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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast, the podcast dedicated to serial killers, who they were, what they did, and how.
I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Weyborg Thun. And tonight, dear listener, a fresh Serial Killer Expo say. As we travel from the limelight and fame surrounding the serial killer superstar Ted Bundy and into the dark underbelly that is the world of American serial killers whose exploits are largely overlooked by the hungry mass media.
Tonight, we take a closer look at a man whose acts are just as depraved as those of Bundy, Raider, Dahmer, and Gacy, but for some reason, his name has remained almost anonymous. His name is John Eric Armstrong, and he murdered at least five women, perhaps as many as thirty.
Please check out my fan page on Facebook. Go to facebook.com slash the SK podcast for discussion, bonus content and frequent interaction with me, your humble host.
Also, feel free to visit my website at theserialkillerpodcast.com and of course, my Patreon page at patreon.com slash theserialkillerpodcast. Any donation, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated. Travel with me, dear listener, to the Rust Belt.
Imagine, if you will, the wind howling through the empty halls of derelict auto factories and massive scrapyards as we motor along, perhaps with a view of the gray Lake Erie, to our right, into the southwest side of Detroit in the great state of Michigan. Detroit used to be the very essence of the American dream. The city had industry like no other place in the world.
A house for every family, a job-active factory for every man, and a modern kitchen for every housewife. A new Chevrolet in the small garage, and neat lawns as far as the eye could see in the suburban area surrounding the city center. One could perhaps argue that Detroit was the birthplace of the modern middle class.
Before its heyday, people working in factories were always poor and working class, more often than not living in cramped squalor. Then Henry Ford and his River Rouge complex came, and every worker was given a decent wage to support his family with.
General Motors followed, and after the horrors of World War II, the American factory worker was often more affluent by those times standard than a highly educated white-collar worker is in today's society, especially here in the West. But nothing lasts forever.
Cheap labor and very low production costs in Asia shipped industrial jobs overseas, and Detroit went over the precipice and is still falling towards the abyss. In this city of growing depression, Barney Jordan was adamant and insistent to anyone who would listen.
that her 39-year-old sister Wendy, she was not a prostitute. Wendy had been a drug addict, but the last two years she had been sober and had tried to put her life together and towards a brighter future. She had been working a good job as a manager of a gas station in the working-class Detroit suburb of Royal Oak and didn't need to sell sexual services on the cold streets of Detroit.
"'She may have been that in the past when she was doing drugs,' Bonnie told interviewers, "'but not when she died. Wendy had been clean for two years,' she added. "'Y2K had come and gone, and the shining promise of a new millennium had quickly turned out to be headlights rather than stars. "'Year 2000 started on a tragic note for the Jordan family.'
They had last seen Wendy at about 9 p.m. on New Year's Day, when she left them at home and said she was going out. Wendy never returned, and the family learned, two days later, that the former addict's body had turned up in the dirty water of the River Rouge.
in Dearborn Heights, an industrial area of Detroit known more for its now largely derelict automobile plants than anything else. Clearly, Wendy Jordan had met with foul play. She had been strangled to death, apparently by use of hands and not ligature, and her lifeless body had been thrown into the water. It was a man that reported discovering Wendy's corpse,
He claimed he was walking across a bridge crossing the Rouge River and had bent over the railing to vomit. As he was spewing bile into the filthy water, he saw Wendy's body slowly floating close to his falling vomit, Wendy's eyes staring lifelessly, accusatorily, up at him. The way Wendy Jordan's body had been discovered was puzzling to the police.
"'Let me get this straight,' the investigating detective was saying to the big man. "'You were out for a walk, and you were gonna puke, so you went over to the side of the bridge. And while you were heaving, you saw the body?' The man was adamant. "'That's pretty much the way it happened,' the man replied. "'How many times do you want me to tell it? I'm not the bad guy here. I called you guys, remember?' "'That didn't mean much,' the cop thought to himself.'
