Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waterers. This podcast was
Speaker 1: recorded on It's a Chilly night in the Detroit, Michigan
Speaker 1: winter of nineteen ninety nine, just a few weeks before Christmas,
Speaker 1: and Monica Johnson turns to her client in his jeep Wrangler.
Speaker 1: It'll be fifty dollars for straight sex, she tells him.
Speaker 1: He agrees and puts on a condom. When it's over,
Speaker 1: he starts strangling her. He doesn't remember why, but eventually
Speaker 1: Monica stops breathing. He places her body face down on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk and drives home. Did you intend to kill her?
Speaker 1: Police later ask no. He tells them, how did you
Speaker 1: feel after killing her? Awful, very hurt, Very sorry, he said.
Speaker 1: But the seemingly innocent looking man with the red hair
Speaker 1: and wire framed glasses didn't just kill Monica. The baby
Speaker 1: doll serial killer, as he'll soon become known, kills at
Speaker 1: least four more women until finally police cotton on to
Speaker 1: his kills. I'm Jemma Bath and this is True Crime
Speaker 1: Conversations Amoma mea podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes
Speaker 1: by speaking to the people who know the most about them.
Speaker 1: After every kill, John Eric Armstrong went home to the
Speaker 1: house he shared with his wife and young son and
Speaker 1: had a long shower. He made no effort to hide
Speaker 1: the women he murdered before his post murder ritual, leaving
Speaker 1: their bodies out in the open, sometimes posed. He became
Speaker 1: synonymous for his vehicle, a jeep with a distinctive number
Speaker 1: plate that read baby Doll, a nickname from his wife
Speaker 1: he used to pick up and kill his victims. In
Speaker 1: Armstrong is not your average serial killer, described as having
Speaker 1: a jeckyal and hide personality, He was remorseful one minute
Speaker 1: and describing his kills in horrific detail the next, describing
Speaker 1: having sex with these women's bodies after he killed them.
Speaker 1: Those who knew him remember a boy next door with
Speaker 1: the soft, boyish demeanor. Not a vicious killer. But this
Speaker 1: was a man able to get away with multiple murders,
Speaker 1: potentially even as many as twenty. B. R. Bates is
Speaker 1: a longtime author and journalist who co wrote The Baby
Speaker 1: Doll serial Killer, The John Eric Armstrong Homicides with retired
Speaker 1: police commander and author Gerald Cliff b. R. Bates joins us. Now,
Speaker 1: br what can you tell us about Monica Johnson who
Speaker 1: was found murdered in nineteen ninety nine. Who was she?
Speaker 2: Well, she was a young lady and her thirty who
Speaker 2: had been born and raised in Detroit, and she grew
Speaker 2: up in the East Side mainly of the Detroit area.
Speaker 2: And she had what you would consider pretty normal upbringing
Speaker 2: a mom and dad's siblings, everybody together through her childhood
Speaker 2: and then she herself in her thirties, had a few kids.
Speaker 2: I think she had four kids, all aged ten and under.
Speaker 2: And she was working the streets. So and we don't
Speaker 2: know why she was working the streets. For some of
Speaker 2: these girls, a lot of these girls, it's addiction that
Speaker 2: puts them out there at risk living on the streets
Speaker 2: and working the streets. But for Monica, we don't really
Speaker 2: know that. We don't really know that she was addicted
Speaker 2: to anything, but she was out there.
Speaker 1: We know that she was murdered in the winter of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine. She was strangled and found face down
Speaker 1: in a sidewalk. What else do we know about how
Speaker 1: she died?
Speaker 2: It was an interesting her. I guess boyfriend. He's been
Speaker 2: called a boyfriend he's been called a friend. His name
Speaker 2: was Cliff. He was somebody that was close to Monica.
Speaker 2: He drove her that night to Michigan Avenue, and Michigan
Speaker 2: Avenue is a very thriving area of prostitution in Detroit.
Speaker 2: This seemed to have been a regular occurrence for them.
Speaker 2: He drove her there, he parked at Michigan and a
Speaker 2: side street called Sharon Street, and he waited there in
Speaker 2: the car while she walked away to do her thing
Speaker 2: to make some money. And so she wandered off and
Speaker 2: he fell asleep while he was waiting for her in
Speaker 2: the car, and she didn't come back. And she didn't
Speaker 2: try to I guess back then nineteen ninety nine, maybe
Speaker 2: page him or something, you know, contact him on a phone.
Speaker 2: He didn't hear from her, and when he woke up,
Speaker 2: he realized, oh, okay, she isn't back yet, and he
Speaker 2: just headed home. So we don't know the nature of
Speaker 2: that relationlationship, or if this was, like I said, a
Speaker 2: regular occurrence and this was just protocol for them. Who
Speaker 2: knows what was going on. But unfortunately Monica had encountered
Speaker 2: her last pain customer. You would say she had accepted
Speaker 2: a transaction with a person who then strangled her and
Speaker 2: left her to die on the sidewalk at a service
Speaker 2: drive off Interstate ninety four and Detroit, little service drive
Speaker 2: called spring Wells. And so he had left her there
Speaker 2: and driven away.
Speaker 1: What is the crime right like over in Detroit is
Speaker 1: murda something that is common.
Speaker 2: Yes, in the city of Detroit. Monica was one of
Speaker 2: about four hundred homicides I believe that year. Wow. And
Speaker 2: so this was December twod when Monica was killed. And
Speaker 2: so when the least realized, Okay, we have this young
Speaker 2: woman who is dead, and she appears to a better
Speaker 2: prostitute and they did id her and realize, yes, she
Speaker 2: was working the street. It really was not even a
Speaker 2: blip on the radar. It was not any cause of concern.
Speaker 2: It was investigated for a short time and then it
Speaker 2: was dropped.
Speaker 1: Full hundred is an insane number. I knew it was high.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was that high. Right, Another sex
Speaker 1: worker was murdered in Detroit and her name was Wendy Jordan.
Speaker 1: What happened to her?
