Dead Men Talking Read online

  The woman thought it was rather strange as the day came for the pair to leave and JR turned up at the motel with his truck and a trailer loaded with clothing. What further concerned her was that he said that he was going to spend the night in the motel with her.

  Nevertheless, excited at the thought of the trip, the woman awoke the next morning at 5am, and roused Robinson. ‘He was like a man possessed,’ she said later. ‘He jumped out of bed yelling at me and barely stopped berating me as he showered and dressed.’ Still angry, JR said that he was going to check her out of the motel and that he had errands to run. He told her that he would meet her at a nearby restaurant, but he never turned up. Confused, and very disappointed, she tried to call him. He refused to take her calls. She persisted. When she finally connected with JR, he said that he was unable to trust her and that the relationship was over. For some reason, he had got cold feet. It wasn’t until Robinson was arrested for murder that the woman realised how close she had come to being killed that day. It is thought that JR had brought his trailer as a means of removing her corpse from the motel and, by rising before he did, she thwarted his plans; the motel had been busy with guests and he would have preferred a quick and silent kill while the woman slumbered.

  * * *

  In pursuit of his sexual preferences, JR had left the personal ads behind him by now and had enthusiastically embraced the internet. In that same year the Robinsons left the mobile-home park and went to live near Olathe, on the Kansas side of the boarder. The upmarket mobile-home development that they moved to was called Santa Barbara Estates, where once again Nancy worked as estate manager.

  Their new address was an immaculate grey-and-white mobile home at 36 Monterey Lane, and here they certainly didn’t opt for inconspicuous anonymity. They erected a statue of St Francis of Assisi in the yard at the front of their home, hung wind chimes over their front door and, at Christmas, earned quite a reputation for their spectacular display of decorations.

  As well as their home, which came as part of the perks of Nancy’s job on the Santa Barbara Estates, JR and his wife somehow managed to lease farmland near the small town of La Cygne, south of Olathe. They had about 16 acres that also contained a fishing pond to which JR invited his few friends from time to time. The couple improved the place by parking a mobile home and erecting a shed on the site.

  And, it was at 36 Monterey Lane, using no less than five computers and the handle ‘Slavemaster’ – while at once trying to set up a legit wheeling and dealing web site business – he spent a lot of time browsing BDSM web sites. Ultimately it would be two of his internet contacts who were instrumental in bringing his world crashing around his ears, but in 1996 that crash was still some years ahead.

  * * *

  In 1997 Robinson encountered a young Polish-born undergraduate on the internet. Her name was Izabela Lewicka, and the perky lass was studying the fine arts at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana.

  Izabela’s parents became very concerned when, in the spring of 1997, she told them she was moving to Kansas, having been offered an internship. She wasn’t forthcoming with the details, doing nothing to allay her parents’ misgivings other than leaving an email and a contact address on Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park.

  Her parents, Andrew and Danuta, attempted to talk Izabela, who had just finished her freshman year, out of leaving home. ‘She was past eighteen,’ explained Danuta. ‘She’s protected by law. We could not stop her.’ In June, Izabela packed up her 1987 Pontiac Bonneville with books, clothes and several of her paintings, then left Purdue for Kansas City. Her parents would never see her again.

  In August, when it was time for school to start, and after receiving no reply to their letters, the Lewickis grew extremely anxious about their daughter’s welfare, so they drove to Kansas to find out what was the matter. They arrived to find that the address on Metcalf Avenue was simply a mailbox; their daughter didn’t live there. When they asked the manager of the place for Izabela’s forwarding address, he refused to divulge the information. Despite their anxiety, Izabela’s parents did not bother to contact the police but returned to Indiana. Shortly after this Andrew received an email from his daughter:‘What the hell do you want? I will not tolerate your harassment.’ The message went on to insist that in the future they contact her at another address. When he later testified at Robinson’s trial, Andrew said, ‘We exchanged email messages every couple of weeks. In most cases, it was her response to my email messages.’

