The Shopping Cart Killer — I am Ivana Estelle

Jan 16

Jan 16 The Shopping Cart Killer

The population of serial killers in this world is small. It’s something like 1%. This is a relief to think about. There is a slim chance that you will ever run into a serial killer…slim but not zero. We hear about Jefferey Dahmer and Ted Bundy repeatedly and we think well that has got to be the worst of it. When in actuality there are for scarier monsters that have walked this earth. Men like Bob Hansen who used to hunt his victims in the woods, or Israel Keys who kept kill kits all over the country and would pick victims at random.

Currently there are serial killers still out there walking amongst us. They could be our grocery store clerk, or the shy lady in the accounting department, our creepy neighbor, or the mail carrier. They could also be dead, have had the ability to live a life of relative normalcy even though they took the lives of many. There’s the Maniac with the dull eyes, and the Vending Machine killer, the Long Island serial killer, and the Zodiac killer.

Serial Killer Ed Kemper (who is still alive by the way) once said that the only time a serial killer is revealed is when they want to be caught. Serial killers are meticulous. They have patterns, and usually police are a step or so behind. With news media going so fast and technology being so advanced I wonder if that is true. Are serial killers as big as Ed Gein and the BTK killer still out there? Are we even paying attention?

I think so.

The Shopping Cart Killer is a serial killer that has been terrorizing Washington DC for the past few months. From 2021- now. I live in DC and the fact that this has just come to the surface is probably the most terrifying thing I have come across in a long time. His 5 victims are all women, he doesn’t have a specific type, but his pattern is the same. They are found in a shopping cart, abused, assaulted, and deceased.

Stephanie Harrison was visiting Washington DC in August as a small vacation from Redding, California. She planned to tour the capital, check out a couple museums and experience the east coast. The 48 year old was single and has spent most of her life surrounded by friends and family. She was a mother to her daughter Destiny Livingston and made sure to check in on her regular. On August 19th when her sister hadn’t heard from her the family filed a police report. Missing flyers had been posted everywhere. Photos of the blue eyed woman with freckles and beach curled styled hair were printed across the DC and Virginia area. Stephanie checked into the Moon Inn a small two star hotel located on 6140 Richmond highway in Alexandria VA. It's about 10 miles downtown from Washington DC and it's pretty much a budget hotel, a place where you can get free breakfast, kid friendly, decently clean and and easy stay if you are planning on doing sightseeing or not really being in your room much. Stephanie's family hadn't heard from her since she got settled which is odd because usually a person would check in once they've gotten to their destination. Her parents also began to become worried because they knew that Stephanie had a few mental health challenges. She was schizophrenic and used her medication regularly. With her being on vacation, seemingly alone, it wasn't clear whether anyone was keeping up with that. Her family described her as a loving but also very vulnerable and could be gullible in her mental state. Stephanie’s sister checked her bank records and phone location and there had been zero movement.

Months went by and eventually there was a break in the case. On Dec. 15, homicide detectives located a shopping cart in the wooded area surrounding the Moon Inn, In a container near the shopping cart, detectives found the human remains of two people, one of them being Stephanie Harrison. Stephanie was was not alone there was a young woman next to her about 29 years old and her name would later be identified as Cheyenne Brown. Cheyenne left home on September 30th 2021 in the 200 block of 36th St southeast and around 3:00 PM. She'd gotten on the metro bus close to her home and hadn't been seen or heard from since. Her family became alarmed when a couple of days had gone by and Cheyenne hadn't checked in. She was described as having medium brown skin was 5 foot 2 inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds. The young African American girl had red relish locks and baked brown eyes. Her family became increasingly alarmed knowing that Cheyenne was pregnant. Cheyenne was also the mother to a 7 year old and she wasn't about to miss Thanksgiving or Christmas so to not hear from her was incredibly concerning. 10 days earlier She had been seen with a man according to her cousin Jonathan Willis. He wasn't anyone that the family was familiar with and he was visiting Cheyenne at her home.

This stood out to Jonathan because none of the family knew who this guy was, they weren't familiar with him being anyone related to her son or having any relation to her pregnancy.

Police were baffled with how Cheyenne and Stephanie could end up in the back lot by the Moon Inn. There was no evidence that the two women had crossed paths or even knew each other. However there was something eerily familiar about these two women they had been missing around the time that 54 year old Elizabeth Redmond and 39 year old Tonita Smith we're missing and found dead in November.

Tonita or Nita Smith was a part of a close knit family. In 2012 the family had suffered from the disappearance of Nita’s niece, Sage Smith. Sage was a young trans woman who went missing in Charlottesville. Eerily enough in November Nita’s body would be discovered. She had gone missing sometime between November 14th and November 19th

Her body was found close to the body of 54 year old Elizabeth Redmon. Both women were found in a vacant lot off of Linda Late near Country Club road in Harrisonburg, VA. Nita and Elizabeth were pretty different in looks on all accounts, but they had similar values. Nita was black with brown eyes, high cheek bones and full lips. She was close with her friends and family. She had a big family and was a loving mother. She loved her kids so much and she was close with her siblings and friends. Elizabeth went missing an entire month prior on October 24th. She was older with reddish blonde hair and was a native to Harrisonburg Virginia. She had friends and family who knew her to be punctual and not miss obligations like work. She was living in an apartment seemingly by herself, and usually used public transportation to get around. Elizbeth went by Beth to loved ones, and was a grandmother. Her daughter May described her as having a really good heart, she was always looking out for others. She kept to herself outside of her family and felt like she didn’t have any friends, but May believes by the outpouring love she’s received, a lot of people cared and appreciated Beth.