Speaker 2: Wendy is somebody who did not live on the street
Speaker 2: so much as she wandered off there now and then
Speaker 2: but she also held down regular jobs in her life,
Speaker 2: and she had sisters who cared very much about her
Speaker 2: and would definitely know when she was missing or when
Speaker 2: she had fallen back on her own addiction, because that
Speaker 2: was what it was for Wendy. It was a matter
Speaker 2: of a day. It was January first when she encountered
Speaker 2: the same person who Monica had encountered, and this was
Speaker 2: off Warren Avenue actually in Detroit. This was one of
Speaker 2: the very few people that Armstrong picked up who was
Speaker 2: not on Michigan Avenue. This is like the one case
Speaker 2: I think, or actually two cases out of ten people
Speaker 2: where the female was not on Michigan Avenue. But yeah,
Speaker 2: he picked up Wendy on Warren and took her to
Speaker 2: a side street parked behind a funeral home, as crazy
Speaker 2: as it is, and he strangled Wendy. And the strange
Speaker 2: thing about the case with Wendy is that he took
Speaker 2: her in his jeep instead of just throwing her out
Speaker 2: of the jeep, which is what he did with all
Speaker 2: the rest of the assaults that he committed in Detroit.
Speaker 2: He took Wendy in his jeep almost all the way
Speaker 2: to his home, which was in a suburb of Detroit
Speaker 2: on the west side of Detroit, a suburb called Dearborn Heights,
Speaker 2: and he was almost all the way home. He was
Speaker 2: about a block from home when he pulled over and
Speaker 2: he dropped her over a bridge onto the Rouge River, which,
Speaker 2: because this was January in Michigan, it was very cold
Speaker 2: and it was partially frozen. There was some water and
Speaker 2: there was some ice, and so he dropped Wendy down
Speaker 2: onto the river. And then he continued on home and
Speaker 2: went to bed like usual, as if you know, nothing
Speaker 2: was different about that night.
Speaker 1: I noticed that he seemed to have, you know, like
Speaker 1: a kind of postmode of ritual. He'd go home and
Speaker 1: have a long shalla.
Speaker 2: Every time he did say that in his confessions to police,
Speaker 2: they would say, okay, what happened, then what did you do? Then? Well,
Speaker 2: I went home and yeah, he often does mention a shower,
Speaker 2: and then he crawled into bed with his wife. And
Speaker 2: I think his wife was really not from everything that
Speaker 2: I understand, his wife really was not aware of how
Speaker 2: long he was even out, and I really don't believe
Speaker 2: she was aware of what he was doing.
Speaker 1: I want to skip to another victim. Her name was
Speaker 1: Rose Marie Felt, and she died in March two thousand.
Speaker 1: What led her to sex work.
Speaker 2: She was introduced to cocaine as a teenager. I want
Speaker 2: to say, like fifteen sixteen. I spoke with the man
Speaker 2: who was the one who was very honest about saying,
Speaker 2: I'm the one I can tell you exactly when Rose
Speaker 2: became addicted, because I'm the one who introduced her to it,
Speaker 2: and that was her. I guess you'd call it a
Speaker 2: baby daddy. That's another thing he was very honest about.
Speaker 2: Rose became pregnant at only age fifteen or sixteen, but
Speaker 2: she also had been living the street life a little
Speaker 2: bit then. She was essentially a runaway. She was just
Speaker 2: kind of drawn into all of these things at a
Speaker 2: very young age, and so introduced to drugs in the
Speaker 2: of course, as with a lot of these other females,
Speaker 2: and how do I need to pay for my drugs?
Speaker 2: You know, how am I going to pay for my drugs?
Speaker 2: You know, that becomes the question, and so later they
Speaker 2: will often turn to prostitution. But yeah, she was very
Speaker 2: young and had a child, and then her daughter was
Speaker 2: taken care of by her boyfriend's parents, and it was
Speaker 2: a very fractured situation in Rose's life from a very
Speaker 2: young age, unfortunately, and when she died she was in
Speaker 2: her thirties, and so she had been living in that life,
Speaker 2: in an unstable, at risk life for quite a few years.
Speaker 1: And was she murdered in a similar fashion to the
Speaker 1: other women we've discovered.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, she was picked up on Michigan Avenue my
Speaker 2: arms Strong and they agreed on a transaction and he
Speaker 2: strangled her. She introduced him to a place because typically
Speaker 2: he wou he would hunt on Michigan Avenue, he would
Speaker 2: pick someone up and then he would drive somewhere close by. Well,
Speaker 2: Rose was the one who introduced Armstrong to the stretch
Speaker 2: of railroad tracks that are at Military and John Cronk
Speaker 2: Streets in southwest Detroit, and she told him she knew
Speaker 2: a place, and so they drove over there. There was
Speaker 2: there's like a part where you're driving in that area
Speaker 2: and you pull into a parking lot where there used
Speaker 2: to be a business. I'm sure it's been long closed now,
Speaker 2: but you pull into a parking lot and then there's
Speaker 2: part of the parking lot that goes up into a
Speaker 2: service drive that's next to the railroad tracks and when
Speaker 2: you get up there, it is pretty secluded. There's trees
Speaker 2: and other buildings around, and so it was a popular
Speaker 2: place for people to go to do drugs or to
Speaker 2: do prostitution back then. And so she knew up that
Speaker 2: place and pointed that out to him, and he drove
Speaker 2: up there and that's where he left her. He left
Speaker 2: her in the brush and then drove home from there.
Speaker 1: And that's why he left the buddies of three minutes.
Speaker 2: Yes, Rose was the first. Then he encountered Kelly Hood
Speaker 2: and he took her to that same place that Rose
Speaker 2: had shown him. And then the third female that he
Speaker 2: took there was Nicole Young, who was also known by
Speaker 2: the name Robin Brown on the street, and she was
Speaker 2: the last one left there, but he left her close
Speaker 2: to where the actual tracks were. He didn't really hide
Speaker 2: her in the brush. He left her out in plain
Speaker 2: view and she was discovered only hours later.
Speaker 1: On all of those deaths, those last three in particular,
Speaker 1: were very close to get the went.
Speaker 2: They Yes, Rose, we figure was mid March, based on
Speaker 2: the fact that she had been seen in Grand Rapids
Speaker 2: on the other side of the state in earlier March.
Speaker 2: I think it was like March seventh, she had gotten
Speaker 2: a citation in Grand Rapids for loitering. I believe it was,
Speaker 2: and so we know she was alive in the first
Speaker 2: full week of March, and based on timing and the research,
Speaker 2: it was probably around in mid March and Kelly Hood.
Speaker 2: I think it was early April for Kelly because based
Speaker 2: on what her family members said about speaking with her
Speaker 2: on the phone and when they last saw her. And
Speaker 2: then Robin Brown, while Nicole would have been around the
Speaker 2: ninth of April, so he was escalating.
