The Soul Sucker

By Albert Reneer

This book is about a horrific murder. No one deserves to be slaughtered like this victim was, and again, like most evildoings, it was over money. "The love of money is the root of all evil." I never thought this adage to be completely true until this murder case, and my eyes were opened. It is true.

The house where this murder occurred is cursed and haunted to this day. For some reason, possibly because of my religious beliefs, I have not had any spiritual problems during and after the serving of four search warrants at this house, but several other officers and crime scene personnel did. I cannot stress the fact enough that this house is evil. I don't know the reason why, but many others have sensed the evil in this property, especially the house, and they refuse to do any more searches with me in this house.

And I have decided to never give the location of this house-ever-because I have witnessed what it has done to other people's souls.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637107683

Book preview

Chapter 1

Home Sweet Home and Getting Acquainted

March 2014

I told him, Why do you keep bugging me about going there? I’ve told you a hundred times I won’t do it. It is a very, very bad place. This isn’t a movie or a neighborhood legend. It’s for real, and it’s a nasty place. What don’t you understand? There are demons and unclean spirits—or whatever you want to call them—hanging out there. It’s their crash pad, depot, portal to hell, or game room. I don’t know, and I don’t care. It’s not a must-see tourist stop.

Now I had probably told this to Elder Williams, a Mormon missionary, at least a hundred times, but he kept asking, So, Brother Richards, when are you gonna take us—us meaning whoever his current partner was—to the Armstrong house?

Elder Williams had an infectious smile and outgoing personality. He was about six feet four and was rather large in girth. I was quite sure his future wife would call him bear. He was also quite spiritual and had some Native American in him, or so he claimed. He was a good guy, and after we met, we became friends immediately. I would be proud to call him a son, but man, did he have an overpowering sense of curiosity! And like the expression, curiosity killed the cat, it almost got him too.

Elder Williams was a Mormon missionary, and I liked Mormon missionaries. The missionaries liked me because I fed them hot dog supremes, my name for a concoction that made for a delicious meal. They were kind of like hot dog tacos, only better, and the record was nine at one sitting, eaten by a rather sizeable and very hungry missionary. For several months, they would come over to be fed. We had good talks regarding religious matters, history, our home states, and my past employment—law enforcement. It was the last subject that they liked to hear about the most, the cop war stories. The stories always led to one particular homicide that I always presented as a spiritual lesson, a war between good and evil, which indeed it was. I also enjoyed telling it because it gave these young men and women a sample of what was really out there—you know, those things that went bump in the night.

During my childhood and teen years and even in my wildest dreams, I never thought I would become a policeman. Since the late seventies, the correct word is police officer so as not to show a distinction between a male or female officer. I spent some time (thank goodness not too much) running from the police as a teen and a young man. I have a feeling this scenario applies more often than not to those who become cops. I retired as a sergeant and left in good standing with my department. I truly enjoyed the work I did. Patrolman, detective, court officer, community officer, field training officer, internal affairs investigator, patrol sergeant, detective bureau sergeant, husband, and a father—oh what a good life. The city I worked for treated me very good, and I, in return, gave them a good day’s work. This city was and still is a very busy place for law enforcement, and it still keeps them busy twenty-four seven. I am grateful to have served this city.

You wouldn’t believe the things police officers see and have to deal with in any given city, and I hope this book will provide a glimpse. Having a strange sense of humor, I used it extensively throughout my career. A lot of cops have a sense of humor. If not, they’ll find one—hopefully, real quick. Sometimes the job could just get to you or eat away at you. For instance, cases involving SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) got to some officers, and they had trouble recovering from such cases.

Investigating the death of an infant hurt some guys, especially those with young children at home. There are many reasons why a baby could die during the night, but usually, with SIDS, there is no definite medical reason for the passing of the infant. I have always believed that God had some reason for taking the soul back, and I’ve left it at that. At least with this belief, I was able to deal with the investigations.

