Trial Underway In Killing of Sade Robinson
Maxwell Anderson charged with first-degree homicide and mutilating a corpse.
Sade Robinson. Photo courtesy Milwaukee Police Department
Prosecutors say evidence will show a Milwaukee man “brutally and callously” killed and dismembered a 19-year-old college student hours after the two shared dinner on their first date last spring
Opening statements began the trial Wednesday of Maxwell Anderson in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. Anderson, 34, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse, hiding a corpse and arson for the death of Sade Robinson.
Robinson went missing after she went out for a first date with Anderson on April 1, 2024. Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Ian Vance-Curzan told the jury during his opening statement that phone records and video surveillance footage will show Anderson killed Robinson after he took her back to his home after they met for dinner at a Milwaukee restaurant.
“He then brutally and callously cut her apart, disposed of her body parts and burned her car,” Vance-Curzan told jurors.
In the days and weeks afterward, Robinson’s body parts — including both of her legs, her right arm, her torso and her right breast — were found at sites across the Milwaukee region.
Robinson’s right arm washed ashore in Waukegan, Illinois, on May 11, 2024, according to Vance-Curzan. Her severed leg was found in a park in Cudahy on April 2, 2024. In a criminal complaint, police said they believed the leg appeared to be “sawn off.”
Robinson was attending Milwaukee Area Technical College and was working at Pizza Shuttle, a restaurant on Milwaukee’s east side. A GoFundMe page set up for her family described her as a “loving daughter, a cherished sister, and a dear friend to many.” Her family was in the courtroom Wednesday.
The trial is expected to last two weeks. Vance-Curzan said the evidence and testimony the jury will see and hear will be “voluminous.”
Vance-Curzan said the jury will see video footage and phone records that show that Anderson drove Robinson’s car around Milwaukee and set the car on fire on the morning of April 2, 2024. He said police found Robinson’s other leg and foot severed into pieces near a playground where the car was set on fire.
Vance-Curzan told the jury that Robinson’s head has still not been recovered.
Maxwell Anderson.
Anderson’s defense attorney didn’t dispute that his client went on a date with Robinson or that the dismembered body parts belonged to Robinson.
However, he said Anderson had no reason to kill Robinson.
“There is absolutely no reason for Max to commit a crime like this,” Anthony Cotton said during his opening statement.
Cotton told the jury that they will hear testimony from the tenant who lived below Anderson who said he heard no sounds of a struggle or a fight. Cotton also said investigators didn’t find a murder weapon in Anderson’s home.
“We don’t dispute any of that timeline, that they went out together and went back to Max’s house. But that doesn’t mean he [Anderson] killed her,” Cotton said.
The home of Maxwell Anderson, as seen on Friday, April 12, 2024. Evan Casey/WPR
Vance-Curzan said investigators did not, “locate any kind of gory scene in the residence.” But he said investigators found a photo on Anderson’s phone of Robinson laying face down on his couch and another photo that shows Robinson’s pants and underwear being pulled off her body.
“And police actually find those pants and underwear in the trunk of her car after it had been burned,” Vance-Curzan said.
Vance-Curzan also told the jury that Warnimont Park, where Robinson’s severed leg was found, was a place Anderson had known well and a place he had called his “secret beach.”
“One does not end up going out to dinner and then going out for drinks on Water Street for a good time, to being dead and cut up into pieces and discarded into Lake Michigan, unless someone intends for that to happen,” Vance-Curzan said.
After the opening statements, one of the men who found Robinson’s leg testified along with a Cudahy police officer who responded to the scene.
Phone records led police to evidence of the meeting
According to the criminal complaint, detectives using phone records learned Anderson and Robinson had met for a date on the night of April 1, 2024 at a seafood restaurant called Twisted Fisherman. Video footage from the restaurant showed them meeting for dinner and drinks. After that, phone records and video surveillance footage found they went to a bar in downtown Milwaukee and then later to Anderson’s home on the city’s south side.
After Robinson went missing, her friend was able to access a location-based services app on her phone, which allows users to share their location with others. After she checked the app, she found that Robinson’s phone was at Warnimont Park on the morning of April 2, 2024. That app showed the phone was near Anderson’s home on the city’s south side before that.
On the morning of April 2, 2024, the Milwaukee Fire Department responded to a vehicle fire on the city’s north side. That vehicle belonged to Robinson.
Investigators gathered video footage from a Milwaukee County Transit System bus that showed Anderson getting on a nearby bus shortly after Robinson’s car was set on fire. Investigators used video footage from other buses that showed a person, whom they believe to be Anderson, walking away from the vehicle shortly after the car was lit on fire.
Police used video surveillance from a nearby neighbor which showed “on-and-off” movement at Anderson’s house on the night of April 1, 2024 until 12:45 a.m. on April 2, 2024. After that, phone records show Robinson’s phone began to travel around the city of Milwaukee before “eventually ending up apparently stationary near Warnimont Park, where the severed leg was recovered,” the complaint said.
Police arrested Anderson during a traffic stop near his home on the morning of April 4, 2024. He has been in custody since his arrest, held on a $5 million bond.
Trial underway for Milwaukee man charged with murdering woman after meeting for first date was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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So sad. Such a beautiful girl. It takes an especially sick person to do something like this!