It wouldn't be the first time that a killer had caused his own arrest for the sake of notoriety or excitement. In a strange twist, police would learn too late that they had been closer than they ever would have thought to Jordan's killer, and if the red tape of bureaucracy had not slowed their investigation, authorities might have been able to apprehend a murderer sooner.
before he had had the chance to kill again. As it stands now, however, a cautious Wayne County Prosecutor's Office allowed the killer to remain on the loose and enabled him to slay three more women. Detroit area police are convinced that the man they ultimately captured
is responsible for those four killings, plus the murder of another known prostitute in December of 1999. But John Eric Armstrong's list of killings could spread far beyond the city limits of Detroit, or even the continental United States.
For when authorities finally put cold iron on Armstrong's wrists after a number of prostitutes reported that a man fitting his description had been attacking them for weeks, the 26-year-old former Navy seaman admitted to as many as 30 murders in countries far away, such as Thailand, Singapore, Korea, Israel, and Hong Kong. But who was this young, rather innocent-looking man?
John Eric Armstrong, and notice how he too has a double first name, was born on the 23rd of November 1973 in New Bern, North Carolina. New Bern, named after the Swiss city of Bern, is a small coastal city on the east coast of the continental United States.
Even today, it is a very picturesque city, with colonial-style buildings, lush greenery and a very nice marina, with bustling holiday life during summer. Even though he grew up in idyllic surroundings, John Eric's childhood was far from idyllic. His father was a very violent and abusive man, and at the early age of two years old,
John Eric fell out of a window even though his father was supposed to be watching him, causing him to break his leg. Also, as with many other serial killers, death was a feature in John Eric's life from very early on. He had a baby brother called Michael that was born when he was five years old. However, the baby died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
SIDS, for short. Even though he was only five, this death greatly affected the young boy. Riding his bicycle, he tried to kill himself by running it straight across a trafficked street, apparently out of a desire to join his baby brother in heaven. John Eric's father's temper deteriorated quickly after this.
In addition to being neglectful, he was reportedly abusive and violent towards both his son and his wife, and started raping John Eric, also when he was only around five years old. He would force John Eric to perform oral sex on him, as well as repeatedly anally raping him.
It is highly probable that John Eric's mother knew this was going on, but failed to stop it out of fear of being further violently abused. One can speculate that this betrayal so early in life might very well have splintered and scarred the young boy's mind, causing violent and murderous desires to spring forth.
Sex, death, and violence were thus prominent features in John Eric's childhood, and they would continue to be so into his adolescence. At a young age of fifteen, he was sent to spend a month at a mental hospital after locking himself in a bathroom at his high school because he claimed a girl had been pressuring him to have sex.
Michael's sudden death, coupled with his traumatic experiences with sex, continued to haunt him, and he was further sent to a psychologist to receive treatment for this in 1988, when he was 15 years old. However, treatment did not seem to work very well. According to later interviews, John Eric claimed to have murdered his first victim,
when he was just 17 years old, a high school senior. This murder, according to John Eric, was a prostitute, and it has not been corroborated by police, and may be him simply exaggerating his crimes in order to gain notoriety, but it may also very well be true
as the events that according to him triggered his serial killings took place when he was 17 years old. What we do know is this. Detroit police believe Armstrong's spree may have begun 25 years ago when he joined the Navy in Raleigh, North Carolina.
John Eric Armstrong served on the supercarrier USS Nimitz, held classification number 68, from 1992 until April of 1999. One of his first experiences as a sailor in the U.S. Navy was our course on how to ward off prostitutes in foreign ports. Armstrong, known by his fellow sailors as Opie,
because of his red hair and freckles, served as a sailor on the high seas with distinction. He received during his service five medals and four ribbons for good conduct and good service. But according to his bunkmate, Armstrong was moody. He suffered bad headaches and would often throw temper tantrums for little to no reason.
And so, dear listener, we find ourselves on the hardscrabble southwest side of Detroit once again. The prostitutes who work the streets there were scared. Since spring the year before, there had been a jawn, that's what prostitutes call their customers, on the prowl, who like to play rough.
