A Lakeside man has been sentenced to 30 years to life in state prison for fatally stabbing his 79-year-old mother inside their Riverview Avenue home, more than four years after he called 911 himself and told a dispatcher he thought he had badly hurt her. Arleigh Clifford Anderson, now 55, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the killing of Judith Terrebonne Anderson.
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, sheriff's deputies responded to the Andersons' Riverview Avenue home on January 24, 2022, after Anderson called 911 and reported that he had taken too much of his medication and believed he had badly hurt his mother. Deputies detained him at the scene before finding Judith Anderson unresponsive inside the home; she was pronounced dead there. San Diego County Sheriff's officials say deputies were initially dispatched to a reported battery at the Andersons' Riverview Avenue home, where they detained Anderson before locating his mother.
The San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office later completed an autopsy determining that Judith Anderson died from sharp force injuries, officially classifying her death as a homicide, per the county Sheriff's Department. Sheriff's Lt. Mike Krugh said Anderson had reported taking too much medication and thinking he had badly hurt his mother, an account that matched what Anderson told the 911 dispatcher that day.
A Life Shaped by Military Moves and the Classroom
Judith Anderson was remembered as a loving mother and grandmother who stayed active in her grandchildren's lives, according to the Union-Tribune's reporting on the case. Long before settling in Lakeside, she had spent decades living across Asia, Europe and the United States while accompanying her late husband, Russell Lee Anderson, through his military career, according to an obituary published by The Daily Star. The couple eventually chose San Diego County for their retirement.
Before her military-spouse years, Judith Terrebonne Anderson had been a 1960 high school valedictorian in Loranger, Louisiana, according to the same obituary, and went on to earn an accounting degree from Southeastern Louisiana University before working as a certified mathematics teacher. When her family published her obituary in March 2022, they requested memorial contributions be directed to the National Alliance on Mental Illness in honor of her dedication to supporting mental health treatment.
Guilty Plea Brings Enhanced Sentence
Deputy District Attorney Miriam Shoval, who prosecuted the case, called the killing tragic, the Union-Tribune reported. Anderson's 30-year-to-life sentence for second-degree murder exceeds the standard 15-years-to-life baseline set under California Penal Code Section 190, according to Timothy Riley Law, APC.
Lakeside, an unincorporated community in East San Diego County, has no municipal police department of its own and relies on the county Sheriff's Department's Lakeside Substation for patrol and emergency response, according to a report from SANDAG. That structure is why county deputies, rather than a local police force, were the ones who responded to the Riverview Avenue home in 2022 and ultimately investigated Judith Anderson's death.
A Rare Category of Violence
In the city of San Diego, the homicide total fell from 52 in 2022 to 45 in 2023, keeping the region's per-capita violent crime rate among the lowest of any major U.S. metro area, according to data compiled by Omnilert. Cases like Judith Anderson's killing remain statistically uncommon even within that broader picture: criminological research drawing on FBI Supplementary Homicide Report data suggests that parricide, the killing of a parent by a child, accounts for roughly 2% of all homicides committed annually in the United States, according to Newsweek.
Research has associated parricide with severe mental illness, according to Psychiatric Times. That body of research offers a possible clinical backdrop to the 911 call Anderson made in 2022, in which he described having taken too much medication and fearing he had badly hurt his mother, though no further detail on his mental state has been disclosed in connection with the sentencing.