Speaker 1: People are fascinated by serial killers. We always have been,
Speaker 1: we still remain to be. It struck me that in
Speaker 1: your book you spent so much time detailing the lives
Speaker 1: of these women, and you opened the book like that,
Speaker 1: one by one by one, detailing the lives of the
Speaker 1: women he killed. Was that a very kind of strong
Speaker 1: decision on your part to honor their lives?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely absolutely. I wanted this book to be victim centric,
Speaker 2: and so I was very determined to start out with
Speaker 2: a chapter on each one of the females who had died,
Speaker 2: and I ended up having two chapters for two of
Speaker 2: the survivors. Also, there were a couple there's one survivor
Speaker 2: who has passed in more recent years. And there's a
Speaker 2: couple survivors, well, one survivor I contacted and did not
Speaker 2: really want to go there, and then another survivor I
Speaker 2: was not able to contact. So seven chapters of people
Speaker 2: who were assaulted as victim centric as I could make it,
Speaker 2: And boy, I will tell you that was quite a challenge,
Speaker 2: because you know, you hunt online for family members of
Speaker 2: these five women who lost their lives, and it's challenging
Speaker 2: to find them, but it's just as challenging or more
Speaker 2: challenging to be able to contact them and get a response.
Speaker 2: Because of course I totally understand why would you want
Speaker 2: to talk about that. Okay, you're writing a book, Well,
Speaker 2: you're just going to make money off this case and whatever.
Speaker 2: There's that perception, and I can tell you this, these
Speaker 2: books are really not necessarily moneymakers, not at all. And
Speaker 2: I was very concerned and that I really was not
Speaker 2: going to be able to get enough information for a
Speaker 2: chapter on each one, and I set out to at
Speaker 2: least find one person to speak for each one of
Speaker 2: those gals, and thankfully for some of them, I got
Speaker 2: multiple people. Rose felt I thought I was going to
Speaker 2: get nobody for Rose felt to even learn who she was,
Speaker 2: and ended up speaking with four different family members, including
Speaker 2: her daughter and her brother. So I'm very, very blessed
Speaker 2: by that that I was able to break through to
Speaker 2: that that was the most important thing to me, was
Speaker 2: to show these valuable lives that were taken, that each
Speaker 2: one of these people, no matter where she ended up,
Speaker 2: each one of these people deserved to live and had
Speaker 2: a life just like you and me. I was hoping,
Speaker 2: honestly to startle people by this, to challenge their preconceived
Speaker 2: notions that a female living on the street has always
Speaker 2: been out and out and that's just the way they
Speaker 2: were raised, or what are our preconceived notions that people
Speaker 2: have about a sex worker, and show that, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people who end up in this kind
Speaker 2: of outrisk situation had very normal seeming lives as children.
Speaker 2: He had loving parents, had just all the things that
Speaker 2: you would picture would make for a good life and
Speaker 2: something went wrong and again it comes back to addiction
Speaker 2: in a lot of these cases.
Speaker 1: Well, you were definitely successful in humanizing these women and
Speaker 1: removing just the title of sex worker, because that's you know,
Speaker 1: when there's so many murders and so many women that's
Speaker 1: often what they got reduced to in news reports exactly
Speaker 1: and say it's so so important, Yes, thank you. Let's
Speaker 1: go back to the start of John Eric Armstrong's story.
Speaker 1: There seems to be two big things that kind of
Speaker 1: shaped his childhood. His father leaving when he was quite young,
Speaker 1: and his baby brother died.
Speaker 2: He was around five years old when his baby brother
Speaker 2: died in the crib, and shortly after that his dad
Speaker 2: left the family, and there are conflicting reports of why
Speaker 2: that happened. I did speak to Armstrong's half brother that
Speaker 2: he's never met. He's got a couple siblings, at least
Speaker 2: two half brothers that he's never met and maybe was
Speaker 2: not even aware of, to tell you the truth, who
Speaker 2: had relationships with their biological father, who were very loving
Speaker 2: relationships with their biological father, and who insists that the
Speaker 2: allegations that Armstrong made about his father were totally false.
Speaker 2: And so there's that element, because after his arrest, Armstrong
Speaker 2: did allege abuse by his biological father who left the
Speaker 2: family at this young age that Armstrong was and so
Speaker 2: there's that angle. And again those allegations have really been disputed,
Speaker 2: and I think very convincingly by the half brother that
Speaker 2: I spoke to, but then the idea of the baby
Speaker 2: brother dying in the crib before any of this happened.
Speaker 2: It's interesting Armstrong was so attached to this baby brother,
Speaker 2: and he was so attached that after his baby brother died,
Speaker 2: his mother later told the media after Armstrong was arrested
Speaker 2: in Detroit. Years later, his mom was interviewed in North Carolina,
Speaker 2: where Armstrong was born and raised, and his mom told
Speaker 2: the media that he was so attached to his baby
Speaker 2: brother that, for one thing, he had written his name
Speaker 2: in the family bible multiple times, almost like a strange
Speaker 2: obsessive element. And also after the baby brother died, little Eric,
Speaker 2: as he went by went by the name Eric, rode
Speaker 2: his bike out into traffic, seeming to be attempting suicide,
Speaker 2: just such a young age, so not too long after
Speaker 2: the babie brother died. So that was definitely a traumatic
Speaker 2: experience for him, we have to say, an interesting element
Speaker 2: of his background.
Speaker 1: Up next, we discussed Natasha, the first woman who escaped
Speaker 1: from John Eric Armstrong, and what happened to her After school,
Speaker 1: he joined the Navy, he met his wife, they had
Speaker 1: a baby. You know, reading his story, it all sounds
Speaker 1: like a pretty normal trajectory for a young man to take.