In one particular SIDS investigation, the parents had a habit of laying the infant between them on their bed before falling asleep. One of their older children informed me of this, and it was a regular nightly thing they did. When I had first arrived at this particular sad call, I had found the deceased infant in his crib. For a little infant to die while sleeping between the parents is not that strange if one considers how easy it is to accidentally suffocate the child with the movement of one parent’s arm or torso during the night. At the time, I felt that the grieving parents had enough pain without digging further into this theory of mine. Besides, there was no petechial hemorrhage (small blood vessel hemorrhaging in the eyes), which indicated that his death was probably not from suffocation. The child was going to be autopsied by the coroner anyway to determine the cause of death.

May 2014

All right, all right already. If you must see for yourself, I will take you and your partner, Elder Henry, to see the house. But you both have been warned.

No sooner had I spoken these words than Elder Williams broke into a huge Cheshire cat smile. There were four Mormon missionaries at my dinner table, and they had just enjoyed a session of hot dog supremes. Two of them refused to go, which was smart on their part and fine with me, but Williams and Henry were delighted. At the time, all four of them were residing in an apartment complex in a nearby city.

We left for the murder house, henceforth known as the Armstrong house, in the late evening, while the other two missionaries rode their bicycles home. We drove away from my cozy house, and en route, there was no shutting Williams up. Actually, both were pretty jazzed up.

Although they didn’t see it, I rolled my eyes at them and thought again, This is not a good idea, even if they’ve been warned extensively.

I pulled up in front of the Armstrong house and parked next to the curb. The place sure looked good compared to what it used to look like—the Bates Motel or, even better, the Adams family house.

Elder Henry sat in the front passenger seat, and Elder Williams sitting in the right rear seat. Both just stared at the house. I turned the car off, and Elder Henry began talking to me. Strangely, Elder Williams sat quietly, just staring intently at the house.

I pointed to a wooden gate in the brick wall between the garage and house. This gate was the gate of no return. It led from the driveway into the rear patio area. I informed them that the stabbing had occurred just inside that gate, but Williams didn’t say a word—he just stared. This went on for about five minutes. Then I asked Williams if he was all right. He let out a weak Yeah and continued to stare. Elder Henry wasn’t fazed by the house except by the noticeable silence from Elder Williams. Normally, one had a hard time getting Williams to clam up about anything. He liked to talk and laugh, but not now.

I let this go on for a few more minutes and then decided, along with Elder Henry, to drive them home. On the drive home, Elder Williams was still very quiet, and he was now staring blankly straight ahead.

I pressed the issue by asking Williams, So what do ya think?

Without moving his head, he softly answered, I was led through the gate and stabbed. Ahh, I saw the whole thing. I was there.

I thought to myself, All righty then.

But Elder Henry asked loud and clear, What the heck are you talking about?

I then asked Williams, Did you have an ‘out of body experience’ or something?

Williams again answered very softly, Yeah. It was as if he didn’t even hear what I had asked him.

Henry turned around in his seat and just stared at Elder Williams, who just looked through him as if he wasn’t there. Nothing else was said during the last ten minutes of the drive. However, Elder Henry and I looked at each other quite often with puzzled expressions on our faces.

I dropped them both off at their apartment complex and drove home. Then I said my prayer and went to sleep.

It was either the next day or the second day after we visited the Armstrong house when I got a call from Elder Henry. He told me that after I had dropped them off, they went into their apartment, and Elder Williams began to act very, very strange, so much so that the two other missionaries in the apartment complex joined Elder Henry in watching Williams’s erratic behavior. Elder Williams was having extreme mood swings, laughing at one point, crying the next, and even yelling about someone sitting on his bed. It soon became apparent to the other three missionaries that an unclean spirit had probably possessed Elder Williams.

Elder Henry and the other two missionaries had sat Williams down and quickly placed their hands on Elder Williams’s head. They gave him a blessing in hopes that it would oust this unclean spirit from him. As they were doing so, out of the corner of Elder Henry’s eye, he saw a shadowy figure moving along the ceiling and the ceiling corners of the room.

