She Dated a Suspected Serial Killer Without Knowing His Dark Secrets. Then She 'Saw Him Snap'

Monica White dated Anthony Robinson months before his Nov. 2021 arrest and accusations that he's a serial killer

Monica White feels lucky to be alive. She was dating a man and saw troubling signs. Months later, that man was arrested — and accused of being a serial killer.

"I knew something was wrong with him,” White, 56, tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. “Something snapped. It was crazy."

In late 2020, White met Anthony Robinson on the dating app, Tagged. Robinson is now known as the alleged "Shopping Cart Killer" and is the suspect in the deaths of at least six women in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C., with most of the bodies dumped next to the killer’s signature calling card — a shopping cart.

After they met, Robinson started calling White and video chatting every day. “I wasn't really thinking romantically. It was just companionship,” says White, who'd been divorced for three years and wanted to try out online dating.

Robinson told her he had a daughter and worked in waste management removal. At first, she says, "I thought he was normal."

In January 2021, Robinson traveled from Harrisonburg, Va., to Mechanicsburg, Penn., to meet White in person, but things felt wrong from the minute she picked him up at the bus station.

“There were things that went up as red flags at the first visit,” she says. “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.’ So that was a red flag right there.”

Still, she decided to get to know him. But she was unsettled by what she learned. In bed, in particular, he made her very uncomfortable.

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“He tried to tie me up," she alleges. "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.”

During that first visit, Robinson told White he wanted to move in with her. “I told him, ‘No. You're moving too fast, man,’” White says.

Robinson asked if he could visit again the following month, to celebrate White's 54th birthday. He arrived a week before the party. He bought himself a one-way bus ticket – and told her he had “good news” because he had job offers in the area.

Alarmed, she refused to be physically intimate with him again.

“He peed in my bed on my birthday. I could not believe it,” she alleges. “I allowed you to sleep in my bed, and you pee in my bed?"

Ultimately, White told Robinson she didn't want to be in a relationship with him.

“He started snapping," at that point, she says. "I'm like, 'Get your stuff and let's go.'”

She gave him $20 to get to the train station. White later learned that Robinson did not leave town, but was staying at a motel in nearby Harrisburg, Penn.

He propositioned her to come to his motel room. “He offered me $500,” she says. “I refused. I said, 'No way.'"

One day, she was driving by the motel and saw him outside.

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“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 says. “It was like I seen a ghost, a monster.”

Months later, after Robinson's Nov. 2021 arrest, White's cousin showed her a news article with Robinson's mugshot and the shocking allegation that he was a serial killer.

“Once I started putting the puzzle together, of course, when the pieces fit, they fit,” White says.

White doesn’t believe that Robinson wanted to kill her, but she worries that her rejection of him might have sparked his rage.

“I felt like I might've been the reason why he might have snapped,” she says. “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?”

Robinson has pleaded not guilty to two murder charges and is currently awaiting trial in a Virginia jail. He has not been charged in the four other women’s deaths, which remain under investigation.

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