Speaker 1: Do we know what kind of person he was, what
Speaker 1: kind of colleague, husband, father?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the people that I spoke with who served with
Speaker 2: him in the United States Navy. He served aboard a
Speaker 2: ship called the Nimetz, the uss N nemts and aircraft carrier,
Speaker 2: a pretty well known ship here in the US, traveled
Speaker 2: all over the place. And if you go online and
Speaker 2: you listen to podcasts that have been done on the case,
Speaker 2: not podcasts with interviews like the one that you're doing,
Speaker 2: but podcasts that cover like news headlines and cover facts
Speaker 2: about cases. And you look at the comments that are
Speaker 2: made on some of those, and even blog posts about
Speaker 2: the case too. If you look at how people comment
Speaker 2: to those about Armstrong, you'll see that there's a lot
Speaker 2: of Nimets shipmates that go in and comment and they
Speaker 2: say things like, I never would have thought this was
Speaker 2: so shocking, this, I totally cannot believe this. You know,
Speaker 2: this just does not seem real. And he was referred
Speaker 2: to as Opie while he served in the Navy aboard
Speaker 2: the Nimets, and that was because if you're familiar with
Speaker 2: the character and the Mayberry character, the TV show character,
Speaker 2: I guess, Richie Cunningham. I think of him as on
Speaker 2: happy days. He was red haired, and he was very innocent,
Speaker 2: sort of a sweet little boy. And that's how they
Speaker 2: saw Armstrong in the Navy. That's how they saw Eric
Speaker 2: was as this sweet boy. He was big. He was
Speaker 2: over six foot and when he lived in Detroit after
Speaker 2: the Navy, he weighed by two hundred and fifty pounds,
Speaker 2: so he was just big all over. But one of
Speaker 2: his shipmates from the NIMTZ told me he was big,
Speaker 2: but he was soft. So he seemed to be soft spoken.
Speaker 2: That's how he carried himself. And there were others who
Speaker 2: went to school with him, like elementary school, and said
Speaker 2: that he was pretty shy. He didn't really talk a lot,
Speaker 2: so soft spoken. And that's the impression that I got
Speaker 2: of him.
Speaker 1: It's a very interesting profile to build, isn't it. How
Speaker 1: did Armstrong get on polices right? Initially?
Speaker 2: That happened with the Jordan incident in January two thousand,
Speaker 2: because he had driven almost all of the way home
Speaker 2: to where he was living in Dearborn Heights at the
Speaker 2: time with Wendy in the car, and then dropped her
Speaker 2: there and went on home. This was Dearborn Heights, This
Speaker 2: was not Detroit, and that was a huge difference. Dearborn
Speaker 2: Heights did not see the homicides that Detroit did, and
Speaker 2: so when they got a homicide, they really investigated it.
Speaker 2: And so the thing was and he really put himself
Speaker 2: on Blize radar with this. He didn't have to do it,
Speaker 2: but really just hours after he left Wendy. So he
Speaker 2: gets up the next morning and he goes to work,
Speaker 2: and he works at a store in Dearborn Heights and
Speaker 2: he complains that he's not feeling very well. I'm a
Speaker 2: little sick. Can I go home early? He asked his supervisor,
Speaker 2: and as supervisor agreed to let him go home a
Speaker 2: little bit early. It was probably about four o'clock in
Speaker 2: the afternoon, and he started heading home to where he
Speaker 2: was living at Dearborn Heights, and he went by way
Speaker 2: of the bridge where he had left Wendy. And this
Speaker 2: is really just hours earlier. This is later that same
Speaker 2: day essentially, because it was the early morning hours when
Speaker 2: he left her and he drove up, he pulled over
Speaker 2: his cheep on the side of where the bridge was.
Speaker 2: He got out, he walked over the bridge. He looked
Speaker 2: over the bridge, and he saw that Wendy was still there.
Speaker 2: She had not gone anywhere, she had not floated down
Speaker 2: the river or whatever. She was still there right where
Speaker 2: he had left her. He also realized that across the
Speaker 2: street from where he was and a couple doors down,
Speaker 2: there was a young man standing outside of a house
Speaker 2: where he lived with his parents, and his girlfriend was
Speaker 2: there with him, and he was about to hop in
Speaker 2: the car and take his girlfriend home because she had
Speaker 2: been there visiting at his house. So the two of
Speaker 2: them got in the car and they headed They pulled
Speaker 2: out of the driveway and turned toward where Armstrong had
Speaker 2: parked his jeep. And I guess he realized He didn't
Speaker 2: specifically say this when police questioned him later about it,
Speaker 2: but I guess he obviously realized, Okay, they noticed me
Speaker 2: pull over my jeep, they noticed that I went and
Speaker 2: walked up to the bridge and looked over the bridge,
Speaker 2: and they're going to know this body is going to
Speaker 2: be discovered. So I guess he was thinking he was
Speaker 2: getting out in front of it by flagging down the
Speaker 2: two people in the car and saying, hey, you have
Speaker 2: to call nine one one, there's a body here in
Speaker 2: the river. I just saw someone. You have to call
Speaker 2: the police. He evidently didn't have a cell phone on
Speaker 2: him himself, so they called police. Dearborn Heights responded. They
Speaker 2: arrived at the scene. They started questioning everyone who was
Speaker 2: there at the scene. They started processing the scene for evidence,
Speaker 2: and in all of that, their eyebrows were just a
Speaker 2: little bit raised at this guy who foul In quotes
Speaker 2: the body and the river. There was something about his
Speaker 2: story that was not making sense. He claimed that he
Speaker 2: had pulled over there to vomit. He was feeling sick.
Speaker 2: That's the story that he had set up at work
Speaker 2: that day. I'm not feeling well? Could I leave early?
Speaker 2: So what didn't make sense to them is that there
Speaker 2: was no vomit anywhere. He didn't actually throw up. And
Speaker 2: one of the police officers who investigated the case told
Speaker 2: me years later, well, if you're pulling over for one thing,
Speaker 2: why are you going to pull over there when you're
Speaker 2: only a block from home if you're feeling sick. And
Speaker 2: so his behavior was a little strange. Plus they knew
Speaker 2: the vehicle that he was driving. They were a little
Speaker 2: suspicious by something that they saw in the jeep when
Speaker 2: they were looking inside, Wendy had been wearing a pair
Speaker 2: of gold colored shoes, and it appeared that there were
Speaker 2: like little flecks of gold inside the cheep, like on
Speaker 2: the floor on the passenger side. So there were some
Speaker 2: suspicious things.
Speaker 1: And tell me about what happened with the DNA, because
Speaker 1: they collected DNA, but because it was nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: two thousand ish, it takes several months to kind of
Speaker 1: have that comeback.
Speaker 2: It seems outlandish, but yes, it took three months. They
Speaker 2: collected Armstrong's DNA in like the second or third week
Speaker 2: of January two thousand they got the warrants. They took
Speaker 2: all kinds of samples and they sent them off to
Speaker 2: the lab, and they did not get the final results.
