The Drowning Death of Brenda Anderson in South Carolina
On the afternoon of June 19, 1965, a little girl playing on the shore of Folly Beach, South Carolina came across the deceased body of a woman wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Because there were no personal belongings found on the beach, authorities began questioning nearby residents to see if anyone could identify the young woman. When 24-year-old John Paul Anderson, a Polaris Submarine crewman from Massachusetts, returned home from running errands early that evening, he was unable to locate his wife, 20-year-old Brenda Lee Minton Anderson, who lived with him on Folly Beach. That’s when neighbors told him about the woman who had been found on the beach and he was able to go to the Coroner’s office and make a positive ID.
Police questioned John Paul Anderson about his activities for the day. He told police he and his wife went to a strand area so he could give her lesson on the use of an agua-lung, or a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus used for scuba diving. Then, he left her on the raft, which was approximately three feet by five feet, and drove to the city to have his brakes repaired and later visited some friends on the Isle of Palms. Brenda had been a lifeguard in her hometown of Newport News, Virginia and he believed she was a capable swimmer. He returned to their home between 4 and 4:30 and couldn’t find his wife.
John Paul had served four years in the Navy before entering the University of North Carolina in 1963. He attended for one year before reenlisting in the Navy in February 1964.
Jennings Cauthen, the Charleston County Coroner, said the body appeared to have been in the water at least six or seven hours. Witnesses said they saw a young man and woman together in the water off Folly Beach for about 30 minutes on Saturday. The man was seen leaving, but no one ever saw the girl again. There was no evidence of a raft found on the day Brenda drowned.
Police discovered the couple had only been married two months and John Paul Anderson had taken out a $50,000 life insurance policy on Brenda, with a double indemnity cause in the case of accidental death. The autopsy report showed bruising on both of Brenda’s arms. John Paul was arrested on July 30, 1965 and charged with murder. After an inquest, and some time spent at the State Mental Hospital in Columbia, John Paul was indicted on September 15, 1965.
His trial began in December of 1965. The crux of the defense’s case was the testimony of Mrs. John Ohlandt, her 11-year-old daughter Pam, and her 13-year-old son John Ohlandt Jr. They said they saw a woman matching Brenda Anderson’s description disappear under the waves right before the man who swam in with her came back to shore with an aqualung the woman had been wearing. Prosecutors theorized Brenda was weighed down with the scuba equipment when John Paul took the air hose away from her, and then held her arms down under the water so she could not resurface.
All in all, there were 44 witnesses for the defense, and they had some interesting things to say. One woman from Hollywood, Florida testified that John Paul had fathered a child with her. Two young women from East Carolina University said they had sexual relations with John Paul in off-campus motels in Greenville, North Carolina. One of the women said John Paul told her he got $196,000 from Britain’s famous train robbery and had the money stashed in a Swiss bank. Two other women who had dated John Paul in the past, one from Long Island, New York and one from Hampton, Virginia, said he tried to take out $50,000 insurance policies on them just months before he purchased the policy on Brenda Lee Anderson. He tried to persuade them that purchasing life insurance policies would enhance their future security together after marriage to him.
He took out the policy on Brenda four months before her death, at first naming her parents at the beneficiaries, but he automatically became the primary beneficiary after they were married in April 1965.
After further reading, you can tell John Paul Anderson enjoyed meeting women and exaggerating about his identity—he often told them he was a graduate of the University of North Carolina, or a CIA agent, and wealthy. He tried to convince more than one woman to marry him and began applications for the life insurance policies. He was sleeping with other women even after he was engaged and married to Brenda.
A Navy friend of John Paul’s, 22-year-old James Duff Stone, said that he and the sailor had plotted to establish a heroin smuggling ring and the murder of a life insurance agent named Samuel Springer from Alexandria, Virginia. Springer was the one who wrote the policy on Brenda Anderson.
John Paul Anderson’s defense attorney Edward K. Pritchard called the trial “another Sam Sheppard case.” Dr. Sam Sheppard was the Cleveland osteopath convicted of murdering his wife Marilyn in a case based on circumstantial evidence.
On December 22, the all-male jury told presiding judge Clarence E. Singletary that they were deadlocked on a verdict. In response, the judge told them, “You haven’t sufficiently discharged your duties if all you do is listen to evidence and listen to the arguments . . . You gentlemen have a duty to expose your views to your fellow jurors . . . you have not performed your duty until you have explained your position to your fellow jurors.” He went on to add, “Had we only wanted your individual views of this matter, without deliberations, we never would have sent you into the jury room in the first place.”
Right before Christmas of 1965, an all-male jury convicted John Paul Anderson of the murder of Brenda Lee Anderson. Judge Clarence E. Singletary imposed a mandatory life sentence after the jury recommended mercy for the defendant.
In March of 1966, The State newspaper reported a Marine Corps private named Don W. Coates, who supplied an alibi for John Paul Anderson, was placed on trial for perjury. He was indicted on Jan. 3, 1966. The indictment alleged Coates was NOT present at Folly Beach on June 19, 1965, at the time Brenda Anderson and John Paul Anderson were swimming off shore. He had testified at John Paul Anderson’s trial that he saw Anderson come out of the water and leave Brenda safe in the ocean. Two other witnesses at the trial testified that Coates, who was for a time a cellmate of Anderson’s in the Charleston County Jail, that Coates had weekend-long duty at the U.S. Naval Base in Charleston, which means there was no way he was present in Folly Beach at the time Brenda drowned. He pled guilty to the charge, was sentenced to two years in prison, and was paroled in October 1966.
In September of 1975, John Paul Anderson was released from prison on parole. An article published in The Index-Journal that month said the former sailor was employed with the South Carolina Department of Youth Services in Columbia, South Carolina, the same facility he taught in while he was incarcerated. John Paul had been eligible for parole the month before but was turned down because he appeared before the board, stated he was innocent, and asked for parole. The next month, he obtained an attorney, who advised he ask witnesses to appear on his behalf. One supporter was a prison guard who said John Paul saved his life during a prison riot in 1968.
In 1980, he received a pardon but continued to seek a new trial in the hopes of proving his innocence. In 1985, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Anderson should get a new trial, but that trial was never held because he had served his sentence. The appeals court said former Solicitor Arthur G. Howe had withheld crucial information, including the autopsy report, from Anderson’s defense attorneys. The autopsy report said the bruises were old and did not immediately occur before death.
The details on whether or not John Paul Anderson ever collected the insurance policy are a little confusing. It appears that the John Hancock Insurance Company tried to refuse paying the $50,000 due to fraudulent information on the application. This began a legal battle that last more than 25 years, and I believe they eventually had to pay out some damages because John Paul claimed the insurance company conspired with prosecutors to get out of paying the money.
In 1990, John Paul Anderson declined to discuss his private life or say where he was currently residing. He said he was now a farmer and had remarried. He said he lived with physical scars from being stabbed and beaten while in prison.
Brenda Anderson’s story appeared in Episode 98 of the podcast, Missing in the Carolinas. You can listen to the full episode here.
