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Background

In the 1990s, Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Northridge Mall began to develop an undeserved reputation for being dangerous.

35-year-old Jesse Anderson tried to use the mall’s reputation to his advantage. On April 21st, 1992, he stabbed his second wife, Barbara, 21 times in the face and head in the parking lot of a TGI Fridays near the mall. He also stabbed himself a few times.

He dropped a Los Angeles Clippers cap nearby. When authorities arrived, Anderson blamed the crime on two black men and said he pulled the cap off one of the men’s heads during the attack.

Two days after the crime, his wife died. Authorities didn’t buy Anderson’s story and got a big break in the case when a teen came forward saying that Anderson had bought the cap off his head at the mall days before the crime. Detectives also found the military surplus store where Anderson purchased the murder weapon. The red-handled fishing knife was the only store in Milwaukee that carried that type of knife

He was arrested a week and eight days after the attack. He was convicted at trial and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 60 years.

Post Conviction

In March 1994, a newspaper article claimed that Norbert Kurczewski, a private eye working for Anderson, found a witness who identified three perpetrators from a photo lineup.

Kurczewski told the media, “Now it’s up to the cops to pick these people up and talk to them.”

The Deputy District Attorney at the time, Carol White, who prosecuted Anderson, said that the claims of new witnesses had “not shaken our belief that Jesse Anderson did, but has reconfirmed it.”

Ultimately, it didn’t matter because Anderdon’s days were numbered.

Death

On November 28th 1994, he and inmates Jeffrey Dahmer and Christopher Scarver Sr. were on a cleaning duty in a bathroom in the prison’s gym at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage,Wisconsin.

Guards left them unattended, and Scarver went and grabbed a bar from the weight room. He attacked Dahmer, beating upon the head. After that, Scarver found Anderson and attacked him in the same manner.

Dahmer died at the hospital an hour after the attack. Anderson was in the hospital for two days before he died, just like his wife back in 1992