Caleb Anderson appears before Brown County court via Zoom, March 26, 2024. (Brown County Court/Zoom)
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Caleb Anderson pleaded not guilty Tuesday to the August 2022 murder of Patrick Ernst – the second stop of a three-state crime spree which included two murders.
Anderson is accused in a three-state crime spree, which allegedly started with a sexual assault of an 18-year-old woman in Iron County, Michigan, on Aug. 1, 2022. The next day, he allegedly killed Ernst in an apartment on Green Bay’s west side. From there, Anderson fled to Alabama, where he killed Dwight Dixon before being arrested. In January, Anderson was sentenced to life without parole in Alabama.
No trial date was set. Anderson returns to court June 4 for a status conference.
Anderson appeared by video Tuesday from the jail. He didn’t speak during the hearing, but before and during the session he repeatedly used the Zoom meeting “reactions” function to play a trumpet which throws confetti.
If convicted of the first-degree intentional homicide count, he faces a mandatory life prison term.
In the Green Bay case, Anderson found Ernst through Grindr, a smartphone app men use to meet other men for sex. Anderson said he did not intend to have sex with the victim, but thought it would be a quick way to find someone to kill, according to the criminal complaint.
“I always just wanted to kill somebody” since he was 14 or 15 years old, he told police in an interview, according to the criminal complaint.
Through tears, Anderson allegedly told police he put a sweatshirt over Ernst’s mouth so his neighbors wouldn’t hear him screaming. He said Ernst kept asking him, “Why are you doing this to me?”
Investigators say they checked on Ernst after he didn’t show up for work. They entered his apartment to find it trashed. Officers found Ernst’s body in his bedroom. A forensic pathologist from the Brown County Medical Examiner’s Office counted 38 stab wounds to Ernst’s head, neck and abdomen, along with 12 more to his left hand and arm, with some of those being defensive wounds.
Written on the wall above the body was “Psalm 23:4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me,” along with the date.
A note was written on a piece of paper on a chair, reading, “I Am so Sorry.. he didn’t deserve this.”
Anderson took Ernst’s car and headed to Alabama, police said. He was arrested in Alabama, but not before killing Dixon, whom he said he also met through the smartphone app. Anderson also claimed to have set fire to a church, though he was unable to tell investigators where the church was.
Before the killings in Green Bay and Alabama, Anderson admitted attacking a woman who was jogging in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He said he thought about sexually assaulting or killing the woman, but then thought of his mother, and decided to let the woman go.
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