says, I just put my hand on yours,
Speaker 5: and he says, I left traces of me on you,
Speaker 5: and you left traces of yourself on me, and DNA
Speaker 5: analysis will identify both of us specifically in such a
Speaker 5: way that there can be no doubt as to who
Speaker 5: touched two. And you know, he says, you've heard of DNA,
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden, you could see the lights
Speaker 5: come on in Armstrong's face, and that's when he began
Speaker 5: to confess because the next question that the detective asked him,
Speaker 5: he says, let's talk about the murders. And that's that's
Speaker 5: kind of what led into Armstrong just giving this all up.
Speaker 5: He was just being basically, just became aware that there
Speaker 5: was no possible way with DNA evidence that he was
Speaker 5: going to plead that he never murdered and raped these women.
Speaker 4: The thing to remember is that.
Speaker 5: After he would murder a victim, he would come back
Speaker 5: and visit the body and have sex with it, So
Speaker 5: he was leaving DNA everywhere.
Speaker 2: Now, let's talk about the prosecution. The idea that Dearborn
Speaker 2: Heights had had this guy under his radar. He continued
Speaker 2: his assaults, and now the Detroit Police Department and dearborn
Speaker 2: heights are set to prosecute him. Tell us about how
Speaker 2: they go about prosecution. What's their strongest case, what's their
Speaker 2: first case that they want to prosecute.
Speaker 5: Well, there was a lot of discussion and a lot
Speaker 5: of investigation took place before we ever got him into
Speaker 5: a trial.
Speaker 4: We got him bound over.
Speaker 5: You've got twelve days to get somebody bound over for trial,
Speaker 5: and we got that he was being held without bail
Speaker 5: because of the severity of his crimes in the interim
Speaker 5: which could have taken it probably took several weeks. We
Speaker 5: had to try and track down all the people that
Speaker 5: he confessed to having murdered, which meant that we had
Speaker 5: to get the FBI agents that were assigned to the
Speaker 5: Violent Crime Task Force to get in touch with US Navy.
Speaker 5: They sent an agent from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
Speaker 5: They had to get in touch then with the State
Speaker 5: Department to reach out to the law enforcement agencies in
Speaker 5: these various countries where the limits had put into port.
Speaker 5: And of course they had to get information from the
Speaker 5: Navy IS to when he had liberty, when he was
Speaker 5: able to go ashore, and so forth. The NCIS had
Speaker 5: to contact people from the ship itself and interview them
Speaker 5: to find out about his activities, and.
Speaker 4: So on and so forth.
Speaker 5: A lot of things were going on at the same
Speaker 5: time during this span of a few weeks between being
Speaker 5: bound over for trial and Ashley going to trial. By
Speaker 5: the time we got to trial, it became apparent from
Speaker 5: the information that was being gathered by NCIS and the
Speaker 5: FBI in the State department that none of these other
Speaker 5: countries were interested in prosecuting, so it was up to
Speaker 5: the US to handle the prosecution. The fact that we
Speaker 5: had him for five four or five Norfolk Virginia said,
Speaker 5: you know, you guys got him for the most and
Speaker 5: why don't you just hold on to him for some reason,
Speaker 5: it happens to fail at trial, will take him.
Speaker 4: But we didn't fail at trial.
Speaker 5: Like I say, there was a lot, a lot of
Speaker 5: investortigation going on in a lot of different areas, a
Speaker 5: lot of jurisdictions before we could get to trial. By
Speaker 5: the time we got to trial, like I said, it
Speaker 5: was a parent that the only ones that we were
Speaker 5: really going to be successful with were the ones that
Speaker 5: he did in Michigan. So the defense moved to I
Speaker 5: guess you would say quash the information from his admissions
Speaker 5: about other murders and eliminate that from trial. So the
Speaker 5: only things that we were able to talk about in
Speaker 5: court were the Michigan murders.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. I'm going to ask how you proceeded with
Speaker 2: that investigation before you got to trial, the kind of
Speaker 2: ironclad information that you had to have to be able
Speaker 2: to successfully prosecute this person despite having extensive confessions, and
Speaker 2: also tell us about some of the details that were
Speaker 2: given in those confessions as to the motivation for these
Speaker 2: murders and attacks.
Speaker 5: Well, basically the information that we were getting from Armstrong
Speaker 5: as he was giving us the information about his various
Speaker 5: murders in other countries. He described one where he picked
Speaker 5: up prostitute, took her to a motel room, did his business,
Speaker 5: murdered or choked her to death.
