Tonight’s Murder Chose Me finds Detective Rod Demery trying to solve a murder-mystery that has haunted him for his entire life: the shooting death of his mother, Barbara Sue Demery.
The episode, titled Dreams of My Mother, focuses on the unsolved homicide, which occurred May 8, 1969, when Demery was just three years old, in the Texas city of Sweeny.
Accounts vary of the death of Demery’s mother. He and his brother were initially told she was killed in a “robbery-gone-wrong”.
But when Demery became an adult, he started to suspect Barbara’s then new-husband Jerry Armstead may have killed her after discovering she had a secret boyfriend — shooting her in the back nine times.
Armstead was allegedly buddies with the police, and it’s claimed there were reports of domestic violence between him and Demery’s mother. But there was never a proper homicide investigation.
Perhaps motivated in part by his desire to get to the bottom of the case — as well as his brother’s murder conviction — Demery later became a homicide detective in Shreveport, Louisiana.
He worked there for more than 25 years and now stars in Murder Chose Me. The show documents Demery as he reflects on the cases he was involved in during his career.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube Channel“I think my mother being murdered and my brother committing a murder was to verify that I was going to be a police officer,” Demery has said.
He added: “I don’t know that I was motivated to be a police officer because of it…I think I was a better police officer because of it.”
Murder Chose Me airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.