Welcome to Postmortem. I'm 48 hours correspondent Natalie Morales, filling in for Ann Marie Green, who is on the other side of the mic to talk about her latest report on the murder of 19 year old Shade Robinson. Thanks for joining me, Ann Marie. Thanks, Natalie. I'm looking forward to talking about this. Now this all started when the Milwaukee Fire Department responded to a vehicle that was set on fire in April of 2024. Turns out that car belonged to Shade, but nobody could get a hold of her. Well, that same day, a body part from an unidentified female washed up on a remote beach on the Wisconsin shoreline of Lake Michigan. Ann Marie, Shade's friends also hadn't heard from her since she went on a date the night before, right? Yeah, and in fact, it was one of her coworkers at Pizza Shuttle that really raised the alarm. She was concerned that Shade hadn't showed up for work. She said she's a good employee. She would never just not show up. She just couldn't let it go. And she was the one who contacted police. Well, good for her for following through with that. And you also talk about in this hour, as we see how much security footage played a part in helping, you know, police put the pieces of this puzzle together. Absolutely. I mean, I think we all know that there's a lot of surveillance cameras around security cameras, ring cameras. We know that we're on camera a lot. But in this case, it wasn't just sort of the places that you would expect like the lobby of her apartment building, but that remote area of the park one of our park was just it was remarkable that they even had video from there. And Shade in particular left kind of digital breadcrumbs pretty much everywhere. And that is part of what led to police honing in on Maxwell Anderson so quickly. Their eyes in the sky everywhere, as we can see throughout this hour. We're going to talk about it all. But first, I would remind our listeners and our viewers, if you haven't listened or watched this episode yet, please go ahead and do that right now. Go check it out and come on back and join our conversation. So Ann Maria at first, while watching the episode, I thought that this was going to be one of those dating app horror stories. Turns out though that Shade actually met Maxwell Anderson in person before their date. Right. I mean, this is the old fashioned way, right? She was looking for yet another job. She already had two jobs and she was looking for a third one at the bar. She meets him there. He's working there. And so yeah, why not think it's okay to go out on a date. This is a young woman who has everything going for her. She's unbelievably driven. She wants to enter the air force. She's finishing up her education. She's going places and this one person, you know, ruined everything. Such a tragic turn. She had everything and was seemed to be doing everything right. The first person we meet in this episode, she's so fascinating is the detective Joe Donner. And, you know, it wasn't quite sure what to make of her fashion sense. I mean, she's incredible. It's she's like something out of another era almost. And that is deliberate. That is by design. She is just one of those people that's really into 1940s and 1950s fashion and the aesthetic of the time she actually owns a vintage clothing store. And she does these like online social media sales where she, you know, will she'll show like the latest haul that she's gotten and people all over the world tune in to buy stuff from her. She does these, I guess, pin up contests. We're not talking burlux stuff, right? We're talking about people who dress like in the era. Her pin up name is misdemeanor. How appropriate is that Natalie? And so yeah, she's got this whole fascinating other side to her. But boy, is she a damn good investigator? She sure is. And when she gets down to business, she really gets down to business as we see. Now it was detective Donner who took you to that remote beach, showed you around. What was it like? The beach is an interesting spot. It's quite desolate. There's a road leading down there. There's a big fence. You can't drive down there. You have to know the pathway to take to get down there. And certainly people come down there to walk their dogs or maybe just to get away. But you would have to really know that that spot is there to venture down there. I wouldn't go down there and I wouldn't go down there alone. She also took you to the place where they have Shadee's burned vehicle. Yeah. So seeing the car, I mean, it was almost a little emotional because it is absolutely charred. But even though Maximal Anderson tried to get rid of every stitch of evidence, he fails to get rid of some really crucial evidence, three pieces of crucial evidence where the driver's seat is situated. That doesn't change. So they know that, you know, Shadee probably wasn't driving that car. But then her purse is found basically intact. I mean, it's cinched, but it's found underneath the car seat and the clothes she was wearing that night. Those are in the trunk of the car. And finding that car really helped to speed up this investigation as well. Yeah, that was what was so fascinating. I never thought about that clue of measuring the seat distance and that being a big clue into the height of the individual who last drove the car, which would turn out to be really important in helping solve this case. And I should say that the other officer, right, Don again, who was the one who was called to do a check on her apartment. She was crucial. She said to us that that day she was getting ready for work and like the news was on the background. And she kind of heard about a body part being found, you know, and then she gets this call to go to the apartment and like immediately she has this gut reaction. She went on a date. She's not here now. I heard about this news report about a body part. And she was also really significant in speeding up the investigation because if it had not moved forward as quickly as it did, Donner really feels like there's a good possibility that a lot of that really crucial video would have been lost. Let's also talk though about Shade's younger sister Adriana. I mean, her ability