John Robinson “The Internet’s First Serial Killer” Part 1

The Victims

Instead of starting with Robinson the douche canoe, today we’re going to start out by talking a little bit about John Robinson’s known victims.  There is more information out there about some of these women compared to others, but we will go over what we do know about each, in chronological order of which they met Robinson. 

Paula Godfrey was born on June 19th, 1965.  She graduated from Olathe North High School in 1983.  During her early life and teenage years, Paula loved to figure skate and is often said to have been a fairly accomplished amateur skater.  She had a petite frame with brown hair and eyes.  After she graduated High School, Paula was presented with an opportunity to join a company, Equi II.  She was interested in starting a career in business and this seemed like a perfect fit.  She was told that she would be flown to San Antonio, TX for a clerical skills course, something that wasn’t uncommon back then.  She told her family goodbye and excitedly set out with John Robinson, the man who hired her.  Paula’s family never saw her again.  

Lisa Stasi was born in April of 1965 in Huntsville, Alabama.  When she was 18, she became pregnant, and she and the father got married and relocated from Alabama to the Kansas City area after their daughter Tiffany was born.  After arriving in Kansas City though, the marriage suffered and eventually failed, resulting in Lisa and her daughter turning to various organizations for assistance in the area.  One such organization was Hope House, a shelter for homeless women in Kansas City.  While there, she was approached by a man calling himself “John Osborne,” who claimed to work with the Kansas City Outreach Program, an organization that assisted young mothers.  We will get into it later, but after joining Osborne, Lisa and Tiffany both went missing.  Eventually Tiffany would be found, but again, more on that later.  

Catherine Frances Clampitt was born in May of 1960 in Korea.  She was adopted by an American couple and grew up in Texas.  In January of 1987, Catherine left her child in Wichita Falls, TX with family and went to Kansas City to stay with her brother and his family to try to find a job and start a career to provide for her family.  Catherine applied for a job at Equi II…..

In 1987, Robinson went to prison, put a pin in that!  While in prison, he met 49 year old Beverly Bonner, the prison librarian.  While he was incarcerated, he was given a job in the library and served as Beverly’s assistant.  The two became friends, but they actually knew each other already.  About 20 years before, they had actually worked together at a place in Kansas City.  After his release, Robinson employed Bonner at one of his businesses.  Her family never heard from her again, except for typed letters with her signature. 

Sheila Faith was born in February of 1949 in Texas.  She had a teenage daughter named Debbie who was born in November of 1978.  Debbie was born with spina bifida.  Spina bifida is a type of neural tube defect.  It can happen anywhere along the spine if the neural tube does not close all the way.  When the neural tube doesn’t close all the way, the backbone that protects the spinal cord doesn’t form and close as it should.  This often results in damage to the spinal cord and nerves.  Debbie was wheelchair bound, but everyone who talked to her, including her doctors, believed that she would absolutely be able to walk eventually, just because of her attitude, determination, and positive outlook.  Sheila would go online and use chat rooms, which were gaining huge popularity and attention in households across the country at this time.  Online, she met a man who lived in Kansas City, and she moved there with Debbie to be with him….

Izabela Lewicka was born in April of 1978 in Poland.  Her family immigrated to the US, and settled in Indiana.  Izabela graduated from Harrison High School in West Lafayette, Indiana in 1996 and went on to attend Purdue University.  She was a talented artist and even painted a wall sized mural at Purdue.  When she was a sophomore in college, she began an online BDSM relationship with John Robinson, who convinced her to relocate from Indiana to Kansas City.  Once there, he bought her an engagement ring and they filled out the forms for a marriage license, which she thought were then filed.  Her family never heard from her again. 

Suzette Trouten  was born in April of 1972.  There’s not much information regarding her life before she met “J.R.” as he called himself online when he talked to her.  She was experienced and familiar with the BDSM lifestyle, particularly the Gorean practices.  This branch of BDSM is based on a series of books written by John Norman.  It’s a sci-fi series about an adventurer in a primitive world similar to Earth.  Throughout his adventures, the main protagonist encounters many women whom he forms a master / slave relationship with, which is the basis for the Gorean concept of master and slave in BDSM.  Norman’s Gor series faced severe criticism and disdain from several groups, particularly feminists, which made publishing the series difficult, but people still managed to find the books and it developed a cult following.  Suzette eventually moved from Michigan to Kansas City to be with “J.R.” and was never seen by her family again. They did receive… typed letters with her signature at the bottom.  

