19 year old Sade Robinson left her apartment for a first date
on April 1st, 2024 and after a few hours with this man, she
would never be seen alive again. Days later, unsuspecting
Milwaukee citizens began discovering severed human body
parts across public parks and on the shores of Lake MI Not only
had Shardaire met such a brutal end, but her body was scattered
around town like some sort of sick scavenger hunt.
And with that, police were on their own hunt for her killer
outlaw. Hello and welcome to Outlaw
podcast. I'm Ellen O'Neill, and in
today's episode, we're in Milwaukee, WI in 2024, where a
whole severed human leg has just been discovered by a member of
the public, A horrifying discovery regardless of the
context. And right now, police had
absolutely none. They weren't yet aware that a
young woman had disappeared the night before.
They weren't yet aware that this severed leg would lead them to a
man so depraved, so twisted that he had set up a thrill kill and
Paul Sharda had walked into a trap she didn't even know had
been set long in advance. Now, before we get into this
case, I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean
absolutely no harm or disrespect to anyone that we talk about in
today's case. Our episodes are made with the
utmost care to honour those who lost their lives and respect the
profound grief that their loved ones endure.
Given the nature of today's episode, we'll be covering some
very sensitive topics including sexual assault, torture,
mutilation, domestic violence and murder.
This episode is created with the hope to raise awareness, inspire
change and further Victim Support.
Viewer discretion is advised. It was May 10th, 2004 in
Vicksburg, Ms. when parents Sheena and Carlos welcomed their
beautiful baby girl charder Carlina Robinson.
Before her second birthday. Her parents split up and her
mother moved herself and Sharday out to Milwaukee, WI to live
with her parents. And Sharday loved living with
grandma and granddad. But soon a whole new family unit
would form. A stepdad would enter the
picture and eventually 1/2 sister too.
Shade's early childhood might sound a little bit rocky on
paper. Parents split moving states, new
father figure. But it all happened when she was
so young that all she would really remember as she grew
older was the secure family unit that she had by the age of five.
She adored her stepdad and her new baby sister Adriana.
She loved being a big sis and her biological father was still
as involved in her life as he possibly could be from states
away. He still adored her and he still
wanted to be in her life. Sade was so surrounded by love
and by people that cared for her enormously.
She was a very happy child and from a young age she had such a
little personality. She was social, fun, outgoing,
active and adventurous. She joined Girl Scouts, she did
dance classes, she played soccer, she loved performing
too. A girl of many interests and
many talents. But as she grew up, Sade began
having a hard time in school. So she moved to Florida to live
with her dad for a while, and she attended a new school out
there, but she ultimately went back to finish high school in
Milwaukee. We read that she'd really
struggled with her mental health and depression in her teen
years, which I'm sure many of us can relate to and know how
horrendous it is to go through such inner turmoil growing up
when you're still trying to make sense of life.
But Sade made it out the other side with fabulous grades and
her sparkling personality still intact.
She was even able to graduate a semester early.
She was so bright, she worked so hard, and she was destined for
great things. But there had been some people
along the way who had tried to break her.
And since moving back to Milwaukee, Sade had actually
been the victim of stalking and sexual assault by a friend that
she had trusted. After such a traumatic incident,
her guard was up all the time. Now, obviously it was hard to
trust people. She was wary of everyone.
And so she became extremely independent.
By the age of 19. She rented her own apartment.
She worked two-part time jobs in order to pay her bills, one at a
pizza place as a cashier and another at a members only club
as wait staff. Sharda was a hustler and a very
reliable worker. She never missed a shift, she
never turned up late, and if she was even running 5 minutes
behind, she would send a text to let her boss know she was so
responsible. And she was doing all of this
while studying a degree in Criminal justice.
She was amazing. By March 2019, she was only a
month away from finishing that course.
In fact, her graduation was planned to be on her 20th
birthday, a very clear end to the chapter of her teenage years
and a fresh start into adulthood.
Sade was thinking long and hard about what she wanted to do
after graduation. There were a few career paths
that she was weighing up, one of which was joining the US Air
Force. Her own family was full of
veterans. Her grandfather was now retired
from the US Navy. Her uncle was also retired from
the Army. It was in the family, she had
grown up hearing all these stories and so it seems that she
was leaning mostly towards that. But in the meantime she studied
her ass off and she spent her free time hanging out with her
loved ones. According to her friends and
family, Sade was so kind, so generous and just the absolute
definition of a social butterfly.