Elder Henry had difficulty explaining to me what the shadowy figure looked like. He explained that this shadowy figure was able to block out light, but it was not necessarily a clear outline of someone. Whatever it was, it seemed to be wearing a hooded cloak. That was the best he could describe it. It sounded to me like he was describing the dark underworld figures in the movie Ghost. They also soon found out that they had to bless the apartment to get this unclean/evil spirit out of their apartment.

This evidently was an all-night ordeal according to both Henry and, later, Williams. Elder Williams didn’t like to talk about it.

During this same night, after the hopeful exorcism, both Henry and Williams had to retrieve their bicycles from another location. They called a church member who gave them a ride from their apartment to a church in order to obtain their bikes. It was well known that Elder Williams, due to his large size, was not fond of riding bicycles, nor did he pedal at any high rate of speed. However, according to Elder Henry, That night, when we rode our bikes back to our apartment, he [Williams] rode faster than anyone I have ever seen before. I could barely keep up with him.

After they arrived at their apartment, Henry asked Williams what was going on.

Williams told him, I was being chased by something evil.

Elder Williams then described this something evil as a dark-cloaked shadowy thing following him. It matched Elder Henry’s description to a tee.

I’ll be darned. Elder Williams has picked up some filthy, demonic hitchhiker at the Armstrong house and brought it home with him. That’s just great, mused Elder Henry.

To this day, Elder Williams still does not like talking about it. He has an occasional nightmare about it. He even stated that he would never go near that house again.

Upon hearing this from him, I couldn’t help the words that melted out of my mouth. I told you so. You were warned.

With his head lowered, all he could retort was Indeed, I was.

I had even told both of them what had occurred at the Armstrong house. But at the time, it must have only aroused their curiosity all the more.

April 2014

My wife and I were traveling with my wife’s cousin, Stephanie, and her husband, Elias, in their silver Range Rover. We were headed to another cousin’s house to honor their uncle who had recently passed away. Elias was driving, I was in the front passenger seat, and the wives were in the back seat. En route to their cousin’s house, we discovered that Elias and Stephanie had never heard the story of the Armstrong murder case. I had thought that I had told everyone I knew about this weird homicide case, especially these two.

My wife stated, Well, now’s a good time. You have a captive audience.

I let them know that the full story would take several hours to tell and then some but that I’d give them the Reader’s Digest version to pass the time. I also emphasized to them the truthfulness of what I was about to tell them. We arrived at our destination with the short version only halfway done. Stephanie was very interested in the story, but Elias seemed uninterested.

After the family get-together was concluded, we were back on the road, and Stephanie requested the rest of the story. Elias didn’t say much regarding my tale, and at times, I didn’t think he was even listening. I also thought he didn’t believe a thing I was saying about the case. No matter. His wife was sure enjoying the story. I shortened the story when my wife mentioned that our granddaughter lived in the same city as the Armstrong house and since we were going to drive by our granddaughter’s house, we could at least go see the Armstrong house.

Thus speaketh up Elias. He was listening after all. Why do I want to go and jump into the lion’s den? He added, For what purpose on this earth would it benefit me to go and see a portal to hell? You guys have to be out of your minds. Unbelievable!

But his wife, Stephanie, won out, and I directed him to the Armstrong house. The last I knew of the house, it was empty and for sale. I used this point as extra bait to get their curiosity up because now we could get out of the vehicle and look into the killing zone, the backyard, and the patio area. This added information certainly worked on Stephanie and even on my wife, but Elias kept silent and drove on.

When we arrived, I had him park slightly past the front of the house because the house was now occupied with either new owners or renters. We could see them sitting in the front room. That was why we parked slightly past the front of the house, but we were still in front of the property. The place really looked different. It was cleaned up and almost looked presentable.

