Lifetime is presenting Valentine’s Day counter-programming that’s as far from romantic as you can get: the true-crime TV movie The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story, which debuts this Saturday, February 14.
Written by Miriam Van Emst (Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell) and David Weaver (Love & Jane) and directed by ex-Law & Order star Elisabeth Röhm, the production stars Waiting to Exhale’s Lela Rochon and Sight Unseen’s Jarod Joseph in a ripped-from-the-headlines story of one woman’s narrow escape from a serial killer.
“After sending her son off to military school, Monica White (Rochon) is finally ready to start dating again and focus on herself. When she meets Anthony Robinson (Joseph) online, she is charmed by him and believes she’s finally found a real connection,” Lifetime explains in a press release. “As their relationship deepens, Monica decides to meet Anthony in person but is unaware Anthony harbors a dangerous secret.”
That “dangerous secret” and the name Anthony Robinson are all too familiar to people living in and around Washington, D.C. It was just a year ago that the real-life Anthony Eugene Robinson was found guilty of killing two women in Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 2021.
Robinson had been dubbed the Shopping Cart Killer since he used shopping carts to transport the bodies of his victims. Surveillance footage showed Robinson entering a Howard Johnson Hotel room in Harrisonburg with Allene “Beth” Redmon in October 2021 and with Tonita Smith the following month, according to WTOP. In both instances, he left the hotel room with a shopping cart covered by a sheet, and the two women’s bodies were found on a nearby hillside.
Additionally, Robinson is linked to the deaths of two women whose bodies were found with a shopping cart nearby in Fairfax County, Virginia, and he’s suspected of the death of a woman whose remains were found in a shopping cart in D.C., according to NBC Washington. Authorities have also investigated Robinson’s potential connection to the death of a woman in Prince George’s County, Maryland, the outlet adds.
After a four-day trial in January 2025, a jury took half an hour to decide Robinson was guilty of all charges against him in the deaths of Redmon and Smith — two counts of aggravated murder, two counts of first-degree murder, and two counts of concealing a dead body — as WTOP reported. The jury recommended that Robinson be sentenced to four life counts plus 10 years and a $400,000 fine, and his sentencing is scheduled for May 22, according to Rocktown Now.
But the other namesake character of The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story is the real-life Monica White, who told People about her encounters with Robinson.
“I knew something was wrong with him,” White told the magazine. “Something snapped. It was crazy.”
White met Robinson on the dating app Tagged in late 2020, and in January 2021, Robinson traveled from Harrisonburg to Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, to spend time with White in person. But his bedroom behavior unnerved her.
“He tried to tie me up,” she told People. “But I wouldn’t let him. I was like, ‘I’m not into it.’ He pulled my arms behind my back and then grabbed me by my neck.”
Robinson also said he wanted to move in with White, but she told him he was moving too fast, she recalled.
On a return visit for White’s birthday the following month, Robinson’s behavior got even more disturbing. “He peed in my bed on my birthday. I could not believe it,” she told People. “I allowed you to sleep in my bed, and you pee in my bed?”
White then broke up with Robinson, and he “started snapping,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Get your stuff and let’s go.’”
Robinson ended up staying at a motel in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and offered White $500 to visit him there, she said. She refused, but later, she saw him one more time, spotting him outside that motel as she passed by in her car.
“He looked like a totally different man,” White remembered. “Something snapped in him. I don’t know whether he was doing drugs and ended up totally flipping out. It was like I[‘d] seen a ghost, a monster.”
After Robinson’s November 2021 arrest, White’s cousin showed her his mugshot. She told People she didn’t think Robinson wanted to kill her, but she worried her rejection of him is what drove him into a rage. “I felt like I might’ve been the reason why he might have snapped,” she said. “I had actually allowed this man into my home, allowed him to stay overnight in my home. Then, to find out later on, you started killing people?”
Now White’s story is getting the Lifetime treatment. “After her birthday celebration, [Anthony’s] demeanor turns menacing,” Lifetime’s press release adds. “Trusting her instincts, Monica manages to get Anthony out of her home before things escalate. When she begins connecting the dots between Anthony’s past and a string of murders haunting her community, Monica realizes she may be the key to ending the deadly rampage.”
The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story is produced by Navid Soofi for PF Birch Productions Inc., in association with Rohm Feifer Entertainment and Studio TF1 America. Kara Feifer, Timothy O. Johnson, and Meghan Hooper White join Röhm as executive producers.
The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story, Saturday, February 14, 8/7c, Lifetime
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