Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 10, 1993 TAG: 9307100279
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Walter Anderson, 36, pleaded no contest to first-degree murder. He will be sentenced later, and faces up to life in prison.
At a hearing in Roanoke Circuit Court, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Wanda DeWease described how Delphine Anderson died:
Late last year, the Andersons' marriage of more than 10 years began to fall apart. Walter Anderson moved out of their Lincoln Terrace apartment, leaving his wife and two children.
Delphine Anderson, an assistant manager at a fast-food restaurant, complained to police that her husband regularly returned to the apartment and became abusive and threatening.
She obtained a protective court order in February - five days before she died.
On the afternoon of Feb. 9, the children came home to an empty apartment. After worrying through the night, Anderson's 15-year-old daughter checked a closet the next day for a suitcase, thinking perhaps her mother had left town.
She found her mother's body, covered by blankets and with a lawn mower pushed partially on top of it.
A few hours later, police spotted Walter Anderson at the Lincoln Terrace public housing complex and arrested him after a chase.
In a statement to a police detective, Anderson said he had gone to his wife's apartment that morning to discuss concerns about their son being out at night "running the streets."
"We just got to scuffling," he said. During the struggle, Anderson choked his wife several times and tried to pour insulin down her mouth "to calm her down," he told police.
Pressed for explanations, he could offer few. "I don't know . . . crazy, upset, my nerves and stuff," he said at one point in the rambling statement.
Anderson said he did not believe he had killed his wife, and that he thought she was still breathing when he left her in the closet.
After Delphine Anderson was discovered choked to death, an autopsy found three small puncture wounds in Delphine Anderson's chest.
A medical examiner determined the wounds could have been caused by a large nail that Anderson was carrying when he was arrested, but a blood sample on the nail was too small to offer positive test results.
Authorities said Anderson was apparently upset because be believed his wife was seeing another man, even though he was dating other women himself.
"If I can't have her, nobody else can," he reportedly told one witness.
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