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Hiding-in-Plain-Sight：-John-Eric-Armstrong-Serial-Killer-Documentary · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:07
Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen ninety nine, twenty six year
0:10
Speaker 1: old John Eric Armstrong was honorably discharged from the US Navy.
0:16
Speaker 1: He settled in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, with his wife and
0:20
Speaker 1: their new baby.
0:22
Speaker 2: He was a nice neighbor, a good friend, a good father,
0:26
Speaker 2: apparently according to his neighbors.
0:28
Speaker 1: But Armstrong wasn't the loving family man that people believed
0:32
Speaker 1: him to be.
0:34
Speaker 3: Armstrong was, in my humble opinion, the personification of evil.
0:39
Speaker 1: Armstrong was using the services of sex workers, many of
0:43
Speaker 1: whom he then brutally murdered.
0:47
Speaker 4: He's killed mark for women. It was natural to him.
0:50
Speaker 5: Only person that that type of life saw that could
0:53
Speaker 5: be natural to as a monster.
0:55
Speaker 1: As more details emerged, police realized that these murders went
0:59
Speaker 1: far beyond their local area.
1:03
Speaker 6: You're talking Singapore, Hong Kong, and all these exotic locales
1:08
Speaker 6: that his boat traveled to while he was in the Navy.
1:12
Speaker 7: He's going to be one of the most prolific, well
1:14
Speaker 7: traveled heerial killers in history.
1:16
Speaker 1: John Eric Armstrong had gone global and been unveiled as
1:20
Speaker 1: one of the world's most evil killers. On April tenth,
1:48
Speaker 1: two thousand, in Detroit, Michigan, police were alerted to an
1:52
Speaker 1: alarming discovery. The bodies of three sex workers have been
1:56
Speaker 1: found near some railway tracks in varying states of decomposition.
2:01
Speaker 1: This was the work of a serial killer.
2:04
Speaker 3: He didn't try and conceal his crimes. He just discarded
2:07
Speaker 3: the bodies, didn't try and hide him. He just came
2:10
Speaker 3: back to visit and abuse and then move on to
2:13
Speaker 3: the next murder and dispose of that one and roll.
2:16
Speaker 8: It down the hill and find another one.
2:19
Speaker 1: With no leads, the police were under pressure to find
2:22
Speaker 1: the unknown killer before he could strike again. Then a
2:26
Speaker 1: chance traffic stop and subsequent arrest of twenty six year
2:29
Speaker 1: old John Eric Armstrong led to more revelations than they
2:34
Speaker 1: could ever have expected.
2:37
Speaker 6: In the patrol car, one of the patrol men could
2:40
Speaker 6: hear Armstrong in the back muttering something under his breath,
2:43
Speaker 6: I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you guys got me.
2:52
Speaker 1: This killer story begins on the southeastern coast of America.
2:57
Speaker 1: John Eric Armstrong was born on November twenty third, nineteen
3:01
Speaker 1: seventy three.
3:03
Speaker 6: Armstrong was born and raised in Newbern, North Carolina, and
3:07
Speaker 6: by all accounts, had a very normal upbringing, very normal childhood.
3:12
Speaker 2: I think the most important point in his early life
3:16
Speaker 2: was the death of the younger brother, Michael, who died
3:19
Speaker 2: of sudden infant death syndrome at barely two months old,
3:23
Speaker 2: and this had an impact on the young John Eric Armstrong.
3:27
Speaker 9: Armstrong was five years old at the time, and at
3:30
Speaker 9: five years old, I'm not sure that children fully understand
3:36
Speaker 9: the concept of death and dying and perhaps how.
3:41
Speaker 8: Permanent it is.
3:44
Speaker 9: So it's quite possible that it impacted him in a
3:48
Speaker 9: way that made him feel completely powerless.
3:52
Speaker 6: He was so distraught over that that he deliberately rode
3:56
Speaker 6: his bicycle out in traffic, you know, with the intention
4:01
Speaker 6: of joining his baby brother.
4:03
Speaker 1: The loss of the baby had a major impact on
4:07
Speaker 1: Armstrong's parents.
4:10
Speaker 6: Shortly after his baby brother, Mikey died in the crib,
4:14
Speaker 6: his biological father left the family.
4:18
Speaker 1: After his father left, young Armstrong stayed in the family
4:22
Speaker 1: home with his mother. Towards the end of the nineteen seventies,
4:31
Speaker 1: Armstrong started school, and his classmates saw nothing unusual about him.
4:37
Speaker 6: The people who went to school with him, for instance,
4:40
Speaker 6: his fellow students, they saw him as just a normal kid.
4:43
Speaker 6: He was a little quiet, he seemed pretty meek. One
4:47
Speaker 6: person described him as aloof but really nothing unusual about
4:51
Speaker 6: his childhood, nothing that would make someone ill at ease.
4:57
Speaker 7: Armstrong felt that he was kind of an underachiever and
5:00
Speaker 7: being bullied, and a lot of this behavior impacted him psychologically.
5:07
Speaker 9: We've got somebody whose whole identity is being formed around
5:12
Speaker 9: this victimhood, this powerlessness. The world is against me, and
5:18
Speaker 9: I think that internal anger, rage, revenge is more what
5:24
Speaker 9: drove him as he went into adulthood.
5:27
Speaker 2: There was a strange incident in his life at school.
5:32
Speaker 2: He said one of his classmates, a girl, was trying
5:35
Speaker 2: to persuade him to have sex with her and he
5:38
Speaker 2: didn't want to.
5:39
Speaker 6: And he liked himself into a bathroom and threatened to
5:43
Speaker 6: kill himself.
5:44
Speaker 4: This led to a month long stay in a mental
5:46
Speaker 4: health facility.
5:48
Speaker 9: So he obviously had issues with sex. A simple pressure
5:51
Speaker 9: for sex is not going to put you into psychiatric care.
5:54
Speaker 9: There's a lot more going on here.
5:57
Speaker 7: At the age of sixteen, Armstrong felt that he was
5:59
Speaker 7: still dealing with the negative impact of his brother's death,
6:03
Speaker 7: and so he went for additional psychiatric counseling to.
