Cruel Intentions
Though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous.
Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 1.
In the end, picking the wrong sex partner brought the downfall of John E. Robinson, Sr., and exposed one of the most bizarre and lengthy homicidal careers in American criminal history.
The Midwestern serial killer, whose brutal treatment of his sometimes willing victims stands in stark contrast to his benign, fleshy appearance, sits on death row in Kansas facing execution for two murders (and a life sentence for a third). The 59-year-old grandfather also admitted to five slayings in Missouri, which accepted the guilty pleas in return for taking a pass on the chance to execute him.
Robinson compounded his murderous ways by taking the infant of one victim and selling it to his brother, pretending to be a do-good adoption broker. He seduced vulnerable or lonely women he met through Internet chat rooms and killed them, continuing to cash their government checks or alimony payments for years with just minimal interference from their desperate families and frustrated investigators.
As Robinson’s case winds its way through the long appeals process, his family is left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. Examining the past for missed clues that could have tipped them to his shocking behavior, they must come to grips with the idea that the man they thought was a doting, loving grandfather was secretly an influential member of a clandestine bondage and sadomasochistic network who seduced and victimized women he met online.
The lucky victims walked away with mental and physical scars. The unlucky ones ended up dead, left to rot in sealed chemical drums. Still others simply disappeared into thin air like the clouds of dust that blow across the prairies on the Missouri-Kansas border.
Robinson was no stranger to Kansas and Missouri law enforcement when he was finally arrested in the early summer of 2000. He had long been suspected in the disappearances of women in and around the Kansas City area, but had managed to stay a half-step ahead of justice using his charm and wits. When he crossed the line with a pair of women he met through his BDSM network and they filed complaints with Kansas police, Robinson finally made a mistake that gave authorities the chance they needed to stop his murderous ways. But even the police who had already tapped his phone, listened through the walls as he engaged in his preferred brand of rough sex, and followed him around while he visited his numerous paramours were not prepared for what they found when they peeled back the layers of Robinsons personality and peered underneath.
If it wasn’t for the photographs that placed him in London singing at the Palladium and the witnesses who saw him chatting with Judy Garland, the story that a teenage John Robinson toured with a troop of Eagle Scouts and gave a command performance before Queen Elizabeth II would be dismissed as one of the countless fabrications Robinson spun. An Eagle Scout at 13, Robinson told his fellow performers that he was planning on entering the priesthood and would someday work in Rome. No one knows whether this was what Robinson really wanted to do with his life or if this was just his way of getting attention. What friends interviewed years later remember most about him was his quiet, studious nature and endearing smile.
A former Scout leader who knew Robinson when the teen lived in Cicero, Ill., recalled a hard-working and motivated youngster whose ability didn’t equal his drive.
“He didn’t talk a great deal, but when he did talk, it was to produce an effect that he wanted,” Richard Shotke told the Kansas City Star. “He was shrewd. He was aspiring to more than he was capable of, quite frankly.”
Robinson dropped out of sight for a few years, leaving the Catholic prep seminary in favor of a trade school, where he planned to learn the radiology profession. Robinson never finished his training, but that didn’t keep him from getting a job as an X-ray technician outside Kansas City, Missouri. It was 1965 and was the first time Robinson was known to have perpetrated a fraud.
His first job was with a children’s hospital where he papered the walls of his office with fake diplomas and certificates. From his lack of skills with his infant patients, his colleagues suspected that he was either a fake or one of the most incompetent technicians ever to practice the craft.
Josephine Bermel, who worked with Robinson at his first hospital job, remembered that Robinson was a nice-enough guy, but that there was no way he could have been a certified technician. Bermel told the Kansas City Star that Robinson struggled especially with young patients. They don’t understand when you say Take a deep breath. And positioning is important and the machinery is intimidating, she told the paper. We had to teach him how to do it.
The 21-year-old pathological liar was married at the time and his wife, Nancy, had just given birth to their first child.
His incompetence led to his dismissal from the hospital staff, but Robinson was undaunted. He eventually found a job in a laboratory run by President Harry S Truman’s former personal physician. This change of employment publicly revealed the earliest indications of Robinson’s personality disorders and led to his first criminal conviction.
Dr. Wallace Graham was a busy physician with a thriving practice when he offered Robinson a job as an X-ray technician in 1966. He recalled later that he was impressed with Robinson’s achievements in Boy Scouts and his extensive credentials in radiology. Graham was highly regarded in the community, but he was a trusting and naive healer who turned out to be an easy mark for a man like Robinson.
Robinson quickly began stealing from Graham and taking liberties in the medical office. He drained the practice’s bank account to the extent that six months after John was hired, Graham was unable to pay Christmas bonuses to the staff. In the meantime, Robinson bragged to colleagues about his new ranch and lakefront property. In addition, Robinson sometimes engaged in sexual liaisons with both office staff and patients. He had sex with one patient in the X-ray lab by pretending his wife was terminally ill and unable to accommodate his needs.
The unexplained loss of revenue prompted an audit of the practice’s books, which pointed to Robinson as the source of the embezzlement. Not for the last time, Robinson’s ability to feign sincerity and remorse would result in a slap on the wrist by the criminal justice system. He was escorted from the medical practice in handcuffs by deputies and charged with stealing $33,000 from Graham.
In 1969, Robinson was convicted of theft. Because it was his first offense and he pledged to make restitution, a Jackson County, Missouri, judge sentenced Robinson to three years of probation. No one could know at that time that a succession of similar white collar crimes would keep Robinson on probation for the next two decades. While he was under court supervision, Robinson killed at least eight women.