Speaker 2: They got some preliminary reports. But the DA, I guess
Speaker 2: you'd say, the prosecutor's office in Wayne County, which is
Speaker 2: where this was, would not issue the warrant for his arrest.
Speaker 2: You know, they wanted to build a solid case as
Speaker 2: they could, to make sure that they could hold him
Speaker 2: and not have him released on some kind of technicality
Speaker 2: or weak part of the case. And so the prosecutor's
Speaker 2: office insisted on the final report of the DNA, which
Speaker 2: did not arrive until around April twelfth, I believe it was,
Speaker 2: So it was basically a full three months later before
Speaker 2: those DNA results came in and were finalized. And yeah, nowadays,
Speaker 2: because our technology has advanced so much, it seems just
Speaker 2: crazy that that happened.
Speaker 1: And what that delay meant was he murdered Rose Kelly
Speaker 1: and Nicole Yes.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, he murdered three more people and he
Speaker 2: attacked three others who survived, so he forever affected their
Speaker 2: lives as well.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the crime scenes. They were numerous.
Speaker 1: At the rial tracks where he dumped three of the
Speaker 1: women's bodies, there was quite a lot of evidence for
Speaker 1: detectives to kind of bag and test. There wasn't there.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was the challenge of it. You had this
Speaker 2: highly frequented area where there was a lot of illicit activity,
Speaker 2: like I said, drugs, prostitution, people just doing meetups or
Speaker 2: whatever the case. You also had the police talk to
Speaker 2: a couple people who just walked through there. One person
Speaker 2: would walk through there on their way home from work.
Speaker 2: So it was just a busy neighborhood. But everybody who
Speaker 2: lived in that surrounding part of the neighborhood and the
Speaker 2: blocks around there. Knew that that area was frequented with
Speaker 2: illicit activity. So because of that, you had all kinds
Speaker 2: of stuff at those railroad tracks, and Detroit Police had
Speaker 2: crime scene photos that showed just the full range of
Speaker 2: articles of clothing that did not belong to the three
Speaker 2: females who were found, just articles of clothing that people
Speaker 2: had left there, the shoe, cigarette cases, and definitely condoms
Speaker 2: and lots and lots of cigarette butts. And I think
Speaker 2: that was something that was remarked by one of the
Speaker 2: officers who was processing the scene as like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: like our commanding officer forced us to pick up each
Speaker 2: and every cigarette butt, and there were a lot of them.
Speaker 2: So that is a lot of processing at the lab,
Speaker 2: but definitely an array of evidence collected there and things
Speaker 2: like tire tracks and things of that sort that were
Speaker 2: processed in the lab as well.
Speaker 1: What did that mean for trying to narrow down the
Speaker 1: evidence on Armstrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's difficult. It's I'm sure clouding up the picture
Speaker 2: when you have so many items to process, and of course,
Speaker 2: with each of the three women who were found, they're
Speaker 2: going to do the DNA testing. They're going to look
Speaker 2: for that kind of DNA evidence in them too, and
Speaker 2: for instance, Wendy Jordan. The interesting thing about processing the
Speaker 2: Wendy Jordans scene at the Rouge River in Dearborn Heights
Speaker 2: is that she was lying on that combination of ice
Speaker 2: and water that I mentioned, and they had to get
Speaker 2: the county dive team out there, that part of law enforcement,
Speaker 2: and they had to suit up and get in there,
Speaker 2: and they had to before they lifted her out of
Speaker 2: the river, they had to wrap her hands in plastic
Speaker 2: bags just in case, for instance, she had some skin
Speaker 2: under her fingernails or whatnot. Because they didn't want any
Speaker 2: evidence to be destroyed, so they had to be very careful.
Speaker 2: And their care really paid off because Wendy did have
Speaker 2: DNA from Armstrong in her body, so they were able
Speaker 2: to prove that. You know, when the DNA results came
Speaker 2: back in April, it did really seal the case against Armstrong.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the railroad tracks, of course, you have all
Speaker 2: that different processing, and I'm sure it was a big
Speaker 2: challenge because of the nature of that place where the
Speaker 2: women were found.
Speaker 1: Were these because these are two kind of separate police
Speaker 1: departments that went to looking about were they talking to
Speaker 1: each other? Did they know they were after the same guy.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's a good question. I talked to an officer
Speaker 2: at Dearborn Heights who said, yeah, we shared information. We
Speaker 2: typically had like a daily call where we would just chat. Okay,
Speaker 2: what he got going on over there? I mean he
Speaker 2: would speak to officers in Detroit and just a touch base,
Speaker 2: well we got this or we got that. And still, remarkably,
Speaker 2: even though they had homicide in Dearborn Heights, there was
Speaker 2: no connection and no inkling that there was a serial killer,
Speaker 2: even though Monica had been killed in December, Wendy was
Speaker 2: killed in January. And then the three women were found
Speaker 2: of the Rowad tracks. That really blew it wide open.
Speaker 2: That was April tenth, two thousand and when three people
Speaker 2: were found of the Rowad tracks in different states of decomposition.
Speaker 2: They realized, Okay, we got something going on here. We
Speaker 2: actually have a serial killer in the motor City. And
Speaker 2: then it was like that day or the next day
Speaker 2: where the connection was made with Wendy Jordan like, oh wow, okay,
Speaker 2: this homicide, this could be connected, even though it is
Speaker 2: another jurisdiction, but Yeah, they to. The short answer to
Speaker 2: your question, I guess is yes, they did exchange information
Speaker 2: in a normal routine, but it still was not evident
Speaker 2: that these cases were connected or that they actually had
Speaker 2: a cereal until that day in April at the railroad Tracks.
Speaker 1: You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Jimmy Bass.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with author and journalist bon Bates about the
Speaker 1: baby Doll serial killer. After the break. Bia tells us
Speaker 1: how the arrest of Armstrong finally went down. How did
Speaker 1: the arrest of Armstrong go down eventually?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of a crazy story to you know.