6:07
Speaker 9: Seek psychiatric care at age sixteen, when he's just had
6:13
Speaker 9: care for another incident. This is somebody who's really really
6:17
Speaker 9: struggling to function in the world.
6:21
Speaker 1: By his late teens, despite his problems, Armstrong had managed
6:26
Speaker 1: to start a relationship with a girl, but when his
6:29
Speaker 1: high school sweetheart left him for another boy, Armstrong was devastated,
6:35
Speaker 1: especially when he saw his love rival shower his ex
6:39
Speaker 1: girlfriend with gifts.
6:41
Speaker 7: Armstrong interpreted this as her prostituting herself or her affections
6:46
Speaker 7: in exchange for these gifts that this other new suitor
6:49
Speaker 7: was providing her.
6:51
Speaker 9: This guy sees women sex relationships transactional, and even he
6:59
Speaker 9: said that this was like she was a prostitute. What
7:04
Speaker 9: an awful way to see relationships.
7:10
Speaker 1: In April nineteen ninety two, when Armstrong was eighteen years old,
7:15
Speaker 1: he signed up with the US Navy.
7:19
Speaker 9: He joined the military, which is, I don't think an
7:22
Speaker 9: unusual thing for somebody like him who feels, you know,
7:26
Speaker 9: like he needs to be in a big gang because
7:29
Speaker 9: he feels like the world's against him and he needs
7:32
Speaker 9: control and he needs power.
7:34
Speaker 1: Armstrong was assigned to the USS Limits aircraft carrier, then
7:39
Speaker 1: the largest sailing vessel in the world.
7:43
Speaker 7: Life of both the Limits it would be pretty exciting.
7:45
Speaker 7: It can go anywhere in the world and often did,
7:47
Speaker 7: and Armstrong would have enjoyed that life.
7:50
Speaker 6: He worked in the barbershop, it was said, and then
7:53
Speaker 6: he had one or two other jobs on the boat,
7:56
Speaker 6: and he had a good record. By all accounts. Aboard
8:00
Speaker 6: the boat. Nothing really stood out.
8:03
Speaker 2: At one point he was nicknamed baby Doll. He had
8:07
Speaker 2: his very childlike face, this very innocent approach, which didn't
8:12
Speaker 2: really make him look like a grown up man at all.
8:17
Speaker 1: Despite his youthful features, Armstrong was over six foot tall
8:21
Speaker 1: with a large build.
8:23
Speaker 4: It was while.
8:24
Speaker 1: Aboard the USS limits that Armstrong met the woman he
8:28
Speaker 1: would go on to marry. After both being honorably discharged
8:32
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine, the couple moved to Michigan to
8:35
Speaker 1: start their married life and raise their first child, and.
8:41
Speaker 6: So they settled into a city in Metro de Trade
8:45
Speaker 6: on the west side of metrody Trade called Dearborn Heights,
8:48
Speaker 6: and they lived with her parents for a while.
8:52
Speaker 1: Armstrong started working for a chain of retail stores, then
8:57
Speaker 1: later as a security guard, and then fueling aeroplanes at
9:01
Speaker 1: Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
9:05
Speaker 7: Seems like Armstrong may not have enable to find his
9:08
Speaker 7: way at least voccasionally in a career.
9:12
Speaker 1: Those around Armstrong just saw him as any other guy
9:16
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood.
9:18
Speaker 3: One lady said, I used to get a ride home
9:20
Speaker 3: with him or ride to work, and.
9:22
Speaker 8: She was just the nicest guy.
9:24
Speaker 2: He was a nice neighbor, a good friend, a good father,
9:29
Speaker 2: apparently according to his neighbors. And yet he had this
9:33
Speaker 2: completely other side, this classic Jacqueline hide approach, particularly to women.
9:40
Speaker 7: Beyond this normal life appeared to be a facade, and
9:43
Speaker 7: behind that facade, Armstrong was going out and engaging in
9:47
Speaker 7: activity like having sex on a regular basis with sex workers.
9:52
Speaker 9: He has got a bad attitude, misogynistic attitude towards women,
9:58
Speaker 9: So I think we can kind of see where it's
10:01
Speaker 9: coming from with him.
10:04
Speaker 1: John Eric Armstrong wasn't the loving family man he was
10:08
Speaker 1: portraying to those around him. He was living a double
10:12
Speaker 1: life filled with dark secrets, one that would soon be exposed.
10:17
Speaker 1: Armstrong's preferred haunt for picking up sex workers was in
10:21
Speaker 1: downtown Detroit, around ten miles from his family home.
10:27
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, prostitution has always thrived in Detroit, and the area
10:32
Speaker 6: of Michigan Avenue has always been a hot spot for prostitution.
10:38
Speaker 1: Kyle James Kassaries was a child when his mum, Kelly
10:42
Speaker 1: jean Hood, began working on the streets in the nineteen nineties.
10:46
Speaker 1: Kelly started taking drugs following the death of her father
10:51
Speaker 1: and was trying to fund her addiction through sex work.
10:55
Speaker 5: She was actually very close to my grandfather and when
10:59
Speaker 5: he passed way she couldn't deal with the pain. My mom,
11:06
Speaker 5: before the drugs and even after the drugs, was one
11:09
Speaker 5: of the most kind hearted persons you could ever meet.
11:12
Speaker 8: We were her world.
11:13
Speaker 5: She made sure we had a good childhood at best
11:16
Speaker 5: she could given what she could.
11:20
Speaker 7: It's you know, a very common motivation of sex workers
11:24
Speaker 7: is to engage in prostitution to raise money to support
11:28
Speaker 7: their drug habit.
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Speaker 1: Despite his young age, Kyle worked out how his mom
11:32
Speaker 1: was earning the money to pay for her addiction.
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Speaker 5: I was with her all the time, and I knew
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Speaker 5: the people she hung out with, and I would just
11:42
Speaker 5: see them around the neighborhood and what they were doing,
11:44
Speaker 5: and I just connected the dots. I was worried, but
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Speaker 5: it was nothing I can do. She was a grown
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Speaker 5: woman and she was my mother, and I felt like
11:52
Speaker 5: I needed protect her all the time.