Robinson was a career criminal, bouncing from job to job over the next 20 years and managing to keep out of prison by crossing jurisdictional boundaries and convincing employers not to pursue charges when his thefts were revealed. Between 1969 and 1991, he was convicted four times for embezzlement or theft, and was barred for life by the Securities and Exchange Commission from engaging in any kind of investment business. Some of his thefts were small — he lost his job with Mobil Corporation for stealing $300 in stamps — while others were more significant.
“He had no real employment, unless you consider figuring out ways of scamming people out of their money to be real employment,” said Johnson County (Kansas) District Attorney Paul Morrison during Robinsons trial.
Authorities suspect that Robinson bilked dozens of others out of their money but that they were too embarrassed to come forward at the time.
In the 1970s and 80s, Robinson promoted himself as a civic leader and philanthropist, and stopped at nothing to polish his image. In reality, he was a sloppy forger who brazenly signed the names of Kansas City’s community leaders to phony letters of introduction and commendation. Once he had a secretary draft a letter that he had been given a full professorship at the University of Missouri-Kansas City dental school. In another forgery that he used to scam investors, he misspelled the last name of one of Kansas City’s leading businessmen.
Robinson’s audacious forgeries were matched by the bald-faced lies he told to people who trusted him for help. His bogus hydroponics business, promoting growing crops in nutritional fluid environments, swindled a friend out of $25,000. The man had invested the money in Robinson’s Hydro-Gro business because he hoped to get a better investment return to pay for his dying wife’s health care. Robinson represented himself as an attorney to a gullible woman and handled her divorce. Years later she wondered whether her divorce was actually legal. He claimed to have helped finance Sylvester Stallone’s second Rambo film, and finagled his way into a national farm publication as an expert on tax shelters for large farm operators.
His narcissism reached its pinnacle in 1977 when he engineered a “Man of the Year” award for himself that involved the mayor of Kansas City and a Missouri state senator. Presenting himself as a wealthy philanthropist with a desire to help the developmentally disabled, Robinson charmed his way onto the board of directors of a local handicapped service organization. One of his first acts, the executive director said later, was to order stationery for the group. With that in hand, he forged a letter from the executive director to the mayor and from the mayor to other civic leaders inviting them to an awards luncheon, honoring an anonymous recipient of the Man of the Year award.
Feigning surprise when the winner was announced, Robinson humbly accepted the rigged award as members of the organization board sat in stunned amazement. The local media was present and reported the ceremony, and Robinson’s family was proudly in attendance. The plan backfired when the people whose names Robinson forged read about the event in the papers. The Kansas City Times, stung by the scam, took its revenge on Robinson two weeks later by exposing him for the fraud he was. His children were ridiculed at school and his wife was reluctant to show her face in public. Robinson, however, seemed undeterred by the turn of events.
The exposé humiliated Robinson’s family, who should also be included among his numerous victims. He portrayed himself as an active father and loving husband to the public, but this was simply an act. Robinson is a true psychopath incapable of any kind of emotional attachment, even to his family. The child of a binge-drinking father and disciplinarian mother, Robinson was a stern parent and intolerant of underachievement or insubordination (two traits that he demonstrated frequently in his own life). His wife Nancy later testified at his murder trial that Robinson was unfaithful for at least 20 years of their 38-year marriage.
The relative who has been harmed most is probably his younger brother. In the worst possible way, John Robinson exploited his brother Don’s wish for a child to fulfill his own perverse need to feel important.
For years, Don and Helen Robinson tried without success to have a child on their own and to adopt a baby through traditional placement services. The couple, who lived in metropolitan Chicago, were beginning to come to terms with the idea that they would never raise a child when John Robinson mentioned that he had contacts with an attorney in Missouri who handled private adoptions and that John would act as a liaison for Don and Helen.
That was in 1983, and for the next two years — after the Robinsons paid a $2,500 retainer to John’s imaginary lawyer friend — John Robinson put into place a plan to procure a child for his brother. If the scam was successful, he probably intended to expand it to “help” other childless families realize their dream of adoption. Several times in the following months, Robinson put Don and Helen on notice that an adoption was imminent, but the child never materialized.
John’s scheme required locating pregnant, single women and he knew exactly where to go to find them. Putting on his civic philanthropist facade, Robinson approached local pregnancy programs and social workers to alert them to a new program he and several fanciful leading businessmen “from the East Coast” had created to serve single moms who needed a helping hand.
Karen Gaddis, a former social worker at Truman Medical Center in Independence, Mo., testified at Robinson’s trial that he came to her in late 1984 for referrals. Gaddis testified that Robinson said he was looking for young mothers, preferably white women, who had no close ties to family members. He showed her an apartment in Overland Park, Kansas, where the women were to stay.
Gaddis knew Caucasian babies were valued on the adoption black market and because Robinson never provided her with any paperwork about the program, she never referred any women to him.
“I think he thought we were a real fertile ground for young women that nobody would be looking for,” Gaddis told NBC’s Dateline when the Robinson story broke.
Robinson’s setback with Karen Gaddis was only a temporary one. In January 1985, at a shelter, John Robinson met 19-year-old Lisa Stasi and her 4-month-old baby, Tiffany. Stasi was estranged from her husband, who had reenlisted in the Navy and deployed to the Great Lakes Naval Base outside Chicago. She was poor, uneducated and unworldly, making her the perfect target for a man like John Robinson.
Robinson convinced Lisa that his program would help her become self-sufficient by telling the emotionally vulnerable teen what she wanted to hear. Robinson’s program provided daycare, job training, housing and a monthly stipend. The only catch was that she would be sent to Texas for job training for a few months. The program was demanding, he told her, and she would hardly have time to contact her family. That’s how he explained away the four blank sheets of paper he wanted her to sign.