Speaker 4: There was one where he just he just turned.
Speaker 5: Around a leftter where he you know, where he killed her,
Speaker 5: walked out of the room, got back on the boat
Speaker 5: to the Nimitz, left the area. He didn't know anything
Speaker 5: more about what took place. There was one where I
Speaker 5: think he believed he actually said that he did the
Speaker 5: same thing in another jurisdiction, in you know, some other
Speaker 5: foreign country, and he just rolled a body out the
Speaker 5: window into a big trash container, and then he went
Speaker 5: back to the ship. He gave He gave details to
Speaker 5: the best of his knowledge, to the best of his recollection.
Speaker 5: I don't believe that he knew even recalled how many,
Speaker 5: in what jurisdictions he committed these crimes and killed these women.
Speaker 5: I think he was just he was going, you know,
Speaker 5: from the best of his recollection. In fact, was one
Speaker 5: of the things that he said, you know, the best
Speaker 5: I remember was this, this happened in Taiwan, This happened
Speaker 5: in Cambodia, wherever the ship might have put in. During
Speaker 5: the investigation, of course, we had to not only look
Speaker 5: at the places that he admitted to. We had to
Speaker 5: look at every place that the ship put into port.
Speaker 5: It was headquartered on the West coast, so we had
Speaker 5: to check, you know, the states of Washington, Oregon, Hawaiian Islands,
Speaker 5: any place that that ship may have put in to
Speaker 5: port where Armstrong may have had shortly. So that was
Speaker 5: the job of the NCIS agent that was assigned to
Speaker 5: us for a few weeks, working with the State Apartment,
Speaker 5: NCIS and the FBI had to try and communicate to
Speaker 5: these various foreign entities law enforcement organizations what was going
Speaker 5: on and see if they were willing or interested in
Speaker 5: pressing charges. And the comment was made in discussion in
Speaker 5: the office there during this whole process trying to get
Speaker 5: determine whether or not there was interest from foreign law enforcement.
Speaker 5: It almost seemed like their attitude toward killing prostitutes was
Speaker 5: almost like he was doing them a public service and
Speaker 5: they didn't want to be bothered expending resources investigating and
Speaker 5: prosecuting and transporting into a foreign country and bear the
Speaker 5: expense of taking them to trial on it.
Speaker 4: They just left it in our hands.
Speaker 2: You write about some of the motivation, if there can
Speaker 2: be any motivation at all, But some of the motivation
Speaker 2: that he put forward as the reason why he killed
Speaker 2: and attacked women, and.
Speaker 3: There were some weird things, and they got picked up
Speaker 3: by the media at the time. One thing, of course,
Speaker 3: we know that Gosh, at least three of the survivors
Speaker 3: said that as he was attempting to strangle them, he
Speaker 3: you know, yelled the thing about hating prostitutes. So he
Speaker 3: even said that in some of his confessions, he said,
Speaker 3: I hate hookers, you know, he put it that way.
Speaker 3: Where did that hatred come from? That was a little strange.
Speaker 3: And so one of the things that he told police,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if this is at all accurate
Speaker 3: or just something that he said, but he said that
Speaker 3: when he was in high school, he had a girlfriend
Speaker 3: and she left him for someone else because the someone
Speaker 3: else that she left him for would buy her things,
Speaker 3: and so he saw that as prostituting herself. She was
Speaker 3: prostituting herself by leaving me and going with this other
Speaker 3: person who was buying her stuff. Now it seems a
Speaker 3: little lame. It was picked up, like a said by
Speaker 3: the newspapers and TV media at the time, like as
Speaker 3: an unusual element of the case. But that was one
Speaker 3: thing he threw out there. And then another thing that
Speaker 3: he said in some of his confessions, maybe one or
Speaker 3: two of his confessions, is that as he was strangling
Speaker 3: the person, he saw the face of his father. Now,
Speaker 3: the thing that makes that significant, I guess, is that
Speaker 3: he claimed that his biological father, who left the family
Speaker 3: when Armstrong was about five years old, his biological father
Speaker 3: was abusive, he said. Now that's been disputed since then,
Speaker 3: I did speak with his half brother, who lived with
Speaker 3: their biological father for all of his life, and said, no,
Speaker 3: there's no way that ever happened. That's just ridiculous. That's
Speaker 3: just something he said after he was arrested. So the
Speaker 3: jury still out on that one, so to speak. But
Speaker 3: those are a couple things that he said that you know,
Speaker 3: you would think maybe would somewhat provide a motive. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I guess you know, you can decide for yourself.
