The Truman Medical Center had led Robinson to nineteen-yearold Lisa Stasi, a pretty, dark-haired young woman with a hard-luck story that had lately gotten harder. Her father had died during her childhood in Alabama and one of her brothers had killed himself. Lisa had grown up wanting stability and a family of her own. Her friends described her as lonely, vulnerable, and gullible but also determined to improve her circumstances. In 1983, she moved to Kansas City, and after meeting a young sailor named Carl Stasi, she appeared to have found what she was looking for. Lisa was soon pregnant, and in August 1984 the couple were married in Huntsville, Alabama. The following month she gave birth, but the arrival of the baby, a girl named Tiffany, did not bring peace to the household. The infant set off conflict that ended with Carl reenlisting in the navy and leaving the area, while Lisa entered Hope House, a battered women’s shelter in Independence, Missouri. She was living at Hope House when a social worker named Cathy Stackpole told her that a generous Kansas City businessman wanted to help her and her daughter. Lisa was deeply relieved and delighted.
In early January 1985, when Robinson first met with her, he promised to give Lisa an $800-a-month silk-screening job in Texas. If that didn’t work out, he could assist her in getting her high school diploma in Kansas City or enroll her in another training program outside of Chicago. One way or another, he would get her out of the situation she was in. He did not present himself to her as John Robinson but as “John Osbourne,” an Overland Park entrepreneur who ran a company called Equi-II. He’d been quite successful, he told her, and now he had a strong desire to do good works; there was no better way than assisting young mothers in need. It was also important to him that the mothers and their children not be separated, as they might be in other social service programs. That was why he’d started Kansas City Outreach and come to her aid.
After taking Lisa and the baby away from Truman Medical Center, Robinson did not move them into an Olathe duplex that he’d talked about, but installed them, along with two other young women, at a Rodeway Inn in Overland Park, near his Equi-II office. While Lisa stayed there, he promised her that he was finalizing travel plans for her and the baby. He had the young mother sign four blank pieces of stationery and provide him with the names and addresses of several of her relatives. He said that he needed these in order to keep them informed of where she was once she’d left Kansas City for Chicago.
On January 9, Lisa and Tiffany visited her sister-in-law, Kathy Klinginsmith, who was Carl Stasi’s oldest sister. When the pair arrived at the Klinginsmiths’, a blizzard was raging outside, so Lisa parked her old Toyota in front of their house and ran inside clutching the baby. She told Kathy that she’d met a benevolent Overland Park businessman who was going to help her finish high school and find a job in the Chicago area. Kathy was taken aback, but didn’t know whether to intervene. Maybe this was a good development, a big step up from Hope House. When Lisa went to the phone and dialed the Rodeway Inn to check her messages, she learned that John Osbourne had been frantically looking for her at the motel. He’d panicked and begun calling around town trying to locate her. He now phoned her at the Klinginsmiths’ and said he was coming to get her and the baby right now—despite the snowstorm that was covering the metropolitan area.
After hanging up, Lisa told Kathy that she wasn’t sure if she should go with him. Kathy’s concerns were quickly turning into fear. When Robinson reached the Klinginsmiths’ address, he didn’t park in front of it, but left his car down the block and out of sight, then walked through the blizzard to their home. Stepping inside, he didn’t say a word to Kathy or acknowledge her in any way. He seemed absolutely focused on removing Lisa and the baby from the home. His behavior struck Kathy as abnormal and she sensed danger—it wasn’t just Robinson’s expression that was menacing. He stood five feet nine inches, weighed two hundred pounds, and was physically imposing to someone smaller than himself. He may have been fleshy and soft around the middle, but the glare in his eyes was anything but soft. It was disturbing and frightening. One day Klinginsmith would identify this expression as evil.
She tried to talk Lisa out of going, but Robinson insisted. Kathy was no match for the man’s forcefulness. Against her sister-in-law’s advice, the young mother walked out of the house with Tiffany held next to her, all three of them disappearing into the snowstorm. As Klinginsmith watched them go, she had a terrible feeling that she would never see Lisa or the baby again. The feeling was so powerful that she called her husband and said that something was badly wrong, that they had to take action now.
Robinson drove the mother and child back to the Rodeway Inn and checked them into Room 131. Lisa tried to phone her sister-in-law and then her mother-in-law, Betty Stasi, but could only contact Betty. During their conversation, Lisa cried and attempted to explain to the woman that she’d been forced to sign four pieces of paper or she would lose Tiffany. It was Betty herself, she’d been led to believe, who’d wanted her to do this and it was Betty who was trying to separate her from her daughter. Her mother-in-law told her this was totally false and cautioned her not to sign anything else.
“I’ve got to go,” Lisa said into the phone. “Here they are.”
She hung up, but her last three words stayed with Betty. She couldn’t stop thinking about them because of the fear in Lisa’s voice and because the words implied that more than one person had come into the room to take Lisa and Tiffany away. How many people were working with this strange man who had assumed control of Lisa’s life? Where was he taking Lisa and Tiffany? Why had the young mother been asked to sign four pieces of paper? Betty was now as worried about Lisa and Tiffany as Kathy Klinginsmith was.