11:54
Speaker 1: Kelly jean Hood was one of many women selling sex
11:58
Speaker 1: in the Detroit area. At the time, Natasha Olenijak was
12:03
Speaker 1: also working in the same area.
12:05
Speaker 10: I wasn't on the street for the drugs.
12:07
Speaker 11: I was in the street for money, fast money, seeing
12:11
Speaker 11: nice cars, clothes, mink coats, stuff like that. And I
12:16
Speaker 11: don't know, I just fell in the trap. I always
12:21
Speaker 11: had jobs and everything. I just wanted to do something
12:24
Speaker 11: to get quicker money than I did.
12:26
Speaker 1: The nature of the industry means that sex workers often
12:31
Speaker 1: operate in secluded and dark areas, making them extremely vulnerable
12:36
Speaker 1: to predators.
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Speaker 9: Sex workers are at a huge risk of serious harm
12:44
Speaker 9: and homicide. I mean mainly because of their accessibility. Sex
12:49
Speaker 9: workers are easy to get into a place on your own,
12:55
Speaker 9: no questions asked.
12:57
Speaker 6: And because they want the money, they'll they'll go with
13:01
Speaker 6: you to a dark place where no one else is around.
13:04
Speaker 6: It is a very risky business. They're living a very
13:07
Speaker 6: high risk life.
13:10
Speaker 1: One night in August nineteen ninety nine, Natasha was working
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Speaker 1: a shift on the usual streets. Unbeknown to the sex
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Speaker 1: workers in the area, there was a deadly predator on
13:20
Speaker 1: the loose and he was out that night looking for
13:23
Speaker 1: his next victim.
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Speaker 10: I went on eight Mile Road.
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Speaker 11: He was in a jeep and he circled one time,
13:34
Speaker 11: then he circled again. He put up and he asked
13:39
Speaker 11: me for a day, and I said yeah. Then I
13:43
Speaker 11: got in the truck. He was big, he was byheaded
13:49
Speaker 11: at the time.
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Speaker 10: He was tall.
13:52
Speaker 11: He wore glasses, yep, and you could he was a
13:58
Speaker 11: big guy.
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Speaker 10: He wasn't little. I didn't feel uncomfortable with him or anything.
14:03
Speaker 10: You know. I wasn't nervous or nothing.
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Speaker 1: Natasha was staying in a motel room close to the
14:10
Speaker 1: red light area, so the pair headed there.
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Speaker 6: He got inside the room and he just was feeling uneasy.
14:20
Speaker 6: He asked to use the bathroom. He used the bathroom,
14:22
Speaker 6: he came out and he said, I just don't really
14:24
Speaker 6: feel right.
14:25
Speaker 4: I gotta leave, and he leaves.
14:27
Speaker 7: She goes into her room. A little while later, there's
14:30
Speaker 7: a knock on her door.
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Speaker 4: She opens the door. It's that guy.
14:35
Speaker 10: I should have never opened the door.
14:37
Speaker 11: I should have just said never mind, but I didn't
14:40
Speaker 11: think he was gonna come back.
14:42
Speaker 1: Opening the door to let the client back in turned
14:45
Speaker 1: out to be a decision that Natasha would soon regret.
14:49
Speaker 10: He came in.
14:50
Speaker 11: Then that's when he slammed my door, and he's like
14:51
Speaker 11: don't scream, don't yell, because that's when he had the knife,
14:54
Speaker 11: some sharp, big ones and I was like, oh my god,
14:57
Speaker 11: you can have all my money, whatever, my whatever.
15:01
Speaker 1: But the attacker wasn't interested in taking Natasha's money. He
15:05
Speaker 1: wanted to take her life.
15:08
Speaker 10: He said he was.
15:12
Speaker 11: Going to kill me, and I was like, don't kill me.
15:17
Speaker 10: I got kids. He came in with his knife at.
15:20
Speaker 11: Me, my foot, nag my eyes, my toes, my fingers.
15:26
Speaker 10: It just blood everywhere because he cut me. Then I
15:30
Speaker 10: was on the bed, like laying down.
15:33
Speaker 11: He had his body on me, and then he grabbed
15:35
Speaker 11: the telephone cord and wrapped it around my neck like
15:40
Speaker 11: five times and was like choking.
15:45
Speaker 1: The asphyxiation caused Natasha to pass out. When she regained consciousness,
15:52
Speaker 1: her attacker was gone.
15:55
Speaker 11: I went out to the ran out of the motel
15:57
Speaker 11: room and said I need help, I need help. I
16:00
Speaker 11: was almost This guy just tried to kill me, and
16:03
Speaker 11: then that's when the police came.
16:06
Speaker 1: The police interviewed Natasha, but her description of the attacker
16:11
Speaker 1: wasn't enough on its own.
16:14
Speaker 7: It's very difficult for the police to follow up on
16:16
Speaker 7: any kind of attack like this because there's so little
16:19
Speaker 7: to go on about who this person is.
16:22
Speaker 11: And after that happened, I said I can get out
16:25
Speaker 11: and I had to get Colson stuff because I got
16:29
Speaker 11: dinosal PTSD.
16:36
Speaker 1: Less than four months later, on December the second, nineteen
16:40
Speaker 1: ninety nine, another woman who was targeted. Thirty one year
16:45
Speaker 1: old sex worker Monica Johnson, was driven to work on
16:48
Speaker 1: Michigan Avenue by her boyfriend. The couple parked up on
16:53
Speaker 1: a side street just off the notorious red light strip.
16:57
Speaker 7: And he stayed in his car while she walked to
17:00
Speaker 7: how much you can have in you to do some business?
17:02
Speaker 4: And that's the last ye iver saw of her.
17:05
Speaker 1: Monica had been picked up by a man on Michigan
17:08
Speaker 1: Avenue and they'd driven away from the area to have
17:11
Speaker 1: their sexual encounter.