Speaker 2: The idea, too, that we hadn't mentioned is the when
Speaker 2: the first three bodies are discovered by railroad tracks in
Speaker 2: varying degrees, they are all displayed in a vulgar fashion,
Speaker 2: which again lends credence to the idea that he hated
Speaker 2: them and wanted to punish them further, but also the
Speaker 2: idea that he also spoke about being rejected and since
Speaker 2: then was then a necrophilia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the necrophilia is one aspect of this case. It's
Speaker 3: not a dominant aspect of this case. But he did
Speaker 3: say I think in one confession that he did visit
Speaker 3: that person later and you know, had a sexual act
Speaker 3: with her again later. And there are some people who
Speaker 3: say that the dead don't say no, you know, they
Speaker 3: that that comes from a fear of rejection sometimes that
Speaker 3: that necrophilia behavior. I was surprised when I researched that
Speaker 3: how prevalent it's been, you know, and how long that idea,
Speaker 3: that concept has been around. It kind of blew my
Speaker 3: mind to read about it in history. But yeah, that
Speaker 3: is one aspect that if you're feeling like you're getting rejected,
Speaker 3: then that person who is deceased is not going to
Speaker 3: reject you. From a psychological aspect, that that is one
Speaker 3: part of it. I guess with some people who practice that,
Speaker 3: it's just very strange.
Speaker 2: Let's talk now about the trial. February twenty fifth, two
Speaker 2: thousand and one, eight day trial. Judge Mary Waterstone. What
Speaker 2: goes on in this trial? Pardon me? In terms of
Speaker 2: the defense. What is the strategy for the defense? What
Speaker 2: do they claim as their defense?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the first trial, the first trial was for Wendy Jordan.
Speaker 3: The second trial was for Kelly Hood, and then after
Speaker 3: that point he realized, Okay, this is not going anywhere.
Speaker 3: He just pled out on the rest of the charges.
Speaker 3: But the first, the strongest case. They put fourth first,
Speaker 3: and that was the Dearborn Heights case with Wendy Jordan,
Speaker 3: and the defense attorney did take the tactic of okay,
Speaker 3: so you found DNA. Yes, he did meet Wendy that evening.
Speaker 3: They they had something going on, They had a transaction,
Speaker 3: but she was perfectly fine when he left. He doesn't
Speaker 3: know what happened to her after that. He did not
Speaker 3: kill her. That's the approach that they took, and it
Speaker 3: did not work. He was convicted. They also, I think,
Speaker 3: were I don't know if there really was any real
Speaker 3: consideration of like an insanity type plea. I mean, this
Speaker 3: was someone who was questioned by police, as Jerry was saying,
Speaker 3: and freely admitted to all of these murders, and not
Speaker 3: only the five in Detroit, but confessed to murders around
Speaker 3: the world while serving in the Navy in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3: But then in between that time of being questioned by
Speaker 3: police and then going to trial like a year or
Speaker 3: two later, then taking the approach Okay, I'm innocent, I
Speaker 3: didn't kill these people. So it's like, what's going on here.
Speaker 3: It's a little strange to have somebody who freely confessed
Speaker 3: then maintaining his innocence when he's tried, but that was
Speaker 3: what happened, and of course the DNA and you know,
Speaker 3: the trial for Wendy Jordan was a successful one in
Speaker 3: convicting him. And then after Wendy's trial for the Kelly
Speaker 3: Hood trial a couple months later, he had fired his
Speaker 3: attorney and got a new attorney and the result was
Speaker 3: not any better for Kelly Hood. He was of course
Speaker 3: also convicted.
Speaker 2: And a couple people like Devin Maris took the stand
Speaker 2: to testify against their attacker.