Elias kept the motor running while in park, and he parked about two feet from the curb. The two ladies in the back seat were talking away, and I was just looking at the house. Elias was busy doing something with the steering wheel and console. I hadn’t noticed at first, but the all-around sonar warning bell was sounding, which was why Elias was so busy. He was trying to find the reason why the alarm was sounding. This all-around sonar alarm would sound off if something was near the vehicle, whether in front, rear, or side. Ah, what a modern vehicle!

After half a minute of this bell ringing, Elias’s wife, Stephanie, now noticed it. She asked, Elias, why is the sonar alarm sounding? Is something next to our car?

Elias was now somewhat frantic. He could not stop the ringing, nor did he know the reason for it. Now the three of us—Stephanie, my wife, and I—were looking outside the windows to see if someone or something, whether human or animal, was near the vehicle. Elias joined in the rubbernecking. After a minute or so, we all stopped looking out of the vehicle, and with startled looks on our faces, we looked at one another and came to the same realization.

An unseen person was causing the sonar alarm system to go off!

I asked Elias to back up a little bit. He did, but the bell kept on sounding. The alarmed expressions on our faces turned into expressions of fear.

Stephanie moaned and said, Oh no.

But Elias yelled, That will be enough of this! He threw the gear shift lever into drive and drove off at a fast rate of speed. We looked back as we sped away, but there was still nothing to be seen where we were parked. He complained out loud, kind of to himself, Why the hell did I let you guys talk me into that? Why did I jump into the lion’s den? Unbelievable!

I answered him in a low voice, Now do you believe me?

There was no answer; he just drove us home.

Mid 1980s

I was working the graveyard shift, and it was a good team. Both the sergeant and officers were squared away. We had one another’s backs, and we worked our butts off. In this particular city, people, for some reason, didn’t sleep. They’d walk around all night like zombies. If we had an assignment in the middle of the night that took us out of the city, we were amazed that there were no citizens walking the streets in other cities but that as soon as we crossed back into our city, shazam, there were people everywhere. We came up with a theory as to why this was so. We figured that since the populace was more on the poor side, they had nothing to do during the day but sleep and with the night being cooler, they came out of their caves and roamed the city at night. That was the best we could come up with.

During this time, I somehow acquired a Schwinn 10 speed bicycle, a.k.a. the Varsity. This bicycle was popular in the midsixties, and it weighed a ton, but who cared? It was fine for my purposes. My team sergeant and I lived near each other, and I was able to talk him into riding our bikes to work, about four miles round trip. The Armstrong house was on our bike route to the station and back. I passed it twice a day, and despite the fact that I had never been inside, it struck me as an odd place.

There was something peculiar about that house; it stuck out like a sore thumb. I have no idea if it had the same impact on the sergeant or not; I never asked. But it sure caught my eye for some reason. It was a two-story house, a rarity in this town, but there was something else. It was just looked creepy, dark, and foreboding. In reality, the place looked normal, but there was a bad spiritual aura about the property that some people could feel. These bike rides were several years before the incident occurred there.

It was a wood-and-stucco two-story house that sat on a three-quarter-acre lot; it had three bedrooms, two baths, and a swimming pool. The rear yard was unkempt and had lots of weeds but no grass that I ever saw. There was a fenced-off section in the rear of the yard, which had three subsections. Maybe, at one time, these subsections were used for horses or some other type of animal. One of the subsections had a shed on it for storage. There was a den and a family room with a nice fireplace, and next to the fireplace on the wooden floor was a secret hiding place. One would have to lift up an unmarked plank of hardwood to gain entrance into this secret spot under the floor.

The Armstrong home even had a small root cellar under the kitchen, another oddity for a California home. To enter the backyard from the horseshoe driveway, one had to open a wooden gate with a metal gargoyle knocker. The gate was midway on a brick wall that spanned between the garage and house. This led to an enclosed patio area, and by enclosed, I mean it was mostly surrounded with overgrown vegetation and a large tree. There was a lot of brickwork—front and back patios, a path around the garage, and of course, the wall between the garage and house. The brickwork also adorned the outside of the house, and the driveway was brick as well. All in all, it would be a nice place if it was kept up and not inhabited by demons.