She loved to chat to anyone and everyone.
She would talk to strangers, she would make friends wherever she
went, she would first time her mom and update her on her life
and fill her in on her plans. And on the 31st of March 2019,
Shardaire had some very specific plans.
She was prepping for a first date the next day with a guy
that she had met out and about. It seems no one knows for sure
just where or when Sade met this man.
It's mostly suspected that they met at the bar that this guy
worked at. But the fact of the matter is
Sade was excited to see him. She had told practically
everyone that she crossed paths with that she was going on a
date. Her Co workers, her mom, her
friends, even the maintenance guy who worked in her apartment
complex. Of course we mentioned Sade is a
very chatty girl. That is just the kind of person
she is, but she was also a very savvy girl.
She was very big on safety. She always let everyone know
where she was. She shared her location with her
closest friends and family on the Life 360 app, which is a lot
more than just a location sharing app.
It can notify someone when your phone arrives and leaves each
new location, basically compiling a log for those that
you trust to share it with. And unfortunately, this becomes
really important in Shade's case.
On the day that she disappeared, it was the 1st of April 2024.
Shade was getting ready in her apartment around 4:00 PM when
she sent her date a text. Where are we meeting?
I can do five. He suggested a place downtown.
It was like a German brewery that does those giant signs of
beer. And he texts her saying, are you
hungry? I'm gonna need to stop by
Twisted Fishermen to pick up my W2 from last year and we could
eat there first. Twisted Fishermen is like a
seafood grill restaurant and bar that faces out onto the water.
The guy that she's going on a date with used to work there and
obviously needs to pick something up.
He asked her if she would rather eat there or at the brewery and
Sharda said let's eat it Twisted.
I'm feeling seafood. And by 5:30 PM that night on
April the first, they are sitting together at the bar
ordering food. The date seemed to go well
enough that by 6:24 PM they decided to head to the next
spot. They didn't end up going to that
brewery in the end, but instead a bar that was much closer
called Jukes on the Water. This was another place that her
date had previously worked at. What a coincidence.
But was it really a coincidence? Because actually, Sharda was
only 19 years old. In America, of course, you can't
be served alcohol under the age of 21.
So it seems that that this man was pulling some strings with
his former Co workers to get his underage date some alcohol.
It's even worse when you eventually learn that the guy
that was taking her On this date was 33 years old dating a 19
year old who can't legally be served alcohol in a bar.
So that's the kind of guy we're dealing with here.
Suspected man child. But they head to this next bar,
and it's from this point, based on CCTV footage of the date
alone, that the vibe between them seems to change.
This guy looks like he's almost ignoring Sade in favor of
speaking to the couple next to him.
She's just sat there off to the side by herself.
And mind you, this is a social, outgoing woman.
It's sad to see her be ignored like this.
Around 9:00 PM, they're ready to leave the bar.
They pay the tab and they hop into Sade's car, heading back to
her date's house, the last place that she would ever be seen
alive. The morning after her date,
Shade was scheduled to work a shift at the pizza restaurant.
Now, I told you she was famously a reliable worker.
Her boss has praised her for being such a great employee, so
commutative. She never skipped shifts.
She would book her time off well in advance.
And like I said, even if she was running 5 minutes late, she
would communicate, she would text, she would let people know.
So when Shade didn't show up to work at all, call on April 2nd
with no text, no call, her coworkers immediately worried
because this was so unlike her. They texted her to see if she
was okay, but it looked like the messages weren't even going
through. They weren't even delivering.
So was Shardes phone shut off again?
This was weird for her. This is the same girl who has
her live location shared with her closest people.
She's not just going to shut her phone off for no reason.
Her boss at the pizza place actually knew where Sade lived
and they were friends enough that she was like right OK I'm
just going to go round to her house and check on her and see
if she's OK. So she jumped in her car and
drove to Sade's apartment, but when she knocked and called for
her, Sade didn't respond. No one came to the door and her
car was missing, so the boss contacted Sharda's friends and
family, who were all immediately concerned.
Hearing this, they also know that this is so out of character
for her, so they rush to check her recent locations on Life
360, and they were horrified by what they saw.
The logs of Sharda's location through the night paint a
picture not of a successful first date, but of something
much more sinister. She had gone back to her dad's
house after the bar. She drove the two of them there,
and they were actually caught on a neighbour's security camera as
they entered his house. Sharde remained there, or at
least her phone remained there, until 12:45 AM.
