On the night of May 25, 1980, a man who had walked away from the Utah State Prison the previous November broke into a house in Bloomington, in San Bernardino County, California. He believed no one was home. Elizabeth Lyman, 81, a retired piano teacher who lived there alone, was asleep in her bed. She woke, and he shot her. He then searched the house for money, found very little, and cooked himself a meal in her kitchen. Sheriff's deputies, called by a neighbor, arrested him inside the house at 3:47 a.m.
He was Stephen Wayne Anderson. Within hours he had confessed on tape. Within days he had also confessed to a Utah detective that he had killed two men in Utah, one a fellow prisoner and one a young man shot in a mountain canyon. Utah never charged him with either killing. A San Bernardino County jury convicted him of first-degree murder and burglary in 1981 and sentenced him to death. The California Supreme Court set the death sentence aside in 1985, a second jury imposed it again in 1986, and his case then went through the state and federal courts while he became known for the poems and stories he wrote in his cell. He was executed at San Quentin on January 29, 2002, at the age of 48.
The record of Anderson's life before 1980 is thin, and much of it comes from the evidence the prosecution used against him at his second penalty trial. The California Supreme Court recorded that the state introduced his prior convictions for aggravated burglary, an aggravated assault on a prisoner, an armed assault in New Mexico in 1971, unadjudicated burglaries and his use of an alias. The Ninth Circuit, describing the same penalty case, mentioned a 1971 burglary in Farmington, New Mexico, and stabbings in prison.
The summary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) says he had been held in Utah for aggravated burglary convictions from 1971 and 1973, and the Deseret News reported the same two years in 2015. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that he began serving time at the Utah State Prison in March 1975 on an out-of-state conviction, which it called aggravated robbery, and that he had also used the name Felix Smith.
His intelligence was not in question. When he later argued that his confession had been involuntary because he had gone without sleep, the California Supreme Court rejected the claim in part because of his age, his methodical conduct and an IQ of 136. A prison chaplain, testifying for him at his second penalty trial, listed the trades he had worked at: plumber, electrician, cook and carpenter. The chaplain's point was that those skills would make him useful inside a prison.
Anderson's own account of his upbringing reached the courts only in outline. At the 1985 to 1986 penalty retrial he described a troubled childhood. Amnesty International, appealing for clemency in January 2002, said his trial lawyer had not investigated or presented evidence that he had been physically abused and neglected as a child, or that he had suffered abuse in a New Mexico prison at the age of 21. Those claims were never tested before a jury.
The first of the two Utah killings took place inside the Utah State Prison. Anderson was never charged with it, and what is known comes from his own confession and from later reporting.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, writing in 2015, Anderson stabbed a fellow inmate, Robert Blundell, to death during an argument in the prison kitchen area in August 1977. The Tribune said Blundell was suspected of being an informer, and that court records showing how, or whether, that case was resolved were not readily available. The Associated Press, reporting on the same day, wrote that police said Anderson had killed a fellow inmate at the prison. The Deseret News put the stabbing in 1979.
In the confession he gave a Utah detective in May 1980, as quoted by the Ninth Circuit, Anderson said Blundell had confronted him at the wrong time and in the wrong mood. When he testified at his California penalty retrial, he gave a different account: he said he had killed Blundell in self-defense. The jury heard the killing as unadjudicated evidence, which means a crime never tried in court. Utah never brought a charge.
In November 1979 Anderson left the Utah State Prison. CDCR gives the date as November 24, 1979. The Salt Lake Tribune called it a walk-away escape, and Anderson himself, in the tape-recorded interview quoted by the Ninth Circuit, described it the same way: he had escaped, or walked away, however anyone wanted to put it. He said he then stayed in the mountains in Millcreek Canyon for several days. A Unified Police detective said in 2015 that Anderson had made clear he was not going to be caught hitchhiking or anything of the kind.
On February 23, 1980, by the Salt Lake Tribune's account, Timothy Glashien of Bountiful was driven up Millcreek Canyon on the pretext of a marijuana deal and shot. His body was found the next day by people collecting cans. The Tribune gave his age as 28; the Associated Press and the Deseret News gave 29, and photo captions on the Deseret News story gave 22.
His brother described him to reporters in 2015 as jovial, a young man who loved to hike and travel and who had graduated from Viewmont High School. He said the loss had aged his parents and, he thought, put them in an early grave. The county sheriff in 2015 said Glashien's life had been taken in a robbery.