17:13
Speaker 6: And it was just a short, little kind of secluded area,
17:17
Speaker 6: a short little service drive, and they parked along there
17:20
Speaker 6: near an alley and they carried out a transaction.
17:24
Speaker 1: But then things took a dark turn when the man
17:28
Speaker 1: Monica was with attacked and strangled her. A passer by
17:32
Speaker 1: found her still alive hours later and called for an ambulance, and.
17:37
Speaker 6: The ambulance came and they picked her up and they
17:40
Speaker 6: took her to the hospital, but by the time they
17:43
Speaker 6: got there, she had died.
17:45
Speaker 1: With no eyewitnesses or CCTV of the attack on Monica Johnson,
17:51
Speaker 1: the police had no leads and very little to progress
17:54
Speaker 1: their investigation, nor had they identified any suspects for the
17:59
Speaker 1: attack on several other sex workers in Detroit in nineteen
18:03
Speaker 1: ninety nine. Monica's killer was still on the loose in Detroit,
18:08
Speaker 1: and he could strike again at any moment.
18:11
Speaker 2: So when we get into the beginning of two thousands,
18:15
Speaker 2: the turn of the millennium, he escalates really quite quickly.
18:22
Speaker 2: He cannot give up the compulsion to have sex with
18:25
Speaker 2: sex workers and kill them.
18:29
Speaker 1: Thirty nine year old Wendy Jordan was known to the
18:32
Speaker 1: police as a sex worker in the Red light area
18:35
Speaker 1: of Detroit. On January the first, two thousand, Wendy got
18:40
Speaker 1: into the car of a man who wanted to pay
18:43
Speaker 1: for her services.
18:46
Speaker 6: He was on Warren Avenue in Detroit, and he picked
18:49
Speaker 6: Wendy up and he took her to this side street
18:53
Speaker 6: that was right next to a funeral home, and they
18:56
Speaker 6: parked in the parking lot of this funeral home and
18:59
Speaker 6: they did with their transaction, and then he killed her
19:03
Speaker 6: and he drove with her in the jeep a few
19:06
Speaker 6: miles away, and he pulled over and dumped her over
19:10
Speaker 6: a bridge into the Rouge River on ann Arbor Trail,
19:15
Speaker 6: and then he went home.
19:18
Speaker 1: When his body had been left in Dearborn Heights, the
19:21
Speaker 1: home of John Eric Armstrong and his family. Since leaving
19:26
Speaker 1: the Army less than a year earlier and moving to
19:29
Speaker 1: the area, Armstrong had changed jobs a number of times.
19:34
Speaker 1: On January the second, two thousand, Armstrong set off for
19:37
Speaker 1: work at a retail store.
19:41
Speaker 7: At some point in the morning, Armstrong reported feeling sick
19:44
Speaker 7: and he told his boss he had to leave work,
19:46
Speaker 7: at which time he drove away, apparently on.
19:49
Speaker 4: His way home.
19:50
Speaker 7: On his way home, Armstrong pulls over on the bridge
19:54
Speaker 7: over the Rouge River and says he did that because
19:58
Speaker 7: he felt so well he was going to vomit.
20:00
Speaker 4: Over the bridge.
20:01
Speaker 1: Armstrong looked down at the river Rouge below.
20:05
Speaker 3: It's maybe at that point fifty yards wide, six or
20:09
Speaker 3: eight feet deep at the most, and it it runs
20:14
Speaker 3: for miles, but there's not a real strong current. It
20:18
Speaker 3: was January and it was.
20:20
Speaker 6: Still frozen, and so he looks over the bridge and
20:23
Speaker 6: he sees this woman.
20:24
Speaker 1: It was the body of Wendy Jordan, who'd been left
20:27
Speaker 1: there the previous day. Armstrong flagged down a passer by
20:31
Speaker 1: to call the police.
20:34
Speaker 4: And there's a dead body in the river. Yeah, I
20:37
Speaker 4: think he got raped naked, got a quote with Bob.
20:40
Speaker 2: He phones them up, and of course the body is discovered.
20:45
Speaker 2: It is indeed Wendy Jordan.
20:46
Speaker 1: The police arrived at the scene, and Armstrong told them
20:50
Speaker 1: that he'd left work early because he was feeling ill
20:53
Speaker 1: and had been driving home.
20:55
Speaker 2: But the police regarded and I quite agree with them,
20:58
Speaker 2: as the most peculiar. He just happened to stop on
21:02
Speaker 2: the bridge and he just happened to look over and
21:03
Speaker 2: he just happened.
21:04
Speaker 4: To see a body. Goodness me.
21:06
Speaker 2: I mean, it almost defies belief, doesn't it.
21:09
Speaker 4: To be honest.
21:11
Speaker 1: Detectives wondered if there was more to the discovery than
21:15
Speaker 1: Armstrong had told them. But if he was involved in
21:19
Speaker 1: any way, why would he have alerted the police.
21:24
Speaker 9: He said he could see a body floating in the
21:27
Speaker 9: river and it was all innocent.
21:30
Speaker 6: Why would he do that?
21:31
Speaker 9: This a really it seems like it would go against
21:35
Speaker 9: everything that you think that he would do. You would
21:38
Speaker 9: think that he would want to get away with it.
21:41
Speaker 9: You think he'd want to stay under the radar.
21:44
Speaker 7: Based on the unusual nature of Armstrong being in that
21:48
Speaker 7: place at that time, the police bring him down for
21:50
Speaker 7: additional questioning to the police station, during which he maintains
21:54
Speaker 7: that he has no connection to this person. He didn't
21:56
Speaker 7: know who they are, why they were there, and he
21:58
Speaker 7: stuck to his story that he felt second left work.
22:02
Speaker 4: Over and then when I leave over.
22:08
Speaker 8: I caught something.
22:09
Speaker 10: I looked over.
22:09
Speaker 2: She was.
22:11
Speaker 4: It seems unusual that you picked the object fire that
22:15
Speaker 4: would that would leave you to be looking over the.
22:16
Speaker 10: End wish was.
22:19
Speaker 1: With her.