On January 9, 1985, Robinson — who told Stasi that his name was John Osborne — arrived at the home of Lisa’s sister, where she had left Tiffany. “Osborne” never spoke to Kathy Klinginsmith, the sister, but left a very strong impression on the woman.
“I just remember I was so frightened,” Klinginsmith testified at Robinson’s trial. “I wanted to run after and get her, but I was too scared.”
Klinginsmith’s instincts were correct. The next day, Lisa phoned her mother-in-law and in a panicked voice, said “they” had told her she was an unfit mother and that Betty Stasi wanted custody of Tiffany. Betty denied the claim to her hysterical daughter-in-law, who was reconsidering her agreement with Robinson.
Her last words to her family were cryptic: “Here they come,” she said as she disconnected the phone. Lisa’s family never heard from her again and no clues to her whereabouts have ever been uncovered.
Two days later, Don and Helen Robinson returned to Chicago with their beautiful 4-month-old adopted baby girl. In exchange for an additional $3,000 fee to John’s “lawyer,” the couple received extremely convincing adoption papers with the forged signatures of two lawyers and a judge. John told them Tiffany’s mother committed suicide in a domestic violence shelter. On the day Don and Helen took Tiffany home, Kathy Klinginsmith and Betty Stasi filed a missing persons report with law enforcement in Kansas and Missouri.
The authorities tracked Lisa to John Robinson, who said she left the program and headed west with a man named Bill. He produced a witness who said Lisa stayed with her the night before she left and later, Betty Stasi received a suspicious typewritten letter with Lisa’s signature that said she was leaving to start a new life. With nothing left to go on and nothing but suspicions and knowledge of Robinson’s reputation, law enforcement officials were stymied.
The police had jumped on the missing persons report with gusto because Robinson’s name had surfaced a few months earlier in connection with another, similar disappearance.
Paula Godfrey, an Olathe, Kansas teen, took a job with one of Robinson’s many do-nothing corporations and told friends and family she was excited about the opportunities he had offered her. He was sending her away for training, she told them as she left home in 1984. Her family became worried and contacted police. Several days after filing a missing persons report, authorities received a typewritten letter with Paula’s signature.
Robinson had allegedly hired her to be a sales representative,” wrote Steve Haymes, Robinson’s Missouri probation officer in a log he kept on John Robinson. “The Overland Park Police Department later received a letter from this girl stating that she was thankful for John Robinsons help and that she was OK, and that she did not want to see her family.
As the girl was of age and there was no evidence of wrongdoing, Overland Park terminated their (missing-person) investigation.
No trace of Paula Godfrey has ever been found.
With the FBI looking into Robinson for a suspected violation of the federal Mann Act — colloquially called the “White Slave Act” — by transporting Lisa and Tiffany Stasi across state lines and state authorities in Missouri and Kansas looking into his activities on a local level connected to the disappearance of Godfrey, it was obvious to Haymes that Robinson’s probation needed to be reevaluated. The probe was pushed by Haymes, who wondered whether Robinson had escalated his crimes from cons and theft to murder and baby selling. It revealed that John was heavily involved in the Kansas City underground sex industry and probably ran a string of prostitutes specializing in domination and submission sex practices.
The feds sent a female agent undercover to meet with “JR”, as he was known in the sex business, and he promised the agent that she could easily make more than $1,000 a night by entertaining his clients if she could tolerate pain. He wanted her to take a trip with him, and, suspecting that the agent’s life was in danger, the FBI pulled her from the assignment.
Armed with evidence from the FBI’s look into Robinson’s activities and a separate investigation into a theft complaint lodged by a company that contracted with Robinson to promote its seminars, Haymes initiated a probation violation action in Missouri. He said later that if the authorities couldn’t get Robinson on the disappearances, they would put him away for his other actions.
A key witness in the probation violation case was a prostitute and mistress of Robinson’s, 21-year-old Teresa. Teresa, who lived in an apartment Robinson rented, received drugs and money in return for her service as a prostitute for Robinson’s clients. She was also most likely Robinson’s next victim. He was using her to discredit an ex-convict pal who was cooperating with police in the revocation proceedings against Robinson. JR ordered Teresa to begin writing a “diary” that he dictated, implicating the ex-con in a number of schemes. He also had her sign blank papers and draft a letter to Robinson’s attorney giving the lawyer the authority to recover the diary from a safe deposit box in the event she disappeared. The last entry in the diary was meant to be the same day that Robinson and Teresa were leaving for the Bahamas — a trip police suspected Robinson was never going to make with her.
“It appears that he has continued to use people to his own end, including Theresa, with whom there is concern for her safety,” Haymes wrote in a June 1985 probation report. The state revoked Robinson’s parole and for the first time, he spent a significant period of time behind bars.
One of the more disturbing pieces of evidence Theresa provided was a story of how Robinson, displeased with the way Theresa had performed with an important client, burst into the apartment and jammed the barrel of a loaded gun into her vagina while threatening her life.
Police removed Teresa from the apartment and hid her from Robinson, a mistake that would eventually result in Robinson’s parole violation being overturned by an appeals court. By keeping Robinson’s attorney from cross-examining her for his defense, the police violated Robinson’s right to face an accuser.
John Robinson went to prison in 1987 in Missouri, where he was held until the appeals court overturned the probation revocation order. He was almost immediately sent to prison in Kansas for a theft conviction and remained behind bars until 1993. The effect on his family was what one would expect. They lost their expensive suburban home and Nancy took a job managing the mobile home park where they lived.
In the corrections system, Robinson continued to lie and use his skills to hoodwink prison officials and ingratiate himself with a future victim, a prison librarian.