Bear in mind, as I'm telling you, these locations, it's not
necessarily her, it's her phone. By 1:00 AM, the tracker was
heading towards downtown Milwaukee and by 115 she seemed
to have reached the area that her apartment was in.
But she didn't turn into to the parking lot.
She didn't actually stop or slow down.
She didn't go home. The tracker just keeps driving
past her apartment building, getting further and further out,
heading northbound. By 1:33 AM, her location seems
to settle at Pleasant Valley Park for about half an hour.
And this is what really scared her family because what 19 year
old girl is going out to a park alone in the dead of night and
staying there for half an hour? But it's not even that, it's
everything that comes next as well.
The location begins to move again.
For 10 minutes it travels West, and it settles once again in
another park right on the river. It keeps doing this, traveling
from park to park and lingering in each one through the early
hours of the morning. From 3:00 to 4:30 AM.
Her location is in Warnerman Park for an hour and a half.
Like obviously that can't be Sade.
No 19 year old girl is park hopping all alone in the middle
of the night. Her phone battery died at 4:40
AM while it was still on the move further northbound.
So at this stage her family have no idea where Sade or where her
phone had ended up. But one thing was clear,
something was wrong, and they needed to find her fast. 9:00 PM
on the day after her first date, Shade Robinson had been reported
missing to the police. And actually, they'd already
begun making headway in her case without even knowing what they
were trying to solve. Yet they had been receiving
calls and clues and reports. It would all soon link back to
Shade Robinson. Earlier that morning at 7:29 AM,
two women were walking along the sidewalk together when they
watched as a man who had been parked outside of what seemed to
be an abandoned building got out of the car, lit it on fire and
fled the scene. So the women are like what the
hell? They immediately go into a bit
of a panic. One of them starts like waving
her arms trying to draw anyones attention that's around warning
people that this car might explode.
Genuinely what a bizarre and scary thing to witness because
why the hell would someone do that and then walk away so
casually as well. This man that just got out of
the car was unfazed. The women called the police and
reported what they had just witnessed and they were at the
scene by 8:15 AM. But by this point the car had
pretty much burnt out completely.
The women described the suspect that they had seen as a tall
white man wearing a tan backpack and a grey hoodie.
A local CCTV camera caught an image of this man that backs up
this description. Police ran checks on the car's
plates and discovered that it belonged to a 19 year old girl
named Sharda Robinson. At this stage though, that
didn't raise any alarm bells Because police weren't familiar
with Sharda, she hadn't been reported missing yet.
So they gathered this information and they take it
back to the station while the car is hauled off, I think to be
kept in evidence while the case was investigated.
Later that afternoon, him a second lead in Sharda's case,
though again, it's before she's reported missing, so it's not
linked to her just yet. But a gruesome discovery had
been made just after 5:30 PM. Two men had been out walking in
the rain in Monument Park when they saw what appeared to be a
whole human leg laying by the shores of Lake MI.
They walked down the S curve from Sheridan.
They started walking S just for fun, you know, rough day on the
beach and they're walking that wax.
Yeah. Leg right there said that it was
up about approximately where the end of that stick that, you
know, branches that bushes so that they sawed up.
So it's like up on the hill kind of.
Yeah. OK.
So said that he, him and his buddy who's in my squad right
now, walked out, called us, and then when he came back, it was
about, I don't know, maybe 7 feet, 7 feet east side of rock.
I moved it just for evidence purposes.
OK, so that's been swept away. Yeah.
OK. And I've documented it well on
body Cam with different angles of where it was.
And what's your name again, bud? Evan.
OK Evan, how long were you out
here? About probably an hour.
An hour? Yeah.
OK. Used to come this way.
Yeah. Yeah.
The first time I see anything here.
Yeah, the first time you seen anything like this?
Yeah, OK. Pretty quickly, it was
determined that this leg belonged to a young black woman
of about 5 feet in height. And importantly, the leg hadn't
begun decomposition. This was very recent.
Police were now trying to identify a dead woman from her
leg. Later that night in comes a
report of a missing young black woman of about 5 feet in height.
Police could already see where this was going and so the very
next day they gained entry to shade Robinsons apartment.
But nothing was out of the ordinary in there.
