MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Slave Master (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

At 10:30pm on June 2, 2000, 15 year old Heather Robinson heard her family’s land line telephone ring, and so she picked it up. But before she could even say, “hello,” she heard her father already saying, "hello" to whoever had just called them; He had picked up the other land line telephone upstairs in his bedroom. Heather was about to hang up, but she got curious when she heard the tense, low tone of the person her father was speaking to. So, she decided to just mute her handset and secretly listen in to her dad’s conversation. What she would hear over the next 45 seconds would not only change her life forever, but it would also make headlines all over the world.For 100s more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

At 10.30 p.m. on June 2nd, 2000, 15-year-old Heather Robinson heard her family's landline telephone ring, and so she picked it up. But before she could even say hello, she heard her father saying hello to whoever had called them. He had picked up the other telephone upstairs in his room. Heather was about to hang up, but she got curious when she heard the tense tone of the person her father was speaking to, and so she decided to just mute her handset and secretly listen to her dad's conversation. What she would hear over the next 45 seconds would not only change her life forever, but it would make headlines all over the world. This story includes sexual content and some graphic violence.

As such, listener discretion is advised. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please remove the pressure plate from underneath the five-star review button's enter key on their keyboard. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Boland podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any bigger than the man who made badminton sexy okay maybe that's a stretch but if i say pop star and shuttlecocks you know who i'm talking about no short shorts free cocktails

careless whispers okay last one it's not andrew ridgely yep that's right it's stone cold icon george michael from teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet join us for our new series george michaels fight for freedom from the outside it looks like he has it all but behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil george is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man

who took part in the first ever round-the-world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also tiny little detail almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. OK, let's get into today's story.

For 19-year-old Lisa Stassi, the Christmas of 1984 was the worst she could remember. And that was really saying something, because even though Lisa was still very young, she had been through a lot. Born in the city of Huntsville, Alabama, whose 143,000 residents lived in the northernmost part of the state, best known as the heart of Dixie, Lisa's father had died when she was just a child and her brother would commit suicide. And so, after dropping out of high school at the age of 17, the beautiful teenager with the bright smile decided to leave Huntsville, her broken family, and her sad memories behind and head for the metropolitan glamour and polish of Kansas City, Kansas, 670 miles to the northwest. But two years after that great escape, here she was in the middle of

a cold Midwest winter, in the middle of a collapsed marriage that had lasted only one year. In many ways, Lisa was worse off now than she'd been back in Alabama. She had no money, she had no job skills, and she had no home. But the one thing Lisa did have that made her happier than anything else in her life was her tiny four-month-old daughter, Tiffany. Back when Lisa had arrived in Kansas City in 1983 and met her future husband, Carl, at a bar, she hadn't intended to get pregnant, but shortly after being introduced to the handsome 23-year-old sailor, the two of them had fallen in love, and the rest, as Lisa's mother would say, was history. Just one month after the young couple got married in August of 1984, little Tiffany Lynn

was born on September 4th at a hospital on the Missouri side of Kansas City. But right after that, things started going downhill. By October, Carl was out of the Navy and out of work, and according to Lisa's friends and family, their marriage had turned violent. Two months later, just a few days after Christmas, Carl would leave Lisa and Tiffany and he would rejoin the military. With nowhere to go, Lisa and her baby moved into Hope House, which was a local shelter for homeless women. But just one month after that horrible Christmas, Lisa got the break she had been praying for. In the beginning of January 1985,

the director of Hope House told Lisa that a local philanthropist had contacted the shelter, saying that his newly founded charitable organization called Kansas City Outreach had heard about Lisa's plight and wanted to help her. Kansas City Outreach looked specifically for mothers with infants who needed housing and job training, and so Lisa was a perfect fit. Through their program, Lisa would be given her own furnished apartment and an $800 monthly allowance, along with some babysitting money. Lisa was thrilled. A few days after learning about this program and agreeing to be a part of it,