22:20
Speaker 12: I never saw her, never seen her. I'm sorry that
22:26
Speaker 12: not knowing anything. Yea knowing anything, maybe something that you
22:33
Speaker 12: want to tell us, And I didn't know that.
22:35
Speaker 5: She wasn't in two and you.
22:37
Speaker 4: Just pull up and you're going to throw up and.
22:38
Speaker 10: See land down it.
22:40
Speaker 12: I had to vote, yes, I had to.
22:44
Speaker 1: Armstrong had placed himself directly into the murder inquiry, but
22:48
Speaker 1: with no grounds to detain him, police let him leave.
22:51
Speaker 1: His account of what happened had raised their suspicions, and
22:55
Speaker 1: they decided to investigate Armstrong further.
22:58
Speaker 6: Dearborn Heights had impecked and they don't get a whole
23:02
Speaker 6: lot of homicides like Detroit does, and so they dug
23:06
Speaker 6: into this one and they hung on. They followed him around.
23:10
Speaker 4: They even asked to search his car, which he consented to.
23:13
Speaker 7: So they did a forensic examination of his car, which
23:15
Speaker 7: they do tape lifts of They try to see if
23:18
Speaker 7: through his fingerprints or DNA or blood inside the.
23:20
Speaker 6: Car, and one of the officers happened to notice in
23:24
Speaker 6: the search of the jeep that he saw what he
23:27
Speaker 6: believed were little specs or residue that were gold in
23:33
Speaker 6: color that matched the shoes that Wendy was wearing.
23:37
Speaker 2: Within the car, there was forensic evidence that Wendy Jordan
23:40
Speaker 2: had been in it, which pointed even more conclusively to
23:43
Speaker 2: the fact that he'd not only known had her in
23:46
Speaker 2: the car, and thrown her out into the river.
23:49
Speaker 6: They got a warrant for his blood and saliva and
23:52
Speaker 6: they did DNA testing, and then they did DNA testing
23:55
Speaker 6: from Wendy's body.
23:57
Speaker 1: Conclusive DNA evidence could give the police enough to link
24:01
Speaker 1: Armstrong to the murder of Wendy Jordan, but this wouldn't
24:05
Speaker 1: be a quick process.
24:07
Speaker 3: DNA really came onder the criminal investigation scene in the
24:10
Speaker 3: late eighties, so it was relatively new.
24:14
Speaker 7: They didn't have the technology that we have today to
24:18
Speaker 7: both get DNA and analyze even a good DNA sample.
24:22
Speaker 1: It could take months for the DNA results to come back.
24:26
Speaker 1: The police would have to wait for those before they
24:28
Speaker 1: could take any further action against Armstrong.
24:32
Speaker 3: Than the prosecutor ordered inim release until such time as
24:36
Speaker 3: they had the results from the DNA lab.
24:38
Speaker 7: At this point, the police look at Armstrong and he's
24:41
Speaker 7: a former military service member who got out of the
24:44
Speaker 7: service and got a decent job and settled with a
24:46
Speaker 7: wife and family, and so his daily life doesn't seem
24:50
Speaker 7: to indicate a killer.
24:53
Speaker 1: It would be an agonizing wait for investigators. Meanwhile, John
24:58
Speaker 1: Edick Armstrong remained free to roam the streets of Detroit.
25:03
Speaker 1: Three months after Wendy Jordan's body was discovered, forty two
25:07
Speaker 1: year old Wilhelmina Draine was on Michigan Avenue.
25:12
Speaker 6: She said she was trying to catch a bus home
25:15
Speaker 6: and she was an older lady.
25:16
Speaker 1: A vehicle pulled up alongside her, and the man driving
25:20
Speaker 1: asked her if she needed a lift.
25:23
Speaker 6: And they start to travel long and she instructs him
25:28
Speaker 6: how to take her home, which was north of Michigan.
25:30
Speaker 6: She lived like off Joy Road, and he traveled north,
25:33
Speaker 6: but he didn't make the turn he was supposed to make,
25:36
Speaker 6: and he turned somewhere else and he pulled over and
25:40
Speaker 6: he reached for her.
25:42
Speaker 7: Well, she spraised him with mace and she's able to escape.
25:50
Speaker 1: Five days later, on April the seventh, two thousand, sex
25:54
Speaker 1: worker Devin Marcus survived an attack and reported the incident
25:58
Speaker 1: to the police. Around the same time, another sex worker
26:02
Speaker 1: called Cynthia was attacked by a man fitting the same
26:06
Speaker 1: description as the other two incidents.
26:10
Speaker 2: He left her for dead, but in fact she wasn't dead.
26:14
Speaker 2: She survived.
26:15
Speaker 1: The attacker was showing no signs of slowing down.
26:19
Speaker 6: We've got Wilhelmina, We've got Devon, We've got Cynthia, who
26:22
Speaker 6: were attacked and survived. And he was escalating. He was
26:25
Speaker 6: definitely escalating. I mean once he kicked back in the
26:27
Speaker 6: gear in mid March, he escalated. Boom boom, boom boom.
26:31
Speaker 1: On April tenth, two thousand, the police received a phone call.
26:38
Speaker 1: Somebody thought they saw a body on the side of
26:41
Speaker 1: a railroad track as they were passing through.
26:44
Speaker 3: I was the commanding officer of the Violent Crime Section
26:48
Speaker 3: of the Detroit Police Department, composed of the Violent Crime
26:51
Speaker 3: Task Force, the Fugitive Apprehension Team, and the Crime Analysis Team.
26:58
Speaker 3: Of that, he tried policed Park every Monday morning. We
27:02
Speaker 3: would have a briefing. While we were in that meeting,
27:07
Speaker 3: the head of Homsheid Division got a message to call
27:13
Speaker 3: the office.
27:15
Speaker 1: Jerry Cliff passed the news onto his colleague Del Christian,
27:19
Speaker 1: a team leader on the Violent Crime Task Force.
