Prosecutors have charged a Wisconsin man for the murder of 19-year-old Sade Robinson, who was reported missing from Milwaukee’s Brewers Hill neighborhood.
Maxwell Anderson was charged Friday with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse and arson in connection with a severed leg discovered at a park in Cudahy, Wisconsin, the day after Robinson disappeared. Her friend reported her missing after she did not show up to a pizza restaurant where she worked on Tuesday, April 2.
Robinson was last seen on the day before when she reportedly had a first date with Anderson. She told a worker in her apartment building that she was “excited” about meeting up with the man police say is connected to her death.
Robinson’s mother, Sheena Scarbrough, told WISN-TV that Robinson texted her that day for $15, which Scarborough called “very unusual.”
Scarbrough feared the worst for her daughter that she last saw on Easter Sunday when the family came together for dinner.
“At this point, as a mother, I know somebody harmed my baby and I’m going to need that person held fully accountable,” she told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday before Robinson’s death was confirmed. “That individual will be haunted eternally.”
Authorities confirmed through a series of texts that Robinson and Anderson had agreed to meet for dinner that night. Surveillance video also shows the pair eating at a local restaurant that night before heading to a bar then to Anderson’s home.
The day after Robinson disappeared, detectives found her car on fire in an alley. That same day, someone found a human leg in or near Lake Michigan at a Milwaukee County park.
According to the criminal complaint against Anderson, the leg “was severed just below the hip socket and appeared to have been sawn off” and the toes had “pink nail polish,” WISN-TV reports.
Detectives found video from a nearby high school that showed a vehicle in the area near the park just before 3 a.m. April 2. Cudahy Water Department officials also reported that a vehicle rammed a gate that lead to the shoreline of the park around the same time.
Footage reportedly shows a person making “multiple attempts to walk between the beach and the service drive of the pump house,” which the complaint said was near where the severed leg was recovered.
Authorities later discovered other human remains in that same area and found another body part just a block from where Robinson’s car was found.
A human foot was found in a wooded area near train tracks plus “what appeared to be human flesh,” according to the police complaint.
Police believe her car was set ablaze just before 7:30 a.m. Witnesses say they saw a man throw a lighter into the driver’s door window before stepping onto a public transit bus about 40 minutes later.
Police launched a death investigation after discovering the remains, but upgraded it to a homicide investigation after they searched a home and detained 33-year-old Anderson as a person of interest on April 4.
Detectives note Robinson’s phone was tracked to Anderson’s home after midnight on April 2 and then traced around the city to the park where the severed leg was found.
Court records show Anderson, a bartender and Navy veteran, was arrested three separate times for disorderly conduct between 2014 and 2019 and he was recently arrested for operating a vehicle while impaired.
However, his criminal history doesn’t show any connections to murders.
Yet, a woman who claims she knows Anderson told WISN-TV that he has “sex dungeon” in the basement of his home.
“I got a little bit of a tour, and he was like, ‘Do you want to see the basement?’ I was like, ‘No, I’m OK!’ He’s like, ‘It’s creepy down there.’ I was like, ‘No, it’s OK!'” the young woman told reporters.
The woman was also suspicious about a hole in his yard that the local outlet confirmed was still on Anderson’s property this week.
Surveillance video from a home across the street revealed “on and off” movement in the backyard until around 12:45 a.m. April 2. Investigators also found blood on a comforter and gasoline containers in Anderson’s home.
In addition to her pizza joint job, Robinson had another job, was enrolled at Milwaukee Area Technical College studying criminal justice, and was preparing to join the Air Force upon graduating in May, according to her family.
“She’s been very successful. She would give anybody anything. That’s how I raised my daughters,” Scarbrough said.
“She’s just such a generous person in general, I don’t remember one day that she was angry or upset,” Robinson’s coworker Ivelisse Martinez said. “It’s devastating. You always see this stuff on the news but you never think it’d be one of your friends.”
