THE SLAVE MASTER: JOHN EDWARD ROBINSON

Article BY Lori Bell - Art by MARK STINSON

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A Serial con man turned to serial murderer, and was luring women into his web of sex and sadomasochism. He then killed them and disposed of their bodies. The streak of the unsolved homicides spanned three decades before cops brought the sociopath to justice and discover the horrors he had committed were far worse than they ever could have imagined.

In Overland Park, Kansas, on September first, 1984, Paula Godfrey was at her parents home waiting for a ride from her new employer. The nineteen-year-old recently graduated from high school. She was hired as a sales representative, and the individual who hired her lured her into this job with an offer that couldn’t be turned down.

Paula was picked up by her new employer. She was to be taken to the airport for one of her first work assignments. Paula never came home. Her parents became concerned and filed a missing persons report with the local police. The authorities contact Paula’s boss who ran a management consulting firm.

The employer said he dropped her off at the airport, and had no knowledge of where she was. A few days after that a strange letter showed up in the mail. It was signed by Paula, but the language was pretty strange. Her parents were not sure what to make of it, and their daughter was still missing. With nothing more to go on, police fully suspended their investigation.

Four months later, in December, 1984, the same non-threatening well-dressed Kansas City businessman, who’s known to some by his initials J. R., and others as John Osborne, announced his latest venture. The Kansas City Outreach Program.

This program was designed for young women who were troubled, who were pregnant, or who had given birth. Lisa Stasi was a 19 year old unemployed mother living in Kansas City. With no home to call her own, she contacted the Outreach Program looking for assistance.

Lisa met John Osborne through the Outreach Program. Osborne set up a trip for Lisa to travel to Chicago for job training. Prior to her departure, Osborne had Lisa sign four sheets of stationary, which he claimed would be used to update her parents.

On January 9th, 1985, Lisa and her daughter were picked up by Osborne and taken to a hotel. They were promised room and board for the foreseeable future. The following morning concerned relatives called the Roadway Inn in Overland Park.

They were told Lisa and her four month old baby had checked out. They found the person who actually got the room for them was not named John Osborne. His real name was John Robinson. Lisa’s family members went to the hotel and found out John Robinson allegedly owned a business named Equa2.

On January 11th, Lisa’s brother-in-law went into the Equa2 offices and confronted Osborne. He left empty-handed with very little information. Her in- laws went directly to the police. Police tracked down Osborne and start questioning him about Lisa’s disappearance. The police quickly determined John Osborne was John Robinson.

Robinson told some sort of a sketchy story to the police. He told them that Lisa’s boyfriend Bill showed up, and they ran off together to Colorado. Police weren’t sure what to make of it, but that’s all the information they had for now.

A few days later, Lisa’s relatives received two letters from her. She stated that she had this new boyfriend named Bill. Her life was wonderful. Of course, none of this is going to ring true. The first thing that Lisa’s family noticed was that all the letters were typed, but she didn't know how to type.

Even though the letters themselves were misleading, the signature was genuine. Police had their suspicions about Robinson, but there was no evidence he was involved in any criminal activity. So the investigation was soon dropped.

It wouldn’t be Robinson’s last run in with law enforcement. His pension for breaking the rules dated back to his childhood. John Robinson was born on September 27th, 1943, in Cicero, Illinois. His father was a machinist and a major raging alcoholic. His mother was a strict disciplinarian.

In the fall of 1947, Robinson enrolled in the Quigley Preparatory School for boys. In 1961, he enrolled into a program in Cicero Community College for x-ray technicians, but he never completed it. A lack of degree didn’t stop him from getting a job.

Utilizing fake diplomas, and fake letters of recommendation, he obtained his first job as an x-ray technician, even though he was unqualified. In June 1967, John was fired from his x-ray tech job, and reported to Kansas City Police on allegations that he embezzled nearly $33,000. Robinson avoided jail time, but received nearly three years probation.

