On the Trail of the Shopping Cart Serial Killer: Dating Sites, Motels, Blunt Force Trauma

Mar. 15, 2025

Anthony Robinson.

In the desperate months after her 29-year-old daughter Cheyenne Brown was last seen alive at a Washington, D.C., Metro station, Nicadra Brown nervously awaited a call from police.

On Dec. 7, 2021, Fairfax County Police Department detectives scoured the grounds of a motel in Alexandria, Va., where the cell phone of Cheyenne, a single mother pregnant with her second child, had last pinged on Oct. 4, “but they didn’t find anything,” says Nicadra, 49.

Top row, from left: Tonita Smith, Stephanie Harrison, Cheyenne Brown; bottom row: Sonya Champ, Allene Redmon, Skye Allen.Courtesy Smith Family; Courtesy Destiny Livingston; Courtesy Nicadra Brown; Facebook; Harrisburg Police Department; Facebook

Courtesy Smith Family; Courtesy Destiny Livingston; Courtesy Nicadra Brown; Facebook; Harrisburg Police Department; Facebook

The victim found alongside Brown was identified as Stephanie Harrison, a 48-year-old tourist from Redding, Calif. And sadly, the grim discovery of the two bodies may not have been an isolated event.

Weeks earlier, police in Harrisonburg, Va., about 130 miles southwest of Alexandria, had recovered the remains of two other missing women—Allene “Beth” Redmon, 54, a mother of two born and raised in Harrisonburg, and Tonita Smith, 39, a mother of six from Charlottesville, Va.—in a field next to a Howard Johnson motel.

The investigation has since expanded, with authorities saying Robinson is a suspect in at least six deaths in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia, with most of the bodies dumped next to the killer’s signature calling card—a shopping cart.

Fairfax County Police Department

According to police, Robinson, whom they described as a transient and who is known to have a daughter and sometimes live in Washington, D.C., allegedly metwomen on dating websitesand lured them to motels where he brutally killed them.

“We have a serial killer,” Fairfax County police chief Kevin Davis said at a press conference on Dec. 17, 2021. “He preys on the weak and the vulnerable,” and after doing “unspeakable things” to his victims, “he transports their bodies to their final resting place literally in a shopping cart.”

In light of Robinson’s arrest, police in Maryland are also reportedly reexamining the 2018 sudden death, supposedly of natural causes, of Robinson’s fiancée Skye Allen, 30. Robinson also has been named the sole person of interest in the death of Sonya Champ, 40, whose body was found in a shopping cart in Washington in September 2021.

Robinson has pleaded not guilty in the Redmon and Smith murder cases and is currently awaiting trial in a Virginia jail. He has not been charged in any of the other women’s deaths, which remain under investigation. “I will not rest until he pays for what he’s done to my daughter and these other women,” says Nicadra Brown.

Moon Inn, Arlington, Va., and Howard Johnson Motel in Harrisonburg, Va.

In August 2021 Cheyenne Brown met Robinson online and invited him to meet her family at the house in Washington that she shared with her then-7-year-old son Juan, her mom, Nicadra, and her sister Amelia, 18.

But the visit didn’t go well: Amelia “started screaming” after Cheyenne’s guest saw her wearing only underwear, and a cousin who was visiting that day asked the man to leave, says Nicadra. More than a month later Cheyenne left the house to catch a bus and was never seen again.

On Thanksgiving, however, her cousin happened to see Robinson’s mug shot in an Instagram post about his arrest on suspicion of two murders in Harrisonburg and immediately contacted Nicadra.

“He said, ‘That’s the guy I put out of the house!’ My instinct was like, ‘He’s the one who did something to my daughter,’ so I called the police,” she says.

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Meanwhile, authorities had already learned that Robinson allegedly crossed paths—lethally—with two women at a motel in Harrisonburg: Redmon, who was reported missing after failing to show up for work on Oct. 24, 2021, and Smith, whose brother believes she met Robinson on a dating site and went to the motel where he was staying to see him.

“We had just lost our mother, just lost two of our aunties, and my son has been missing since 2012, so we were dealing with a lot of sad situations,” says Dean Smith, 48. “She was dealing with trauma and I guess just looking for love in the wrong place, and somebody took advantage of her.”

Harrisonburg (Va.) Chief of Police Kelley Warner.Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post via Getty

Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/For The Washington Post via Getty

Other surveillance footage allegedly shows Robinson doing the same with Smith in November of that year. “He’s killed four victims already,” says Fairfax County police chief Davis. “We suspect that he has more.”

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up forPEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletterfor breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.Robinson’s attorney Louis Nagy said at a hearing in 2022 that “there is no evidence this [the deaths of Redmon and Smith] is a coldblooded, premeditated murder” and toldPeoplethat his client has had a history of mental illness since at least 2014.

Location in Harrisonburg, Va., where bodies were found.

The first of Robinson’s two trials, for Smith’s murder, is due to begin on Sept. 23. While waiting for justice to be done, the families of his alleged victims are struggling to make sense of their losses.

“This is a worst-case scenario,” says Harrison’s daughter Destiny Livingston, 34. “I didn’t grow up with a dad. All I had was my mom—and now she’s gone too.”

Wendy Grossman Kantor

andSusan Young

Susan Young

source: people.com