[tense music] NARRATOR: In the summer of 1999,
26-year-old John Eric Armstrong was honorably discharged
from the US Navy. He settled in Dearborn
Heights, Michigan with his wife and
their new baby. He was a nice
neighbor, a good friend, a good father, apparently,
according to his neighbors. NARRATOR: But Armstrong
wasn't the loving family man that people believed him to be. Armstrong was, in
my humble opinion, the personification of evil. NARRATOR: Armstrong
was using the services of sex workers, many of whom
he then brutally murdered. KYLE JAMES CAZARES: He's
killed a lot of women. It was natural to him. Only person that
type of lifestyle that could be natural
to is a monster. NARRATOR: As more
details emerged, police realized that
these murders went far beyond their local area. You're talking Singapore,
Hong Kong, and all these exotic locales
that his boat traveled to while he was in the navy. He's going to be one of the
most prolific, well-traveled serial killers in history. NARRATOR: John Eric
Armstrong had gone global and been unveiled as one of
the world's most evil killers. [theme music] On April the 10th, 2000 in
Detroit, Michigan, police were alerted to an
alarming discovery. The bodies of three
sex workers had been found near
some railway tracks in varying states
of decomposition. This was the work
of a serial killer. GERRY CLIFF: He didn't try
and conceal his crimes. He just discarded the bodies,
didn't try and hide them. He just came back
to visit and abuse and then move on to the next
murder and dispose of that one and roll it down the hill
and find another one. NARRATOR: With no
leads, the police were under pressure to
find the unknown killer before he could strike again. Then a chance traffic stop
and subsequent arrests of 26-year-old
John Eric Armstrong led to more revelations than
they could ever have expected. In the patrol car,
one of the patrolmen could hear Armstrong in the
back muttering something under his breath. "I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you guys got me." NARRATOR: This
killer's story begins on the southeastern
Coast of America. John Eric Armstrong was born
on November the 23rd, 1973. Armstrong was born and raised
in New Bern, North Carolina and, by all accounts, had
a very normal upbringing, very normal childhood. I think the most important
point in his early life was the death of a
younger brother, Michael, who died of sudden
infant death syndrome at barely two months old. And this had an impact on the
young John Eric Armstrong. Armstrong was five
years old at the time. And at five years
old, I'm not sure that children fully understand
the concept of death and dying and perhaps
how permanent it is. So it's quite possible that it
impacted him in a way that made him feel completely powerless. He was so distraught over
that that he deliberately rode his bicycle out in
traffic, almost like, you know, with the intention
of joining his baby brother. NARRATOR: The loss of a
baby had a major impact on Armstrong's parents. Shortly after his baby
brother Mikey died in the crib, his biological father
left the family. NARRATOR: After his father
left, young Armstrong stayed in the family
home with his mother. Towards the end of the 1970s,
Armstrong started school, and his classmates saw
nothing unusual about him. The people who went
to school with him, for instance, his
fellow students, they saw him as
just a normal kid. He was a little quiet. He seemed pretty meek. One person described him as
aloof, but really nothing unusual about his
childhood, nothing that would make someone ill at ease. Armstrong felt that he
was kind of an underachiever and being bullied. And a lot of this behavior
impacted him psychologically. We've got somebody whose
whole identity is being formed around this victimhood,
this powerlessness, this "the world is against me." And I think that
internal anger, rage, revenge is more what drove
him as he went into adulthood. GEOFFREY WANSELL: There was a
strange incident in his life. At school, he said
one of his classmates a girl was trying to persuade
him to have sex with her, and he didn't want to. And he locked
himself into a bathroom and threatened to kill himself. This led to a month long stay
in a mental health facility. JANE MONCKTON-SMITH: So he
obviously had issues with sex. A simple pressure for
sex is not going to put you into psychiatric care. There's a lot more
going on here. At the age of
16, Armstrong felt that he was still dealing
with the negative impact of his brother's death. And so he went for additional
psychiatric counseling. To seek psychiatric care at
age 16, when he's just had care for another incident,
this is somebody who's really, really struggling
to function in the world. NARRATOR: By his late
teens, despite his problems, Armstrong had managed to start
a relationship with a girl. But when his high school
sweetheart left him for another boy,
Armstrong was devastated, especially when he saw
his love rival shower his ex-girlfriend with gifts. Armstrong interpreted this
