Story Time

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction and today we're gonna look at one such strange story. I will be uploading stories throughout the week, so don’t miss our stories.

Growing up in a suburb of St Louis, Missouri Mike Anderson was a troubled young man that seemed destined for jail. From 2000 to 2013, Cornelius Mike Anderson unbelievably turned his life. It was something that changed for him in the year 2000.

He was 23 years old, and suddenly he wanted to make the most out of his life so he distanced himself from his old friends and he moved to a different suburb outside of St Louis called Webster Groves. There he started a successful construction company. Mike got married, divorced married again. He had three kids and became the father to a stepchild.

Mike was very active in his community, volunteering countless hours at his Church as well as becoming a youth football coach. Anyone who knew Mike after 2000 only had wonderful things to say about him.

But Mike had a big secret about his past that he was just hoping never saw the light of day.

Back in 1999, when Mike was 23 years old he robbed a burger king outside of St Louis at gunpoint. He was arrested in 2000, convicted of armed robbery, and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Shortly after his conviction, he was out on bail pending the outcome of his

appeal. But when his appeal was denied in May of 2002 Mike was expecting to go back to jail. So he asked his lawyer you know what are the next steps because I’m out on bail do I go to jail?

His lawyer said “Oh! they'll issue a warrant for your arrest, they will come to your house, and they will take you to jail. So Mike got his affairs in order and he waited to go to jail.

But no police ever showed up, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into years. No one ever took Mike to jail. This was because it would turn out the state had made a clerical error, they believed Mike was already behind bars.

In July of 2013, at the end of his original 13-year sentence, they went to go release him from prison that's when they realized he had never been incarcerated.

So now, eight U.S. marshals immediately went to his house and they arrested him and they brought him to jail. There was this huge public outcry that it was totally unjust to arrest him now because it was the state's fault that it did not bring him to jail. Mike used that opportunity to become

a totally changed man and so after a number of appeals and this very public petition of people trying to get Mike out of jail a judge finally took a closer look at Mike's case. It would take this judge only 10 minutes to come to the conclusion that Mike was in fact a changed man and should not have to serve the rest of his sentence. So although Mike was held for nine months after being rearrested, he was released and today he is a free

man.