Speaker 3: Didn't that was very helpful? And that wasn't it to
Speaker 3: have a survivor. And you know, the thing about Armstrong
Speaker 3: that I have found kind of unusual or kind of
Speaker 3: interesting is that he did leave alive some people who died,
Speaker 3: and then he left others alive who survived. He did
Speaker 3: actually stop himself in some of these cases, of these
Speaker 3: ten people in Detroit that we know that he assaulted,
Speaker 3: he seemed to stop himself. Cynthia is the survivor that
Speaker 3: Jerry mentioned as when he Armstrong was being rounded up
Speaker 3: in the squad car on Michigan ab she was the
Speaker 3: one who was like, what's going on over there? And
Speaker 3: she walked over and she recognized him. He had attacked
Speaker 3: her a couple nights earlier, and he he tried to
Speaker 3: strangle her. She doesn't even know she blacked out, but
Speaker 3: she woke up a few hours later on a sidewalk
Speaker 3: in a different place and didn't quite know what happened.
Speaker 3: But it's like he stopped himself at times, and there
Speaker 3: were times where he seemed to think he killed the
Speaker 3: person but was wrong, as in the case of Natasha,
Speaker 3: the first person he was known to attack in Detroit,
Speaker 3: which was back in August of nineteen ninety nine, he
Speaker 3: thought he killed her because she played dead, so he
Speaker 3: just left. He figured, Okay, she's done, I'm gone. So evidently,
Speaker 3: from what he said Kelly at the Rower tracks, Kelly
Speaker 3: Hood was actually alive when he left, and she did die.
Speaker 3: So there's kind of strange blurring of the lines. Is
Speaker 3: he actually trying to kill these people? Is he like
Speaker 3: panicking and stopping what he's doing and leaving them alive
Speaker 3: on purpose? I don't know. I've found that very interesting
Speaker 3: a weird aspect of the case.
Speaker 2: Now, speaking of a weird aspect of the case, you
Speaker 2: write that one of you have visited Eric in prison
Speaker 2: a couple of times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was this girl. That was an interesting experience.
Speaker 3: I never visited a serial killer in person. I had
Speaker 3: contacted him for the book and just asked if I
Speaker 3: could speak with him. He did not want to talk
Speaker 3: about the case, but he was willing to talk. He said, well,
Speaker 3: I'll just you know, I'll talk to you, but I
Speaker 3: just don't want to talk about any of the details,
Speaker 3: any of that. He said it in like, he said
Speaker 3: something to the effect of, I don't want to put
Speaker 3: my family through that. I don't think the victims' families
Speaker 3: want to go through that again, or whatever, something to
Speaker 3: that effect. But I did go visit him a couple
Speaker 3: times and got to sit with him and just kind
Speaker 3: of got a feel for him as a person and
Speaker 3: what he's like these days. I don't know how it
Speaker 3: compares to what he was like twenty years ago, but
Speaker 3: it was a very interesting experience, and that he's just
Speaker 3: not what you would expect. He was very friendly, smiling,
Speaker 3: very innocent, seeming just not at all, not at all
Speaker 3: what you would consider savvy or you know, I always
Speaker 3: draw the comparison with somebody like a Ted Bundy, who
Speaker 3: was so swab, and you know, I would be very
Speaker 3: scared to be in a room for Ted Bunny, not
Speaker 3: to what he would do physically, but just how manipulative
Speaker 3: he seemed in interviews, and just like he's the smartest
Speaker 3: person and you're never going to outsmart him, and just
Speaker 3: this this almost haughty attitude he had, like I've got
Speaker 3: this whole thing looked and Armstrong is very much the
Speaker 3: opposite of that. He's just talking to you, He's just
Speaker 3: being you know, friendly or kind or whatever. And it's
Speaker 3: just really mind blowing to speak to him and to think,
Speaker 3: is this the same person? Is this the right person?
Speaker 3: I don't know. That went through my mind. It seemed
Speaker 3: very odd.
Speaker 2: Jerry, before I let you both go, tell us about
Speaker 2: what this meant to the Violent Crime Section group, this
Speaker 2: team that was assembled, and this case, the impact it
Speaker 2: had on you, and its importance in your career.
Speaker 5: Serial murders in Detroit aren't as frequent as they might
Speaker 5: be other places. There had only been one during my
Speaker 5: career prior to that in ninety one. Billy Ray I
Speaker 5: could tell you more about that as well. The occurrence
Speaker 5: of a serial homicide was very very big news in
Speaker 5: our city. It was very very big news to the chief.
Speaker 5: He did not take it lightly.
Speaker 4: At all. It was a very high priority, and.
Speaker 5: To have that dumped on me as I'm taking over
Speaker 5: a new command at the very beginning of my executive.
