Despite his unlawful behavior, Anderson became somewhat of a folk hero among those in his native Tennessee, even more so after he was shot and killed by FBI officers while evading arrest.

Anderson was born in Pall Mall, a community in Fentress County, Tennessee, the same Wolf River valley from which World War I hero Alvin C. York hailed.

[1] However, he was believed not to have been a troublesome youth,[2] and volunteered as a preacher at Wolf River Methodist Church in Pall Mall at age eighteen.

[citation needed] In June 1959, Anderson and two friends committed armed robbery of a drive-in theater in Jamestown, Tennessee.

In October 1962, Anderson brandished a shotgun on a group of state police troopers in Jamestown, which escalated to his shooting an officer.

He accessed the cave through an opening, 3 feet (0.91 m) in diameter, located halfway up the side of a hill and hidden in a rock outcropping.

Legends abound in Fentress County regarding the man known as Billy Dean Anderson, as his story takes on much the same interest locally as that of Jesse James.

There are many legends about his death, including some that tell that the authorities only managed to get him because he got tangled in a barbed-wire fence or that he stopped because they tricked his mother into calling his name.

[2] Anderson was a sympathetic figure to many in the area, which had a long history of violence around moonshine stills and logging camps.