An experienced con man and criminal, John Edward Robinson eventually turned to murder when he started killing young women while living in the Midwest with his wife and four children. With the advent of the Internet, Robinson, who was heavily into BDSM, turned to online chat rooms to find not only women who were willing to become his sex slaves, but also victims he could murder for profit.
While he killed several women over the course of more than a decade, Robinson got away with murder until police made a gruesome discovery hidden in plain sight on his property in Kansas. When officials learned exactly how the middle-aged husband and father met many of his victims, he was given the dubious distinction of being the "Internet's First Serial Killer" - as well as two life sentences.
14 Disturbing Facts About The First Internet Serial Killer, John Edward Robinson,
He Put The Bodies Of His Victims In Barrels
When investigators searched John Edward Robinson's home and property in Kansas in June 2000, they discovered two large barrels, each containing the body of a dead woman. Officials later determined they were the corpses of Izabela Lewicka, the young Polish immigrant, and Suzette Trouten, the nurse he'd convinced to move near him to take a nonexistent job looking after his sick father.
Officials learned Robinson rented two large units at a storage facility in Missouri, and they quickly discovered they had been used to stored two more drums, containing a total of three victims. Inside the barrels, Robinson had placed the dead bodies of Sheila Faith and her teenage daughter Debbie, as well as the corpse of Beverly Bonner, the prison librarian who had left her husband to be with him.
After examining the remains of the victims, medical experts determined they had been killed by blows to their heads.
He Convinced Two Women To Become His Sex Slaves
In 1997, John Edward Robinson met 19-year-old Polish immigrant Izabela Lewicka, through a BDSM chat room, and he convinced the young woman to move from Indiana to Kansas City to become his sex slave. Lewicka signed a slave contract, giving Robinson complete control over her life. However, in August 1999, Robinson killed Lewicka, and when people who knew both Robinson and his sex slave asked about the young girl's sudden disappearance, he told them she'd been caught using drugs and was deported home to Poland.
Shortly after murdering Lewicka, Robinson encountered 27-year-old nurse Suzette Trouten online, and he got her to move to Kansas City by offering her a fictional job talking care of his father. Soon after she relocated to Missouri, Robinson convinced Trouten to sign a slave contract, but like Lewicka, he also murdered the young nurse. In order to convince Trouten's family she was still alive, Robinson sent letters to her mother, purportedly written and mailed by Suzette from all over the world, but they all had postmarks from Kansas City, causing the young nurse's mother to suspect foul play.
He Murdered A Woman And Sold Her Baby To His Own Brother
In early 1985, John Edward Robinson, husband and father to four children, met Lisa Stasi, a 19-year-old mother, and her baby Tiffany through a Kansas City hospital. Stasi, who had recently separated from her husband, accepted Robinson's offer of a well-paying job and help finding a home for herself and her newborn daughter. However, shortly after meeting Stasi, Robinson murdered the young mother, leaving her infant daughter physically unharmed.
Then, Robinson contacted his brother and sister-in-law, who had been unable to have a child of their own, and told the couple he could help them adopt a baby. Robinson claimed Tiffany's mother had killed herself, so the child desperately needed a home. He charged his brother and sister-in-law thousands of dollars in "adoption" fees, and they didn't find out the truth about Stasi's death until Tiffany was in her teens.
He Murdered A Disabled Teenager And Her Mother
Through an online chat room, John Edward Robinson met Sheila Faith, and he offered the 45-year-old mother a job and medical care for her 15-year-old daughter Debbie. Debbie had spina bifida, a birth defect that affects the spinal cord, so the teenager was confined to a wheelchair. Shortly after the mother and daughter arrived in Missour in 1994, they were murdered by Robinson, but their friends and family members didn't know what had actually happened to the Faiths for several long years.
He Used The Screen Name "Slavemaster"
In 1984, John Edward Robinson murdered his first known victim, Paula Godfrey, a 19-year-old woman he had hired to work as a sales representative for a shell company he'd set up. While Robinson was a suspect in her disappearance, he sent letters bearing Godfrey's signature to the young woman's family in an effort to convince them she was still alive. Consequently, the investigation into Godfrey's disappearance was dropped.