as her prostituting herself for her affections in
exchange for these gifts that this other new
suitor was providing her. This guy sees women, sex,
relationships transactional. And even he said that this
was like she was a prostitute. What an awful way to
see relationships. NARRATOR: In April 1992, when
Armstrong was 18 years old, he signed up with the US Navy. He joined the
military, which is I don't think an unusual
thing for somebody like him who feels, you know, like
he needs to be in a big gang because he feels like
the world is against him, and he needs control,
and he needs power. NARRATOR: Armstrong was
assigned to the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier,
then the largest sailing vessel in the world. BOBBY CHACON: Life
aboard the Nimitz, it would be pretty exciting. It can go anywhere in
the world, and often did. And Armstrong would
have enjoyed that life. He worked in the
barber shop, it was said. And then he had one or two
other jobs on the boat. And he had a good record by
all accounts aboard the boat. Nothing really stood out. GEOFFREY WANSELL: At one point,
he was nicknamed baby doll. He had this very child-like
face, this very innocent approach, which didn't
really make him like look like a grown-up man at all. NARRATOR: Despite his
youthful features, Armstrong was over 6 foot
tall with a large build. It was while aboard
the USS Nimitz that Armstrong met the woman
he would go on to marry. After both being honorably
discharged in 1999, the couple moved to Michigan
to start their married life and raise their first child. And so they settled into
a city in Metro Detroit, on the west side
of Metro Detroit called Dearborn Heights. And they lived with her
parents for a while. NARRATOR: Armstrong
started working for a chain of retail stores,
then later as a security guard, and then refueling airplanes at
Detroit Metropolitan Airport. It seems like
Armstrong may not have been able to find his way in-- at least vocationally--
in a career. NARRATOR: Those around Armstrong
just saw him as any other guy in the neighborhood. One lady said, I used to
get a ride home with him or ride to work. And she said he was
just the nicest guy. He was a nice
neighbor, a good friend, a good father, apparently,
according to his neighbors. And yet he had this
completely other side, this classic Jekyll and
Hyde approach, particularly to women. Beyond this normal life
appeared to be a facade. And behind that
facade, Armstrong was going out and
engaging in activity like having sex on a regular
basis with sex workers. He has got a bad attitude,
misogynistic attitude towards women. So I think we can
kind of see where it's coming from with him. NARRATOR: John Eric
Armstrong wasn't the loving family man he was
portraying to those around him. He was living a double life
filled with dark secrets, one that would soon be exposed. Armstrong's preferred haunt
for picking up sex workers was in Downtown Detroit, around
10 miles from his family home. Unfortunately, prostitution
has always thrived in Detroit. And the area of Michigan
Avenue has always been a hotspot for prostitution. NARRATOR: Kyle James
Cazares was a child when his mom, Kelly
Jean Hood, began working on the streets in the 1990s. Kelly started taking
drugs following the death of her father
and was trying to fund her addiction through sex work. She was actually very
close to my grandfather. And when he passed away, she
couldn't deal with the pain. My mom, before the drugs
and even after the drugs, was one of the most kindhearted
person you could ever meet. We were her world. She made sure we had a
good childhood, the best she could given what she could. It's-- you know, a very common
motivation of sex workers is to engage in prostitution
to raise money to support their drug habit. NARRATOR: Despite
his young age, Kyle worked out how his mom
was earning the money to pay for her addiction. I was with her all
the time, and I knew the people she hung out with. And I would just see them
around the neighborhood and what they were doing. And I just connected the dots. I was worried, but there
was nothing I can do. She was a grown woman,
and she was my mother. I felt like I needed to
protect her all the time. NARRATOR: Kelly
Jean Hood was one of many women selling sex in
the Detroit area at the time. Natasha Olejniczak was also
working in the same area. NATASHA OLEJNICZAK: I wasn't
on the streets for the drugs. I was in the streets
for money, fast money, seeing nice cars, clothes,
mink coats, stuff like that. And I don't know, just-- I just fell in the trap. I always had jobs
and everything. I just wanted to do something
to get quicker money, and I did. NARRATOR: The nature
of the industry means that sex
workers often operate in secluded and dark areas,
making them extremely vulnerable to predators. Sex workers are at a huge risk
of serious harm and homicide. I mean, mainly because
of their access ability. Sex workers are easy to get
into a place on your own, no questions asked. And because they want
the money, they'll-- they'll go with
