On November 23, 2021, officers from the Harrisonburg Police Department found the bodies of two women in an undeveloped lot off Linda Lane, in a commercial part of the Shenandoah Valley city. The lot lay behind a Howard Johnson motel. The women had died at different times; one body had been there much longer than the other. They were Allene Elizabeth Redmon, 54, of Harrisonburg, known as Beth, and Tonita Lorice Smith, 39, of Charlottesville. That same day police arrested a 35-year-old guest at the motel, a Washington, D.C., man named Anthony Eugene Robinson, and charged him with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of concealing a dead body.
Within a month, detectives in northern Virginia and Washington had linked Robinson to three more women. He was tried only for the two Harrisonburg killings. A jury convicted him in January 2025, and in May 2026 a judge sentenced him to life in prison. As of October 2026 he has not been charged in the other three deaths.
Much of what is publicly known about Robinson's life comes from a sentencing memorandum his public defender filed in 2026, as reported by WMRA, the public radio station in Harrisonburg. According to that filing, he grew up moving around the Washington and Maryland area with his mother and two younger sisters, sometimes living with his grandparents and with an uncle five years older than he was. As a teenager he lost that uncle, who was shot and killed, and in a separate incident he was stabbed in the chest. One of his children died of sudden infant death syndrome in 2010. In 2014 he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, and he reported hallucinations to doctors. A later defense motion added diagnoses of major depressive disorder with psychotic features and anxiety, and cited his high school grade point average of 1.24 as a reason for intelligence testing. His defense also said he had no criminal record before 2021, and Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said in December 2021 that Robinson had a "remarkable absence" of criminal history. Davis described him as transient, with many jobs over the years and addresses ranging from New York to Prince George's County, Maryland, to Washington.
In 2018 a woman Robinson was engaged to, Skye Allen, 30, died after her mother found her barely breathing in the bedroom the couple shared in her mother's home in Glenarden, Maryland. According to The Washington Post, as reported by Patch and NBC4 Washington, her death certificate gave the cause as a fatal cardiac arrhythmia. Her mother, Stacey Allen, told NBC4 that she had always doubted it, and that when she asked Robinson whether he had done something to her daughter, he said no. Prince George's County police said they had not been notified of the death at the time because it happened at a hospital, and that Skye Allen had been cremated. In January 2022 a homicide supervisor spoke with her relatives and the department's cold case unit began reviewing the death. No finding has been reported.
From late 2020 to early 2021 Robinson dated Monica White, a divorced former preschool teacher in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, area, whom he met through a dating site. White, then 53, told The Washington Post (as summarized by PhillyVoice and A&E) that he said he preferred older women, that he called her obsessively, and that during sex he tried to tie her up and grabbed her neck, leaving her gasping. He stayed with her for about three weeks in early 2021 and worked at a warehouse to pay for a ticket home. She ended the relationship after her birthday party in February 2021, when, she said, he got drunk and made sexual comments toward her son and a friend's teenage son; she called police to get him to leave. White was not physically harmed beyond what she described, and her account has not been tested in court.
By the fall of 2021 Robinson was working for the poultry company Pilgrim's Pride and living at the Howard Johnson in Harrisonburg as an employee, according to WMRA. He kept Room 336.
Sonya Champ was 40 and lived in Washington. D.C. police told WAMU's DCist that she had no known address. A passerby found her on the morning of September 7, 2021, in the 200 block of F Street NE, a few blocks from Union Station, lying in a shopping cart under a blanket. She was pronounced dead at 12:15 p.m. The city's medical examiner first ruled the cause of death undetermined.
Stephanie Harrison, 48, came from Redding, California. Her family last heard from her on August 19, 2021, when she called from the U.S. Capitol while sightseeing, according to WTOP as reported by Cox Media Group. Her sister later found bank records showing she had checked into the Moon Inn on Richmond Highway in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County. Her family put up missing-person fliers along Route 1 that said she lived with a mental illness and was vulnerable. Her daughter told investigators that her mother "was a beloved mother and even a better grandmother," and "the kindest person, and helped everyone, and would give you her last dime."
