Monica White never anticipated how perilously her brief online romance could have ended. Her relationship with a man she met on the internet brought her unexpectedly near to the brink of death.
It was only months later that White discovered the chilling truth: Anthony Robinson, the man she had dated, was a suspected serial killer who is believed to have lured his female victims through dating apps.
“There was something unsettling about him,” White confided to People. “There was a moment when everything changed—it was surreal.”
This terrifying chapter in her life is now the crux of the Lifetime movie The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story, which is currently available for streaming on Netflix. The film offers a haunting insight into the man behind these chilling crimes.
Known widely as The Shopping Cart Killer, Robinson was convicted in 2025 for the murders of two women. He is also suspected of being linked to at least three more deaths.
Here’s everything to know about the case and White’s disturbing brush with a killer:
How Did Monica White and Convicted Killer Anthony Robinson Meet?
After a painful divorce, White, then 53, was looking to find love again when she signed up for the dating app Tagged and connected with Robinson.
“Hi beautiful,” White remembered Robinson writing in their initial exchange, according to The Washington Post. “I’d like to get to know you better.”
Robinson described himself as the father of a young daughter (he also had a 2-year-old son who died), had never been married, and was working in D.C. removing snow and cleaning streets for the city, the outlet reported.
He added that he found himself drawn to older women because of their maturity.
The pair soon began daily video chats as Robinson commuted to and from his job from Harrisonburg, Va.
As White told People, “I thought he was normal.”
Monica White Noticed “Red Flags” in Her Visits With Anthony Robinson
In January 2021, White invited Robinson to visit her at her Mechanicsburg, Penn. home as they took the next step in the budding romance.
White says now that there were certain “red flags” she noticed from the beginning.
“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,’” she recalled to People. “So that was a red flag right there.”
Still, White was willing to give the relationship a chance and the two spent the weekend watching movies, ordering in and getting to know each other.
When they moved to the bedroom, White noticed another concerning sign.
“He tried to tie me up,” she alleged to People. “But I wouldn’t let him. I was like, ‘I’m not into it.’ He pulled my arms behind my back and then grabbed me by my neck.”
He also wanted to move in with her right away, but she told him that he was “moving too fast,” she recalled.
Despite those initial concerns, White agreed to see him again the next month for her birthday.
So, Robinson bought a one-way ticket and arrived a week early.
“When he got here,” White recalled to The Washington Post, “he said, ‘I’m going to have to get a job or something in order to get back home cause I don’t have my ticket money.’”
The relationship ended after Robinson drank too much at her party, peed in her bed and made sexual comments to her son and her son’s teenage friend, White shared.
The Washington Post reached out to Robinson’s attorney at the time Louis Nagy about White’s allegations, but he declined to comment. Oxygen also reached out to Robinson’s public defender Abigail Thibeault, who did not immediately respond.
Feeling as though she was no longer able to trust him, Robinson gave him $20 for a ride to the train station and asked him to leave—but she said he didn’t take the rejection well.
“He started snapping,” she told People. “I’m like, ‘Get your stuff and let’s go.’”
Weeks later, she said she got a Facebook message asking her to come to a Harrisburg, Penn. motel where he was staying so that he could “give you whatever you want,” The Washington Post reported.
“He offered me $500,” White added to People. “I refused. I said, ‘No way.’”
She saw him one last time about a month later as she drove by the motel and saw him walking down the street. She said she was shocked by his untidy appearance.
“He looked like a totally different man. Something snapped in him. I don’t know whether he was doing drugs, and ended up totally flipping out,” she told People. “It was like I seen a ghost, a monster.”
Police Announce Anthony Robinson is Suspected Serial Killer
In November 2021, Harrisonburg, Va. Police announced that Robinson, then 35, had been charged in the deaths of two women, Allene Elizabeth “Beth” Redmon, 54; and Tonita Lorice Smith, 39.
Police said both bodies were discovered in an undeveloped lot off Linda Lane.
As Harrisonburg Police Chief Kelley Warner explained in a press conference, according to previous reporting from Oxygen, “Both women were discovered within a short distance of each other dead, although their deaths took place at two separate times.”
Police linked the killings to Robinson—who authorities said met his victims on dating apps before luring them to his motel—through phone records and video surveillance.
“After he inflicts trauma to his victims and kills them,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis explained at the press conference, “he transports their body to their final resting place literally in a shopping cart and there’s video to that effect.”
As the investigation into Robinson continued, investigators revealed that he was also suspected in the deaths of Cheyenne Brown, 29, who was last seen in surveillance footage at a metro stop with Robinson, Stephanie Harrison, 48, and Sonya Champ, 40.
“We have a serial killer,” Davis said at the press conference. “He preys on the vulnerable and he does unspeakable things with his victims.”
After his arrest, police also looked into the possibility that he could have been connected to the 2018 death of his girlfriend Skye Allen.
Though her death was found at the time to be caused by “fatal cardiac arrhythmia” and her body was cremated shortly after, Prince George’s County Police Department reviewed the case again after Robinson’s arrest, according to The Washington Post.
Oxygen reached out to the department to get an update on the case review, but did not receive an immediate reply.
Was Anthony Robinson Convicted?
Robinson was convicted in the murders of Redmon and Smith in 2025, WMRA reported. The next year, he was sentenced to life in prison.
Before the sentence was handed down, defense attorney Thibeault asked the court for leniency insisting that that her client was “not a monster” and noting previous hardships in his life and his 2014 diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder.
However, Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst pointed to the violent nature of the crimes and read a letter from Smith’s 12-year-old daughter who would never see her mother again.
“He enjoyed brutalizing them,” she added of his victims, according to the outlet. “There should be no opportunity for the defendant to ever walk free.”
Where is Monica White Now?
For White, learningthat the man she once dated was a killer was a jarring experience.
As she told The Washington Post, “It was all kinds of emotion flooding my head.”
Though White doesn’t believe Robinson ever planned to kill her, the experience left her shell shocked.
“I felt like I might’ve been the reason why he might have snapped,” she told People. “I had actually allowed this man into my home, allowed him to stay overnight in my home. Then to find out later on, you started killing people? He’s an insane, weird, crazy person. Something snapped.”
She told the outlet in 2024 that ever since the arrest, she has chosen to stay off the dating apps.
“I don’t need a man to love myself. I had to learn that. In order to make myself happy, I didn’t need a man,” she said. “All I needed was God.”