There was no sign of a struggle, no clues to her whereabouts, She
hadn't left a note or anything. There was nothing to be learnt
from her apartment. Her loved ones had told the
police everything that they possibly could about Shardaire's
last day. You know, especially the first
day because it was becoming increasingly clear that they
needed to hunt him down and ask him some questions.
I don't know if her friends and family knew his name or not, but
they certainly had all of her locations from that night.
You know, they'd seen that she'd been at Twisted Fishermen and at
Dukes on the Water. So police could go down to those
places and speak to the staff and grab the CCTV footage.
They'd be able to identify and track down Sharda's date pretty
easily. Meanwhile, they had requested
her phone logs from her network provider that would give them
access to her text and call activity from earlier in the day
on her date. It because she'd been texting
her date as she was getting ready, planning where they were
going to meet and what time. And now the police had his phone
number, they could trace it to a man named Maxwell Anderson.
He was 33 years old, 14 years older than the 19 year old girl
he took out on a date. Maxwell Anderson was a
bartender. Again, it's believed that they
met at his place of work before they eventually planned and went
On this date. And the thing about Maxwell
Anderson is the police were very aware of him and they weren't
exactly shocked to see him linked to a violent case like
this one. Maxwell was born into a wealthy
family on the 26th of May 1990. He lived his whole life in
Wisconsin in a gorgeous big home.
His dad was quite frankly rolling in it because he owned
two different insurance companies.
And so Maxwell grew up never wanting for anything.
In fact, people that knew him said that he grew up bratty and
entitled, never having been told no everything, always going his
way. In 2014, Max was 24 years old
when he got into an argument with a female family member.
We're not exactly sure what relation she was to him, but we
do know that in this confrontation, he pushed the
woman. Not only that, but he was
smashing things up around her. He smashed up her kitchen.
He smashed up her phone. The poor woman had to call the
police on him and when they arrived, Max even said to the
police officers, what are you going to do, shoot me?
And then he actually tried to make a run for it.
He fled and jumped into the woman's car and only returned
home after he had crashed it. And he was of course arrested
for all of this. And then a year later, in 2015,
he was arrested once again for getting violent and threatening
at another family function. When a relative suggested that
Max should get a mental health check because his behaviour was
so bad and something had to be wrong, he got so offended and so
mad that he smashed a glass over the head of this family member.
He punched a wall. And then when a family member
tried to call the police to come and defuse the situation, he
grabbed the phone out of their hand.
This is a violent and angry man who can't control his emotions.
He just keeps racking up charges for domestic violence and
disorderly conduct. And then in 2019, he was 29
years old and in trouble with the police again.
A stranger had witnessed Maxwell being aggressive with a woman in
public, possibly a girlfriend at the time.
It made the stranger so uncomfortable and worried for
the woman that they stepped in and said something to Max and he
just went mental. He punched this guy over and
over again. He dragged him down to the floor
and got on top of him, still punching him like this was a
properly violent assault. For this incident, Max got a
year of probation, 25 hours of community service, and he was
ordered to pay $7000 in restitution to the victim for
medical bills and for lost wages.
Now that is a lot of money. The fact that this guy needed
that much hospital treatment afterwards and he couldn't work
tells you just how awful that assault was.
Maxwell Anderson is clearly very, very dangerous.
He will attack strangers. He will attack loved ones.
He seems at risk of attacking absolutely anyone that upsets
him or challenges him in any way, and now they are connecting
this violent man with the case of missing and tragically at
this point, presumed dead 19 year old Sade Robinson.
On the 4th of April, just three days after the date, police
arrested Maxwell Anderson a few blocks from his home as he was
waiting at a red light. When he was taken in for
questioning, he was clearly trying not to give much away,
but the evidence had mounted high enough that he didn't
really need to talk. The police knew it was him by
now. The human leg that had been
discovered by Lake MI had been taken to a lab where it was
identified to be Sharda Robinson's.
They could also confirm at this point that the leg had been
severed using a sharp instrument, essentially
confirming that she was dismembered by whoever had
killed her, ruling out any possibilities of her leg having
been torn off by anything in nature.
You know what I mean? This had been an intentional act
by another human being. The burnt car that had been
confirmed to be Shardes, the car that she had driven to Maxwell
Anderson's house, the last place that she had been seen alive,
revealed her clothes. The same outfit that she had
worn on the date was burnt to a crisp in the back of that car.