Lisa had packed up all of her belongings and she had driven to her sister-in-law's house, where someone from the program was going to come and pick Lisa and her baby up and take them to their new apartment. As Lisa waited, she felt annoyed that her sister-in-law, Kathy, was not as excited about this opportunity as she was. In fact, Kathy was acting like this whole thing seemed kind of sketchy, that the Kansas City outreach program was just too good to be true. And as a heavy snowstorm moved into the area that day, Kathy suggested in a hopeful voice that maybe the weather would keep her ride from

being able to drive out to pick her up that day, and that maybe Lisa would have another day or two to decide if she really wanted to go through with this. But Lisa shrugged her off, and a little while later, right at the appointed hour, the two women heard a knock on the front door. And when they opened it, to their surprise, the founder of the Kansas City Outreach Program was there. He was a smiling, well-dressed, middle-aged man in a long trench coat. And after introducing himself, he walked back to the car and stood there ready to open the car door for Lisa. Lisa carefully wrapped her baby, Tiffany, in her warmest blanket and tucked her into the car seat that was sitting near the front door. Then Lisa said goodbye to her sister-in-law,

and then she picked up the car seat and shielded Tiffany from the snow as she walked quickly down the front steps and out to the waiting car. She strapped her infant into the back seat, then Lisa slid into the front passenger seat where she buckled up and then waved and smiled at Kathy as the car pulled away from the curb. Over the next several weeks, Lisa, who normally spoke with her mother all the time, stopped calling. Concerned, Lisa's mother contacted the Kansas City police,

and the police asked her if, besides phone calls, had she had any other interactions with her daughter recently, and Lisa's mother would hesitate, but would say yes, she had. Not long after Lisa's calls had stopped, Lisa's mother had received a typewritten note from Lisa that had her daughter's signature written out at the bottom that claimed Lisa was doing just fine and that she didn't need anything, but there was just something odd about the way the note was written. It just didn't sound like Lisa at all. sound like Lisa at all. Eight years later, in 1993, a 48-year-old woman named Beverly Bonner stood looking around the prison library at the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, a little town

of 8,500 residents located in the northwest corner of Missouri. When Beverly had gotten her advanced degrees in teaching and librarianship back in college, she had never expected to find herself in charge of a prison library, especially after spending more than a decade as an executive with the Mobile Oil Company back in the 1970s and 80s in Kansas City. But a lot had changed for Beverly over the last 20 years. She'd had two children and had gone through one divorce before marrying her current husband, who happened to be the prison doctor at the Western Missouri Correctional Center. Beverly was grateful that she'd been hired as the prison librarian, but as she looked around at the perfectly organized collection of books on the shelves, she wished that her job was a little

more challenging and that her marriage to Dr. William, now in its sixth year, was a little bit more exciting. Except that recently, very recently, Beverly's life had gotten a little bit more interesting. As she heard the metal door into the library open, Beverly felt her pulse quicken. She knew it was her new library assistant, a prison inmate whose exemplary behavior and high level of education had qualified him for this plum assignment inside the library. And when she'd first been introduced to him several weeks ago, it turned out that, amazingly, she'd actually met him before, back in 1970, when he also had worked at Mobile Oil in Kansas City as a systems analyst. Back then, there had been some gossip surrounding the circumstances under

which he had been fired from Mobile, but even in the short period of time that she'd spent with him there at the library, it had become clear to Beverly that whatever had happened at Mobile, just like the fraud charges that had landed him here in prison, could not have been his fault. As he walked toward her now, eyes twinkling and that boyish grin on his face, Beverly felt her face flush as his eyes traveled up and down her body. Then when he reached her, he leaned in close and he told her how very, very good she looked. Beverly's affair with her library assistant had begun almost immediately after he had started working with her, and by the time his prison sentence was over six months later, Beverly's lover had promised her an exciting role in the new business he planned to build as soon as he was on the

outside. Not only would this new business make both of them rich, but Beverly believed this would finally be a career that challenged her. And it came with lots of international travel, so Beverly was really excited. And so in 1994, a few months after her lover's release, Beverly divorced her second husband, Dr. William, and got a property settlement from him for $18,000. Then she sent her kids off to live with Dr. Bonner, and then she left Missouri and headed off to Olathe, Kansas to join her prison lover and start this new and exotic life with him.