Speaker 2: You had this Violent Crime Task Force, and my collaborator
Speaker 2: of the book, Gerald Cliff, he was part of the
Speaker 2: leadership of the Violent Crime Task Force, and you had
Speaker 2: a multi agency, multi jurisdiction panel of law enforcement that
Speaker 2: was out to get this guy, and it was a
Speaker 2: very quick time frame. They found the three women at
Speaker 2: the railroad tracks on April tenth, and they had him
Speaker 2: arrested about a day and a half later, But it
Speaker 2: actually was not by the Violent Crime Task Force. As
Speaker 2: crazy as that was. The word went out, Okay, this
Speaker 2: is the person we're looking for, and the Violent Crime
Speaker 2: task Force. They had members from the FBI, the Detroit
Speaker 2: office of the FBI, and I think it was an
Speaker 2: FBI profiler who told them, you know, and Jerry Cliff
Speaker 2: tells this story all the time, remembering it very well,
Speaker 2: that the FBI person said, you know, you're focusing on
Speaker 2: his three successes that you found to the rowad tracks
Speaker 2: so unfortunately, but why don't you focus on his failures,
Speaker 2: because for these three females being found dead, there's some
Speaker 2: other people out there who probably survived to probably have
Speaker 2: seen this guy and can tell you about them. And
Speaker 2: that is indeed what happened. And so they found someone
Speaker 2: who spoke to them, and after a lot of reluctance,
Speaker 2: were able to get that person to speak to them
Speaker 2: and come to find out it was someone who had
Speaker 2: encountered Armstrong and had survived an attack from Armstrong and
Speaker 2: was able to give a description, gave a description of
Speaker 2: the jeep that he was driving, his appearance, his work
Speaker 2: shirt that he had on with a name on the
Speaker 2: front of it, and right down to I think he
Speaker 2: was even included the baby doll played on the front
Speaker 2: of the jeep, which we now know so well. And
Speaker 2: you know, just other elements of the description, so they
Speaker 2: had something to go on. There also was another survivor
Speaker 2: who came forward to police and filled out a police
Speaker 2: report because she had been trying to get home on
Speaker 2: the bus one night on Michigan Avenue. And I guess
Speaker 2: there was something about her that struck Armstrong as interesting
Speaker 2: or you know, she wasn't by all accounts, she wasn't
Speaker 2: actually out there as a sex worker, but she was
Speaker 2: trying to get home waiting for the bus, and he
Speaker 2: offered to give her a ride, and so he tried
Speaker 2: to strangle her, and she was able to get away
Speaker 2: because she was wearing a scarf and it complicated betters
Speaker 2: for Armstrong. Plus she was carrying mace, so she got
Speaker 2: him good with her mace and she was able to
Speaker 2: get away. And then when the news broke about the
Speaker 2: discovery of the road tracks, she came forward and she
Speaker 2: gave a description that matched the other survivor's description. She
Speaker 2: was talking about Armstrong's tattoos, which were very unique striking,
Speaker 2: and what kind of car he drove, and what he
Speaker 2: looked like and all of that. So police were pretty
Speaker 2: sure they had a good description of their guy. And
Speaker 2: then it was like a night later, when these patrol
Speaker 2: officers were out and they were looking for that vehicle
Speaker 2: that the survivors had talked about, and lo and behold,
Speaker 2: there he was back out there on Michigan Avenue. As
Speaker 2: crazy as it was. Like I said, he was escalating,
Speaker 2: and so he was not trying to hide anymore. He
Speaker 2: did lay low for a little while while Dearborn Heights
Speaker 2: was investigating him back in January. He laid low, and
Speaker 2: he cooled it for a couple months. But now he
Speaker 2: had just killed a few people, few different people, had
Speaker 2: assaulted others, and he was right back out there on
Speaker 2: Michigan Avenue. Even though he had to have heard about
Speaker 2: the discovery of the roilroad tracks, he had to have
Speaker 2: heard that these three females had been found. But yet
Speaker 2: there he was, back out hunting. And so they pulled
Speaker 2: them over, and they began to realize, okay, we actually
Speaker 2: have our guy here.
Speaker 1: And he confessed pretty much straight away, didn't.
Speaker 2: He It didn't take long. The patrol officers who took
Speaker 2: him downtown claimed that he was muttering under his breath
Speaker 2: in the backseat, I'm glad it's over. I'm glad it's over. Well,
Speaker 2: that's not really a confession, although the one officer said
Speaker 2: they started to give him his rights at that point
Speaker 2: because they were concerned they were here in a confession.
Speaker 2: They saw what he was saying. But he got downtown
Speaker 2: and police began to question him, and there were two
Speaker 2: officers who were sent into the room with him. There
Speaker 2: was a guy who was a little bit more of
Speaker 2: a rookie who was young like Armstrong, just about his
Speaker 2: same age, and so there was an appeal to that
Speaker 2: idea of sending in a young guy to talk to him,
Speaker 2: to develop a rapport with him. And then the other
Speaker 2: officer who went into the room was a more seasoned
Speaker 2: veteran who was known to be a really good interrogator.
Speaker 2: The two of them started with I guess your stereotypical
Speaker 2: small talk, you know, I'm talking about sports teams and
Speaker 2: breakfast cereals and whatever. And maybe it was an hour
Speaker 2: or two before they finally broke him and got him
Speaker 2: to confess. So once he started confessing, he confessed to
Speaker 2: not only five murders in Detroit, but he also made
Speaker 2: confessions very very freely to other murders while he was
Speaker 2: serving in the Navy in the nineteen nineties, as crazy
Speaker 2: as that was.
Speaker 1: How many did he confess to.
Speaker 2: The Navy murders? I think were ten additional murders, and
Speaker 2: he confessed to the five in Detroit, like I said,
Speaker 2: but he really did not confess to his survivors. Strangely enough,
Speaker 2: one of those five survivors was never known until recently
Speaker 2: for one thing. So there were only four survivors known
Speaker 2: at the time of the case. And I don't think
Speaker 2: he made any of those confessions. He only confessed to
Speaker 2: the murders. So that really begs the question of how
Speaker 2: many people did he really attack in Detroit. It could
Speaker 2: have been more. But yeah, as far as the Navy ones,
Speaker 2: I believe there were ten additional that he claimed to
Speaker 2: have killed. They haven't all been corroborated. In fact, only
Speaker 2: one has really been paired with an actual murder, and
Speaker 2: that was the Virginia confession. But the rest are big
Speaker 2: question marks we don't know.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, he was actually quite remorseful of the mood as
Speaker 1: he commuted.