A couple of hookers had been picked up by the guy in the dark, late-model SUV and barely escaped with their lives. The man looked innocent enough, but he had issues with women who sold sexual favors for money. He had tried to choke them and had talked about his hatred of prostitutes while trying to strangle two of them with his bare hands. Prostitutes are, in many ways, an ideal target for serial killers.
They can easily, without using force, be picked up anonymously without anyone becoming suspicious. They are not hesitant to engage in sex, and as such are often naked and defenseless when the killer strikes. James Fox, criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston, told the Detroit Free Press that such women are commonly attacked. They are the most common target, Fox said.
So, the working girls were scared. But that didn't stop 34-year-old Kelly Hood saying,
from continuing to sell sexual favors on the streets. She no longer had a choice. She was addicted to both crack and heroin, and such drugs are not cheap. She didn't have any profession that allowed her enough money to support such a habit, and thus she turned to the oldest profession in the world, selling sex. Hood had come down to Detroit from Muskegon,
A northern Michigan town that, despite its smaller size, seemed to have a lot of the same problems that plague the larger urban centers. Beneath its attractive appearances, Muskegon has more than its share of poverty, and like a lot of Michigan cities that survive on the generosity of the tourists, the city on Lake Michigan changes in fits and starts depending on the economic cycles.
However, Kelly didn't come to Detroit to be a prostitute and a drug addict. She moved to the big city after meeting her future husband, who worked on the line at the Chrysler auto plant. They lived in a nice house in a working-class neighborhood in Detroit and settled down to raise their family. The three children came quickly in succession. That year, they turned seven, eight, and nine.
But at the turn of the century, something changed in Kelly, and along with a friend, she became a user of crack cocaine and heroin, chasing the dragon in street parlance. Soon, Kelly and her friend Linda were addicts, and after about a year, she left her husband and children for a life on the streets as a buffer, or woman who engaged in prostitution to support her habit.
It was cold that night, but it wasn't too cold for a crack addict to be out on the streets, and it wasn't too cold for the man in the black jeep to be out trying to satisfy his own demon. Like Hood, the man was not a native to the Motor City, but unlike her, he had only recently arrived in town after a nondescript Navy career.
In the waning hours of the night, he prowled the dark city streets. Driving down Michigan Avenue, the man spotted Kelly Hood standing beneath the street lamp, her fake rabbit fur jacket pulled up high around her ears in contrast to the short skirt she wore. The man felt the strong urge he had felt so many times before rise up in him like a red tide.
He had started that night's prowl with only the intent to look, just looking at the prostitutes and maybe masturbating later. But deep down he had known it might end up being more than just looking, and the black prostitute standing there in such provocative clothing, well, she was the one. There was still one rational part of his mind left.
The man argued with himself about whether to stop or not. This was different than the other times. He was soiling his own nest here. This wasn't any three-day furlough. He lived here, and that meant he couldn't get caught. Almost like in a cartoon, his dark nature offered up a ready reply.
Hadn't he got away with it before? Hadn't the police tried to trap him into admitting he killed that other woman? And hadn't he managed to throw them off? As his internal, infernal debate went on, he slowed his dark jeep down and came to a stop, aside Kelly Hood. "'How's it going?' Hood said to the man, snapping him back to reality. "'Wanna party?' she asked."
He said nothing as he leaned over and opened the door. The dome light flicked on, and in the dim light Kelly Hood got a good look at the last face she would ever see. The man was young, but his hairline was already receding. He wore glasses and he sported a three-day growth of strawberry-blonde beard. He was a big man, nearly three hundred pounds, but built like a power forward.
The two of them haggled for a moment about the particulars of their transaction, and, satisfied that the man wasn't a cop, Hood got in the jeep. The inside of the jeep was warm and inviting, and Hood directed the man to drive about a block away and turn down an alley. Without comment, he did so. He pulled the jeep far into the alleyway and put the gear in park.