you to a dark place where no one else is around. It is a very risky business. They're living a
very high-risk life. NARRATOR: One night
in August 1999, Natasha was working a
shift on the usual streets. Unbeknown to the sex
workers in the area, there was a deadly
predator on the loose, and he was out that night
looking for his next victim. NATASHA OLEJNICZAK:
I was on 8 Mile Road. He was in a Jeep. And he circled one time. Then he circled again. He pulled up, and he
asked me for a date. And I said, yeah. And then I got in the truck. He was big. He was bald headed at the time. He was tall. He wore glasses. Yup, and you could--
he was a big guy. He wasn't little. I didn't feel uncomfortable
with him or anything, you know? I wasn't nervous or nothing. NARRATOR: Natasha was
staying in a motel room close to the red-light area. So the pair headed there. He got inside the room, and
he just was feeling uneasy. He asked to use the bathroom. He used the bathroom. He came out, and he said, I
just don't really feel right. I got to leave. BOBBY CHACON: And he leaves. She goes into her room. A little while later,
there's a knock on her door. She opens the door. It's that guy. NATASHA OLEJNICZAK: I shouldn't
have never opened the door. I should've just
said, never mind. But I didn't think he
was going to come back. NARRATOR: Opening the door
to let the client back in turned out to be a decision
that Natasha would soon regret. NATASHA OLEJNICZAK:
He came in, and that's when he slammed my door. And he was like, don't scream. Don't yell. Because that's when he had the
knife, some sharp, big ones. And I was like, oh, my God. You can have all my money,
whatever, my whatever. NARRATOR: But the attacker
wasn't interested in taking Natasha's money. He wanted to take her life. He said he was
going to kill me. And I was like, don't kill me. I got kids. He came in with
this knife at me. My neck, my eyes, my toes,
my fingers, it just blood everywhere because he cut me. Then I was on the bed,
like, laying down. He had his body on me, and then
he grabbed the telephone cord and wrapped it around my
neck, like, five times and was, like, choking. NARRATOR: The asphyxiation
caused Natasha to pass out. When she regained consciousness,
her attacker was gone. I went out to the-- ran out
of the motel room and said, I need help. I need help. I was almost-- this guy
just tried to kill me. And then that's when
the police came. NARRATOR: The police
interviewed Natasha, but her description
of the attacker wasn't enough on its own. It's very difficult for the
police to follow up on any kind of attack like this
because there's so little to go on about what--
who this person is. NATASHA OLEJNICZAK: And
after that happened, I said, I got to
get out of this. I had to get counseling
and stuff because I got diagnosed with PTSD. NARRATOR: Less than four months
later, on December the 2nd, 1999, another
woman was targeted. 31-year-old sex
worker Monica Johnson was driven to work on Michigan
Avenue by her boyfriend. The couple parked
up on a side street just off the notorious
red-light strip. BOBBY CHACON: And
he stayed in his car while she walked down Michigan
Avenue to do some business. And that's the last
he ever saw of her. NARRATOR: Monica had been picked
up by a man on Michigan Avenue, and they'd driven
away from the area to have their sexual encounter. And it was just a short
little kind of secluded area, short little service drive. And they parked along
there, near an alley. And they carried
out a transaction. NARRATOR: But then
things took a dark turn when the man Monica was with
attacked and strangled her. A passerby found her
still alive hours later and called for an ambulance. And the ambulance came,
and they picked her up. And they took her
to the hospital. But by the time they
got there, she had died. NARRATOR: With no eyewitnesses
or CCTV of the attack on Monica Johnson, the police had
no leads and very little to progress their investigation,
nor had they identified any suspects for the
attacks on several other sex workers in Detroit in 1999. Monica's killer was still
on the loose in Detroit, and he could strike
again at any moment. So when we get into
the beginning of 2000, the turn of the millennium, he
escalates really quite quickly. He cannot give up the
compulsion to have sex with sex workers and kill them. NARRATOR: 39-year-old
Wendy Jordan was known to the
police as a sex worker in the red-light
area of Detroit. On January the 1st, 2000, Wendy
got into the car of a man who wanted to pay for her services. He was on Warren
Avenue in Detroit. And he picked Wendy
up, and he took her to this side street that was
right next to a funeral home. And they parked in the parking
lot of this funeral home. And they proceeded
with their transaction, and then he killed her. And he drove with her in
the Jeep a few miles away. And he pulled over and
dumped her over a bridge, into the Rouge River
on Ann Arbor trail. And then he went home. NARRATOR: Wendy's
body had been left in Dearborn Heights,
the home of John Eric Armstrong and his family. Since leaving the army
