The Voices of Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  Soon after taking up his new appointment, John made a somewhat astute discovery, which developed into an abiding, lifelong attachment to the buoyant pleasures to be had from fleecing almost everyone he came across. The upshot was that he developed the disagreeable technique of making himself wealthy at the expense of others whom he made extremely poor. From then on, even up to today, dishonest thoughts occupied every space in John’s head, and he pushed honesty completely to the back of his mind.

  Robinson started his criminal activities in 1967, but soon came unstuck and was placed on probation for three years for embezzling $33,000 from the 57-year-old Dr. Graham. He had begun by stealing and taking liberties in the practice’s medical office. He boasted to friends and colleagues about a house he had bought. In addition, he engaged in sexual liaisons with both office staff and patients—convincing one patient to have sex with him in the X-ray lab by pretending his wife was terminally ill and unable to accommodate his priapic needs.

  How did J.R. find the money to buy the house? The answer is simple: He drained the practice’s bank account to the extent that, just six months after he had been taken on, a bewildered Dr. Graham was unable to pay Christmas bonuses to his staff. This unexplained loss of revenue prompted an audit of the practice’s books, and accusatory fingers all pointed toward Robinson. J.R. was arrested and marched away in handcuffs while feigning sincerity and remorse, hoping that this would get him nothing more than a slap on the wrist from the criminal justice system.

  Robinson? I wouldn’t leave him alone in my yard to wash my truck. That sumbitch would steal the car, the hose, the faucet, and carry away as much fuckin’ water as he could carry.

  —JEFF TIETZ, FORMER KANSAS CITY POLICE OFFICER

  In 1969, Robinson was convicted of the theft. It was his first offense, and he pledged restitution, so a Jackson County judge exercised leniency, sentencing him to three years’ probation. Dr. Graham never saw a cent of the money J.R. had stolen from him.

  J.R.’s next career move was as the manager of a TV rental company. He soon tuned in to stealing merchandise from this employer, too. When he was exposed, the company did not prosecute him, but they most certainly did fire him.

  During the next decade, Robinson, of whom one employer said: “He gave a very good impression, well dressed, nice looking . . . seemed to know a lot, very glib and a good speaker” was often in trouble with the police. He defrauded tens of thousands of dollars from various companies to help him along the way. Despite being on parole for most of this time, he managed to prosper.

  To give credit where credit is due, if John Robinson was anything, he was pathologically persistent. For the next 20 years he bounced from job to job, managing to keep out of prison by crossing his fingers, crossing jurisdictional boundaries, and convincing employers not to press charges when he was caught.

  In 1977, J.R. bought a large waterfront house. It was set in four acres of prime real estate in Pleasant Valley Farms, an affluent neighborhood in Johnson County, Kansas. By now, he and Nancy had four children and it was here, in picturesque rural surroundings, that the confidence trickster and embezzler formed a company called Hydro-Gro Inc. The firm ostensibly dealt in hydroponics, which is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions and a great deal of water instead of soil.

  J.R.’s own publicity literature, a glossy, 64-page brochure, portrayed him as a “sought-after lecturer,” an “author,” and “one of the nation’s pioneers in hydroponics.” This claim would have certainly come as a surprise to the ancients, for the hanging gardens of Babylon, the floating gardens of the Aztecs of Mexico, and those of the Chinese are examples of hydroponic culture. Egyptian hieroglyphic records dating back several thousand years BC describe the growing of plants in water. So, hydroponics is hardly a new method of growing plants. But by the 1970s, not only were scientists and analysts, many of whom worked for NASA, involved in hydroponics, but also traditional farmers and hobbyists had begun to be attracted to the virtues of hydroponic growing. However, John E. Robinson was not—and this will come as no surprise—among them.

  Hydro-Gro Inc. was, of course, a bogus enterprise, and in setting it up, Robinson swindled a friend out of $25,000. The man had invested because he hoped to get a better return on his money, to pay for his dying wife’s medical care.

