‘Shopping Cart Killer’ found guilty of killing two women | Courts

The man dubbed the “Shopping Cart Killer” by law enforcement was found guilty Thursday, with the jury recommending he receive four life sentences and be fined $400,000.

Anthony Eugene Robinson was on trial this week in Rockingham County Court on murder charges, accused of killing Beth Redmon, 54, of Harrisonburg, and Tonita Smith, 39, of Charlottesville, in Harrisonburg in November 2021. Police, who said Robinson met the women on dating apps, dubbed him the “Shopping Cart Killer” because he transported their bodies in shopping carts.

Robinson is also suspected of other killings in Fairfax County. Those victims, too, are believed to have been killed with blunt force trauma before being transported by shopping carts to a place where they could be ditched, according to law enforcement officials.

On Wednesday evening, a jury recommended Robinson receive four life sentences and four $100,000 fines, both for the murder of Redmon and Smith, along with two extra sentences of five years each for concealing dead bodies. Judge Bruce D. Albertson will sentence Robinson on Sept. 17.

The murders occurred in Room 336 of the Howard Johnson hotel on Linda Lane in Harrisonburg. At the time, Robinson was working at Pilgrim’s in Timberville. Pilgrim’s, a poultry company, was paying for motel rooms in Harrisonburg for some of its employees, including Robinson.

During the trial, surveillance video presented by Rockingham County Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst showed Redmon and Smith entering the motel room but never leaving. Video footage was later shown in which Robinson was seen exiting the motel room with a shopping cart on two occasions in the early morning hours. Each time, the cart was laden with a large object covered by a sheet. Robinson was seen in the video dragging the shopping cart toward an abandoned lot adjacent to a trailer park.

Detectives found the bodies of Redmon and Smith about 180 feet away in a copse of trees in the direction the security cameras showed Robinson going. Redmon was found with a plastic bag over her head, and Smith’s arms were tied behind her back with a “chunky black yarn” that police believe was purchased at Walmart by Robinson.

During the trial, Garst said the killings were “sado-sexual.” She said investigators found links to pornography sites on Robinson’s phone that he accessed after each woman died. The video descriptions matched each woman’s body physique. In court this week, she read off the names of some of the pornographic videos Robinson was watching online. Most of the titles were sexually graphic. One of the more tame titles was “Mature blonde followed home and brutalized.”