The case went unsolved in Utah for 35 years. But in May 1980, two days after his arrest in California, Anderson told a Salt Lake County sheriff's detective that he had killed Glashien. The Ninth Circuit described the killing, as he confessed it, as commissioned by drug traffickers after his escape, and said he told the detective he had been paid $1,000. He later recanted. At his trial he testified that he had made a prior agreement with the people who helped him escape to take the blame for the Glashien killing if he were ever arrested for another crime, a claim the Salt Lake Tribune said appeared in the court documents. At the penalty retrial he disputed killing Glashien at all.
The Glashien killing, like Blundell's, was never charged.
Elizabeth Lyman was 81. She had been a piano teacher and was retired, and she lived alone in her house in Bloomington. She had an adult daughter, with whom she had spent Mother's Day in 1980, a few weeks before she died; a photograph of the two of them was later shown to the jury. Beyond these details the court records and reports say little about her life.
The California Supreme Court summarized Anderson's own confession. He had watched the house for several days, waiting for signs that the people who lived there were away. He arrived shortly before midnight on May 25, 1980, cut through a screen door, removed a pane of glass from a second door and went in armed with a handgun. CDCR and the Ninth Circuit add that he cut the telephone line. He entered the bedroom where Mrs. Lyman was sleeping. She woke and began to scream, and he turned and fired, killing her.
"I sleep with my gun," he told officers. "Somebody come at me and I-I'm going to blow them away." He said he had acted out of fear and had not known who she was. The California Supreme Court, in its first decision in 1985, described the same event from the record: he had gone into the house at about midnight to burglarize it, believing it was empty, and fired one shot at a woman who had sat up in the dark. He told police his intent had been to get something to eat and to get out.
CDCR's summary says he shot her. He then ransacked the house. The California Supreme Court put what he found at about $112; CDCR and the Ninth Circuit say less than $100. He turned on the television and cooked a meal, which the court described as noodles and CDCR as noodles and eggs.
Accounts differ slightly on timing. The California Supreme Court says he arrived shortly before midnight on May 25. CDCR says he broke in shortly after midnight and dates the killing May 26. The Ninth Circuit says the break-in was about an hour after midnight on May 26, which was Memorial Day.
A neighbor, woken by barking dogs, saw a man inside the house through a window and called the sheriff, according to CDCR. Deputies arrested Anderson at 3:47 a.m. and took him to the San Bernardino County sheriff's substation in Fontana. In his statement to police he said that if he had had his M-1 carbine, he would have come out, but he did not have it. The California Supreme Court later held that the remark was properly admitted because it showed he would have started a gun battle with police.
Detectives Wes Daw and Dennis O'Rourke advised Anderson of his rights, and he confessed to the burglary and the shooting. He repeated the confession during a filmed reenactment. At about 7 a.m. on May 26 the detectives had a short tape-recorded conversation with him in which he said he wanted to talk about unsolved crimes in Utah but, for the moment, thought silence was better. That tape was not given to his defense lawyers until April 1993.
On May 28, 1980, Sergeant Jerry Thompson of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office interviewed him and took his confessions to the Blundell and Glashien killings. Anderson said he was making the statements to clear up the fact that other people were under suspicion for those crimes. The same day, Dr. Robert Flanagan, a psychiatrist employed by the California prison system, interviewed him, and Anderson told him he had been sober at the time of the burglary.
He also made what the California Supreme Court called vague statements about other killings in Las Vegas. CDCR's summary states that he admitted to six earlier contract killings there. The detective who heard him did not believe it: Thompson testified at the penalty retrial that he doubted the Las Vegas confession and that no officer he contacted gave it credit. The Associated Press wrote in 2015 that it was not clear the Nevada killings had happened, and LA Weekly in 2002 said they had not. No charge was ever brought in Nevada.
Anderson was not arraigned until May 29, 1980, about 76 hours after his arrest. Years later that delay became one of the central issues in his federal appeal.
The county appointed S. Donald Ames to defend him. According to LA Weekly, it was Ames's first capital case. The federal district court later found that Ames did not meet Anderson in jail before the guilt trial, although he spoke with him daily once the trial was under way, and that Ames conceded in his closing argument that his client was guilty of first-degree murder. The Ninth Circuit treated that concession as a strategy: Ames had tried to steer the jury away from a finding that would make Anderson eligible for death.
The jury convicted Anderson of first-degree murder and burglary and found true the special circumstance that the murder was committed during a burglary, which made him eligible for the death penalty. On July 24, 1981, the jury fixed the penalty at death. CDCR received him on July 30, 1981, under the number C33900.