Released in 1993, Robinson discovered the Internet and its usefulness in meeting people interested in domination and submission sexual activity. He had always been interested in technology, which he used for his own ends. Robinson was a master of manipulating a word processor to create forged documents and when the Web took off in the 1990s, he was an avid Internet user and frequent participant in sexually explicit chat rooms.
Robinson used the name “Slavemaster” to meet women who enjoyed playing the role of the submissive partner during sex.
As the end of the century approached, Robinson was enjoying a steady income by cashing government checks and alimony payments from three of his victims. The first known woman to die after Robinson walked out of prison was Beverly Bonner, a librarian in the Missouri corrections system who had been seduced by John during his incarceration. Shortly after Robinson was freed from prison in Kansas, Beverly divorced her husband, a prison system doctor, and moved to Olathe to work for Robinson in one of his ventures. She disappeared almost immediately and Robinson placed her belongings in a storage locker in a Kansas City suburb. Beverly told her ex-husband that she was going to be traveling abroad and gave him an address at a post office box that he could use to mail her alimony.
When he was asked about Bonner by the storage facility staff, Robinson said Bonner, whom he described as his sister, was in Australia and that she was enjoying herself so much “she probably would never come back.”
Little did the staff know that Beverly Bonner was actually entombed in a chemical drum in the storage locker. Next to Bonner’s decomposing corpse were two other barrels that contained the remains of a mother and daughter whose government checks continued to supplement Robinson’s income.
Sheila and Debbie Faith lived a lonely life in Fullerton, California, after Sheila’s husband died. Debbie had been diagnosed at various times with spinal bifida or cerebral palsy. She was confined to a wheelchair and barely had the strength to manipulate the chair’s joystick controller. When John Faith passed away, Sheila began trying to meet men online and made a string of bad choices before making the fatal acquaintance of John Robinson. He portrayed himself as a wealthy man who would support her and Debbie, pay for therapy for the girl and give Sheila a job. They packed up their belongings and moved to the Kansas City area, where they promptly disappeared.
For years, the Social Security Administration continued to send checks to the suburban Missouri post office box that they had given out as their new address. Every month, John Robinson came by and picked up checks made out to Bonner and the Faiths, an employee of the mail box store would testify later.
As the computer revolution took hold and the Internet became a way of transacting business as well as a way to meet people with similar interests, John Robinson immersed himself in the virtual world of cyberspace. His reputation and record prevented him from working in a corporate setting, so he began publishing a mobile home magazine that was paid for through advertising. His magazine was so similar in design and purpose to another periodical in Kansas City that Robinson received (and ignored) a cease-and-desist letter from the publication’s attorney.
The magazine was moderately successful and with Nancy working full-time as the manager of the mobile home park where they lived, combined with the illegal income he was getting from the Faiths and Bonner, things were looking good for John.
One woman that he struck a deal with for sex in exchange for financial support didn’t learn until years later how close she had come to ending up in a barrel alongside Sheila and Debbie Faith and Bev Bonner. The woman was living in an apartment paid for by Robinson, who told her he was divorcing his wife to explain why he never stayed the night. He showered her with gifts and clothes, but she soon noticed that most of the clothes he presented to her appeared worn. Robinson said they were left behind at his office by former employees.
The two entered into a master-slave contract that listed numerous requirements for the woman, who was also required to sign over power of attorney to John Robinson. In return for the sex, he promised to get her a job in the entertainment industry for which he needed publicity stills and her Social Security number. Like a good submissive, she followed his orders explicitly.
The relationship was going along fine until one day Robinson told her to get ready to travel with him. He was going to take her to London on an extended business trip. He told her she should leave her job and advise friends that she would be gone for some time. She gave up her apartment and Robinson moved her into a local motel. Like so many others, she was told she would be so busy that she should take the time to write letters to her family now, there would be no time while traveling. Robinson said he would take care of her passport application, as he had friends in the U. S. State Department.
The woman thought it was rather strange as the day came for the pair to leave and Robinson showed up at her apartment with his truck and a trailer loaded with clothing. It was stranger still that Robinson said he was going to spend the night in the hotel with her.
Excited at the thought of the trip, the woman awoke the next morning at 5 a.m. and roused Robinson. He was like a man possessed, she said later. He jumped out of bed yelling at her and barely stopped berating her as he showered and dressed. Still angry, Robinson said he was going to check her out of the motel and that he had errands to run. He told her he would meet her at a nearby restaurant, but Robinson never showed up. Confused, the woman tried to call him, but he would not take the calls. When they finally connected, he said he was unable to trust her and that the relationship was over.
It wasn’t until after Robinson was arrested for murder that the woman realized how close she had come to dying that morning. Police surmised that Robinson brought his trailer as a means for removing her dead body from the motel and that by rising before he did, she thwarted his plans.
Robinson the Slavemaster was thoroughly at home on the Internet. The anonymity of the medium reduced his need to playact and he easily slipped from his public persona of the kind, loving grandfather who mowed his lawn several times each week and shared gardening chores with his neighbors to a domineering master who demanded total obedience from the slaves who served him over the Web. With just the written word and carefully staged photographs of himself, he was able to charm almost any willing submissive to do his will. At his expense, women interested in the submissive lifestyle would come to Kansas City, some for brief visits and others to spend the rest of their lives. The women who came to stay, lured by his promises of financial support and jobs frequently ended up dead after he no longer needed or wanted them.
Shortly before his plans to kill his early-rising mistress fell through, Robinson struck up an acquaintance with a college student named Izabela Lewicka. The Polish immigrant lived in north-central Indiana with her parents, both university professors. Izabela was a beautiful, young fine arts student with an interest in gothic horror stories and bondage. In late 1997, she told her parents that she was dropping out of school and heading to Kansas City, where a rich entrepreneur had offered her an internship. He was a publisher, she told her family and the opportunity was too good to pass up.