So how did Beth and Nita, two family women from other parts of the DMV area end up in a lot in Virginia?

The way I have described the location of these 4 women may seem like they’ve been spread out and not related. But they are, they are incredibly close, in fact they are all in the same lot area as the Moon Inn.

Nita Smith, Elizabeth Redmon, Stephanie Harrison, and Cheyenne Brown, also have one other major thing in common.

They were murdered by the same man.

“DNA evidence has confirmed the identities of Cheyenne Brown, 29 years old, of Washington D.C., and Stephanie Harrison, 48 years old, of Redding, Calif., as the victims found in a container near the Moon Inn Motel in Alexandria, (Virginia),” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said.

That DNA also connected Nita and Beth. It belonged to 35 year old Anthony Eugene Robison.

Anthony is a black man, who was born in New York and at some point moved to DC. For now there isn’t much about him. This case is ongoing and no one from his family has spoken out. However there are a few things to note. Police coined the term Shopping Cart Killer because he would transport the bodies of the women in Shopping Carts from his kill site to the back lot of the Moon Inn where he would dispose of the bodies. Police said they are working with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit and have also partnered with his home state of New York and Harrisonburg Police. They are also working to build a victimology profile and are hoping to get into contact with survivors. Police believe there are other victims and a chance of a survivor.

So if DNA isn’t enough, there is the coincidence of Anthony Robinson always being…around, it’s jarring. The Moon Inn gave police a receipt that showed Anthony stayed in the Moon Inn the same night Cheyenne went missing. She even was noted to have communicated with him once she got to the Huntington Metro station in Virginia not far from the Inn. Later Cheyenne’s phone pinged in cellphone records near that very same Inn. Cell phone records showed that she communicated with Anthony and both there phones were in the same location of that Inn on September 30th. Anthony had even stayed at the Moon Inn on 4 or 5 other seperate occasions. After learning the suspect allegedly disposed of his victims' bodies using a shopping cart, they spotted one in a wooded area off Route 1. Besides the red Target shopping cart was a container. When they looked inside, police found human remains. The container and cart were used to hold and dispose of all four women.

Police say that Anthony does unspeakable things to his victims, and those details have yet to be disclosed.

Recently in Fairfax another unnamed woman’s body has been found, inside of a shopping cart, police believe Anthony is behind her death based on the same vicinity, digital evidence, and time of the disappearance. Anthony is currently being held in a prison in Virginia and there is no chance he is getting out any time soon.

Anthony looks like shit in his mugshot. Ugly on the inside, manifesting itself on the out. The question is how does he manage to lure these women? Crime detectives believe he has used social media sites to do so. Here is something unbiased I need to say. First and foremost, anyone who like romanticizing killers – like Ted Bundy fans or want Chriss Watts to be their boyfriend- is sick. Like you don’t even need to go to Hell you specifically need mental health treatment and then you can be weald off to a prison. Romanizing murderers or thinking you are special and valued because they have killed someone else but won’t kill you is, fucking insane. You aren’t Love from You.

Objectively speaking though, I want to be real about something. Looks play a role in life and they also play a role in true crime, they play a role in victims, news story, and even the ability for certain criminals to evade the police or lure their prey in.

Anthony Robinson with a haircut and shape up would look like a normal decent looking person, he would look like someone I would potentially see on Hinge or Tinder, and he used that to his advantage. That much is clear. Police found that he was on the dating app Plenty of Fish, which by the way I have heard like enough crazy stories about that app to run far far away. He also was on the app Tagged which is another dating app I am not quite familiar with. Only one victim, Stephanie Harrison was actually staying at the Moon Inn, and it hasn’t been clear whether the two met by chance or had been communicating before.

The police do notice a pattern that all other women he communicates with are on the app. It is assumed he uses his own pictures, as the police are looking for other people who may have communicated with him, and when Cheyenne met with him from all witness accounts they seemed familiar. In fact, evidence from both their phones showed the two were talking on the dating app at one point. It wouldn’t surprise me if Anthony came off somewhat charming before attacking women, mutilating their bodies, and disposing them near the Inn.

This revelation of a serial killer in the DMV area has affected me to a major extent. I often think about me going missing or something happening to me, and the clues that I would leave my loved ones to at least help find me. I think the scariest thing about Anthony is that he's gone pretty much undetected. I haven't seen any podcasters talk about this case yet, and it’s still developing I know but someone that goes by the name shopping cart killer and there's a chance that there's more than the five women already, and he's 35 making him one of the youngest known serial killers in history. This is prolific. However, with a pandemic, obsession over pop culture, and a 24 hour news cycle that's pretty much turned into like 5 seconds, it's hard to get things to stay grasped. Which makes me think every time I fantasized about me going missing how long it would really matter it's so much harder for it to stay in the news Anthony did not have a type the women that have been discovered ranged from ages 29 to 54. They were mothers, sisters, they were on vacation, or met this monster on a dating app simply trying to find love. The one thing they all had in common was that they were vulnerable and Anthony I can tell clearly probably looks like a normal guy. Then he took them to either his room in the Moon Inn or he took them to the woods where no one would hear them and he did unspeakable acts then he carried their bodies in your shopping cart and he pushed them to empty lot and he dumped their bodies like they were nothing. So, his name deserves to be known by everyone, he was 35 and he did this in DC Virginia and Maryland, but he's from New York which means someone in Brooklyn or the Bronx or Queens or Long Island or Harlem or Manhattan knows something.