On the evening of Tuesday, January 23, 2007, and the morning after, Tulsa police worked two shootings a few blocks apart on the near north side of the city. Christopher Moderow, 30, was found shot in the head in the 1100 block of East Haskell Place. David Gilbert, 26, was found shot in the head in a yard in the 1500 block of East Independence Street. The two killings, with two others elsewhere in the city, made four homicides in 24 hours. A police spokesman said the Haskell and Independence cases might be connected because of where and when they happened.
Ten days later, on Friday, February 2, firefighters found a man and a woman dead inside a burning house in the 500 block of North Quaker. They were Rose Mary Hobbs and her adult son, Herbert. Both had been shot. By the following Monday, Tulsa police had a suspect for all of these deaths and one more from the previous November: a 19-year-old named Joshua Julius Anderson, who had been sitting in the Tulsa jail since the day of the fire on an unrelated rape warrant from Muskogee County.
Little has been reported about Anderson's early life. The Muskogee Phoenix described him in February 2007 as "of Summit." The Associated Press, reporting on the charges later that month, said the killings happened near his home east of downtown Tulsa. Reports put his age at 18 in July 2005 and 19 in February 2007.
His record was better documented than his life. News On 6 in Tulsa reported that his court history went back at least to 2003, when, at 16, he was charged with shooting with intent to kill. On July 27, 2005, Muskogee police arrested him, then 18, on a complaint of shooting with intent to kill in the wounding of Roy Thompson Jr. on Elgin Street the week before. Police were still looking for a second suspect. Thompson was treated and released the same day. According to News On 6, that 2005 shooting charge was dismissed after the victim failed to appear in court and then changed his testimony.
The station also reported that Anderson was jailed on kidnapping charges three days before his 18th birthday and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. The Muskogee Phoenix, working from court records, listed a dismissed kidnapping charge and a misdemeanor domestic assault and battery charge to which he pleaded no contest and received 90 days in jail; the two accounts appear to describe the same case. The Phoenix also listed a dismissed shooting-with-intent-to-kill charge and a dismissed charge of knowingly concealing stolen property. Muskogee authorities, News On 6 said, knew him well.
His most recent case before the Tulsa killings was a first-degree rape charge from November 2006. The Muskogee County warrant on which he was eventually arrested listed first-degree rape by force and fear, first-degree burglary, second-degree burglary and grand larceny.
His older brother, A.C. "Alvin" Anderson, was 29 in 2007. State corrections records cited by the Muskogee Phoenix showed earlier convictions for possession of a controlled drug with intent to distribute, delivery of controlled drugs and possession of a firearm while committing a felony.
The first death police later attributed to Anderson was that of Evaristo Tovias Jr., killed on November 5, 2006. He was found in the street at 700 North Madison with a shotgun wound to the head. Who he was, his age, his work and his family went unreported. The Muskogee Phoenix reported that, according to police documents, Anderson confessed to killing him. No reason was reported.
Christopher Moderow was 30. He was found on January 23, 2007, in the 1100 block of East Haskell Place, two blocks from where Tovias had died, according to the Muskogee Phoenix. The Associated Press, citing police, reported that he was shot with a .22-caliber pistol and that $3 was taken from his body.
The only account of how Moderow died came from Anderson's brother. According to police documents described by the Muskogee Phoenix, Alvin Anderson told detectives that he saw Joshua fire a .22-caliber revolver and take $3 from Moderow, that the two of them then left in Alvin's car, and that Joshua told him he had killed the man in the street during an attempted robbery. Joshua, by that account, had not confessed to this killing.
David Gilbert was 26. He was found dead of a gunshot wound in a yard in the 1500 block of East Independence on the morning of January 24, according to News On 6 and the Phoenix; the AP and a later News On 6 report put the shooting itself on the day after Moderow's death and on January 23, respectively. Witnesses told police that Anderson shot Gilbert in revenge for an altercation between the two men earlier that day; the AP described it as an argument at a store. Anderson was never charged in Gilbert's death. Little else was reported about either man's life.
