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Online Seductions

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 Robinson's 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.

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Resolution

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.