Speaker 4: Career was a little bit stressful. I'll admit.
Speaker 5: I had an incredible group of people that just knew
Speaker 5: their jobs so incredibly well that we had the guy
Speaker 5: in custody within forty one hours of finding the bodies.
Speaker 4: They were that proficient on what.
Speaker 5: They were doing, and the combination of agencies working together
Speaker 5: worked so well. It was quite a pressive to just
Speaker 5: be a part of, let alone responsible for But it
Speaker 5: was big news, as I said, in Detroit, and it
Speaker 5: helped cement the reputation of the violent Crime Section with
Speaker 5: the department with the city because we always handled high
Speaker 5: profile te says. This was the highest profile case that
Speaker 5: we'd had in Detroit, and it had been ten years
Speaker 5: since we'd had a pial killer before that, and that
Speaker 5: wasn't in our city. It was in Highland Park, So
Speaker 5: we only played a small role in that to be
Speaker 5: you know, anyways, it was big.
Speaker 4: It was a big deal.
Speaker 5: I made a copy of the file knowing that at
Speaker 5: some point I was going to retire and that I
Speaker 5: might want to sit down and write a book about it.
Speaker 5: I carried that file with me for almost twenty one
Speaker 5: years until I met Billy Ray and we were introduced
Speaker 5: by a mutual friend and we talked about the case,
Speaker 5: and for having been a former employee the Detroit News,
Speaker 5: a professional journalist seemed like the right match for.
Speaker 4: The two of us to work on this.
Speaker 5: So it was big for the department, it was big
Speaker 5: for the city, and it was probably that number one case.
Speaker 5: Every detective, every police officer, has a case in their
Speaker 5: career that sticks with them, and for me, this was it.
Speaker 5: So fortunately I was able to still have the paperwork
Speaker 5: or copies of the paperwork in my possession that we
Speaker 5: were able to work from, and we were able to
Speaker 5: put this book together and tell the story as accurately
Speaker 5: as anybody could.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, when you went to speak br two Armstrong and
Speaker 2: you said you explained the book project to him, what
Speaker 2: did you specifically or especially need to explain to him
Speaker 2: and tell us about how you say, it was hard
Speaker 2: to reconcile the two perspectives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I had emailed him. He didn't answer it. First.
Speaker 3: I had to coax him a little bit to get
Speaker 3: them to answer me and when he finally did, then, yeah,
Speaker 3: I explained, you know, I'm writing a book about the case.
Speaker 3: I would like to talk to you if you would
Speaker 3: be willing, and you know, just just explain it. And
Speaker 3: when he replied and said, no, I don't want to
Speaker 3: do a book right now. I don't think that would
Speaker 3: be good for my family. I don't think that would
Speaker 3: be good for the victims' families either, or whatever. Almost
Speaker 3: like he was trying to talk me out of the
Speaker 3: project altogether. And I was sure at the time that
Speaker 3: he would realize and probably already knew that I could
Speaker 3: do the book with or without him, you know, it
Speaker 3: didn't really matter, but that I still would like to
Speaker 3: talk to him. And so I did keep talking to
Speaker 3: him back and forth through email and said, you know,
Speaker 3: I'd like to come and visit if you'd allow me.
Speaker 3: Of course, you know, when you're in prison, you have
Speaker 3: to put someone on your list. If they're going to
Speaker 3: come visit you, you have to consent. I guess in
Speaker 3: a way, and at least with this kind of casual,
Speaker 3: friendly visit. I'm sure it's probably differently law enforcement and
Speaker 3: things like that, but I needed him to add me
Speaker 3: to his list to come visit him, and so we
Speaker 3: worked all of that out, going back and forth and
Speaker 3: would chat about this or chat about that. But yeah,
Speaker 3: when I first went there, oh goodness, he looks quite
Speaker 3: a bit different than he did back then than the
Speaker 3: photos of him from back then. He's a big guy.
Speaker 3: He's over six foot and back then at the time
Speaker 3: of the case, he weighed like probably two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty pounds, just big all over. And he's real thin
Speaker 3: now and does not have hair anymore's fault, and so
Speaker 3: his physical appearance is very different. And when they brought
Speaker 3: him out to meet with me, I did I honestly panicked,
Speaker 3: I thought, because he made eye contact and he smiled
Speaker 3: at me, and I panicked, think, and that's not him.