Kansas to join her prison lover and start this new and exotic life with him. But when Beverly's oldest child died a little over one year later in December of 1995, Beverly didn't show up for his funeral. In fact, it had been more than 12 months since anyone had seen Beverly in person. The only communication anyone in her family had had with her since she left for Olathe, Kansas, were a few typewritten letters she had sent that had her signature at the bottom. But no matter how many times the family read these letters to reassure themselves that everything was okay with Beverly, they couldn't help but think that the language she had chosen to use in these letters sounded totally weird. It just did not sound like her.

letters sounded totally weird. It just did not sound like her. Six years later, on a cold night in late January 2000, 28-year-old Suzette Troughton was sitting inside her apartment in Monroe, Michigan, a town of 22,000 people located in the southeast corner of the Great Lakes state. She was doing what she did almost every night, talking on the phone with her mom, Carolyn, who also lived in Monroe. While they talked, Suzette petted Pika and Harry, the two tiny Pekingese dogs that were her constant companions. Outside her apartment window were the familiar streets of her hometown, the place where she had been born and where her parents had gone through a nasty divorce and where she had dropped out of high school in her junior year. But despite all that, Suzette actually liked living in Monroe. And overall, she liked her job as a nurse's aide, where she mostly took care of elderly

and terminally ill patients. She was actually so good at her job that she wanted to get her degree in nursing, but money was tight. Just to pay for the few nursing prep courses she was taking right now, she had had to pick up a part-time waitressing job at Bob's Big Boy Restaurant. So, when Suzette had found this amazing job offer online five months ago in the fall of 1999, she could hardly believe her luck. A well-to-do businessman in Kansas City was looking for a healthcare worker to come with him and his elderly father on a round-the-world cruise on his yacht. In exchange for taking care of his dad, the man was offering to pay all living expenses plus an annual salary of $65,000, three times what Suzette made working her two jobs in Monroe.

But ever since she had accepted this job offer, her mother and some of Suzette made working her two jobs in Monroe. But ever since she had accepted this job offer, her mother and some of Suzette's closest friends had voiced real concerns, saying that the opportunity just seemed way too good to be true. And sure enough, on that cold night in January of 2000, that's what Suzette's mom was talking to her about on the phone. And per usual, Suzette told her mom to stop worrying. Suzette knew her future employer was totally legit. The previous October, she'd contacted him to get more details about the job, and he'd paid for her to fly down to Kansas City for a week just to meet him and discuss the job. He'd sent a limousine to pick her up at the airport, and he'd

put her up in a nice motel for five days. He also showed her the mansion where he lived, and he showed her a furnished apartment in a section of Kansas City called Overlook Park, where she could live when they weren't off visiting Hawaii, the Far East, and Europe. And once it was time for Suzette to move from Monroe to Kansas City on February 11, 2000, her employer had said he would be renting a small truck for her to drive so she could bring her two dogs and some of her belongings along with her. Because no matter how sweet the offer was, Suzette had stressed that she could never go anywhere without her Pika and Harry. A few minutes later, the phone conversation with her mother wrapped up and Suzette said goodnight

and that she would call again tomorrow. After hanging up the phone, Suzette turned to the computer in her small living room. A minute later, she was logged in to her favorite website where she spent the majority of her free time. The name of this website was the International Council of Masters and it was fully and completely devoted to people like Suzette who were deep into the world and alternate lifestyle of BDSM. BDSM is an umbrella term that refers to a spectrum of sexual behaviors and preferences that can be divvied up into the groups of bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism. Suzette was very close with her mother and always had been, but this aspect of her life was something she kept secret. Suzette had multiple online BDSM

relationships, and during the last several years, she had moved from the world of BDSM sex online to BDSM sex in person. And in a strange twist of fate, it was actually through BDSM that she had met her future employer, the wealthy Kansas City businessman. This man, whose online username was TheSlaveMaster, had first reached out to Suzette in one of her BDSM chat rooms, and it was there that he actually offered her the $65,000 a year sail-around-the-world-on-a-yacht dream job. And so Suzette had obviously been very interested and asked him for more information, and in response, he had paid for her to come to Kansas to learn more. During those five days, Suzette spent a little time learning about the dream job and a lot of time being the slave master's slave.

