People and incidents
The killing of Lisa Armstrong (2013)
Conviction and later court proceedings documented
Lisa Armstrong, 47, of Trenton was found shot in woods beside Route 206 in Tabernacle in October 2013. Terrance J. Patterson was convicted; a later appellate opinion records resentencing and the denial of post-conviction relief.
Case summary
Land surveyors discovered Armstrong a few yards inside the tree line along Route 206 on October 7, the date confirmed in the later appellate record. Investigators believed she had been shot there shortly before discovery. Prosecutors later alleged that Patterson and accomplice Lorain Hawkins, 44, took Armstrong from her Trenton home to Tabernacle during a suspected robbery.
Patterson, 37, of Trenton was arrested that Saturday and held on $1 million bail on charges reported as murder, felony murder and kidnapping. A Burlington County grand jury subsequently indicted him for murder. Hawkins died after an illness before the indictment report. The initial report said motive remained under investigation; the early allegations should be read alongside the subsequent court record below.
The case reached a verdict
A January 11, 2023 appellate opinion supplies the missing outcome. Patterson was convicted of murder, kidnapping, second-degree robbery and related offenses. His original life-without-parole sentence was later changed: the opinion’s resentencing footnote records life, treated as 75 years, with an 85 percent parole disqualifier, alongside concurrent kidnapping and robbery terms of 30 and 10 years. The court affirmed the denial of post-conviction relief. State v. Patterson, A-2457-20, pp. 7–8 and footnote 1.
The opinion describes cellphone evidence that directed investigators toward Patterson and Hawkins, and surveillance footage contradicting parts of Patterson’s account. It also says Hawkins had not been charged before her death, whereas contemporary reporting describes an arrest and murder charge. That inconsistency remains unresolved here; it does not alter Patterson’s documented conviction. The opinion is an unpublished decision about this case, not a general legal precedent.
Sources
An Associated Press brief and a Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office indictment brief preserved as undated newspaper clippings.