Murder.com (11 page)

But life for Theresa wasn’t all roses. One night towards the end of April, after being given $1,200 and a new outfit by JR, she was taken, blindfold in a limousine, to a mansion. There she was introduced to a distinguished-looking man of about 60, who led her down to a basement which was fitted out as a medieval torture chamber. Her host instructed her to remove all her clothes and moments later she found herself being stretched on a rack. Theresa panicked and demanded to be allowed to leave. Blindfolded again, she was driven back to her apartment. JR reacted angrily and a few days later she had to give back the $1,200.

On another occasion, JR took her to task for entertaining a boyfriend at the apartment. However, the worst was yet to come. In late May, JR paid her a visit during which he did something that caused her more fear than she had ever known in her life. She was asleep when he let himself into the apartment. He burst into the bedroom, dragged her out of bed by her hair and spanked her until she began to scream. After throwing her to the floor, JR drew a revolver, put it to her head and pulled the trigger. Instead of an explosion, there was only a click. The chamber was empty.

By now, Theresa was whimpering with fear, but she went rigid with utter terror as JR slid the revolver slowly down her stomach and inserted the barrel into her vagina. He left it there for several terrifying seconds before withdrawing it, replacing it in its holster and, without another word, leaving the apartment.

About a week after the incident with the gun, Lavin and Dancer called unannounced at Theresa’s apartment. Having been told that they were investigating the disappearance of two women and that JR was the suspect, she decided to reveal the truth. That, of course, involved telling them about the drugs that JR was supplying to her as well as the incident with the gun. When the agents learned that Theresa had been asked by JR to sign some blank sheets of notepaper, they felt they had reason to believe that her life was in danger, and moved her to a secret location.

Together with Stephen Haymes, the agents filed a report with the Missouri court which claimed that Robinson had violated his probation conditions by carrying a gun and supplying drugs to Theresa Williams. They asked the court to revoke his probation and put him in prison.

Once more, however, JR avoided imprisonment on a technicality: his lawyer argued successfully that, because he had not been allowed to confront his accuser, Theresa Williams, his constitutional rights had been violated. However, his real-estate fraud case, in Johnson County, ended with his being sentenced to serve between six and 19 years.

Around the time that JR was about to go to prison, the police were searching for 27-year-old Catherine Clampitt. Born in Korea but adopted and raised by the Bales family in Texas, Catherine was a one-time drug user now seeking rehabilitation. She had begun to work for JR at Equi-II in early 1987, but had disappeared a few months later. Despite the fact that in some quarters suspicion of murder once again fell on Robinson, no further action was taken against him.

Strangely, JR took to the prison regime like a duck takes to water. He was the model inmate, making such a good impression on the prison authorities that the parole board set him free in January 1991, after he had served just four years.

However, he still had to go to jail in Missouri for having violated the terms of his probation resulting from the $40,000 fraud he had perpetrated more than a decade earlier. He went back behind bars for a further two years.

It is interesting to read Stephen Haymes’s assessment of Robinson in a memo that he wrote to a colleague in 1991. It says, ‘I believe him to be a con-man out of control. He leaves in his wake many unanswered questions and missing persons… I have observed Robinson’s sociopathic tendencies, habitual criminal behaviour, inability to tell the truth and scheming to cover his own actions at the expense of others.’ The probation officer went on to say, ‘I was not surprised to see he had a good institution adjustment [settled in well] in Kansas considering that he is quite bright and a white-collar con-man capable of being quite personable and friendly to those around him.’

While in jail in Missouri, the ‘white-collar con-man’ forged a friendship with the prison doctor, William Bonner. He also developed a relationship with Bonner’s wife, Beverly. She was the prison librarian and JR very soon found that he had a job in the library.

On the outside, Nancy Robinson had found the going tough without her husband’s income and eventually had had to sell their palatial home at Pleasant Valley Farms. What is more, she had had to take a job to keep body and soul together and she was fortunate in getting one that provided accommodation. She became the manager of a mobile-home development in
Belton, a suburb of Kansas City on the Missouri side of the state line.