She had even signed his so-called slave contract, which said he had full control over her and could punish her however and whenever he wanted. For five days, the slave master filmed himself having his way with Suzette. And when Suzette had come back to Monroe, she would spend hours re-watching those videos, fantasizing about doing it all over again when she headed off to begin working for him. Finally, February 11th rolled around and it was time for Suzette to leave Monroe and head off to Kansas City. Suzette kissed her mom and other family members goodbye, she tucked Pica and Harry into their

deluxe travel cases, and then she climbed into the truck that the slave master had rented for her, and then she began the 750-mile drive west to Kansas City. A few weeks later, on March 1st, from her motel room in Kansas City, Suzette sent a message on her computer to a fellow BDSM enthusiast to say that she and the slave master were finally leaving for their around-the-world yacht trip with her master's elderly father, and that she was really excited and that this experience was going to be a lot of fun. At 10.30 that morning, the slave master opened the door of Suzette's motel room and walked inside. He looked around,

happy to see that Suzette had packed up the last of her things and was ready to go, but before they left, there was just one more thing he needed Suzette to do. He walked across the room and put the blank pieces of paper he had been holding down on a table, and then he gestured for Suzette to come over. He told her to sign her name at the bottom of each page. This way, he said, she'd be reminded to write some letters to her family once they were out at sea. He said he could even help her type some of the letters up, since he'd be bringing along his typewriter. Suzette, who was a terrible speller and who preferred messaging on the computer over letter writing, thought this was a good idea, and after she'd signed her name to each page, she turned her attention to making sure that her dogs had

finished their food and that they were snuggled down inside of their carrying case. A few minutes later, Suzette was in the car with the slave master on their way to pick up his father. But as they drove, the slave master suddenly turned to her and said, before we get my dad, I want to take you somewhere. He told her he wanted to show her a piece of farm property that he owned in Lynn County, which was just outside of Kansas City. Suzette grinned and said, okay, thinking her master must want one more sexual

encounter before they set sail. And sure enough, after they had arrived at the single trailer on a deserted stretch of flat farmland 60 miles south of Olathe, the slave master parked the car, reached into the glove compartment, and pulled out a blindfold and a length of rope. Suzette smiled. She could tell by the expression on his face that he clearly had something very special planned for her. A few hours later, the slave master was back in his car, except this time he was alone, minus Suzette's two dogs who were whining in the back seat. The slave master wiped some sweat from his brow, then he fired up the car engine, pulled out of the dirt lot onto the road.

I'm Peter Frankapern. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time, somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all

captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. We'll always be the first one to catch our new episodes. But that's not all. You get access to other amazing shows like Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Morbid, 48 Hours, and 2020, all ad-free too.

And you know what that means. Uninterrupted listening, so no more cliffhangers. Amazon Music is your home for all things true crime and offers the most ad-free top podcasts, so we definitely have something for you. And it's already included in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to amazon.com slash ballin. That's amazon.com slash ballin, or download the free Amazon Music app. It's just that easy. A few weeks later, Suzette's mother, Carolyn, would receive a typewritten letter in the mail from her daughter. And in this letter, her daughter would tell her how great the cruise was going so far.

And at the bottom of the letter was her daughter's signature. But just like Lisa Stassi's family and Beverly Bonner's family, Carolyn and the rest of Suzette's family thought this letter just didn't seem right. It didn't sound like Suzette's family thought this letter just didn't seem right. It didn't sound like Suzette. But what made Suzette's family especially skeptical of this letter was that one of her dog's names had been badly misspelled. Not just a typo, but a full-blown misspelling. Suzette adored her dogs like they were her children, and she would never have spelled the dog's name that way. And so the combination of this egregious spelling error combined with the overall alien feel of the letter

convinced Suzette's family that Suzette simply could not have been the letter's author. But the implications of this were not clear. Did this mean Suzette was in trouble? Was this letter just a prank? They didn't know. But they had no way of actually getting in touch with Suzette was in trouble? Was this letter just a prank? They didn't know, but they had no way of actually getting in touch with Suzette because she was out on this yacht, so there was no phone number for her. So with nothing else to do, the family just kind of began digging into Suzette's life to see if there was anything they could find, and her family quickly discovered that Suzette was a part of this BDSM community, but more importantly, they discovered that the Kansas City businessman who had offered Suzette this dream job was also a member of the BDSM

