Man jailed 13 years after sentence asks family to 'keep praying; keep hope'
TODAY -- Cornealious "Mike" Anderson has plenty of time to think. He spends most of his day locked in a cell in Missouri’s Southeast Correctional Center, pining for his family and wishing he could wake up from what feels like a nightmare.
TODAY — Cornealious “Mike” Anderson has plenty of time to think. He spends most of his day locked in a cell in Missouri’s Southeast Correctional Center, pining for his family and wishing he could wake up from what feels like a nightmare.
“It’s — it’s like my life is wasting away,” Anderson, 37, told NBC News’ Kate Snow in an exclusive interview that aired on TODAY on Thursday.
“I think about my wife, my children … all my family … and I just try and stay positive, you know. ‘Cause it is depressing.”
Anderson’s case has garnered national media attention because its circumstances are so unusual. Back in 1999, Anderson helped rob a Burger King assistant manager in St. Charles, Mo., with what turned out to be a BB gun. In May 2000, he got convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 13 years in prison — but because of a clerical error, he never did the time.
He went on to become a law-abiding, happily married man with four children. After training as a carpenter, Anderson started small businesses and built his own home from the ground up. On the weekends, he volunteered at his church, went fishing, fixed up old cars and helped his kids prepare for their spelling tests — “just normal, everyday, good stuff,” he told Snow.
“I grew into the man that I was supposed to be,” he said.
Anderson lived every day knowing that might be the day that law enforcement finally comes to take him to prison.
“For the first couple of years, yes,” he said. “When I’m in the shower, I hear a noise, outside somebody closing the door, I’m thinking it’s them at the door every single day.”
Despite that anxiety, he did not turn himself in.
“That was not me,” he said. “Prison is not me.”
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