John Edward Robinson

John Robinson was born in December of 1943 to Henry and Alberta Robinson.  He’s the middle child with four siblings, Henry Jr, Donald, Joanne, and Mary Ellen.   The family called Cicero, Illinois home.   In 1923, Chicago elected William Emmett Dever as mayor, which led Al Capone to move his Chicago based organization to Cicero, to avoid the reach of the authorities in Chicago.  Once set up in the suburb, Capone and his gang quickly seized power over the local saloons and rum-running business.  The Chicago Outfit, as Capone’s organization was called, operated out of Cicero for several years.

While John was growing up, Henry Robinson worked as a machinist for Western Electric.  It was a 9 to 5 job, and Robinson said that his father was hard working and law abiding but a heavy drinker.  Some accounts said that Henry was also abusive towards his family.  Alberta Robinson was the disciplinarian in the family, and ran a tight ship when it came to the household.  Many on the outside said that Alberta was tough on her children, but she also pushed them in positive directions.  She wanted them to excel in life and said that began with being clean and well dressed.  She encouraged them to better themselves.  Robinson described his mother as “detached” when he spoke of her later in life, but Alberta saw John as her child with the most potential.  

As a young boy, Henry encouraged John to join the Boy Scouts, and John thrived in the organization.  In the Scouts, Robinson worked hard and was able to attain the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank one can achieve in Scouts.  Attaining the rank of Eagle Scout is something that less than five percent of Scouts have achieved since the organization’s inception in 1911.  For several decades, being an Eagle Scout would give you a leg up in certain situations.  On job applications or college applications, seeing that someone was an Eagle Scout meant that they were trustworthy and dependable, and it was something that people put a lot of weight into.  

To obtain the rank, a scout has to perform various tasks and earn at least 21 merit badges, 14 of which have to come from a list of Eagle-Required merit badges, the other 7 can be any of the 138 offered by the Scouts.  The process is estimated to take a scout 4-6 years to complete, but some have done it in a much quicker time frame.  One task that takes a while though is that the scout has to perform an extensive service project that they have to plan, organize, lead, and manage.  The projects must benefit an organization other than the Scouts, but can’t be performed for an individual, business, or be commercial in nature.  Although it is a huge undertaking, the rank of Eagle Scout has lost some of its luster in recent years though, due to the controversies that have surrounded the Scouts over the years.  

As an Eagle Scout, Robinson was chosen to lead 120 Boy Scouts in England at the Royal Command Performance in London.  They performed in front of Queen Elizabeth II.  Also performing at this event was one… Judy Garland.  While backstage, Robinson ran into Judy where they two spoke briefly.  Even at a young age, he wasn’t shy.  What were the chances that he would ever be around someone like Judy Garland again?  So he took the opportunity to try to make an impression.  As they were backstage, he gave a smile and a wink to Garland and said “We Americans gotta stick together!”  The remark got a chuckle out of Garland who leaned and gave him a kiss.  This incident gave him a minor bit of celebrity back home. 

In 1957, Robinson enrolled in the Quigley Preparatory Seminary in the heart of downtown Chicago.  Quigley was a five year academy for Catholic boys.  Robinson had said repeatedly that he wanted to become a priest and eventually work in the Vatican, but shocker… that ultimately didn’t happen.  After about a year at Quigley, Robinson dropped out and seems to have switched to public school.  Records show that he wasn’t exactly the best student; he failed multiple classes and got into fights with his classmates.  Much of his time was spent in detention, but eventually, he graduated.  

In 1961, he enrolled in Morton Junior College in Cicero.  He studied to become a medical radiographer, but dropped out after two years.  At some point between high school and college, to make some extra money, Robinson began doing “favors” for some of the local crime families.  This seems to have been mostly running money / items for local bookies, which he was able to do to make some quick money.  But what it did was show him that it was possible for him to make decent cash by doing some shady things.  

