Murder of Rachael Anderson

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Anthony Pardon is a recidivist violent offender and sexual offender whose criminal history prior to Anderson’s murder involves several rapes, including the rape of an infant and the rape of an eight-year-old girl, along with robbery, kidnapping, and attempted murder.

At the time of Anderson’s murder, he had spent a total of thirty-three years in prison for his crimes and was registered as a Tier III sex offender.

According to Pardon's defense attorneys, he had an "abused (sic), dysfunctional, chaotic childhood."

He was raised by his grandparents before living with his mother.

He developed conduct disorder and antisocial personality disorder.

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.