Cheyenne Brown, 29, lived in Southeast Washington. She had a seven-year-old son and was about four months pregnant. She had her name and a lily tattooed on her right arm. She was last seen on September 30, 2021, in the 200 block of 36th Street SE, and her family reported her missing on October 12. Her mother, Nicandra Brown, told The Washington Post that her heart was broken. Through Chief Davis she asked people to know that her daughter "had a huge heart and was trusting and thought of everyone as her friend." A cousin, Jonathan Willis, told the Post that a man had stayed at the family's house with Cheyenne in September, and that after the arrest he recognized Robinson's photograph as that man.
Beth Redmon, 54, lived in Harrisonburg with her daughter, Amanda May. She was a grandmother. Her brother, Jennings Lambert, remembered at the trial the letters she wrote to him while he was stationed in Iraq with the Army. "I don't have my big sister anymore," he said. Her daughter described her as a "vibrant, loving woman" with red hair and green eyes, which her youngest grandchild has too. "My mom just had a really good heart," May told WSET. "She would do anything for people." May last heard from her mother by text on the night of October 24, 2021. Redmon said she was watching football at the Howard Johnson, and when her daughter asked who she was with and which room she was in, she told her it was none of her business. She did not sound frightened. When the weeks passed without a call, a text or a social media post, the family reported her missing to Harrisonburg police in early November. After Redmon disappeared, May was evicted from their apartment and, by her own account at the trial, ended up staying at the same Howard Johnson while her mother's body lay behind it.
Tonita Smith, 39, called Nita, lived in Charlottesville and was the mother of six children, many of them young. Charlottesville police said she was last seen on the evening of November 14, 2021, in the 300 block of 10 1/2 Street NW, and she was reported missing on November 19. Her father, Steven Robinson, said her death "has just torn me up." Her brother, Dean Smith, and his fiancee took in two of her children afterward. Her twelve-year-old daughter later wrote to the court: "My mom was more than just the victim in this case. She was my home."
Prosecutors said Robinson met both Redmon and Smith through dating apps and invited them to Room 336. Motel surveillance video, later shown to the jury, showed each woman walking into the room alive, in daylight, on separate occasions, Redmon in October and Smith in November. Later clips showed Robinson bringing a shopping cart to the room late at night and leaving early the next morning pushing it, its load covered with a sheet, toward the tree line behind the motel.
How the Harrisonburg police first focused on Robinson has been described only in outline: Chief Kelley Warner said cell phone records and video surveillance linked him to both women. Detectives watched the room and waited until he left it before moving in, so that he could not destroy evidence. Six to eight officers in tactical gear stopped him in a Home Depot parking lot on November 23, and according to testimony he complied with every order.
In a recorded interview that day with Detective Mike Spiggle, played in full at the trial at the defense's request, Robinson first asked whether he was in trouble and said he had never met the women. When Spiggle showed him a still image from the motel video of a man pushing a shopping cart, Robinson said he had been "getting rid of some dirty laundry." His account then changed. He said both women had come to his room, had taken a pill whose purpose he did not know, and had collapsed; he said he had been using marijuana, was scared to call 911, and had left the bodies along the tree line. He denied having sex with either woman and said he had never been violent with them.
Both bodies were badly decomposed when found. Dr. Eli Goodman, the medical examiner, could not determine an exact cause of death and listed each as "homicidal violence of an undetermined etiology." Redmon had been found with a plastic bag over her head, which he testified raised suspicion of suffocation. Smith's hands had been bound tightly behind her back with yarn of a kind seized from Room 336, and bleeding in her eyes was consistent with asphyxia. Both women were found unclothed except for their socks, with a shirt pulled up around the neck. A towel recovered with Smith's body carried semen matching Robinson. Both women had small amounts of drugs in their systems, which Goodman said were not a lethal dose; he saw no evidence of an overdose or heart attack.
On November 30, 2021, a week after the arrest, D.C. police contacted the Harrisonburg major crimes unit. Robinson, they said, was the last known contact of a missing woman they were looking for: Cheyenne Brown. Cell phone records put the two of them together near the Moon Inn. On December 7 D.C. detectives asked the Fairfax County Police Department to help. Fairfax detectives searched the hotel and the surrounding area that day with a cadaver dog and a George Mason University officer and found nothing.
Fairfax homicide detectives then traveled to Harrisonburg to learn about the case there. Video from the Metro system showed Robinson and Brown together at the Minnesota Avenue and Huntington stations on September 30, the last time she was seen; a search warrant for cell data confirmed they were at the same place that day. The Moon Inn produced a receipt showing Robinson had stayed there on the day Brown disappeared, and records showed five other stays.