The car that Maxwell Anderson had driven out to a random St.
and set on fire to destroy evidence.
Not only did the CCTV footage of the incident look exactly like
him, but the grey hoodie that he was wearing that day was found
in his car when he was arrested. The police obtained a search
warrant for Max's home, which seemed rather unassuming
actually, until they got to the basement.
As they went down the stairs leading to it, they spotted
blood on the walls. And inside that basement was
some sort of horror sex tortured dungeon.
And not like in a BDSM50 Shades kind of where this was literally
like something out of a horror movie.
There was a bed and a bunch of sex gear like hoists and
handcuffs, and there was a a curtain around the bed.
But then there were a mass of weapons, anything and everything
that you could think of. An axe, firearms, power tools.
He even had a wall with 51 knives on it.
That's insane. There were also a few empty gas
cans laying around, which were obviously the ones that he had
used to torch Shade's stuff and possibly even her car.
More blood was also found in Max's bedroom and in his
bathroom. But here's where things get
stranger. When the DNA testing of that
blood comes back, it wasn't Sharda's.
It was someone else's. It wasn't Max's either.
So did this mean that there were other victims?
But with Max in custody, more developments would come and more
parts of Sharda would be discovered.
On the 6th of April, her other foot was found in a park close
to where her car had been set on fire, along with other lumps of
flesh that were confirmed to be hers.
Now, we don't know if this was intentional, like her body
really had been cut into shreds by her attacker, or if the
scattering of her flesh and tissue was the work of animals.
Either way, it's absolutely horrific.
Around this time, Maxwell Anderson was officially charged
with first degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a
corpse, and arson, and Sade Robinson was officially declared
dead. Over the coming weeks and
months, her remains continued to surface.
Parts of her were found scattered in the parks that her
Life 360 app had logged her location on.
On the night that she disappeared, her torso washed up
on one of the shores, almost whole, but missing one of her
breasts that had clearly been severed by her killer.
At this point, it's clear that there was an element of
enjoyment to the dismembering. It could have been argued up
until this point that her killer had dismembered her body simply
for ease of disposing it. But to intentionally cut off one
of her breasts? That would make no difference to
how he got rid of the torso. He just wanted to do that.
He just had the desire to cut off one of her breasts.
Over a month after her death, on the 18th of May, 1 of Sharda's
arms even washed up one state over in Illinois.
As they slowly recovered these pieces of hair, they sent them
off for a post mortem. But since most of her remains
had been thrown into the water and washed up on the Shaws,
carrying out any kind of detailed post or getting any
kind of detailed answers was kind of impossible.
When a body is found in water, especially if it's been there
for a long time, a lot of the soft tissue may be destroyed.
Any physical evidence like fingerprints or DNA are
obviously washed away. Being in water also speeds up
the rate of decomposition, so especially those pieces that
were discovered weeks and months into the investigation will be
almost impossible to get any information from.
Nevertheless, the examiner was able to make some conclusions.
She couldn't pinpoint Sharda's exact cause of death, but she
could at the very least tell that she had been stabbed.
It's unclear whether that is the cause of death or just one of
the awful things that happened to Sharda Robinson as part of
the attack on her. Honestly now that we know that
this guy has a whole entire torch and dungeon under his
house, it horrifies me to think what he could have done to
Sharda for the fun of it just because he was sick and twisted.
Another thing to note though, and this is just so horrific,
Shardes head has never been found.
Still to this day Maxwell has never offered up where it is, no
matter how much Shardes family beg him.
So unfortunately they've never had the closure of having all of
her back to be able to lay her to rest.
Her mum Sheena has written letters to Sharda's killer in
jail just begging him to give over the location, give over any
information so that she can bury all of her baby.
She's also begged his family to try to speak to him and try to
get through to him and convince him to give over this
information. But still, he's never said a
word. At this stage, Maxwell was being
held without bail, waiting for his court date, and he was
pleading not guilty. He wasn't prepared to go down
for his crimes without traumatizing Sharda's family
through a trial. But while he waited for his
trial, as soon as the police had done their investigation in his
home, Max's family sold his house two months after the
murder, before the case has even gone to trial.
