Dead Men Talking (5 page)

For the record, JR’s interest in sadomasochistic sex had continued to flourish and he upped the ante by starting to place adverts in the personal columns of the Kansas City newspaper
Pitch Weekly
. He met and had relationships with a number of women before he fell in with Chloe Elizabeth, who described herself as a ‘businesswoman’ from Topeka, Kansas. She 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 Wednesday, 25 October 1995: ‘I was to meet him at the door of my house 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.

Some red-blooded male readers would find nothing wrong with JR’s request at this point… indeed, there might be thousands of men who would applaud John for his imagination. However, as events would later prove, things would turn sour, for upon his arrival JR took a leather-studded collar from his pocket, placed it around Chloe’s neck and attached a long leash to the collar. After a drink and some small talk, he made her remove all her clothes except for her stockings, and then took from another pocket a ‘Contract for Slavery’ in which she consented to let him use her as a sexual toy in any way he saw fit (it was a template contract he had downloaded from the internet).

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

With her signature on the dotted line, he promptly tied her to the bed, whipped her and carried out a variety of imaginative acts on her breasts with ropes and nipple clamps; JR was in his element. Sweating profusely, he concluded their first date by making her perform oral sex on him. The submissive Chloe Elizabeth, it seems, was delighted with her ‘Dom Slave Master’ and he was pretty much delighted with her.

‘That was the first date,’ she later told the judge at Robinson’s trial. ‘It was sensational! […] He had the ability to command, control, to corral someone as strong and aggressive and spirited as I am.’

In any event, before the perspiring and head-to-toe-trembling JR left the house that evening, he told his new slave that she had been stupid for allowing him to do everything he had done to her. ‘I could have killed you,’ he said, with a smirk on his face.

For JR, this master-slave contract with the amply proportioned Chloe Elizabeth had to be about as good as it could get; however, she was not as naïve as he may have thought. Without his knowledge, she had taken the precaution of having a male friend stationed in another room of her house, listening vigilantly, upturned tumbler to the wall, for any sound of excessive behaviour – as if the aforementioned was not excessive enough.

The relationship between JR and Chloe Elizabeth blossomed 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.

Although this author has no personal experience in such matters, I am reliably informed that it is not unusual in BDSM relationships for the dominant partner to take control of the submissive partner’s assets (as in financial affairs), an arrangement that is sometimes included in the contract drawn up between slave and master. For Chloe Elizabeth’s part, she was required to sign over power of attorney to JR. In return for sex he promised to get her a job in the ‘entertainment industry’, for which he needed publicity photographs and, this will come as no surprise, he demanded her Social Security number. As an obedient submissive, she should have followed his orders explicitly, but she refused, correctly suspecting that he was after her money.

So, 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. Moreover, their relationship was now moving in the wrong direction as she found out more and more about him, and she started to voice her concerns to JR.

Realising that he was coming unstuck, he told her that he was going to Australia and would be away for some time – perhaps a very long time. However, she soon 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 own 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.

*    *    *

It wasn’t long until another woman (her name is omitted for legal reasons) entered into a master-slave contract and struck a deal for financial support with Robinson. She didn’t learn until years later how close she had also come to ending up in a barrel alongside Sheila and Debbie Faith and Beverly Bonner.

JR told this woman that he was divorcing his wife and that’s why he could never stay the night. However, he showered this ‘Ms X’ with gifts and clothes, but she soon noticed that most of the clothes he presented to her appeared unwashed and well worn. When she asked about this, ever the cheapskate Robinson said they were left behind at his office by former employees. Given that most of the clothes were raunchy undergarments leaves us begging the question, what in God’s name was going through her mind?

This notwithstanding, the relationship was going fine until one day Robinson told her to get ready to travel with him. He was going to take her to London on an extended business trip. He told her that she should leave her job and advise friends that she would be gone for some time. She gave up her apartment and Robinson moved her into a local motel. Like those before her, she was told she would be so busy that she should take the time to write letters to her family straight away, as there would be no time while travelling. Robinson said that he would take care of her passport application, as he had friends in the US State Department.

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.