John Edward Robinson

In November 2015, the Kansas Supreme Court vacated the Trouten and Stasi murder convictions on technicalities, but it upheld the Lewicka conviction and its accompanying death sentence. The ruling marked the first time Kansas's highest court has upheld a death sentence since the reinstatement of capital punishment there in 1994. Robinson currently remains on death row at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.

In 2006, Stasi's daughter—known since her (faked) adoption as Heather Robinson—filed a civil suit against Truman Medical Center in Kansas City and social worker Karen Gaddis. The suit accused Gaddis of putting Robinson in contact with Stasi and her newborn daughter in 1984 after he told Gaddis that he ran a charitable organization assisting "unwed mothers of white babies." In 2007, Heather and the hospital reached a settlement for an undisclosed sum, which Robinson said she would split with her biological grandmother, Patricia Sylvester. Heather won a second judgment, in 2007, preventing Robinson from profiting from any future potential book sales or film rights.

In 2006, the body of a young woman was found in a barrel in an area of rural Iowa where Robinson reportedly had a business partner. She was initially considered a possible victim of Robinson but was later identified as Lois Tomich, who police believe was killed by her ex-husband.

In 2005, Nancy Robinson filed for divorce after 41 years of marriage, citing incompatibility and irreconcilable differences.

When it became clear that the women's remains would never be found without Robinson's cooperation, a compromise was reached. In a carefully scripted plea in October 2003, Robinson acknowledged that Koster had enough evidence to convict him of capital murder for the deaths of Godfrey, Clampitt, Bonner, and the Faiths. Though his statement was technically a guilty plea and was accepted as such by the Missouri court, observers remarked that it was notably devoid of any remorse or specific acceptance of responsibility. Robinson received a life sentence without possibility of parole for each of the five murders.

In 2002, Robinson stood trial in Kansas for the murders of Trouten, Lewicka, and Stasi along with multiple lesser charges. After the longest criminal trial in Kansas history, he was convicted on all counts. He received the death penalty for the murders of Trouten and Lewicka, and life imprisonment for Stasi's murder because she was killed before Kansas reinstated the death penalty. He received a 5-to-20-year prison sentence for interfering with the parental custody of Stasi's baby, 20.5 years for kidnapping Trouten, and seven months for theft.

Robinson was arrested in June 2000, at his farm near La Cygne, Kansas, after a woman filed a sexual battery complaint against him and another charged him with stealing her sex toys. The theft charge finally gave investigators the probable cause they needed to obtain search warrants. On the farm, a task force found the decaying bodies of two women, later identified as Lewicka and Trouten, in two 85-pound (39 kg) chemical drums.

Robinson became well known in increasingly popular BDSM chatrooms. In 1999, he offered a job and a bondage relationship to Izabela Lewicka, a 21-year-old Polish immigrant living in Indiana. When she moved to Kansas City, Robinson (who was still married to Nancy) gave Lewicka an engagement ring and brought her to the county registrar, where they paid for a marriage license that was never picked up. It is unclear whether Lewicka believed she and Robinson were married; she told her parents she had married but never told them her husband's name. She did sign a 115-item slave contract that gave Robinson almost total control over every aspect of her life, including her bank accounts. Sometime during the summer of 1999, she disappeared. Robinson told a web designer he employed that she had been caught smoking marijuana and deported.

Over time, Robinson became increasingly careless, and his ability to avoid detection declined. By 1999, he had attracted the attention of authorities in Kansas and Missouri as his name frequently came up in missing person investigations.

By then, Robinson had discovered the Internet and roamed online chatrooms using the name "Slavemaster," looking for women who enjoyed playing the submissive partner role during sex. An early online correspondent was Sheila Faith, aged 45, whose 15-year-old daughter Debbie was a wheelchair user due to spina bifida. Robinson, portraying himself as a wealthy businessman and philanthropist, offered to pay Debbie's medical expenses and give Sheila a job. In 1994, the mother and daughter moved from Fullerton, California, to Kansas City and immediately disappeared. Robinson cashed Faith's pension checks for the next seven years.

Because he made contact with most of his post-1993 victims via online chatrooms, Robinson is sometimes referred to as "the Internet's first serial killer".