What Izabela did not tell her parents was that she had also agreed to be Robinson’s slave. After she moved to Kansas City, Izabela never returned home and only communicated with her parents by e-mail.
Lured by the need to be dominated, the promise of a job and later marriage, Izabela arrived in Kansas City about the time Robinson was getting ready to eliminate his other mistress. Thwarted in that plan, Robinson simply broke off the relationship to concentrate on Izabela. He gave her a ring and took the doe-eyed, young woman to the county registrar, where they paid for a marriage license that Robinson never picked up.
Izabela registered at a local community college as Izabela Lewicka Robinson a year later, although whether she actually believed she and Robinson were married was unclear. She did tell her parents she had married, but refused to tell them her husbands name. Lewicka and Robinson didn’t live together and when they appeared in public, Robinson often described himself as her uncle.
She did sign a 115-item slave contract that gave Robinson almost total control over every aspect of her life, including bank accounts.
At some point in the summer of 1999, Robinson grew tired of Izabela. Testimony at his trial revealed that she told friends she was going on a trip with Robinson soon, and that they would be gone for a long time. No one ever saw her alive again.
John told a Web designer he hired that she had been caught smoking marijuana and deported.
Izabela Lewicka disappeared at about the time Robinson convinced a lonely health care worker from Michigan to come to Kansas, where he would take care of her. Suzette Trouten was a bored licensed practical nurse who lived a double life, nurse by day, submissive slave by night. She frequented many of the same Web sites and chat rooms where John lurked and it wasn’t long before the two found each other. Few who knew her outside the BDSM world would ever have suspected she wore a silver chain that hung from rings through her nipples and that other, more intimate parts of her anatomy were pierced, as well.
Robinson was passing himself off as a mysterious well-to-do businessman who needed a full-time caregiver to look after his elderly father. He told Suzette that if she came to Kansas, he would pay her more than $60,000 per year and that the three people, Robinson, Trouten and the mysterious “father” would be traveling the world.
Trouten, 27, was particularly close to her mother, Carolyn, and the two talked by phone almost every day. Suzette also had a number of e-mail and chat-room friends that she spoke with on a regular basis and they all knew she had come to Kansas to work for a man who frequented the chat rooms and was known as “JR.”
Before she left Michigan in February, Suzette left John Robinson’s telephone numbers and name with her mother, giving police a link to follow when in March, Suzette’s family reported her missing. Police visited Robinson, who by this time had aroused suspicion in authorities in two states because his name kept coming up in missing persons investigations. Law enforcement has a long memory, and the police quickly tied Robinson to Stasi, Lewicka, Trouten, Godfrey and another woman, Catherine Clampitt, 27, who disappeared in 1987 after moving to Overland Park to take a job with John Robinson.
Suzette’s last e-mail to a friend before she was to leave expressed contentment and hope for the future: “We all finally find what we want and need and I found mine,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, Robinson was losing control and getting sloppy. Like so many other serial killers, he was increasing the frequency of his killing and for whatever reason — perhaps overconfidence, psychosis or an unconscious will to be caught was doing a poor job at covering his tracks.
Carolyn Trouten received several typed letters from Suzette which that were allegedly written while she traveled abroad but had Kansas City postmarks and were uncharacteristically mistake-free. Carolyn later testified that Suzette was a poor speller and never typed notes to friends or family.
After contact with Suzette dropped off, Carolyn called the telephone numbers her daughter gave her and was surprised to have Robinson answer the phone. After all, the letters she received from her daughter said they were traveling together. Robinson denied this and said she had run off with an acquaintance and stolen money from him.
This was so unlike her daughter that Carolyn contacted the Lenexa police and filed a missing persons report. It was too late to save her daughter, but Carolyn’s plea for help from the police would provide authorities with enough evidence to get warrants to tap Robinson’s phone and monitor his online activities.
The authorities were closing in.
The world of domination and submission is a complex place, and mental health experts have been debating its role and effect on the personality since Freud began writing in the early 20th century. While the term BDSM — Bondage, Domination and Sadomasochism — is frequently used to describe the type of sex act where one person plays the role of a dominant partner and another takes the submissive role, the all-encompassing term generalizes the activities and oversimplifies dominate/submissive sexual relations.
Sexual sadism and masochism are listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 4th Edition as personality disorders, but only to the extent that they interfere with normal productive living or involve non-willing partners. Interest in BDSM is not considered a disorder or affect. Domination, submission and bondage have no formal definition in psychology, as scholars and D/S practitioners have not reached mutually agreeable consensus of what the terms involve.
Nevertheless, domination and submission are frequently explored topics of sex research and some general conclusions about them have been reached. Bondage refers to the use in sexual behavior of physically restraining materials or devices, or to the use of psychologically restraining commands. Sadomasochism involves sexual behaviors that include inflicting and/or receiving physical or psychological pain. Domination and submission in sex acts does not require either physical restraint or inflicting pain.
Theories of what attracts a person to a dominant/submissive sexual relationship or encounter are numerous and range from the assumption that the various acts are perfectly normal and even helpful to a healthy psyche, to the belief that participants are mentally ill and incapable of traditional love. Most experts have concluded that domination and submission are normal aspects of the continuum of sexual activity, while the more controversial aspects of bondage or sadism have many, but fewer supporters in the psychology community.
Participants point out that a healthy D/S relationship requires trust and respect on the part of all parties involved. Once the line is crossed and consent by a participant is withdrawn, the act becomes a crime. The vast majority of people who enjoy robust D/S relationships are outgoing, functioning members of society who are most frequently well-educated, employed and often involved in long-term relationships. Surveys of sexual practices reveal that anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of the population in Europe and North America practice some sort of domination/submission sex play on a regular basis. Most of the people who say they enjoy domination and submission are men, although women also frequently express their enjoyment of BDSM role-play.