Turning to Kelly Hood, he muttered something under his breath. "'Huh?' she asked, her mind on the rocks of crack. This trick would bring her. The man's hands seemed huge to Kelly as they lunged forward and closed around her neck. "'I said I hate whores!' the man growled as he choked the life out of her. "'Now, dear listener—'
I would like to stop for a brief moment to impart upon you what strangling someone to death actually entails. In films, we usually see the killer holding his hands around some hapless victim's neck, and maybe some gasping noises before, after a few seconds, the victim's body goes limp. This is very far from what happens in reality.
Choking someone to death manually without the use of a ligature is very difficult. The killer need to be very strong, especially since doing it from the front, as Armstrong did, gives the victim the opportunity to fight back, to claw and punch until they succumb to the lack of oxygen. Also, you don't die almost immediately after oxygen is being cut off.
The body retains full functionality for up to several minutes without fresh oxygen, and brain death does not occur until several minutes after unconsciousness. Oftentimes the killer changes grip to get a better hold, and that allows the victim a brief breath, which again prolongs the process. It is also, for the victim, extremely painful.
The ligatures in the neck are being ripped, along with the literal crushing of the windpipe and esophagus. Often, blood vessels burst inside the windpipe as it's crushed, and the victim then drowns in blood, as well as dying from lack of breathing. Adrenaline is pumped throughout the body. This is a natural defense mechanism, in place to allow you to fight until your literal dying breath.
And if you have experienced a jolt of adrenaline, you can imagine that effect times a thousand. John Eric Armstrong's victims not only suffered a painful, traumatic and long-winded death. The last thing each one of them saw was the angry eyes of a baby-faced fat man with a goatee. You are dealing with a sadist, state prison psychologist Richard Walter told the Detroit Free Press.
A serial killer likes to play cat and mouse with the police. Catch me if you can, and you terrorize the community at large. Generally, it's their arrogance that gets them done in. Armstrong was the one that had called the police right around the first of the year to report Wendy Jordan's body in the Rouge River. Armstrong had been taking a walk, he said, when he began to feel ill.
He was atop a bridge, spanning the icy water of the Rouge River, and as he leaned over the side, he saw something on the riverbank, twenty feet below. Looking closer, he told the police he recognized that it was a body. That was when he dialed 911 and summoned the authorities. Wendy Jordan had been strangled, a preliminary examination revealed, and there was some evidence of a struggle.
She had recently had sexual intercourse and semen samples was taken, and that would go a long way towards helping authorities confirm the identity of her killer. Not only were police a little skeptical about Armstrong's account of how he found the body, they would later find additional witnesses who said they saw Armstrong on the bridge before he claimed he happened upon the scene.
He was an oddball, Royal Oak Police Sergeant James Cervatovsky told the press. Armstrong vehemently denied having anything to do with Jordan's death, but sometimes, when the investigators were going over his story and pointing out where it diverged from known facts, Armstrong would hang his head and close his eyes, Cervatovsky said.
He'd never admit to anything, but he wouldn't argue either, he further explained. Other officers on the case had already begun to investigate Armstrong. He hadn't been in town that long, having just been discharged from the U.S. Navy. He had been working as a refueler at Detroit's Metro Airport, putting the skills he had learned in the Navy to work. Prior to taking that job, Armstrong had been a security guard in Novi,
a well-to-do suburb out of Detroit, and a clerk at a Target store. Police talked to Armstrong's neighbors, who could shed little light on the newcomer. The only suspicious activity anyone could report was that the day Armstrong left about 5 a.m. and returned an hour later. The neighbors were asked what day was that. It turned out to be New Year's Day.
The same date Wendy Jordan was killed. The authorities decided to put a little pressure on Armstrong to see how he would fare. They tipped their hand a little. We're going to be watching him, they told one neighbor. If he leaves with a lot of luggage, please give us a call. Police continued to watch Armstrong, and he complained to neighbors that they were harassing him.
In February of 2000, there was some physical evidence available to investigators working on the Jordan homicide. They had what was presumably the killer's DNA, and the medical examiner's office had found tiny fibers in Jordan's clothes that probably came from the vehicle she had been in shortly before she was dumped in the river.
