Gene S. Anderson: memorial to honor trailblazing prosecutor

Gene S. Anderson rarely argued in court when he served as U.S. attorney for Western Washington in the 1980s.

Addressing the court wasn't his plan when he walked into a federal courtroom in Seattle in 1984 to watch the trial of a man charged with torching four abortion clinics. Mr. Anderson only wanted to see how things were going as he sat down next to the prosecutor handling the case.

But a dispute developed over the wording of a key instruction to the jury. The judge, John Coughenour, clearly was torn over how to rule. Mr. Anderson suddenly asked, "May I address the court?" The federal public defender objected on the grounds Mr. Anderson wasn't the government's attorney of record.

Without pause, Mr. Anderson responded, "I'm attorney of record on every case filed in this district."

Coughenour granted Mr. Anderson the instruction he wanted, helping secure a conviction.

"I appreciated him being there — because he had done it all," said the prosecutor, Andrew Hamilton, who was new to the office at the time and has since joined the King County Prosecutor's Office.

Mr. Anderson, who died March 27 in Santa Barbara, Calif., at age 73 after a lengthy illness, indeed left a major imprint.

As U.S. attorney, and before that the head of the fraud division in the King County Prosecutor's Office, he oversaw some of the region's biggest cases and made the prosecution of white-collar crimes a hallmark of his career.

In tribute to his service more than 20 years after he left office, Mr. Anderson's life will be remembered and celebrated at 4 p.m. Friday at the U.S. Courthouse in Seattle, 700 Stewart St.

Mr. Anderson, known for his bemused grin and sly quips, believed white-collar crime was as grievous an offense as a robber walking into a bank with a gun. Industrial polluters, savings-and-loan swindlers and white-collar drug users learned that the hard way in cutting-edge cases he helped orchestrate.

Acting as a mentor, Mr. Anderson led a talented corps of attorneys whose accomplishments also included bringing down a violent cadre of neo-Nazi criminals and winning a conviction in the first federal trial involving deaths by product tampering.

First fraud-division chief

Gene Scott Anderson was born in Berwyn, Ill., on Aug. 12, 1937, the middle of seven boys. He attended high school in nearby Wheaton and was a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he also earned his law degree in 1962.

He married Barbara Jane Malcolm, also a graduate of the university, on June 24, 1961. They later became parents to two boys and a girl.

The couple moved to Washington, D.C., where Mr. Anderson briefly worked for the National Labor Relations Board before he was drafted into the Army. He then served three years in the Judge Advocate General's Corps at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

On returning to Washington, D.C., he worked for the U.S. Justice Department and in the local U.S. Attorney's Office, where he handled fraud cases.

He caught the eye of Christopher T. Bayley, who had been elected King County prosecutor in 1970 on a reform platform.

Bayley, in a recent interview, said Mr. Anderson's name came up as he searched the country for someone to become the head of a new division he planned to create in the Prosecutor's Office to handle white-collar crime.

Mr. Anderson became the first chief of the office's fraud division. He joined Norm Maleng, head of the civil division, who was elected county prosecutor in 1978 and died in 2007 while still in the job, and David Boerner, the chief of the criminal division, now a professor emeritus at Seattle University law school.

Bayley and the three supervisors — all in their 30s — would discuss how to handle cases.

"Very often, Gene Anderson had the best judgment," Bayley said. "By that I mean he would weigh everything and decided what under the justice system is the best thing to do here."

Nod from President Reagan

Mr. Anderson's pursuit of white-collar cases paved the way for his selection by President Reagan to fill the U.S. attorney post. The choice was somewhat surprising, because Mr. Anderson was a career prosecutor who lacked the usual political ties and even a known party affiliation. But on merit he got the nod.

Mr. Anderson led the office from 1981 to 1989.

He expanded the fraud unit, created an environmental-crimes section and formed a task force that tackled bank fraud — moves that forever shaped the office.

"I think in his view, many of the people engaged in white-collar crimes are well-educated folks, folks who had options other than committing white-collar crimes," said Gene Wilson, who served as Mr. Anderson's chief criminal deputy for most of his tenure.

Mr. Anderson also played an instrumental role in the prosecution of a Northwest-based neo-Nazi group, The Order, that committed two murders, armored-car robberies and other crimes throughout the Western United States in the mid-1980s, Wilson said.

Mr. Anderson pulled together U.S. attorneys from other districts to arrange an umbrella racketeering case that led to the convictions of more than 20 defendants, Wilson said.

Under Mr. Anderson's supervision, the office obtained the first conviction in a trial arising from a federal death-by-product-tampering law. The defendant, Stella Nickell, was found guilty in 1988 of lacing pain capsules with cyanide, causing the death of her husband to collect insurance, and then placing tainted bottles on store shelves, causing the death of a woman, to make it look like a random killer was at work.

In 1987, Mr. Anderson was featured in a People magazine article for his prosecution of a so-called yuppie cocaine ring, in which his office not only went after dealers but also "silk-stocking" customers.

Mr. Anderson quipped that he read a different article in the magazine on auto-industry executive Lee Iacocca. "I liked it better," he said.

After leaving the U.S. Attorney's Office, Mr. Anderson worked in private practice for several years, taught environmental-law classes at the University of Washington and spent a year as a visiting professor at the University of California law school at Berkeley.

"Work was his passion, no doubt about that. He enjoyed what he did," said his wife, Barbara Anderson.

To get away from the pressures, he enjoyed spending time with his family at a vacation home purchased 40 years ago on Camano Island, where he enjoyed crabbing, fishing and watching the sunsets and birds, she said.

The couple also spent winters in Santa Barbara beginning in 1992.

Mr. Anderson was diagnosed in 2009 with Lewy body dementia/Parkinson's disease, which led to his death.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Anderson is survived by his three grown children, Gene Scott Anderson Jr. of Denver; Douglas Malcolm Anderson of Santa Fe, N.M.; and Amy Beth (Anderson) Campbell of Santa Barbara, Calif.; five grandchildren; and his six brothers. Information on his life can be found at www.genesanderson.org.

Mr. Anderson's memorial service will fall on the 50th anniversary of his wedding.

Information from Seattle Times archives is included in this story.

Steve Miletich: 206-464-3302 or smiletich@seattletimes.com