Sometime in the late 1990s, on Halloween night, near midnight

It had been a long and busy night. We had been running calls all night, and it finally slowed down. Four of us, each in a one-man radio car, had just broken up a large drunken party, and the participants were slowly leaving. We four officers stood together for safety and comradeship as we discussed the interesting radio calls of the night. We still kept a watchful eye on the people leaving the party. We didn’t want to get hit with a thrown beer bottle.

My fellow officers knew that I had recently finished being the investigative officer (or IO) for the district attorney during the second murder trial for Jason Peter Armstrong. Armstrong had won his appeal with his first murder conviction, and he had to be retried on the same murder charge a second time. In the state of California, every murder conviction case where the defendant was found guilty was reviewed by a panel of attorneys and/or judges who would do their best to find fault in the prosecution of the case. There were several reasons why this was done, but I had not yet figured out a good enough reason except the fear of putting away an innocent person.

Anyway, in Armstrong’s original trial, this panel found that the judge had allowed evidence into the court that should not have been allowed, which was some type of legal technicality, so Armstrong had to be retried. This second trial had the DA worried. With the prosecutor being worried that Armstrong might walk, I started to worry as well. I had thought we had ample evidence against him, but apparently not so, according to the DA…

This trial was the subject of our conversation after breaking up the party, which led to one of the officers asking me to again talk about some of the bizarre spiritual happenings during the investigation. I briefly spoke about the Armstrong house and how it was infested with evil spirits. I mentioned how the victim’s remains, his bones, were found by a transient one morning. This transient heard moaning and screaming coming from opposite his campsite one night, and after being terrified the whole night, he investigated the area of the screams after daybreak, where he found the remains/bones of my victim. These scant bones were kept at the coroner’s building near downtown Los Angeles. The bones were named (as all the other unnamed remains) John Doe number such and such.

As I tried to continue with my scary stories, and before clearing this party call, one of the officers, Dan Smithers, stated loud and clear, I don’t believe this spiritual rubbish. It’s a lot of bull, if you ask me. Now Smithers had a slight English accent because he was English. His parents had moved to Southern California from England when Dan was twelve years old.

It was apparent he didn’t believe in the spiritual world, especially evil ones. The other two cops had goose bumps on their arms but not officer Smithers. He didn’t believe in that crap.

Then one of the officers, Ron Corvis, said, Richards, why don’t you take us to the Armstrong house tonight and show us where the stabbing occurred? Let’s see if Smithers is right about it all being bull.

An excellent idea, I said. But we have to be very quiet because his parents still live there, and we wouldn’t want to wake them up now, would we?

We cleared the party call and then made sure that there were no more radio calls pending. This was too perfect. It was Halloween, midnight or close to it, and all four of us drove our police cars to the Armstrong house.

Tally-ho, Smithers, you nonbeliever you! Officer Smithers was warned.

We all arrived at the same time and parked several doors down from the Armstrong house. This was the same way we parked when responding to a domestic problem call. Domestic disturbance calls were always a two-officer call. If one of the responding officers arrived before the other, he would not park in front of the house because he might get sucked into the family fray or the physical fighting between the spouses. It does happen—the reason for domestic calls requiring two officers, sometimes more.

After we arrived and parked our police vehicles, we tiptoed onto the horseshoe driveway, whispering as we did so. I acted as a tour guide as I pointed out the gate where the victim had been led through like a lamb to the slaughter. I even showed them the gargoyle knocker on the wooden gate. There was light from a nearby streetlamp, but we also used our flashlights. We toned down the bright flashlight beams by putting our cupped hand over the lens, just like when checking the eyes of a junky or tweaker.

