An Officer Seen as a Hero Faces a Year Behind Bars

[Odin]

CLOUDCROFT, N.M. — Sgt. Billy Anders knew something was terribly wrong. The fresh blood spots outside the roadside cabin, the hatchback with the open rear door in the driveway and the instincts he had honed as a big-city cop in San Antonio gave him reason to be alarmed.

His gut was right.

What happened in the next few minutes on that freezing night in December 2004 would leave two men dead, a community in shock and Sergeant Anders, a beloved local sheriff's officer nearing retirement, charged with killing a handcuffed prisoner. A video camera in the sergeant's own patrol truck was unblinking witness.

That the victim was a white supremacist ex-convict, Earl Flippen, who had just killed his pregnant girlfriend and Sergeant Anders's partner, sprayed gunfire around the girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter and barely missed shooting Sergeant Anders at point-blank range, was beside the point.

Sergeant Anders, who received a minimal one-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter with a firearm, says he has trouble remembering exactly what happened but recalls that he fired to save himself and the little girl.

"I remember he was moving and I considered him a threat," he said in a rambling interview. "I don't remember shooting him when he was handcuffed."

Still, said Sergeant Anders, who was sentenced on March 3, his 63rd birthday: "I'm a reasonable person; I can't argue with the videotape. If I crossed the line, I have to take responsibility."

The sergeant spoke on March 9 while working his way through Cloudcroft's quaint wooden shopping arcade, enveloped in goodbye embraces from supporters. [He began serving his sentence on March 10.]

The case has devastated this close-knit frontier town nearly 9,000 feet above Alamogordo's atomic-testing desert, where drivers say they have no need to use their turn signals: everyone already knows where everyone else is going.

Many see Sergeant Anders as a hero, and supporters have raised the $50,000 that his legal defense cost.

"As far as I'm concerned, Billy did everyone a favor," said Charliss Randall, who works in the Copper Butterfly gift shop. Mr. Flippen had already killed his girlfriend, Ms. Randall noted, adding, "Who else would he kill?"

The emergency workers who rushed to the cabin that night credit Sergeant Anders with saving their lives. "I'm convinced that had he not eliminated the threat, Flippen would have started picking us off," Grady McCright, a former volunteer fire chief of a neighboring community, said outside the sentencing hearing.

But the district attorney, Scot D. Key, said he had had no choice: "It goes without saying that when you have a videotape that clearly shows a police execution, it's just screaming for prosecution."

If Sergeant Anders had not agreed to plead guilty, Mr. Key said, federal prosecutors, concerned about the possibility of acquittal by a state jury, were prepared to try him under a civil rights statute that could have sent him to prison for life. His guilty plea carried a sentence of up to seven years; the one year the judge gave him was the lightest possible term.

In truth, Sergeant Anders said, he should not have been on duty the night of Dec. 18, 2004. It was his 11th wedding anniversary, and he was fighting off a case of stomach flu. But when a call came in to 911 reporting a quarrel and shots fired 10 miles east of Cloudcroft, he insisted on joining his partner and best friend, Deputy Robert Hedman.

The call took them to a cabin rented by Mr. Flippen, a 38-year-old career criminal whose "white pride" tattoos proclaimed his membership in the Aryan Brotherhood.

Shortly before the deputies pulled up, Mr. Flippen had shot to death his 30-year-old girlfriend, Deborah Rhoudes, then eight months pregnant, and rolled her body into a rug for loading into his waiting hatchback. Ms. Rhoudes's 3-year-old daughter, Victoria, was also there.

In the interview on March 9, which began at the cabin, now sealed off, Sergeant Anders said a shirtless Mr. Flippen, barring the two officers from entering, had explained the bloodstains as coming from a deer he had killed, and had then slammed the door. Sergeant Anders radioed for backup, while Deputy Hedman crept to the back of the house.

When he heard a shot from the back, Sergeant Anders rushed the cabin. But Mr. Flippen, who in the darkness had slipped through the front door unseen with Victoria, popped up from behind the hatchback and fired a shot from his .357 Magnum Peacemaker at the startled sergeant, who was just feet away.

"It felt like a Civil War cannon in my face," Sergeant Anders recalled. "I thought the left side of my head was gone." Actually the bullet had torn through his jacket, searing his left arm.

In 31 years as a law enforcement officer, he said, he had never fired his weapon on duty, but now he pulled the trigger of his Glock semiautomatic four times, striking Mr. Flippen in the forehead and left hand and arm.

