John Eric Armstrong: Did he have any markers?

People often talk about the Macdonald triad when it comes to serial killers, the three markers it's believed serials show as children: bed-wetting, animal cruelty, setting fires. So how does convicted serial killer John Eric Armstrong stack up to that? Did he show any of those markers when he was growing up?

Short answer: Not in any of my research. There are a lot of details around Armstrong's childhood that are a bit of a mystery. I was able to speak with people who knew him back then in New Bern, North Carolina. People he went to school with, people he went to church with, people he worked with before joining the Navy in 1992. There's no mention of bedwetting, animal cruelty or setting fires anywhere in any of the files or interviews on the case. 

Another marker people believe in, as far as serials go, is childhood abuse. I just read a book that puts that abuse idea in what I believe is a much better perspective, however. It's Katherine Ramsland's "Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer," and in it, she quotes a colleague who essentially said it's not so much about abuse as it is about trauma. Every serial killer was not abused as a child, but serials do tend to experience trauma as children. And where trauma is concerned, Armstrong definitely checks the box. 

  

A few school photos of  young Eric Armstrong.

See note below for attribution / copyright.

He had a baby brother he adored, but when Armstrong was about five years old, the baby died in the crib. The loss was devastating for this young boy. After Armstrong was arrested in Detroit in April 2000, his mother told the media that her son, who would later go by Eric, once rode his bicycle into traffic, presumedly to join his baby brother. And that brings up another element that I have to wonder about as a marker: suicide attempts. Armstrong was known to have seriously contemplated or attempted suicide three times in his life. Other serials have done this.

There is always the million-dollar question of nature vs. nurture, as far as why a person chooses to take the life of another. Markers like the Macdonald triad are about nurture, but I really have to think there is brain chemistry going on, too. Dennis Rader, for instance, believes he was affected by his mother not only dropping him on his head as a child, but also falling off a horse when she was pregnant with him. (But perhaps those incidents are both nature and nurture!) I don't know if Armstrong suffered any such injuries, but I do believe that not even he really understands why he grew up to be a killer.

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Above photos: 

The first two are yearbook photos from Classmates.com. The third is a snapshot courtesy of Bill Taylor, classmate of young Eric in New Bern, North Carolina; it's copyrighted and specifically for use in "The 'Baby Doll' Serial Killer"; any other use prohibited without permission.

See more photos from the case at the gallery on the WildBlue Press website.