Fairfax County police are investigating a man they call “The Shopping Cart Killer” after four victims have been killed since August.
Police said they believe suspect Anthony Robinson, 35, is a serial killer. Robinson is in custody, officials said at a news conference Friday.
Detectives believe Robinson met victims on dating websites, went to hotels with them, killed them and then transported their remains in shopping carts. Badly decomposed remains of two victims were found together in a container.
“Our Shopping Cart Killer does unspeakable things with his victims,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said.
Robinson’s attorney has not issued a statement, law enforcement officials said Friday.
Police “tentatively” believe that Cheyenne Brown, a 29-year-old woman who was missing from Southeast D.C., is one of the victims.
Brown took a Metro train from D.C. to the Huntington station in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County on Sept. 30 and was not heard from again, police said.
The human remains found in the same area were preliminarily identified as Brown’s, on the basis of a distinctive tattoo, police said.
Brown was the mother of a 7-year-old boy and was pregnant, her family said in an interview with News4 earlier this month, desperate for answers about her disappearance.
Robinson was charged in late November in the deaths of Allene Elizabeth “Beth” Redmon, 54, of Harrisonburg, and Tonita Lorice Smith, 39, of Charlottesville.
Their bodies were found the night of Nov. 24 in a vacant lot in Harrisonburg.
Smith was the mother of six children.
Police believe there may be additional victims. Anyone with information is asked to contact police.
Robinson is known to have lived in D.C., Prince George’s County and New York, Davis said. He has a “remarkable absence of a criminal history,” compared with the horror of the crimes of which he’s accused, the chief said.
Human remains were found in the Alexandria section of Fairfax County on Wednesday, police said earlier Friday. The remains were found “tucked away in an isolated wooded area,” in a container near a shopping cart in the 2400 block of Fairhaven Avenue. The location is about a mile south of the Capital Beltway.
Stay with NBC Washington for more details on this developing story.