At this point, the sergeant's recollections and the videotape diverge. Repeating what he had told investigators, he said he recalled having seen Mr. Flippen squirming on the ground with the Magnum nearby and having shot him again in the body. Afterward, he said, he moved the gun out of reach and handcuffed him.

But the videotape and its audio from the sergeant's body microphone tell a different story. After downing Mr. Flippen, Sergeant Anders handcuffs him as Victoria, whom Mr. Flippen was helping to raise, wails nearby, over and over: "Don't shoot my daddy!"

Sergeant Anders says: "I won't, honey. Back up, honey."

He tells Mr. Flippen, "You lay there, buddy," and rushes to the back of the house, shouting: "Bob! Bob!" He finds his partner's body — draped over a railing, a bullet in the head — and gasps, "Oh God, Bob!"

Then he returns to Mr. Flippen, shoos the little girl inside and fires a single shot into his chest.

The next police officer on the scene, Terry Flanigan, said he had found Sergeant Anders all but catatonic, propped up on his truck. He found Ms. Rhoudes's body "stuffed in a closetlike garbage," and the little girl, who had minor wounds from a bullet fragment, crying that her sister was still in the house. Officers later realized she had meant her dead mother's unborn baby.

When investigators played the videotape for Sergeant Anders three days after the shootings, he seemed stunned. He said he had no memory of shooting Mr. Flippen after handcuffing him.

"I remember being afraid," he said, according to transcripts of interviews with the investigators. "I remember being worried for Bob. I remember the little girl screaming and carrying, you know, carrying on, being upset. But, God, I don't remember that."

Later, when Sergeant Anders was indicted and turned himself in, the Otero County sheriff, John Blansett, a mammoth, easygoing man, wept.

Fifteen months after the shooting, the case still bruises Cloudcroft, not simply because of Deputy Hedman's death but also out of concern for Sergeant Anders and an appreciation for the hellish circumstances of that night.

By all accounts at the sentencing hearing, Sergeant Anders was more than a standout officer. He was a model citizen known for a warm demeanor and for using humor to defuse dangerous situations.

"Billy was one of the greatest and most compassionate cops we ever had," said Willie Walker, a former colleague with the San Antonio Police Department, where Sergeant Anders spent 23 years as a patrol officer and SWAT team commander before retiring as a captain and moving to Cloudcroft with his wife in 1998.

As Sergeant Anders made his farewell rounds through Cloudcroft on March 9, residents turned out to wish him well. A man in a cowboy hat clapped him on the shoulder, enfolded him in a crushing embrace and said, "Behind you, brother."

[ngcsubutterbar]

Damn, sounds like the old man snapped after seeing his partner dead. To be honest I don't blame him. I wish him well.

[Mike Romeo]

Thanks for sharing this, as always, Olin, Owin, Ofin, whatever your name is.

[ngcsubutterbar]

double. still sad.

[Hockey9019]

Haha he finally did it!! Doubled it right up... :D I could really be a smartas* and say use the 6 letter word haha..But yeah, I don't blame the officer for what he did

+1

[txinvestigator1]

Haha he finally did it!! Doubled it right up... :D I could really be a smartas* and say use the 6 letter word haha..But yeah, I don't blame the officer for what he did

+1

WTF is that supposed to mean? You don't blame the officer for executing a handcuffed prisoner? How old are you???

[Unit19]

I think he is talking about the word (grimace on face) REPOST!!

[Valor55]

I think he is talking about the word (grimace on face) REPOST!!

I fixed it.

[Hockey9019]

WTF is that supposed to mean? You don't blame the officer for executing a handcuffed prisoner? How old are you???

Sorry I wasn't trying to make it sound like that

[Joeyd6]

Guy is already shot and down....and MAYBE he is dead. "Police officers are not doctors." Maybe he soem him move or slightly and fired again. Why is this such a big deal?

I hate the liberals in the criminal justice system. Nobody denies this guy killed a pregnant wormen, shot another police officer in the head and then attempted to kill another police officers. Nobody denies the cop shot him legally in the first four shots: forehead, arm, hand. He sees him moving and fires again. Sounds good to me! Handcuffs him and checks on partner. Sees him dead. Reality is setting in. He returns and sees perp moving again. Maybe the stress and reality set in anad he forgets about the handcuffs, sees the perp moving again and fires. I don't give two craps about the perp. You have three people dead and he just tried to kill another cop. Gee, maybe the poor pregnant mothers rights were violated? How about the babay that never got to live? The DOA cops? He have any rights?