In 1987, Catherine Clampitt, aged 27, left her child with her parents in Wichita Falls, Texas, and moved to Kansas City to find employment. Robinson hired her, who reportedly promised her extensive travel and a new wardrobe. She vanished in June of that year. Her missing persons' case remains open.

From 1987 to 1993, Robinson was incarcerated, first in Kansas (1987–1991) on multiple fraud convictions and after that in Missouri for another fraud conviction and parole violations. At Western Missouri Correctional Facility, he met 49-year-old Beverly Bonner, the prison librarian. Upon his release, she left her husband, a prison doctor, and moved to Kansas to work for him. After Robinson arranged for Bonner's alimony checks to be forwarded to a Kansas post office box, her family never heard from her again. For several years, Bonner's mother continued forwarding her alimony checks and Robinson continued cashing them.

In 1985, using the name John Osborne, Robinson met Lisa Stasi and her four-month-old daughter, Tiffany, at a women's shelter in Kansas City. He promised Stasi a job in Chicago, an apartment, and daycare for her infant and asked her to sign several sheets of blank stationery. A few days later, he contacted his brother Don and sister-in-law, Helen, who had been unable to adopt a baby through traditional channels, and informed them that he knew of a baby whose mother had committed suicide. For $5,500 in "legal fees", the couple received Tiffany (whose identity was confirmed by DNA testing in 2000) and a set of authentic-appearing adoption papers with the forged signatures of two lawyers and a judge. Stasi was never heard from again.

In 1984, having established two more fraudulent shell companies (Equi-Plus and Equi-2), Robinson hired Paula Godfrey, aged 19, ostensibly to work as a sales representative. Godfrey told friends and family that Robinson was sending her away for training. After hearing nothing further from her, Godfrey's parents filed a missing persons report. Police questioned Robinson, who denied any knowledge of her whereabouts. Several days later, her parents received a typewritten letter, with Godfrey's signature at the bottom, thanking Robinson for his help and asserting that she was "OK" and did not want to see her family. The investigation was terminated as Godfrey was of legal age, and there was no evidence of wrongdoing. No trace of Godfrey has ever been found.

After completing his probation In 1979, Robinson was arrested for embezzlement and check forgery, for which he served sixty days in jail in 1982. After his release, he formed a bogus hydroponics business and stole $25,000 from a friend to whom he promised a fast investment return so the friend could pay for his dying wife's health care.

Robinson became a Scoutmaster, a baseball coach, and a Sunday school teacher. In 1977, he was named to the board of directors of a local charitable organization where he forged letters from its executive director to the mayor of Kansas City and from the mayor to civic leaders, naming him as the organization's Man of the Year. Under that guise, he hosted an awards luncheon in his honor.

In 1969, Robinson was arrested in Kansas City for embezzling $33,000 from the medical practice of Dr. Wallace Graham, where he worked as a radiographer using forged credentials. He was sentenced to three years probation. The following year, he violated probation by moving to Chicago without his probation officer's permission and gained a job as an insurance salesman at the R.B. Jones Company. In 1971, he was arrested for embezzling funds and was ordered back to Kansas City, where his probation was extended. In 1975, Robinson's probation was extended again after an arrest on charges of securities fraud and mail fraud in connection with a phony medical consulting company he had formed.

In 1961, Robinson enrolled at Morton Junior College in Cicero to become a medical radiographer, but dropped out after two years. In 1964, he moved to Kansas City and married Nancy Jo Lynch, who gave birth to their first child, John Jr., in 1965, followed by daughter Kimberly in 1967, and twins Christopher and Christine in 1971.

John Robinson was born in Cicero, Illinois, the third of five children of an alcoholic father and a disciplinarian mother. In 1957, Robinson became an Eagle Scout and traveled to London with a group of Scouts who performed before Queen Elizabeth II. He enrolled at Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago, a private boys school for aspiring priests, but dropped out after one year due to disciplinary issues.

John Edward Robinson (born December 27, 1943) is an American serial killer, con man, embezzler, kidnapper, and forger who was found guilty in 2003 for three murders committed in and around Kansas City, Kansas, receiving the death penalty for two of them. In 2005, he admitted responsibility for five homicides in Missouri as part of a plea bargain to receive multiple life sentences without possibility of parole and avoid more death sentences. Investigators suspect that more victims remain undiscovered.