HOUSTON – Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg and prosecutors John Jordan and Ryan Trask spoke to the media on Wednesday afternoon after a jury found Antonio ‘A.J.’ Armstrong guilty of capital murder and sentenced him to life in prison for the gruesome 2016 slaying of his parents, Dawn and Antonio Sr. in their southwest Houston home.
After thanking members of the prosecution team, Ogg also thanked the Houston Police Department and Chief Troy Finner for their help with the case despite a recent filing against the agency, stating that evidence was planted on Armstrong by officers at the time of his arrest.
“I want to say this on behalf of the victims. Antonio Sr. and Dawn Armstrong died because they were trying to be good parents. Because they wanted their children to do right. Not to lie. To work. To be law-abiding, contributing adults. And for that, they paid with their lives,” Ogg said.
She then circled back to a question that prosecutors asked at the beginning of the trial on what a murderer looks like. “Today, we’ve now seen what a murderer looks like. It can be anyone. And the fact that it was their own son is a tragedy for the whole family,” she said. “The community found Antonio Armstrong Jr. guilty, and the community found justice for our victims.”
Ogg turned the microphone over to prosecutor John Jordan for comments.
“Kim had asked Ryan and I, ‘Should you try him again?’” Jordan recalled. “Our answer was ‘Yes. Because we believe he killed his parents.’”
“We always felt that Dawn and Antonio [Sr.] would’ve been on our side,” prosecutor Ryan Trask said. “So, that helped us push through and get through these trials.”
Jordan chimed in during Trask’s remarks, saying “There was somebody else we were in the courtroom defending and that’s Josh Armstrong. And we passionately believe that it was inexcusable to drag his name through this courtroom in order to get this guilty defendant off. And we felt the honor of defending him just as much as it was holding the defendant comfortable.”
A key difference during this third trial is that prosecutors brought the crime scene to the court room to show the jury a makeshift staircase and bed from the Armstrong’s home.
“It wasn’t just drama,” Jordan said. “The jury told us that was very effective to them. And so we’re very glad we did.”
Prosecutors said the jurors told them the 911 call, inconsistencies in A.J.’s story, and manipulation of the crime scene helped convince them of a guilty a verdict, which they apparently reached using flip charts that outlined the significant evidence.