27:23
Speaker 13: The commander from the Foy Police Department came through and says, hey,
27:27
Speaker 13: they found a body over by the railroad tracks. It's
27:30
Speaker 13: just a track that just goes through. It's a single
27:33
Speaker 13: track in that area that's used by one of the
27:35
Speaker 13: passenger rails and also freight and a passenger on the
27:41
Speaker 13: train that looked out the window and saw the body
27:44
Speaker 13: told the conductor, I think I just saw a body
27:47
Speaker 13: on the track, and the conductor contacted the police department.
27:51
Speaker 1: Not long after this report came through to the police,
27:54
Speaker 1: there was more news to follow.
27:57
Speaker 6: As they walk around the area, they discover a second body.
28:01
Speaker 8: And he came back and he said, there's two bodies.
28:05
Speaker 3: At the scene and they're in different states of decomposition.
28:11
Speaker 6: They walk around further and unfortunately third body, and so
28:15
Speaker 6: they realized, okay, this is very bad. These three females
28:20
Speaker 6: were probably left here by the same person.
28:23
Speaker 1: With three dead bodies found in the same location, police
28:26
Speaker 1: had to act fuss to establish what had happened to
28:29
Speaker 1: these women.
28:31
Speaker 8: There was one victim.
28:32
Speaker 3: She was lying ten or fifteen yards away from the
28:36
Speaker 3: tracks themselves on grass and gravel, but not concealed at
28:42
Speaker 3: all in brush or anything like that. She had her
28:46
Speaker 3: pants down around her ankles, She had her legs had
28:49
Speaker 3: been spread in a revealing manner.
28:52
Speaker 8: I guess you would say.
28:53
Speaker 3: There was what appeared to be tights of some sort
28:56
Speaker 3: wrapped around her neck, so you could tell that she'd
28:59
Speaker 3: obviously been raped and strangled.
29:03
Speaker 8: As we watched further would have been north.
29:08
Speaker 3: There was a lot of brush, and that's where the
29:12
Speaker 3: second and the third bodies were found.
29:15
Speaker 9: The bodies weren't very well hidden, So this isn't somebody
29:19
Speaker 9: who's done what they've done and they're leaving the scene.
29:23
Speaker 9: So we have to assume that the killer knows these
29:27
Speaker 9: bodies will be found, wants them to be found. In fact,
29:31
Speaker 9: they want to display what they've done to the world.
29:37
Speaker 1: The victims all had ligature marks around their necks showing
29:41
Speaker 1: that they'd been strangled. Their bodies had also been posed
29:47
Speaker 1: by their killer.
29:48
Speaker 9: I don't think that somebody who does that to women
29:54
Speaker 9: has got great relationships with women, probably struggles in relations
30:00
Speaker 9: ships with them and feels an awful lot of resentment
30:03
Speaker 9: towards women. I mean, the misogyny of it, just it's
30:08
Speaker 9: probably the loudest message that you can get from something
30:11
Speaker 9: like that. It's wanting to degrade and humiliate the victims.
30:18
Speaker 1: This was a man taking pleasure in killing and demeaning women.
30:23
Speaker 13: Once we realize, oh, we have a what i'd call
30:26
Speaker 13: it dumping ground for the bodies.
30:29
Speaker 8: We knew we had a serial.
30:30
Speaker 3: Murderer, we mobilize pretty much everybody that we had.
30:34
Speaker 8: Didn't take us long to realize that.
30:36
Speaker 3: This guy was a very prolific killer and that we
30:40
Speaker 3: needed to get him off the straight as soon as
30:41
Speaker 3: humanly possible before somebody else died.
30:44
Speaker 7: Now you have multiple victims, you have future victims that
30:47
Speaker 7: may happen unless you catch this person, because they're not
30:50
Speaker 7: going to stop killing until you catch them.
30:55
Speaker 1: Over eight months in nineteen ninety nine and two thousand,
30:59
Speaker 1: a space of acts and murders that happened in the
31:02
Speaker 1: Detroit area of Michigan. It was clear to police that
31:06
Speaker 1: a serial killer was loose on the streets, attacking and
31:10
Speaker 1: murdering women at an increasing rate. Detectives knew they needed
31:14
Speaker 1: to act fast.
31:17
Speaker 7: Now this ops everything in the police mind. The investigation
31:21
Speaker 7: immediately takes on a different tenor.
31:24
Speaker 3: This is obviously a serial because you could tell by
31:27
Speaker 3: looking at the three parties that they were in different
31:29
Speaker 3: states of decomposition.
31:31
Speaker 8: And it's going to be the only case that we're
31:32
Speaker 8: going to.
31:33
Speaker 3: Be dealing with for the next few days until we
31:35
Speaker 3: get the bad gag.
31:36
Speaker 1: The race to catch the killer was on, but with
31:39
Speaker 1: limited evidence and no leads, the investigators had little to
31:43
Speaker 1: go on. They needed to identify the three women and
31:47
Speaker 1: work out a possible connection between them in the hope
31:50
Speaker 1: that it might lead the police to their killer.
31:55
Speaker 3: As we were able to identify the victims, we also
31:58
Speaker 3: found out that there had been previous arrests for or
32:02
Speaker 3: encounters with the law concerning prostitution and whatnot.
32:08
Speaker 2: One was called Robin Brown, also known as Nicole Young,
32:13
Speaker 2: one was Rosemarie Felt, and the last was called Kelly.
32:18
Speaker 1: Hood for Kellyhood's son Kyle. His worst fears for his
32:26
Speaker 1: mother had come true.
32:28
Speaker 5: I heard my grandmother coming up the stairs, and the
32:30
Speaker 5: first thing she told me before anyway, she said, Mi ko,
32:33
Speaker 5: they found her mom. She's not here with us anymore.
32:36
Speaker 5: They found her. She's gone. And then I knew then
32:39
Speaker 5: that they she meant she was dead.
32:42
Speaker 8: She became addicted to drugs.
32:44
Speaker 3: The only way that she could support herself after her
32:46
Speaker 3: family broke up was to work the street. She didn't
32:49
Speaker 3: become addicted because she wanted to. She wasn't working the
32:52
Speaker 3: street because she wanted to. She was working the street
32:53
Speaker 3: to support the habit she had no control over.
