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Thread: John Edward Robinson, Sr. - Kansas Death Row

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    John Edward Robinson, Sr. - Kansas Death Row




    Facts of the Crime:

    Convicted of capital murder in the deaths of Izabel Lewicka and Suzette Trouten and of first-degree murder in the case of Lisa Stasi, who disappeared in 1985 and was never found.

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    Senior Member Member Jeffects's Avatar
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    Very long article if you're interested:

    John Edward Robinson

    At 10.15am on Friday 2nd June 2000 at #36 Monterrey Lane, Santa Barbara Estates, Kansas, two police officers knocked on the door of John Robinson Snr and told him he was under arrest. He would be later charged with the aggravated sexual battery of two women. His wife, Nancy, would be bought in for questioning but had nothing to offer the investigation.

    The next day a team of detectives and forensic investigators set up base on Robinson’s farm in La Cygne. Five large metal barrels would be quickly found with the use of cadaver dogs. When opened, the first barrel would uncover a naked, blindfolded and decomposing body lying face down in the fetal position. A second barrel was opened where another decomposing body would be found. The bodies are removed from the scene and taken to Dr Donald Pojman for autopsy.

    Over the weekend, search warrants would be signed approving a search of two storage lockers owned by Robinson in Raymore. Monday June 5th the task force moved in and opened locker #E2 finding inside 3 barrels each marked “Rendered Pork Fat”. Kevin Winer (Kansas City PD Crime Lab) opens the first barrel, in which he finds amongst other items a shoe, which when picked up has a leg attached to it. Immediately the barrel is resealed. All 3 barrels are taken away for autopsy to Dr Thomas Young in Jackson County.

    That afternoon John Robinson made his first appearance since the discoveries on his property. Wearing standard issue prison orange, Robinson was in Johnson County Courthouse where he would here that his bond was being raised to $5 million. Tuesday afternoon at another press conference DA Chris Koster would announce that each of the 3 barrels found in the storage locker would contain a female body. Wednesday morning and one of the bodies would be named as Suzette Trouten who has been missing since March 1st 2000. On June 12th Beverley Bonner would be named as the first of the three bodies found in the storage locker barrels.

    The next day, June 13th, John Robinson was charged with 5 counts of first degree murder for the bodies found in Kansas and Missouri, the death penalty would be sought by both states. In Johnson County District Court, Kansas, Robinson is formally charged with 2 counts of murder for the deaths of Suzette Trouten and Izabela Lewicka in addition to the kidnapping (aggravated) of Suzette. In Cass County he was charged with the murders of Beverly Bonner and the 2 still unidentified women found in the storage locker. They would be identified in late June via their dental records as Sheila Faith and her disabled daughter Debbie.

    http://murderpedia.org/male.R/r/robi...ohn-edward.htm

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    Member Member giallohunter's Avatar
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    Documentary about the case "FBI: Criminal Pursuit: Internet Slave Master".


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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Kansas serial killer case to go before Kansas Supreme Court

    TOPEKA, Kan. — John Robinson, a serial killer who targeted women in Kansas and Missouri and was convicted in the murders of six women between the mid-1980s until his arrest in 2000, is appealing his death penalty conviction. His case is scheduled to be heard before the Kansas Supreme Court on Tuesday, March 24.

    Robinson was ultimately charged and convicted of one count of aggravated kidnapping, two counts of capital murder, which included the murders of all six women; one count theft, one count first-degree premeditated murder and one count of aggravated interference with parental custody.

    During their investigation, detectives searched Robinson’s property in Linn County, Kan., and found two barrels containing the remains of missing women. Prosecutors said Robinson engaged in sado-masochistic sex and then killed the women. Officers found the bodies of Suzette Trouten and Isabella Lewicka in June 2000. Robinson also faced charges in Cass County, Mo., where police found the bodies of Beverly Bonner, Sheila and Debbie Faith stuffed in barrels in a Raytown storage facility.

    After his conviction in Kansas, proseuctors in Missouri agreed to a plea in which Robinson acknowledged that the prosecutor had enough evidence to convict him of capital murder for the deaths of Paula Godfrey and Catherine Clampitt, Beverly Bonner and Sheila Faith and her 15-year-old daughter Debbie.