to offer up data on Shade via life 360, the app. I mean, it proved to be invaluable, right? Yeah, exactly. Detective Donner calls Adriana the quiet backbone of the family. And I don't know how Adriana was able to keep a level head in the middle of all of this chaos. I've never, ever, ever met an adult, much less a teenager with the type of presence that this young girl has. I'm glad it came through in the hour. She's remarkable. And she was able to provide the information about the life 360 app. She could show them where Shade had gone. She could show them that she had been at Maximal Anderson's house at around 930. She could show, according to the life 360 app that at 253, the phone arrived at Warnamont Park. All of these things were crucial that life 360 app. That was something. The minute my kids got their driver's license, I put it on their phones because it goes beyond the fine my feature. You can actually track if they're going and driving above the speed limit. It gives you an alert. So it's an incredible tool. Yeah, I had never heard of the app before. I have since put it on my phone. Because it really is remarkable the amount of detail. I mean, it helped investigators literally kind of like walk the path that Shade did to figure this whole thing out. Well, this brings us to the man who was then charged with Shade Robinson's murder. Maximal Anderson tell us about him. So this guy's, you know, as you can imagine, an interesting character. He's 33 years old. Shade was a teenager. She's 19. We spoke to his ex girlfriend Chloe. And Chloe also was very young when they started dating, perhaps praying on their vulnerability. Exactly. Even before he met Shade, he had a criminal record operating a vehicle while intoxicated, disorderly conduct. And you saw in the hour that he was arrested for battery against a bystander who tried to intervene. He was apparently having an argument with one of his girlfriends. And he ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge for that. What was really fascinating and kind of alarming in my opinion was when detectives did search his apartment, they found he had a large collection of knives in his apartment, which I mean, that really raised my eyebrow. Yeah, 51 knives in the kitchen alone. I like to cook. I have a lot of knives, but I certainly don't have a collection like that. Yeah, I know. And you know, I'm pretty sure investigators were hopeful that amongst those knives, they would find something that maybe you played a role in this case. And that simply wasn't the case. Chloe says that he sort of fancied himself a handyman. But he was always starting projects that he would never finish. But there were two projects, she said, that he did finish in the time that she knew him. And they were both secret compartments. And she sort of described how you would like touch something and then a compartment would pop out. We didn't know what he was hiding in those compartments. The other curious tidbit, investigators found tons of women's clothing in his house. Random items, you know, shirts, pants, not necessarily like all intimate items. Chloe wonders if some of the clothes might be hers. They also found the ID of a woman. They did track the woman down. She's alive and well. A couple of other interesting things about that house. The house is actually sort of split. He owns the house, but he lived on the second floor. And then there was a tenant on the first floor. Apparently, the tenant complained a lot about the noise. Anderson, Maxwell Anderson had dogs. He was complaining about the dogs making too much noise upstairs. The tenant was home the night, Sade went over there and never heard a thing. Did investigators have a theory as to how Shadeh Robinson could have been killed without making any sort of noise? Strangulation perhaps? It's a silent death. Yeah, I was going to say that could have been, you know, away someone could have been killed without making a lot of noise. And certainly without a lot of blood, which is also something else that they didn't find. You know, he goes on the date with her April 1st. He's arrested by April 4th. Dreaming of a truly magical 2026, there's still time to book your family break at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida with Virgin Atlantic Holidays. Enjoy lots more than just the bare necessities, with up to 25% off 14-day Disney Magic Tickets and Disney Hotel Stays. This offer disappears when the clock strikes midnight on March 31st. So book today with our Virgin Atlantic Holidays experts in store, by phone or online. Selected 2026 arrivals and Disney resorts, Tisensees apply. On April 12th, 2024, the Sheriff's Office announced that the remains found on that remote beach were identified as belonging to Shadeh Robinson. And on that same day, Maxwell Anderson was formerly charged with first degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse and arson. He would plead not guilty to all the charges. Now, one of the worries for Detective Joe Donner was that there wasn't any direct evidence linking Maxwell Anderson to the case, but it didn't seem Ann Marie that the jury really needed that so much, right? No, it was really the last piece of evidence that sealed his fate. We spoke to a number of jurors, but Wendr Beka talked about seeing those photos that Maxwell Anderson had taken on his phone and then deleted. They are photos of Shadeh. You can see his hand on her. He's touching, you know, intimate areas of her body. And that basically did it for these jurors. I want to read a little bit of what Beka had to say about this. She said, I mean, I personally felt like I had lived the last few hours of Shadeh's life with her. And to see her end up like that was disgusting, humiliating, just horrible. Yeah, and to think that to not know if she was dead or alive when those photos were taken, they seemed staged, almost like a trophy, but then he deletes them. I mean, that tells you a lot if you're a juror, right? It was perhaps the most powerful piece of evidence that the jurors saw, right? That along with, you know, we did see the footage of the man on the beach with the backpack. Yeah. Also, then you saw the