The dawn of the internet age promised connection and opportunity, but for a string of vulnerable women in Kansas and Missouri, it became a digital death trap. John Edward Robinson, Senior, a man who would become known as the “Internet Slavemaster,” exploited the anonymity of early online chat rooms to lure, enslave, and murder at least eight women, forever changing the landscape of criminal predation.
Robinson, now 81 and sitting on death row in Kansas, is the first serial killer in history to use the internet as his primary hunting ground. His case, which culminated in a 2003 conviction and a death sentence for the murders of three women in Kansas, is now at a critical juncture as 2025 approaches, a year that could see his long-delayed execution finally carried out. The state of Kansas, which has not executed anyone since 1965, is under immense pressure to deliver a verdict that has been decades in the making.
The story of John Edward Robinson is one of a double life so profound it strains belief. To his neighbors in the quiet suburb of Olathe, Kansas, he was a family man, a former Eagle Scout, a church volunteer, and a businessman. He coached baseball, led Boy Scout troops, and even fabricated a “Kansas City Man of the Year” award for himself, complete with a luncheon and a presentation from a state senator.
But beneath this veneer of respectability lurked a predator of staggering cruelty.
Robinson’s criminal history began long before the internet era. Born in Cicero, Illinois, in 1943, he was arrested for embezzlement as early as 1969. Over the next three decades, he amassed a rap sheet of fraud, forgery, and theft, often using charm and forged documents to swindle employers and investors.
He spent time in prison in the early 1990s, but it was upon his release that he discovered his true weapon: the emerging world of online chat rooms.
By the mid-1990s, Robinson was prowling BDSM and fetish forums under the screen name “slavemaster.” He targeted women who were lonely, vulnerable, or seeking financial stability. He promised them jobs, romance, and a life of adventure.
He offered them contracts of submission, binding them to him in a perverse parody of a relationship. Once they trusted him, they vanished.
The first known victim was Paula Godfrey, a 19-year-old graduate who answered a job advertisement in 1984. She was never seen again. In 1985, Lisa Stacy, a 19-year-old mother fleeing a violent marriage, disappeared with her infant daughter, Tiffany, after Robinson promised her a job and a home.
Stacy’s body has never been found, but her daughter was later discovered living with Robinson’s own brother, who had been given the child under the guise of a legal adoption.
The horror escalated in the late 1990s. Robinson met Sheila Faith, 45, and her 15-year-old disabled daughter, Debbie, online. He promised to care for them and pay for Debbie’s medical treatment.
They moved from California to Kansas in 1994 and were never heard from again. He cashed their disability checks for seven years. Isabella Lewicka, a 21-year-old Polish immigrant, was lured by the promise of a bondage relationship and a job.
She signed a 115-item slave contract and disappeared in 1999. Susette Troutton, a 28-year-old nurse from Michigan, was promised a $62,000 salary to care for Robinson’s fictional elderly father. She moved to Kansas in February 2000 and was dead within weeks.
The end came in June 2000, when two women Robinson had sexually assaulted in a hotel room escaped and filed complaints. Police raided his property near La Cygne, Kansas, and made a grisly discovery: two 85-gallon chemical drums containing the decomposing bodies of Lewicka and Troutton. A search of a storage locker he rented in Raymore, Missouri, yielded three more barrels, each marked “rendered pork fat.”
Inside were the remains of Beverly Bonner, 49, a prison librarian who had fallen for Robinson’s schemes, and Sheila and Debbie Faith.
All five women had been killed by one or two blows to the head. The murders were methodical, clinical, and utterly devoid of remorse. Robinson’s arrest sent shockwaves through the nation, not just for the brutality of the crimes, but for the method.
He had used the internet, a tool still in its infancy, to find and destroy his victims.
In 2002, a Kansas jury convicted Robinson of capital murder for the deaths of Troutton and Lewicka, and first-degree murder for the death of Stacy. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection in January 2003. In a separate plea deal in Missouri, he admitted to the murders of Bonner, the Faiths, Godfrey, and Catherine Clampet, a 27-year-old who vanished in 1987, in exchange for a life sentence.
He remains on death row in Kansas, where his execution has been delayed for over two decades by legal appeals.
As 2025 approaches, the clock is ticking. The U. S.
Supreme Court upheld Kansas’s death penalty law in 2006, clearing a major legal hurdle. However, the state has not carried out an execution in nearly 60 years, and Robinson’s age and health have become factors. His attorneys have argued that his strokes and partial paralysis make him unfit for execution, but prosecutors are pushing for a final resolution.
The families of Robinson’s victims have waited for decades for justice. For them, the prospect of an execution in 2025 is not about vengeance, but about closure. “It’s been a long time coming,” said Karen Moore, an aunt of Lisa Stacy, after the 2002 verdict.
“I’m just glad he’s been held responsible for his actions.” But for others, the wait has been agonizing. The body of Lisa Stacy has never been found, and the families of Godfrey and Clampet still do not know where their loved ones rest.
John Edward Robinson’s legacy is a chilling warning. He was the first to show the world that the internet, a place of connection and discovery, could also be a hunting ground. His case raised a question that remains urgent today: how many more monsters are hiding behind a screen, waiting for their next victim?
In a digital world where predators can assume any identity, the lessons of the Internet Slavemaster are as relevant now as they were in 2000. Trust can be a weapon, and monsters don’t always lurk in the shadows. Sometimes, they live next door.