  With his phony resumé in radiography and hydroponics richly embroidered in merit and distinction, this devious jack-of-all-trades and master of none also managed to engineer his appointment to the board of governors of aworkshop for disabled people. It was a position he occupied for scarcely more than two months when the self-proclaimed philanthropist, with an almost religious desire to help the developmentally disabled, was named “Man of the Year” for his work with the handicapped.

  Amid much publicity, the Kansas City Times extolled Robinson’s virtues, and at a special dinner and presentation ceremony, J.R. was given a grandiose gesture of approbation in the form of a certificate signed by the mayor and a Missouri state senator.

  According to Robinson, he had “no idea” that when he had been invited to this dinner they would be honoring him. However, feigning surprise when the winner was announced, he humbly accepted what amounted to a rigged award as members of the organization’s board sat in stunned silence.

  A short time later, however, the meritorious award was exposed as having been obtained fraudulently. It had been granted as a result of faked letters of commendation received at City Hall, all written by none other the Man of the Year himself, John E. Robinson Sr.

  Robinson’s plan backfired big-time when the city fathers, whose names Robinson forged on the letters of recommendation, read about the event in the local press. One man was outraged because on “his” letter supporting Robinson, his name had even been misspelled. The Kansas City Times, stung by the scam, took its revenge by exposing Robinson two weeks later as a fraud. His children were ridiculed at school, and his wife, who says today that her husband was unfaithful to her for at least 20 years of their 38-year marriage, was reluctant to show her face in public. But how did John react? One might have thought that he would have wished he could have become invisible. The fact was, however, J.R. couldn’t have cared less.

  By now the reader will have come to the inescapable conclusion that Mr. Robinson is a most disagreeable fellow, not a man to trust, least of all the type to enter into any form of agreement with, so it came as no surprise to this author when J.R. penned the letter of February 20, 2008, demanding $400,000.

  In 1980 Robinson was given the position of director of personnel by another company, and very soon he honed in like a heat-seeking missile on his employers’ checkbook and money, using the former to direct quite a lot of the latter to his own bank account. After laundering $40,000 into PSA, a paper company he owned, he yet again found himself placed on probation, this time for five years.

  He had no real employment, unless you consider figuring out ways of scamming people out of their money to be real employment.

  —DISTRICT ATTORNEY PAUL MORRISON ROBINSON’S MURDER TRIAL

  Between 1969 and 1991, John Robinson was convicted four times for embezzlement and theft, earning himself the notable distinction of being barred for life by the Securities and Exchange Commission from engaging in any kind of investment business. Some of his thefts were minor—he lost his job with Mobil Corporation for pinching $300 in postage stamps—while others were more significant.

  For his part, Robinson soldiered on unfettered and undeterred, founding another firm, Equi-Plus, to add to his impressive portfolio. This newcomer to the Robinson stable specialized in “management consultancy” and was very soon engaged by Back Care Systems, a company that ran seminars on the treatment of back pain. And, by golly, give the company a pain John surely did!

  Equi-Plus, aka John Robinson, was commissioned to prepare a package that included a marketing plan, printed publicity material, and videos. However, what Equi-Plus actually provided was a string of inflated, and in most c
ases bogus, invoices. Once again, a criminal investigation was begun into the business activities of the energetic J.R., who responded by producing a series of faked affidavits, all attesting to the legitimacy of the invoices submitted to Back Care Systems.

  While the investigation continued, this slippery eel founded Equi-II, an Overland Park corporation run by Robinson, who at the time described himself as a “consultant in medical, agricultural, and charitable ventures.” And it was while he was at the helm of this new outfit that he moved into a sphere of activities far more sinister than embezzlement and fraud.

  With the $40,000 in stolen funds, J.R. acquired an apartment in Olathe, a town south of Kansas City. Here he was able to enjoy sexual affairs with two women, one of whom is quoted as saying, “John kind of swept me off my feet. He treated me like a queen and always had money to take me to nice restaurants and hotels.”