  Izabela was still alive at that time and living a life far removed from the one she had known in Indiana. And she had good reason to keep it a secret from her parents, for her new friend, JR, had provided her with an apartment in south Kansas City, where they enjoyed a BDSM relationship. They even had a slave contract, one which contained more than 100 clauses governing their conduct – she as the slave, he as her master.

  In return for her submission, JR maintained Izabela financially, paying all her bills. When she wasn’t engaged in sexual activity with him, Izabela enjoyed the life of a lady of leisure. Her main interest was reading gothic and vampire novels bought from a specialist bookstore, one that she visited frequently in Overland Park. But she didn’t abandon her studies completely, for in the autumn of 1998, using the name Lewicka-Robinson, she enrolled at Johnson County Community College. Her adoption of JR’s name lends weight to reports which concluded that the young woman believed they were going to marry – he being 58 and she 18.

  Around Thanksgiving in 1997, Andrew emailed his daughter in Polish saying, ‘I write in Polish because I’m not 100 per cent positive that your letters are coming from you. […] As you know anyone could create an email account and sign it as you. If you would telephone, I would feel much, much better.’

  Izabela purportedly replied, insisting that all further contact be in English.’ I have told you I’m happy,’ she wrote. ‘I’m well. I have a wonderful job and a wonderful man in my life who loves me. I want to be left alone. I don’t know how I can make it any clearer.’

  At JR’s subsequent trial for Izabela’s murder, a friend of the dead girl testified that Izabela had confided in her that she was going to do secretarial work for an international publishing agent named ‘John’, who was also going to train her to be an S&M dominatrix. Jennifer Hayes also told the court that Izabela was going to begin her sex education as a slave.

  In January 1999, JR moved Izabela into another apartment, this one in Olathe. It was closer to his own home, which may account for his sometimes describing her as a graphic designer employed by his new internet company ‘Speciality Publications’. On occasion, however, he is known to have referred to her as his adopted daughter, while at other times he described her as his niece.

  Then in August, Izabela Lewicka disappeared and was never heard from again. Police believe that she was killed and disposed of around that time. However, her parents continued to receive emails purportedly from their daughter up until Robinson’s arrest. In the final months, John said that she was always travelling in some exotic land. In one of her last ever emails, she claimed to have just returned from China.

  We all finally find what we want and need and I found mine.

  Suzette Trouten’s last email to her friend, 2000.

  * * *

  ‘The Slavemaster’ soon returned to the world of sadomasochistic chatrooms. He made contact with Suzette Trouten, a bored 27-year-old licensed nurse from Newport, Michigan, who lived a double life; nurse by day, submissive slave by night. A substantially built young woman with a mass of bubbly brown hair, Suzette, whose non-sexual interests were collecting teapots and doting on her two Pekinese, pursued a highly active BDSM lifestyle, carrying on relationships with as many as four dominants at once.

  Suzette had pierced not only her nipples and navel but also five places in and around her genitalia, all to accommodate rings and over devices used in BDSM rituals. A photograph of Suzette, with nails driven through her breasts, had been circulated on the internet and
it must have acted like a magnet to JR. Quite understandably, a relationship soon developed. In fact, JR was so enamoured of his new submissive friend that he concocted a very attractive job offer to entice her to fly down from Michigan for an interview. He paid for her flight and when she arrived in Kansas City there was a limousine waiting at the airport to meet her.

  The job, JR told her, involved being a companion and nurse to his very rich, elderly father, who travelled a lot but needed constant care. He went on to say that his father did most of his travelling on a yacht and that her duties would involve her sailing with them between California and Hawaii. For this, she would be paid a salary of $60,000 and be provided with an apartment and a car. JR neglected, however, to mention that the only way to have contact with his father would be through the use of an Ouija board or a medium, as the old man had been dead for some ten years. But as we have already established, JR was not a man to let such trivial details inhibit his grand design, so he gave Suzette to understand that the interview had gone well and the job was hers. She returned to Michigan and began putting her affairs in order before relocating to Kansas.

