Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Sex, Lies and Murder

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

John Robinson is a con artist. He has a history of scamming vulnerable women, convincing them that he has the best of intentions, and then taking their money. But over the course of nearly three decades, it isn't just the money going missing, it's also the women themselves. And despite a lack of evidence, or bodies, police begin to suspect that John Robinson might be far more than a con artist. He might be a serial killer. 

Hey, Cold Case fans, we have something special for you. We're bringing you double the episodes every week. We know you dedicated fans need your fix in between new episodes. So every Thursday, we are back bringing some of our best episodes from previous seasons. Let us know which classic episodes you'd like to hear again in the comments. And don't worry, we'll see you back here every Tuesday for all new episodes of Cold Case Files 2. Now, on to the episode. Paula Godfrey graduated from Olathe North High School during the summer of 1984. She was 19.

Like the other graduates in her eastern Kansas town of Overland Park, Paula was looking for her first job. She didn't have the benefit of the internet,, Paula was looking for a first job. She didn't have the benefit of the internet, so Paula responded to an ad in the Help Wanted section of the local paper. Paula felt lucky that she was offered a position. The prospective employer's name was John Robinson. He tells Paula that she'll need to attend a training session out of town.

Under that premise, John picks Paula up from her home on August 23, 1984. The thing is, there was no training. And that was the last time Paula's parents saw their daughter alive. One-third of all murder cases in America remain open. Each one is called a cold case. And only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those cases. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast.

The story of Paula Godfrey's disappearance, one that spanned over two decades, is horrifying on its own. However, only four months later, another woman had an unfortunate encounter with John Robinson. Mr. Robinson, it seems, had an ability to make young women disappear. Lisa Stasi was also 19, and she had a five-month-old daughter named Tiffany. It was just the two of them with no outside support. Lisa wanted the best for her baby and so she looked for a job through a local outreach group. Instead, Lisa found John. John was nice to Lisa. He offered her some money and helped her find a place to stay, which in this case was a motel. Lisa checked into the Roadway Inn on January 7th, 1985, and she checked out on January 10th with little Tiffany in tow. The bill was settled by John,

and then, like Paula, Lisa got into his car and was never seen alive again. It's time for us to zoom into a different scene. Instead of the first class city of Overland Park, Kansas, we're going to focus on the small city of Liberty, Missouri. Overland Park had more than four times as many residents as Liberty did at the time. And even today, that gap continues to widen. At the City of Liberty's small parole office, an ironic combination of words, I know, Stephen Hames became the first local investigator to look at John Robinson with a suspicious eye. Hames hadn't connected Robinson with the missing woman from Kansas. He was actually answering concerns from a local charity. The organization is called Birthright, and they proclaim to help women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. According to their

website, Birthright focuses on the mother, reminding her that there's hope and that she's not alone. It's not a surprise that John Robinson, a man who preyed on vulnerable women, involved himself in this organization. Addressing the concerns raised by Birthright, Hames has a conversation with Robinson. Here's Steve Hames to explain. Do you fantasize about who you'd be if you lived somewhere different? Maybe you'd surf if you lived by the ocean. Or if you lived above a coffee shop, maybe you'd finally write that novel.

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at Progressive.com to try the Name Your Price tool for yourself and join the over 29 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law. He told me a similar story to what he had told Birthright, that he and some area businessmen who had done very well had decided they wanted to give back to the community and had decided to set up this program to help young girls with babies. It sounds like an ideal situation, local business people giving back to their community through charity. However, as idyllic seeming as it was, Hames had seen Robinson's prior arrest for embezzlement, and he had pegged Robinson for a con man. Here's Steve Hames again. My initial thought was, you

know, what's his angle here? Who's he trying to con money out of? And how's he going to do it? To further his investigation, Hames called other charitable organizations to see if they'd had any dealings with Robinson. At this point, the connection between Robinson and at least one of the missing women was made. Almost as an afterthought, they said, you know, there is a girl that was referred to him with a baby.