  But there is no such thing as a free lunch, and retribution loomed on the horizon for the thieving and libidinous Robinson. He was convicted of the theft, and given his criminal record, this time he faced a possible prison sentence of seven years. However, he only had to spend only a couple of months behind bars and once more found himself placed on probation for five years.

  Paula Godfrey

  John Robinson took away from our family our oldest daughter that we all loved so much. After she disappeared, my wife was a changed woman. A big part of her was ripped away.

  —William “Bill” Godfrey, Paula’s father

  In 1984, an attractive, dark-haired young woman named Paula Godfrey went to work for J.R. as a sales rep at Equi-II, after graduating from Olathe North High School. Her new boss told her that she was going to be sent to Texas to attend a training course paid for by the company. Robinson collected Paula from her parents’ home in Overland Park to drive her to the airport. Her family never saw her again.

  Having heard nothing from their daughter for several days, Paula’s parents became anxious and eventually contacted the Overland Police Department to report her missing. The police questioned Robinson, but when he professed ignorance of Paula’s whereabouts, they went away satisfied with what he had told them.

  Not long afterward, the police located a letter bearing Paula Godfrey’s signature which began, “By the time you read this, I’ll be long gone. I haven’t decided on Cleveland, Chicago, or Denver, oh well.” In the rest of the letter, Paula seemed to be saying that she was perfectly fine but didn’t want to remain in touch with her family. The neatly folded letter had been found in the bottom of a briefcase belonging to one Irving “Irv” Blattner, an ex-con associate of Robinson, who had been arrested on an entirely unrelated matter. The one-page letter was a photocopy and accompanied an original letter from J.R. addressed to Blattner in an Equi-II business envelope.

  After reading the letter, the police closed their investigation. But Paula Godfrey was to become J.R.’s first murder victim. The truth of what happened to her would not come out until 2003.

  It seems that Paula, an excellent ice skater, had gotten into some kind of domestic trouble, and Robinson helped her out by loaning her some money. For his part, Irving Blattner helped her find places to stay in Belton, on the Missouri side of the state line, where her boyfriend couldn’t find her. One night, Robinson drove to a Belton motel where the young woman was staying, and for reasons known only to the tight-lipped J.R., he hit her in the head with a lamp while Blattner blocked the doorway so she couldn’t escape.

  Notwithstanding this, following his new vocation as a philanthropic helper of young women, J.R. approached the Truman Medical Center in Independence, a small city in Montgomery County. There, he spoke to social workers, telling them that he, together with some other local businessmen, had formed “Kansas City Outreach.” This, he explained while patronizingly peering over the top of his glasses, was a charitable organization that would provide young unmarried mothers with housing and career training along with a babysitting service. The Truman Medical Center smelled a rat. They refused to help this patron saint of lost causes, so the next Saint Jude moved on and pitched the same story to Birthright, an organization that gave help to young pregnant women. Birthright, in turn, pointed Robinson in the direction of Hope House, a refuge for single moms.

  According to writer David McClintick, J.R. told both organizations that Kansas City Outreach was likely to receive “funding from Xerox, IBM, and other major corporations,” which would have been news to them. In any event, the great philanthropist asked the social workers to submit candidates they felt would be suitable for the KC Outreach program, and in early January 1985, Robinson was contacted by the Hope House shelter and put in touch with Lisa Stasi.

  Lisa Stasi

  Poor, uneducated, and unworldly, 19-year-old Lisa Stasi was cute. With long, dark hair, and trusting eyes—and a four-month-old daughter, Tiffany Lynn—she was homeless and living at Hope House, the shelter for single women. Sadly, her marriage to Carl Stasi had fallen apart and he’d left his wife and baby to rejoin the Navy at the Great Lakes Naval Base outside Chicago.