  While she was making ready to move, Suzette spoke to her mother, Carolyn, to whom she was very close, telling her all about her new job. In fact she also gave her mother JR’s telephone numbers – giving police a lead to follow when she later disappeared in March. She also discussed the job offer with Lore Remington, an eastern Canadian friend. The two women had met in a chatroom and shared an interest in BDSM. Later Suzette introduced Lore to JR on the internet, and they too developed a long-distance, dominant-submissive, cyber-sex relationship.

  In February 2000, Suzette rented a truck, loaded it with her belongings and headed off to her new life in Kansas City. Along with her clothes, books, a collection of teapots, and the two Pekinese, she took with her an array of BDSM accessories, including whips, paddles, handcuffs, various lengths of chains, numerous items made from rubber, and just about anything else that a self-respecting, bona-fide BDSM enthusiast might care to invent. And, on John’s insistence, and although he had no interest in the game, she also purchased two golf balls (brand name undetermined) and a length of elastic, but more this later.

  Lenexa is a busy suburb of Kansas City, lying west of Overland Park and north of Olathe, and it was there that Robinson took Suzette when she arrived on Monday, 14 February 2000. He had reserved accommodation for her, specifically Room 216 at the Guesthouse Suites, an extended stay hotel. Claiming that they didn’t allow pets at the hotel, he told her that he had generously arranged for her dogs, Peka and Harry, to be boarded at the kennels of the Ridgeview Animal Hospital in Olathe.

  As soon as Suzette had settled in, JR told her to get herself a passport as they would be leaving in a fortnight. He also produced a master/slave contract covering their BDSM activities, which she duly signed. Then, ominously, he got her to attach her signature to 30 sheets of blank paper and to address more than 40 envelopes to relatives and some of her friends. Just as he had done with other women, he told Suzette that he would take care of her correspondence while they were travelling, as she would be too busy to do so herself.

  Suzette was the youngest of a family of five children and, according to her mother, Carolyn, ‘was a kind of mama’s girl’. While she was in Kansas, she phoned her mother every day, keeping her informed of how things were going and, although Mom had at first worried that she would be homesick, she seemed to be in good spirits and was certainly happy with her employer, John Robinson. Evidently, he was happy with her too.

  On 1 March, Carolyn spoke to her daughter, who was looking forward to her impending yacht cruise with her wealthy boss and his father, and Suzette promised to phone Carolyn regularly before she disappeared. After not having spoken with her daughter for some time, Carolyn made a few discreet enquiries, then she picked up the telephone and called the police.

  Detective David Brown began an immediate and thorough investigation of the man he saw as the prime suspect, John Robinson. He obtained JR’s criminal antecedents then contacted the Overland Park Police. The ‘rap sheet’ acquainted him with the reports of other missing women and soon he saw a potential connection. After he had spoken to two other detectives and Stephen Haymes, Robinson’s probation officer in Missouri, it became clear that he could possibly be investigating a serial killer, and a somewhat clumsy one at that.

  David Brown instructed the Trouten family and a few of JR’s acquaintances to tape their telephone conversations with him and to give the police copies of any emails that they received from him.

  For several weeks after 1 March, Robinson spent time contacting Suzette’s submissive friends and some of her relatives by email, pretending to be her. Most weren’t fooled by the subterfuge. He soon dropped the act and set his sights on Suzette’s Canadian friend, Lore.

  Lore and another Canadian woman began their own amateur investigation of the man they believed was named ‘JR Turner’. Robinson moved quickly after Lore told him she was interested in finding a dominant master for a friend. The emails and chat sessions turned to telephone calls, which were picked up by the police wire taps now in place. The Lenexa PD contacted Lore and told her they were investigating Robinson. They did not explain the extent of the probe, but asked her to continue the relationship.

