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‘Shopping cart killer’ sentenced to life in prison for 2021 murders

Anthony Eugene Robinson, also known as the “shopping cart killer,” was sentenced Friday to life in prison for the 2021 murders of two women in Harrisonburg, Virginia, whose bodies he transported in a shopping cart and concealed in an undeveloped lot.

Last year, Robinson was convicted of murdering 54-year-old Allene “Beth” Redmon and 39-year-old Tonita Lorice Smith in a Harrisonburg motel room in the fall of 2021. A jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated murder and two counts of concealing a dead body in 2025.

During the four-day trial last year, jurors watched hotel surveillance video showing Robinson entering a motel room with the two women on separate occasions and leaving the next morning with a shopping cart covered by a sheet.

The jury at that time recommended four life sentences, plus 10 years in prison and a $400,000 fine.

Robinson is also wanted in connection with the murder of another woman in D.C. — 40-year-old Sonya Champ of Northwest D.C. who was found a few blocks from Union Station in a shopping cart covered with a blanket.

Robinson is suspected in the deaths of two more women in Fairfax County — Stephanie Harrison, 48, of Redding, California, and Cheyenne Brown, 29, of Southeast D.C, near the Moon Inn Hotel in Alexandria. Their remains were found in a plastic container near a shopping cart, in a wooded area near the 2400 block of Fairhaven Avenue.

No formal charges have been filed against Robinson in the deaths of Harrison and Brown in Fairfax County.

WTOP’s Neal Augenstein contributed to this report.

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