Beginning in the late 60s Robinson started getting involved in crime. It was mostly white-collar crime, and fraud. He started accumulating a tremendously lengthy rap sheet. He was assigned a probationary officer for the rest of his life. He was ultimately just a con man.

Outwardly, his personal life was stark in contrast. To those who knew him, Robinson was a quiet man, a committed father, and a good husband. He was well-liked and respected in his community. He was an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, an Eagle Scout, and involved in all sorts of social and civic activities.

In December, 1984, Robinson approached an organization called Birthright. It was dedicated to helping unwed mothers . He offered to provide housing and job training to some of their clients through his Kansas City Outreach Program.

When Birthright employees started asking around town about Robinson’s program, it didn’t check out. They were put in touch with Missouri Parole Officer, Steven Haines. Haines reviewed Robinson’s lengthy criminal record, and wondered if the known con man was connected to any baby selling rings. He wasn’t but he was on the FBI’s radar.

On January 17th, 1985, Haines ordered Robinson to report to the probation office. He never shows up. He blew the meeting completely off. In Kansas City, on January 24th, 1985, Robinson finally paid a visit to the Missouri Department of Probation and Parole. He showed no hostility, and had easy answers for all of Haines’ questions.

At some point, the probation officer went to an apartment Robinson had on Truce Avenue in Kansas City. When he walked inside their were two women living there on their own. According to Robinson , they were clients from his Outreach Program.

Something didn’t seem right to the probation officer. Haines started calling around to find out as much as he could about John Robinson. It didn’t take him long to find out that Miss Godfrey and Miss Stasi were both missing, and somehow they were connected to Robinson.

Steve Haines knew that something was unusual about Robinson. He contacted the FBI, and gave them all the information he knew. Haines and the FBI started to figure out what the connection was between Robinson and the two missing women.

As it turned out, Robinson had a ravenous appetite for bondage, discipline, and sadomasochistic sex. He even became a slave master, and a pimp, organizing a ring of prostitutes to serve S & M clients.

In May, 1985, John Robinson met Teresa Williams. Before long, Robinson recruited her as his personal sex slave. He was putting her up in his apartment on Truce Avenue, and covered all of her daily expenses.

On Saturday morning, in late May, Robinson visited Teresa at the Truce Avenue apartment. He burst into the apartment, grabbed her by the hair, threw her off the bed, and started spanking her saying that he was going to punish her sexually for being a bad girl. He started beating her.

He had a revolver in a holster, withdrew it, placed into her mouth, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. The chamber was empty. Robinson then took the revolver and shoved it between her legs. He decided that she had enough so he withdrew the gun, and left.

In Kansas City on June 7th, 1985, two FBI agents, who had been following Robinson for five months, arrived at his Truce Avenue apartment to question Teresa Williams. When the FBI agents informed her that they were looking into the disappearance of two other women, she suddenly realized she could have been the next.

Teresa started relaying all the sorted affairs, and all the different violence which was perpetrated on her by Robinson. She enlightened the two agents about his role in the underworld of sadomasochism in the Kansas City area.

The agents placed Williams into protective custody, believing that her life was in danger. In conjunction with the FBI, probation officer Haines started to build a case against Robinson. There were a number of probation violations they were able to hook him up on.

Robinson was arrested and charged in Missouri, but avoided jail time, and was released on bail pending appeal. Meanwhile, in January, 1986, prosecutors in Kansas secured the first of two fraud convictions against Robinson.

He was sentenced to 6 to 19 years, which he began serving in May, 1987. Around that same time , yet another woman went missing in Missouri. Catherine Clampitt was a 27 year old from Wichita Falls, Texas.

She saw an ad in the newspaper for what she thought was an attractive job, and moved to Kansas City. Although Catherine was known to have a bit of a wild side, staying away from her family for a few days at a time, they became concerned because they had lost contact with her.