On Wednesday, December 15, new information sent detectives back to the Moon Inn. One of them noticed a red Target shopping cart in the wood line nearby. Knowing that the Harrisonburg suspect had moved bodies in a shopping cart, they searched the area and found a large plastic container. Inside were human remains. At the medical examiner's office it was found to hold two women. A distinctive tattoo allowed detectives to tentatively identify one of them as Brown.
On December 17, at a joint news conference, Chief Davis and Chief Warner announced the link. "We're here today to talk about a serial killer," Davis said, "and that is a phrase that I've used sparingly in my three decades in this profession." He summed up the pattern police alleged in five steps: "dating sites, motels, blunt force trauma, shopping cart, final resting place." He said Robinson had used the Plenty of Fish and Tagged dating apps, and that police were working with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit to look for other victims and for women who had survived contact with him. It was Davis who first used the phrase "shopping cart killer," a label Robinson's trial lawyer later accused him of coining to attract attention.
While searching for Brown, detectives had seen the missing-person fliers for Stephanie Harrison along Route 1, and check-in records suggested she had stayed at the same hotel. Fairfax detectives flew to Redding to collect DNA from her family. On January 7, 2022, Davis announced that DNA had identified the two women in the container as Cheyenne Brown and Stephanie Harrison. He called Robinson the primary suspect and said he anticipated charges. At the same news conference Major Ed O'Carroll said a tip had led detectives to a fifth possible case: Sonya Champ, found in a shopping cart near Union Station in September. "This is based on digital evidence that puts him in the same vicinity around the time of the victim's disappearance," O'Carroll said. "This case is not about shopping carts. It's about a serial killer who took the lives of innocent women." By then Fairfax County had been in touch with more than 35 law enforcement agencies in the region about unsolved cases with similar features.
In June 2022 the D.C. medical examiner reclassified Champ's death as a homicide, and D.C. police said Robinson was the sole person of interest. At the time it was the only death linked to him that had been formally ruled a homicide; the Harrisonburg deaths had initially been classed as undetermined.
On September 12, 2022, at a preliminary hearing in the Harrisonburg-Rockingham General District Court, prosecutors played the motel video, and the judge sent the case to a grand jury. A Rockingham County grand jury indicted Robinson the following Monday. Reports at the time described five counts: two of first-degree murder, two of concealing a dead body, and one of aggravated murder, a Class 1 felony that in Virginia covers killing more than one person within three years. By the time of trial the case had six counts, with an aggravated murder count for each woman.
A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, requested in 2022, did not support an insanity defense, his lawyer, Louis Nagy, said in August 2024. Nagy also asked the court to bar the phrases "shopping cart killer" and "serial killer," and any mention of the Fairfax County and D.C. deaths, from the Harrisonburg trial, because Robinson had not been charged in them. At one stage the court split the case into separate trials, one for the first-degree murder counts and one for the aggravated murder counts. A few days before a September 2024 trial date, the two were combined again, and Judge Bruce D. Albertson kept the case on schedule despite several defense efforts to change the trial.
The trial opened in Rockingham County Circuit Court on Monday, January 27, 2025, and lasted four days. Ninety-two prospective jurors were called and fourteen were seated. Nagy moved for a mistrial because no Black jurors had been chosen; the judge denied it, noting that the pool was drawn at random from Department of Motor Vehicles records.
Commonwealth's Attorney Marsha Garst opened by telling the jury to "meet the real Anthony Robinson," the man behind the one who invited women to his room for company or sex. Nagy's opening asked a single question: "What really happened in Room 336?" He argued that the medical examiner had found no clear cause of death, that homicide and murder are not the same thing, and that while "it looks bad," the evidence was "just suspicion." He told the jury that other women had left the room alive and could describe Robinson as strange but not as violent.
The prosecution's witnesses included friends and relatives of the victims, who described reporting them missing or last contacting them; Detective Randall Life, a digital forensics specialist, who walked the jury through the motel video and through the history of Robinson's phone, which prosecutors said showed searches for pornography describing violence against women resembling the victims; Master Patrol Officer Steven Burrows, who photographed Room 336 and described a stained mattress topper, the yarn and the cart; Lieutenant Brooke Wetherell, the lead investigator; Detective Spiggle and his recorded interview; and Dr. Goodman. When the video of Smith's body leaving the room was played on the first day, Dean Smith, her brother, shouted at the defendant. Judge Albertson held him in contempt and sentenced him to ten days in jail, warning the gallery that "even a syllable can give you jail time." Nagy moved again for a mistrial, and was again denied.
