Murder of Rachael Anderson

On January 24, 2020, Pardon dismissed his attorneys, despite urges from Judge McIntosh not to do so. McIntosh warned him of the perils of representing himself and asked him a series of questions about self-representation. Pardon said that he understood what he was doing. His former attorneys, Isabella Dixon and Larry Thomas, were to serve as standby attorneys in case he decided he wanted legal representation. According to Thomas, Pardon was unhappy with his representation. However, on January 27, Pardon decided not to represent himself. January 27 was also the start of jury selection.

The trial began on Monday, February 4, 2020. Four witnesses testified on the first day including Johnathan Kennedy, who discovered Anderson's body. Anderson's co-worker, and the manager of her apartment complex also testified. Jurors also heard from Officer Frank Sclafani, who was in his car outside the apartment when Kennedy discovered Anderson’s body and saw his body camera footage.

Sentencing occurred on March 16, 2020. Both of Anderson's parents gave victim impact statements, with her father calling Pardon "an animal who stalked and preyed on our beautiful daughter." Anderson's father also said in his statement: "Over the past few years I have watched him make demands and have temper tantrums as though he was owed something. During the trial, he complained how the system had failed him. If anyone should be complaining it is our family. The system definitely failed Rachael. The department of corrections system failed to keep him on a leash and let him walk free in society. The state highway patrol system failed to protect our daughter by giving him a slap on the wrist and a free ride home the day before he brutally murdered her." In Anderson's mother's impact statement, she told the court "it's frustrating to know the horrors of what was done in his early life and the families that were destroyed prior to ours" and said to Pardon "you stole my daughter's life. You will suffer for it in your new block walls and bars." She also stated "my daughter is Rachael Nicoletta Anderson. She is not case number 19CR00769." Additionally, Anderson's mother expressed disapproval of the fact that the money she made from working that she pays in taxes will support Pardon in prison.

In December 2019, Pardon sent a handwritten letter to WBNS-TV claiming that he didn’t kill Anderson. Pardon, who wrote that he “didn’t kill anyone” and that “this case is only because of my past” (sic), claimed that he knew Anderson and that they got high together. O’Brien said that Pardon would have known that Anderson had THC in her system because he had access to information from her autopsy through discovery. O’Brien also said that there was no evidence that Anderson knew Pardon and that Pardon’s letter was a tactic to delay the trial and a “desperate act.”

The murder of Rachael Anderson occurred on January 28, 2018, in Columbus, Ohio. Anderson, a twenty-four-year-old aspiring funeral director, was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by Anthony Pardon in her apartment on her birthday. Pardon, a registered sex offender with an extensive criminal history, left Anderson's body in her bedroom closet where she was discovered the next day. A significant amount of evidence linked Pardon to the crime, including cellphone data and DNA. He was arrested and charged with Anderson's murder. He was convicted in 2020 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Anderson celebrated her twenty-fourth birthday on January 26 and January 27, 2018. On the 26th her brother John came from Warren to Columbus to stay with her. The next day, Anderson and her brother went to the home of their friend John Kennedy. There, the Andersons, the Kennedys and other friends had a party to celebrate Anderson's birthday. The Anderson siblings spent the night at the Kennedy's house and came back to Anderson's home on the 28th. Anderson worked on both the 26th and 27th. During the times she was at work she gave her brother her key so that he could come and go as he wanted. On the 28th John Anderson went back to Warren and accidentally took the key with him. At around 1:00 PM Anderson texted the Kennedys, who owned a key to her home, and said that she would come and pick up their key. Because they were giving a friend a ride to Athens, Ohio, she had to come and get the key later when they returned home. Later that day, at 6:17 PM, Anderson texted the Kennedys saying she would leave in twenty minutes to come and get the key. She spoke to her mother at around 6:30 and then went and got her key from the Kennedys. Because her apartment door could only be locked from the outside with a key, Anderson had to leave it unlocked. She stopped at an Arby’s on the East Side at around 7:30 and then went home.

Location service apps and Pardon's email account on his phone allowed investigators to collect data showing where his phone was located at various times. Data showed that he was at Anderson's apartment from 7:59 to 9:25 PM on January 28, 2018. After police discovered that Anderson’s debit card was missing, they examined bank records. Using cell phone data, they matched Pardon’s whereabouts to the use of her card. Surveillance video also showed Pardon and his sister using Anderson's debit card, as well as Pardon using Anderson's credit card and driving her car. Investigators also spoke to Anthony Sleets after video footage showed him using her card. Sleets told them that a man matching Pardon’s description gave it to him though by the time Pardon became a suspect, Sleets had died. Video showed Pardon and Sleets driving Anderson’s car hours after she was murdered.