community, and his username was The Slave Master. And when the family began reaching out to people in this community that had heard of The Slave Master, no one had nice things to say about him. And so at this discovery, Suzette's mother, Carolyn, just got this really bad feeling that something had happened to her daughter. And so she called the Kansas City police. And on this call, she would tell them that, you know, she can't get in touch with her daughter, and she's gotten these letters from her daughter, but it doesn't sound like her. And then at the end of her initial story of what's going on with her daughter, she would tell the police that the last person she believed her daughter was with was her new employer, a man who called himself the Slave Master Online. Now, at first, the police, as they're listening to Carolyn, they were a little bit dismissive of her

story because it sounded like her adult daughter had chosen to go do something and she was sending letters so she was in touch. So what was the big deal? But when they heard Carolyn mention the slave master part of the story, everything changed because the police knew exactly who the slave master was. who the slave master was. A few months later, in the spring of 2000, 15-year-old Heather Robinson was sitting in her bedroom in her family's house in Chicago, Illinois, listening to her parents arguing downstairs. As she tossed her long brown hair over her shoulders, Heather was thinking to herself, did her parents really believe that she couldn't hear them fighting? And did they really think that over the last year she hadn't noticed that arguments like this one were becoming more and more frequent? It actually wasn't even the arguing that bothered Heather the most. It was the fact that her parents tried to act like these fights weren't even

happening, like everything was just fine. And this totally annoyed and stressed Heather out. But the truth was, at the age of 15, everything bothered Heather, including the fact that she was an only child, and she didn't have any siblings to talk with about her parents going through this rough patch, and about how way overprotective her parents were. They had rules for everything, like not allowing her to take phone calls after 9pm, or telling her it was time to get off the family computer when she was mid-conversation with her friends. And with her 16th birthday and driver's license coming up that fall, she was sure they'd be making up even more rules for her.

As she sat there wishing she had a little more independence, Heather suddenly remembered that offer her uncle had made her almost a year earlier. It was back when one of his four kids was getting married, and Heather and her parents, Donald and Freda Robinson, had flown down to Florida for her cousin's wedding. And after the wedding, during the big reception, Heather's uncle had pulled her out onto the dance floor. Heather didn't know her uncle very well. He and his wife lived six hours away from them, and her uncle was 10 years older than her own father, so the two brothers hadn't really grown up together, and except for special occasions like this wedding, they really only got together once a year at an annual family reunion. Now, as Heather recalled that actual dance with her uncle, she shuddered. Her uncle, who had been drinking at

the reception, had suddenly gotten way too close to her, kind of rubbing up against her. However, just as quickly as he had started doing that, he had stopped and then, taking hold of one of her arms, and said, you know, it looks like things are kind of rough right now with your parents, and if you ever need to get away, you can just message me and I'll buy you a plane ticket and you can come out and visit me, no questions asked, just a little getaway. Then he squeezed her arm one more time, he gave her a nod, and then he walked away. At the time, Heather had not been remotely interested in this offer. But now, as she sat there staring out at the dark, cold night, listening to her mom and dad argue downstairs, she started to think, maybe she should go visit her uncle. Maybe some time away would be a good thing. A few weeks later, at 10.30 p.m. on Friday, June 2nd, Heather listened from her bedroom for the sound of her parents retreating to their room. Once she was sure they were both in

there, Heather quietly slipped out of her bedroom and headed downstairs to be closer to the landline telephone. She was expecting a call from a friend, but since it was after 9 p.m., she was not allowed to take calls. And so her plan was just to stand right in front of the phone and grab it the second it rang so it didn't wake up her parents, who had a phone right next to their bed.

But when the phone actually rang just a few minutes later, Heather was fast, but not fast enough. By the time she'd picked up the receiver and put it to her ear, she could hear her father's sleepy voice already saying, hello? Immediately, Heather pressed mute on her own handset, but instead of hanging up the phone, Heather hesitated. She could hear on the phone not her friend who was supposed to be calling, but one of her relatives, and his voice was low and very tense.

