Security video from a Virginia Howard Johnson hotel showed the same grisly scene playing out twice in late 2021, a detective testified in court Monday: Anthony Robinson wheeling a shopping cart to Room 336 and then emerging some time later pushing what appeared to be a body.
Robinson, whom authorities have dubbed the “Shopping Cart Killer,” had killed 54-year-old Allene Redmon of Harrisonburg and 39-year-old Tonita Smith of Charlottesville inside his Harrisonburg hotel room, before loading their bodies into the cart, Harrisonburg/Rockingham County Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst alleged in court.
The remains of both women were ultimately found in a field behind the hotel, nearly naked, Garst said in a preliminary hearing in Harrisonburg/Rockingham County General District Court. Robinson, 36, a D.C. resident, watched pornography shortly after killing both women, she said.
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“They were used and thrown away,” Garst said of the women.
Judge John Hart Jr. found there was sufficient evidence to forward the case to a grand jury. Robinson is facing two counts of first degree murder and two counts of concealing a body.
The hearing was the first significant one for a man authorities have alleged is a serial killer. Robinson is being investigated in three other slayings in Fairfax County and D.C., authorities have said.
Louis Nagy, an attorney for Robinson, argued that prosecutors had not shown that Robinson killed Redmon or Smith, saying a medical examiner had not made a definitive conclusion about how either woman died and police did not know what occurred inside the Howard Johnson hotel room.
“There is no evidence this is a coldblooded, premeditated murder,” Nagy said in court.
Robinson did not speak during the hearing and had a stern look on his face as he entered the courtroom wearing an orange and white striped jumpsuit. He is being held in the Rockingham County jail.
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Harrisonburg Detective Brooke Wetherell testified that the case began as a missing-person investigation. Redmon was last seen Oct. 24, 2021. Wetherell testified that Redmon’s friends and phone data put her last location at the Howard Johnson hotel in Harrisonburg.
While still searching for Redmon, Wetherell told the courtroom that on Nov. 19, 2021, she was notified by Charlottesville police that Smith had also gone missing and that phone data put her last location at the same Howard Johnson hotel.
Wetherell eventually determined that the last call Redmon placed was with Anthony Robinson, she testified. At the time, Robinson was working at a Pilgrim’s Pride chicken plant in nearby Timberville, Va.
Wetherell said she obtained surveillance footage from the hotel that showed Redmon arriving at Robinson’s room about 6 p.m. on the day she was last seen. Video showed Robinson removing what appeared to be a lifeless body in the shopping cart with white bedsheets and a gold comforter about 4 a.m. the next day, Wetherell testified. Video also showed Robinson throwing away tennis shoes that appeared to be Redmon’s.
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Wetherell said surveillance video also showed Smith entering Robinson’s hotel room but did not show her emerging alive. On Nov. 21, 2021, video showed Robinson pushing what appeared to be a body wrapped in a sheet away from the room in a shopping cart around 4 a.m.
Wetherell testified that she found both bodies behind the hotel near a tree line, about 15 feet apart on Nov. 25, 2021. Redmon was found with her hands bound and a bag over her head and a cord around her neck, and Smith was found with an abrasion on her head, the detective testified.
A medical examiner determined both women died of “homicidal violence of unidentified etiology,” but suspected they had been strangled or asphyxiated given signs on the bodies and the bag placed over Redmon’s head and the cord around her neck.
Wetherell testified that she questioned Robinson in November 2021 about both women’s deaths. She said he told her that he had met the women on the dating sites Tagged and Plenty of Fish. Wetherell testified that Robinson claimed both women had died of overdoses and that he had panicked after awaking and finding them dead, so he quickly disposed of their bodies.
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Garst rejected that account, calling Robinson’s hotel room a “house of horror” and saying the evidence pointed to him killing both women.
Fairfax County police have said publicly that they linked Robinson to the killing of Cheyenne Brown, 29, of D.C. and Stephanie Harrison, 48, of Redding, Calif. Both women’s bodies were found in a trash can off the busy Route 1 corridor in the Alexandria area of the county in December. During the periods the women went missing, police said, Robinson was staying at the Moon Inn Hotel across the street from where Brown’s and Harrison’s bodies were found.
Police said they have linked Brown to Robinson via cellphone and video evidence. She was last seen alive in September 2021. Harrison’s family last heard from her in mid-August 2021. Robinson has not been charged in either case.
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D.C. police are investigating Robinson in the death of Sonya Champ, whose body was found in a shopping cart not far from Union Station in September 2021. Robinson has not been charged in Champ’s death.
The Washington Post also reported Sunday that Prince George’s County police are re-examining the 2018 death of Skye Allen, 30, to whom Robinson had been engaged. Her family found her barely breathing after she spent the night with Robinson. Her death certificate said she died of natural causes.
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