On February 21, 1985, the California Supreme Court decided People v. Anderson, written by Justice Mosk. It upheld the convictions but set aside the special circumstance finding and reversed the death sentence. Under the court's earlier ruling in Carlos v. Superior Court, a jury deciding the felony-murder special circumstance had to find that the defendant intended to kill, and Anderson's jury had not been told so. Because the record did not establish intent to kill as a matter of law, the error required a new trial on the special circumstance and on the penalty. The guilty verdicts stood.
The retrial took place before Superior Court Judge Don A. Turner. Jury selection ran through October and November 1985, and the jury reached its verdicts in 1986.
On the special circumstance, the question was whether Anderson had meant to kill. His lawyers called a psychiatrist, Dr. Thompson, who testified that Anderson had a brain abnormality that, combined with alcohol, reduced his capacity to form a specific intent, and a psychologist, Dr. Beaber, who testified that survival instinct and a sense of danger could produce action without thought. The prosecution's neurologist, Dr. Hunt, and psychiatrist, Dr. Oshrin, disputed both opinions. Anderson's statement to Dr. Flanagan that he had been sober was admitted. The prosecution was also allowed to tell the jury that he had stayed in the house and cooked and eaten a meal. The California Supreme Court later agreed that the jury could weigh that fact: it held that the presence of mind to calmly cook and eat after the killing suggested a lack of concern or remorse not usually seen in an accidental killing.
At the penalty phase the defense tried, in the Ninth Circuit's words, to humanize him. The plan grew out of a study by a defense penalty expert after the first trial, which found that the first jurors had felt they had no alternative to death because Anderson never came forward. This time he testified. He denied that he had meant to kill Mrs. Lyman, disputed killing Glashien, said he had killed Blundell in self-defense, described a troubled childhood, and offered poems and stories he had written in prison. At his request the most personal part of his evidence was heard in closed session, over the objections of the press. Ames, who represented him at both trials, called one other mitigation witness: a prison chaplain, described by Amnesty International as a retired prison minister who had met Anderson only the day before.
The prosecution put in his prior convictions and the two Utah killings. Sergeant Thompson testified about the Utah confessions and said, on redirect, that he believed them because they were supported by enough detail. In rebuttal the prosecutor used Anderson's own statement to police that he was either born or trained to be a killer and had always wanted to be one, and called him a sociopath. In closing the prosecutor said that Mrs. Lyman's daughter was probably grateful she had been able to spend Mother's Day with her mother a few weeks before the murder.
During jury selection, the judge had told prospective jurors that the case was being retried because the rules on intent to kill had changed, and that a previous death judgment had been reversed on what he called a technicality. Defense counsel did not object.
After six days of penalty deliberations one juror was injured and replaced by an alternate. The judge told the jury to set aside its earlier discussions and begin again. The new jury found the special circumstance true, finding that the killing was intentional, and again returned a verdict of death.
Denying the motion to reduce the sentence, Judge Turner described Anderson as the type of person who does not really care whether somebody else lives or dies, and concluded that if there was to be a death penalty, there was no legitimate excuse why it should not be applied in this case.
On December 27, 1990, the California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in an opinion by Chief Justice Lucas, with no dissent. Justices Broussard and Mosk concurred in the judgment only. The court found the confession voluntary, held that the noodles evidence, the M-1 remark and the "killer" statement were properly admitted, held that most claims of prosecutorial misconduct had been waived because the defense had not objected, and found any error in the prosecutor's remarks about the victim's family harmless. The opinion also noted that Utah had not tried to extradite him for the Blundell and Glashien killings.
Justice Mosk wrote separately. He said he was most troubled by a claim Anderson had not raised: that the trial judge's description of the earlier reversal as a technicality was altogether improper, and that defense counsel's failure to object may well have fallen below reasonable standards. He found no prejudice and joined the result. The United States Supreme Court declined to review the case on October 7, 1991.
Anderson then challenged the judgment in federal court. The federal district court in the Central District of California denied his petition after what the Ninth Circuit called an exhaustive evidentiary hearing. While the federal case was pending, the defense received the May 26, 1980, tape for the first time, in April 1993. The California Supreme Court rejected a claim based on that tape on January 3, 1996.
On November 17, 2000, a Ninth Circuit panel of Judges Stephen Trott, Ferdinand Fernandez and Margaret McKeown affirmed the denial, in an opinion by Judge Trott. His federal lawyers included Margo Rocconi, an assistant federal public defender, and Robert Horwitz. The court took up seven claims:
The undisclosed tape. The court held it was neither favorable nor material, and that Anderson had not clearly invoked his right to silence when he told the detectives that silence was better for now.
