Who Is Anthony Milan Ross?
At the time, Ross was a 45-year-old chef who lived in Phoenix. He had become a local television personality known for advocating a vegan lifestyle. Ross used his own personal weight loss and transformation story to promote healthy living.
Ross made regular appearances on local TV programs, including Good Morning Arizona and 12News and gained attention for losing more than 300 lbs. eating a plant-based diet. He even boasted about how much his weight loss improved his relationship with Nigel, telling Arizona 12News just two months before the murders that he’d gone from sitting in a chair in the middle of their yard playing catch to coaching Nigel’s sports’ teams.
People loved hearing Ross’s story and seeing his before-and-after photos online. Soon those led to major speaking engagements, national television appearances and packed cooking classes. Ross got publishing deals and wrote two books with Dr. Scott Stoll, an advocate for plant-based lifestyle.
He even appeared alongside Stoll and other celebrities, including Samuel L. Jackson, in a 2018 feature-length documentary Eating You Alive.
To the outside world, Ross personified the idea that if you work hard and change your lifestyle, you’d be rewarded with positive results. But nothing was as it seemed. While Ross had shed hundreds of pounds, he was still carrying significant emotional weight.
Inside His Mind
Clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Leslie Dobson, who is familiar with the case but didn’t work on it directly, tells A&E Crime + Investigation many of Ross’s traits and behaviors were consistent with narcissism, depression and psychopathy.
“To be 518 lbs., you have to be pretty depressed. So, it tells me that he does have access to something very dark inside of him that led to him being so large,” she says. “And if you look up the psychopathy checklist, he meets so much of the criteria,” including traits like lack of empathy, pathological lying and impulsivity.
Dobson also notes there's always some type of triggering moment that gives a narcissist and psychopath “permission” to commit a violent act like familicide as their emotions escalate.
The Trigger Moment
The triggering moment for Ross was likely the collapse of his marriage. After eight years of marriage, Iris, who worked as a director and health-care administrator for Phoenix’s St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, filed for divorce in June 2017. The divorce was reportedly amicable, and Iris paid Ross child support because she earned five times as much as he did according to court records.
Dobson says she believes that for someone like Ross, divorce is “not a normal disappointment, it's a fall from grace ... It's like falling into hot lava, utter despair, and it is often what will pull out some of their psychosis,” she continues.
Iris confessed to friends and family that Ross had become more irrational. Iris’s sister Mary Wogas told Arizona’s ABC15 Ross would go from yelling and demeaning Iris one minute to telling her how much he loved her and “wanted them to be a family unit" the next. Wogas even claimed Ross was dabbling in voodoo.
Dobson says these behaviors were signs that Ross wasn’t living in a state of reality.
“[Iris] wanted to leave him. That fear of abandonment when you're a narcissist is very, very strong,” Dobson says. “And what I have found is when you really want to hurt a woman, you hurt her children, the things she cares the most about.”
And then there was his darkest secret of all: Ross had hidden a previous marriage that included four children he’d abused and abandoned. Two of his daughters told 12News about how Ross allegedly physically abused them when they were growing up and starved them.
“Familicide is so uncommon,” Dobson says. “These two daughters spoke out about how he would abuse them. Child abuse is one thing, but he would [allegedly] choke them and strangle them. That is 100% a precursor in domestic violence to murder."
The Chaos that Became Christmas
The video of Ross singing Christmas songs with Nigel has been viewed more than 235,000 times on Ross’s business Facebook page alone. Prosecutors argued that it served as a coverup of his true intentions.
The violence began on Christmas just outside Ross’s apartment in Phoenix. Iris arrived to pick up Nigel and Anora when, according to witnesses, Ross shot her multiple times in the parking lot, killing her.
Then he returned to his apartment where Nigel and Anora were. Neighbors said they heard two or three more gunshots and called 911.
Next, an hours-long armed standoff and gunfight unfolded between Ross and Phoenix Police. Ross barricaded himself in his apartment and shot at police while negotiators tried to get him to surrender. After hours of failed talks, and out of concern for the children, the police finally entered the apartment and discovered both children had been killed. Ross was arrested unharmed.
Charges and the Long Wait for Trial
Ross made his first court appearance and was formally charged with three counts of first-degree murder, plus 20 counts of aggravated assault for shooting at officers. He pleaded not guilty in January 2018.
The trial didn’t start until September 2025 due to court backlogs, mental health evaluations, COVID-19 and the case’s complexity.
Maricopa County prosecutor Richard Dusterhoft painted a picture of a man who planned the murder of his family. “He thought about it before he did it. He meant to do it, and then he did it. Why?” Dusterhoft said in his opening statement September 9, 2025.
Dusterhoft told the jury Ross cared only about vanity and celebrity, and that he depended on Iris’s income to maintain that lifestyle, and when she filed for divorce, it all came crashing down.
“His five minutes of daytime TV fame was up. The money, the success—all a façade,” Dusterhoft said.
The prosecution also presented digital evidence that Ross sent text messages to family members admitting he’d killed Iris and the children, as well as his online searches for things like guns, silencers and battery acid. The prosecution argued these showed he was planning the murders.
But Ross’s defense attorney, Carrie Gallagher, disagreed. Court records show she never argued that Ross didn’t commit the murders. Gallagher instead suggested Ross was having a mental breakdown from depression and insomnia, and admitted he drank too much on Christmas. But she said he was planning his own future, even adopting a dog and proposing to his girlfriend.
Jurors were unconvinced. On November 3, 2025, they found Ross guilty on all three counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of aggravated assault on a peace office. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the three first-degree murder convictions. Ross is facing life in prison or death by lethal injection.
