HOUSTON — More than seven years after Antonio Sr. and Dawn Armstrong were shot to death in their Bellaire-area home, their youngest son, Antonio "AJ" Armstrong Jr., is waiting to learn his fate in his third capital murder trial.
Jurors began deliberating around 1:45 p.m. Tuesday. At one point, they sent a note to the judge asking to review some evidence. Just after 7 p.m., the jurors were dismissed for the day. They're expected to return Wednesday morning at 9:30.
Before the case went to the jury, prosecutors and defense attorneys spent four hours of sometimes heated closing arguments trying to convince jurors that Armstrong Jr. was or wasn’t the killer. Both sides recapped mountains of evidence, including the 911 call, the defendant's interview with homicide detectives, security alarm records, cell phone records and text messages.
The prosecution
Prosecutors pointed to three key events before Antonio Sr. and Dawn Armstrong were killed while they slept. About a week before the July 29, 2016 killings, Armstrong Jr. shot his father’s gun through the floor of his bedroom through a pillow and blanket.
“He shot the murder weapon in his room. Who does that?” prosecutor John Jordan asked loudly. “Purely coincidental? It’s ridiculous. Ridiculous.”
Jordan said the then-16-year-old initially lied to detectives and said he did it because his friend had never heard a gun go off but later admitted he was alone at the time.
Forty-eight hours before the deaths, Jordan said Armstrong Jr. poured gasoline into a bottle of rubbing alcohol and set a fire outside his parents’ bedroom. He said Armstrong also searched how to make a car bomb on his iPad.
Jordan brought up Armstrong Jr.’s claim that he saw a 6-foot-tall, masked intruder after hearing gunshots in his parents’ room. The prosecutor pointed out that he didn’t mention an intruder on the 911 call or during the first few hours of his interview with detectives.
Also, during that interview, Jordan told jurors that Armstrong Jr. never asked about his mom or showed any emotion when told she was dead.
To counter the defense’s claims that the victims’ oldest son, Josh Armstrong, was a more likely killer, prosecutors called on his longtime girlfriend, Hannah Pilon, who testified that his mental health issues didn’t start until after his parents were killed.
While Josh was also having issues in school and smoking marijuana, jurors saw dozens of text messages with his mother that appeared to show a loving relationship. She sometimes confided in him about her frustrations with his younger brother.
Armstrong Jr. had been in trouble with his parents for getting kicked out of Kinkaid High School, failing in school and smoking marijuana.
Jordan showed cell phone records that showed Armstrong Jr.’s phone was being used just before the early-morning killings, beginning at 1:09 a.m. Jordan said the cell phone and motion sensors chronicled Armstrong Jr. moving around the house until 1:40 a.m. when he called 911.
Finally, he pointed to alarm records that he said proved the victims and their two youngest children were the only ones in the home. "The alarm records show nobody entered the house that night, period, end of discussion."
The defense
Throughout the trial, jurors heard from 31 witnesses, including the defendant’s sister Kayra Armstrong, who was 12 when her parents were killed, and his paternal grandmother Kay Winston.
One family member who hasn't attended any of the trials was again the focus of much of the testimony. The defense has tried to paint the Armstrongs' oldest son Josh Armstrong as an alternate suspect. He has a history of severe mental health issues although there were no medical records of such issues before his parents' deaths.
Both sides brought on forensics psychiatrists to go over thousands of pages of medical records documenting Josh Armstrong’s downward spiral in the months and years after his parents were killed, beginning on Dec. 19, 2016.
The defense argued that Josh Armstrong showed signs of paranoia and schizophrenia before their deaths. They point to testimony from the sister and grandmother who said Josh Armstrong “was different” when he moved back home from Blinn College weeks before the killings.
Both women testified that he neglected basic hygiene, would stare off into space and spend hours in the bathroom talking to himself. They said he was smoking a lot of marijuana and was kicked out of his parents’ house after throwing a party while they were out of town.
“Both doctors (for defense and prosecution) agreed and testified that marijuana can serve as a trigger for psychotic episodes,” Defense attorney Chris Collings told the jury.
He pointed out that Josh Armstrong thought he was both God and the devil during later stays at psychiatric hospitals and once told a doctor “I witnessed my parents’ murders.”
Collings referred to Kay Winston’s testimony that Josh Armstrong once lit a towel on fire and put it in the oven when he was living with her after the killings. She and Kayra Armstrong both testified they were afraid of him as his issues became more severe.
The defense also cast doubt on the accuracy of alarm records and blood spatter evidence and the lack of DNA evidence.
Collings told jurors “There is nothing, absolutely nothing that proves AJ was in the bedroom where his parents were shot to death."
“That is reasonable doubt all day long,” defense attorney Rick DeToto said.
Both earlier trials ended in mistrials because jurors couldn’t agree on a verdict. In one case, it was eight to four in favor of guilty. In the other case, it was eight to four in favor of not guilty.