Intrigued, Heather put the phone back to her ear and secretly listened. What Heather would hear in the next 45 seconds would change her life forever and make headlines all over the world. A few months earlier, when Suzette's mother, Carolyn, had called the Kansas City police and told them about how her daughter might be in trouble and that the last person she thought she had been with was this slave master person, the police instantly knew the man she was talking about because they were already investigating him. women in the BDSM community had come forward with complaints against this man. Most of the women had said they had met up with the slave master in person and he had assaulted them or stolen from them. So the police were confident that this slave master guy was a really bad guy. And so when Carolyn said her daughter Suzette had been with him last and now no one could get in touch with Suzette and didn't know where she was, this sent up huge red flags for the police. But what pushed their suspicions over the edge was when a couple

of days later, Carolyn got a call from Olathe, Kansas Animal Control saying they had just found her daughter's beloved Pekingese dogs alive but abandoned in a trailer park. Carolyn knew her daughter would never abandon those dogs willingly, and so she called the Kansas City police back to tell them. When the police heard about the dogs, not only that Suzette was not with them, which was highly unusual according to her mother, but that the dogs were found in the same trailer park where they knew the slave master lived, they knew this could not be a coincidence. And so, on the morning of Friday, June 2nd, just 12 hours before 15-year-old Heather Robinson overheard that fateful phone conversation, the police in Kansas descended on the trailer park

where the slave master lived. Federal, state, and local law enforcement would search not only the slave master's house, but also his 17-acre piece of farmland 60 miles to the south, and several storage units he had rented in Raymoor, Missouri, 30 miles to the west. In his house, investigators would quickly find Suzette's ID cards, as well as some blank stationery with her signatures written out at the bottom. They also found a receipt from 1985 for a motel room rented in Kansas City to a 19-year-old woman named Lisa Stassi. But these discoveries were nothing compared to what was found next. On the slave master's farmland were three 85-gallon oil drums hidden next to the single shabby trailer. Inside of these drums, investigators found the bodies of two women who had died of puncture wounds to their skull, likely caused by a hammer.

One of the bodies belonged to a 21-year-old Polish immigrant from Indiana who had been one of the slave master's slaves. The other was 28-year-old Suzette Troughton. She was found wearing a blindfold and had a piece of rope tied around her neck. Out at the slave master's storage facility in Raymoor, Missouri, investigators found that one of the units had been rented back in 1994 under the name of former prison librarian Beverly Bonner. Inside that unit, they found three storage containers. One of them had Beverly Bonner's body inside of it, and the others held two more victims the slave master had recruited for sex,

a 45-year-old mother and her 15-year-old disabled daughter who had been confined to a wheelchair. That night, at around 10.30 p.m., just hours before the public would find out the identity of the slave master, 15-year-old Heather Robinson picked up the phone and heard her father give a sleepy hello to whoever had called. Heather quickly muted her handset, but decided to secretly listen to her father's conversation. The low, tense voice of the person on the other line belonged to the son-in-law of her father's older brother, John Robinson. John was the uncle that Heather had danced with just a few months earlier at the wedding, who had been somewhat

inappropriate with her and then kind of abruptly offered to fly her out to visit with him anytime she wanted. In a hushed and terrified voice, the son-in-law delivered the news that would start appearing in the newspapers and on the TV the next day. John had just been arrested for murder. Heather was so shocked by what she had just heard that she didn't really hear anything else the son-in-law said. However, before the son-in-law hung up, Heather remembered him saying that John was connected to several women, one of which was a woman named Lisa Stassi. Heather eventually hung up the phone, and then she took a deep breath,

and she walked up the stairs, and then walked down the hallway to her parents' bedroom, and when she pushed open the door, she saw her normally stoic father sobbing into his hands. she saw her normally stoic father sobbing into his hands. Next to him, her mother was staring straight ahead with a shocked and frozen look on her ashen face. Heather had two questions. Is it really true that Uncle John killed someone? And who is Lisa Stassi? It would turn out Heather's uncle, John Robinson, was the slave master, which meant Heather's uncle was a serial killer. But this revelation was not the most shocking thing that Heather would learn that night. The most shocking thing had to do with Lisa Stassi. 15 years earlier, back in January of 1985, Heather's uncle, John, was the man who had driven through the snowstorm to pick up 19-year-old