It wasn't referred by us, but was referred by another local organization, and she's missing. That's right. The woman is Lisa Stasi and five-month-old Tiffany from Overland Park, Kansas. Hames contacts the police in Overland Park and discovers that there's also another missing woman with ties to John Robinson. Her name? Paula Godfrey. The investigation was prompting more questions than answers. You've got a girl with a baby and a girl without a baby. What's the connection? Where's all of this going? And again, going back to what's his angle in this and how is he going to make money out of this? That was Detective Sergeant Marty Ingram from the Overland Park Police Department,

who becomes part of the team later on. Hames contacts the FBI and requests their assistance with the investigation. And with this request, Agent Tom Lavin becomes a part of the team. The investigators search for any possible legal violation to put John Robinson behind bars, even if it was only for a little while. The search led the investigators to a woman named Teresa Williams. She was pregnant, and John Robinson had placed her in an apartment. Hoping to take Robinson into custody for violating probation through the possession of a firearm, Steve Hames asked Ms. Williams if she's ever seen

Robinson with a gun. What she told them is too much for me. I'll let Steve Hames explain. She told us that not only had she seen him with the firearm, but that on one occasion that he had taken this revolver and that he had put the gun barrel in her vagina and had threatened her with that and said something to the effect of, you know, how would you like a blowout? His twisted attempt at humor apparently backfired because his gun possession and then subsequent accusations of distributing illegal substances were enough to revoke his probation. Robinson

spent two years in prison, but in the spring of 1987, he was released and able to wander the streets. In that same year, concurrent with his release, women once again started to disappear. There was a very good possibility that Mr the police department in Overland Park. Another woman was missing in Detective Sergeant Ingram's jurisdiction in the spring of 1987. Her name was Catherine Clampett. She'd been last seen with Robinson. He had offered her a job. Catherine, like Lisa Stassi, was also the mother of a small child.

Although I can't attribute luck or fortune to anyone in that circumstance, thankfully, the child had been left with Catherine's parents before she went missing. Detective Sergeant Ingram believed that Robinson was responsible for the disappearances of more than just the three women and one child being attributed to him. This is Detective Sergeant Ingram. There were numerous females that had answered some ads in the newspaper regarding an opportunity to start a new life, whether that be in modeling, being an assistant, you know, some type of rouge to get females to meet him. And this would be the last time that they would be seen. Both Hames and Ingram agreed that John Robinson was a predator. His evasion of the police's grasp was credited to his adherence to the first rule of serial killing.

Get rid of the body. If there's no body, there's no crime. With no evidence of murder, Catherine Clampett joins Lisa Stassi, Tiffany Stassi, and Paula Godfrey, in the file of cold cases. Detective Sergeant Ingram does the only thing he can think of to serve and protect his citizens. We looked at it as a situation of, regardless of what type of crime that we can charge this gentleman with, we need to get him charged and get him in prison and away from the civilian community. And he does it. In 1987 to 1991, John Robinson was incarcerated in the state of Kansas for multiple fraud convictions. When his sentence was over, he was transferred to Western Missouri Correctional Facility to serve three more years for additional fraud charges and parole violations.

It was during his time in the Missouri prison that John Robinson met Beverly Bonner, the prison librarian. Robinson and Bonner made a connection during their interactions at the prison. In fact, in 1993, when John Robinson was paroled, Beverly Bonner divorced her doctor husband. She then moved to Kansas to work for Robinson in a supposed business venture. Robinson assisted Beverly in getting a post office box so her alimony checks could be mailed to her. Beverly's mother continued to forward the checks to that P.O. box for four years, even though after its initial setup, she never heard from Beverly again. It was as if she had just disappeared. In early 1994, Sheila Faith, a woman who had mourned the loss of her husband to cancer the year prior, met John Robinson in an online forum. Sheila thought John was perfect, and John told couldn't even move the controller of her automatic wheelchair due to a dual diagnosis of spina bifida and cerebral palsy.