less than a year earlier and moving to the
area, Armstrong had changed jobs a number of times. On January the 2nd,
2000, Armstrong set off for work at a retail store. At some point in the morning,
Armstrong reported feeling sick and told his boss he
had to leave work. At which time, he drove away,
apparently on his way home. On his way home,
Armstrong pulls over on the bridge over
the Rouge River and says he did that because
he felt so ill he was going to vomit over the bridge. NARRATOR: Armstrong looked
down at the River Rouge below. It's maybe at that
point, 50 yards wide, 6 to 8 feet deep at the
most, and it runs for miles. But there's not a
real strong current. It was January. And it was still frozen. And so he looks over the
bridge, and he sees this woman. It was the body of
Wendy Jordan, who'd been left there the previous day. Armstrong flagged down a
passerby to call the police. He phones them up. And of course, the
body is discovered. It is indeed Wendy Jordan. NARRATOR: The police
arrived at the scene, and Armstrong told
them that he'd left work early because
he was feeling ill and had been driving home. But the police regard it,
and I quite agree with them, as most peculiar. He just happened to
stop on the bridge. And he just happened
to look over. And he just happened
to see a body. Goodness me. I mean, it almost defies belief,
doesn't it, to be honest? NARRATOR: Detectives wondered if
there was more to the discovery than Armstrong had told them. But if he was involved
in any way, why would he have alerted the police? JANE MONCKTON-SMITH:
He said he could see a body floating in the river. And it was all innocent. Why would he do that? It's a really-- it
seems like it would go against everything that
you think that he would do. You would think that he would
want to get away with it. You would think he'd want
to stay under the radar. Based on the unusual nature
of Armstrong being in that place at that time, the
police bring him down for additional questioning
to the police station. During which, he
maintains that he has no connection to this person. He didn't know who they
are or why they were there. And he stuck to his story that
he felt sick and left work. NARRATOR: Armstrong had
placed himself directly into the murder inquiry. But with no grounds to detain
him, police let him leave. His account of what happened
had raised their suspicions, and they decided to
investigate Armstrong further. Dearborn Heights
had him pegged. And they don't get a whole lot
of homicides like Detroit does. And so they dug into this
one, and they hung on. They followed him around. BOBBY CHACON: They
even asked to search his car, which he consented to. So they did a forensic
examination of his car, which they do tape lifts of-- they try to see if
there's fingerprints or DNA or blood inside the car. And one of the
officers happened to notice in the
search of the Jeep that he saw what he
believed were little specks or residue that were gold
in color that matched the shoes that Wendy was wearing. Within the car, there
was forensic evidence that Wendy Jordan had been in
it, which pointed even more conclusively to
the fact that he'd not only known her,
had her in the car, and thrown her out
into the river. They got a warrant for
his blood and saliva, and they did DNA testing. And then they did DNA
testing from Wendy's body. NARRATOR: Conclusive
DNA evidence could give the police
enough to link Armstrong to the murder of Wendy Jordan. But this wouldn't
be a quick process. DNA really came onto
the criminal investigation scene in the late '80s. So it was relatively new. They didn't have the
technology that we have today to both get DNA and
analyze even a good DNA sample. NARRATOR: It could take
months for the DNA results to come back. The police would have
to wait for those before they could take
any further action against Armstrong. And the prosecutor ordered
him released until such time as they had the results
from the DNA lab. BOBBY CHACON: At this point,
the police looked at Armstrong. And he's a former
military service member who got out of the service
and got a decent job and settled with
a wife and family. And so his daily life doesn't
seem to indicate, you know, a killer. NARRATOR: It would
be an agonizing wait for investigators. Meanwhile, John Eric Armstrong
remained free to roam the streets of Detroit. Three months after Wendy
Jordan's body was discovered, 42-year-old Wilhelmina Drane
was on Michigan Avenue. She said she was trying
to catch a bus home. And she was an older lady. NARRATOR: A vehicle
pulled up alongside her, and the man driving asked
her if she needed a lift. And they start to travel along. And she instructs him
how to take her home, which was north of Michigan. She lived, like, off Joy Road. And he traveled north. But he didn't make the turn
he was supposed to make, and he turned somewhere else. And he pulled over,
and he reached for her. She sprays him with mace,
and she's able to escape. NARRATOR: Five days
later, on April the 7th, 2000, sex worker Devon
