#571 Guest Host Guest Host Ashley Fantz with Marvin Anderson
Wrongful Conviction
Lava for Good Podcasts
4.4 • 5.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On July 17, 1982, in Hanover County, VA, a white woman was raped by a black man who was a total stranger. During the rape, the man beat her and threatened her with a gun, and also mentioned that she was not the only white woman he had had sexual relations with. Based on this statement alone, police immediately suspected 18-year-old Marvin Anderson to be the perpetrator because Marvin lived with his white girlfriend at the time. Despite a complete lack of evidence linking him to this crime, and evidence pointing to another more viable suspect, Marvin was convicted of rape by an all white jury, and sentenced to 210 years in prison.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | No gloss, no filter. |
| 0:03.1 | Just stories. |
| 0:04.8 | Spoken without fear. |
| 0:06.5 | Person who is not generous can not be an artist. |
| 0:09.4 | The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. |
| 0:14.3 | Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Abhaw on the IHeart Radio app, |
| 0:18.5 | Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:23.0 | Come for the honesty. |
| 0:24.9 | Stay for the fire. |
| 0:30.1 | On a Saturday afternoon in July of 1982, a young woman was walking home in Ashland, Virginia, |
| 0:37.0 | when she was approached by a man on a bicycle. |
| 0:40.0 | He offered to walk her home. |
| 0:41.7 | She said no and kept walking. |
| 0:44.0 | But a few minutes later, she saw the man again. |
| 0:47.1 | He attacked her and dragged her to a secluded, wooded area, then beat and raped her over and over. |
| 0:55.7 | The woman later described her attacker to police as a light-skinned black man with short |
| 1:01.1 | kinky hair. She also told them something he'd said while assaulting her, that he had had, quote, |
| 1:07.4 | other white girls. Officer Roy Anderson knew of only one black man in town with a |
| 1:13.4 | white girlfriend, 18-year-old Marvin Anderson. When police picked Marvin up a few days later, |
| 1:19.7 | he insisted he hadn't attacked that woman. He had an alibi, and his mother and girlfriend |
| 1:25.4 | backed him up. But the victim picked out Marvin from a bunch of photos police presented to her, |
| 1:31.5 | and she also identified him in a live lineup of other suspects. |
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