John Robinson promised Sheila she could ride horses on his farm and that he would give her a job. He also promised that he would pay for her daughter to attend a private school where she would receive better care. 45-year-old Sheila Faith and 15-year-old Debbie Faith moved from Colorado to Kansas to be with John Robinson. Though their disability checks continued to forward to an address registered to John Robinson for upward of six years, the mother and daughter vanished upon their arrival. In the winter of 1994, John Robinson moved to Olathe, Kansas, very close to where Paula Godfrey and Lisa Stassi went missing 10 years prior.

Ten years is a long time for the human brain to hold on to a memory. But Stephen Hames, the original investigator, couldn't forget John Robinson. We were really quite aggressively pursuing the fact that he was a threat to the community. You know, they have certain due process rights. You can't just lock them up and throw away the key. By 1999, John Robinson had increased his manipulation and reach through the use of the internet. He met Isabella Luka, a 21-year-old Polish immigrant living in Indiana. He convinced Isabella to move to Kansas so they could get married.

The two applied for a marriage license that was never picked up, and John convinced Isabella to sign her bank accounts over to him. Isabella simply told her parents that she had gotten married, but she never told them her husband's name. Isabella disappeared in the summer of 1999. Six years after moving to Olathe, and just under two decades after Paula Godfrey went missing, law enforcement makes a connection between the missing women and John Robinson. That connection is made by Marty Ingram, who is now a patrol sergeant. He had contacted me and had indicated that there was a family in Michigan who had wanted to report

their daughter as missing. John Robinson had leveraged the pool of potential victims through the use of the internet. This time he lured another woman all the way from Michigan into the deep end to never be seen alive again. The woman's name was Suzette Troughton. She was 28. Suzette's family told police that she had moved to Kansas after meeting a man online. The man had offered her a job. The family was able to provide some of the correspondence between Suzette and the man, and they also were able to share a photograph. The picture cleared away any doubt for Marty Ingram. With the exception of a slightly more receded hairline, I knew without question

that it was the John Robinson that I had worked almost 20 years prior. And at that point, you know, it's one of those feelings that come over you that you hope that it isn't the person that you think it is. It was the person he thought it was, John Robinson. Sergeant Ingram concluded from Robinson's earlier behavior that it was likely that Suzette was dead. Ingram immediately contacted Joe Reed from Homicide. This is him now. It was immediately apparent to me the importance of the investigation and the fact that we needed to give it a lot of serious attention immediately. Suzette had been last seen at a hotel, so a team is immediately dispatched to the location.

They recover a surveillance tape and see John Robinson walking through the hotel lobby. During this information gathering, they also discover that they've crossed the city limits into Lenexa, a neighboring town. Sergeant Reed contacts the Lenexa police and shares the situation. This is Sergeant Rick Roth from the Lenexa Police Department. They wanted to be active in the investigation and actually offered their services to us. The two departments work in tandem. One team initiates surveillance on the suspect, while the other team talks with the family to gather more information on Robinson. This is Kim Dodd, Suzette's sister. Honestly, when I knew she was missing,

and when they said that everything had been taken from the guest house, and he is saying that he didn't know anything about it, I honestly thought that she had either been kidnapped or she was dead. There's no way she would not get a hold of my parents. Kim, Suzette's sister, and Carolyn, Suzette's mother, tell the police they've already talked to John Robinson. He told the family that Suzette had left on a year-long boat trip with a wealthy attorney. Suzette's mother then tells law enforcement she's able to reach Robinson on his cell phone. The police ask Carolyn to call John Robinson to see if she could get him to share any useful information.

This is a recording from that call. Hello? Who is this? This is John. Oh, I see. Listen, have you heard from Suzy? Suzy? Oh, I forgot. Listen, have you heard from Susie? Susie? Uh, golly.

