On August 6, 1897, while serving as cook aboard the Olive Pecker, John Andersen shot and killed, Captain J.W. Whitman, and mate, William Wallace Saunders. The ship had left Boston on June 20, bound for Buenos Aires with a load of lumber and a crew of eight men.
Saunders and Whitman were killed 150 miles off the Brazilian coast.
The remaining six men then boarded smaller boats and sailed into Brazil. On land, the men split up. A group of the other men altered authorities to Andersen’s crimes and he was arrested in Bahia, Brazil, before being able to find passage out of the country.
Returned to the United States to stand trial, Anderson was tried in the United States Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He was convicted of murder on the high seas on December 23, 1897, and sentenced to death.
After his appeals and clemency request were rejected, John Anderson was hanged in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 9, 1898.
The Federal Death Penalty Project 