BDSM appears in the earliest known writing on sexuality, but it was only in the mid-1980s that the medical community stopped considering it an abnormal practice and an indicator of other mental illness. For centuries, adherents to BDSM met secretly, which added to the mystique and belief that the practice was unwholesome, violent and an indicator of madness. The participants formed clubs that sometimes traded “slaves” among groups and that practice gave rise to the rumor that many women who took part were unwilling victims.
It was the Internet that brought BDSM within reach of everyone and this has been both a blessing and a curse for practitioners. On the one hand, it has increased the pool of doms and subs, but it has also allowed dangerous malefactors to infiltrate the society and bring harm to innocent participants. Sociopaths like John Robinson are much more difficult to identify online and the anonymity of the Internet makes sharing information about particular threats among a close-knit group almost impossible. In the days when clubs and munches were the only way to meet like-minded people, serial killers were less likely to ingratiate themselves into a small group of BDSM aficionados and any mysterious disappearances of regular munch attendees would be noticed.
Carolyn Troutman didn’t know it when she contacted authorities about her missing daughter, but police had recently stepped up their surveillance of John Robinson. Suzette also cultivated online friendships with other subs from around the world who also knew she had gone to Kansas to be with John Robinson. Some of the women she traded instant messages with daily thought it was strange that she no longer appeared online.
For several weeks, Robinson contacted Suzette’s submissive friends and some of her relatives by e-mail, pretending to be Troutman. Most weren’t fooled by the blatant attempt at subterfuge. Robinson soon dropped the act and set his sights on seducing one of Suzette’s online friends named Lore, who lived in Eastern Canada.
Lore and another Canadian woman began their own amateur investigation of the man they believed was named “J. R. Turner.” Robinson moved quickly after Lore told him she was interested in finding a dominant master for a friend. The e-mails and chat sessions turned into telephone calls, which were picked up by the police taps in place. The Lenexa, Kansas police contacted Lore and told her they were investigating John Robinson. They did not explain the extent of the probe, but asked her to continue her relationship with him.
“The police didn’t tell me to get John Robinson to lure me to Kansas City,” Taylor said later at Robinson’s trial. “I was willing to help.”
Robinson made vague offers to Lore about meeting in person, she said.
“He offered nothing other than I would be financially taken care of and never have to work,” she testified.
Lore wasn’t the only target of Robinsons homicidal lust. He was meeting women locally and had struck up an online and telephone friendship with a Texas woman who fit his typical pattern. Vickie was a recently laid off psychologist who suffered from depression and a lack of meaningful companionship. She was eager for a change in her life and Robinson was quick to pick up on this. He convinced her that he was a well-connected community leader who could help her start over in the Kansas City area. Vickie was somewhat reluctant to drop everything and move to Kansas for many reasons, not the least of which was that she couldn’t afford to relocate. That wasn’t a problem, Robinson assured her. He would pay for everything until she could stand on her own.
Listening in on the call, police knew Robinson had selected his next victim.
Over the Easter holiday, thanks to funds Robinson had wired to her, Vickie came to Overland Park for a rendezvous with the Slavemaster. As police listened in the next room, Vicki and Robinson engaged in rough sex play.
It was during this weekend encounter with Vicki that Robinson made the mistakes that would eventually lead to eight murder convictions and two death sentences. The killer who looked more milquetoast than master was more brutal and cruel than Vicki was willing to accept. Robinson forced her into sex acts Vickie did not want to do, took photos when she was tied up despite her explicit instructions not to, and slapped her much harder than she expected. These acts constituted sexual battery, but he wasn’t finished yet. Robinson left her penniless and alone in a strange city for several days before returning. When he came back, he dismissed Vickie and ordered her to return to Texas to await further instructions. John sent her on her way, but kept the $700 worth of S&M toys and props she brought with her.
Robinson repeated this same scenario with another vulnerable woman he lured to his lair. Jeanna, an unemployed accountant also from Texas, came to Kansas City by bus, ready to begin work as Robinson’s executive assistant for his hydroponics business. He put her up in the same hotel from whence he had banished Vickie and left her alone to wonder about her fate for several days. Returning, he savagely beat her when she failed to assume a position naked in the corner of the room when he appeared. Then he had sex with her.
Like Vicki, Jeanna was not interested in extreme physical pain or photography, but that didn’t matter to John. He took his liberties with her, then photographed the bruises on her body. Following the same pattern as before, he gave Jeanna $100 and sent her home, ordering her to put her possessions in storage and then return to Overland Park. She followed his orders, but when she returned to Kansas, Robinson continued to play too rough and abandoned her in the motel. She realized his promises had been empty, and destitute, was at his mercy.
In fear, she contacted police. Members of the 30-man Robinson task force removed her from the motel and went to Johnson County prosecutor Paul Morrison, hoping that he would now issue a warrant for Robinson’s arrest. Morrison was eager to get Robinson off the streets and the Internet, but he wanted to make sure the case was solid. There was enough evidence to charge Robinson with sexual battery for his assaults on Jeanna (they did not know at the time the extent of the encounter with Vickie), but Morrison wanted to close the unsolved murders, too.
Ironically, it was Robinson who forced his hand. He had been seducing a Tennessee woman who was very close to agreeing to become his slave. When John convinced her to come to Kansas City with her 8-year-old daughter and to bring the title to her car, Morrison agreed that under no circumstances would authorities allow Robinson anywhere near the woman and her child. When officers tracked down Vickie and she agreed to file complaints for the stolen sex toys and the sexual battery, Morrison said it was time to prepare the arrest warrant.