No, not for... I guess since the first of the month. What did she have to say again? Who's this? Carol, her mother. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. From what I understand, they're not coming back. They're going on a trip from there. They're going to whatever's next and going east or west, I guess.

They're going to sail around the world. From what I was told, they're going to go to New Zealand or Australia and do some islands and things like that. I really wouldn't worry about it too much. I'm sure that when they hit the next place, they'll send us a card or call us or email us or something. All right, well, if you hear anything, you please call me. I will call you. Okay, thanks a lot.

All right, then. Bye-bye. Bye. Robinson didn't fall for the trap. He didn't incriminate himself during the call. The pressure increased for the surveillance team as they appeared to be the last chance to catch John Robinson. March 29, 2000. Day two of surveillance on the suspect.

Sergeant Roth is the lead in a six-car team following John Robinson. On that same day in the early afternoon, Robinson takes Route 169 out of Olathe and into the less-developed area of eastern Kansas. Sergeant Roth explains what the route was like. Several of us got lost. We had no communication whatsoever. Our police radios failed. They were out of range. Our cell phones wouldn't work. Several officers just drove around until we located each other. Robinson's destination was an 18-acre piece of land. For reference, 18 acres is about the same size as 11 Olympic soccer fields or 288 tennis courts. In the middle of all the land, and also the middle of what appeared to be nowhere, there was a single trailer home. The perfect hideaway for a serial killer.

The police didn't want Robinson to know they were watching, so all they could do was quietly and patiently wait for Robinson to leave. John Robinson stayed inside the home for around an hour, then got back into his car and went back the way he came. This is Sergeant Rick Roth explaining their next move. Obviously we wanted to get on the property to see if there was any burial sites or any bodies here, but we needed evidence and we needed a reason to get a search warrant to get on here. In hopes of finding evidence to allow them a search warrant, the police began a practice called trashing. Detective Boyer from the Lenexa Police Department is going to explain that process. Trashing is involved actually going to someone's house and picking up their trash and then we leave other trash bags in their place so that they're not suspicious of it.

The detectives began performing trashings on John Robinson's garage twice a week. Robinson shredded all of his personal documents and receipts. The team of investigators were determined, so they got out some tape and tried to reassemble some of the documents. And it worked. They found receipts for storage lockers that Robinson had been paying for, right across the state line in Rainmore, Missouri. This is Sergeant Joe Reed again. We had no good physical evidence against John Robinson.

We tried to get into his lockers with cameras, with surveillance. We never could pull it off. Until we had some evidence to get us into his home or his storage locker, we were at a standstill. Everyone desperately wants to know what's inside the storage lockers and the trailer house. The only way for investigators to find out is through a search warrant. They get the warrant, but the grounds that they use to justify it come from an unusual place. A woman once John Robinson arrested,

but not for trying to harm her, but rather because she claims he stole her sex toys. You've been stewing about a health problem you have. You almost resort to texting your group chat to get your friend's opinions. You're extremely unlikely to find quality medical advice in your group chat, but you can find it from a doctor on ZocDoc. Thousands of medical professionals on ZocDoc. Thousands of medical professionals on

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Hi, everyone. This is Jillian with Court Junkie. Court Junkie is a true crime podcast that covers court cases and criminal trials using audio clips and interviews with people close to the cases. Court Junkie is available on Apple Podcasts and PodcastOne.com. or just a handy person, Angie can help you find what you need. One of our producers recently used Angie to find a much-needed plumber for a busted faucet. Using Angie, it helped narrow down the exact cause of his problem, then helped him assess if he needed to repair, replace, or install a new faucet. It made his life so much easier. Angie has over 20 years of home service experience,

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From 8 30 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon, he would be out. He would meet other females. We found out about some girlfriends that he had. But by 5 o'clock, virtually every day, he was home when his wife got home. They had dinner together, and he looked like an all-American family after 5 o'clock each day. Captain O'Neill discovers that Robinson has set up many women in various hotels throughout the area. Detective Mike Lothar is assigned to the extended stay. The hotel's staff call and inform the police that Robinson has a reservation. They tell police that he's checking in with a woman. The police rent the room adjoining to Robinson's.

