Just a few years ago, police were on the hunt for a serial killer after the discovery of the bodies of six dead women in various areas across the DMV. After three years of having caught the alleged killer, one woman who dated the suspect gives a chilling account of what happened ahead of his tirade.
Monica White, native of Mechanicsburg, Penn., tells PEOPLE that back in 2020 she went to dating app Tagged to meet herself a fella after three years of being divorced. She said she ended up matching with 37-year-old Anthony Robinson and began speaking with him on what she considered to be a platonic level.
“I thought he was normal,” White told the outlet.
Red Flags
At the beginning of 2021, she said Robinson traveled all the way from Virginia on the bus to see her. Upon picking him up from the bus station, White says Robinson showed her his first red flag: he doesn’t take rejection well.
“He was like, ‘Please don’t judge me straight off the bat. Let’s get to know each other. I don’t like when women reject me.’ So that was a red flag right there,” she told PEOPLE.
The second red flag was the alarming kinkiness Robinson tried to push onto White. She alleged he tried to tie her up, pulled her arms behind her back and grabbed her by her neck when in bed together. She told the outlet that by the end of their first date, Robinson said he wanted to live with her. She refused, but instead agreed to letting him come back to visit for her birthday, per PEOPLE.
Things Get Weird...
However, White says when he returned, he arrived a week early by a one-way bus ticket and claimed he had some job offers in the area. The evening of her birthday, White says she refused to have any sexual interaction with him but allowed him to sleep in the same bed with her — all for him to allegedly urinate in her sheets.
White said that was her last straw and officially cut Robinson off. She said she gave him some cash to leave town. However, she told PEOPLE he never left but staked out in a motel. The next time she saw him, she said he looked like a different man.
“Something snapped in him. I don’t know whether he was doing drugs and ended up totally flipping out. It was like I seen a ghost, a monster,” she said.
A Serial Killer?!
It wasn’t too long after this spotting that law enforcement from Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. were scouring the area searching for Robinson, calling him a serial killer.
Read more from The New York Post:
Now, authorities in Prince George’s County are trying to determine if Robinson played a role in the Feb. 2018 death of 30-year-old Skye Allen, whom he dated.
The man had been arrested in connection with the killings of Allene Redmon, 54, of Harrisonburg, and Tonita Smith, 39, of Charlottesville, who were killed around Oct. 24 and Nov. 14, respectively. Their bodies were discovered together on Nov. 23 in a vacant lot next to a shopping cart that cops said had been used to transport the bodies, earning Robinson his macabre moniker.
In Dec. 2021, the remains of two more women were uncovered in a large plastic container near another shopping cart next to the Moon Inn hotel in Fairfax County, Virginia. They were identified as Cheyenne Brown, 29, and Stephanie Harrison, 48. Fairfax County police have said publicly that they have linked Robinson to the killing of the two women. Since then, Robinson also has been tied to the death of 40-year-old Sonya Champ, whose body was found in a shopping cart in Northeast D.C. in Sept. 2021.
Authorities revealed Robinson often found his victims on dating apps like the very one White used to meet him, The Post reported. Authorities claim he would lure them to a hotel, kill them and transport their remains in shopping carts — leading him to be dubbed the “Shopping Cart Killer.”
In 2022, Robinson was charged with first-degree murder for only two of the six killings police suspect he committed, per WTOP News. He also faces multiple counts of aggravated murder of more than one person. Robinson’s trial is scheduled for September 2024 as he awaits an evaluation of whether he is sane to stand trial.