It was to these modest quarters that JR went when he was released from prison early in 1993. The two older children had grown up and left home and the twins were at college, so JR and Nancy had the place to themselves. They rented storage lockers near by to house their surplus belongings.

JR set to work restoring the family fortunes. There was never any real likelihood that he would stay on the straight and narrow and it wasn’t long before he was back to his old ways.

By now, Beverly Bonner had left her husband and begun divorce proceedings. A few months later, she moved to Kansas City and went to work with JR, who appointed her a director of his company Hydro-Gro.

Not long after this grand appointment, Beverly’s alimony cheques were finding their way into an Olathe post-office box number used by Robinson.

Beverly Bonner was not seen or heard from after January 1994.

JR’s next victim was a widow named Sheila Dale Faith. When her husband, John, died of cancer in 1993, Sheila was left to bring up their teenage daughter, Debbie.

Debbie was born with spina bifida and spent her life in a wheelchair. Life was not easy for the two, who had moved from California to live in Pueblo, Colorado, and depended on Social Security payments.

It isn’t certain exactly how Sheila met JR, although it may have been through a newspaper ad, but, after being in Pueblo for only a few months, she and Debbie moved to Kansas City. Sheila told her friends that she had met her ‘dream man’, John, who had
promised to take her on a cruise. He had also assured her that she would never have to work or worry about taking care of Debbie, as he would look after them both; money was no problem.

One night in the summer of 1994, with no prior warning, JR called at Sheila’s home and she and Debbie were taken away by him to live in ‘the Kansas City area’.

As was the case with so many other women who were befriended by JR, the two Faiths were never seen again.

Sheila Faith had been receiving disability benefits from the Social Security Administration for herself and Debbie. Now these payments were being sent to a mail centre in Olathe, where they were collected by Robinson. In the autumn of 1994, according to court documents, Robinson filed a medical report to the Social Security Administration. In the report, he claimed that Debbie was ‘totally disabled’ and would require care for the rest of her life. The report, however, bore the signature of William Bonner, the doctor with whom J.R had been friendly when he was in prison and who until recently had been Beverly Bonner’s husband. When he was eventually questioned on the matter, Dr Bonner denied ever having met Sheila or Debbie Faith, and had certainly never treated either.

In any event, JR collected the Faiths’ disability cheques for almost six years.

In July 2000, Cass County Prosecutors alleged that, between 1994 and 1997, Robinson had defrauded the US Government of more than $29,000 in Social Security and disability payments by forging documents to suggest that Sheila and Debbie Faith were alive.

It was also alleged that he received more than $14,000 in alimony cheques that should have gone to Beverly Bonner. The
owner of the mail centre from which Robinson retrieved the cheques told police that he knew JR as James Turner.

JR’s interest in sadomasochistic sex continued to flourish and he began placing adverts in the personal columns of a Kansas City newspaper named
Pitch Weekly
. Chloe Elizabeth, a businesswomen from Topeka, Kansas, claimed that JR sent her a wealth of publicity material selected to show him in a good light. He included newspaper clippings describing his appearance before the Queen when he was a Boy Scout, his hydroponics brochure, details of his Man of the Year award and a Kansas University brochure containing pictures of two of his children. It was altogether an odd portfolio for someone wishing to engage in a BDSM encounter – the term widely used to describe relationships involving bondage and sadomasochism. Unsurprisingly, JR’s lengthy and distinguished criminal record received no mention whatsoever.

In later years, Chloe Elizabeth described an event that took place during the afternoon of 25 October 1995. ‘I was to meet him at the door wearing only a sheer robe, black mesh thong panties, a matching demi-cup bra, stockings and black high heels. My eyes were to be made up dark and lips red. I was to kneel before him,’ she recounted.

