On April 2, 2024, a walker along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Warnimont Park found human remains, setting off a homicide investigation that would center on a missing Milwaukee college student, Sade Robinson. The discovery launched a search for both a victim and a suspect amid few immediate answers.
Sade, 19, was a criminal justice student and server who had planned to join the Air Force. She was last seen after a date on the evening of April 1. When her family reported her missing, detectives traced a disturbing path of evidence. A burned car was recovered behind an abandoned building about three miles from Sade’s apartment. Inside, deputies found Sade’s purse beneath the driver’s seat and clothing in the trunk, including the jeans and underwear she had been wearing — the jeans turned inside out — and the smell of gasoline. Fire investigators concluded the vehicle had been deliberately set.
Digital records helped fill gaps in the timeline. Sade’s Life360 app showed her phone battery died at 4:35 a.m. at Warnimont Park, the same shoreline where remains were located. Security cameras captured a shadowy figure dragging something to the water and later carrying a large backpack away. Detectives noted the figure’s height and gait; the position of the driver’s seat in the burned car suggested the last driver was at least six feet tall. DNA testing would later confirm that remains found across the city belonged to Sade.
Investigators reconstructed Sade’s evening. On April 1 she worked a shift, then messaged a man she had recently met, Maxwell Anderson, and arranged to meet at The Twisted Fisherman. Surveillance showed Sade and Maxwell together at that restaurant and later at Duke’s on Water, where they played beer pong. Life360 placed them at Maxwell’s house around 9:30 p.m.; Sade’s phone left the house around midnight. Cameras later captured Sade’s car driving around with fogged windows for hours before it was abandoned and burned.
Police arrested Maxwell on April 4 and executed a search warrant at his home. Officers found many knives but no obvious blood evidence or a weapon linked to a dismemberment. As the official investigation continued, family and friends carried out independent searches. Two family friends found Sade’s blanket and a human bone in areas police had previously searched, heightening community frustration and involvement.
A key witness emerged: Chloe Wright, Maxwell’s ex‑girlfriend, who told investigators about a secluded spot Maxwell called his “secret beach” and led them to Warnimont Park. Her testimony helped establish that Maxwell knew the area well. Prosecutors added that to the other evidence: Life360 location data, surveillance of a person carrying a large backpack near the lake, the burned car containing Sade’s items, and later the preliminary identification of a severed leg at Warnimont as Sade’s. On April 12, 2024, Maxwell Anderson was charged with first‑degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse, and arson.
In the months before trial, forensic teams worked intensively. More remains believed to be from the same victim were recovered across Milwaukee and later confirmed by DNA testing to be Sade’s. Police also recovered a jacket in a neighbor’s trash can that tested positive for Sade’s DNA on the hood and zipper pull. Video from neighborhood and city cameras showed a man later identified as Maxwell traveling on a bus wearing the same pants and shoes seen after the burned vehicle. Evidence from Maxwell’s phone included deleted photos of Sade at his house, some of which jurors viewed as depicting her in a compromised state.
Maxwell, who had prior convictions for battery and other offenses, pleaded not guilty. His defense emphasized the circumstantial nature of the case: no one had witnessed the killing, no murder weapon tied to Maxwell was recovered, no clear motive was established, and questions remained about the precise cause and location of death. Maxwell maintained he did not commit the crimes and suggested he had been set up, at one point telling investigators he regretted not walking Sade to her car and speculating someone else could have abducted her.
At trial in May 2025, prosecutors laid out a coherent timeline: the movements recorded by Life360, surveillance footage of Sade and Maxwell together and of a figure at Warnimont Park, the burned car with Sade’s belongings, the backpack footage, the jacket bearing Sade’s DNA found in a neighbor’s trash, and the images recovered from Maxwell’s phone. Chloe Wright testified about the secret beach and Maxwell’s controlling behavior. Volunteers and family members described finding additional items along the shoreline, sometimes in places previously searched by law enforcement.
The defense urged jurors to focus on gaps and the lack of direct, eyewitness proof of the killing. But jurors found the accumulation of circumstantial evidence persuasive: the timeline and location data, surveillance and physical evidence linking Maxwell to Sade, and the phone images that many described as especially compelling.
Deliberations were brief. Maxwell Anderson was convicted of first‑degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse, and arson. At sentencing, the judge described the crime as among the most serious and imposed life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Sade’s family and community mourned publicly and sought to preserve her memory. On what would have been her 20th birthday they held a memorial. Her sister, Adriana, accepted Sade’s associate degree at graduation the following spring. Sade’s mother, Sheena, launched a program to help crime victims and worked with a state representative to push for a task force focused on violence against Black women and girls. The city and local supporters commissioned a mural near Sade’s workplace and installed a memorial bench at Warnimont Park, the shoreline where key evidence first surfaced. The family continues to press for answers about remaining unrecovered remains, including Sade’s head, which has not been found.
Detective Norah Donegan said she believed the investigation likely prevented further violence and that the brutality of the homicide and dismemberment indicated a continued danger if the offender had not been stopped. Sade’s loved ones acknowledge the conviction cannot bring her back, but they say they will keep her memory alive through advocacy, community support, and efforts to help other victims.