In court proceedings, Anderson first claimed a "masked man" came into the pawnshop and shot the manager and that he--Anderson--hid in the building, only to be mistaken by Brown as the assailant. Later, he pleaded temporary insanity.
The jury would have none of it. Anderson, sitting through the weeklong trial with his arms wrapped in heavy bandages and still oozing from the shotgun blasts, stood long enough to hear the jury return a verdict of guilty.
On the day of Anderson's sentencing, a probation officer told the court that the defendant was upset with the verdict because he believed he actually \o7 refrained \f7 from killing more people that day. "He then expressed the wish that he had killed some other people, as long as the verdict turned out as it did," the officer stated.
Dr. Stanley E. Willis, a University of San Diego psychiatrist, said, "Anderson would actually prefer to be considered a tough killer than to be seen as an emotionally disturbed and inadequate individual who killed impulsively."
The psychiatrist added: "He is obsessively preoccupied with thoughts about dying with dignity."
Anderson seemed to have been granted that wish when Superior Court Judge Verne O. Warner looked down from the bench at the little figure before him in the blood-stained bandages and ordered him to die in the California gas chamber.
But his sentence was later commuted, and, in 1976, Anderson was paroled and moved to Seattle. Today he says he regrets the store manager's death but realizes "there is nothing I can do to bring Mr. Richards back."
In fact, if he had one last thought, he said, it would be this: "I wish I never got off that bus."