Maybe they wanted it gone and filled by someone else so that
it couldn't keep being checked for evidence and worsening their
son's case. Who knows, maybe it was
sinister. Or maybe it was to get the money
to pay for his legal fees, which mind you, would be quite
expensive because Maxwell was going to be working with an
infamous lawyer known for getting people off who are
clearly guilty of murder. This lawyer has managed to get
his clients found not guilty even when they have literally
confessed to the crime. And even in cases where evidence
is just overwhelming. And then in the case where they
might still be found guilty, he manages to get them as little
time behind bars as possible. We covered the Slender Man
stabbing case a while ago. That was 2 teenage girls, one of
them named Morgan Geyser, who was ultimately represented by
the same lawyer. She and her friend had murdered
their other friend because Slender Man had told them to do
it. Morgan Geyser, while I think she
was still found guilty, she never got sent to prison or
anything, or juvie. She was a child.
Instead, she was sent to a psychiatric facility and she
only spent, I want to say six years there.
So Maxwell was enlisting the help of that exact same lawyer.
Clearly at this point he still has a level of confidence that
he might be able to get off lightly or completely.
But soon a witness testimony would appear that threw the
whole case into a new light and absolutely screwed Maxwell's
chances of being seen as anything other than a depraved
evil psycho killer that could well have turned into a serial
killer. A confidential informant had
brought themselves forward to the police because they believed
that they had some very disturbing yet very crucial
information about Max and about this case.
This person was one of Maxwell's friends that he had known for a
few years, someone that he trusted, someone that he spoke
quite freely around and clearly felt that he could voice some of
his darkest desires in front of. This informant told the police
that on the 5th of March 2024, that's a month before Sharda's
murder, he had gone over to Max's house to hang out and that
was when he first became aware of the existence distance of
that torture dungeon in his basement.
Max took him down there to show him around and he was clearly
very proud of everything that he had set up.
I think at first he was kind of implying that its purpose was
just for sex, but if that was the case, then why was the whole
entire room covered in plastic tarp?
Literally the whole entire thing.
Not just the floors, but the walls, the ceiling, even lining
the sink. He wasn't taking any chances.
And that was when Max was actually honest with the friend
about what this was all for. He just point blank told him
that he had lined everything up down here because he is going to
kill someone. He wanted to commit a thrill
kill. He wanted to know what it would
be like to murder someone, to take someone's life and to try
to get away with it. He had been thinking about this
for some time, and not only that, he'd already chosen his
victim, this young woman that he'd met about a month ago, Sade
Robinson. His plan was to ask her on a
date. He'd even anticipated that he
might have to ask her a few times, thinking that Shade might
initially say no to him. He told the friend that he would
ask again and again and again until she agreed.
He said that when she eventually said yes, he would take her out.
They would have a few drinks, then he would bring her back to
his place where he planned to murder her.
His plan at this stage was to pull out one of his firearms
while they were still upstairs, probably in the living room, and
scare her, threaten her into doing whatever he demanded.
He would tell her to walk down to the basement where he then
planned to shoot her dead and chop up her body and scatter it
all over the city. This is what he told his friend.
According to that informant, Max was really matter of fact about
the whole thing. There was no emotion attached at
any point. And actually, let's just take it
back a second because I told you that his plan was to threaten
her with a gun and get her to walk down into the basement
herself. She would have seen everything
that he had set up and laid out. She will have seen the Dexter
level dungeon down there, covered in plastic tarp and
tools and weapons all around. She will have known immediately
what kind of fate awaited her in her next moments.
She will have been so scared. It's harrowing to think about
what might have been going on in her head in those final moments.
I can't imagine you'd have ever felt a feel like it in your
life. Now, we do have to talk about
this informant, by the way, because I genuinely can't
believe that this man never went to the police after experiencing
everything Max had just told and shown him.
What do you mean? You're standing in another man's
basement that is covered in plastic tarp lining the entire
room. There are power tools laid out,
saws, knives, guns. He's saying that he has a plan
to kill that he is clearly putting into action right in
front of you, and you don't go to the police immediately.
A murderer could have been literally stopped in his tracks
before he committed it. A death could have been
prevented, a life could have been saved.
But this man, this informant, just stood around and did
nothing, only to eventually come to the police anonymously with
his tail between his legs when he learned that Max had actually
gone through with his plan. It's just so incredibly
frustrating and heartbreaking to know that the outcome of this
case could have been different. It never needed to become a
case. For a whole year after Sharday's
death, different vigils and protests and celebrations of her
life took place. Local residents had decorated
their driveways with the colour pink to honour her.