Within a week or so, a letter showed up at her parent’s house which included Catherine’s signature at the bottom, but the wording itself didn't sound like the daughter they knew. Her brother went to the police and told them he hadn’t seen her in about three days. Also, that she was hired by a man by the name of John Dawson.

Catherine’s brother, Robert, called Dawson’s office and demanded to speak to him. He was informed that there was no such person named John Dawson employed there. At that point he started going through Catherine’s own personal effects.

He did, in fact, find a receipt which had been signed by Robinson not Dawson. Detectives immediately recognized Robinson’s name and his consulting firm Equa2. What they realized was that this was the exact same person who they had sought and investigated with the disappearance of Stasi two years prior.

In late June, 1987, Robert went to the Equa2 offices to confront his sister’s employer, only to find out the company closed, and John Robinson was in prison. At this point in time, police had three missing women cases, each one unsolved, and each one mysterious in their own rite. The entire case trail went cold.

Robinson was able to maintain a squeaky clean record while he was in prison, so he received an early release. He only served four years out of a ten year sentence. But Robinson still needed to serve time for probation violations from a decade old Missouri fraud case.

He served two years at Western Missouri Correctional Facility, where he struck up a friendly relationship with the prison librarian , Beverly Bonner. When he was fresh out of prison in 1993, he maintained his relationship with Bonner.

Bonner ended up in Kansas working for Robinson. He promised jet-setting, international relations, fancy trips, and everything else. Before Bonner left on what was supposed to be her first international trip, she was asked to have her alimony checks from her ex- husband, sent to a certain P.O. Box in Kansas City.

The only other person who had access to that box was Robinson. Bonner went missing in 1994, but her checks were still cashed. That summer, Robinson started placing personal ads in local newspapers.

Forty-five year old Sheila Faith lived in Pueblo, Colorado, with her physically disabled, 15 year old daughter, Debbie. Her daughter was basically confined to a wheel chair. Shiela had a husband who just recently passed away.

She supported the family on $1200 a month from her daughter’s disability, and husband’s social security checks, and was looking through newspaper personal ads for companionship. In 1994, she met a man, and the gentleman referred to himself as “John.”

The “John” Sheila starts corresponding with was John Robinson. He promised her a job and a better life for her daughter. One night in 1994, John showed up at her house, and she took off with him, taking her daughter along. Shiela and Debbie were never seen or heard from by anyone again.

The disability checks continued to be cashed. It was the exact same scenario that happened to Beverly Bonner. Meanwhile, in public, Robinson obtained a vanilla image, yet behind closed doors he spent hours searching websites under the handle “Slave Master.”

Izabella Lewicka was a 21 year old Polish immigrant, who, in 1997 enrolled in Purdue University. Before long she was off for an internship in Kansas City. Her new boss was Robinson. She left a forwarding address, and her parents started writing her. All of their letters remained unanswered.

But Izabella didn’t want to be found. She enjoyed the S&M relationship she had with Robinson. She even signed a slave contract. Her parents became worried after a month. They drove all the way from Indiana to Kansas trying to track her down.

They found out the P. O. Box number Izabella gave them was located inside a shipping specialty store. But, the manager refuses to give them any information. Her family returned to Indiana, however, they failed to contact the police.

For two years, Izabella worked for Robinson by day, but lived the life of a sex slave by night. In August of 1999, Izabella suddenly disappeared. A few weeks later, in the fall of 1999, Robinson logged on, and linked up with Suzette Trouten, a 27 year old home health care nurse from Michigan who had seen his job posting.

Trouten, like Robinson, was also into BDSM. In February 2000, Trouten packed her bags and headed off to Kansas City. Trouten arrived in Missouri on Valentine’s Day 2000, with her two beloved Pekingese dogs in tow.

Robinson put Suzette up in a guest house suite, room 216. He had her sign a sex slave contract, along with some other papers. On March 1st, Robinson paid Trouten’s bill at the front desk. Trouten is not with him, and neither are her dogs.