The next day the Klinginsmiths contacted the Overland Park Police Department, as well as the FBI. The police went to the Rodeway Inn, but Lisa and Tiffany had checked out. Their bill had been paid not by John Osbourne, who’d checked them into the room, but by John Robinson with an Equi-II corporate credit card. After Kathy Klinginsmith learned this, her husband, David, drove to the Equi-II address at Ninety-eighth Street and Metcalf Avenue. Robinson was there alone and David confronted him with questions about Lisa and Tiffany. Robinson acted put upon at first, indignant that anyone would think he had done anything wrong. Then he suddenly transformed himself—his eyes focusing and growing hard, his muscles stiffening, and anger taking over his entire body. He no longer looked soft. He flew into a rage and pushed the man out of his office.
David Klinginsmith was shaken up. He would soon tell the police about receiving a strange phone message from someone named “Father Martin.” This was apparently a priest from the local City Union Mission, who indicated to David that Lisa and Tiffany were all right. When David tried to follow up on the message and talk with Father Martin, there was no one by that name to be found. And no one seemed to know what had become of Lisa and Tiffany Stasi.
Robinson had taken the baby girl to his home in Stanley and handed the child over to his wife, who was surprised that her husband was in custody of an infant. Nancy Robinson, who’d raised four kids of her own, was also surprised by Tiffany’s condition. The baby smelled bad, had dirt under her fingernails, and needed diapers and food. She had arrived at the house with nothing. Nancy bathed her and then went out into a snowstorm and got supplies for the child. As she was taking care of the infant, John explained to her that the baby had come from a private adoption agency and that he’d had to pay $4,000 for her. He’d apparently somehow gotten the adoption papers from the office of an Olathe attorney named Doug Wood, who would one day become a Johnson County commissioner. Robinson told his wife that Don and Helen Robinson, his younger brother and sister-in-law from Chicago, would be flying in the next day to adopt the baby.
The Chicago couple had been married about a decade and had no children of their own. Helen had taken fertility drugs to become pregnant, but this hadn’t worked. For some time, the couple had been looking for a way to adopt. At a 1983 family reunion, Don had told his brother that he’d been pursuing
this goal by working with Catholic Charities and a Lutheran agency, but he’d had no luck. Adoption fees were high and the wait was several years. He’d asked John if he knew any attorneys who handled adoptions or if he knew any single women who might want to give up their child to a good family. John said that he was willing to help and was aware of a lawyer who specialized in this area. Although the older brother had been in and out of jail on numerous charges, Don didn’t seem to have many qualms about enlisting his aid in finding a baby. The younger Robinson sibling was soon on the phone with an attorney who used the name Doug Wood, and Wood was eager to offer his services for an adoption.
In the spring of 1984, John told Don to send him a check made out to Equi-II in the amount of $2,500. The money was to be disbursed to several people and a baby would be available in October of that year. Don and Helen were overjoyed by this news and began preparing for the infant’s arrival. They created a nursery in their home and made plans to furnish it with a crib, baby toys, and clothes. When October came, John explained that some things had changed and the baby wasn’t yet available. The Robinsons were disappointed but willing to be patient and see what developed. Three months later John called them and said that he’d found a baby but the infant was Italian and had medical problems and big feet. He advised that they pass, so they did. A few days later he phoned again and asked the couple to fly to Kansas at once. On the morning of January 10, they landed in Kansas City and were met by John at the airport. He told them how he’d dealt with lawyers and judges to arrange the adoption, and he provided them with notarized court documents and a birth certificate. After driving them to his office in Overland Park, John had them sign a “Petition for Adoption,” and Don gave him a second check for $3,000.
John told them a tragic story about how the child had come to him: the baby’s mother had committed suicide and left behind in a shelter this beautiful infant named Tiffany, who needed parents and a good home. Don and Helen were ecstatic as they rode with John back to his home and were thrilled to see the child outfitted in a tiny new dress. They renamed her Heather Tiffany and took pictures of the baby with her new relatives, including the Robinson children. In one photograph Heather is sitting near a rocking horse and on the lap of a proud-looking John Robinson. He wears a festive yellow sweater and a patriarchal smile, looking pleased to be the head of this clan. The following day Helen and Don and their new daughter returned home to Chicago.
In July 1985, John Robinson mailed his brother adoption documents bearing the signatures of Johnson County lawyers Doug Wood and Ronald Wood and Magistrate Judge Michael Farley. Judge Farley was a small-claims-court judge who did not handle adoptions. Doug Wood and Ronald Wood, who were unrelated, would one day testify that they never did any adoption work for Robinson or anyone else in his family. All three signatures had been forged. A woman named Evi Greshem was listed as the notary public on the adoption papers. She’d never been a notary public, but in 1985 she was Robinson’s mistress and had engaged in sadomasochistic practices with him—at approximately the same time he was believed to be in the International Council of Masters. Greshem had also signed some blank pieces of paper because he’d asked her to.
