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