Marcus survived an attack and reported the
incident to the police. Around the same time,
another sex worker called Cynthia was
attacked by a man fitting the same description as
the other two incidents. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He
left her for dead. But in fact, she wasn't dead. She survived. NARRATOR: The
attacker was showing no signs of slowing down. BR BATES: We've got
Wilhelmina, we've got Devon, we've got Cynthia, who
were attacked and survived. And he was escalating. He was definitely escalating. I mean, once he kicked back
into gear in mid-March, he escalated. Boom, boom, boom, boom. NARRATOR: On April the
10th, 2000, the police received a phone call. Somebody thought they saw a body
on the side of a railroad track as they were passing through. I was the commanding
officer of the violent crime section of the Detroit
Police Department, composed of the violent. Crime Task Force, the
fugitive apprehension team, and the crime analysis team of
the Detroit Police Department. Every Monday morning, we
would have a briefing. While we were in that
meeting, the head of the homicide division got
a message to call the office. NARRATOR: Gerry
Cliff passed the news on to his colleague, Del
Christian, a team leader on the Violent Crime Task Force. The commander from the
Detroit Police Department came through and said,
hey, they found a body over by the railroad tracks. It's just a track that
just goes through. It's a single
track in that area. And it's used by
one of the passenger rails and also freight. And a passenger on the train
that looked out the window and saw the body
told the conductor, I think I just saw
a body on the track. And the conductor contacted
the police department. NARRATOR: Not long
after this report came through to the police,
there was more news to follow. As they walk around the area,
they discover a second body. GERRY CLIFF: And he
came back, and he said, there's two bodies at the scene. And they're in different
states of decomposition. BR BATES: They walk
around further. And unfortunately, third body. And so they realize,
OK, this is very bad. These three females
were probably left here by the same person. NARRATOR: With three dead bodies
found in the same location, Police had to act
fast to establish what had happened to these women. There was one victim. She was lying 10 to 15 yards
away from the tracks themselves on grass and gravel,
but not concealed at all in brush or anything like that. She had her pants down
around her ankles. She had-- her legs
had been spread, you know, revealing manner,
I guess, you would say. There was what appeared
to be tights of some sort wrapped around her neck. So you could tell
that she'd obviously been raped and strangled. As we walked further, it
would have been north. There was a lot of brush. And that's where the second and
the third bodies were found. JANE MONCKTON-SMITH: The bodies
weren't very well hidden. So this isn't--
this isn't somebody who's done what they'd done
and they're leaving the scene. So we have to assume
that the killer knows these bodies will be
found, wants them to be found, in fact. They want to display what
they've done to the world. NARRATOR: The victims
all had ligature marks around their necks, showing
that they'd been strangled. Their bodies had also been
posed by their killer. I don't think that somebody
who does that to women has got great
relationships with women, probably struggles in
relationships with them, and feels an awful lot of
resentment towards women. I mean, the misogyny
of it just-- is probably the loudest
message that you can get from something like that. It's wanting to degrade
and humiliate the victims. NARRATOR: This was a
man taking pleasure in killing and demeaning women. Once we realized,
well, we have what I call a dumping
ground for the bodies, we knew we had a
serial murderer. We mobilized pretty much
everybody that we had, didn't take us long to realize
that this guy was a very prolific killer, and
that we needed to get him off the street as soon
as humanly possible before somebody else died. JANE MONCKTON-SMITH: Now
you have multiple victims. You have future victims that
may happen unless you catch this person because
they're not going to stop killing until you catch them. NARRATOR: Over eight
months in 1999 and 2000, a spate of attacks and murders
had happened in the Detroit area of Michigan. It was clear to police
that a serial killer was loose on the streets,
attacking and murdering women at an increasing rate. Detectives knew they
needed to act fast. Now this ups everything
in the police mind. The investigation immediately
takes on a different tenor. GERRY CLIFF: This is
obviously a serial because you could tell by
looking at three bodies that they were in differing
states of decomposition. And it's going to be
the only case we're going to be dealing with
for the next few days until we get the bad guy. NARRATOR: The race to
catch the killer was on. But with limited
evidence and no leads, the investigators
had little to go on. They needed to identify