Years later, Robinson hired another young woman, 27-year-old Catherine Clampitt, promising her not only a job, but a closet full of new clothing and lots of traveling. However, Clampitt disappeared in June 1987, and she has never been found dead or alive.
That same year, 46-year-old Robinson went to prison, not for murder, but for defrauding investors who had participated in a business partnership with him. When he was paroled in 1989, Robinson starting visiting the online chat rooms that had cropped up during the Internet's infancy, often talking with other people who shared his interest in bondage and sadomasochism.
Robinson, who had five computers in his home, spent hours chatting to people online, and he used the screen name "Slavemaster" to let women know he was interested in a submissive partner. Interacting with people in chat rooms helped Robinson meet lots of different women, including some of his future murder victims.
He Met One Of His Victims While He Was In Prison
While he was incarcerated in the early 1990s for crimes related to defrauding investors, John Edward Robinson met Beverly Bonner, a middle-aged prison librarian. Bonner, who was married to a doctor who worked in the prison, became friendly with Robinson, and she gave the inmate a job working alongside her in library.
After he was released, Robinson remained in contact with Beverly Bonner, and in 1994 he convinced the 49-year-old librarian to divorce her husband and move to Kansas City to work for him as the president of a hydroponics company. However, shortly after she left her husband and relocated to Kansas City, Bonner was murdered by Robinson, and it took years for her family and friends to find out what had happened to her.
He Embezzled Money From His Employers
After graduating from high school, John Edward Robinson studied X-ray technology at a local college, but he never graduated with a degree. Instead, he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and married his first wife when he was 21. While working as a laboratory technician for a doctor in Kansas City, Robinson was arrested for the first time in 1967, and he was convicted of embezzling more than $33,000 from his employer. Instead of going to jail, Robinson received three years of probation, which didn't stop him from committing more crimes.
In 1970, he was fired from a job at Mobil Oil in Kansas for stealing thousands of postage stamps, so he went back to Illinois and got a position with another company. However, seven months after he started working at R.B. Jones in Illinois, Robinson was terminated for embezzling over $5,000. However, instead of going to jail, Robinson paid back the money he'd stolen, and the charges against him were dropped.
He Cashed His Victims' Checks After Murdering Them
After Sheila Faith moved from California to Kansas City with her teenage wheelchair-bound daughter, she arranged for both her and 15-year-old Debbie's Social Security checks to be mailed to a post office box in Kansas. However, after John Edward Robinson murdered the Faiths, he collected and cashed the checks totaling over $1,000 a month, allowing him to profit off of their killings for seven years.
After moving to Kansas City, Beverly Bonner had her alimony checks sent to a Kansas post office box, and as with the Faiths, Robinson cashed these checks long after he killed the 49-year-old former prison librarian.
His Wife Knew He Was Having Affairs With Other Women
While John Edward Robinson's wife denied knowing anything about her husband's murders, during his trial, she admitted that she knew he was having affairs with other women. In fact, she was aware of Robinson's relationship with Izabella Lewicka, the young Polish immigrant who was eventually discovered dead in a barrel, and she thought Robinson was thinking of leaving her for the younger woman.
While she was upset by his relationships with other women, and she often thought about leaving her husband over his infidelity, Robinson's wife said she didn't divorce him because she didn't want to upset her granddaughter. Even after the bodies were discovered and her husband was arrested for multiple counts of murder, Robinson's wife confessed during his trial that she still loved him.
He Was Apprehended When A Woman Accused Him Of Assaulting Her And Stealing Her Sex Toys
In April 2000, a Texas woman John Edward Robinson had been communicating with online agreed to visit him in Kansas to engage in BDSM. After spending the weekend together, the woman went to the police, claiming he had forced her to perform sexual acts against her will, and he'd stolen her money and belongings, including more than $700 worth of sex toys.
At the same time, another woman contacted the police about Robinson, claiming he was particularly violent towards her during a sexual encounter. Law enforcement learned a third woman was in the process of leaving her home with her young daughter to become Robinson's sex slave in Kansas City.
Consequently, authorities knew they needed act before the middle-aged husband and father could hurt anyone else, so they got a search warrant to try to recover the stolen sex toys, as well as a warrant for Robinson's arrest. However, when investigators visited Robinson's home, they found far more than hundreds of dollars worth of sex toys.