The second day in Anthony Eugene Robinson’s murder trial saw digital, photographic, video, and physical evidence introduced. WMRA’s Randi B. Hagi reports.
Robinson stands accused of murdering Allene “Beth” Redmon and Tonita Lorice Smith at the Howard Johnson motel in Harrisonburg less than a month apart in late 2021. On Tuesday, the digital evidence extracted from Robinson’s phone showed extensive and regular searches for pornography. In the minutes and days around when Robinson was captured on surveillance cameras removing body-shaped objects from his room in a shopping cart, some of these porn searches described women with similar characteristics to the two deceased, with some of the titles suggesting violence.
Records from the dating app Tagged show he exchanged messages with Redmon before she came to his motel room on October 24, 2021.
Repeatedly throughout the day, Defense Attorney Louis Nagy asked police officers on the stand if they had been in the motel room when Redmon and Smith died – underscoring that they didn’t see what had happened. Nagy also honed in on two small, clear vials that can be seen in one of the police photos of the motel room. One of them appeared to have a light or clear liquid inside, but investigators did not collect or test the vials.
An orange-handled shopping cart was wheeled into the courtroom among other physical evidence from the motel. Harrisonburg Police Lieutenant Brooke Wetherell said that not only does its coloring match that of the shopping cart on the surveillance footage, but it was the only orange-handled shopping cart around the motel when they arrested Robinson. He was apprehended on November 23, 2021 in the parking lot of the Home Depot across Route 33 from the motel.
A video from the nearby Walmart showed Robinson purchasing a skein of chunky, black yarn before either woman visited his room. Investigators had testified Monday that Smith’s body was found with the same kind of yarn looped around one of her ankles. Her arms had been bound behind her back with nylon rope. Both her and Redmon’s bodies were found naked from the chest down, except for socks.
The jury also watched a video of Robinson’s entire police interview, lasting about an hour. In it, he goes from saying he did not know either woman, to saying he just talked on the phone with them, to saying they each came to his room and took an unknown pill and collapsed. Eventually, after being shown the footage of himself pushing the shopping cart, Robinson admits that Smith “stopped breathing,” and he took her body out wrapped in a sheet, the same way he took out Redmon’s. Towards the end of the interview, he became agitated and shoved his chair back into the corner.
Garst also called Trenton Mowbray to the stand on Tuesday. Mowbray is currently incarcerated on a conviction of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and probation violations. He said Robinson admitted killing multiple women to him when they were locked up in adjacent cells in the RSW Regional Jail last year. Nagy played recordings of multiple calls Mowbray made from jail, in which Mowbray made claims he admitted on the stand were exaggerations or lies – such as telling his parents he was in the same cell as Robinson and Mowbray had intimidated him.
Robinson sat silently in the courtroom throughout the day’s proceedings.