How Many Women Did John Eric Armstrong Kill?
By: Jean Campbell
Tags: Psychopath, Serial Killers, True Crime, Detroit, Murder

How Many Women Did John Eric Armstrong Kill?

Armstrong, photo courtesy BBC News.

“You are dealing with a sadist,” state prison psychologist Richard Walter told the Detroit Free Press, shortly after police arrested the man responsible for at least five murders in the Detroit area.

Walter went on to note, “[Sadists] like to play cat-and-mouse with the police; catch me if you can [to] terrorize the community….[In the end], it’s [their] arrogance that [always] does them in.”

Childhood and youth

He went by Eric because, he said, his abusive father also carried the name John. Eric Armstrong wanted to put distance between himself and his worthless father, who abandoned the family when the boy was five.

When he was a toddler, his father was charged with keeping an eye on him but had more important things to do. Two-year-old Eric fell from a window.

When Eric was five, his two-month-old baby brother Mikey died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. For better or worse, Eric’s dad left the family just four months afterwards. He hadn’t bothered to pay for a gravestone when he took off for Georgia with another woman. Shortly thereafter, Eric rode his bike into traffic, telling his mother he wanted to die so he could be reunited with Mikey.

In high school, Eric was an ordinary student who made no waves. He dated, and would later claim a single incident shaped his view of women. He recalled his high school girlfriend left him after another guy lured her away with gifts. In his mind, she might as well have been a sex worker. After that, Eric Armstrong viewed all women as potential whores, guilty and deserving of punishment.

Eric took a job in a grocery store just after graduating high school, then decided to make a career in the navy. He enlisted and was stationed as an active-duty sailor aboard the USS Nimitz, the largest ship on the planet. The Nimitz is an aircraft carrier with its home base in Bremerton, WA (10 miles west of Seattle). In the navy, he met another sailor, Katie, who would become his future wife. They married in 1998, six years after Eric enlisted.

The other sailors nicknamed him “Opie” for his strawberry-blond hair and mild demeanor. Some said he could be moody, while others barely recalled his presence.

‘I called you guys, remember’

It isn’t clear why Eric Armstrong settled in Detroit after he left the navy in 1999, but since his wife had grown up in nearby Dearborn, MI, it’s likely the growing family (they had one son and his wife was pregnant at the time of his arrest) wanted to be closer to Katie’s family. In his mid-twenties now and honorably discharged, Eric took a job first as security guard, and later worked for at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport as an aircraft refueler.

He first came under suspicion when he reported finding a body on January 2, 2000. The story he told investigators sounded concocted and raised eyebrows.

According to Eric, he was strolling near the Rouge River in Detroit, when he felt sick to his stomach. Bending over the side of a bridge to vomit, he saw the half-naked body of Wendy Jordan floating in the icy river. Officers weren’t just skeptical of Armstrong’s story; they immediately began considering him as the prime suspect in Jordan’s death.

She was murdered on New Year’s Day and police immediately interviewed Armstrong’s neighbors who reported the only unusual activity was him leaving home at 5am, to return an hour later.

Despite being under suspicion as of January 2nd, he wasn’t arrested until April, 12, 2000. This four month period would later come back to haunt the DPD, as Eric continued to prowl the streets of the Motor City.

While police had physical evidence, including DNA left on Jordan’s body, it was Armstrong’s behavior that made them suspicious. Several months earlier, while working as a security guard, he’d filed a false police report, claiming he’d been assaulted while on duty. He eventually admitted he made the story up, and was fired from his job.

But forensic evidence doesn’t lie, and fibers found on Jordan also pointed to Armstrong. When they discovered the fibers were a match, police asked the Wayne County prosecutor’s office for an arrest warrant but were denied. The County wanted an official report before they moved on Armstrong. At the time, police were in no rush to solve a single murder.

Waiting for evidence

Because of the delay, four more women would die at Eric Armstrong’s hands before he was taken off the streets.

While the fiber evidence made its way through the Wayne County forensics procedures, and before the DNA was matched, Eric continued to cruise Michigan Avenue.