The 76-hour delay before arraignment. The court found the delay presumptively unreasonable under County of Riverside v. McLaughlin. It held that the Utah confessions were sufficiently separate from the delay to be admissible. It found that the interview with Dr. Flanagan was not the product of Anderson's free will, but that admitting it was harmless.
The judge's remarks to jurors about automatic appeal. The court held they did not mislead the jury about its responsibility.
The lack of instructions on lesser offenses. The court found any error harmless, holding it extremely unlikely that the jury would have found he lacked the intent to commit burglary.
Ineffective assistance of counsel, including Ames's failure to meet him in jail before trial and his concession of guilt in closing. The court found no showing of prejudice on the parts it decided, and described the concession as a strategic choice.
Amnesty International reported that the panel's vote was two to one and that six judges of the Ninth Circuit dissented when the full court declined to rehear the case. In the dissenters' view, as Amnesty quoted it, the death sentence may well have been imposed because of the lawyer's incompetence rather than the crime, and the system had failed doubly. LA Weekly reported in January 2002 that Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote that dissent, joined by five other judges.
The question of Ames's competence was the center of the last years of the case. LA Weekly reported in January 2002 that he had kept no handwritten notes, interviewed only Anderson's father and stepmother, and left court-approved investigation money unspent. Two other clients he defended in capital cases had their death sentences overturned because of his work, according to both LA Weekly and Amnesty International; Amnesty said appeal courts had called his conduct deplorable. Ames died in November 1999.
Three jurors from the earlier proceedings told Anderson's lawyers that they believed the sentence should not be carried out. According to Amnesty, they cited a defense lawyer who was completely outclassed by the prosecutor, the Lyman family's view that life imprisonment was enough, and pressure on some jurors to vote for death. One juror told LA Weekly that the vote had stayed with him or her for years.
On death row Anderson wrote poetry, stories and drama. PEN America's Prison Writing Awards lists show him winning second place for poetry in the 1990 to 1991 awards for "Friday Crabs," an honorable mention in poetry for 1992 to 1993 for "Beyond All Seasons Passing," and an honorable mention in drama for 1993 to 1994 for "The Hearing." Amnesty International said his work had been published and that a play of his, Lament from Death Row, was performed in New York in 1991. His lawyers, in a statement before the execution, called him the poet laureate of the condemned.
His prison record was not clean. CDCR lists rule violation reports for a fight in 1984, a use of force in 1985 and an assault on another inmate in 1987.
Anderson's execution was scheduled for January 29, 2002. His lawyers asked Governor Gray Davis for clemency, arguing that his writing showed he had been rehabilitated and that his trial lawyer had failed him. The petition, according to Amnesty, also pointed to the loss an execution would mean for his mother, his brother and his two sons. His lawyers argued that Davis, who had never commuted a death sentence, could not consider the plea fairly.
Elizabeth Lyman's family did not ask for his death. In late December 2001, LA Weekly reported, her son-in-law issued a statement saying the family did not want or need Stephen Anderson to pay with his life for the death of their beloved mother and grandmother. Amnesty reported that members of the family asked for the sentence to be commuted to life without parole.
Davis denied clemency on January 26, 2002. Last-minute appeals to the federal district court, the Ninth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court were all rejected.
Anderson spent his last days quietly, according to LA Weekly. He gave away his television and his cassette player and turned down calls and visits from lawyers and spiritual advisers. He made no special food requests for his visits between January 24 and 28, CDCR recorded. His last meal included grilled cheese sandwiches, cottage cheese, hominy and corn, peach pie, chocolate chip ice cream and radishes.
Eleven journalists witnessed the execution. The Lyman family did not attend. On Anderson's side were his lawyers, Margo Rocconi and Robert Horwitz, and a psychiatrist who had testified at his trial. From the gurney he smiled at them; Rocconi mouthed "I love you," and he answered with a silent "Thank you." He declined to make a last statement.
By CDCR's record the lethal injection began at 12:18 a.m. on January 29, 2002, and he was pronounced dead at 12:30 a.m. He was 48 and had spent about 20 years on death row. Outside the prison, opponents of the death penalty held a vigil. Amnesty International counted him as the fifth person executed in the United States in 2002 and the tenth in California since executions resumed.
Utah police later returned to the Glashien case. A detective in the Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake, Ben Pender, reopened it about a year before announcing the result in June 2015. Ballistic evidence, the Associated Press reported, matched the gun from the Lyman burglary to shell casings and bullet fragments from the Glashien scene, and a cold case unit found that details of Anderson's confession matched the crime scene.
