The Internet's First Serial Killer

John Edward Robinson was an American serial killer who was sentenced to death in fraud, kidnapping and murder cases.

 John Edwards is also known as "the Internet's first serial killer". Police offered him a life sentence if he confessed to all the crimes. As the Internet became more popular, Robinson began using it for his own criminal purposes. He not only sought a sexual partner for himself through the Internet, but later killed them.

 

 Early Life

 

 Robinson was born in Illinois. His mother was a strict and principled woman, while his father was an alcoholic. Robinson was the third of five siblings.

  In 1957, he became an Eagle Scout, and reportedly traveled to London with a group of scouts who performed in front of the Queen (Elizabeth II). Later this year, he attended th Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago, but dropped out a year later due to poor discipline.

 

 In 1961, he enrolled at Cicero's Morton Junior College to become a medical X-ray technician, but dropped out two years later. In 1964, he moved to Kansas City and married Nancy Joe Lynch. In 1965, their first child, John Jr, was born. In 1967, a daughter was born to them, and four years later, twins were born to them.

 

 Early Crimes

 

  In 1969, Robinson was first arrested on a charge of embezzlement. He committed the fraud with a doctor in Kansas City, where he obtained a job as an X-ray technician using forged documents.

 He was sentenced to three years in prison but was later released on parole.

 In 1970, Robinson violated probation by moving back to Chicago without the permission of his probation officer, and began working as an insurance salesman at RB Jones Company.

 In 1971, he was again arrested for embezzling firm funds, and was ordered to be sent back to Kansas City, where his trial was extended. In 1975, after another arrest, it was extended again, this time on charges of fraud in a "medical consulting" company based in Kansas City.

 Robinson then began to change himself. He made a good impression on people, but he had the same old devil in his mind. He also served as a scout master and baseball coach.

 He was not incarcerated but was regularly monitored. He was required to obtain permission from his probation officer to leave the city. Mentoring was stopped in 1979 and in 1980 he was again charged with multiple offenses. In which forgery and embezzlement were clear crime. This time he had to spend two consecutive months in prison. Even after his release from prison, he continued his activities and went one step further. He used to forge companies, but now he has set up his own fake company. Robinson took 25,000 dollars from a friend and told him that he Will return it soon with a profit.

 Meanwhile, he started having sex with his neighbors' wives. Once he got into a quarrel with one of his neighbors because of this work. He also claimed to be a member of a Sadomasochism religion. Which was called the International Council of Masters. He called himself one of masters whose duties included torturing and raping victims by gang members.

 

 Murders

 

 In 1984, after starting two more fake shell companies (Equi Plus and Equi2), Robinson hired 19-year-old Paula Godfrey. He asked her to work for him as a sales representative.

 Godfrey told friends and family that Robinson was sending him for training. When no further news was heard from Godfrey for a long time, her parents filed a report of his disappearance.

 Police questioned Robinson, who said he was completely unaware of it. Several days later, Godfrey's parents received a letter, signed by Godfrey, stating that she was OK and did not wish to see her family. After receiving the letter, the investigation was terminated because Godfrey was of legal age. And no evidence was found against Robinson. No trace of Godfrey has been found to date.

 In early 1985, John Edward Robinson met Lisa Stasi and her four-month-old daughter at a women's shelter in Kansas City. Lisa had recently separated from her husband and was now looking for support. Robinson promised to give her a job and a house. He had her sign on a lot of blank papers. Robinson soon killed her after winning his trust. Robinson contacted brother and sister-in-law after Lisa's murder. Robinson's brother was childless. Robinson told him that he knew a girl whose father was unknown and whose mother had committed suicide. Robinson received thousands of dollars from his brother and sister-in-law for fees in the name of adoption.

 In 1987, a 27-year-old woman named Catherine went missing in Texas. According to the reports, she contacted Robinson and Catherine left her child with her parents in Texas and moved to Kansas City in search of work.

 She went missing in June 1987 and her case is still Unsolved. Meanwhile, Robinson learned to use Internet. He used to go around different sites under the name of "Slavemaster" and look for women who showed complete surrender during sex.

 Her first victim on the Internet was "Sheila Faith". Sheila also had a 15-year-old daughter who was wheelchair-bound due to her disability. Robinson introduced himself as a wealthy businessman and Offered to pay the expenses of Debbie's medical and give Sheila a job. In 1994, mother and daughter moved from California to Kansas City and soon disappeared. Robinson cashed Sheila's pension cheque for the next seven years.

 Gradually, Robinson became popular in BDSM chat rooms.

 In 1999, he offered a job and slavery relationship to 21-year-old Izabela Lewicka, who lives in Indiana. When she arrived in Kansas City, Robinson gave Izabela an engagement ring and brought it to the county registrar and paid for marriage license. (That license later remained there and no one received it.)

 Izabela told her parents that she was married, but never told them her husband's name. She signed an agreement that gave Robinson almost complete control over every aspect of her life, including her bank accounts.

  During the summer of 1999, she disappeared. Robinson told a web designer that she had a job somewhere and that she had been caught smoking marijuana and had been deported.

 After Izabela's disappearance, Suzette Trouten, a licensed practical nurse, came from Michigan to Kansas to travel the world with Robinson as his submissive sex slave. Trouten's mother received several typed letters that suggested Trouten and Robinson were abroad, although the envelopes contained Kansas City postmarks. Later, Robinson told Trouten's mother that she had run away with an acquaintance after stealing money from him.

 

 Arrest

 

 Robinson gradually became careless or fearless. When his name came up in various missing persons cases, Kansas City officials turned their attention to him.

 Robinson was arrested in June 2000 on his own farm near La Cygne, Kansas.

  When a woman filed a sexual battery complaint against him and another charged him with stealing her sex toys. The theft charge, in particular, 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 chemical drums.

 

 Across the state Missouri, task force searched Robinson's two rented garages, where bodies were found in three chemical drums.

 

 Conviction

 

 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 in all cases. He was sentenced to death for the murders of Trouten and Lewicka, and to life imprisonment for Stasi (because she was killed before the death penalty was reinstated in Kansas). He was also sentenced to 20-and-a-half years in prison for kidnapping and adopting Lisa's daughter without any authority.

 

 After serving his sentence in Kansas, Robinson also faced additional murder charges in Missouri. Missouri is more notorious for the death penalty than Kansas. (No one has been executed in Kansas City since the death penalty law was reinstated in 1994.)

  Missouri prosecutor Chris Koster offered a plea bargain that Robinson lead authorities to the bodies of Stasi, Godfrey and Clampitt. Robinson, who has never cooperated in any way with investigators, refused, but Koster still faced pressure to make a deal.

But when authorities realized they would not be able to find the remains without Robinson's help, they signaled a lenient sentence. Robinson was sentenced to life in prison without bail.

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

 

 Possible victims of Robinson:

 

 1984: Paula Godfrey (age 19); remains never recovered

 1985: Lisa Stasi (19); remains never recovered

 1987: Catherine Clampitt (27); remains never recovered

 1993: Beverly Bonner (49): remains discovered at storage facility in Raymore, Missouri

 1994: Sheila Faith (45) and Debbie Faith (15): remains of both discovered at storage facility in Raymore, Missouri

 1999: Izabela Lewicka (21): remains discovered at Robinson's ranch near La Cygne, Kansas

 2000: Suzette Trouten (28): remains discovered at Robinson's ranch near La Cygne, Kansas