Original Article Phoenix news briefs Dec. 8, 2004 12:00 AM <SNIP> PHOENIX - A 51-year-old Phoenix man filed a damage claim Tuesday against Maricopa County, blaming Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies for eliciting a false confession in the 1998 murder of three young people at a riverbed hangout in the west Valley. The claim was tendered by attorney M.E. "Buddy" Rake on behalf of Robert Louis Armstrong, who spent 15 months in jail and faced a possible death sentence before he was exonerated. Armstrong, a machinist with no criminal history, was arrested last year by sheriff's detectives based on statements from a mentally ill drug-abuser who claimed to be an accomplice during the Easter 1998 shootings at the Agua Fria River near Camelback Road. Armstrong told investigators he was in Oregon with his mother at the time, but they refused to believe him. Eventually, Rake alleges detectives "psychologically beat a confession out of Robert Armstrong" by convincing him that he blocked the murders from his memory. Armstrong was finally released from a Maricopa County jail in September after a member of his defense team located Greyhound bus records to corroborate his alibi, and after his accuser recanted. <SNIP>