Photo: Harrisonburg and Fairfax Police
A Black woman is shocked after finding out she was dating a man who police allege is a serial killer.
Monica White, a divorced 53-year-old woman living outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told The Washington Post she met 36-year-old Anthony Eugene Robinson on a dating website back in 2020. Authorities have accused Robinson, nicknamed the "Shopping Cart Killer," of allegedly meeting women on dating sites and luring women into hotels. After killing them, the alleged murderer would transport their bodies in shopping carts and dump them in empty lots.
White recalled Robinson's flattering comments about her, and their romance moved quickly into video chats, daily phone calls, and in-person visits.
“He seemed to have an attachment to me, so he would call me every day,” White said. While he never mentioned killing anybody to her, the Harrisburg woman remembers him saying some disturbing things. One time he allegedly showed her a scar, vowing to kill the person who stabbed him. White also says he would sometimes choke her when they were being intimate.
Things came to a head in February 2021 during White's birthday party. She reportedly caught a drunk Robinson making inappropriate comments to her adult son and the teenage son of a friend. White confronted the 36-year-old about the comments the next day, which escalated into a fight and police responding to the home, according to The Post.
Robinson left the home and invited White to a Harrisburg hotel weeks later. “I will give you whatever you want," he wrote in the Facebook message, but the distraught 53-year-old declined the offer. White says she spotted a disheveled Robinson one last time in the area before he was taken into custody on November 23, 2021.
The 36-year-old man is accused of killing 54-year-old Allene Redmon, of Harrisonburg, Virginia, and 39-year-old Tonita Lorice Smith, of Charlottesville, Virginia, last fall. Fairfax County Police allege Robinson slayed Redmon in October 2021 and killed Smith the following month. Reporters say their bodies were found in an open lot in a Harrisonburg commercial district.
Authorities claim they have surveillance video and cellphone records linking Robinson to the murders. He's also been linked to the deaths of 29-year-old Cheyenne Brown, 29, of D.C., 40-year-old Sonya Champ, of D.C., and Stephanie Harrison, 48, of Redding, California. He hasn't been charged in their deaths.
The Prince George’s County Police Department has also reopened the case of 30-year-old Skye Allen, a Maryland woman who died from “fatal cardiac arrhythmia” in 2018, according to a copy of her death certificate obtained by The Post.
She was allegedly engaged to Robinson after meeting him online in 2016, reporters learned. The suspected killer allegedly told White he was engaged to someone who died.
White heard about the news around Robinson in December. She says the shocking revelation has left her feeling depressed and unwilling to date again.
“It really rocked my world,” White said. "It was all kinds of emotion flooding my head."
Robinson appeared in Harrisonburg court Monday afternoon (September 12), where a judge said there was probable cause for first-degree murder charges, according to local news station WJLA. His case was moved to the circuit court to be reviewed by a grand jury. He's currently being held in Rockingham County Adult Detention Center.
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