A Compost Pile was Pretty Shelly's Shroud

The mysterious ordeal surrounding the disappearance of 24-year-old Shelly Anderson began on September 14, 1981 when the slim, 5 foot, 100-pound bank teller bun­dled up her soiled laundry and left her Grand Boulevard apartment in Spokane, Washington, and headed for the South Hill home of her estranged husband.

It was still early evening when she left for her former residence, located in the 3800 block of East 13th Street, and she likely thought she could do her laundry, visit her daughters and still get back home at an early hour. What she didn't know, and likely didn't think about, was that she would ultimately end up dead at the hands of a merciless killer.

It was on that Monday evening in 1981 that Shelly Anderson was last seen alive, and her disappearance triggered a two-year probe that baffled her family and friends, detectives and even a psychic brought in from the East Coast. And in spite of the efforts of all those concerned, no one knew for certain that Shelly was really dead until her remains turned up two years later...

Shelly wasn't reported missing to the police until the following day, Septem­ber 15th, when it was learned by a person wishing anonymity that she had not re­turned to her apartment the evening be­fore. When police went to the home of her estranged husband, naturally their next avenue of investigation, they were told by 31-year-old Monte Anderson that Shelly had done her laundry at the home the previous evening and left at approx­imately 11 p.m. Anderson told the in­vestigators that Shelly left the laundry behind after promising to pick it up later (presumably the next day), and that he saw her last when he kissed her on the cheek and watched her walk down the sidewalk in front of the East 13th Street home.

Was there anyone else living at the residence who could corroborate the story? It was then that police investigat­ing the matter learned that Monte An­derson had a young relative living at the house with him who was home the night Shelly came to do her laundry. The young relative told the cops that she last saw Shelly at 9:00 p.m., just prior to going to bed. The relative couldn't offer the investigators anything additional, ex­cept that she hadn't heard or seen any­thing unusual before or after she went to bed.

The investigators' next step was to check with all of Shelly's known rela­tives and friends in an attempt to de­termine whether or not anyone had seen her after she left the home of her es­tranged husband, either on the night that she did her laundry or on the following day. However, no one reported having seen her nor did anyone report having heard from her. Likewise, no one at the bank where she worked as a teller had seen Shelly since she left work on Mon­day, September 14th.

The detectives working on the case soon learned that Shelly had filed for a divorce from her husband, Monte An­derson, one month prior to her dis­appearance. They'd learned from court documents and from talking with rela­tives that Anderson had been involved in an industrial accident where he worked in which he lost three of his fingers. As compensation for the loss, Anderson was paid approximately $25,000 which, police learned, he had squandered on cocaine. Unable to live with her hus­band's severe drug addiction any longer, Shelly left him and filed for divorce. But was a divorce petition motive enough for someone to hold another captive or, even worse, to kill her?

Normally, the cops reasoned, it wouldn't be. But considering a drug addict's frame of mind, the investigators felt that such a felony was possible in this case, and as a result of this line of reason­ing they soon began to focus on An­derson as a possible suspect in his es­tranged wife's mysterious and sudden disappearance, particularly when she disappeared the day after her lawyer served the divorce papers on her hus­band.

Spokane Police Captain Richard Olberding assigned Detectives Charles Staudinger and Jerry Prescott to head the case, which they actively tried to clear through dogged determination. They returned time and again to An­derson's home, questioning him repe­atedly about his wife's disappearance. But they were told the same story each time, leaving them with no discrepancies on which to build their case.