So, John Edward Robinson got started young. He was arrested in 1969 at age 26 for stealing from his employer to the tune of $33,000, which is nothing to sneeze at now, but was really nothing to sneeze at back then. He ended up in jail, where he learned nothing because when he got out, he went right back to faking documents and stealing money.
Oh, yeah, and he also started killing women.
Robinson took advantage of this new-fangled information superhighway (the “internet”) and in the year 1993, he started meeting women online by hiring them to work for him. They would relocate to Robinson’s Kansas for the job…and he would kill them. Depending on how you look at it, you could call him the first serial killer on the internet, a distinction without honor, to be sure.
Luring people to their deaths is pretty bad, obviously, but Robinson also did something so bizarre and so disturbing that it really stuck out to me: His brother was looking to adopt a child…so Robinson lured a woman with a 4-month-old to Kansas, murdered her, then forged adoption papers and gave the baby to his brother!
What the actual…?
Robinson was arrested in 2000. He confessed to eight murders, but the police think he committed more. He’s still on Death Row in Kansas as I write this.
(Oh, and the illegally adopted baby? She eventually learned the truth and I hope she’s living well and peacefully.)
(This piece comes from my newsletter, which goes out monthly. For more stuff like this, and to get it first, sign up here!)