Jason Armstrong had been in prison for several years, but his parents still kept his Ford Escort parked in the driveway. This was the same vehicle Jason and Val used to move the victim’s decomposing/rotting body from Jason’s backyard to a secluded spot next to the San Gabriel Mountains. The officers were oohing and aahing as they touched the vehicle and gate as if these things were some type of religious relics. I whispered to a couple of the officers to keep it down and have some respect because a young man had lost his life here.

We were there for several minutes, and then we decided to scram. Two of the officers and I were walking out of the driveway, but Officer Smithers was not with us. I turned around to see what he was doing, and he was still looking at the gate. It was no sweat off my nose, so we just kept walking. We were halfway down the driveway when Officer Smithers ran past us at a terrific speed; I had never seen him run so fast. His police gear on his person was clanking and clinking as he zoomed by. Before I could whisper anything to the other two officers, Smithers was in his patrol car and gone. We quickly figured that he must have woken up Armstrong’s parents, and we, not wanting to get caught, hightailed it out of there as well.

Now get this picture: There we were, three officers—in full uniform and gear—running out of this driveway as if they had just lit off a cherry bomb in the residence’s mailbox or had just put a burning paper bag of dog poop on the porch and then rung the doorbell. And yes, we were giggling as we ran out of the driveway. We flew into our police cars and drove off.

I spotted Officer Smither’s parked police car at a 7-Eleven store about half a mile from the house. I pulled into the parking lot and contacted Smithers. He was very pale, and it seemed as if he was still out of breath from his mad dash.

I asked him, "What did you do, you git [English word for jerk]? Did you wake up the parents? Is that why you ran like you got the heebie-jeebies?"

He looked at me for a few seconds and answered, Something or someone grabbed my shoulder. I turned my head around, but there was nothing there. It was evil, and I will never go back there again. He turned around, walked to his police unit, and drove away. I didn’t even have the chance to say anything else to him.

But I informed the other officers of what Smithers had said when they showed up in the parking lot. It looked like Mr. Smithers just became a full-fledged believer in the spiritual world. The other two officers and I had not experienced anything of a spiritual nature at the house that night. As a matter of fact, during the investigation of the murder (I had served four search warrants at the Armstrong house and was also there on several other occasions for other police matters), I never experienced any spiritual attacks or anything of that nature. I assumed I was being protected by the Good Spirit of God.

June 2014

Four years after my retirement, some of the officers at the station still kept in touch with me, and one of them, Lt. Costello, invited me to a swing shift briefing just to say hello to the troops. I hadn’t been to a briefing in some time, so I went on a Wednesday afternoon to sit in and hopefully disturb the briefing, just like Lt. Costello used to do when he was a patrolman and I was the sergeant giving the briefing.

On the particular afternoon of my visit, the sergeant giving briefing was none other than the infamous gate runner—now a sergeant—Smithers. Lt. Costello was present, and he asked me to talk about the infamous murder in front of the swing shift team. I guessed that Lt. Costello wanted the newer officers to hear about the city’s wacky and spooky murder case that still resonated with the citizens and cops.

So once again, I rehashed some of the weirder and more bizarre occurrences of the Armstrong case. As I was doing so, about three of the officers present whipped out their smartphones and started looking for any information they could find regarding the victim, suspects, or location. They had taken such an interest in my story that the lieutenant delayed the team’s going 10-8 (unit in service) for an extra thirty minutes. This usually upset the dispatch office and the team that was already in the streets. You see, they often had paper reports to do, but they couldn’t until the relieving team went 10-8 (in service). This stuff always happened, and the troops still shagging calls in the city just took it. It was a busy town for law enforcement. What could they do?

During my tale of horror and what-not during briefing, I let the officers in on a certain fact that I was sure they had no idea about. There was a superstar eyewitness of the spooky aspect of this evil murder case present in their briefing. They all looked at one another, wondering whom I was referring to. I asked Sgt. Smithers to please speak up and let everyone know just exactly what had occurred to him at the Armstrong house on that special night so many years ago. I also let everyone know that their Sgt. Smithers was a nonbeliever of evil spirits prior to his adventure at the Armstrong residence.

