The video/audio should start right when Jessica (the reporter) starts talking.
Transcript BelowA ct Four, Run On Sentence. Ira Glass: So lots of us have things about ourselves that we keep to ourselves that we assume people would see us differently if they knew about. And Mike Anderson had something like that, one thing about him in particular that he kept a secret, until one day it came out. Jessica Lussenhop explains.
Jessica Lussenhop
Mike Anderson was 36 years old, married, a suburban father of four. He owned a contacting business and built his family’s modest, three-bedroom house in St. Louis from the ground up. He volunteered at church on the weekends and coached his son’s football team. That changed last July. He was home alone with his two-year-old daughter while his wife was away on a business trip.
Mike Anderson
I was sleeping. I was awoken. I was about 6 o’clock in the morning, woken by knocking at the door. And it was unusual knocking. It was the consistent knocking– you know, the hard knocking.
So I knew something– what is going on? So I just stood at the top of the stairs for a moment. And finally I said, who is it? I’m in my boxers. And they said, marshals. Open it up or it’s coming down. Opened up the door.
As soon as I opened up the door, it was a small army. I mean, it was about eight of them. They had the shields. They had the helmets. They had the AR-15 style machine-looking guns. And they had the street blocked off. And I said, hey man, you got the wrong person. And he just looked at me. He said, no, you’re the right person.
Jessica Lussenhop
The officer handcuffed him and asked, do you remember 13 years ago?
Mike Anderson
I broke out in a sweat. They had to sit me down. And the only thing I could think about, what’s my wife going to say, what she’s gonna think, you know. So I called her. As soon as I called her, she was crying. What’s going on? And I told her what’s going on. I said, baby, this is from 13 years ago.
Laqonna Anderson
I’m freaking out– I mean, screaming, crying.
Jessica Lussenhop
This is Mike’s wife, LaQonna. They’ve been married for six years.
Laqonna Anderson
I could hear the marshals in the background telling him he has to go. So he told me he loved me, and that was it.
Jessica Lussenhop
And when you heard “something from 13 years ago,” did you understand what that meant at all? Or what were you thinking?
Laqonna Anderson
I didn’t understand what it meant until the next day, when we had a talk with the attorney. Then I just passed out, hit my head on the concrete.
Jessica Lussenhop
Here’s what LaQonna learned. In 1999, Mike was arrested for armed robbery but never served his time because of what amounted to a clerical error. He was 22 years old when he a friend held up a Burger King manager making a night deposit at a bank. This wasn’t a case of mistaken identity or wrongful conviction. Mike was there.
Although his attorney instructed him not to discuss the details of the crime with me, Mike says he got caught up with the wrong crowd that night. Until then, he had no prior convictions and worked a full-time job at AT&T. In court, Mike testified that the robbery wasn’t his idea and that the gun his friend was holding was just a BB gun.
The police never actually recovered any weapons, but Mike was convicted of armed criminal action and robbery. The judge sentenced him to 13 years in prison. Mike filed a series of appeals. But in the end, the courts decided, nope, he had to serve his sentence. At the time, Mike was out on bail.
And here, something strange happened. At this point, Mike’s bail should have been revoked, and he should have been arrested and taken to prison. But a warrant was never issued for that. Mike’s attorney and the prosecutor appeared before a judge. Mike wasn’t actually there himself.
Mike Anderson
From what I understand, the judge asked, where is Mr. Anderson? My attorney handed her the briefs and told her Mr. Anderson is currently out on bond. But the prosecuting attorney at that time hopped up and said, no, he’s not out on bond. I checked. My office checked. He’s currently in prison. And so that was it.
Jessica Lussenhop
It was the prosecutor who told the judge that Mike was in custody even though he wasn’t. He was at home. Mike’s attorney didn’t say anything because he hadn’t actually talked to Mike in a few days, and he thought maybe he really was back in prison– until he talked to Mike on the phone.
Mike Anderson
He was shocked. He said, you aren’t in jail? I said, no, I’m not. And so I was like, well, what are we supposed to do? Am I supposed to turn myself in? And it was just like, well, at this time, it’s a mistake. They’ll figure out their mistake. You know, he said, it’s temporary. Expect to be picked up. They’re going to pick you up.
Jessica Lussenhop
It wasn’t unusual for it to take a couple of weeks for a warrant to get issued. But months, then years passed. No one ever came and picked up Mike.
Mike says he never really considered turning himself in. He figured they’d either come for him or they wouldn’t. And if they didn’t, OK. That was God’s plan for him. His lawyer was vague about what he should do next. He left it up to Mike.
But after the arrest, the trial, the months he spent in prison before bonding out, Mike decided to turn his life around. He went back to school and became a master carpenter. He got married and became a family man who checked homework and got his kids ready for bed every night. Mike never had another run-in with the law.
Jessica Lussenhop
Did you feel like a fugitive during that time?
Mike Anderson
No, I never felt like a fugitive, because a fugitive’s someone that’s running from the law. I never ran from the law. I was there. I registered my business through the state, you know, with a social security number, address, everything. I’m four streets over from the address that they had on file, built a house over there. So there was never any running or strategy of, hey, I don’t want to go here because there’s going to be authorities. No, I lived a normal life.