On June 2, 2000, officers from the task force descended on Robinson’s mobile home and arrested the Slavemaster. They were carrying search warrants for his trailer and for his desolate ranch, about 30 miles away in La Cygne. Robinson remained unperturbed until police started describing the surveillance they had conducted. They mentioned Vicki and Jeanna, and Robinson began to sweat. When they told him of the evidence they had connecting him to Stasi and Trouten, he went pale.
Robinson, who survived by his ability to talk his way out of anything, had nothing left to say. But the murderous bunko artist still had some surprises hidden away.
The task force arrived at the La Cygne ranch and found the place barren and overrun. There was a large pond surrounded by marsh grass that was home to hundreds of snakes. The main building was an old mobile home with windows covered with black plastic wrap. Near the trailer was a rickety pole barn with a dirt floor, where the team began its search.
They dug up the ground in the barn while divers plumbed the depths of the algae-filled pond. The only item of interest found in the water was an old pickup truck, but running the vehicle identification revealed it had been left in the water by a former property owner. The searchers in the barn were having similar luck, while crime scene investigators went over the trailer in excruciating detail.
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation brought in cadaver-sniffing dogs who went over the property, noses to the ground in search of a scent. When the dogs went around the side of the pole barn, where two yellow, 85-gallon chemical drums stood in overgrown weeds, they sniffed, stopped and sat down facing the drums — the sign that they had sensed something.
One of the agents who testified at Robinson’s trial recalled the moment when the drums were moved and investigators realized what they had.
“It was horrendous,” said Sgt. Rick Roth about the scene. Prying the lid off the first drum, investigators were physically thrown back by the smell of decayed flesh. In the barrel, sitting in about a foot of fluid that had once been body fat, was the corpse of a young woman. The body was so decomposed that it was impossible to identify her at the scene and eventually medical examiners used dental records to identify Suzette Trouten. Back at the county morgue, the second barrel was opened and Izabela Lewicka’s remains were found in a similar state.
Across the state line in Missouri, other members of the task force were serving a search warrant on a storage facility where Robinson rented two garages. This time, investigators knew what to look for. In one of the garages, they found three similar chemical drums. There was cat litter on the floor of the garage, which Robinson had placed there to absorb fluid from the leaking containers and to try to minimize the smell of death that hovered. It would take several days, but eventually the M. E. was able to identify these bodies as Beverly Bonner and Sheila and Debbie Faith.
All five women were killed in the same way, by one or two blows to their head. The attacks left two-inch holes in their skulls, and the coroner said death was almost immediate in each case. The method of murder left no doubt in anyone’s mind that the killings were all premeditated and that none had occurred as a result of sex play that had gone too far.
Even with the bodies, investigators continued their search for evidence. They obtained permission to examine the apartment where Lewicka stayed while she was Robinson’s slave. The landlord later testified that the living room of the apartment was dusty and unkempt when Robinson moved Izabela’s furniture out, but that the bedroom looked as if it had been scrubbed clean and possibly painted. When crime scene technicians applied the chemical Luminol to the walls and illuminated them with ultraviolet light, the blood spatters reappeared as if the walls had never been cleaned.
Although no sign of the bodies of Paula Godfrey or Lisa Stasi was found, in Robinson’s home authorities found copies of a hotel receipt with Lisa’s name on it and a typewriter that matched the type face of the letter Paula sent to police. Other evidence revealed the shocking fact that John Robinson had sold Tiffany Stasi to his unwitting brother.
Armed with the physical evidence, Morrison increased the charges against Robinson from theft and sexual battery to three counts of murder. Because Lisa Stasi was killed before Kansas reinstated the death penalty, just the charges involving Lewicka and Trouten were capital crimes. In Missouri, prosecutors filed three more capital murder charges against Robinson.
From their place in seclusion, Robinson’s family released a statement that denied any knowledge of his deeds and said they were unable to explain the two different men the world knew as John Robinson.
“While we do not discount the information that has and continues to come to light, we do not know the person whom we have read and heard about on TV,” the family said in a statement. “The John Robinson we know has always been a loving and caring father.”
It would be more than a year before John Robinson faced a jury in Kansas. By this time the case had attracted world-wide attention and Robinson was termed the first Internet serial killer. With elements of kinky sex and infidelity, the trial was a lurid affair. Carolyn Trouten was forced to come to terms with her daughter’s unusual sex life on the stand and jurors were subjected to a 40-minute videotape of Trouten and Robinson engaging in sadomasochistic sex. The jurors were confronted with solid evidence of Robinson’s guilt and the defense team could only point out that there was no physical evidence except a few fingerprints to link Robinson with anything connected to the bodies.
The jury also heard from Don Robinson, who testified about how his daughter was delivered to him by his brother, as well as from the notary public, the judge and two lawyers who said their signatures on her adoption papers had been forged. DNA tests linked saliva on the seals of letters sent to Carolyn Trouten by Robinson, a criminologist testified, and Lewicka’s blood was found in the trailer in La Cygne and on a roll of duct tape. Suzette Trouten’s hair was found in the trailer, and maids at the motel where she was staying testified that the amount of blood on the bed sheets in her room was much more than they had ever encountered when cleaning.
Even Suzette’s prized Pekinese dogs became evidence in the case when a veterinarian testified that Robinson had dropped the two dogs off for boarding. The dogs were later abandoned in the mobile home park where John lived and later adopted from the humane society.
Izabela Lewicka’s mother told the court how she had given her daughter some distinctive bed sheets with a pattern identical to a pillowcase that ended up in the barrel containing Trouten’s body. A former lover of Robinson’s testified that he had given her similar sheets, but that she didn’t recall there being any pillowcases.
