Talking with Serial Killers: Dead Men Talking. Christopher Berry-Dee

evidence connected with the murders was hidden in the storage locker in Raymore; he had paid to rent his locker with a company cheque, in order to conceal his identity.

       We started removing boxes from the front [of Locker E2]. After less than 10 minutes there was a very foul odor that with my past experience I associated with a dead body.

      Douglas Borcherding, Overland PD officer.

      Shortly after 8am on the Monday, Mark Tracy served the search warrant on the storage depot and the Johnson County detectives were led to Robinson’s locker – effectively a small garage with a brown, lift-up shutter door. Inside was a lot of clutter and the task force spent more than half an hour sifting through it before they saw, hidden at the back, three barrels. Wafting from the barrels emanated the nauseating, unmistakable stench of decomposing flesh.

      As it was virtually certain that the barrels contained dead bodies, Tracy summoned his boss, Chris Koster, and the state of Missouri assumed immediate control of the crime scene. A new team of police investigators arrived and the locker was emptied of all its contents, save for the three barrels, which were standing on piles of cat litter; obviously a futile attempt by JR to reduce the smell coming from them.

      The first barrel, a black one with the words ‘rendered pork fat’ on the label, was opened by senior criminalist Kevin Winer. The contents revealed a body wrapped in blue-grey duct tape, and a light brown sheet. There was a pair of spectacles and a shoe. When the crime scene technician had removed the sheet, he took hold of the shoe, only to find that the foot was still attached to a leg. On the assumption that the storage depot wasn’t perhaps the best place to investigate the barrels and their contents, it was decided to reseal them and take them to the medical examiner’s office in Kansas City. However, this was not as simple a procedure as it seemed. There was a very real fear that the bottoms of the barrels were corroded and might give way, so a police officer was sent to a nearby Wal-Mart to buy three children’s plastic paddling pools and these were slipped underneath the barrels before they were loaded on to a truck.

      Back at the medical examiner’s office, the barrels were opened and, as expected, each contained a severely decomposed female body. Dr Thomas Young determined that they had all been beaten to death with a blunt instrument, probably a hammer, and had been dead for some six years. The body of Sheila Faith also had a fracture on her right forearm that was consistent with a defensive injury.

      The first body was fully clothed. The second was wearing only a T-shirt, and in its mouth was a denture which was broken in two. Body three was that of a teenager wearing green trousers and a silver-grey beret. Identification was not immediately possible and would take some days to complete.

      Over in Kansas, in Topeka, the two bodies found on the Robinson smallholding were identified by a forensic odontologist as those of Izabela Lewicka and Suzette Trouten.

      A few days later, with the help of another forensic odontologist, two of the bodies that had been found at the storage depot were identified. One was Beverly Bonner; the other was Sheila Faith. Soon afterwards, Sheila’s disabled daughter, Debbie, was identified by means of a spinal X-ray, the technology of which, in past years, Robinson had been briefly acquainted with.

      The case against Robinson was beginning to assume a structure, although there was the problem of jurisdiction in relation to which state, Kansas or Missouri, would be responsible for each murder. Eventually it was resolved that Robinson would be tried first in Kansas; the date being slated for 14 January 2002, before being postponed until September of the same year.

       I was represented by court-appointed attorneys who did NO INVESTIGATION, hired no experts, tested nothing and admitted in open court a day prior to my trial they had not read the discovery.

      John E Robinson, letter to the author, 24 January 2008.

       I resent the fact that people are now claiming that Mr Robinson, either directly or indirectly, is a serial killer. As each day has passed, the surreal events have built into a narrative that is almost beyond comprehension. While we do not discount the information that has, and continues to come to light, we do not know the person whom we have read and heard about on TV. The John Robinson we know has always been a loving and caring father.

      Byron Cerrillo, public defender for Robinson at his trial.

      In suggesting that five decomposing bodies found in barrels on two premises rented by his client could never indicate that John was a serial killer, Byron Cerrillo seemed to have watched too many episodes of The Practice – an American legal drama based on the partners and associates at a Boston law firm. Still, with elements of kinky sex and infidelity, the trial was guaranteed to become a sordid affair.

      Carolyn Trouten was forced to come to terms with her daughter’s bizarre sex life on the stand and, on 14 October 2002, jurors were subjected to a 40-minute videotape of Trouten and Robinson engaging in sadomasochistic sex. Early in the video, Trouten sat on the bed, looked into the camera, and said to Robinson: ‘This is what you wanted me to tell you…I’m your slave…everything is yours.’ While several jurors covered their eyes, others winced as Robinson was seen to say: ‘The most important thing in life is that you are my slave.’

      The jurors were confronted with solid evidence that could only point to JR’s guilt. In counter-argument, the defence team could only say that there was no physical evidence, except a few fingerprints, to link Robinson with anything connected to the bodies.

      Indeed, although JR grumbles and complains about the ‘negligence’ of his trial attorneys, he was as guilty as sin. The court heard from Don Robinson who testified about how Tiffany was delivered to him by his brother JR, as well as from the notary public, the judge and two lawyers who said that their signatures on the adoption papers had been forged.

      DNA tests linked saliva on the seals of letters sent to Carolyn Trouten by Robinson, to JR. A criminalist gave evidence that Izabela Lewicka’s blood was found in Robinson’s trailer in La Cygne, and on a roll of duct tape of the same type used to bind some of the bodies.

      Suzette Trouten’s hair was also found in JR’s trailer, and maids at the motel where she had been staying testified that the amount of blood on the bed sheets in her room was much more than they had ever encountered when cleaning before.

      Even Suzette’s prized Pekinese became evidence when a veterinarian testified that Robinson had dropped the two dogs off for boarding. The animals were later abandoned in the mobile home park where JR lived. Dog lovers among the readers will be delighted to learn that ‘Peka’ and ‘Harry’ were later adopted from the humane society.

      The pillowcase found in a barrel also formed a solid link between Izabela Lewicka and Robinson. Her mother had given her daughter some distinctive bed linen with a pattern, identical in every single respect to the pillowcase that ended up in the drum containing Izabela’s body. A former lover of Robinson recalled that JR had given her similar sheets, but she didn’t recall there being any pillowcases.

      Nancy Robinson talked of her husband’s philandering and how several times she wanted to divorce him, only reconsidering because of the children. Although, at the penalty phase of the trial, JR’s family asked the court to spare his life, when the jury had reached a decision about his punishment the Robinson family put a lot of air under their car’s tyres and were nowhere to be seen.