Billy Dean Anderson
| Billy Dean Anderson | |
|---|---|
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Wanted Poster for Billy Dean Anderson
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| FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive | |
| Charges |
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| Description | |
| Born | July 12, 1934 Pall Mall area Fentress County, Tennessee |
| Died | July 7, 1979 Mountains of Pickett County, Tennessee |
| Cause of death | Shot |
| Status | |
| Added | May 14, 1984 (date FBI added to list) |
| Number | 386 (sequence number) |
| Killed during attempt to capture | |
Billy Dean Anderson (July 12, 1934 – July 7, 1979) gained notoriety in 1975 when he was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list after a long list of crimes — for which he was jailed and paroled three times — including armed robbery and prison escapes, over the course of 20 years. Despite his unlawful behavior, Anderson became somewhat of a folk hero among those in his native Tennessee, even more so after he was shot and killed by FBI officers as he was leaving his mother's home one night after eluding federal authorities for four-and-a-half years.
Anderson was born in the Pall Mall area of Fentress County, Tennessee, the same Wolf River valley where World War I hero Alvin C. York hailed. Little is known about his early life. While this is reported in many articles the FBI disputes these claims and his birthplace has been unconfirmed. He attended Rotten Fork Elementary School, where he preferred to fill his notebooks with sketches rather than homework. However, he was believed not to have been a troublesome youth, and volunteered as a preacher at Wolf River Methodist Church in Pall Mall at age eighteen. He used the aliases 'Billie Dean Anderson' 'James Forster' and 'William David Upchurch'. He had a stocky build and stood at 5'8 and weighed between 160 and 170 pounds with fair skin and bluish-green eyes. He worked as an artist, mechanic, unskilled laborer, tree surgeon and farmer. Anderson was severely marked with a scar across the bridge of his nose, the left side of his forehead, a surgical scar on the right side of his stomach and another surgical scar on his lower spine. He reportedly wore braces on both of his legs and suffered from atrophy of the legs.
In June 1959, Anderson and two friends held an armed robbery at a drive-in theater in Jamestown, Tennessee. When the theater usher revealed he possessed little money, Anderson intentionally missed while shooting near him. The three men managed to evade police, however were arrested the following morning while engaged in a police standoff while inside the Wolf River Methodist Church in Pall Mall. Anderson served a four-month jail sentence, as his lenient sentence was due to being a first-time offender.
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Wikipedia