Heads stuck up in their A##@#!!!!!

Just out of curiousity, I wonder what race this officer is. Is that the angle? A black officer kills a white supremaicist?

[Valor55]

Guy is already shot and down....and MAYBE he is dead. "Police officers are not doctors." Maybe he soem him move or slightly and fired again. Why is this such a big deal?

I hate the liberals in the criminal justice system. Nobody denies this guy killed a pregnant wormen, shot another police officer in the head and then attempted to kill another police officers. Nobody denies the cop shot him legally in the first four shots: forehead, arm, hand. He sees him moving and fires again. Sounds good to me! Handcuffs him and checks on partner. Sees him dead. Reality is setting in. He returns and sees perp moving again. Maybe the stress and reality set in anad he forgets about the handcuffs, sees the perp moving again and fires. I don't give two craps about the perp. You have three people dead and he just tried to kill another cop. Gee, maybe the poor pregnant mothers rights were violated? How about the babay that never got to live? The DOA cops? He have any rights?

Heads stuck up in their A##@#!!!!!

Just out of curiousity, I wonder what race this officer is. Is that the angle? A black officer kills a white supremaicist?

The picture I saw he was white.

If he said that when he got back he saw the guy moving and shot him he'd be fine but he says he has no memory of it.

I'm with you though, they automatically assume the worst. Maybe it was maybe it wasn't.

[Ironhead]

Guy is already shot and down....and MAYBE he is dead. "Police officers are not doctors." Maybe he soem him move or slightly and fired again. Why is this such a big deal?

I hate the liberals in the criminal justice system. Nobody denies this guy killed a pregnant wormen, shot another police officer in the head and then attempted to kill another police officers. Nobody denies the cop shot him legally in the first four shots: forehead, arm, hand. He sees him moving and fires again. Sounds good to me! Handcuffs him and checks on partner. Sees him dead. Reality is setting in. He returns and sees perp moving again. Maybe the stress and reality set in anad he forgets about the handcuffs, sees the perp moving again and fires. I don't give two craps about the perp. You have three people dead and he just tried to kill another cop. Gee, maybe the poor pregnant mothers rights were violated? How about the babay that never got to live? The DOA cops? He have any rights?

Heads stuck up in their A##@#!!!!!

Just out of curiousity, I wonder what race this officer is. Is that the angle? A black officer kills a white supremaicist?

If the story is recounting the video correctly, then this is not what happened Joey.
They say the video and body mic say that it happened in this order ....
1) Shoots 4 times, bad guy goes down.
2) Handcuffs BG and tells the little girl he won't shoot her daddy.
3) Goes to check on partner
4) Returns to BG, shoos away the little girl, and then shoots the BG in the chest.

If that is actually what is on the video, then I think the last shot was excessive force (an understatement) unless the BG got his hands on the gun again or something.

[Joeyd6]

If the story is recounting the video correctly, then this is not what happened Joey.
They say the video and body mic say that it happened in this order ....
1) Shoots 4 times, bad guy goes down.
2) Handcuffs BG and tells the little girl he won't shoot her daddy.
3) Goes to check on partner
4) Returns to BG, shoos away the little girl, and then shoots the BG in the chest.

If that is actually what is on the video, then I think the last shot was excessive force (an understatement) unless the BG got his hands on the gun again or something.

I may have mis-implied how I saw it. But I see it exactly as you say. Even then though, can you have excessive force on a dead guy? Was he out of line with the last shot based on telling the girl to go away? Sure. Any difference to the perp after 4 already in him? Nope. This perp was a BAD-BAD-BAD dude. He had a record, killed 1 female, killed 1 fetus, killed one cop, attempted to kill another cop. Suspend the guy without pay, send him to counseling, etc... Jail should be no option! You can't kill somebody who is already dead a 2nd time and call it an execution. Nor can a dead person have civil rights.

[aussie1]

This guy gets 10 points from me. The BG deserved everything he got. In this day and age the BGs have the most rights and we have to be carefull not to violate their rights, howver our own mean nothing. What a joke. This guy seems to have overwhelming support for what he did.

I think justice was served.....

[NCSO911]

Another one down.

I can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing, just somehow a little different.

Some people just deserve to die. Even if he were tried, this is exactly the kind of scumball who would have gotten a liberal jury, and even if he had gotten death, he would be fighting it for the next 20 years.