Nancy Robinson talked of her husband’s philandering and how several times she wanted to divorce him, but reconsidered because of the children. More than 100 witnesses would testify for the prosecution in the three-week trial, and in light of the overwhelming evidence, the jury didn’t take much time to bring back three guilty verdicts.
In the penalty phase of the trial, Robinson’s family asked the jury to spare his life, but when jurors announced they had reached a decision about his punishment, none of John Robinson’s family was there to hear it. In January, 2003, Judge John Anderson III, sentenced Robinson to death two times and handed down a life sentence for Lisa Stasi’s killing.
John Robinson was on death row in Kansas, but Missouri was still actively pursuing the three murders that were discovered across the state line. John was more worried about being extradited to stand trial in Missouri, because that state was much more aggressive in using capital punishment than Kansas, where the state had yet to execute anyone since the death penalty was reinstated.
His attorneys negotiated endlessly with Chris Koster, the Missouri prosecutor, who stood firm against their offers and tried to get Robinson to lead authorities to the bodies of Lisa Stasi, Paula Godfrey and Catherine Clampitt.
Either because he could not, or would not reveal where their bodies lay, Robinson demurred until Koster and his team became convinced the women’s remains would never be found. Only then did Koster, with the permission of the victims’ families, agree to accept the guilty pleas in return for life without parole sentences.
In mid-October 2003, John Robinson, looking much older than his 59 years, stood before a Missouri judge and, in a carefully scripted plea, acknowledged that Koster had enough evidence to convict him of capital murder for the deaths of Godfrey, Clampitt, Beverly Bonner and the Faiths. He demanded the unusual plea agreement because an admission of guilt in Missouri might have been used against him in Kansas — Kansas prosecutor Morrison said he wasn’t convinced the murders actually occurred in Koster’s jurisdiction — and nothing he said in Cass County, Missouri resembled anything like an admission of guilt.
While Morrison told the Kansas City Star he supported Koster’s deal to end the mystery of what happened to the women, he spoke with disgust about John Robinson, the Internet’s first serial killer.
“This was classic John Robinson,” he said about the deal. “The guy was a gamesman to the end.”
Once again John Robinson gave no statement or even a hint of what prompted his homicidal acts. As family members of the victims shared their feelings of anger and pain before his sentencing, Robinson ignored them and stared straight ahead, oblivious to the hurt he had wrought. His mind unable to empathize with the survivors, Robinson appeared bored with the whole process. In this, the final time John Robinson was likely ever to appear in public, it was clear that their emotions were something he had never experienced.
Associated Press
October 16, 2003, Robinson admits five killings in Missouri, Bill Draper
January 22, 2003 Families: Robinson’s death sentence does not end pain, John Milburn
November 2, 2002, Kansas jury recommends death penalty in barrel bodies case, John Milburn
November 2, 2002, Robinson maintained facade of man who had done no wrong, John Milburn
October 21, 2002, Robinson’s brother to testify as trial starts third week.
October 11, 2002, At murder trial, wife says she still loves Robinson, John Milburn
July 28, 2000, Man accused in barrel bodies case faces sixth murder charge, John Milburn
June 17, 2000, Mail center owner claims Robinson picked up checks for women
June 10, 2000, S&M sex, possible money woes linked to suburban murder mystery, John Milburn
June 8, 2000, Authorities work to identify victims, John Milburn
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The Kansas City Star
October 18, 2003, Robinson Plea Called Difficult And Draining, Joe Robertson
October 17, 2003, Robinson Enters Plea Of Guilty, Joe Robertson
January 26, 2003, ‘Fortunate Twist’ Pointed Police Toward Robinson, Tony Rizzo
November 3, 2002, Robinson Deserves To Die, Jury Decides Tony Rizzo
November 1, 2002, Robinson Described As Loving Family Man, Tony Rizzo
October 30, 2002, Robinson Guilty In 3 Murders, Tony Rizzo
October 29, 2002, Robinson Jury Weighs Case Evidence, Tony Rizzo
October 25, 2002, Robinson’s Defense Is Under Way; Prosecution Called About 100 Witnesses, Tony Rizzo
October 18, 2002, Blood Spots From Victim Were Found; Robinson Rented Apartment For Her, Tony Rizzo; Diane Carroll
September 15, 2002, Jury Selection To Begin In Long-Awaited Case, Tony Rizzo
August 23, 2002, Mothers’ Ties To Robinson Led To Arrest, Richard Espinoza
February 8, 2001, Testimony traces ties of Robinson, women, Tony Rizzo; Stacy Downs
February 6, 2001, Robinson hearing opens; five witnesses testify Victim’s mother recalls disappearance, Tony Rizzo; Richard Espinoza
July 15, 2000, Last of bodies found in barrels identified, Diane Carroll; Tanyanika Samuels
June 18, 2000, Women and money link murder case, Rick Montgomery;
June 11, 2000, Who is John E. Robinson Sr.? Rick Montgomery; Mark Morris; Diane Carroll
June 10, 2000, Prison worker missing since ’94 knew Robinson, Scott Canon; Tanyanika Samuels
The Mirror, June 8, 2000, Net Chat Room Killer Lured Five Women To Their Deaths, Andy Lines
Murphy, Carolyn; Vess James, Subtypes of psychopathy: proposed differences between narcissistic, borderline, sadistic, and antisocial psychopaths. Psychiatric Quarterly 2003 Spring; 74 (1): 11-29
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Time Magazine, June 19, 2000, The Bodies in the Barrels; Police in Kansas go after a financial con man suspected of murderous prowling on the Internet, David E. Thigpen