In 1964, Robinson married Nancy Joe Lynch, and in 1965 they had their first child, John Jr.  Then daughter Kimberly came in 1967, followed by twins Christopher and Christine in 1971.  Their family would also relocate from the Chicago area to Kansas City during this time.  

The Non-Murderous Crimes

Okay, so now we’re going to dive into Robinson’s early crimes.  There are conflicting accounts of when some of these occurred, but we are going to go over them and try to put them in the best order we’ve been able to discern.  These occur from the late 60s up into the 70s, 80s, and 90s.  To put it into perspective, it’s basically the entire time that he was married and his children’s entire lives.  During all of this turmoil, Robinson presented as the All American husband and father.  He coached baseball, became a Scoutmaster, and was a Sunday school teacher.  He did everything he could to just blend in and be a “typical” family man.  

As his family began to grow initially, Robinson grew desperate for money.  That is one trend in all of his crimes, he would do just about anything for money, even dupe one of his own brothers.  The pressure of starting a family quickly began to build and Robinson decided to start stealing from his employer.  The exact details aren’t known, but he was caught and when confronted, he begged and pleaded for another chance.  His employer decided not to press charges, but he was fired.  That’s when Robinson realized that in a given situation, he was confident that he could talk his way out of trouble.  

After being caught in Chicago, the family moved to Kansas City for a “fresh start.”  Once there, Robinson used his completely real and accurate medical certifications and employment background to land two jobs.  The first was at Children’s Mercy Hospital and the second was at Truman Medical Center.  He told them that in the past, he was a technologist in medical labs, nuclear medicine, and in the radiography fields.  He in fact had a big fat ZERO experience in any of those fields.  He was quickly able to smoooth talk with his co-workers and kind of convince them that he knew what the hell he was doing.  Generally, he was well liked by all his co-workers when he first started, but after seeing him work first hand, they knew he was full of shit.  When he had to x-ray children, he was very clumsy and didn’t really know how to handle them in general.  He had a difficult time getting them into position for x rays.  Sometimes he wasn’t even able to take the x-rays because he didn’t know how.   When the pictures came back, co-workers noted that he couldn’t even read the damn things.  All of these things, he would have learned in school.  

In the beginning, they kinda chalked it up to nerves from moving to a new city and taking on two new jobs.  Robinson did whatever he could to put people at ease too.  In his office, he had framed FORGED credentials all over his walls along with framed awards and citations.  He kept his extensive training on display for everyone!

After a little while, he began to rub all of his co-workers the wrong way though.  Not only because of how shitty he was at his jobs, but he developed a reputation as the guy who constantly asked out his female c0-workers and tried to convince them to have affairs with him…. Like all the time, he was trying to seduce them.  It was like that was his job.  When they rebuffed his advances, he found himself in different local night clubs where he started to quench his thirst for extramarital affairs, and he was able to satisfy his desire to enter into the BDSM lifestyle. 

It didn’t take long for Robinson to be fired from BOTH jobs at the trauma center and the children’s hospital due to gross incompetence and his extracurricular activities were also raised as an issue at both hospitals.  Most people who found themselves in this situation would have probably taken this as a sign and stopped, kinda like “Whoa, I’m in way over my fucking head here.  I need to quit the bullshit and find a job I can actually perform.”  But all this did for Robinson was reinforce his thinking that he could say whatever he wanted as long as he had some kind of document or way to prove them on the surface because most people will take him and his word at face value and not look any deeper into it.  

Robinson soon smooth talked his way into a position with Fountain Plaza X-ray.  It was a new business that had opened in Kansas City that was started by Dr. Wallace Graham.  Graham was a well respected physician who actually served as the personal doctor for President Harry Truman.  Dr. Graham was known to be a brilliant doctor, but he was also very, very kind and trusting, and unfortunately a little naive regarding some people’s true nature or intentions.  So, Robinson is at Fountain Plaza, and they didn’t call the other hospitals for references because.. Why would ya? They were impressed with the credentials he presented, again, forged.  

