MILWAUKEE (AP) — A jury found a Milwaukee man guilty Friday of killing and dismembering a 19-year-old college student on the night of their first date.
Prosecutors charged Maxwell Anderson in April 2024 with first-degree intentional homicide, dismembering a corpse, arson and hiding a corpse in connection with Sade Robinson's death. The jury convicted Anderson on all four counts.
Investigators believe Anderson killed her on their first date on April 1, 2024, dismembered her body and spread her remains around Milwaukee County. They also believe he burned her car to hide evidence.
Assistant District Attorney Ian Vance-Curzan told jurors during closing arguments Thursday afternoon that Anderson and Robinson had met at a bar a week before her disappearance. Surveillance video and cellphone text and tracking records show they spent the late afternoon and early evening of April 1 drinking at two bars before going back to Anderson's apartment.
Vance-Curzan said photos on Anderson's phone show Anderson groping Robinson as she lay face down on his couch. The prosecutor said Robinson was incapacitated at that point and could not have resisted.
Surveillance video shows her car leaving the apartment early on the morning of April 2 and arriving at a county park along the shores of Lake Michigan. There, under the cover of darkness, he cut her body into pieces, Vance-Curzan said. Later that morning, he burned her car behind an abandoned building before taking a bus back to his apartment, Vance-Curzan said.
Anderson's attorney, Tony Cotton, said during his closing arguments that prosecutors failed to show Anderson ever intended to kill Robinson, a key element in the first-degree intentional homicide charge. Cotton also argued that nobody heard a struggle in his apartment. Anderson never tried to conceal his identity when he boarded the bus and his clothes and shoes were clean then even though he had been supposedly dismembering a body in a muddy park, Cotton added.
Asked to comment on the verdicts, Cotton said in an email to The Associated Press on Friday that he's sure it was a difficult case for jurors and he respected their time and attention.
Anderson faces a mandatory life sentence in prison when he's sentenced Aug. 15.
Maxwell Anderson, right, with his defense attorney Anthony Cotton, left, in Milwaukee County Circuit court on Thursday, June 5, 2025, in Milwaukee, Wis. (Angela Peterson/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP, Pool)