They press their ears to the wall to hear what's happening. Detective Lothar explains. At first, the conversation was very cordial. It was basically an introduction to her of the BDSM lifestyle, kind of the rules that govern it. I found conflicting information when I was researching what the letters BDSM stand for. But the basic definition is sexual practices or activities involving bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism,

or acts of domination and submission. If you want to know more about BDSM and the law, I would recommend checking out the podcast, Deliberations. Detectives had to use their judgment to determine if a crime was being committed or if it was just part of the BDSM lifestyle. Here's Sergeant Roth. We'd hear, you know, screaming, slapping. If that was any normal situation, we probably would have broke down the door. Under this one, we had to hold off and make a decision how much screaming was someone in trouble and how much of it was part of the BDSM lifestyle.

The team doesn't bust down the door for fear of blowing their cover over something that's consensual and not an attack at all. It turned out to be the right choice, because the woman checks out with no obvious injuries. Though this won't be the last time they see her. The woman, named Vicki Neufeld, who'd been with Robinson that day, filed a police report against Robinson. She claimed that he had stolen a bag of her favorite sex toys. Additionally, another woman came forward to press charges against Robinson for assaulting her during one of their encounters. This is Sergeant Roth. When those two women came forward and wanted to press charges, that was the linchpin that put the case together.

Everything that we had up to that point was pretty circumstantial, but when they came forward with actual charges against him, it opened the door for us to go ahead with a search warrant, and that led to his arrest. Two detectives, Greg Wilson and Jack Boyer, arrive at Robinson's house on Friday morning. They tell Robinson that they're arresting him for assault and theft in accordance with two women who have come forward.

Then, Detective Boyer mentions that there might be more charges to come. And I just told him, and I said, don't be surprised if we charge you with murder. And his response was, murder? I said, yeah, five counts of it. And then I started naming these females' names. And when I got to Suzette Troughton, Greg said the color just completely left his face. The team now has limited time to find evidence connecting John Robinson to the missing women. A forensic team descends on the home searching for any relevant evidence.

They search over four hours, and during that time, they find absolutely nothing. But a forensic dead end can't stop the investigation for the detectives on this cold case. Detective Boyer and Sergeant Roth have plans to search Robinson's trailer the following morning. We started out early in the morning. The plan was for everybody to go down there without the press ever knowing about it. First on the scene were the cadaver dogs from Missouri Search and Rescue. The morning came and went, but they still hadn't found any remains.

We had really thought we would find a burial spot, and by noon we hadn't found anything remotely close. I think everybody was dejected, worried that this was the one spot we thought we would find the remains. Then, around 1 in the afternoon, one of the cadaver dogs hits on an area behind a shed where several barrels are stacked. Sergeant Roth and Detective Sergeant Hughes tell us more. And one of the first things to be moved was one of the yellow barrels that was sitting there.

And when we uprighted that barrel, we saw blood come out of that. As I got within about 10 feet of the barrel, I smelled an odor that, through experience, I associated with that of a decomposing body. Detective Sergeant Hughes opened the first barrel and confirmed everyone's suspicions that there was a body inside. Then they opened a second barrel, which also had a body inside of it. Sergeant Roth described Detective Sergeant Hughes' reaction to the contents of the barrel. The smell was horrendous. Once he popped the seal and lifted that lid, the smell just drove him back. He could only hold his breath so long. Then he dropped the lid, catch his breath, and pull it up again.