Trouten’s mother and father received the first of multiple letters. It was dated February 28th and postmarked March 6th. It was her signature at the bottom of the letter, but they knew their daughter was not a good speller, and this letter was perfectly written with no mistakes at all.

However, the name of her favorite dog was misspelled. They knew that something wasn’t right. That same day Suzette’s mother called Robinson. Robinson informed the family that she had run off with another man. Her parents reported her missing. Suzette was never heard from again.

In Lenexa, Kansas, on May 19th , a desk clerk at the Extended Stay America, called local authorities for a distressed woman. One of Robinson’s sex slaves stated that at some point this man went too far, and she wanted to file a formal police complaint.

Only a few days later another woman came forward to the police. She also reported sexual assault and even robbery this time. The person she described was Robinson. In Olathe, Kansas, on June 2, the task force executed a search warrant on John Robinson.

The task force arrived and arrested Robinson at his residence. They found a treasure trove of evidence. Identification cards, birth certificates, and other documents belonging to the missing women. Among the finds was a piece of paper signed by Lisa Stasi 15 years earlier, and a the receipt from the day before she disappeared. The evidence was overwhelming. At this point, however, they still had no body.

In Lynn County, Kansas, on June 3rd , armed with a search warrant, investigators raided a 16 acre farm owned by Robinson. What they did come across were two large 55 gallon drums. Ultimately, what they were going to discover were the dismembered and partially decomposed bodies of previous victims, all female.

In Raymore, Missouri, on June 5th, investigators visited a storage facility where Robinson rented unit E2. Police found three more barrels with three more decomposing bodies inside. Dental records identified the unknowns, in the barrels on Robinson’s farm, as Suzette Trouten and Izabella Lewicka.

The three bodies found in the storage unit in Missouri, were identified as Beverly Bonner, Sheila Faith, and her daughter Debbie. There was evidence that all the women had been beaten to death. In June, 2000, after Robinson’s arrest, one of his former associates came forward.

He advised the police that Robinson is the leader of a cult called the International Counsel of Masters. It was a cult designed to attract young women to come into their fold, where Robinson could then rape them and in many cases kill them. Even removing body parts for his own sick pleasure.

As law enforcement prepared for trial, they uncovered an even bigger skeleton from Robinson’s closet, Lisa Stasi’s missing daughter, Tiffany. Shortly after the abduction in 1985, Robinson contacted his brother Don and his wife Helen.

Robinson knew they were trying to have a baby, and for the price of $5,500, he told them he could get them a baby. Before long, they had a new baby in hand. It was Lisa’s daughter, Tiffany. Don and Helen renamed her Heather and raised her as their own.

In Olathe, Kansas, on October 7th, 2002, the John Edward Robinson trial got underway at Johnson County District Court. Robinson faced two counts of capital murder for the deaths of Suzette Trouten and Izabella Lewicka, and a premeditated first degree murder charge for Lisa Stasi.

Robinson pled not guilty. After three weeks of testimony and evidence, the jury rendered it’s verdict. Robinson was ultimately convicted of the murder of Trouten and Lewicka. He was also convicted of the murder of Lisa Stasi, despite the fact that her body was never recovered.

After the longest criminal trial in Kansas history, Robinson was convicted on all counts, he received the death sentence for the murders of Trouten and Lewicka, and life in prison for Stasi. He also received a five to 20 year prison sentence for “ interfering with the parental custody” of Stasi’s baby. He also received a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murders of Godfrey, Clampitt, Bonner, and the Faiths.

John Edward Robinson was a serial con man who turned into a serial killer. He played the doting father and husband. He had no respect for women, and at least half a dozen died at his hands. John Edward Robinson remains on death row in the El Dorado Correctional Facility in El Dorado , Kansas. He could become the first convict executed in the state by lethal injection.