While working for Dr. Graham, Robinson would proposition female patients that came in and try to have sex with patients and co-workers alike.  On top of that, he began to embezzle money from Dr. Graham.  Just a quick note on stealing vs embezzlement.  Stealing is generally classified and applied to any dollar amount or item that is taken.  Embezzlement is typically much larger amounts, and is the misappropriation of funds placed in one’s trust or belonging to one’s employer.  That’s why you typically see fraud and embezzlement go hand in hand, you typically have to fake documents / signatures, etc to perform the embezzlement.  Robinson forged checks with Dr. Graham’s name, giving himself extra money when he needed or wanted it.  In addition to that, on multiple occasions, after performing an x-ray, he would tell the patients that they had to pay him directly .. in cash.  He stole so much money from the doctor that when it came time for yearly Christmas bonuses, Graham was unable to give any to his staff.  Estimates are that Robinson embezzled between 100 and 300 thousand dollars.  

When confronted, Robinson tried to make an excuse and talk his way out.  He said that no money was missing, and he was just moving money around accounts and it was all accounted for.  Dr. Graham was like nahhhh, and called the police.  Robinson was found guilty of stealing by means of deceit and given 3 years of probation. 

Again, this would be appoint lots of people would be like “holy shit, I fucked up but I’m not in prison and I can turn my life around…”  John Robinson didn’t.  While on probation, he went back to Chicago, unbeknownst to his probation officer, and got a job as an insurance salesman.  He was again caught embezzling funds and ordered back to Kansas City where his probation was extended.  In 1975, his probation was extended AGAIN after another arrest, this time for charges of securities fraud and mail fraud.  Securities fraud is typically defined as stock or investment fraud.  This arrest centered around a fake “medical consulting”  company Robinson formed and took investments for.  

He also forged letters and documents from well known businesses in the area and represented himself as a person who could take investments from people on behalf of the companies.  One man invested as much as $2500.  The businesses caught wind of this scheme and Robinson was arrested and… his probation was extended!!!

The pattern was clear: get a job or start a “business”, steal money, get caught, extend probation, rinse and repeat.  By 1979, Robinson had finally completed his extended probation.  His probation officer said that he hoped Robinson would “continue to reap the rewards of good citizenship.” In 1980, he  promptly got arrested again for multiple charges including embezzlement and check forgery.  He served 60 days in jail.  His victims ranged from a school teacher to friends that he had known for years.  After his release from jail, he formed a fake hydroponics business and convinced a friend to invest twenty five thousand dollars.  He promised a fast return, which the man desperately needed.  The man’s wife was dying from cancer and he believed that the investment would return enough profit that they would be able to crawl out of the medical debt hole they found themselves in.  

Robinson got a job at Guy’s Foods… where he reportedly was fired once they discovered that he had stolen around fifty thousand dollars.. And had an affair with a secretary. He was fired, sued, spent another 60 days in jail, and had to pay back forty one thousand dollars of the fifty that he stole.  The secretary also told his wife everything about their affair.  Whether Nancy already knew of John’s infidelity or just didn’t care, did her best Tammy Wynette impression and stood by her man… for decades.  In fact, it would be almost five years after he was sent to prison before she filed for divorce.  

As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, at one point, John Robinson convinced a local Kansas City charitable organization to name him to their board of directors.  He took the opportunity to forge letters from its executive director to the mayor of Kansas City.  He also forged letters from the mayor to local civic leaders, commending himself for his volunteer efforts and just overall being such a good guy.  He organized an awards banquet and told all the invitees that an anonymous person was going to get a “Man of the Year” award.  Welllll, turns out that person was in fact John Robinson.  Yes, John Robinson gave John Robinson the Man of the Year award, you heard that right. The people whose names Robinson forged on the letters read about the award banquet in the paper and quickly exposed Robinson as a fraud.  

Everything we’ve gone over so far has been basically a summary of Robinson’s more white collar crimes.  In part two, we will take a look at the crimes that lead to him being called the internet’s first serial killer….