It looked as if the victims had been placed in the barrels headfirst. Their heads and shoulders were near the bottom, and their backs and hips were pressed against the side of the containers. Their knees were close to their face, like some warped version of the fetal position. Donald Pajman, medical examiner of the Shawnee County Coroner's Office, was tasked with taking the bodies out of the barrels and performing the autopsies. He determined that both women were killed in the same way, trauma to the head with an object similar to a hammer. He then tries to establish a framework for the time of death. The autopsy took place in the year 2000,

but Robinson's earliest victims had been killed in 1984, 16 years earlier. This is Deputy Coroner Donald Poschman. The first one we looked at, she obviously had less decomposition than the other one. And so I estimated her time of death to be within several months to possibly a year. The other one, because of the state of decomposition, I thought it was close to the six months to two years. The first body identified was believed to be Suzette Troughton, the last of Robinson's suspected victims. She'd gone missing two months prior. The second woman was Isabella, the immigrant from Poland who had moved from Indiana to Kansas.

She disappeared one year earlier in the summer of 1999. Three days later, during a search of one of the storage lockers, Mike Lothar finds some familiar-looking barrels. When we opened up the barrel, there was a shoe. I think it was a tennis shoe that was kind of on the top. And we inspected the barrel further and found a body inside the barrel. We only opened the one. Once we opened up the one, we assumed that the other two probably contained bodies also.

All three barrels did contain a body. All women. All killed by blunt force trauma to the head. Investigators eventually identified the victims as Sheila Faith, her daughter Debbie Faith, and Beverly Bonner, the prison librarian. John Robinson begins to attract media attention. He's being charged on five counts of murder. Robinson refuses to talk to the police. Instead, he sits in the county courthouse waiting for his trial.

And when his day in court came in 2002, he was convicted on all counts. John Robinson was given a life sentence for Lisa's murder, and for the murders of Suzette and Isabella, he was sentenced to death. Paul Morrison, the Johnson County District Attorney, had no doubt that the right decision had been made. I have never prosecuted anybody in my 24 years as a prosecutor that was more deserving of the death penalty than John Robinson. It is impossible to describe or to estimate the amount of suffering John Robinson has inflicted on other people throughout his lifetime. Robinson went on to face charges in Missouri, a state that's historically more forceful in its use of the death penalty.

But there were still women missing, and no indication that they'd be found without Robinson's cooperation. So a deal was made. Robinson effectively pleaded guilty and led investigators to the other women's bodies in exchange for his own life. He received five life sentences without the possibility of parole. There was one body that Robinson was not able to lead detectives to. Lisa Stassi's five-month-old daughter, Tiffany. The young girl managed to avoid her mother's fate.

She wasn't murdered. She wasn't even physically harmed. It was a huge surprise to us, and certainly I've never heard of anything like it before. The fact that she'd been missing for 15, 16 years at the time and then resurfaced. Tiffany was given to Robinson's brother and his wife to raise as their own child. Robinson lied to the family because, of course he did. He told them a made-up story about Tiffany's biological parents. Tiffany's adoptive parents believed her adoption was legal.

John Robinson's got that baby and posing for pictures in his house with that baby bouncing on his knee with his brother and sister-in-law there who have come down to Chicago to get their new adopted baby. He told them that through his connections in the community, he'd been able to find this baby whose mother had committed suicide in a hotel room. In May of 2005, Heather Stassi, whose name is now legally Heather Robinson, won a $5 billion lawsuit against John Robinson.

Somehow, during the appeals process, a procedural error vacated Robinson's conviction for the murders of Suzette and Lisa. Vacated basically means that those charges were no longer valid. But, in an unexpected turn of events, his conviction for Isabella's murder was not only affirmed, but also his death sentence was reinstated. John Robinson is currently 74 years old and awaiting the execution of his sentence on death Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by Scott Brody, McKamey Lynn, and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler, and we're distributed by Podcast One. This story was adapted from A&E's Cold Case Files, which was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by the one and only Bill Curtis.

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