    In his appeal, Robinson challenges the trial court’s denial of his motion to change venue. He also challenges the court’s denial for a continuance, the court’s denial to suppress evidence. He challenges if the evidence is sufficient to support his convictions, and the denial of Robinson’s motion for mistrial based on alleged juror misconduct during the penalty phase. Other appeals are for court decisions during both the guilt-phase and the penalty-phase.

    Robinson was sentenced to death in the capital murder convictions, along with sentences for the other convictions, including:

    * Life imprisonment for the first-degree murder conviction
    * 246 months in prison for the aggravated kidnapping conviction
    * Seven months in prison for the felony theft conviction
    * He was also ordered to pay more than $9,000 in restitution.

    http://fox4kc.com/2015/03/19/kansas-...supreme-court/

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    John E. Robinson death penalty appeal hearing takes three hours in Topeka

    By TONY RIZZO
    The Kansas City Star

    Topeka, Kan. - After more than a decade of preparation, lawyers for convicted serial killer John E. Robinson Sr. got a little more than one hour Tuesday to make their case for a new trial.

    During oral arguments before the Kansas Supreme Court, the defense raised a multitude of factors they say prevented Robinson from getting a fair trial.

    Attorneys for the state countered that Robinson’s 2002 prosecution in Johnson County was handled fairly and his convictions and death sentence should be upheld.

    The justices questioned prosecutors about how they had constructed the two capital murder charges that put Robinson on death row. In each count, prosecutors cited the same deaths of four other women in Missouri as being part of a continuous scheme or course of conduct, one of the factors that allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty under Kansas law.

    If the court finds that structure to be a problem, the state could lose one of Robinson’s two capital murder convictions. Jurors also convicted Robinson of first-degree murder in a third woman’s death after the longest criminal trial in Kansas history.

    Robinson, now 71, killed the three women over a 15-year period.

    He later pleaded guilty in Cass County to killing five other women and was sentenced to life in prison in Missouri.

    The Johnson County convictions — the subject of Tuesday’s hearing — involved the deaths of a 27-year-old Michigan woman, Suzette Trouten, and a 21-year-old Indiana woman, Izabela Lewicka. Both moved to the Kansas City area after meeting Robinson online.

    Their bodies were found in June 2000 stuffed inside barrels on property Robinson owned in Linn County, Kan.

    Robinson also was found guilty in Kansas of killing Lisa Stasi, a 19-year-old Kansas City woman last seen by her family in 1985. Her body has not been found, but authorities discovered that her infant daughter had been raised by members of Robinson’s family after he arranged an adoption that they believed was legitimate.

    Kansas has not executed an inmate since the state re-instituted the death penalty in 1994.

    http://www.kansascity.com/news/local...#storylink=cpy

  6. #6
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Kansas Supreme Court upholds death sentence for serial killer John Robinson

    Defendant convicted of three Kansas murders, five in Missouri

    The death sentence imposed on serial killer John E. Robinson, Sr., was upheld Friday in a 415-page decision from the Kansas Supreme Court.

    The decision appears to be the first time the Kansas Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and sentence in a death penalty case since Kansas restored the death penalty in 1994, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt told The Capital-Journal on Friday.

    Robinson, who used internet postings with promises of work to attract several of his victims into his world of sadomasochism and sexual torture, was convicted of killing three women in Kansas and five in Missouri.

    The bodies of several of his victims were found stuffed in storage barrels on his northeast Kansas farm, or in a storage locker he rented in south suburban Kansas City, Mo. Other bodies of his victims have never been found.

    The high court, in a split decision authored by Justice Caleb Stegall, upheld the death sentence imposed for one of Robinson's two convictions of capital murder.

    The court reversed a second capital murder conviction, as well as an additional conviction of first-degree murder, as “unconstitutionally multiplictous” with the first capital murder conviction.

    All other convictions were upheld.

    In a dissenting opinion, Justice Lee Johnson said the Johnson County prosecutors failed to prove either of the capital murder charges. Johnson also argued that the death penalty is unconstitutional under Section 9 of the Kansas Bill of Rights.