Speaker 2: He was he was crying, he was making extra notes
Speaker 2: as he was signing the confession sheets. The officers would
Speaker 2: read him his rights brand new with every single confession,
Speaker 2: And so when you're figuring like fifteen or so confessions
Speaker 2: and fifteen times reading his rights. Then at the end
Speaker 2: they would have him sign every page. They have him
Speaker 2: acknowledge every single page of the confession that they had
Speaker 2: jotted down from what he was saying, because it was
Speaker 2: not recorded, it was handwritten from what he was saying.
Speaker 2: And so he signed each and every page, and then
Speaker 2: at the end sometimes he would write a little note,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I hope that the family can forgive me,
Speaker 2: or something to that effect. And there's different schools of
Speaker 2: thought on this. My collaborator Jerry, would tell you that
Speaker 2: was all an act. It was all manipulation. He's trying
Speaker 2: to get sympathy. He knows that these statements are going
Speaker 2: to be read in court later, and he wants that
Speaker 2: little I'm sorry, the remorse part to be read. I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's difficult to say to me. In my research,
Speaker 2: he seemed very very penitent when he was making these confessions.
Speaker 2: He seemed very very sorrowful. But of course then by
Speaker 2: the time it came to trial a year later, he
Speaker 2: was recanting everything he was claiming in so I guess
Speaker 2: you got to decide for yourself if he was actually
Speaker 2: sorry or not. It's a good question.
Speaker 1: He was charged with five motives. In the end, he
Speaker 1: didn't played guilty to any of them.
Speaker 2: Yes, he was being charged with five murders, and then
Speaker 2: three out of the four survivors he was being charged
Speaker 2: with their assaults too. There was one of the four
Speaker 2: survivors who bowed out of the whole process because she
Speaker 2: just this was the one who was trying to get
Speaker 2: a ride home on the bus. She was just nervous
Speaker 2: and just didn't want to go through the whole thing.
Speaker 2: And so we had three survivors and five fatalities for
Speaker 2: the charges that he was brought with. He was tried
Speaker 2: for two of the murders, beginning with Wendy Jordan because
Speaker 2: that was the strongest case, and then the Kelly Hood
Speaker 2: trial followed that and it was two for two in convictions.
Speaker 2: He was convicted both times with mandatory life sentences. So
Speaker 2: at that point he just decided to plead out on
Speaker 2: the rest to the charges.
Speaker 1: But with those two trials you mentioned, firstly he tried
Speaker 1: to use the insanity defense and then secondly for the
Speaker 1: second trial, he tried to use the criminally insane defense.
Speaker 1: So it's quite a change from someone who literally gave
Speaker 1: the exact details of how he killed these women to
Speaker 1: then claiming insanity and not guilty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot that people probably don't realize. It's
Speaker 2: kind of an uphill climb with the insanity defense. There's
Speaker 2: a lot you have to show or have to prove
Speaker 2: in the insanity defense. For him just went nowhere. It
Speaker 2: was just not going to happen.
Speaker 1: Too much evidence.
Speaker 2: For a variety of reasons. And then also he switched
Speaker 2: lawyers between the first trial and the second trial. He
Speaker 2: hired a new lawyer for the second trial, but his
Speaker 2: lawyer for the first trial at first seemed to be
Speaker 2: taking the approach that, okay, so you found DNA in
Speaker 2: the victim Wendy, you found Armstrong's DNA. So yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: he did encounter Wendy, they had a transaction, but she
Speaker 2: was perfectly fine. He didn't kill her, she was fine
Speaker 2: when he left her. He was taking that approach, and
Speaker 2: the jury thankfully did not buy that either.
Speaker 1: Well, the jury in both of those trials returned a
Speaker 1: guilty verdict within a few hours.
Speaker 2: It was pretty short.
Speaker 1: Yes, so what was this plea deal that he agreed to.
Speaker 2: Well, he was convicted of multiple life sentences beyond the two.
Speaker 2: And you know, of course, when you're serving life in
Speaker 2: prison here in Michigan, USA, it's basically all the same.
Speaker 2: You're serving all sentences at once. But he was convicted
Speaker 2: of the others beyond the two mandatory life sentences for
Speaker 2: Wendy Jordan and Kelly Hood. And I couldn't tell you
Speaker 2: exactly like the but if you look at his prison
Speaker 2: record online, it will show you. It will outline for
Speaker 2: you all the sentences. But I know he was convicted
Speaker 2: of more beyond the two. Really, not much was thrown out.
Speaker 2: I think one survivor. Maybe there was a charge that
Speaker 2: was thrown out, but basically he got sentences for everything.
Speaker 2: There's just no chance. There's one survivor. Natasha, the first
Speaker 2: one he was known to have attacked in Michigan, and
Speaker 2: that was in August nineteen ninety nine. Natasha, I've gotten
Speaker 2: to know her really well, and she's still oh gosh,
Speaker 2: she's so traumatized. She has a pretty high degree of
Speaker 2: PTSD that she deals with regularly. I think she does
Speaker 2: honestly fear he'll get out someday and she has nightmares
Speaker 2: about it. She's very honest about having nightmares about him
Speaker 2: getting out, and sometimes she'll even see someone at our
Speaker 2: apartment complex with red hair that reminds her of him.
Speaker 2: And she even called me after one of these times, like,
Speaker 2: are you are you sure he can't get out? I mean,
Speaker 2: it's honestly, it has been so traumatizing for her. But yeah, thankfully,
Speaker 2: with so many multiple life sentences, I really don't think
Speaker 2: there's anyway even though he is when you look at it,
Speaker 2: he's a relatively young man. He just turned fifty I
Speaker 2: think last year, so he's pretty young still, even though
Speaker 2: he's been behind bars for more than twenty years.
Speaker 1: Do we know how his family reacted to all of
Speaker 1: these He had a wife and he ended up having
Speaker 1: two children. One I believe he hasn't met.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yes, he has not seen his wife and his
Speaker 2: toddler's son since he was incarcerated. His wife was there
Speaker 2: for his trial. His wife was supporting him. His wife
Speaker 2: really did not want to believe this, and that's how
Speaker 2: police described her as just shocked and this is not
Speaker 2: my husband. You got the wrong guy. And I think
Speaker 2: she honestly will it. But then by the time Armstrong
Speaker 2: was convicted, she left the picture and he has not
Speaker 2: seen her from what he told me, and like you said,
Speaker 2: he has not met the child that his wife was
Speaker 2: pregnant with when he was arrested. So yes, very sad.