Smithers started talking about his experience at the house on that Halloween night in a rather surprisingly frank manner. He had always been quite open and frank about his experience. He never showed any shame about his fear that night nor in telling others the truth about what had happened. I had started the story about that night, but I let Sgt. Smithers continue in his own words with the rest of his tale. He told them that, after the other two officers and I had walked away from the gate at the Armstrong house, he decided to stay a few moments longer to gaze at the gate.

Then something unreal happened—he felt a hand on his back. This unseen hand went up his back and grabbed onto his right shoulder.

He then stated, This thing that was touching me was very evil.

I interrupted him and asked why he didn’t tell me the full story that night in the 7-Eleven parking lot regarding the hand on his back. He couldn’t remember if he told me or not, so he again related that a hand touched his back and went up his back to his shoulder, where it grabbed him. For the benefit of the audience, I asked him how he knew that this thing was evil.

He replied, I just knew it. I felt it plain as day. I got out of there just as fast as my feet could carry me.

During Smithers’s recollection of the event, he kept a straight and sober face, which contrasted with all the swing shift officers’ gaping mouths. I could tell it still bothered him to speak of it.

Sometime in the mid-1990s, a brief scenario

Originally, Jason Armstrong was sentenced to five years in state prison for possessing, manufacturing, and selling bombs. All the evidence for these charges was discovered during the first search warrant. The main reason for this search warrant was to find evidence regarding the murder of Jacob Paine, but due to the danger of the bombs found, the murder evidence was put on the back burner until all was clear with the explosive problems at hand.

When the first felony bomb violations were discovered, I sent a two-man team of detectives to arrest Jason at his workplace, a sulfuric acid reclaim plant in Los Angles. He was arrested without incident and jailed at our station. His vehicle, a Ford Escort hatchback, was impounded and brought back to the station for searching. All we found at this time in his car was a black powder handgun and a pair of handcuffs. I was glad to get him put away for a while so we could concentrate on the murder investigation. Nobody would want a mad bomber running loose.

Approximately two years before Jason’s bomb conviction, he was busy one bright and sunny weekend afternoon detonating explosive devices in a wilderness area located in the middle of the Rio Hondo River bed near Leg Lake. He had placed a bomb in a discarded toilet, and he was planning to detonate it remotely while filming it. The toilet was set in the middle of a dirt road.

What bad luck (others would say, What perfect timing!) he had because just as Jason blew up the toilet, the bomb squad from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) was driving down the same dirt road. It turned out that the LASD bomb squad used this particular area to detonate all their confiscated and/or impounded explosive devices.

One of the squad’s supervisors, whom I got to know quite well thanks to Jason, told me they were driving down this dirt road when they noticed a toilet sitting in the middle of the road ahead. They stopped their truck and watched as it exploded right in front of their faces. They continued to watch as Mr. Armstrong and another young man (Val?) came out of some nearby bushes with a video camera stuck to his face. He was filming the blast and the aftereffects. He told the bomb squad that he had just found a cherry bomb and used it to blow up the toilet. He even admitted that it was a much bigger explosion than he anticipated from a cherry bomb. It was quickly determined to have been a pipe bomb type of device. Needless to say, he was arrested for obvious bomb charges and subsequently went to court on the said charge.

In the state of California, all bomb laws were felonies, and probation was not allowed. A conviction carried a state prison term. Zip! Nada! No in and out on bomb charges. Or so this was what was related to me by the district attorney. The judge who tried him for this case was also the same judge who was signing my search warrants, and he was upset with Mr. Armstrong.

The judge explained to me that during Armstrong’s prior bomb trial, professors, schoolteachers, and political who’s who sent letters to him letting him know that Jason was a fine, outstanding young citizen and was just a typical smart lad who deserved to walk away from this matter. This judge admitted to me that he had been duped. He was now embarrassed, and he confessed to giving Jason probation, which was not an easy thing to do considering the laws. Jason Armstrong got away with one.

