#RememberThem: Nicole
Nicole came to Detroit from Chicago, evidently with her boyfriend, whom some have called her pimp. She wasn’t on the streets of the Motor City for very long before she encountered John Eric Armstrong.
She would be the last person he was known to kill, and investigators really had a time figuring out which was her real name — Nicole or Robin — and what was her true age. She had arrest records and would tell police different things at different times.
After her death and with some digging, police learned she was younger than they thought — just 17. She had been aging herself up a bit so that police would not return her to her family, a family that by some accounts didn't want her. There was no one who would come to claim her body in Detroit. The prosecutor, Betty Walker, was able to contact the family at one point, requesting a photo of Nicole that could be used at trial. What they sent was an early grade school photo.
As I researched the Armstrong case for "The ‘Baby Doll’ Serial Killer: The John Eric Armstrong Homicides," I was determined to reach at least one person to speak for each of the five women who lost their lives in Detroit. Nicole was the most difficult of the five -- no one seemed to know her or want to claim her. I almost was able to reach her boyfriend, on a tip from the landlady of the building where she had sometimes been in Chicago for a brief time. It was a couple degrees of separation at best. But the boyfriend wouldn't respond, so I had to take what the landlady said, and she really didn't know her.
Soooo ... 17 years, reduced to a few paragraphs, unfortunately. There was someone who commented on a podcast on the case on YouTube, saying they knew her, she loved to dance, and had a great smile. I was pretty thankful to read something like that.
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| Above and below: A couple of Nicole's arrest records. She also went by the name Robin / Robbin. Images from Detroit Police files. |
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| The building in Chicago where Nicole stayed for a time before coming to Detroit. Image by Google. |
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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