    Robinson was 58 in October 2002 when he was convicted in Johnson County District Court on two capital murder charges in the killings of Izabel Lewicka, 21, and Suzette Trouten, 27. Their decomposed bodies were found in drum barrels on Robinson’s Linn County farm near La Cygne.

    Robinson also was convicted in Kansas of premeditated first-degree murder in the death of Lisa Stasi, whose body was never found after she was last seen in 1985. Robinson also was convicted on another charge involving the fraudulent adoption of Stasi’s 4-month-old daughter.

    The Kansas jury that convicted Robinson recommended the death penalty after a separate hearing in 2003.

    Robinson has been linked to the killing of eight women in Kansas and Missouri between 1984 and his 2000 arrest in Kansas.

    In Missouri he pleaded guilty — as part of a plea arrangement to avoid that state’s frequently applied death penalty — to the first-degree murders of Beverly Bonner, a former Missouri prison librarian Robinson befriended while serving time on a fraud conviction, as well as Sheila Faith and her disabled teen daughter, Debbie.

    The bodies of the three women were found — after the discovery of the bodies in Kansas — in a storage locker rented by Robinson in Raymore, Mo., just south of Kansas City.

    As part of his Missouri plea agreement, Robinson also admitted killing two former employees, Paula Godfrey, 19, believed to be the first of his victims in 1984, and Catherine Clampitt, 27. Robinson was never charged in their deaths, and their bodies have never been found.

    Robinson’s case attracted national attention after investigators uncovered evidence of his cyber-stalking of victims through Internet chat rooms. At his Kansas trial, jurors were shown a videotaped sadomasochistic sex scene with one of his victims.

    Robinson's capital murder defense attorney, Paige Nichols, cited 19 issues of possible reversible error during oral arguments before the Supreme Court last March.

    One involved the conduct of a juror who during the penalty phase of the trial consulted a Bible for a definition of the word “mercy” – a mitigating factor juries are allowed to consider when deciding whether to impose the death penalty.

    The juror's Bible research was done outside of deliberations, Stegall wrote, and comments on what was found were made only after a unanimous jury vote to recommend the death sentence.

    The high court also rejected defense arguments regarding the district court's refusal to consider a change of venue; the procedure used during voir dire examination of jurors; the legality of search warrants executed on Robinson's property, as well as wiretaps on his phone; prosecutor misconduct during closing arguments; and jury instructions given in the penalty phase.

    The Supreme Court upheld Robinson's capital murder conviction of Trouten, saying it was part of a “common scheme or course of conduct” that also included the murders of Lewicka, Sheila and Debbie Faith, and Stasi.

    But having found Robinson guilty of capital murder of Trouten, it was unconstitutionally multiplictous – that is, punishing a defendant twice for the same crime – to convict and sentence Robinson for the killing of Lewicka and Stasi, Stegall wrote.

    Kansas restored the death penalty in 1994 after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck it down in 40 states. The state has not executed a prisoner since then, however.

    The last execution in Kansas was June 22, 1965 when James Latham and George York were hanged on the same day.

    Their executions came two months after Perry Smith and Richard Hickock were hanged for the infamous “In Cold Blood” murders of the four-member Clutter family in Holcomb.

    The Kansas Department of Corrections currently lists nine men as capital murder inmates.

    Three of those inmates – brothers Jonathan and Reginald Carr, and former Topekan Sidney Gleason – had their convictions upheld but their death sentences vacated by the Kansas Supreme Court in 2014.

    The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a Schmidt appeal of those decisions.

    A fourth inmate, Scott Cheever, had his conviction and death sentence for the 2005 fatal shooting of Greenwood County Sheriff Matt Samuels overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court in 2013.

    But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled later that year that Kansas erred in doing so, and remanded the case back to the state for new consideration.

    http://cjonline.com/news/2015-11-06/...-john-robinson

  7. #7
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    This is unbelievable news! I had really thought the Kansas Supreme Court was absolutely hellbent on overturning each and every death sentence that came before it.

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    ProDP
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    So, what happens now anyway?

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Robinson will likely appeal to the US Supreme Court.

  10. #10
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
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    I think it's highly likely that the Kansas Supreme Court is anticipating being benchslapped by a possibly unanimous SCOTUS in the Carr and Gleason cases and they're trying to save face.

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