Jessica Lussenhop
Did you feel relaxed right away? What was it like to sort of acclimate to this feeling that you’re out and you may get to stay out?
Mike Anderson
It was 13 years of somewhat relief, but was it always in the back of my mind? Of course it was always in the back of my mind. Is that day coming any day now? So you get pulled over for a traffic ticket. You run a red light, run a stop sign, or you didn’t come to a complete stop. And they’re running your information, and your heart’s beating fast, like, man, are they going to know? And they come back, hey, Mr. Anderson, get your tail light fixed. Get your tags renewed. And that was it. And I was just like, wow, what’s going on?
Jessica Lussenhop
In the end, the only reason that the Missouri Department of Corrections realized Mike was missing was because they were preparing to release him from prison. I called the Department of Corrections, the county’s warrant officers, the original court where this happened, Missouri’s Attorney General, and the state’s Supreme Court, and no one would say anything about how there was a record claiming that Mike was one of their inmates when he was, in fact, free.
Meanwhile, Mike and his wife still have not had a frank conversation about all this either. They haven’t discussed the fact that Mike knew all those years that he might someday go back to prison but never told her.
Jessica Lussenhop
Do you feel any sense of anger or wished that he had told you this earlier on?
Laqonna Anderson
I mean, that question arose in my head, just like, why he didn’t tell me. But I can’t get mad at him, because I understand why he hid it from me. He just wanted to protect me. So he didn’t want to put too much on me that I couldn’t handle. And that’s just the type of person Mike is, too. He’ll try to juggle everything by himself.
Jessica Lussenhop
It feels a little strange that you guys haven’t had that conversation.
Mike Anderson
It’s uncomfortable for me because I’m always embarrassed about it. That’s not who I am now. It’s not who I’ll ever be. I just want to forget it.
Jessica Lussenhop
When I first visited Mike in November, he had to stay in his cell for about 22 hours a day in a huge penitentiary called Fulton Reception and Diagnostic, a gray building planted in the middle of farmland about two hours west of St. Louis. Usually clean cut, Mike had several months worth of beard on his chin.
Mike Anderson
August, the kids went to school, their first day of school. Missed that. September, missed me and my wife’s anniversary on the 26th. November, my son turned 7 on the 5th, and my daughter turned 11 on the 10th. I’ve missed a lot– missed a lot.
Jessica Lussenhop
13 years without going to prison did exactly what you’d hope 13 years in prison will do for a person. Mike reformed, became a model citizen– which raises the question, do we want to send him to prison? It will cost the state of Missouri about $20,000 a year to house and feed him.
And if Mike’s no longer a danger to society, what’s the point of having him sit in a cell, when he could be out working, paying taxes, and raising his kids? Tim Lohmar is the prosecuting attorney in St. Charles County where Mike was sentenced– although he’s not the one who jumped up in court and said Mike was in prison. That prosecutor has passed away.
Tim Lohmar
It still baffles me how this could have happened. But I think the state’s interests are that this sentence has to be served.
Jessica Lussenhop
So he’s had this life. He’s had children, started a small business, hasn’t had any run-ins with the law. Some people would say that he’s been rehabilitated. He shouldn’t have to serve this sentence because it took so long.
Tim Lohmar
Well, I can’t say that that’s an unreasonable thing for those people to think, especially his family, people who are close to him. Anybody who doesn’t have sympathy for Mr. Anderson, I think, is not being genuine. It’s a horrible tragedy for he and his family. So whether that spurs somebody at a higher pay grade than me to figure out a better way to do this, I don’t know.
You open Pandora’s box if our system allowed for people to somehow, whether it was their doing or somebody else’s doing, to delay their incarceration, to see if they can rehabilitate and become a productive member of society, become a family man. I don’t know how we would do that. I don’t know where you stop. Where do you draw the line? That’s not a precedent that I feel that we can set.
Jessica Lussenhop
Mike’s family hired a lawyer who filed a brief arguing that when the state forgot about Mike for 13 years, they violated his constitutional right to due process or speedy punishment, that now suddenly taking Mike away from his life because of the state’s, quote, “utter and complete failure to act defines cruelty,” end quote. If that fails, Mike can petition Missouri Governor Jay Nixon for clemency. He’s only granted that once. Then there’s the victim from the robbery. You’d think if anyone would have an opinion about whether Mike should serve his time or not, it would be him.
Mike Anderson
I hope someday that man can forgive me for what I was a part of. So I’ve always wanted to someway, somehow, reach out to him, but I always feared that it would be an intrusion. And all I can do is just– I’m sorry. I should have never been there that night.
Jessica Lussenhop
I first reported this story last summer for the St. LouisRiverfront Times. At that time, I couldn’t find the victim. But then, right after my article published, he found me. His name is Dennis.
