He was unassuming, sweet, and friendly. "Saved" in church as a teen, he never caused trouble. In the Navy, they called him Opie. Though he was a big guy, he had a soft, boyish demeanor. "The boy next door," said those who worked with and knew him.
But John Eric Armstrong had a dark secret-hidden even from those closest to him.
Prowling Detroit's well-known pocket of prostitution on historic Michigan Ave, this young husband and father picked up unsuspecting women who thought they were simply meeting a john. He seemed innocent, even driving a Jeep with a front plate reading "Baby Doll." But they soon discovered, he could turn on a dime -- fly into a rage. Sometimes he would leave his victims alive, but sometimes he didn't.
In THE 'BABY DOLL' SERIAL KILLER: The John Eric Armstrong Homicides, journalist B.R. Bates lays out the gripping story of this chameleon of a serial killer through his crimes - with a compassionate look at the life of each one of his victims - and the heroic efforts of law enforcement to catch him.
THE'BABY DOLL' SERIAL KILLER is the first in Bates' series of true crime books based in Detroit called "Murders in the Motor City." Bates gathered a wealth of case documentation, as well as interviews with victim family members, survivors, police and several who knew Armstrong to write her first exciting true crime.