A jury recommended Thursday that Anthony Pardon be sentenced to life in prison without parole in the murder of 24-year-old Rachael Anderson in January 2018. The jury of eight women and four men arrived at the verdict after deliberating for about 3 1/2 hours over two days. A recommendation of a death sentence has to be unanimous.







The mother of murder victim Rachael Anderson wept Thursday in a Franklin County courtroom after a jury spared the life of the killer, recommending a sentence of life in prison without parole for Anthony Pardon.

Trish Anderson was still crying as she left the courtroom after meeting privately with county Prosecutor Ron O’Brien and Common Pleas Judge Stephen L. McIntosh. She declined to comment about the verdict

The victim’s father, Bill Anderson, also didn’t want to comment, although both will have an opportunity to address the judge in court before he sentences Pardon on March 16.

Because the jury recommended life in prison, the judge is barred from imposing a death sentence.

O’Brien said the parents, who live in Warren in northeastern Ohio and attended every day of the trial and sentencing phase, are "very strong people and have had their life virtually ruined by the acts of this career criminal that were senseless, predatory, brutal."

He said they "accept the verdict, as do I, and we all feel that Anthony Pardon should die in prison, and will die in prison, and won’t be on the streets to prey on another young woman or any person."

The jury of eight women and four men arrived at the verdict after deliberating for about 3 1/2 hours over two days. A recommendation of a death sentence has to be unanimous.

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Defense attorney Isabella Dixon said she wasn’t surprised by the verdict, calling it "very difficult for 12 people to be unanimous on the death penalty."

The jury had made Pardon, 55, eligible for a possible death-penalty sentence last week by convicting him of aggravated murder and finding that he purposely caused Anderson’s death in the course of committing rape, kidnapping, aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary.

Prosecutors used DNA evidence and cellphone-tracking technology to establish that Pardon raped and strangled Anderson, stabbed her in the back of the neck and left her hogtied body in the bedroom closet of her East Side apartment on the night of Jan. 28, 2018, her 24th birthday.

Her body was discovered the next day after she failed to show up for work as a mortuary intern at Shaw-Davis Funeral Homes.

The conviction triggered a sentencing phase this week, during which Pardon’s defense team presented mitigating evidence about his traumatic childhood and an adulthood spent mostly in prison. The intent was to convince at least one of the 12 jurors that a death sentence wasn’t appropriate.

Jurors learned during the sentencing phase that Pardon had served 25 years in prison for attempted murder, rape and aggravated robbery. But the judge prevented them from hearing details of that case, in which Pardon, at age 16, kidnapped, raped and tried to drown the 39-year-old mother of a girlfriend in Alum Creek.

Pardon didn’t visibly react to Thursday’s sentencing recommendation. One of his defense attorneys, Larry Thomas, said he thought that Pardon had prepared himself for a recommendation of death and had yet to fully process the jury’s decision.

"You all know about my client’s background and the things he’s been through," Thomas told reporters. "So he doesn’t react like a normal individual would. It takes him a little more time."

jfutty@dispatch.com

@johnfutty