Police said a second man, a former fellow inmate of Anderson's and a motorcycle gang member, had arranged the meeting with Glashien and, by the Deseret News account, had hired Anderson because he believed Glashien was a police informant. That man died of natural causes in Iowa in 1986 and was never charged. Prosecutors said there had been evidence to charge him, but that the time limit for those charges had run out in 1984.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office said there would have been probable cause to charge Anderson with criminal homicide had he been alive. Police said the finding closed the book on the case. No court ever ruled on it. Glashien's brother told the Deseret News that it felt good that the case was now officially closed and the details tracked down.
The Utah killings. Anderson confessed to both in 1980, and a Salt Lake County detective testified that he believed the confessions. Anderson later claimed self-defense in the Blundell killing and denied the Glashien killing, saying he had agreed in advance to take the blame for it. Neither killing was ever charged or tried. In 2015 Utah police said ballistic evidence tied him to the Glashien killing, and prosecutors said he could have been charged. These are confessions and police findings, not convictions.
The Las Vegas claims. CDCR's summary says he admitted six contract killings in Las Vegas. The detective who heard the statements doubted them, no officer contacted credited them, and no charge followed in Nevada.
The date of the Blundell killing. August 1977 (Salt Lake Tribune, 2015) or 1979 (Deseret News, 2015).
Glashien's age. 28 (Salt Lake Tribune), 29 (Associated Press, Deseret News) or 22 (Deseret News photo captions).
Anderson's age at the time of the Lyman killing. 26 (CDCR, Ninth Circuit) or 27 (California Supreme Court).
The time of the break-in. Shortly before midnight on May 25 (California Supreme Court), shortly after midnight (CDCR) or about 1 a.m. on May 26 (Ninth Circuit).
The money found. About $112 (California Supreme Court) or less than $100 (CDCR, Ninth Circuit).
The Utah conviction. Aggravated burglary in 1971 and 1973 (CDCR, Deseret News) or an out-of-state aggravated robbery (Salt Lake Tribune).
Intent. The 1986 jury found the killing intentional. Anderson always said he fired in fear and did not mean to kill, and his defense offered expert evidence that drink and a brain abnormality reduced his capacity to form intent; the state's experts disagreed, and he had told Dr. Flanagan he was sober.
The quality of his defense. The Ninth Circuit panel found no prejudice from Ames's conduct on the claims it decided; six judges of the same court, by Amnesty's and LA Weekly's accounts, would have reheard the case because of it.
1971: Armed assault in New Mexico (California Supreme Court); burglary in Farmington, New Mexico (Ninth Circuit).
1971 and 1973: Aggravated burglary convictions (CDCR).
March 1975: Begins serving time at the Utah State Prison (Salt Lake Tribune).
August 1977: Robert Blundell, a fellow inmate, is killed at the prison; Anderson later confesses (never charged).
November 24, 1979: Walks away from the Utah State Prison (CDCR).
February 23, 1980: Timothy Glashien is shot in Millcreek Canyon, Utah; Anderson later confesses (never charged).
May 25 to 26, 1980: Elizabeth Lyman, 81, is shot in her Bloomington home; Anderson is arrested inside at 3:47 a.m. on May 26.
May 28, 1980: Confesses to the Utah killings to a Salt Lake County detective; examined by Dr. Robert Flanagan.
May 29, 1980: Arraigned, about 76 hours after arrest.
July 24, 1981: Sentenced to death by a San Bernardino County jury; received by CDC July 30.
February 21, 1985: California Supreme Court upholds the convictions but sets aside the special circumstance and the death sentence.
October and November 1985: Jury selection for the retrial before Judge Don A. Turner.
1986: Second jury finds the killing intentional and returns death.
December 27, 1990: California Supreme Court affirms.
October 7, 1991: United States Supreme Court denies review.
April 1993: Defense first receives the May 26, 1980, tape.
January 3, 1996: California Supreme Court rejects the tape claim on state habeas.
November 1999: Trial lawyer S. Donald Ames dies.
November 17, 2000: Ninth Circuit affirms denial of federal habeas.
Late December 2001: The Lyman family says in a statement that it does not seek his death.
January 26, 2002: Governor Gray Davis denies clemency.
January 29, 2002: Executed by lethal injection at San Quentin; pronounced dead at 12:30 a.m.
June 2015: Utah police announce that the Glashien killing is solved; prosecutors say Anderson could have been charged had he been alive.