There were even plans to have a memorial made for Sharday there
in Milwaukee, but this was ultimately scrapped when the
supervisors pulling it all together received an onslaught
of abusive and racist emails. And Shardes own friends and
family had been receiving this kind of senseless abuse this
whole entire time. It's literally just pure evil at
that point. As if this family hasn't gone
through enough without facing this on top of grieving their
loved one and finding out all of these awful awful things that
happened to her. And now they're having their
plans ruined when they're just trying to honor their lost loved
one. The way that Sharda's family
were treated in the aftermath of her case is truly devastating.
But they never let that stop them from being vocal about her
case and the changes that need to be made now that the memorial
wouldn't go ahead. Sade's mother, Sheena, was
looking for other ways to immortalize her daughter and let
her legacy and her memory live on, changing the lives of others
as it did. And so she set up a foundation
named Sade's Voice. It's a nonprofit organization
dedicated to providing support to the families of missing Black
women and girls, starting with Wisconsin.
Sade's Voice aims to build a whole world where every person,
regardless of race or background, receives the right
amount of attention and care to their case.
It's so important to us here at Outlaw to use this platform to
highlight the nonprofit organizations that families of
victims have set up to honor their loved ones legacy.
It's such an inspiring display of strength and it impresses me
immensely every single time. I think it's such an incredible
thing to do. And so the link to Sharda's
Voice Foundation will be below in the description.
Please do take a look and learn about what they do and if you
have the means, a donation to their cause would go a long way
for the safety of black girls in Wisconsin.
Now back to the case. Maxwell Anderson's murder trial
began on the 28th of May 2025 and up until this point he had
refused to cooperate with investigators and actually that
wasn't about to change at this point.
I don't know why I said it like it was going to change.
He refuses to give away any kind of motive, explanation or
reasoning for why he did what he did to Sharda, which is the
worst part of it all. It one thing to not give
information to investigators so they're struggling to solve the
case, but it's a whole other level of evil to deny a grieving
family any kind of closure or answers.
During the trial, it was revealed that Max had actually
taken photos of Sade on his phone back at his house while
she was either unconscious or even dead.
It's not entirely clear what the context is, but what is clear is
that Sade was not an active participant in what was
happening to her in these photos.
In one of them, Max has his hand on her right breast, and in the
very next photo, he is holding her breast in his hand after he
had cut it off of her body. He had tried deleting these
images, but no images ever truly deleted forever.
Obviously, investigators were able to recover them.
And with all of this grotesque evidence piled high, it wasn't
looking good for Maxwell, especially because a majority
female jury had been chosen for this trial for the case of an
innocent young woman who had simply been living her life
going on a date, something most young women do.
This is a jury that could relate to Shade.
They could see her as their friend, as their daughter, as
their sister or even as themselves.
There was also a female judge on this trial as well, and
statistically women feel more confident handing guilty
verdicts to male perpetrators of sexually motivated crimes
against women. So it really wasn't looking good
for Maxwell. His defence.
Like I said, give no motive. No reason as to why he killed
Shardaer other than insisting that he actually just didn't do
it. Instead they complain about the
Police Department spending too much money investigating the
case. She's just bullshit and also
like so irrelevant to anything right now.
Who cares how much it costs to get to this point?
The fact is that we're here and the evidence against you has
been found. Throughout the trial, more
evidence was brought up, like some grainy CCTV footage that
showed a tall figure dumping something in the park, believed
to be footage of Maxwell disposing of Sharda's body
parts. Let's not forget they were also
going to get those women up as witnesses to tell the court how
they had seen Maxwell hop out of Sharda's car, light it on fire
in broad daylight and walk away as if it was nothing.
And then of course, there was the DNA evidence, including a
new piece which was Maxwell's grey hoodie from the night of
the murder that had been found bundled up in his neighbour's
bin. It was covered in Sharda's blood
and his own DNA. Look, there's no getting away
with murder here. It took the jury all of 40
minutes to deliberate and return with a guilty verdict.
Maxwell Anderson would pay in time for what he did to Sharder.
When he's read the verdict, he actually, for the first time in
this whole case, looks like he's experiencing emotion.
He looks as if he's going to cry.
And then you remember it's only because it's over himself.
He never cared about anyone but himself.
Sade's family gave really strong emotional statements.
Both her younger sister Adriana and her mother were pleading for
Max to be given the maximum sentence.