On arriving, JR took a leather-studded collar from his pocket, placed it around her neck and attached a long leash to the collar. After a drink and some small talk, he made Chloe Elizabeth remove all her clothes except for her stockings, and then took from his pocket a ‘Contract for Slavery’ in which she consented to let him use her as a sexual toy in any way he saw fit.

‘I read the contract and signed it. He asked if I was sure. I said yes, very sure,’ said Chloe Elizabeth.

After he had tied her to the bed, whipped her and carried out a variety of acts on her breasts with ropes and nipple clamps, JR concluded their first date by making her perform oral sex on him. Chloe Elizabeth was delighted with her new master and he was pretty much delighted with her.

‘That was the first date. It was sensational! He had the ability to command, to control, to corral someone as strong and aggressive and spirited as I am,’ she said.

Before he left, JR told Chloe Elizabeth that she had been stupid for allowing him to do everything he had done to her. ‘I could have killed you,’ he said.

However, Chloe Elizabeth was not as naive as he may have thought. Without his knowledge, she had taken the sensible precaution of having a male friend stationed in another room of her house, listening vigilantly for any sound of excessive behaviour. The man also noted down the number of JR’s car.

The relationship between Chloe Elizabeth and JR burgeoned and they were meeting at least twice a week before it waned as she started to find out that Robinson was not all he claimed to be.

It is not unusual in BDSM relationships for the dominant partner to take control of the submissive partner’s assets and financial affairs, an arrangement that is sometimes included in the contract drawn up between slave and master. Naturally, given his passion for other people’s money, JR broached this issue with Chloe Elizabeth and suggested that they exchange lists of their assets. She, wisely, refused, suspecting that he was after her money. Knowing as we do now that he was merely the
unemployed husband of a woman who was the manager of a mobile-home park, it would be interesting to see just what those assets were that JR had intended listing, apart from Beverly Bonner’s alimony cheques and the Faiths’ welfare payments.

If JR had imagined that Chloe Elizabeth’s submissiveness extended beyond her sexual inclinations, he was badly mistaken; she was an intelligent and successful businesswoman, not an ill-educated teenage mother desperate for help and support. Their relationship was by now moving in the wrong direction as she found out more and more about him.

He told her that he was going to Australia and would be away for some time. However, she discovered that he had not even left Kansas. When she telephoned his office, the phone was answered but remained utterly silent. About an hour afterwards, her phone rang and she found herself being berated by a furious JR. He accused her of checking up on him and warned her in very unpleasant tones against that sort of behaviour.

The final straw for Chloe Elizabeth was when she found out about JR’s criminal record, and in February 1996 she ended their relationship.

That same year, the Robinsons left the mobile-home park and went to live over on the Kansas side of the border, near Olathe. The development that they moved to was called the Santa Barbara Estates, where again Nancy worked as estate manager.

Their new address was 36 Monterey, 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 at their front door and at Christmas earned quite a reputation for their spectacular display of decorations.

As well as their home on the Santa Barbara Estates, JR and Nancy bought some farmland near the small town of La Cygne, south of Olathe. They had about 16 acres of land that also contained a fishing pond to which JR invited friends from time to time. The couple improved the place by putting a mobile home and a shed on the site.

In pursuit of his sexual preferences, JR had by now left personal ads behind and embraced the internet. Using the handle ‘Slavemaster’, he maintained five computers and spent hours trawling BDSM sites. Ultimately, it would be two of his internet contacts who would be instrumental in bringing his world crashing around his ears, but in 1996 that was still some years ahead.

The following year, Robinson encountered a young, Polish-born undergraduate on the internet. Her name was Izabel Lewicka and she was studying fine arts at Purdue University in Indiana.

Izabel’s parents were very concerned when, in the spring of 1997, she told them that she was moving to Kansas, having been offered an internship. She wasn’t forthcoming with details, doing nothing to allay her parents’ misgivings other than leave an address on Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park. In June, she left Purdue and drove off to Kansas. Her parents were never to see her again.