Tests were in the works to try and identify which type of vehicle, but without something to match them to, identifying a suspect would be difficult. On the theoretical side, investigators' instincts continued to point them in Armstrong's direction. He didn't look like a killer, sure, but that didn't mean anything. There were just a number of things in his past that looked suspicious.
Take that last run-in with the police, one detective said, as he and his partner were revisiting the Rouge River crime scene one more time. The Dearborn Hates police had run a computer check on Armstrong and found out that he had been investigated for filing a false police report in Novi.
Novi police told them Armstrong had placed a 911 call from his job as a security guard in early November to report that he had been attacked while breaking up a robbery. Investigating officers found Armstrong bleeding from superficial wounds to the face and arms. The officers immediately suspected something was amiss, and it didn't take Armstrong long to claim he had cut himself with a scalpel and fabricated the whole story.
Apparently, he just wanted to attract attention to himself. Something sensational, which seems to be part of his makeup, said Novi Police Chief Doug Schaefer. The fake report cost Armstrong his job. Now, dear listener...
Reading this report, it seems both newspaper reporters and police were inclined to believe Armstrong had fabricated the story to attract attention to himself. But I, dear listener, place little faith in this. A more likely scenario, perhaps, is that Armstrong had come back from a fresh kill.
and now knowing what strangling someone that is unrestrained from the front entails it is not far-fetched to believe that the bleeding wounds he suffered had come from the nails of some poor prostitute now lying dead in a ditch
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But it's good to have some things that are non-negotiable. For some, that could be a night out with the boys, chugging beers and having a laugh. For others, it might be an eating night. For me, one non-negotiable activity is researching psychopathic serial killers and making this podcast. Even when we know what makes us happy, it's often near impossible to make time for it.
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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. Investigators paid a visit to Armstrong at home, and he consented to allow them to gather fibers from his car and to give them a blood sample.
The officers quickly shipped the samples off to the state police crime labs in Lansing, Michigan, and waited for the results. Armstrong wasn't going anywhere, they theorized, and at that time authorities had no reason to believe he was involved in anything other than Jordan's murder. What they didn't know was that Monica Johnson of Detroit University
The 31-year-old prostitute whom police found unconscious and barely alive near Interstate 94 had also been intimate with Armstrong. Johnson, a mother of four, would die at Ford Hospital in Detroit before talking to authorities. And what they could never predict was that their diligence in seeking more evidence, their quest to build a strong case,
would give Armstrong time to kill again. Armstrong's neighbors, who had known him as a quiet, unassuming man for almost a year, had no reason to suspect anything was amiss.
The police had been to the small two-story bungalow that Armstrong, his wife and son, shared with some in-laws. But the neighbors just assumed that was because Eric had been unfortunate enough to stumble across Jordan's body. He told me he felt the police were harassing him, one neighbor told the Detroit News. But none of us suspected anything. Law enforcement agencies make a distinction among the different kinds of repeat killers.
Mass murderers are sociopaths like Columbines, Harris and Klebold, who do all of their killing at one time. They are the kind of killers who often plot and plan their attacks over a period of time, with the intent of making a big statement in a single incident. They are like a supernova. They explode upon the scene in a bright fury of death.
and are immediately gone, leaving destruction in their wake. Then there are spree killers, who are rarer. They are the type who flame out over a short period of time, usually a few days. Killers like Charles Starkweather are spree killers. They are the meteorites of the psychopath universe, burning out brilliantly over a short period of time. Serial killers are different.
They are rarely in a hurry. They are methodical in their carnage. Serial killers are the comets. They blaze through the night and disappear into the blackness, only to return again and again and again to kill. Organized serial killers, according to models developed by the FBI and other experts, target strangers.
and tend to travel some distance from home to kill. And prostitutes tend to be among the most likely victims in terms of serial killers, said Deborah Laufenzweiler-Dwyer, associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Arkansas. Nobody is going to necessarily note someone picking up a prostitute, and they tend to go with anyone quite easily, she said.
She said that research shows that organized serial killers are typically sociopaths who have a problem with authority. They don't like rules. They think they can make up the rules as they go along, she said. The Dearborn Heights police had no reason to suspect that they were dealing with a serial killer. So they had no reason to rush their investigation of Wendy Jordan's murder.
