Jean Armstrong

Jean Armstrong is the effeminate French proprietor and chef of the restaurant Trés Bien.

The crime
Armstrong set up his restaurant some time before the beginning of 2017. However, his food was extremely overpriced and terrible tasting, so the restaurant fell on hard times. Armstrong later took out a loan of $500,000 from notorious loan shark Furio Tigre. Due to a lack of customers, however, he was unable to repay this loan and was under Tigre's control. This fear of Tigre was not helped by the presence of Tigre's assistant Viola Cadaverini, granddaughter of mob boss Bruto Cadaverini.

This control forced him to help in framing Maggey Byrde for the murder of Glen Elg. However, this was certainly something he did not want to do as he was a decent man at heart, if a little eccentric. After the murder, Armstrong tried to steal a winning lottery ticket that Elg had, which had sparked the murder in the first place, but the ticket he stole turned out to be worth a dollar instead of the $500,000 Elg had won. Armstrong then watched as the murder was reenacted to make it look to a witness, Victor Kudo, that Byrde committed the murder, and then he disposed of the body while Kudo called the police.

The follow-up
A month after Byrde was convicted of Elg's murder, her lawyer Phoenix Wright appealed the case. Visiting Trés Bien to investigate the murder, Wright met Armstrong and questioned him about Maggey's motive. However, Armstrong refused to cooperate with him and sneakily stole his magatama. On another visit, Wright showed Armstrong a job listings magazine. Armstrong got the wrong idea about this and forcibly took Wright's assistant Maya Fey, hiring her as a waitress. This led Wright to find his magatama again and discover Armstrong's pickpocketing habit. Wright returned to Trés Bien during another visit from Viola Cadaverini. Armstrong told them about his debt to Tender Lender. On a final visit to the restaurant, Wright found Armstrong with Tigre, who told his indebted to deal with the lawyer, who was figuring out too much about the crime. Armstrong punched Wright, but detective Dick Gumshoe then appeared and dealt with the pair while Wright escaped.

Prosecutor Godot called Armstrong to the witness stand the next day. There were many inconsistencies between the testimonies of Armstrong, Kudo and Byrde. Armstrong testified that the victim was listening to the radio in an ear that, according to other testimonies, had a ruptured eardrum. Armstrong then tried to claim that Kudo had seen the murder through a mirror reflection, but Wright broke through this testimony and revealed that the murder that Kudo saw was a farce. Armstrong eventually admitted that he was being forced to play along with the farce, and Wright sent for Tigre to testify about the murder. Wright eventually gave Tigre some of his own medicine, tricking him into incriminating himself.

Personality
Armstrong is quite flamboyant and feminine. He apparently loves the color pink, which is the color of his restaurant. He also liked flirting with Wright, to the point that Wright actually believed that Armstrong may be a woman. He also has a interest in aromatherapy and gives out oils that don't work. He is also somewhat of a kleptomaniac, and he was once arrested for this habit.

Name

 * In the English version, he is French but has an English surname. In the French version he has an Italian name, "Labocca" (meaning "the mouth").


 * In both English ("Jean") and Japanese ("Kaoru") versions, his name can be either male or female. "Jean" is also traditionally a very popular French male given name.


 * In the Spanish version many characters refer to him as "Esa mujer" meaning "That woman".


 * His English surname "Armstrong" might be a reference to the fact that he has relatively muscular arms, or possibly to Tigre using Armstrong's debt to "strong-arm" him into assisting in the murder plot.