33:00
Speaker 1: Police had identified the victims were all sex workers, but
33:04
Speaker 1: specialist help would be needed to track down their killer.
33:09
Speaker 1: FBI profilers got to work on building a picture of
33:13
Speaker 1: the offender.
33:14
Speaker 7: The profile will come in, Look at all the victims,
33:16
Speaker 7: look at the victimology. What commonalities among these victims, among
33:19
Speaker 7: the way they were posed, among the way they were killed,
33:23
Speaker 7: and maybe even if you can figure out the way
33:25
Speaker 7: they met the person that killed them.
33:28
Speaker 2: Looking at the crime, the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit suggested
33:34
Speaker 2: that the crimes have been committed by white man compared
33:38
Speaker 2: toly Young twenty five to thirty.
33:41
Speaker 3: They told us, you're looking at his successors. You need
33:46
Speaker 3: to look for a failure, and by that they meant
33:50
Speaker 3: somebody got away, and if we could find that somebody,
33:54
Speaker 3: we would get a physical description, maybe a vehicle description,
33:57
Speaker 3: so on and so forth.
33:59
Speaker 1: Having identify the women as sex workers, police knew they
34:03
Speaker 1: needed to interview women in the red light area in
34:06
Speaker 1: the hope of getting much needed information.
34:11
Speaker 13: Well, from two or three of the girls that were interviewed,
34:15
Speaker 13: they mentioned that yes, eGate Trader kill me.
34:17
Speaker 8: He was waving eg Another one.
34:20
Speaker 13: Said that he had a tiger tattoo on his arm,
34:23
Speaker 13: that he was a white male with reddish hair. Another
34:26
Speaker 13: one said he had a work shirt with the name
34:28
Speaker 13: Eric on it.
34:29
Speaker 1: The reports all seemed to point to the same offender.
34:33
Speaker 3: So we realized that the next thing that he would
34:35
Speaker 3: do is find another victim.
34:37
Speaker 1: In the hope of stopping the killer in his tracks,
34:40
Speaker 1: Detroit's Violent Crime Task Force set up covert surveillance on
34:45
Speaker 1: Michigan Avenue and the surrounding streets.
34:48
Speaker 7: Now you have potentially a predator hunting victims through this area,
34:52
Speaker 7: and you can't afford to miss that.
34:54
Speaker 3: We basically flooded the area with surveillance crews and detectives
35:00
Speaker 3: in plane closed not business suits but you know, jeans
35:04
Speaker 3: and jackets, and basically patrolled looking for someone fitting his description.
35:11
Speaker 1: They didn't want the killer to realize that the police
35:14
Speaker 1: were onto him. Any suspicion they were looking for him
35:18
Speaker 1: could scare the killer off and prevent him from being caught.
35:23
Speaker 7: So during this time in this area, an actual marked
35:27
Speaker 7: uniform patrol car noticed a car with a guy in
35:31
Speaker 7: it that might have matched the description of the profile,
35:34
Speaker 7: and so they do a routine car stop so they
35:37
Speaker 7: can identify and get his driver's license, get his day
35:39
Speaker 7: of birth, run him through the system to see if
35:41
Speaker 7: anybody's looking for him.
35:42
Speaker 4: Who is this guy?
35:45
Speaker 1: The driver of the vehicle was John Eddie Armstrong. Dearborn Heights.
35:50
Speaker 1: Were waiting for DNA results to establish a link to
35:53
Speaker 1: the merger of Wendy Jordan, but Armstrong was unknown to
35:57
Speaker 1: the officers in neighboring Detroit.
36:01
Speaker 6: He said he was coming home from work. Well, his
36:03
Speaker 6: work was in the other direction. He lived in Dearborn Heights.
36:07
Speaker 6: He worked over in that direction. He was a long
36:10
Speaker 6: way from home.
36:11
Speaker 1: Based on the matching description of Armstrong's story not adding up,
36:16
Speaker 1: police arrested him for further questioning, but before they could
36:20
Speaker 1: get to the station, there was a shock in store
36:22
Speaker 1: for the officers.
36:24
Speaker 7: The officers that are driving him hear him muttering in
36:27
Speaker 7: the back seat under his breath, and he's saying, kind
36:30
Speaker 7: of in a low voice, I'm just glad it's over.
36:33
Speaker 4: I'm glad you got me.
36:35
Speaker 3: He was taken straight down to the fifth floor police headquarters,
36:38
Speaker 3: and that's when the interviews began.
36:41
Speaker 1: As the officers talked to Armstrong, one of them leaned
36:45
Speaker 1: forward and put his hand on top of Armstrong's.
36:49
Speaker 8: He says, I just touched you.
36:51
Speaker 3: He says, I left my DNA on your body simply
36:56
Speaker 3: by laying my hand on yours.
36:58
Speaker 8: And that's when they began to.
37:01
Speaker 3: Explain to him, you know, if you had anything to
37:05
Speaker 3: do with the murders and you touched them in any way,
37:09
Speaker 3: we're gonna be able to tell there is absolutely no
37:12
Speaker 3: way that you're going to plead that you didn't touch
37:15
Speaker 3: them if we get this DNA analysis that proves.
37:18
Speaker 8: That you did.
37:19
Speaker 6: And all of a sudden, he just started, Okay, I
37:21
Speaker 6: did it, I did it. I did it. Then he
37:23
Speaker 6: started making all of his confessions, and one right after
37:27
Speaker 6: another a lot of confessions. For several hours.
37:30
Speaker 1: John Edick Armstrong confessed to the murders of the three
37:34
Speaker 1: women found at the rail yard, Nicole Young, Rosemary Felt,
37:38
Speaker 1: and Kelly Jean Hood.
37:40
Speaker 7: Also during this time, in this confession, he confessed to
37:43
Speaker 7: the murder of Wendy Jordan off the Roosebridge. He knew
37:47
Speaker 7: that he was a suspect in that case, so it
37:50
Speaker 7: was time to confess to that.
37:58
Speaker 1: But Armstrong's confession I'd only just begun.