The poor woman was dead. Screwing up the probe so that a killer could walk would do no one any good. Nevertheless, investigators felt they had their man. When the tests came back indicating that the fibers on Wendy's body matched those in Armstrong's jeep, the police went to the prosecutor's office in the hope of getting a warrant. But they were turned away.
The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office has a policy not to issue an arrest warrant for a homicide until the state police lab has issued its final report in writing, and the Dearborn Heights police only had preliminary results linking Armstrong to Jordan, and so Armstrong would remain on the streets.
About a time Dearborn Hates Police were waiting for more than just an oral report that the DNA had matched up, Wilhelmina Drain was waiting for a bus along Michigan Avenue when she accepted a ride from a man in a black Jeep. She would later tell police that the man stopped on a side street and told her he needed to get something from his coat.
The man, whom she identified as Eric Armstrong, went for her throat instead. His hand reached out and grabbed my neck, she said. I was lucky I was wearing a scarf. He got my scarf and had a hold of me real tight. Drain fought back and managed to knock Armstrong's glasses from his face. His fingers were around my windpipe, she said. Near unconsciousness and in a state of panic,
Drain managed to reach into her coat and grab a can of pepper spray. I sprayed him in the face with it, she recalled, and then I jumped out of the car. Even though the police were closing in on him, and one victim had managed to escape, Armstrong's desires, dark as they were, still hounded him, urging him on, insisting that he killed again.
He continued to return to the Michigan Avenue area, and over the next few weeks, he had sex with and assaulted several more prostitutes in his Jeep. Authorities said Armstrong also killed Kelly Hood, in addition to 32-year-old Detroit local Rose Marie Felt and 18-year-old Nicole Young, a Chicago woman who was brought to Detroit by her boyfriend.
forced into prostitution and abandoned. Detroit is the third most violent city in the United States, with 43.8 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, only beaten by Baltimore and St. Louis. The neighborhood where military and southern streets intersect in southwest Detroit is a relatively safe one compared to other parts of the city,
But relative safety is not the same as safe. The military-slash-southern area is lined with the homes of hard-working, decent, law-abiding citizens and residents that are not used to hearing gunfire or the sharp report of a weapon.
They are accustomed, however, to the loud sounds of corn rail freight trains, carrying supplies to the Detroit industrial plants or taking newly built cars to destinations unknown. One of those trains, no one knows if it was incoming or outgoing,
was plodding through the neighborhood on the morning of the 10th of April, 2000, when someone aboard noticed a grisly sight. Beside the tracks lay the bodies of three women in varying stages of decomposition. The Detroit police, responding to the call from the train, arrived to find the bodies of Hood, Felt, and Young.
Based on their condition, it was clear to investigators that the women had not been killed at the same time. More than 80 police officers, along with crime lab personnel and canine units, converged on the scene and immediately cordoned off the area. The bodies of the three women were not removed until early evening. Interestingly, police located a fourth body near the site,
But they believe that corpse was from an unrelated murder. Technicians determined that Hood had been dumped three weeks prior, sometime in mid-March. Feld's body had been there about a month, and Nicole Young had apparently been murdered sometime within 12 hours of the discovery of the bodies. Almost immediately, the authorities let it be known that they were tracking a serial killer.
When you kill three people on three separate occasions and leave them in the same location, then yes, you have a serial killer. Detroit Police Chief Benny Napoleon told the Detroit Free Press. It's very serious and we're taking it very seriously as a department.
By the end of the day, a multi-jurisdictional force composed of the Detroit Police Sex Crimes Unit, the Violent Crimes Task Force, the FBI, the Michigan State Police, Conrail Railroad Police, and the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office was formed to investigate the slayings. Chief Napoleon recalled the last serial killer in Detroit.