And it's truly heartbreaking what her family went through
learning all of that information.
Of what this man did to Sharday and what she went through in
those final moments. And thank God for that guilty
verdict because I, like everyone else, really believed that they
stopped a serial killer in the making.
And you know what? We might actually have evidence
that he was heading in that direction because during all of
this, another girl had gotten in touch with journalists saying
that Maxwell Anderson had taken her out for a date and taken her
back to his house, just like he had with Sharday.
And he tried to make her go down to the basement with him.
So I got a little bit of a shorter and he was like, do you
want to see the basement? And I was like, no, I'm.
OK, he's like it's. Creepy down there.
And I was like, no, that's OK. The woman also said that he had
dug a really large hole in his backyard, and actually, it was
still there at the time that he was caught for Sharda's murder.
So who knows what or who that hole was intended to be for.
Maxwell Anderson had a terrifying pattern in his
behavior. It should have never gotten to a
point where he killed even one woman.
But I actually want to cast your minds back to when police
searched his home and they found blood in his bedroom and in his
bathroom. That wasn't his.
That wasn't chardiers, it was never actually identified at
all. And that is absolutely
horrifying to think about that there could have been other
victims prior to Sharda that we are completely unaware of, and
that clearly if that is the case, those victims will not
have seen any kind of justice. It's all so bleak, but at least
Maxwell Anderson would be off the streets and out of society
forever more because the judge sentenced him to life in prison
without parole. Lock him up.
Throw away the fucking key. Sharda Mae Robinson was 19 years
old, 19, and already she had achieved so much more than he
had at the age of 33 when they met.
For a start, she had graduated early, she had a degree, she was
an exemplary employee, a precious daughter, a beautiful
friend. She was bright, she was bubbly.
She made everyone around her so happy.
She was going to prosper and do amazing things in her life, but
instead Maxwell Anderson murdered her in the most evil
way possible. Outside the pizza shop that
Sharda worked at, a mural of her was painted to commemorate her
and to remember her. It's such a beautiful painting.
She has a Halo and she's up in the clouds finally resting.
There is an epidemic right now of men murdering girls.
We are literally living through a femicide emergency.
Until men are able to treat this with the same fear and
seriousness that women do, I don't think we'll be able to
break out of it. We know that both in America and
here in Britain, we have active politicians and men in
governmental power with heinous allegations and guilty charges
against them for violence towards women.
How on earth are we going to be able to implement public safety
for women and girls when they're not even safe with the men who
control our governments, the ones who make the policies and
uphold the laws? We are told so often to
prioritize our own safety, to wear different clothes, to not
go to certain places at certain times because you never know who
could be lurking there and what they might want to do to you.
But the fact of the matter is, no matter how women try to
prepare and arm themselves, if a man wants to kill her, he's
going to kill her. The issue needs to be dealt with
at the root with the men, not with the women who fall victim
time and time and time again. What you see in the news and in
content like this is only the tip of the iceberg of this
epidemic. So many women are being killed
every week at the hands of men, and it is all of our
responsibility to scream and shout and get something done
about it. We need to see change that's
changing our governments and policies, changes in the media
from institutions, changes from us on an individual level.
I think men especially need to recognize the sexism and
misogyny that underlies each of these crimes.
And of course, it doesn't start with murder or abuse, does it?
It starts with small sexist comments and dodgy patterns
around women. Call out your mates, correct
them, confront them on their bad behaviour.
All of us have a part to play in ending the femicide emergency
that we are currently facing. Now, as we come to the end of
this episode, I want to take one last moment to remember Sade
Carlina Robinson. For the beautiful girl that she
was, inside and out. For her love of novels, cooking
for her loved ones, her dream to join the forces and to protect
others. For how independent she made
herself at such a young age, for how much of an incredible woman
she was becoming, and most importantly, for how many young
woman's lives she saved and changed in her work.
From all of us here at Outlaw, we send our sincere condolences
to the loved ones of Shade Robinson and that is all we have
for this episode. Thank you so much once again for
tuning in to Outlaw podcast. If you're watching this episode
on YouTube, don't forget to subscribe.
Leave us a like, leave us a comment.
I love reading the conversation that happens with every single
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This audience means the world to me.
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please rate as five stars. Again, leave us a comment.
I've been checking the comment sections on the podcast
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see you in the next episode. Bye.