surveillance footage of the man leaving the burnt car. And then you see clearly Maxwell Anderson's face when he hops onto a city bus. I mean, thank goodness that security footage was very crisp and clear. You could clearly see his face. Oh, absolutely. Well, and then it turns out the defense didn't call any witnesses. So the jury didn't take very long to deliberate. Anderson was found guilty of intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse and arson. Although he continues to maintain his innocence at his sentencing, Shadeh's mother, father and sister, they weren't having any of that. No, they were very outspoken. Shadeh's mother is, you know, really she's been dealing with a lot of stuff, even before the disappearance and the murder of her daughter. She's been dealing with sort of health stuff. And so it really took a lot out of her and she has kept the fight going. But it wasn't just the family members that spoke. Maxwell Anderson's father also spoke. He was crying. He said, Shadeh's family, he thought about them every single day. He said that he loved his son and that he hoped for a path for his son that would allow his son to become a positive influence in some way. There was also members of the community that sent in letters because like the whole city was moved by this murder. And there was one particular letter from an anonymous person that even the jurors said had a significant impact on them. And I just, I'm going to read some portions of this because I think it really captures the way the entire city of Milwaukee felt about Shadeh. Shadeh Robinson was not a torso. She was not evidence. She was a full living radiant human being. She had dreams, plans, and a future she was building with pride. She had people who loved her and that still love her more than words can hold. And she had a right to live, to breathe, to laugh, to grow old. That right was stolen and it continues. But here's what you couldn't take. You could not mutilate her soul. You could not silence the scream of justice. You could not prevent an entire community from rising up in Shadeh's name. So beautiful and so moving. I love that the judge read that letter. It's not surprising because I really felt like she became the daughter of the entire city. People either saw something in her that they felt was also in them or in a young woman that they know whether there's a daughter or a friend. And they really rallied around this family, which I thought was significant now, because the reality of it is, is that they're often are times when young black women are victims of crime and they don't get the same level of attention. Right. And I just want to read a statistic out. This is Columbia University study in Wisconsin, black women are 20 times more likely to be murdered than white women. It's the worst statistic in the country. The other thing is that Milwaukee is home to Jeffrey Dahmer. And when you think of Dahmer's crimes, there's a sickening feeling that comes with it. And this reminded Milwaukee of that sickening feeling. And just as a kind of a side note, when we traveled there to do some of our interviews, we stayed in this really nice old hotel. It was built sort of in the, I think it's like 1920s, 90s, 30s, but I kind of like cracked a little joke with the guy at the front desk and asked him if there were any ghosts. And then I struck up a conversation with someone in the elevator. And I mentioned that I was inquiring about ghosts. And he said, well, you know, you know what happened on the fifth floor. And it turns out the hotel we stayed in was a hotel that Jeffrey Dahmer killed one of his victims in. But I tell you, I slept with the lights on. I would have to. Yeah. I'm surprised. I'm surprised you slept at all. Yeah. I know. Back to Shade as we know her remains. They were spread all over the county. We learned from some friends that they even found a blanket that had belonged to Shade as well as they found what they believe was a human bone in an area that investigators had already searched. You talked to Shade's sister Adriana as well about the ongoing search for Shade's remains. I wanted to play a little piece of that. Does it bother you that, you know, parts of your sister are still missing? Yeah, it definitely does. I have this necklace and another one, which is a star that I wear every day, that has some of her ashes in it. So it's like a part of her is with me, but knowing that a part of her isn't with anyone, that it's floating around somewhere decomposed, it's like she hasn't been allowed to stop fighting. Like her battle is not over. Like she's never going to be able to rest in some sense. Heart breakingly, you know, as we saw in the sentencing, Shade's mother asked Maxwell Anderson to confess where her daughter's crown was and we're talking about her head, of course. He though maintained his innocence, but we do hope that Shade's family will get an answer someday. And I know that that search is ongoing. Yeah, this is the kind of continued heartbreak for everyone who cares about Shade that all of her has not been found. Before we go though, let's end on something that is so hopeful and positive and uplifting, I think, and that is that Shade's legacy is her younger sister Adriana. Adriana, as we mentioned, such a bright light in this world. Well, she accepted Shade's graduation diploma for her associate's degree, but she also has some big news, right? Yeah. So Adriana is in the top 5% of high school kids in Wisconsin. She's been accepted to Harvard. She has a 99% scholarship. She doesn't know what she's going to do where she's going to go, but when I say I've never met anyone like this, I wish her all the luck in the world. She, I don't think she needs it. I expect great things from Adriana and I cannot wait to watch her continue to strive and rise and accomplish and be all the things that we all know she can be, but also that her sister knew she could be. Well, that is a hopeful way to end this. And thank you again for your incredible reporting and Marie on this when I appreciate it. I was great talking to you Natalie. And if you liked this episode, please rate a review on Apple podcasts or on Spotify.