During Jason’s time in prison, it was found out through phone warrants that he was calling a teenage boy who lived next door to his parents’ house. I surmised he was probably having this teenage kid steal evidence relating to the murder from his laboratory, bedroom, and anywhere else from his parents’ house. It was too late to grab up evidence related to his bomb-making. Jason had a playroom/laboratory attached to the rear of the garage, where he did his chemical experiments of melting flesh, bombs, and other mad-scientist stuff. When we served the first search warrant, we found in his lab his written plans for making an antigravitational device for future travel to the moon so he and his buddies would not be harassed by any government agency, including the local cops. I found notes Jason had written regarding experiments of mind control over people, both individuals and groups. According to these notes, he was successful with individuals but not so with groups.

There were elaborate plans, somewhat like a blueprint for an underground marijuana-growing facility in the San Gabriel River Bed—a fairly large flood system with large pipes eight feet in diameter leading to the vast open flood channel. He even drafted in his drawings separate bedrooms for his buddies. This plan had elaborate drawings showing how he was going to blast out this underground facility using, I assumed, his own homemade blasting devices. In a briefcase, an interesting price list for bombs was found. The list contained bomb types, blast radius, and prices that ranged from a fifty-dollar model of a standard pipe bomb to a five-thousand-dollar model of a remote-control bomb. The most costly one, the five-thousand-dollar job, had a blast radius that would have taken out a small city block, and the frightening part was that he had the materials to do it.

On a rollback search warrant (a search warrant off the original warrant, like an addendum to a warrant), we searched a storage locker (20' × 10') that Jason was renting in a nearby city. Inside the storage locker, we found numerous bags of fertilizer and numerous cases containing one-gallon cans of acetone and, when mixed together, could constitute a large and powerful bomb that would take out a small city block. The notorious McVay used the same type of bomb in a parked vehicle on a federal building in Oklahoma, where so many lives were lost. We also found pipe bombs and a fake bomb (hoax device) with radiation warning labels on it. The LASD bomb squad, the county hazmat team, and the Los Angeles County Fire Department were called in to assist in the cleanup and inventory of the storage locker’s evidence; it was raining too. What a bizarre night. (All this will be discussed in greater detail in another chapter.)

Back to the teenager next door to the Armstrong house who was deemed one of Jason’s minions. He was a weird, freaky kid who worshipped Jason Armstrong. He was burglarizing the Armstrong house while Jason sat in prison, but unfortunately, we were never able to prove it. On two occasions, Jason’s parents called the police department for a burglary report even though we were the ones who put their son in prison. By the way, the arrest of Jason that year kept his mother from running for city mayor. The parents believed their son to be innocent of murder, but the mother thought her son’s bomb-making to be just a normal kid’s thing to do. Jason was extremely smart, but chemistry was his forte.

Some of Jason’s minions thought him to be a genius, albeit a weird one. And maybe he was, but a better description of him would be mad scientist. Jason thought himself to be smarter than anyone else, especially the police. He showed no emotions and could probably gut someone like a fish if needed. Now I could account some of this behavior to his Marine Corps experience in the Iraq war number 1. War is hell, and no better statement has been proven to be so true. If you added up all of Jason’s traits, you’d know that he was a dangerous person walking around, but the scariest thing was his spiritual love for Satan. He didn’t flaunt it or walk around wearing a hooded cape, chanting Natas, natas. No, he kept it to himself. He was deeply into the dark side.

In his room, we found numerous books regarding his foul love for evil. Jason tried to get his pal Val Barrios interested in Satan, but it never happened. His mother was also very smart, and she also excelled in chemistry. She still considered his bomb-making and backyard detonating to be typical kid stuff because all red-blooded American boys did such things. Maybe there was a certain percentage of boys who did play around with explosives but not to Jason’s extent. All this even though she knew that witnesses had told me that her