Anderson's Warnings Recounted
BELLEVUE
Like any normal 15-year-old boy, Bellevue High School freshman David Anderson liked to talk about girls, sports and television shows, his former girlfriends said.
But unlike other boys, Anderson also repeatedly told his sweethearts of his elaborate, violent and unnervingly serious plans for murder - two years before he allegedly orchestrated the slaying of an entire family, two former classmates testified yesterday.
"He said he wanted to feel the feeling of killing someone, to experience the power of taking someone's life into his own hands," Danielle Berry, who dated Anderson briefly in the 10th grade, told a King County Superior Court jury.
"He said it was going to be a very special murder, and it was going to be very violent. He wanted his victims to experience the pain he had felt throughout his life."
The accounts of Anderson's high-school talk bore striking resemblances - down to specific weaponry - to what prosecutors in Anderson's quadruple-murder trial contend the teen made a reality on Jan. 3, 1997.
Anderson is charged with four counts of aggravated murder in the killings of William and Rose Wilson, and their daughters, Kimberly, 20, and Julia, 17.
Prosecutors say Anderson and his best friend, Alex Baranyi, both now 19, beat and strangled Kimberly Wilson at a park before using a knife and a baseball bat to kill the other Wilsons at their home in Bellevue's Woodridge neighborhood.
Anderson says Baranyi was the sole killer.
Baranyi was sentenced to life without parole after a jury convicted him of identical charges.
Yesterday, Berry said Anderson wasn't joking or exaggerating when he told her how he would use a baseball bat and his prized knife collection to "show off his talents."
"As a normal 15-year-old, I was quite frightened," said Berry, now a University of Washington freshman. "He was completely serious. (His voice) was very flat. His face would be emotionless."
A later girlfriend, Amryn Decker, now also a college freshman, agreed.
"Throughout life, there are people who cause us agony, and it was for that agony that more than one person had caused to him that required more than one person to suffer," Decker said.
Additionally, prosecutors presented 16-year-old Heather Herberg, a former neighbor of Anderson, who said he told her he was going to kill the Wilsons because Julia Wilson, whom he described as his girlfriend, had jilted him.
"I remember he said he was going to use swords or knives or something like that," Herberg said.
However, on cross-examination from Anderson's lawyer, Michael Kolker, the three witnesses all said they hadn't taken Anderson seriously enough at the time to tell anyone.
Other testimony yesterday included a police detective who described Anderson as "polite, cooperative and pleasant" when first questioned about the killings.
Also, two of Baranyi's former housemates testified they saw Baranyi and Anderson leave together late on the night of the slayings.
The trial is expected to last five more weeks.