38:03
Speaker 3: He actually went through a list of a number of
38:09
Speaker 3: females that he had murdered while he was on the
38:13
Speaker 3: USS Nimics aircraft carrier in multiple foreign countries. Anytime he
38:19
Speaker 3: was on shortly, if he would go ashore, and quite
38:23
Speaker 3: often he would find a prostitute and go through his
38:27
Speaker 3: routine rape and murder, and you know, sometimes he would
38:32
Speaker 3: dispose of the bodies and sometimes he.
38:33
Speaker 8: Would just leave them.
38:35
Speaker 6: You're talking Singapore, You're talking, you know, Hong Kong and
38:41
Speaker 6: all these exotic low pals that his boat traveled to
38:44
Speaker 6: while he was in the Navy.
38:46
Speaker 7: At this point, FBI officials begin to investigate Armstrong's claims
38:51
Speaker 7: of all these other murders internationally, because if it is true,
38:54
Speaker 7: he's going to be one of the most prolific, well
38:56
Speaker 7: traveled here killers in history. And so they start to
38:59
Speaker 7: look into all of these things that he's telling them
39:03
Speaker 7: in other jurisdiction. Some of his descriptions aren't definitive enough.
39:07
Speaker 7: So when they look the dates don't match up. It
39:09
Speaker 7: could be he's told the truth, he just didn't give
39:11
Speaker 7: them enough details.
39:14
Speaker 1: In March two thousand and one, twenty seven year old
39:18
Speaker 1: John Eric Armstrong went on trial for the murder of
39:22
Speaker 1: Wendy Jordan at the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in
39:26
Speaker 1: downtown Detroit. To the surprise of those involved in the investigation,
39:32
Speaker 1: and despite his earlier confessions, Armstrong changed his story.
39:37
Speaker 6: By the time he was brought up on charges and
39:40
Speaker 6: things were proceeding through the court system, he was maintaining
39:44
Speaker 6: his innocence.
39:45
Speaker 1: During the trial, DNA and forensic evidence was presented to
39:49
Speaker 1: the jury. Fibers from Wendy Jordan's clothes had been found
39:53
Speaker 1: in Armstrong's vehicle, and the results of the DNA taken
39:57
Speaker 1: by the Dearborn Heights Police had back the seaman found
40:02
Speaker 1: inside Wendy's body was John Eric Armstrong's.
40:07
Speaker 6: And so in the case of Wendy Jordan. His attorney.
40:10
Speaker 6: One of the tactics he tried was that, Okay, you
40:14
Speaker 6: got DNA evidence and it's linked my client to Wendy Jordan's. So, yeah,
40:18
Speaker 6: they had sex that night, but it was consensual and
40:21
Speaker 6: when he left her she was alive, so somebody else
40:23
Speaker 6: killed her.
40:24
Speaker 1: The jury didn't believe this excuse. On the third of
40:28
Speaker 1: April two thousand and one, after a two week trial,
40:31
Speaker 1: John Eric Armstrong was found guilty of the first degree
40:35
Speaker 1: murder of Wendy Jordan and given a life sentence. On
40:40
Speaker 1: the eighteenth of June two thousand and one, he was
40:43
Speaker 1: also found guilty of the first degree murder of Kelly
40:46
Speaker 1: Jean Hood and given another life sentence.
40:50
Speaker 5: She was a wife, a mother, a daughter, and she
40:54
Speaker 5: was a human being that deserved to live and deserved
40:57
Speaker 5: to come back from her addiction. If he didn't take
41:00
Speaker 5: her life, I know she would have came around, because
41:04
Speaker 5: everybody can overcome an addiction.
41:09
Speaker 1: On July the fourth, two thousand and one, Armstrong pleaded
41:13
Speaker 1: guilty to the second degree murder of Robin Brown, Rosemary Felt,
41:18
Speaker 1: and Monica Johnson. He was sentenced to an additional thirty
41:22
Speaker 1: one years Armstrong was never charged with the attack on
41:26
Speaker 1: Natasha o'lenichak, but she is certain he was the man
41:29
Speaker 1: who attacked her in August nineteen ninety nine.
41:35
Speaker 11: He was wrong for doing what he's done in period.
41:39
Speaker 11: I don't even know how someone could just be at
41:42
Speaker 11: home with their wife and killing women.
41:46
Speaker 10: How can you just go out and do that.
41:49
Speaker 1: Armstrong was taken to the g. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility
41:53
Speaker 1: in Michigan to serve his sentence.
41:57
Speaker 3: I've worked other serial investigations in One of the things
42:00
Speaker 3: that you learn when you're doing that is serial.
42:02
Speaker 8: Criminals don't just stop whinning.
42:05
Speaker 3: If they get back into polite society, they're going to
42:07
Speaker 3: start up all over again.
42:09
Speaker 11: If he could, he would still be doing it. If
42:11
Speaker 11: they let him out, he wouldn't do it again.
42:15
Speaker 3: Armstrong was, in my humble opinion, the personification of evil.
42:22
Speaker 3: He had no remorse whatsoever for what he was doing.
42:25
Speaker 3: He knew what he was doing was wrong, He knew
42:27
Speaker 3: he was taking lives. He was a manipulator, and he
42:32
Speaker 3: would do it until we stopped him.
42:35
Speaker 1: The lives that Armstrong took before being caught will always
42:39
Speaker 1: be remembered by their loved ones who bear the pain
42:43
Speaker 1: to this day.
42:45
Speaker 5: My impression of John Eric Armstrong, He's just a monster.
42:47
Speaker 5: He's killed off women, so it was natural to him.
42:53
Speaker 5: Only person that that type of life, though that could
42:56
Speaker 5: be natural to as a monster, plain and simple.
43:07
Speaker 1: Armstrong killed five women in Michigan and violently attacked many more.
43:13
Speaker 1: He also claims to have murdered women all over the
43:16
Speaker 1: world when he was in the Navy. If true, John
43:20
Speaker 1: Eric Armstrong is one of the most globally prolific serial
43:24
Speaker 1: killers to ever exist, and will forever be known as
43:29
Speaker 1: one of the world's most evil killers.