Billy Dean Anderson (July 12, 1934 – July 7, 1979) was an American criminal. He was jailed and paroled three times, and his 20 year crime career included armed robbery and prison escapes. He was added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1975. Despite his unlawful behavior, Anderson became somewhat of a folk hero among those in his native Tennessee, even more so after he was shot and killed by FBI officers while evading arrest. Early life Anderson was born in the Pall Mall, a community in Fentress County, Tennessee, the same Wolf River valley where World War I hero Alvin C. York hailed. Little is known about his early life. While this is reported in many articles the FBI disputes these claims and his birthplace has been unconfirmed. He attended Rotten Fork Elementary School, where he preferred to fill his notebooks with sketches rather than homework. However, he was believed not to have been a troublesome youth, and volunteered as a preacher at Wolf River Methodist Church in Pall Mall at age eighteen. He used the aliases "Billie Dean Anderson", "James Forster", and "William David Upchurch". He had a stocky build and stood at 5'8" and weighed between 160 and 170 pounds with fair skin and bluish-green eyes. He worked as an artist, mechanic, unskilled laborer, tree surgeon and farmer. Anderson was severely marked with a scar across the bridge of his nose, the left side of his forehead, a surgical scar on the right side of his stomach and another surgical scar on his lower spine. He reportedly wore braces on both of his legs and suffered from atrophy of the legs. Criminal career In June 1959, Anderson and two friends committed armed robbery of a drive-in theater in Jamestown, Tennessee. When the theater usher revealed he possessed little money, Anderson intentionally missed while shooting near him. The three men managed to evade police but were arrested the following morning while engaged in a police standoff while inside the Wolf River Methodist Church in Pall Mall. Anderson served four months in jail, the lenient sentence due to his being a first-time offender. In October 1962, Anderson brandished a shotgun on a group of state police troopers in Jamestown, which escalated to his shooting an officer. Anderson decided to surrender when a bullet grazed his head, and he was shot twice in the stomach. Anderson received