Anderson was born in 1953 and had a long record of burglary and escape across several states. He escaped from the Utah State Prison in 1980 and made his way to California.
On the night of May 26, 1980 he broke into the house of Elizabeth Lyman, eighty-one, a retired piano teacher living alone in Bloomington, San Bernardino County. She woke, and he shot her in the face. He then cooked himself a meal in her kitchen and was watching television when police arrived, having been called by a neighbour who heard the shot.
He was convicted of first degree murder with special circumstances and sentenced to death. In custody he claimed a series of earlier killings, including contract killings, and gave a figure of eight. Those claims were never charged and never tested, and a killing of a fellow inmate is attributed to him in the same way. This entry is written on the Lyman conviction, which is the only murder established against him.
He learned to write in prison and published poetry that was well regarded; the clemency campaign before his execution rested partly on that and on the accepted evidence of severe childhood abuse and neglect. Clemency was refused, and he was executed by lethal injection at San Quentin on January 29, 2002.