During a nine-month period, in 1991-1992, a serial killer raped and strangled 11 women, many of whom had histories of prostitution and drug abuse. Several of the victims were found in abandoned motels and other derelict buildings near Woodward Avenue in Detroit and Highland Park. Benjamin, known to acquaintances as Tony,
Atkins, 29 years old, was convicted of those murders. He died in September of 1997, just four years into the 11 life terms he was serving for the slayings. Atkins, much like Jack the Ripper, the Yorkshire Ripper, and the Green River Killer, said he was driven by a hatred of prostitutes.
In contrast to the Dearborn Hates investigation, which was moving along at a slow, careful pace, the Detroit police force sprung into action. Investigators linked three reported assaults of prostitutes with the murders of Hood Felton Young. Using descriptions provided by the women, and only one transvestite,
who had escaped the killer, they began round-the-clock patrols of the high-traffic areas where Detroit's prostitutes converged. They focused on the Michigan Avenue and Livernois Corridor after consulting with the FBI agents who created a profile of the killer. It was likely that whoever was targeting the prostitutes would return there for another victim. They did not have to wait long.
Armstrong was arrested at 12.30 a.m., Wednesday, the 12th of April, 2000, inside his Jeep Wrangler while on the prowl. Police brought him in for questioning. The brazen young man who stood up to the Dearborn police was gone. The Detroit authorities confronted Armstrong with an overwhelming pile of evidence and he quickly broke down.
All the years of torment finally broke free, and police authorities told how Armstrong's mental state began to collapse. He expressed remorse several times, and he was crying like a baby, said Assistant Police Chief Marvin Winkler. Basically, he told us he either killed or tried to kill every prostitute he'd ever had sex with.
Even though the Detroit police had linked Armstrong to the three bodies found in the railroad yard, they had no idea at the time that they might have had the farthest roaming serial killer in history in custody. Armstrong was in a cathartic state, authorities said. His confession, which began shortly after he was arrested, was like a litany of horror.
Dates, details, events, killings, assaults, it all came spewing out in a torrent. Armstrong told police about killings in Washington state, in Hong Kong, Thailand, in Hawaii, and the Middle East. In Seattle, he said, he killed a man after an argument. He killed two prostitutes there as well, according to the initial police reports.
Another prostitute was murdered in Spokane, he told them. All in all, Armstrong, between his arrest Wednesday and arraignment Friday, shared details about as many as 30 killings. In Norfolk, Virginia, Armstrong's confessions revitalized at least one stalled murder investigation. The body of a 34-year-old woman was found in Norfolk.
On the 5th of March, 1998, four days after the USS Nimitz docked in its home port, Newport News, 12 miles away, Lynette Hilley, who had previously been arrested for prostitution several times, was discovered behind a bingo parlor. She had been sexually assaulted, authorities said.
Armstrong reportedly told investigators that he had strangled a woman in Virginia, taken the body inside his car, and driven it over there. Once he began to talk, he was freely giving very intimate details about the case, said Detective James Hines of the Wayne County Sheriff's Office. His demeanor was shifting quite often from being calm to irritable to sometimes sad.
Hines also told the Detroit Free Press that Armstrong described in great detail each of the killings, giving details only the killer would know. His mood would fluctuate from calm to an appearance of anger, but the anger didn't appear to be sincere, Hines said.
When the story broke that Detroit police had arrested a man who may have used the aircraft carrier Nimitz, the largest sailing vessel in the world and one of the most powerful weapons of war ever conceived as his means to travel the world to kill, the Detroit Police Department was inundated with contacts from around the globe.
There's a bunch of people I've never seen before in our office, said Detroit Police Sergeant Arlie Lovier, who had been interrogating Armstrong. The FBI, the Office of the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and police officials from Washington State all joined in on the investigation.
Authorities from the Far East have reopened cases in hopes of finally solving some of their unfinished investigations. Agents in 38 FBI foreign offices began probes into unsolved killings. Almost as quickly as they began to promote the idea of a globetrotting serial killer, authorities began to back away.
There are gaps in his timeline we are concerned about, said one Detroit police commander. Nothing outside of Michigan has been confirmed yet, he continued. Investigators began to look detailed into Armstrong's life, trying to find a clue to what might have set him off. Predictably, the reports that are coming in paint a picture of seeming normality on the surface of Armstrong's life.