VIII
While the Robinsons celebrated with pictures and congratulations, the Klinginsmith family had grown frantic with worry for Lisa and her baby. They weren’t the only ones with grave suspicions about what had become of the mother and child. Birthright’s Ann Smith had called Stanley’s First Presbyterian Church to confirm Robinson’s membership there and his connection to the Kansas City Outreach program. The church knew Robinson but had never heard of this adoption program. She then contacted the Olathe bank whose board Robinson claimed to sit on. They knew nothing at all about the man. This prompted Smith to call the Missouri Board of Probation and Parole, where she reached Stephen Haymes and told him about Robinson. Haymes went to work talking with local social workers.
“When I first pulled Robinson’s file,” says Haymes, “and took a look at what we had, I knew that he was a con man, a slick character. My immediate curiosity was, ‘What’s in it for him?’ And I figured it was not something good. But what it was I didn’t know and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out just that question.
“When I’m supervising a probationer or parolee, I’m trying to understand, ‘Who is this person and what kind of danger do they represent to the public? Is it physical danger or theft?’ I took a look at Robinson and knew that he was involved in a number of criminal activities going back to the 1969 conviction for theft from Dr. Graham and then theft in Chicago from a company he was working for there. I knew he was a classic con man and you don’t see really good con men very often. We deal with a lot of pretty poor-quality criminals who do things very impulsively or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. A very sophisticated criminal we don’t see that often, not those who set up businesses, some legitimate and some phony, and then manipulate things and steal by setting up limited partnerships or things like that.
“What really got my attention in 1984 was the initial call from Birthright that said he was trying to do something very suspicious with a young girl and a baby. This doesn’t fit with him. It doesn’t fit with a good con man because they go around the block to avoid hurting people because they’re smart enough to know the penalties when people get hurt are much more significant.”
Haymes tried to make personal contact with Robinson but wasn’t successful. He then sent a letter to Robinson telling him to show up at his probation office on January 17, 1985. Robinson, who’d been busy with Lisa and Tiffany Stasi and with Don and Helen Robinson, ignored the letter. Haymes fired off a second one, sent by registered mail, demanding that Robinson appear at his office a week later, on January 24. Haymes also called the local field office of the FBI and asked if they knew of any baby-selling operations in Kansas City. The FBI responded by saying that they were aware of John Robinson and some of his activities but weren’t currently investigating him, and they didn’t know of any baby-selling rings in the area.
On January 24, Robinson came to Haymes’s modest North Kansas City office in an upbeat, bouncy mood, as he usually was when first presenting himself to people. He seemed confident and cheerful. Haymes had prepared for the meeting by laying out on his desk Robinson’s extensive criminal file, so the visitor could see his past staring him right in the face. Robinson appeared unflappable, indifferent to the file. He was talkative, well-dressed, and forthcoming with certain information. When asked about Lisa and Tiffany, he acknowledged that he and five of his business connections were trying to help the unfortunate in the community and had approached both Birthright and Truman Medical Center looking for mothers with infants. Haymes questioned him about the apartment at 8110 Troost Avenue, which the officer believed he was running as a house of prostitution. Robinson said that he was currently offering living space to two young women there, and Haymes could drop by the address and talk with them himself.
The meeting was charged because Haymes sensed that he wasn’t being told the truth yet he wasn’t sure what the truth was. When he asked Robinson what he was receiving in return for all the good deeds he claimed to be doing, Robinson smiled and replied that he was getting the satisfaction of helping people worse off than himself. This was gratifying to someone of his nature. The answer only made the officer more edgy and frustrated.
“Robinson had a lot of excuses about where Lisa and Tiffany were and what had happened to them,” Haymes says. “He’d set up some phony information out there trying to say that they were okay. With me, he was just indignant that—gosh, here he was trying to be nice and help people and he just couldn’t believe that people would accuse him of doing something. But people were disappearing: Paula Godfrey and then Lisa and Tiffany. Some of what had happened with Paula—the letters and things like that—would also happen with Lisa. I believed that he was going from stealing to harming people now, but we still had pretty much nothing but dead ends on these cases.”
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nbsp; Following the meeting, Haymes spoke to the Truman Medical Center, which had referred two other young women to Robinson, and was told they were doing fine under his supervision. But the center was aware that a third young woman whom it had sent to Robinson, Lisa Stasi, had lately vanished. Both the Truman Medical Center and the Overland Park Police Department had been looking for her but with no results.
When Haymes contacted the Overland Park Police Department about Stasi, he was told that they didn’t believe a crime had been committed because there was no evidence suggesting this. The department did acknowledge that Paula Godfrey, who’d worked with Robinson in 1984, had also disappeared. The police explained that they hadn’t pursued this case because of a letter her family had received, apparently written by Godfrey herself, stating that she was okay.
Haymes’s suspicions deepened when he spoke with Stasi’s relatives and others, learning that they’d just received typed letters supposedly from Lisa. One was addressed to Cathy Stackpole, the Hope House social worker. It contained punctuation errors and read in part:
Dear Cathy:
I want to thank you for all your help. I have decided to get away from this area and try and make a good life for me and Tiffany…. I borrowed some money from a friend and Tiffany and I are leaving Kansas City. The people you referred me to were really nice and helped me with everything. I am very greatful for everyones help….
Anyone You Want Me to Be Page 5