Speaker 2: And his family in North Carolina, his mom and his
Speaker 2: stepdad have been very faithful in visiting him in prison.
Speaker 2: They have stood by him. His other family members, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure. He just actually lost a stepsister recently, but
Speaker 2: I'm not sure where they where the rest of the
Speaker 2: family members stand.
Speaker 1: Have you spoken to him, Yes.
Speaker 2: I visited him a couple of times. I've spoken to
Speaker 2: her email for the past few years. And yeah, he
Speaker 2: doesn't talk about the case. He will be friendly, he
Speaker 2: will talk to you, you know, he does talk to
Speaker 2: people from prison. It doesn't really get many visitors, but
Speaker 2: does not wish to discuss the case.
Speaker 1: How did you find him? What was he like?
Speaker 2: Oh? Goodness, completely opposite of what you would expect. I
Speaker 2: heard people describe him as the boy next door. And
Speaker 2: the one gal who worked with him at the store.
Speaker 2: She was sort of a motherly figure to him, and
Speaker 2: she really liked him. She had either a son or
Speaker 2: a nephew in the Navy, I believe as well, and
Speaker 2: so they would talk about that. They would share stories.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like I said, a motherly figure to him,
Speaker 2: and she described him as the boy next door. The
Speaker 2: prosecuting attorney, Betty Walker, actually was the other person who
Speaker 2: described him as the boy next door. She said, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I shopped at that store where he worked, and it
Speaker 2: just sent chills down my spine when I learned that
Speaker 2: he worked there. That was like my store that I
Speaker 2: went to. But sitting there in court even she described
Speaker 2: him as the boy next door, and those descriptions really
Speaker 2: struck a chord with me when I met him myself.
Speaker 2: For one thing, so many years later, his physical appearance
Speaker 2: is a lot different from what it was when he
Speaker 2: was arrested in his twenties. He was twenty six when
Speaker 2: he was arrested, so he looks a lot different nowadays.
Speaker 2: But he is just not what she would think, not
Speaker 2: a serial killer at all. And that's why his arrest,
Speaker 2: his identification as the serial killer was so shocking to
Speaker 2: anyone who knew him here in Michigan, just so very
Speaker 2: very shocking. And his demeanor and his appearance, he strikes
Speaker 2: you as very genuine when he chats with you, he smiles,
Speaker 2: he seems very kind in a genuine way, not a
Speaker 2: put on way or a manipulative way, but in a
Speaker 2: very genuine way. So it is seriously whacked that he
Speaker 2: just seems so different from being a serial killer.
Speaker 1: Did we ever find out why he did this, why
Speaker 1: he picked six workers, why he noted and assaulted so
Speaker 1: many people.
Speaker 2: Three of the survivors said that as he was strangling them,
Speaker 2: as he had his hands around their necks, he would
Speaker 2: say something or he would like mutter or yell something
Speaker 2: about hating prostitutes, I hate hookers, that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: in a very angry way. And he himself said after
Speaker 2: he was arrested, he told police, and this was picked
Speaker 2: up by the media at the time as just sort
Speaker 2: of a strange element of the case, and I don't
Speaker 2: really personally lend much credence to it, but it was
Speaker 2: reported in the media what he told police that when
Speaker 2: he was in high school, he had a girlfriend and
Speaker 2: that girlfriend left him for someone else because that someone
Speaker 2: else bought her things and Eric did not buy her things,
Speaker 2: and so he saw that he saw her as prostituting herself.
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking, what, that's kind of a loose association there,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I mean, is that a reason that
Speaker 2: you go on years later to kill prostitutes. I just
Speaker 2: don't know if that makes sense. So that is a
Speaker 2: mystery of why he so deeply hated prostitutes. It's really
Speaker 2: a mystery. I mean, obviously, like we discussed before, he
Speaker 2: was traumatized by his baby brother being killed at a
Speaker 2: young age, and I don't know. It's you know, I
Speaker 2: hope that people will form their own conclusion when they
Speaker 2: read the story, because it is. It truly is a
Speaker 2: million dollar question, and it intrigued and befuddled me as
Speaker 2: I researched the case, and I still could not tell
Speaker 2: you for sure, really, what is in back of all
Speaker 2: of this?
Speaker 1: Honestly, how many victims do you think there are out there?
Speaker 1: I've seen some reports saying there could be as many
Speaker 1: as twenty people did.
Speaker 2: His Yeah, besides the five killed and five who survived
Speaker 2: in Detroit, and then the ten in the Navy. I
Speaker 2: really have to believe the Navy confessions because his level
Speaker 2: of detail and how it flowed out of him, and
Speaker 2: he would even try as he was making these confessions,
Speaker 2: he would even try to like pause and make sure
Speaker 2: that he was remembering correctly, and he would tell police, well,
Speaker 2: sometimes I don't always remember them correctly. I may think
Speaker 2: of something else later. He seemed pretty serious and honest
Speaker 2: in the way that he was telling all of this
Speaker 2: in the confessions, and just the idea. You know, he
Speaker 2: didn't know any of their names, which is a sad
Speaker 2: aspect of that, but he often could say what she
Speaker 2: was wearing and her appearance. He could recall her hair color,
Speaker 2: he could recall what race she was, He could recall
Speaker 2: just other things like how tall, and things like that
Speaker 2: about how old she seemed to her. He did confess
Speaker 2: to one survivor, and I was able to pair that
Speaker 2: confession that he made about Cynthia with Cynthia's own account
Speaker 2: of the incident, and so comparing those two there were
Speaker 2: a few things that matched and a few things that
Speaker 2: didn't match. So we know from that that he wasn't
Speaker 2: entirely accurate on all of his confessions. But I feel
Speaker 2: like in what I read in the confessions, he actually
Speaker 2: was trying to recall this information. So all of that
Speaker 2: in consideration, I feel like those confessions to murders during
Speaker 2: his years in the Navy, those really did happen. And
Speaker 2: so if you figure ten, I mean that's attacking, assaulting
Speaker 2: at least twenty people, but you just have to wonder
Speaker 2: or when did all of this really begin?
Speaker 1: And how many more bodies are out there exactly? Thanks
Speaker 1: to be Our Bates for helping us to tell this story.
Speaker 1: True Crime Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and
Speaker 1: produced by me Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio
Speaker 1: design by Tom Lyon. Thanks so much for listening. I'll
Speaker 1: be back next week with another True Crime Conversation