Officer Convicted, but Still Seen as Hero After Videotaped Shooting

May 10, 2006 — -- When Otero County Sheriff's Deputy Billy Anders took an emergency call on a cold December night in 2004, he had no idea that a little video camera would change his life forever.

"A call came out and it said, 'Shots fired with an argument,'" Anders said.

Anders said he didn't know what was going on at that point, but he knew it should be recorded, so he turned on his patrol car's dashboard camera.

That decision would undo a stellar 31-year career in law enforcement. Anders had moved to the rugged mountains of southern New Mexico in 1998, after 23 years as a big-city cop in San Antonio, where he had been a SWAT team commander.

At 63, he was one year from retirement from the sheriff's department, where he was well-liked and respected.

"I loved my job," Anders said. "I loved the community I worked in."

Anders and his best friend and partner, Bob Hedman, were known as "mountain deputies" -- assigned to cover a vast and untamed territory around the tiny mountain town of Cloudcroft.

"We had about 4,000 square miles in the mountain that we had to cover, not much backup or anything like that," Anders said.

So when the call came in that night of shots fired at a cabin seven miles east of town, Anders, who was suffering from the flu, had no intention of letting his partner respond alone.

"I mean. … You can't let a guy go by himself," Anders said. "You know, Bob wouldn't've let me go by myself. It's your responsibility."

When the two officers arrived at the cabin, they noticed blood on the porch. They unsnapped their holsters and pounded on the door, which was finally opened by a shirtless man who appeared nervous and agitated, Anders said.

Next to him was a 3-year-old girl, who appeared shaken.

"You can see that she is upset, not screaming, but obviously, obviously upset. Obviously, there is something really wrong," Anders said.

Anders recalled that Hedman had asked the man whether anything was wrong. The shirtless man replied, "Just go on and leave us alone," Anders said.

The officers continued to press, though, saying they needed to make sure everyone was OK. The man told them he had just shot a deer, Anders said.

"And I said, 'Well just show us the deer, and we're gone,'" Anders said. "The guy didn't react, and he wasn't gonna let us in. And we knew, for the little girl's sake, we knew we had to get in there."

Anders said that he and Hedman then lunged for the door, but the man slammed and locked it before they could get in.

Anders said he and Hedman also noticed pools of blood on the rear bumper of a car parked near the front door of the cabin.

"You had a feeling that someone had been shot and killed," Anders said. "And that he was in the process of getting rid of the body. Obviously, by where the blood was, he had gotten the body up as far as the back of the car."