Verona Swanigan
In early June, a jury found Milwaukee man Maxwell Anderson guilty of first-degree intentional homicide, mutilating a corpse, hiding a corpse and arson after he allegedly killed and dismembered 19-year-old college student Sade Robinson on their first date, scattered her body parts across the city and burned her car to hide the evidence. Anderson’s legal team argued during the trial that his client did not plan the murder, but Robinson’s family’s attorney, Verona Swanigan, tells In Touch that Anderson’s intentions seemed clear.
“You have to say, somehow, in less than two hours, he dismembered an entire human being and spread her body across the city. That’s, you know, that requires some major skillset that most average human beings do not have,” Swanigan tells In Touch Investigates’ Kristin Thorne. “You know, most people would have vomited before they even got to the, ‘Let’s throw the body parts in the bag,’ like that.”
Swanigan continues, “Just, you know, I can’t even conceive chopping someone’s arm off, and somehow I can still manage to bag everything up, clean everything up, take photos, do this, do that, and then go drop the body parts off. It’s just unimaginable. And so, it’s hard pressed for anyone to think that this was not premeditated. You had the tools to do it. You would have had to have premeditated it.”
Robinson went missing after she went out to dinner and drinks with Anderson, 34, on April 1, 2024. Video footage showed the pair meeting at Twisted Fisherman restaurant in Milwaukee, Assistant District Attorney Ian Vance-Curzan told the jury in his opening statement, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. Phone records and additional video footage revealed that they later went to a bar in downtown Milwaukee and then to Anderson’s home on the south side of the city.
Prosecutors showed the jury photos that Anderson had taken on his phone of an “incapacitated” Robinson on his couch.
“She is face down,” Vance-Curzan said of the photos, per WPR. “Her face is buried in his couch cushion. He has her breast exposed, and he is grabbing her, grabbing her right breast — the breast that would later be cut off of her body.”
In the days and weeks after her disappearance, Robinson’s body parts, including her right arm, her torso and her right breast, were found scattered across Milwaukee.
In video footage shown in court, Anderson could be seen walking away from Robinson’s burning car.
Kristin Thorne
Anderson was arrested on April 4, 2024. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Though the trial is now over, Swanigan says Robinson’s family is “still in recovery.”
“It was a long trial. “There’s a lot involved in that trial, and a lot of things you have to see and face while sitting in the same room with the person that actually did it. And that’s not easy for any parent to endure. So I believe they’re just kind of, like I said, recovering and trying to gather themselves,” she says. “We’ve really been doing a lot of trying to process what we saw, what we heard, and just, there’s things that you see, that you’re not sure about, things that you question, things that are lingering questions, like, where the rest of her remains? You’ve traced his entire steps, but what? Where did he supposedly stop? Like, how else could this have happened?”
Swanigan continues, “I don’t think that if someone thought of the worst thing to happen to their enemy, this would pop in their head. This is gotta be one of the most horrific things I’ve seen a parent have to go through. And I’ve seen some terrible things parents have had to go through, and I mean, some gruesome ways that I’ve seen other people pass away, painful ways. And this, in my opinion, it’s ranking equal to dealing with the Dahmer type case like this is, it’s one of those moments you cannot return back to normal from. It creates an entire new normal for you.”
Swanigan adds that Robinson was a “glowing light.”
“She was inspirational. She loved to laugh and dance and play with her little sister,” she says, adding that Robinson was a “hard worker” who had “multiple jobs” and often worked with homeless individuals.
“I don’t think there’s anyone that I can imagine that has a negative thing to say about her,” Swanigan adds. “I think her being absent from the family has created a void that they will not be able to get over.”
Before her death, Robinson had been helping her mother pay bills, Swanigan says, and she helped her little sister find jobs and get enrolled in college programs.
Robinson’s mother, Sheena Scarborough, has created the Sade’s Voice Foundation to offer support to the search for missing persons and victims of crimes.
Anderson is set to be sentenced in August. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