  Carl later testified that he’d met his wife through a friend. They had married in Huntsville, Alabama, in August 1984, where Lisa had been raised. Lisa was eight months pregnant at the time. “We were going to stay there and start our lives there,” Carl Stasi later testified, “but I didn’t have no insurance and the baby was due, and so we came back here [to Kansas].”

  Tiffany Lynn was born a few weeks later at the Truman Medical Center, a hospital well known for its care of the indigent. Nevertheless, broke and homeless, the Stasis’s marriage quickly fell apart. “It was shaky,” Carl explained. “I was irresponsible and I wasn’t working at the time. It was going downhill from there.” He and Lisa separated in mid-December, and he returned to the Navy a few days after Christmas.

  I fed her [Lisa] and the baby. She slept a long time, she took a bubble bath.

  —CARL’S SISTER, BETTY, TO THE COURT AT ROBINSON’S TRIAL

  John Robinson, using the name John Osborne, now arrived on the scene. Using his phony credentials, he offered Lisa free accommodation and career training. He explained to her that this involved helping her to gain her High School Equivalency Diploma, after which he would arrange for her to go to Texas to train as a silkscreen printer. After she had completed her training, he said, there would be job opportunities for her in Chicago, Denver, or Kansas City. In the meantime, her new mentor told her, he would not only pay for her accommodation and living expenses, but also he would give her a monthly stipend of $800.

  It was an offer she couldn’t refuse.

  The kindly benefactor took Lisa and Tiffany from the refuge and installed them in Room 131 at the Rodeway Inn, a motel in Overland Park, telling the young mother that she and the baby would be traveling to Chicago within a few days.

  When J.R. left the motel, Lisa went to see her sister-in-law, Betty Klinginsmith, to discuss matters with her. She stayed the night, and the following morning, Wednesday, January 9, 1985, Lisa telephoned the front desk at the Rodeway Inn and learned that an irate “Mr. Osborne” was looking for her. She left a message for Osborne with the clerk, asking him to call her at Klinginsmith’s home. A few minutes later the phone rang, and Klinginsmith gave Osborne directions to her house.

  “He [J.R.] came to my door about twenty-five minutes later and rang the doorbell. I went down to the door with my son, who was five,” Klinginsmith later testified at J.R’s trial. “Lisa put on her coat. He didn’t waste any time on pleasantries. He didn’t say anything to me. He just stood there and looked at me.”

  After expressing anger that she had checked out of the motel, Robinson insisted that Lisa and her daughter leave with him immediately. There was a heavy snowstorm when Lisa carried Tiffany to his car, which was parked down the street. She left her own damaged yellow Toyota Corolla and many of her belongings behind.

  Like Paula Godfrey, Lisa Stasi was never seen again by her family.

  Back at the motel, later the same day,
Osborne produced four sheets of bank notepaper, which he asked Lisa to sign. He also asked for the addresses of her immediate family, saying that as she would be too busy to write letters when she got to Chicago. He would write them for her, just to let her relatives know her whereabouts. Perhaps she resisted, but we do know that she telephoned Betty.

  “I took it for granted she was at her motel,” Betty would tell investigators. “She was crying real hard, hysterical. She was telling me that ‘they’ said that they was going to take her baby from her, that she was an unfit mom. They wanted her to sign four sheets of blank paper. I said, ‘Don’t sign nothing, Lisa. Don’t put your name in anything.’” According to Betty, the last words Lisa said were, “Here they come,” before the phone was disconnected.

  According to testimony given by J.R.’s wife, Nancy, years later, he had brought the baby home that night. She recalled that it was “snowing heavily” and that “the infant was not very clean and smelled badly. There was dirt under the child’s fingernails. Apart from some spare diapers, the baby had only the clothes she was wearing and some baby food,” Nancy recalled.

  The next morning, the 10th, Betty Klinginsmith telephoned the Rodeway Inn, only to discover that Lisa and Tiffany had checked out and that the bill had been settled by a John Robinson, not John Osborne. She reported him to the Overland Park Police Department and the FBI.