On the third day the judge allowed the prosecution to call Fairfax County and D.C. officers and forensic witnesses about the deaths of Brown and Champ. The jury saw Metro video of Robinson with Brown and heard that Brown, like the Harrisonburg women, had been found unclothed except for socks. A forensic scientist testified that DNA on the shopping cart in which Champ was found, and on Champ herself, matched Robinson, with a likelihood ratio she put at 1 in 22 nonillion. Toxicologists said each of the four women had a controlled substance in her system, and the medical examiners who examined all four gave the same ruling: homicide by violence of undetermined type, with decomposition preventing a fuller finding.
The most contested witness was Trenton Mowbary, a man with prior convictions for obstruction of justice, forgery, eluding police and marijuana distribution, who had been housed next to Robinson at the Rappahannock Shenandoah Warren Regional Jail after a water main break closed the Rockingham County jail. Mowbary testified that Robinson told him he strangled his victims and enjoyed it. He acknowledged that he had written to the prosecutor seeking consideration on a probation violation. Nagy accused him of learning case details from news coverage and from relatives and said he should be charged with perjury; Mowbary insisted his testimony was true and said he had come "to redeem myself."
The defense called no witnesses and introduced two exhibits. Robinson did not testify. Nagy argued that police work had been careless: two small vials found in the room had never been tested; one of them, he suggested, might have held liquid cocaine. DNA swabs from the Harrisonburg cart were inconclusive, and motel housekeepers used similar orange-handled carts, one of which he wheeled before the jury. Detectives had not pursued a guest in a neighboring room, and the motel video had unexplained gaps. "Are you sure beyond a reasonable doubt this is the cart?" he asked. He also raised Redmon's heart disease and the methamphetamine in her system. Garst answered that the shared details of the bodies were "the signature, like signing your name," that Robinson had slept with the women's blood in his bed until his arrest, and that messages to his mother in October 2021 showed him telling her he had had "a good weekend" right after Redmon's death.
On Thursday, January 30, 2025, the jury deliberated for well under an hour (about 30 minutes by WTOP's count) and convicted Robinson on all six counts: two of aggravated murder, two of first-degree murder and two of concealing a dead body. In the sentencing phase that afternoon, family members of both women gave statements, Dean Smith by video from jail. The jury recommended the maximum on every count: four life sentences, ten years for the concealment counts and fines totaling $400,000. The judge later reduced Dean Smith's contempt sentence to time served, citing the strain he had been under and his clean record.
Sentencing was set for September 17, 2025, but was delayed three times. Nagy had since been appointed a judge in the 26th Judicial District, and Abigail Thibeault, the chief public defender for Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, took over with co-counsel Scott Hansen. On September 17, 2025, they moved to set aside the verdict, arguing that Garst had used evidence of the uncharged Fairfax County and D.C. deaths as propensity evidence and had made inflammatory statements, including telling jurors they were "the only thing that can stop him." Garst replied that the evidence showed a consistent method. Judge Albertson denied the motion and set sentencing for December 23, noting that Robinson had been convicted of "extremely violent" crimes and remained in a local jail. He also ruled, contrary to what the new defense team had first assumed, that each sentence could in principle be partly suspended.
In December the hearing was moved to May 2026 so that Daniel Murrie, a University of Virginia professor who directs its Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy, could evaluate Robinson for mitigation. The defense disputed prosecutors' claims that Robinson was dangerous in jail. Its filings acknowledged two incident reports from 2025: in March he was written up for covering his cell camera, and in June for hiding alcohol, breaking a broom and resisting a move to isolation, after which he was shocked with a Taser and placed in a restraint chair.
At the hearing on Friday, May 22, 2026, Thibeault asked the court to suspend all of the sentence beyond thirty years, arguing that whatever happened in 2021 should not define his whole life. Hansen told the court that keeping Robinson in prison until his statistical life expectancy of 76 would cost Virginia nearly $2 million, and that inmates over 65 reoffend at the lowest rate of any group. Several sheriff's deputies testified about physical and verbal confrontations with Robinson in jail. Smith's father spoke about her six children; Redmon's daughter spoke about the grandchildren her mother would not meet. Garst read the letter from Smith's twelve-year-old daughter and said, "The community deserves safety." Robinson declined to speak.
