In the spring of 1992, Jesse M. Anderson, a 35-year-old businessman from the Milwaukee suburb of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, became a figure of public scorn. Two years later, his life would end violently inside the walls of a maximum-security prison. Jesse, a husband and father of three, was treasurer of the local Lions Club and a volunteer at his church. To his community, he appeared to be a respectable family man, which made the events of April 21, 1992, all the more shocking.
That evening, after dinner and a movie at a TGI Fridays near Milwaukee's Northridge Mall, a call to police reported a brutal attack in the parking lot. Responders found Jesse Anderson's wife, 33-year-old Barbara, bleeding from numerous stab wounds to her face and head. Jesse, who had sustained several superficial stab wounds to his chest, told officers a shocking story: he and his wife had been ambushed and attacked by two Black men.
He even produced a Los Angeles Clippers basketball cap that he claimed to have knocked off one of his assailant's heads. Barbara Anderson was rushed to the hospital but died from her injuries two days later.
The racially charged claim created a wave of fear and anger in the community. However, Jesse Anderson's story quickly unraveled. Investigators discovered that the distinctive red-handled fishing knife used in the attack had been purchased by Anderson weeks earlier from a local military surplus store, the only one in Milwaukee that sold that specific knife. Furthermore, a university student came forward and told police that he had sold the Clippers cap to Anderson just days before the murder. On April 29, 1992, Jesse Anderson was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. He was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide on August 13 and sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 60 years.
Anderson was incarcerated at the Columbia Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison in Portage, Wisconsin. His notoriety followed him, and his crime, particularly his attempt to incite racial animosity by blaming fictitious Black men, made him a pariah. It was in this tense prison environment that his path crossed with two other infamous inmates: serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Christopher J. Scarver, a man serving a life sentence for a 1990 murder.
On the morning of November 28, 1994, Anderson, Dahmer, and Scarver were assigned to a work detail cleaning a gymnasium bathroom, left unsupervised by corrections officers. Scarver, who had reportedly been disturbed by Dahmer's crimes against Black men and was angered by Anderson's racist actions, confronted both men. He retrieved a 20-inch metal bar from the prison weight room and brutally attacked both Dahmer and Anderson.
Jeffrey Dahmer was declared dead shortly after arriving at the hospital. Jesse Anderson, aged 37, clung to life for two more days. He died on November 30, 1994, after he was removed from life support at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. His cause of death was severe head trauma from the bludgeoning.
Christopher Scarver, already serving a life sentence, confessed to the killings, telling a corrections officer, "God told me to do it." He was found competent to stand trial and pleaded no contest to two additional counts of first-degree intentional homicide. He received two more life sentences, ensuring he would never leave prison. Scarver was later transferred to a federal penitentiary and has spent many years in solitary confinement. The deaths of two of Wisconsin's most infamous murderers at the hands of a fellow inmate brought a final, violent end to Jesse Anderson's story, a footnote in the history of a much more notorious serial killer.