After Wendy Jordan, however, the next attack didn’t go as planned. He offered Wilhelmenia Drane a lift, then attempted to strangle her. Drane fought him off with pepper spray, crediting wearing a scarf for slowing down the assault. She narrowly escaped from Armstrong’s clutches with her life, reporting the incident to police.

Kelly Hood, Rose-Marie Felt, Robbin Brown, and Monica Johnson were not so lucky. On April 10, 2000, four months after Armstrong reported finding a body in the Rouge River, the bodies the first three of these women were found, dumped together. They were spotted early one morning next to the train tracks, near the intersection of Southern and Military streets in southwest Detroit, by a train passenger.

Grisly puzzle pieces fall into place

The list of Eric Armstrong’s victims may be much longer than five, although police are still unsure if he has inflated the numbers. He was charged with murdering: Jordan, Hood, Felt, Young and Monica Johnson.

Johnson, 31, was found clinging to life on the side of a road in Detroit. She died shortly after being admitted to Ford Hospital and before she could tell anyone what happened to her.

‘Sex Machines’

Bonnie Jordan is the sister of Wendy, the murder victim who drew attention to Eric Armstrong. Bonnie acknowledges her sister once had a drug problem, and once made her living as a sex worker. But at the time of her death, Wendy Jordan had two years of sobriety under her belt. Her family still does not know if she was back in “the life” when she told them she was going out on New Year’s Eve.

All of Armstrong’s victims were sex workers, and most were plying their trade to support a drug habit.

“[Sex workers] are the most common target [of serial killers],” Psychologist James Fox told the Detroit Free Press after Armstrong’s arrest. “They are women who get into cars and find themselves at the mercy of strange men. For the killer, it is psychologically easier to kill them because he already views them as worthless sex machines who exist only to give pleasure.”

Kelly Hood, the next victim after Wendy, fit the victim profile perfectly — but it hadn’t always been so. Kelly had come to Detroit from northern Michigan, to marry and raise a family. She was a mother of three kids, all under 10-years-old, at the time of her death. She had a normal, working-class life in Detroit but one day picked up a crack pipe.

It didn’t take long for Kelly to become an addict; her life turned upside down as she became more dependent on using crack and heroin daily. She left her kids for a life on the streets, selling herself to fuel her drug habit. Kelly was standing on a Detroit street corner one cold Spring night in heels, a short skirt, and a faux rabbit fur coat when she saw a black Jeep approach.

She was mostly concerned about whether Armstrong might be a cop, but once she was sure he wasn’t she climbed in and they bargained over price. She told him to drive a block away and pull over in an alley. Before he choked her to death he told her, “I hate whores.”

The next victim who fell prey to Eric Armstrong was Rose-Marie Felt, who was murdered about a week after Kelly.

Robbin Brown was the last victim in this group of three who were dumped on the tracks. She had been murdered, police estimated, about 12 hours before her body was seen by the train passenger.

Profile of a serial murderer

The justice system had been slow, but three bodies discarded in one spot got cops attention. The Detroit Police Department now sprung into action and assigned dozens of officers to track down the killer, knowing they might prevent more deaths.

One of the first moves they made was profiling the murderer. The profile indicated he would strike again soon, and identified Michigan Avenue as the place he was targeting women. And shortly after midnight, on April 12th (over four months after Wendy Jordan’s body was found), police located Armstrong cruising the area and arrested him.

The evidence was overwhelming, and Eric Armstrong soon began detailing his murderous acts from 1992 to 1998 — across the world. He told police he’d killed women in Washington State, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Israel, Thailand, Hawaii and the Middle East. Police have not been able to confirm all of these locations, but a conservative tally of victims stands at 11.

He admitted he often returned to where he’d left bodies so he could have sex with them. This is the reason the three women were not only dumped in the same location, but also posed.

“He told us he either killed, or tried to kill, every prostitute he’d ever had sex with,” Assistant Police Chief Marvin Winkler said, adding, “He expressed remorse several times.” The 300-lb killer, who was as ordinary looking as the day is long, was “crying like a baby” as he confessed his crimes.