Missing from Michigan Ave: The Case of John Eric Armstrong

by B.R. Bates, Gerald Cliff

In late 1999, women began disappearing from Detroit's thriving areas of prostitution. The following spring of 2000, when the bodies of three of them were discovered on a seedy stretch of railroad tracks in the southwest part of town, police realized there was a serial killer operating in the Motor City. And though it was a quick arrest - just a couple days later - police at first had no idea just how far and wide the horrors of this crime extended. As the perp began to talk, and he revealed detail after detail, it became all too clear that the case of John Eric Armstrong could span the country. And even the globe.

Longtime author and journalist B.R. Bates takes you through the crimes and investigation that followed, collaborating with the commanding officer of the Violent Crime Section that investigated the Armstrong case in Detroit, Dr. Gerald Cliff. Informed by interviews of victim family members, numerous law enforcement, and others touched by the crimes, as well as a wealth of documentation from the case, Missing from Michigan Ave is a chronicle of a killer with a reach that still remains largely unknown. 

Check out the authors' appearance on the second episode of Oxygen's "Twisted Killers" series focusing on the Armstrong case.

Genres: True Crime

395 pages, Paperback

Published January 3, 2022

About the author

B.R. Bates is a longtime author and journalist who has concentrated her career in the pop culture genre, with 12 books in print, numerous e-books, and years of other publications such as many, many clips from her career in newspapers. With "The 'Baby Doll' Serial Killer" (formerly the academic edition "Missing from Michigan Ave") she made her first foray into true crime, returning more solidly to her journalism roots. After researching the case of convicted serial killer John Eric Armstrong, she turned to an earlier Detroit serial, Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins, for the second title in the Murders in the Motor City series, "The Crack City Strangler."

She graduated from Michigan State University's accredited School of Journalism with a bachelor's degree, and a second major of English, and spent 10 years in the daily newspaper industry before moving into the corporate world. Besides time at the Wausau (Wis.) Daily Herald and The Saginaw (Mich.) News, she spent five years at The Detroit News, where she worked at the time of the Armstrong case. More recently, she has managed websites for a federal government agency while continuing her freelance writing projects.

A Michigan native who has spent a lot of time in Detroit, Bates has also lived in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

You can catch interviews with her in Oxygen's "Twisted Killers," S1E2, focusing on the Armstrong case, as well as S8E2 and S8E3 of "The World's Most Evil Killers." She has discussed the Armstrong and Atkins cases on an array of podcasts, such as True Crime Talk with Nic Edwards, Dan Zupansky's True Murder, True Crime Conversations with Gemma Bath, and more.

Learn more:
https://brbates.com
https://br-bates.blogspot.com
https://wildbluepress.com/category/au...
https://wildbluepress.com/category/th...

Reviews

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a fine, compassionate, insightful read about a dreadful local case of serial murder. This one still feels so close and immediate after nearly 25 years, and the authors brought it all back as if it were last week. Finally I got to learn something about the victims! I remain furious that I learned zero about that fourth body at the dump site, not even whether it was a child or an adult, male or female, not a name, not a cause of death, nothing. Who are you!? With that said I am extending a plea to these authors to bring us a book, or books, about the victims of Tony Atkins, Donald Murphy, Victor Malone, Coral Watts, Shelly Brooks and DeAngelo Martin. So many unanswered questions.