Speaker 3: Why did they get me this guy? Go back? You
Speaker 3: got to get me the right prisoner here. But no,
Speaker 3: it was him. And so, you know, in the visits,
Speaker 3: we just chatted about this or that, really just like
Speaker 3: you know, just a couple of people chatting, and it
Speaker 3: wasn't anything really meaningful or substantial. But I did learn
Speaker 3: about a little bit more about him, and it was
Speaker 3: just a mind blowing experience because we continued to email
Speaker 3: and matter of fact, gosh, maybe it's only been like
Speaker 3: a year since I've heard from him. I've heard from
Speaker 3: him fairly recently, but he knows, he knows the book
Speaker 3: has been out. In fact, I've let him know when
Speaker 3: there's been a TV show that has covered the case,
Speaker 3: that's doing interviews with people like Jerry and I have
Speaker 3: done interviews for a couple shows, like on the Oxygen
Speaker 3: Network that have covered the Armstrong case over the years,
Speaker 3: and I've kept him informed of stuff like that, and
Speaker 3: we've talked back and forth. But at the time I
Speaker 3: was doing my research. I remember there was one particular
Speaker 3: day I was down in the basement of my old house,
Speaker 3: sitting in front of my laptop, and I am reading
Speaker 3: the story again of Natasha, and I think I had
Speaker 3: even talked to her that day, and she was talking
Speaker 3: about it. Almost every time I talked to her on
Speaker 3: the phone, she talks a little bit about it, and
Speaker 3: just the grizzly details of wrestling with him in that
Speaker 3: hotel room and he had a knife and he cut
Speaker 3: her all up in their scuffle in the hotel room.
Speaker 3: And hearing those details, and then right after that I
Speaker 3: got an email from him, pop up, Hey, how's it going, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I had such and such today and blah
Speaker 3: blah blah and COVID and whatever, and it's just how
Speaker 3: can this be? How can you reconcile these two words?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm chatting with this guy just like he's
Speaker 3: somebody I know at work or something, but yet I'm
Speaker 3: reading and hearing these horrifying details of when he tried
Speaker 3: to kill Natasha. So yeah, crazy experience.
Speaker 2: It's an incredible book. You go into the investigation of
Speaker 2: other murders that he claimed to have done. But needless
Speaker 2: to say, the five bodies, the five women that were
Speaker 2: killed and the I think it's five or six attacked,
Speaker 2: was enough of a tally for this person, you say
Speaker 2: in the very end, you write that in the end,
Speaker 2: Eric John Armstrong is a complicated man, and I would
Speaker 2: say that's an understatement. For those that might want to
Speaker 2: find out more about this book, could you tell us
Speaker 2: about a website or do you do any social media?
Speaker 3: I do Instagram, YouTube, I just got on Pinterest the
Speaker 3: other day. I do a little bit of social media.
Speaker 3: We do have a website, but it's like a tiny
Speaker 3: URL that's a little hard to recite. So I could
Speaker 3: just send you the link for that. But my instagram,
Speaker 3: I think it's just br Baits, you know, at vr
Speaker 3: Bates and then my YouTube basically same thing. Actually, I
Speaker 3: think my instagram is author vr Baits and then my
Speaker 3: YouTube is bur Bates. So yeah, there's a little bit
Speaker 3: of that. Of the book is the Baby Dolls Series Killer,
Speaker 3: The John Eric Armstrong Homicides. It's from Wild Blue Press
Speaker 3: and so they have it on their website. You can
Speaker 3: find it on Amazon. And it was a joy to
Speaker 3: work with Jerry and his expertise and to put all
Speaker 3: this together. I really enjoyed the research. You know. It's
Speaker 3: one of those things where I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people say this about their true crime passion, like the
Speaker 3: people who watch the shows on Oxygen or Datelight, NBC
Speaker 3: or whatnot. It's like they almost don't want to admit
Speaker 3: that they love this true crime stuff. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like a guilty pleasure or something. But I really enjoyed
Speaker 3: the research despite the horrifying subject matter. I really enjoyed
Speaker 3: the project. So I hope that people will enjoy the
Speaker 3: result of the research.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they were. Thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: on and talking about the Baby Doll serial Killer, The
Speaker 2: John Eric Armstrong Homicides, thank you so much. Br Bates
Speaker 2: and Jerry Cliff, thank you so much for this interview,
Speaker 2: and you have a great evening and good night.
Speaker 4: Thank you.