Pardon was arrested on February 9, 2018, in the Linden neighborhood by SWAT officers. He was held in jail on a five million dollar bond. On February 15, a Franklin County Grand Jury indicted Pardon on nine counts including aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, rape, and aggravated murder. The indictment also included death penalty specifications, as well as repeat violent offender, sexually violent predator and repeat attempted murder specifications. He was formally arraigned on February 20 and pleaded not guilty on all charges.

Pardon was eligible for the death penalty because he murdered Anderson during the course of aggravated burglary, kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and rape and because he has a prior conviction for purposefully attempted to kill another victim. Prosecutors sought the death penalty against Pardon due to his extensive criminal history, with O’Brien saying in 2018 "there are some people who can't conform their conduct to the law. And it at least is alleged that he is one of them."

In 2017 Pardon was released from prison, returning to Ohio in June of that year through an interstate compact agreement between Ohio and Georgia. He was monitored by the Adult Parole Authority and required to check in with the Sheriff's Department every ninety days. Ohio’s Adult Parole Authority did not give him a monitor, as a judge had requested, because of the length of time spent monitoring and “the expense issue.” On August 21, 2017, Pardon was caught with a prostitute in his car. Though he told police he was giving her a ride, the woman confirmed to local news that he was interested in sexual activity. At 4:00 AM on January 27, 2018, he was caught driving without a license. During that stop, he was found to have a pocket knife, a kitchen knife, and a pellet gun. He was not arrested.

Pardon moved to Georgia in 2006 or 2007 and applied for a maintenance job under a false name. In 2007 he was charged with forgery and failure to register as a sex offender in Georgia. He was convicted of these offenses in Floyd County, Georgia and spent nine years in prison for them. He was also given twenty years of probation and was required to wear a GPS ankle monitor and pay for all expenses.

Rachael Nicoletta Anderson was born on January 28, 1994, to William "Bill" Anderson and Patricia "Trish" Anderson (née Sprecacenere) in Warren, Ohio. In 2012 she graduated from Warren G. Harding High School where she was part of the National Honor Society and played soccer and volleyball and was in band. Anderson, who wanted to become a funeral director, attended Youngstown State University where she majored in prerequisites for mortuary science and made the Dean's List. She then attended the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science, graduating in 2016 with a Bachelor's degree in Mortuary Science. While in mortuary school, she worked at the Naegele-Kleb-Ihlendorf Funeral Home. Anderson, who was a member of the Ohio Funeral Directors Association, moved to Columbus where she began an apprenticeship at the Shaw Davis Funeral Home. At the time of her murder, Anderson was nearing the end of that apprenticeship, and, according to the funeral home’s manager, was going to be offered a job. Anderson’s murder occurred on her twenty-fourth birthday. Anderson was buried at Pineview Memorial Park.

Pardon was tried as an adult, and in May 1982, at age seventeen, he was convicted of aggravated robbery, rape, and attempted murder in Franklin County, Ohio. Pardon was sentenced to five to twenty-five years in prison. He was originally sent to the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield but was transferred to the Lebanon Correctional Institution and later to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. While in prison he acquired several disciplinary infractions, including possessing weapons, setting fire to a mattress, and fighting. He ultimately spent more than twenty-four years in prison for the crime and was released in November 2006.

On November 13, 1981, Pardon, then sixteen, was allowed into the home of his girlfriend’s thirty-nine-year-old mother to use her phone. He pulled a butcher knife on her, raped her at knife point and stole one hundred dollars from her purse. He bound her hands and feet together, gagged her, and put her in the trunk of a car. He proceeded to drive her to Valley Dale, where he untied her feet and threw her into Alum Creek behind the Valley Dale Ballroom. When Pardon saw that the victim, who was partially clothed, was able to keep afloat, he went into the creek and held her head under the water. The woman survived after a good Samaritan intervened. Pardon left before police arrived and used the money he stole from the victim to buy tennis shoes and a jogging outfit.

In 1980 Pardon was charged with raping a nine-month-old child. The victim of this rape was the son of Pardon's foster parents. Pardon, who was fifteen when he committed the crime, was babysitting while his foster mother went out grocery shopping. He told Columbus police that he committed the crime because he was upset after having a fight with his girlfriend. Pardon was convicted of the crime as a juvenile.

In March 1979, Pardon, then fourteen, was temporarily committed to the Ohio Youth Commission after he raped an eight-year-old girl. In July of that year, he was made a ward of the Court and temporarily committed to Franklin County Children Services. And in December of that year, Pardon was found guilty of menacing and permanently committed to the Ohio Youth Commission as well as being placed in foster care.