Rose Mary Hobbs, whose first name also appears as Rosemary, shared the house on North Quaker with her son Herbert; the AP called it their home. Her family told News On 6 she had eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. Herbert had five children and six grandchildren of his own. Two of her grandsons, Chris and Brandon Hobbs, spoke to the station after the arrest. They described their grandmother and uncle as people who would do anything for their family, and Chris called them wonderful people. The family heard about the fire from a relative. "And initially we thought it was a freak accident in the house," Brandon said. Brandon's mother had died unexpectedly about a year earlier, and the family had only just saved enough to place her headstone. Now they were planning two more funerals. They said they chose to remember Rose Mary and Herbert at their best rather than by how they died. Chris said the man accused should never have been on the streets.
When firefighters reached the house on February 2, the bodies were burned beyond recognition, and the medical examiner had not confirmed their identities for several days. The medical examiner found that both had been shot and that the house had been set on fire.
According to the police documents described by the Muskogee Phoenix, Anderson told detectives that he went into the house armed with a handgun, held the two at gunpoint, tied them up and robbed them. He left and came back. When he returned, he said, Herbert had freed himself and was untying his mother. Anderson said he shot Herbert and then Rose Mary. He then left again and returned with Alvin, and the two poured gasoline over the bodies and through the house and set it alight to destroy evidence. News On 6 reported at the end of the 2008 trial that Anderson's confession also described sexual abuse he forced on both victims before the shootings. The sources do not say what was taken from the house.
On Friday, February 2, the day the Hobbs house burned, Anderson was booked into the Tulsa jail on the Muskogee County rape and burglary warrant. Over the weekend, according to the Muskogee Phoenix, police gathered evidence tying him to the five deaths, and on Monday, February 5, detectives added five first-degree murder complaints, two armed robbery complaints and two arson complaints. Four detectives were assigned to the cases. Bond was set at nearly $200,000.
Alvin Anderson was arrested on Sunday, February 4, on a federal criminal complaint unrelated to the killings: possessing nearly 300 rounds of .22-caliber and .38-caliber ammunition after prior felony convictions, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Police said they believed he may have been involved in his brother's activities. Tulsa police spokesman Officer Jason Willingham said the brothers had been "terrorizing the neighborhood."
The two brothers implicated each other. By the Phoenix's account of the police documents, Joshua confessed to at least three of the killings: the Hobbs double murder and the killing of Tovias. He named Alvin as the man who helped him burn the Hobbs house. Alvin, in turn, put the Moderow shooting on Joshua. Witnesses supplied the account of the Gilbert shooting.
The AP noted that all five victims were found within blocks of one another in a neighborhood it described as drug-affected, that four of the five had been killed in the two weeks before the arrest (a description the dates do not fully bear out, since the Hobbs, Moderow and Gilbert deaths fell within about ten days), and that those deaths made up a third of Tulsa's homicides so far that year. Police said all five were within about a mile of each other.
On February 27, 2007, Tulsa County prosecutors charged Anderson with first-degree murder in four of the five deaths: Evaristo Tovias Jr., Christopher Moderow, Rose Mary Hobbs and Herbert Hobbs. He remained a suspect in David Gilbert's death, and prosecutors said more charges were pending; no charge in that case was ever reported. Police told the AP the motives were believed to be revenge or robbery.
Whether Alvin Anderson was charged in connection with the fire was not reported. The federal ammunition case against him is mentioned only at the time of his arrest.
A preliminary hearing in Tulsa County District Court ran into a second day on Thursday, August 2, 2007. On August 3, News On 6 reported that a judge had ordered Anderson to stand trial on four counts of first-degree murder, assault and arson. The report restated the police account at the center of the case: that Anderson had admitted robbing and killing Rose Mary and Herbert Hobbs and then returning with his brother to burn the house, and that investigators considered all the killings to have been motivated by robbery or revenge. His next court date was set for August 13. The judge's name and the details of the assault count are not given in the reports opened.