  ‘The police didn’t tell me to get John Robinson to lure me to Kansas City,’ Lore said later at Robinson’s trial. ‘I was willing to help.’

  Robinson made vague offers to Lore about meeting in her person. ‘He offered nothing other than I would be financially taken care of and never have to work,’ she said.

  At the time that Suzette had been preparing to move to Kansas, the sexually insatiable JR, using the name James Turner, had established two more BDSM friendships on the internet. The first woman, Vicki, was a psychologist from Texas who had placed an advert on a BDSM site. She had recently lost her job and when JR became aware of this he promised to help her find work in the Kansas City area.

  Vicki arrived in Lenexa on 6 April and, while staying at the Guesthouse Suites, spent five days getting to know JR. During this time she signed a slave contract in which she consented to, ‘give my body to him in any way he sees fit’. They also discussed her working for Hydro-Gro before he told her to return home and prepare to move to Kansas City. She was, in many ways, and obvious choice for Robinson… that is to say, she was vulnerable. She suffered from depression and a lack of meaningful companionship and was eager to change her life; she fell completely for Robinson’s ‘bull’. She returned to Kansas City for another long weekend in late April, and it was then that she found that JR was eager to pursue more severe and violent forms of bondage sex than she wanted, but as she believed he was going to find work for her she consented to his demands, allowing him to brutalise her far beyond the limits she had intended.

  Vicki later testified that he took photographs of her bound and nude and he hit her hard across the face. ‘I had never been slapped that hard by anybody before’, she later told the court. She also stressed that the photographs were taken against her wishes and despite her protests.

  Fortunately for Vicki, the promised move to Kansas never took place. When she demanded the return of her sex toys, worth more than $500, JR chivalrously refused. Moreover, he threatened to publicly reveal the slave contract and the explicit, compromising photographs.

  Vicki’s response was to report the matter to the police, and was astonished to learn that all of her phone conversations with JR had been tape-recorded from the outset.

  A woman called Jeanne was the second of the two women, and she turned out to be the last one to fall foul of ‘the Slavemaster’. She was an accountant and, after some weeks of preamble on the internet, agreed to become Robinson’s sex slave. In mid-May, she journeyed to Kansas for a few days with JR and was installed in an apartment at the Guesthouse Suites, who, by now, regarded Robinson as an excellent customer.

  Later, Jeanne recalled that on Friday, 19 May, she received a phone
call from Robinson telling her that he would be coming round to see her. During the call he instructed her that when he arrived she was to be kneeling in the corner of the room completely naked with her hair tied back.

  Submissive Jeanne was ready, as instructed, when JR arrived. Yet she wasn’t prepared for what would actually happen. He walked into the room, grabbed her by her hair and flogged her brutally across her breasts and back. Like Vicki before her, Jeanne was discovering that JR was interested in a much rougher relationship than she had anticipated. She, too, didn’t like being photographed during sex, but he insisted on doing so; he seemed excited by recording the marks his beatings made on her body. However, Jeanne’s genuine distaste for that level of treatment must have spoiled his enjoyment, because he told her he didn’t like her attitude and wanted to end their relationship. Her body burning and bruised from the flogging, Jeanne became hysterical to the extent that after JR had left she dressed and made her way in tears to the reception desk. There she asked for the registration card and it was then that she discovered that her host’s name was not James Turner, but one John Robinson. Worried and distraught, she called the Lenexa PD, who, on hearing that JR was involved, gave her complaint the utmost priority.

  The detective who arrived at the hotel in response to Jeanne’s call was David Brown, who had been investigating Robinson since the disappearance of Suzette Trouten for more than two months. Convinced that JR was a killer, Brown was not going to risk leaving another woman in the position of becoming a potential victim. When he heard Jeanne’s tearful story, he got her to collect her belongings together and moved her to another hotel.