Dennis
I was sitting there back at work, eating my lunch and reading this magazine. Something about, oh, the guy was a Burger King manager on the night shift, and he got robbed out in St. Charles. And that’s when I was like, wow, man. This is really trippy. It almost sounds like something that happened to me. And then when I got on down farther, I was like, crap, they are talking about me.
Jessica Lussenhop
When he first contacted me, Dennis sent me an email saying, I was that victim. Why don’t you talk to me, and I’ll tell you how bad it screwed up my life. When we finally met, Dennis told me that getting robbed at gunpoint left him deeply paranoid. He even moved a few times, thinking the robbers might come looking for him to keep him from testifying.
Dennis
It started kind of getting to me a little bit, to where I wasn’t sleeping at nights. And it kind of just escalated from there. I didn’t want to be there at work no more, refused to take any money back to the bank– not night time anyway.
Jessica Lussenhop
Did you keep that job? Or did you stay there? Or did you quit?
Dennis
I stayed there for another three or four months, and it just got to where I just– I ended up transferring out to a different county. It was going to be either that, or I was going to quit. I told them I had to get away from there. I just didn’t trust anybody, didn’t want to do anything, didn’t want to be anywhere. I just pretty much wanted to just be by myself.
Jessica Lussenhop
Dennis said he had problems in his life before the robbery– with his marriage, with drinking. But he says after, they got worse. His marriage fell apart. And so when Dennis found out that Mike never served his sentence, he got pretty angry.
Dennis
But then the more I thought about it, it was like, what you’re doing to him is not right. He wasn’t out robbing other people, doing this, that, and the other. He seemed to have gotten his life together. You’ve got to give the guy a little bit of slack. I mean, yeah, he screwed up when he was little. But the law dropped the ball. The law ought to drop it completely. They need to leave the man alone.
Jessica Lussenhop
When you tell people that that’s how you feel about it, does it surprise them?
Dennis
You know, it’s the weirdest thing. As I was sitting downstairs rereading that article one day for my daughter, she goes, Dad, we read this in school the other day. I was like, oh yeah? I said, oh. At the time, she didn’t know it was me, because I just never talk about it. She said that she didn’t think it was right, what they’re doing to him now. And pretty much her whole class agreed with her.
Jessica Lussenhop
Then Dennis told her that he was the Burger King manager in that article and that he felt the same way she did. Two days after that conversation, I went back to the prison to talk to Mike. I told them what Dennis and his daughter said, that the state should let him go. He was overwhelmed.
Mike Anderson
Wow, that’s– all I can say is praise God. Thank God for that, and– I don’t know what to say. (CHOKING UP) I don’t.
Jessica Lussenhop
He told me he was really sorry to be bothering Dennis by reminding him of the past.
Mike Anderson
I appreciate him. I never wanted him to ever be– this brung back to him. And that’s my fault, and I appreciate him for that– you know, his daughter in the class and how his daughter could be affected by that. You know, that’s not something that I ever– that’s never my intent, and I don’t want that.
Jessica Lussenhop
Mike is afraid of falling into the daily routines of prison. So aside from his church group, he doesn’t interact much with the other inmates. He won’t do things like watch TV with them or play cards. He also doesn’t like writing his family letters.
Mike Anderson
You know, I try not to write anybody, because I don’t want to get used to this. I don’t want my wife coming up here to visit me. She wanted to come up here the 1st of this month, and I said, no, don’t do it. For eight years, we’ve never been apart. And I don’t want her getting this image of me. I don’t want anybody thinking this is who I am.
Jessica Lussenhop
If you could go back, would you turn yourself in at 22?
Mike Anderson
If I would have known this, yes. Yes. If it would have been something– oh, definitely. Like I said, I would rather done it then. I was 22, 23 at the time. Didn’t have any children, didn’t have a wife, didn’t have a mortgage, didn’t have a car payment. The hurt would have been less then. No one financially or physically depended on me. It’s almost like I feel like I’ve abandoned my job as a man and as a father, you know? Because my mom, my wife, my kids, they’re doing the same time I’m doing.
Jessica Lussenhop
As it stands now, Mike’s sentence will keep him in until 2026. He’ll be nearly 50 when he gets out. His two-year-old will just be starting high school. Accepting all that is just too crushing to consider.
Mike Anderson
I have to look at it like, no matter what, God’s got me. I wake up every time the doors pop, every time the intercom comes on, every time my name is called. I feel it’s my time, I’m going home.
Jessica Lussenhop
How long do you think you can kind of keep up that mindset?
Mike Anderson
I’m going to keep up that mindset till the day I walk out of here. I have to. I can’t sit here and think that I’ll be here for 13 years. There’s no way. Everything that I’ve been allowed to do, that I’ve accomplished. It just seems like it’d be all for nothing.
Jessica Lussenhop
In November, Mike and his wife both expected he’d be home for Christmas. Now she just assures herself it’ll be very soon. They talk on the phone almost every day, but they both told me they figure they’ll finally discuss Mike’s original crime and the fact he kept it from her all those years face to face, once this is all over, once he gets home.
Ira Glass
Jessica Lussenhop, she’s the managing editor at the Riverfront Times in St. Louis.