By The New York Times (U.S.) | Created at 2024-10-03 20:18:34 | Updated at 2024-10-07 00:21:39
3 days ago
U.S.|Jay J. Armes, Private Eye With a Superhero Story, Dies at 92
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/03/us/jay-j-armes-dead.html
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With steel hooks for hands and a flamboyant personality, Mr. Armes captured the attention — and scrutiny — of reporters across the nation.
Oct. 3, 2024, 4:01 p.m. ET
Jay J. Armes, a flamboyant private investigator who lived on an estate with miniature Tibetan horses, traveled in a bulletproof Cadillac limousine with rotating license plates and had steel hooks for hands — including one fitted to fire a .22 caliber revolver — died on Sept. 18 in El Paso. He was 92.
His death, at a hospital, was caused by respiratory failure, his son Jay J. Armes III said.
Described as “armless but deadly” by People magazine, Mr. Armes appeared to live the life of a superhero. In the 1970s, the Ideal Toy Corporation even reproduced him as a plastic action figure, with hooks like those he began wearing in adolescence after an accident in which railroad dynamite exploded in his hands.
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Mr. Armes (pronounced arms) catapulted to investigatory stardom in 1972 after Marlon Brando hired him to find his 13-year-old son, Christian, who had been abducted in Mexico. Working with Mexican federal agents, Mr. Armes said he found the boy in a cave with a gang of hippies.
He told other daring tales of triumph: flying on a glider into Cuba to recover $2 million for a client; helping another client escape from a Mexican prison by sending him a helicopter, which he said inspired the 1975 Charles Bronson movie “Breakout.”
The national media was enthralled by his detective skills.
“He is an expert on bugging, a skilled pilot, a deadly marksman and karate fighter and, perhaps, the best private eye in the country,” Newsweek wrote in 1975. “All he lacks is a pair of hands.”