He was a very smart boy, said a schoolmate of Armstrong's. You would never have thought he would do the things he is accused of doing. Another acquaintance said that, and I quote, he was a basic high school student. He tried to fit in with everyone else. The district attorney in Armstrong's hometown of New Bern, North Carolina, was hard-pressed to identify Eric Armstrong.
Some folks grow up and they leave a footprint, said David McFadden. He was just somebody that didn't really leave a footprint, he continued. Shipmates recalled a quiet man known as Opie, who was the kind of man, and I quote, Moms want their kids to meet, end quote. While there are conflicting reports as to what Armstrong's job was on the Nimitz ship,
He has been described in various reports as a mechanic and a barber. His tour of duty aboard the ship was unremarkable. In fact, he seemed to excel as a sailor. I just can't believe this guy would do something like that, said June Estevez of Bremerton, who was Armstrong's chief petty officer aboard USS Nimitz from 1994 to 1997.
He was my sailor of the month at one time, he said. This guy had an unblemished record aboard the ship when he was working for me. Armstrong's wife, pregnant with their second child, did not believe her husband could be responsible for these killings, authorities said. She's in extreme denial, Hines reported. Apparently she didn't want to hear what I had to say.
Hines had to hang up on Katie Armstrong after a minute-long conversation when she wouldn't stop screaming. She was a very loud and rambunctious woman, he finished. In the Wayne County Jail, Armstrong was held in the Psychiatric Observation Unit where he remained under closer-than-normal scrutiny. In his sole appearance in court, a clearly distraught Armstrong was quiet and contrite.
His only comment to the media was a mumbled "sorry". There are several photos of Armstrong online, where you can see his face looking very scared and sad at the same time. In fact, he looks remarkably childlike. Meanwhile, authorities around the world are tracking down leads, trying to determine if Armstrong's story is true.
Detroit police and the FBI matched a list of Nimitz ports visits between 1992 and April of 1999 when Armstrong voluntarily left the Navy with an honorable discharge with a list of unsolved killings in cities across the world.
Detroit police now believe they can link Armstrong to the Detroit slayings and to three in Seattle, two in Hawaii, two in Hong Kong, and one each in North Carolina, Thailand, Singapore, and Virginia. Other slayings may include prostitute strangulations in Japan, Korea, and Israel.
If these killings turn out to be true, and a few police investigators think that Armstrong's list of victims is not nearly as long as he says, then the red-haired, baby-faced, 300-pound aircraft refueler could be one of the most well-traveled serial killers in history.
They are hampered in many places by poor record-keeping or unsophisticated investigations. For his part, Armstrong's attorneys doubt that his client has left a string of bodies across the globe. He is a very distraught and very disturbed young man who has emotional problems that emanated many, many years ago, said one of his lawyers.
You will see that some of it arises out of his compassion, said attorney Robert Mitchell. It's quite a story. Quite a story. End quote. Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Elizabeth Walker looks at compassion differently. I have enough people I have real compassion about. Five are dead and three got away, she said.
For the friends and family of the victims, there is little solace in knowing that the man accused of these killings is in custody. Think about all the other sisters and wives, said Kelly Hood's younger sister. Not everyone has a perfect life, but they all had families somewhere. I'm still numb about it, she went on. My sister had a good husband and a good family. She always had a heart of gold.
After a two-week long trial in March of 2001, John Eric Armstrong was convicted of first-degree murder of Wendy Jordan. After a few months, he further pled guilty to the deaths of Robin Brown, Rose Marie Felt and Monica Johnson. He also pled guilty to one assault charge and no contest to another assault charge.
A third assault, an unarmed robbery case, was dismissed as part of a plea bargain. Ultimately, John Eric Armstrong was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
I don't know.
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Hence, the last episode of the Serial Killer podcast in 2017. The next episode will air on the 1st of January, 2018. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. I have been your host, Thomas Warburg Thun. Doing this podcast is a labor of love.
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