[slow country music]
♪ I thought the world was letting me down ♪
[narrator]
in the flatlands of eastern Kansas.
Paula Godfrey is 19 years old,
fresh out of high school and looking to land her first job.
She answers an ad in the local paper.
A man named John Robinson offers her a position.
The catch?
Paula must attend a training seminar out of town.
On August 23rd, the young woman hops into a car with Robinson.
It is the last time Paula Godfrey's parents
will see their daughter alive.
♪
[soft country music]
[narrator]
Lisa Stasi is 19 years old
with a five-month-old named Tiffany.
No husband and no way to support herself.
Again, John Robinson comes to the rescue.
Working through a local outreach group,
Robinson offers Stasi money.
And sets her up in a motel.
Lisa checks into the Roadway Inn
on January 7th, 1985,
and checks out
on January 10th.
The bill is settled by Robinson
and Lisa Stasi, like Paula Godfrey before her,
disappears,
this time, with her five-month-old daughter in tow.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Marty]
that Mr. Robinson was in fact a serial killer.
[narrator]
with Overland Park.
In the spring of 1987,
the department takes a call about Catherine Clampitt,
another woman who took a job with Robinson.
Another woman now gone missing.
[Marty]
that had answered some ads in the newspaper,
um, regarding an opportunity to start a new life,
whether that be in modeling, being an assistant.
You know, some type of a ruse
to get females to meet him.
And this would be the last time that they would be seen.
[narrator]
Robinson allows the community to grow comfortable
with his presence.
Then the serial killer begins to stir,
and women once again begin to vanish.
The first to notice, a cop who knows Robinson all too well.
[suspenseful music playing]
Keith O'Neal is a captain in the Overland Park PD
and works the point on John Robinson's surveillance.
His job?
Follow the suspect around town
and see what he does with his day.
From 8:30 in the morning to 5:00 in the afternoon,
he would be out. He would meet other females.
We found out about some girlfriends that he had,
but by 5:00, virtually every day, he was home.
When his wife got home, they had dinner together
and looked like an all-American family
after 5:00 each day.
[narrator]
in a string of hotels throughout the area.
One of them, the Extended Stay hotel,
detective Mike Lowther, is assigned
to cover the location.
[Mike]
one local hotel did call us and informed us
that he had made a reservation
and a woman had checked into the room that he had reserved.
[narrator]
and wait for their suspect to arrive.
When he does,
investigators press their ears to the wall and listen,
as Robinson explains to the woman
what he would like her to do.
[Mike]
It was basically an introduction to her
of the BDSM lifestyle.
Kind of the rules that govern it.
[narrator]
are in a difficult spot,
not sure if they are listening to an argument over rough sex
or a prelude to murder.
[Rick]
If that was any normal situation,
we 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?
[narrator]
believing the woman to be safe
and unwilling to blow their cover.
They make the right decision.
Robinson exits the hotel,
and the woman eventually checks out, apparently unharmed.
A month later,
the woman, identified by detectives as Vickie Neufeld,
turns up again, filing a complaint against Robinson
for stealing a bag filled with her favorite sex toys.
Another of Robinson sex slaves also comes forward,
claiming Robinson played a little too rough
in one of their encounters.
Detectives believe these women might be the break
they are looking for.
[Rick]
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 the search warrants.
And that led to his arrest.
[narrator]
a judge grants an arrest warrant for John Robinson
on a charge of battery.
He also signs a slew of search warrants on Robinson's home,
his rural farmland property and his storage lockers.
The team will look for Vickie Neufeld's sex toys,
but hopes to find evidence of much more.
A judge steps into the serial killings investigation
before charges are even filed.
He's put a gag order on all the major players
in the Johnny Robinson case.
Robinson remains jailed in Olathe,
suspected in the murder of five women.
Their bodies were found in barrels on his Linn County Farm
and in a storage locker in Raymore.
[narrator]
John Robinson suddenly becomes big news.
He refuses to talk to police.
He's arraigned on five counts of murder,
and sits in a county jail awaiting trial.
Meanwhile, the strange case of the Kansas serial killer
is about to take yet another twist.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator]
15-year-old Heather Tiffany Robinson
sits in front of her computer, confused,
her Uncle John has just been arrested for murder,
a fact the teenager finds hard to accept.
She accesses a website on the case
and pulls up photos of Robinson's suspected victims.
One is of a baby
believed to be the missing daughter of a woman
Robinson allegedly murdered.
The woman is Lisa Stasi.
The baby Heather recognizes as herself.
Investigators travel to Chicago and learn
that in 1985,
John Robinson sold a baby to his brother, Donald,
and Donald's wife, Frieda.
That baby grew up to be Heather.
In fact, police recover a picture
taken they suspect just hours after Robinson killed Stasi.
It's a family photo, John Robinson is in the front row.
On his knee, Lisa Stasi's infant.
[prosecutor]
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 had been able to find this baby
whose mother had committed suicide in a hotel room.
[narrator]
is added to the list of charges Robinson faces,
a set of crimes for which the state of Kansas
is prepared to seek the death penalty.
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.
And we were successful in convicting him of everything
and in the penalty phase,
the jury rolled with us
and decided to recommend the death sentence,
which the judge gave him.
[narrator]
only long enough to face three more counts of murder
in the state of Missouri
for the deaths of Bev Bonner and Sheila and Debbie Faith,
each found in a barrel inside Robinson's storage locker.
Robinson pleads guilty to murdering all three
and also pleads guilty to the homicides
of two Overland Park women,
Paula Godfrey in 1984 and Catherine Clampitt in 1987.
Robinson, however, refuses to reveal how he killed them
or where their bodies might be found.
Finally, he has returned to death row.
The investigation over, the killing finally stopped.