the three women and work out a possible
connection between them in the hope that it might lead
the police to their killer. As we were able to
identify the victims, we also found out that there
had been previous arrests for-- or encounters with
the law concerning prostitution and whatnot. One was called Robin Brown,
also known as Nicole Young. One was Rosemary Felt. And the
last was called Kelly Hood. NARRATOR: For Kelly
Hood's son Kyle, his worst fears for his
mother had come true. KYLE JAMES CAZARES: I
heard my grandmother coming up the stairs. And the first thing she
told me before anybody, she said, mijo,
they found your mom. She's not here with us anymore. They found her. She's-- she's gone. Then I knew then that they-- she meant she was dead. GERRY CLIFF: She became
addicted to drugs. The only way that
she could support herself after her family broke
up was to work the street. She didn't become addicted
because she wanted to. She wasn't working the
street because she wanted to. She was working the
street to support a habit that she had no control over. NARRATOR: Police had
identified the victims were all sex workers, but specialist
help would be needed to track down their killer. FBI profilers got
to work on building a picture of the offender. The profiler will come in
and look at all the victims, look at the victimology,
what commonalities among these victims, among
the way they were posed, among the way they
were killed, and maybe even if you can
figure out the way they met the person
that killed them. Looking at the crime, the
FBI's Behavioral Science Unit suggested that the crimes have
been committed by a white man, comparatively young, 25 to 30. GERRY CLIFF: They
told us, you're looking at his successes. You need to look for a failure. And by that, they meant
somebody got away. And if we could
find that somebody, we would get a physical
description, maybe a vehicle description,
so on and so forth. NARRATOR: Having identified
the women as sex workers, police knew they needed
to interview women in the red-light area
in the hope of getting much needed information. Well, from two or three of
the girls that were interviewed, they mentioned that, yes,
a guy tried to kill me. He was driving a Jeep. Another one said that he had
a Tiger tattoo on his arm, that he was a white
male with reddish hair. Another one said he had a work
shirt with the name Eric on it. NARRATOR: The reports all seemed
to point to the same offender. So we realized that the
next thing that he would do is find another victim. NARRATOR: In the hope
of stopping the killer in his tracks, Detroit's
Violent Crime Task Force set up covert surveillance
on Michigan Avenue and the surrounding streets. Now you have potentially
a predator hunting victims through this area, and
you can't afford to miss that. We basically flooded the
area with surveillance crews and detectives in plain
clothes, not business suits, but, you know,
jeans and jackets, and basically patrolled,
looking for someone fitting his description. NARRATOR: They didn't
want the killer to realize that the police were on to him. Any suspicion they
were looking for him could scare the killer off and
prevent him from being caught. So during this
time, in this area, an actual marked
uniform patrol car noticed a car with a guy in
it that might have matched the description of the profile. And so they do a
routine car stop, so they can identify him,
get his driver's license, get his date of birth, run
him through the system to see if anybody is looking for him. Who is this guy? NARRATOR: The driver
of the vehicle was John Eric Armstrong. Dearborn Heights were
waiting for DNA results to establish a link to the
murder of Wendy Jordan. But Armstrong was
unknown to the officers in neighboring Detroit. BR BATES: He said he was
coming home from work. Well, his work was in
the other direction. He lived in Dearborn Heights. He worked over in
that direction. He was a long way from home. NARRATOR: Based on the matching
description and Armstrong's story not adding
up, police arrested him for further questioning. But before they could
get to the station, there was a shock in
store for the officers. The officers that
are driving him hear him muttering in the
back seat under his breath, and he's saying kind
of in a low voice, "I'm just glad it's over. I'm glad you got me." He was taken straight
down to the fifth floor police headquarters. And that's when the
interviews began. NARRATOR: As the officers
talked to Armstrong, one of them leaned
forward and put his hand on top of Armstrong's. He's just-- I just touched you. He says, I left my
DNA on your body simply by laying
my hand on yours. And that's when they began
to explain to him, you know, if you had anything to
do with these murders and you touched them in any way,
we're going to be able to tell. There is absolutely
no way that you're going to plead that
you didn't touch them if we get this DNA analysis
that proves that you did. BR BATES: And all of a sudden,
he just started, OK, I did it. I did it.