After about forty minutes Judge Albertson imposed life in prison on each aggravated murder count, run consecutively according to the Daily News-Record, and five years on each concealment count, and ordered about $205,000 in restitution. On a defense motion he vacated the two first-degree murder convictions, accepting the argument that a defendant may be convicted of only one homicide offense for each killing. Thibeault said Robinson would appeal.
Robinson is serving two life sentences plus ten years for the murders of Beth Redmon and Tonita Smith. In Virginia, aggravated murder carries a mandatory life sentence. His public defender said he would appeal; no appellate ruling has been reported.
No charges had been filed in Fairfax County in the deaths of Cheyenne Brown and Stephanie Harrison as of WTOP's report on his sentencing in May 2026, although Fairfax police have called him their primary and sole suspect since January 2022. In Washington, a December 2025 defense motion said he was "under a warrant" in a separate murder case, which WMRA took to refer to Sonya Champ; WTOP described him in May 2026 as wanted in connection with her death. Prince George's County police have not announced any result from their review of Skye Allen's death.
Proven in court: Robinson murdered Beth Redmon and Tonita Smith in Room 336 of the Harrisonburg Howard Johnson in October and November 2021 and concealed their bodies. Those are jury verdicts, upheld by the trial judge on a post-trial motion; an appeal was announced.
Alleged but not charged: the deaths of Cheyenne Brown and Stephanie Harrison in Fairfax County and Sonya Champ in Washington. Evidence about Brown and Champ was heard by the Harrisonburg jury as evidence of method, but no court has ruled on whether he killed them. Police have said that video and cell data place him with Brown on the day she disappeared and that his DNA was on Champ and on the cart in which she was found. The public record says less about Harrison: police have pointed to her stay at the same hotel and the discovery of her remains in the same container as Brown's.
Unproven: whether Robinson had anything to do with Skye Allen's death in 2018, which was certified as a cardiac arrhythmia and is under review only. Claims that he had more victims, including Chief Davis's statement in December 2021 that "we suspect that he has more victims," have not been borne out in any public charge. The jail informant's account of what Robinson told him, including a remark that he had "technically" killed a baby, was not corroborated, was challenged as secondhand, and came from a witness hoping for leniency. Robinson's own account, that the women collapsed after taking a pill, was rejected by the jury.
2010: one of Robinson's children dies of sudden infant death syndrome (defense filing).
2014: diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (defense filing).
February 14, 2018: his fiancee, Skye Allen, 30, dies in Glenarden, Maryland; death attributed to cardiac arrhythmia.
Late 2020 to February 2021: relationship with Monica White in Pennsylvania.
August 19, 2021: Stephanie Harrison's last call to her family, from the U.S. Capitol.
September 7, 2021: Sonya Champ found dead in a shopping cart near Union Station.
September 30, 2021: Cheyenne Brown last seen; Metro video shows her with Robinson.
October 12, 2021: Brown reported missing.
October 24, 2021: Beth Redmon's last text to her daughter, from the Howard Johnson.
November 14, 2021: Tonita Smith last seen in Charlottesville; reported missing November 19.
November 23, 2021: Redmon's and Smith's bodies found behind the motel; Robinson arrested.
November 30, 2021: D.C. police tell Harrisonburg police Robinson was Brown's last known contact.
December 7, 2021: Fairfax County detectives called in; first search near the Moon Inn finds nothing.
December 15, 2021: remains of two women found in a container near a shopping cart off Route 1.
December 17, 2021: Fairfax and Harrisonburg chiefs announce the link.
January 7, 2022: DNA identifies Brown and Harrison; Champ named as a possible fifth victim.
June 2022: Champ's death reclassified as a homicide; Robinson named sole person of interest.
September 12, 2022: preliminary hearing; case sent to grand jury. Indictment follows within a week.
August 2024: defense says a psychiatric evaluation does not support an insanity defense.
January 27 to 30, 2025: trial; convicted on all six counts; jury recommends four life terms.
September 17, 2025: motion to set aside the verdict denied; sentencing postponed.
December 23, 2025: sentencing postponed again for a mental health evaluation.
May 22, 2026: sentenced to two life terms plus ten years; first-degree murder convictions vacated; appeal announced.