#RememberThem: Natasha, survivor
Natasha is not really a "victim." At least I prefer not to think of her that way, though she has felt like a victim so much over the years. She is a survivor, and I keep telling her that. The Lord has spared her for a reason.
She has seen her kids grow up, since that night she survived convicted serial killer John Eric Armstrong in August 1999. She has seen her grandchildren born. She has been a special person in their lives, and in my life, too. She has impacted people with her story. She was spared for a reason. Or multiple reasons.
As I have blogged before, many times women are living at risk out on the streets, doing sex work, to feed a drug habit. Natasha is the exception. She didn't do any drugs. She will tell you to this day that she was just out there to get some cash. She lived in Grand Rapids, on the west side of Michigan, and she would travel to Detroit for a stretch of days, stay in a motel, make some money, then head back to Grand Rapids. She was about to head back, that day in August 1999, but she decided to stay one more night then leave the next day. But what happened on that night changed her life forever.
He picked her up on Michigan Ave. They went back to her motel room. He seemed nervous. Antsy. He used the bathroom. Said he had to leave. But then a minute later, there's a knock on her door. Him again. She will always regret letting him back in. They tussled all over the room, he armed with a knife that he tended to use to threaten and weaken his victims, though his M.O. was always strangulation. There are more details to the story, but where it ended up was with Natasha playing dead, the cord from the room phone round around her neck, and him leaving.
Next, Natasha had to face the fact that cops don't always take seriously an assault on a prostitute. She reported the crime, police responded, did a little looking around. The clues were there, in the room. They were not really investigated. Had they been, it's possible the other nine people Armstrong went on to assault in Detroit would have been spared. That's one sad aspect of many surrounding Natasha's attack.
But ... spared for a purpose. Let's get back to that aspect. Because I choose to believe that it's far more important.
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| Natasha with her son Kenny, above, and below, her son Ronnie and his own son. Above image by the author and below image courtesy of Natasha; see note below. |
This post is part of a series on this blog that I am calling #RememberThem, a chance to honor the women who encountered the two Detroit serial killers I have researched, John Eric Armstrong and Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins. In this continuing series, with installments dropping every week or so, we'll first learn more about the women Armstrong was known to have killed in Detroit, then two of his survivors, then we'll turn to the women killed by Atkins. Click on the "Honoring the Victims" label on the left to see all of the parts in the series.
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