Part of Anastasia's killer's original alibi was his claim that Anastasia angrily got out of Justin Bruton's car at an intersection and stormed away from the car in the general direction of her home, which was about three miles away. He further claimed that this was not unusual behavior for her,¹ as she frequently walked out of Justin's condo in the Plaza area and walked around the block. This theory was originally offered as the most likely scenario by her killer, starting just days after the murder,²,³ and then by his defense attorney during trial,⁴ but it defies logic and available forensic evidence. While his supporters have abandoned trying to argue this angle (and occasionally claim that no one ever took such a wild idea seriously), we leave it up because they have abandoned other arguments in the past once they were debunked, and then returned to them a few years later, hoping no one remembers. Who knows? They might return to this one someday.

Anastasia was described by both prosecution and defense as a feisty, combative young woman,⁵ yet she had no defensive wounds on her body,⁶ and showed not the slightest indication of having run from or struggled with a pursuer, nor even having tried to cover up against the fatal shot.

This evidence tells us she was not forcibly picked up and driven to the site. If Anastasia were truly as much a fighter as she was described (and those who knew her well would completely agree with that description), she would have run from a stranger in a car, and would not have willingly gotten into a car, even at gunpoint. Such efforts would be noticed during an autopsy. For the record, Anastasia didn't even have the time to cover up before the fatal shot.

The idea that she would have walked to the cemetery on her own volition and have been killed by a complete stranger hiding in the dark is where the theory becomes outrageously impossible. Anastasia knew the way home from where she was, having walked, ridden, and driven it many times. She knew full well that Truman Road was the way home, and that the path up to and through Lincoln Cemetery (assuming that she was even aware of the path in the first place) would not be any sort of short cut. The killer and his supporters argued that she might have been too upset to notice, but they were deliberately discounting Anastasia's intelligence with that claim, and in effect insult ours as well as their own intelligence.

Forensic evidence showed that Anastasia was surprised by her assailant. She turned and saw her killer in only the last split-second of her life. Her killer crept close enough to her to put the barrel of his weapon almost against her face before firing. She had only enough time to throw her hands up in surprise (not even into a defensive posture), and then fall where she was shot. It does not tell us definitively who DID kill her, but it very clearly informs us who DID NOT kill her. What it says is that she was standing in one place (as opposed to walking or running), that she was fully aware that there was someone behind her and was unconcerned about their presence, not expecting any danger from them.

The Random Stranger theory requires:

1. that Anastasia displayed a confusion as to her whereabouts and a carelessness for her safety that was completely out of character with all her previous actions that anyone who knew her well had ever witnessed before;

2. that she chose to take an unexplainable detour that would take her the wrong direction to get home, through a cemetery on a steep, uphill, overgrown path with which she was unfamiliar (as opposed to her knowledge of the route home, with which she was quite familiar), along a path that would have been virtually invisible from any pedestrian vantage point at night, and would make her journey home much longer;

3. that there was a bloodlusting killer who just happened to choose this seldom-visited cemetery to sit in wait on that night, hoping for some unsuspecting victim to walk by (and it is really hard to imagine Lincoln Cemetery having much pedestrian traffic at that time of night, especially consisting of lone and unarmed teenage girls);

4. that this killer was only interested in killing his victim, not robbing, raping, nor even taunting her first, despite the fact that he took the effort to sneak up on her first, when he could have fired a shot from his hiding place;

5. that while walking through this cemetery in dark twilight, Anastasia (whose normally fertile imagination apparently did not activate to all the obvious fears and fantasies) obliviously allowed this murderous stranger to creep up upon her from behind without even once turning around to check her surroundings;

6. and that Anastasia paid so little attention to this stranger that he/she was able to approach close enough without her notcing that they were able to shove the gun in her face before she could react.
   

This scenario was the only logical result of Anastasia's killer's alibi throughout the investigation and trial. It took close to 10 years, but the killer and his supporters finally disowned this therory, claiming that it was never his idea and was instead his attorney's invention, but that claim is blatantly untrue. This was always by default the logical result, if his alibi that Anastasia jumped out of the car and walked away is to be believed, and one he employed as early as November 1997, and it is possible that someday, he will return to it again.

It did not happen. There was never that proverbial Random Stranger.