Sade Robinson and the Secret Beach | Post Mortem | Forensic Files

Welcome to Postmortem. I'm 48 hours correspondent [music] Natalie Morales, filling in for Anarie
Green, who is on the other side of the mic to talk about her latest report on the murder of 19-year-old Shadeai
Robinson. Thanks for joining me, Anie. 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 Sha Day, 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. And Emory 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 co-workers at Pizza Shuttle that really raised the alarm. She was concerned that Shade hadn't showed up
for work. She's such 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 for following through with that.
And you you also talk about in this hour as we see how much security footage played a part in 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 you know
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, WMAR 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. There are eyes in the sky everywhere as we can see throughout this
hour. We're going to talk about it all. But first, I want to 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 Marie, 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 Shadeai actually met Maxwell Anderson in person
before their date, right? I mean, this is the oldfashioned way, right? Um, she was looking for yet another job. She
already had two jobs and she was looking for a third one at the bar. Uh, 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 uh 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, I wasn't quite sure what to make of her
fashion sense. I mean, she's incredible. it. She's like something out of another
era almost and and that is deliberate. That is by design. Um 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, well, she'll show like the latest haul
that she's gotten and people all over the world tune in to buy stuff from her. Um, she does these, I guess, pinup
contests. We're not talking burlesque stuff, right? We're talking about people who dress like in the era. Her pinup
name is misdemeanor. How appropriate is that, Natalie? Um, 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. Uh, what was it like? The beach is an interesting spot. It's quite desolate,
though. 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 Shade's burned vehicle. Yeah. So, seeing
the car, I mean, it was almost a little emotional because it is absolutely charred. But even though Maxwell
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,
Shade probably wasn't driving that car. But then her purse is found basically intact. I mean, it's singed, 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 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, uh Donigan, 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 in 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
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. Uh Donna 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 Shadeai's younger sister Adriana. I
mean, her ability to offer up data on Shade Day via Life 360, the app, I mean, it proved to be invaluable, right?
>> Yeah, exactly. Um, 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 um where Shade had gone. She could
show them that she had been at Maxwell Anderson's house at around 9:30. she could show according to the life 360 app
that at 253 the phone arrived at Warnmont 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 find
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. Yeah.
>> Um because it really is um remarkable the amount of detail. It helped investigators literally kind of like
walk the path that Shade did um to figure this whole thing out. >> Well, this brings us to the man who was
then charged with Shadeai Robinson's murder, Maxwell 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
Khloe. And Khloe 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 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 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. Um I like to cook. I have a lot of knives, but I certainly don't have a
collection like that. >> No, I know. And and you know, I'm I'm pretty sure investigators were hopeful
that amongst those knives, they would find something that maybe he played a role in this case, and that 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 a compartment would
pop out. Um we 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. Um, you know, shirts, pants, not necessarily like all
intimate items. Um, Khloe 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. Um, 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. Uh Anderson, Maxwell Anderson had um dogs. He would
complain about the dogs making too much noise upstairs. The tenant was home the night Shade went over there and never
heard a thing. Did investigators have a theory as to how Shadeai 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, a way
someone could have been killed without making a lot of noise and and certainly without a lot of blood, which is also
something else that they didn't find. Um, you know, he goes on the date with her April 1st. He's arrested by April
4th. On April 12th, 2024, the sheriff's office announced that the remains found on that remote beach were identified as
belonging to Shadeai Robinson. And on that same day, Maxwell Anderson was formally charged with firstdegree
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 Anmarie 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 one juror, Becca, talked about seeing those photos that
Maxwell Anderson had taken on his phone and then deleted. They are photos of Shade. 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 Becca had to say about this. She said, "I mean, I personally felt like I had lived the last few hours of
Shade's life with her. And to see her end up like that was disgusting, humiliating, just horrible."
>> Yeah. To think that to not know if she was dead or alive when those photos were
taken. They seem 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 juror 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, Shadeai's mother, father, and sister, they weren't having any of that.
>> No. Um, they were very outspoken. Shade'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. um she's been dealing with sort of health stuff and so
it 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. Um he was crying. He said Shade'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 uh 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 Shade. Shade
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 Shade'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, you
know, a young woman that they know, whether it was a daughter or a friend. Um, and they really rallied around this
family, which I thought was significant, Natalie, because the reality of it is is
that there 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 Dawnmer. And when you think of of Dawnmer's crimes, there's a sickening
feeling that comes with it. And this reminded Milwaukee of that sickening feeling. Um, and just as a kind of a
side note, when we um 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 in like 1920s, 1930s. 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 Dawnmer killed one of his
victims in. But I gotta tell you, I slept with the lights on. I would have too. >> Yeah.
>> Oh my gosh. 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 believed was a a human bone in an area
that investigators had already searched. Um, you talked to Shadeai's sister Adriana as well about the ongoing search
for Shadeai'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 to to stop fighting, like her battle's not over. Like, she's
never going to be able to rest in some sense. Heartbreakingly, you know, as we saw in the sentencing, um Shade's mother
asked Maxwell Anderson to confess where her daughter's crown was. And we're talking about her head, of course. Um he
though maintained his innocence, but we do hope that Shade's family will will get an answer someday. And I know
that's 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 a bright light
in this world. Well, she accepted Shadeai's graduation diploma um for her associates 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, um, I wish her all the luck in the world. I 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 uh thank you again for uh your incredible reporting and Marie on this
one. Appreciate it. >> Always great talking to you, Natalie. >> And if you liked this episode, please
rate or review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify.

48 Hours correspondents Natalie Morales and Anne-Marie Green discuss Sade Robinson's murder after her partial remains were discovered on a remote beach and scattered throughout Milwaukee, WI.

Crime. Social justice. Impact. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses Shadeai Robinson's murder, the investigation, and the impact on her family, highlighting key evidence and emotional moments.

Key points

The Mysterious Case of Shadeai Robinson. A tragic story unfolds as investigators piece together the events leading to Shadeai's murder.
Detective Joe Donner's Unique Style. Detective Donner stands out not just for her investigative skills but also her vintage fashion sense.
The Impact of Life 360. Adriana's use of the Life 360 app proves crucial in tracking Shade's last movements.
The Emotional Sentencing. Shade's family and community express their grief and demand justice during the sentencing of Maxwell Anderson.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

To see her end up like that was disgusting, humiliating, just horrible.

A juror's emotional reaction to the evidence presented in the case.

12:28WatchFeb 28, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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