IN LOVING MEMORY OF 5 YEAR-OLD AUDRA ANN REEVES (DIED: JUNE 9, 1992; KILLER, ROBERT JAMES ANDERSON WAS EXECUTED ON JULY 20, 2006 IN TEXAS)

            Let us not forget five year old Audra Ann Reeves who died on this date, June 9, 1992. Her killer, Robert James Anderson was executed by lethal injection on July 20, 2006 in Texas. She would have been 26 years old if she was alive today. Let us not forget her. We, Victims' Families For The Death Penalty, care for all murdered victims and their families regardless of race and country. We feel that child killers must pay with their lives. We do not want them to get protective custody in prison, we want them dead. We will post a date when the child killer was executed or when the child was murdered to remember the child. 

Audra Ann Reeves

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/anderson1034.htm

CASE: On June 9, 1992, neighbors observed a man pushing a grocery cart with a styrofoam ice chest inside. Minutes later, one of the neighbors, Lewis Martin, found the ice chest in a dumpster and discovered that the ice chest contained the body of a five-year-old girl. Martin called the police, and an officer was dispatched to look for the suspect. The initial description of the suspect was that of a white male, about thirty years of age, wearing a black shirt, dark jeans, tennis shoes, and an orange baseball cap. Within ten minutes after receiving the dispatch, the officer approached Anderson, who matched the description except for the shirt. The officer asked Anderson for identification and a residential address, both of which Anderson provided.

Anderson asked why he had been stopped, and the officer replied that he was investigating an incident that occurred a few blocks away. The officer then asked Anderson where he was going and where he had been. Anderson answered that he had pushed a grocery cart back to the Homeland store on nearby Western street. At this point, the police officer asked Anderson not to say anything else and further asked Anderson if he would be willing to go back to the scene of that incident so that the witnesses could take a look at him. Anderson agreed to go, but the officer testified that he would have detained him for that purpose had he refused. Anderson sat in the back seat of the patrol car and was driven to the witnesses' location. The witnesses identified Anderson as the individual seen pushing the grocery cart containing a styrofoam ice chest. At that point, Anderson was handcuffed, advised of his constitutional rights, and transported to the Special Crimes Unit.

Upon arrival at the Special Crimes Unit, physical samples were taken from Anderson with his consent. He was also interrogated and gave both oral and written confessions, detailing how he kidnapped, sexually assaulted, choked and gagged, stabbed, beat and drowned the girl. He said he kidnapped Audra from in front of his home as she returned from playing with other children at a park. He took her inside and tried to rape her. He then beat and stabbed her. Anderson told investigators that after the brutal assault, he stuffed the girl into the cooler, but she tried to crawl out. He persuaded her to take a bath to clean the blood off her battered body. He then drowned her.

"It's scary sometimes, you know. If I was to be found innocent, it would happen again," Anderson wrote. In 2004, Anderson told a federal judge that he wanted to abandon further appeals and be executed. Anderson said he didn't want to "hurt anybody any longer" and that he believed God forgave him for abducting, sexually assaulting and killing Audra Ann Reeves. In his recommendation in 2004 to deny Anderson's initial federal appeal, US Magistrate Clinton Averitte cited the "particularly egregious" nature of the crime. "His persistence in carrying out this assault and murder over a period of at least 45 minutes, leaving no major part of her body that did not sustain wounds, and undaunted by a plea for mercy, would support a finding of sufficient aggravation, in and of itself, to support imposition of the death penalty," Averitte wrote. The appeal was denied.

QUOTE: Lawson said she will drive to Huntsville this morning to watch Anderson get his due and hopefully begin to close the trying 14-year wait for justice to be served. "I'm not a violent person at all, but I am looking forward to this closure knowing that he is going to die for what he did," she said. The family has had to endure the trial - during and after which Lawson said she "couldn't eat or sleep for a while because of it" - and years of state and federal court appeals, which always jolted them back to the gruesome details of Audra's death.

Lawson said she always had the nagging worry that as long as Anderson was alive, other children were in danger. "We had him, but there was still the possibility that he could escape or what have you, and if he did this to another child it would have killed us," she said.

AUTHOR: Grace Lawson is the grandmother of Audra Ann Reeves who was murdered by Robert James Anderson on June 9, 1992. He was executed by lethal injection in Texas on July 20, 2006.