The Hobbs case was tried first, before a Tulsa County jury, in October 2008; News On 6 dated its story on the opening of the trial to October 22. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. Anderson had been determined to be intellectually disabled, and under the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia a person with an intellectual disability cannot be executed.
The jury convicted him and, on October 23 or 24, recommended two life sentences for the two murders, according to News On 6. The station's report described the confession at the center of the case, including the sexual abuse he said he forced on the victims before killing them and setting the house on fire.
Reports in the Tulsa World and from the AP added more: that the jury fixed life without parole for Rose Mary Hobbs's murder, life for Herbert's, and 25 years for first-degree arson; that Tulsa police Detective Vic Regalado testified Anderson denied any involvement until he was shown a video of his brother blaming him; that the defense argued no fingerprints, DNA, weapon or other physical evidence tied him to the crime; and that in a recorded jail call Anderson said, "I ain't never going to see daylight again."
The Tulsa World later reported, under the headline "Killer pleads guilty to 2 more murders," that on December 8, 2008, Anderson pleaded guilty to the murders of Evaristo Tovias Jr. and Christopher Moderow and received further life sentences. If the report is accurate, the four Tulsa County murder charges filed in February 2007 all ended in convictions.
News On 6 reported on October 24, 2008, that Anderson stood convicted of the Hobbs murders, with life sentences recommended by the jury. Neither an appeal of the verdict nor the prison where he was sent has been reported.
Proven by a jury verdict: the murders of Rose Mary Hobbs and Herbert Hobbs. An arson conviction is reported only by the Tulsa World.
Charged, with a reported but unconfirmed guilty plea: the killings of Evaristo Tovias Jr. and Christopher Moderow. Police said Anderson confessed to Tovias. The Moderow account came from his brother.
Suspected and never charged: the killing of David Gilbert, based on witness statements that it was revenge for a quarrel earlier that day.
Disputed in the reporting: the role of Alvin Anderson. The Muskogee Phoenix, citing police documents, and News On 6, citing police, said Joshua told detectives his brother helped pour the gasoline. The AP reportedly described Joshua as saying he set the fire himself, while the Tulsa World said he told police his brother poured the gas. Each brother gave police an account that blamed the other.
Dates: one Muskogee Phoenix story put the discovery of the two bodies in the house on January 7; every other report, including the Phoenix's own later story, gives February 2.
2003: At 16, Anderson is charged with shooting with intent to kill (News On 6).
July 27, 2005: Arrested in Muskogee, at 18, on a complaint of shooting with intent to kill in the wounding of Roy Thompson Jr.; the charge is later dismissed.
November 2006: Charged with first-degree rape in Muskogee County.
November 5, 2006: Evaristo Tovias Jr. is found shot in the street at 700 North Madison, Tulsa.
January 23, 2007: Christopher Moderow, 30, is found shot in the 1100 block of East Haskell Place.
January 23 or 24, 2007: David Gilbert, 26, is found shot in a yard in the 1500 block of East Independence.
February 2, 2007: Rose Mary and Herbert Hobbs are found shot in their burning house in the 500 block of North Quaker. The same day, Anderson is jailed in Tulsa on the Muskogee County warrant.
February 4, 2007: Alvin Anderson is arrested on a federal ammunition complaint.
February 5, 2007: Five first-degree murder complaints are added against Joshua Anderson.
February 27, 2007: Tulsa County charges him with four counts of first-degree murder.
August 2-3, 2007: Preliminary hearing; he is bound over for trial on four murder counts, assault and arson.
October 2008: Trial in the Hobbs killings; the jury convicts and recommends two life sentences. The state does not seek death because of his intellectual disability.
December 8, 2008: Reported guilty plea to the Tovias and Moderow murders (Tulsa World).
October 2008: serving life sentences for the Hobbs murders, according to News On 6.