I did it. Then he started making
all of his confessions, and one right after another,
a lot of confessions for several hours. NARRATOR: John Eric
Armstrong confessed to the murders of the three
women found at the rail yard-- Nicole Young, Rosemary
Felt, and Kelly Jean Hood. BOBBY CHACON: Also, during
this time and this confession, he confessed to the
murder of Wendy Jordan off the Rouge Bridge. He knew that he was a
suspect in that case. So it was time to
confess to that. NARRATOR: But
Armstrong's confessions had only just begun. He actually went through a
list of a number of females that he had murdered
while he was on the USS Nimitz
aircraft carrier in multiple foreign countries. Any time he was on shore
leave, he would go ashore. And quite often, he
would find a prostitute and go through his routine-- rape, murder. And, you know, sometimes he
would dispose the bodies, and sometimes he
would just leave them. BR BATES: You're
talking Singapore. You're talking, you
know, Hong Kong and all these exotic locales
that his boat traveled to while he was in the navy. At this point,
FBI officials begin to investigate
Armstrong's claims of all these other
murders internationally. Because if it is
true, he's going to be one of the most prolific,
well-traveled serial killers in history. And so they start to look
into all of these things that he's telling them
in other jurisdictions. Some of his descriptions
aren't definitive enough. So when they look, the
dates don't match up. It could be he's
telling the truth. He just didn't give
them enough details. NARRATOR: In March 2001,
27-year-old John Eric Armstrong went on trial for the
murder of Wendy Jordan at the Frank Murphy Hall of
Justice in Downtown Detroit. To the surprise of those
involved in the investigation and despite his
earlier confessions, Armstrong changed his story. By the time he was brought
up on charges and things were proceeding through
the court system, he was maintaining
his innocence. NARRATOR: During the trial,
DNA and forensic evidence was presented to the jury. Fibers from Wendy
Jordan's clothes had been found in
Armstrong's vehicle, and the results of the DNA taken
by the Dearborn Heights Police had come back. The semen found inside Wendy's
body was John Eric Armstrong's. BR BATES: And so in the case
of Wendy Jordan, his attorney, one of the tactics he tried was
that, OK, you got DNA evidence, and it's linked my
client, to Wendy Jordan. So yeah, they had sex that
night, but it was consensual. And when he left
her, she was alive. So somebody else killed her. NARRATOR: The jury didn't
believe this excuse. On the 3rd of April 2001,
after a two-week trial, John Eric Armstrong
was found guilty of the first-degree
murder of Wendy Jordan and given a life sentence. On the 18th of June
2001, he was also found guilty of the first-degree
murder of Kelly Jean Hood and given another life sentence. KYLE JAMES CAZARES: She was
a wife, a mother, a daughter, and she was a human being
that deserved to live and deserved to come
back from her addiction. If he didn't take
her life, I know she would have came
around because everybody can overcome an addiction. NARRATOR: On July the
4th, 2001, Armstrong pleaded guilty to the
second-degree murder of Robin Brown, Rosemary
Felt, and Monica Johnson. He was sentenced to an
additional 31 years. Armstrong was never charged
with the attack on Natasha Olejniczak, but she is
certain he was the man who attacked her in August 1999. He was wrong for doing
what he'd done, period. I don't even know
how someone can just be at home with their
wife and killing women. How can you just
go out and do that? NARRATOR: Armstrong was
taken to the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in
Michigan to serve his sentence. I've worked other
serial investigations, and one of the
things that you learn when you're doing that is serial
criminals don't just stop. When and if they get
back into polite society, they're going to start
up all over again. NATASHA OLEJNICZAK: If he could,
he would still be doing it. If they let him out,
he would do it again. GERRY CLIFF: Armstrong
was, in my humble opinion, the personification of evil. He had no remorse whatsoever
for what he was doing. He knew what he was
doing was wrong. He knew he was taking lives. He was a manipulator. And he would do it
until we stopped him. NARRATOR: The lives
that Armstrong took before being
caught will always be remembered by
their loved ones, who bear the pain to this day. KYLE JAMES CAZARES: My
impression of John Eric Armstrong, he's just a monster. He's killed multiple women. And so it was natural to him. Only person that that
type of lifestyle that could be natural to is
a monster, plain and simple. [tense music] NARRATOR: Armstrong killed
five women in Michigan and violently
attacked many more. He also claims to have murdered
women all over the world when he was in the navy. If true, John Eric Armstrong
is one of the most globally prolific serial
killers to ever exist and will forever be known
as one of the world's most evil killers. [theme music]