Lisa Stassi and her baby to take them to their new apartment that his program was going to pay for. But instead of bringing her to this new apartment, John brought Lisa and her baby to the Roadway Inn Motel in Overlook Park, Kansas City, and once there, he somehow convinced Lisa, like he would do with all of his other victims, to sign a blank piece of stationery. This would allow him to write letters to the victim's families as if they were letters written by the victim because their signature was at the bottom. He hoped this tactic would keep the police off of his back. After Lisa had signed these papers, John killed her. As for Lisa's baby John simply executed his plan for years John's brother Donald and his wife Frida who were Heather's parents had been

trying to adopt a child but they had been unsuccessful and so during this very stressful time John had told them that in the course of his work as a philanthropist, he would sometimes get leads on babies who were up for adoption, and if he ever found a baby in need of a home, he would let them know. And now that John had just killed Lisa, her baby suddenly needed a home. So he called his brother and gave him the good news. And Donald, feeling incredibly lucky and grateful, and believing the whole process had been totally legal, happily agreed to take this baby, and he agreed to pay John the $5,500 for the adoption paperwork.

This paperwork was of course forged by John. And after that, Donald and his wife rushed to Kansas City where they met their beautiful little four-month-old baby girl. They would name her Heather. Before returning with baby Heather to her new home in Chicago, John insisted that they all pose for a family picture. In this picture, which would hang in Heather's house for the next 15 years, Uncle John is seen sitting in the front row bouncing on his knee his new four-month-old niece, whose mother he had literally just murdered. A few days after being told the horrific truth about who she was, DNA and fingerprints would confirm it was all true. Heather really was Lisa Stassi's daughter. But tragically, even though John would confess to

murdering Lisa, he would refuse to disclose how he actually killed her or where he dumped her remains. In the story that investigators would piece together, John Robinson was a con man, and in 1985, his cons became deadly. That year, he created the fake charity he called the Kansas City Outreach Program that claimed to help young mothers and their infants get back on their feet. But in reality, John had just created this phony charity to lure a young mother to him so he could kill her and profit off of her baby. This is exactly what he did to Lisa. After handing Lisa's baby, Heather, over to his brother, Donald, John then convinced Donald to pay him the $5,500 for the forged adoption paperwork.

Investigators don't know for sure if John killed any more victims after Lisa up until the early 1990s, but he is a strong suspect in at least two missing women cases from that time frame. In 1994, John would land in jail in Missouri for fraud, and while in jail, he would meet and seduce Beverly Bonner. Once he got out of jail, he convinced Beverly to divorce her husband and come out to Kansas City to be with him, and when she did this, he killed her and collected that $18,000 settlement check she received from her divorce. After killing Beverly, John discovered the internet. Specifically, he discovered how easy it was to lure people to him using the BDSM community that lived on the internet. And so,

he remade himself as the slave master online and began brutalizing and killing people at a much more rapid pace. Police believe it was around this point when he became the slave master that John's motives for killing people shifted from killing for monetary gain to killing simply because he wanted to. This is likely the reason why Suzette was murdered. She was simply available. In total, John was found to be responsible for eight murders, but in theory it could be more. But John, who is actually still alive awaiting execution, is totally unwilling to give any information up. So there is a very good chance he will take his secrets to the grave. Heather Robinson would ultimately choose to be legally adopted by her parents, Donald and Frida. They truly had no idea what John had done and were, by all accounts,

excellent parents to Heather. In 2019, at the age of 35, on the 2020 crime documentary Soul Survivor, Heather broke her long silence about her childhood ordeal. In that interview, Heather said that if she had accepted that offer John had made her back in 2000 at the wedding reception when he said he would buy her a plane ticket to come out to Kansas to spend some alone time with him, she believes he would have killed her and stuffed her in one of those 85-gallon oil drums. Heather, who is now married and a mother herself, said she is committed to finding her own biological mother's remains and returning them to the memorial to Lisa Stassi that now stands empty in the Stateline Cemetery in Madison County, Alabama.

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