3 days ago
Serial Killer John Robinson's Arrest Revealed a Shocking Family Secret. Here's Where He Is Now
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story:
Serial killer John Robinson killed eight women in Kansas and Missouri until he was caught in 2000.
His case caught greater attention when his adopted niece, Heather Robinson, discovered her biological mother was one of John's victims.
John remains in prison today and has appealed his sentence numerous times.
Heather Robinson always had an uneasy feeling around her uncle John Robinson, as if she was stalked by a malevolent force. It turns out her intuition would prove hauntingly accurate, as details of John's sinister past emerged.
Heather's unlikely ties to her murderous uncle are the subject of Kidnapped By a Killer: The Heather Robinson Story, airing Saturday, June 7, on Lifetime at 8 p.m. ET. Starring actors Steve Guttenberg and Rachel Stubington, the movie gives a fictionalized account of Heather's terrifying revelation that John was, in fact, a serial killer and responsible for her biological mother's disappearance.
More than two decades after these life-changing details came to light, the real Heather has continued to seek out the truth about her family. Meanwhile, John remains in prison on death row. Here's what you need to know about the case and what John's life is like today.
John Edward Robinson Sr. is a convicted serial killer originally from Cicero, Illinois. He was found guilty of, or admitted to, murdering eight women in Kansas and Missouri between 1985 through 2000, though his true victim count is unknown.
Some consider him the first serial killer to use the Internet to lure victims, as he spoke to women in online chatrooms under the handle 'Slavemaster.' Authorities determined several of his victims engaged in sadomasochistic sex and participated in master-slave relationships with Robinson before he killed them.
In 2000, police arrested then-56-year-old Robinson after finding the remains of two women kept in barrels on his property near Kansas City. The remains of three additional women were soon discovered on another property he owned in Raymore, Missouri.
Robinson's case drew national attention and sparked a prolonged criminal trial—the longest in Kansas history. A jury found the man guilty on three counts of capital murder in 2002, and he was sentenced to death. He later admitted to five additional murders in Missouri as part of a plea agreement and received five life sentences in prison.
While the details of the crimes are gruesome, the lengths Robinson went to hide them—particularly from his own family—added another unusual layer to the case.
John's crimes not only shocked neighbors, but also completely upended the life of his adopted niece, Heather Robinson.
John's brother, Don Robinson, and his wife had been raising Heather since she was an infant. When John was arrested, Heather was 15 and learned for the first time that her real name was Tiffany Stasi.
When Heather was only 4 months old, she and her 19-year-old mother, Lisa Stasi, went missing and were presumed dead by family members. In reality, John had begun a relationship with Lisa and gave her young daughter to his brother and sister-in-law by claiming she was up for adoption after her mother had killed herself in a hotel room. He even manufactured documents and charged his brother more than $5,000 in fake legal fees. Lisa's remains were never found, but John was convicted of her 1985 murder at trial nearly two decades later.
Editor's Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or self-harming behaviors, call or text 988 to get help from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
During a 2019 televised interview for 20/20, Heather said she likely witnessed her mother's killing as an infant but has no recollection. She shared that her uncle 'gave me this really weird, off-putting feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's like walking down a dark alley in the middle of the night while you know someone is behind you, approaching you closer and closer.'
Heather also said that shortly before his arrest, John asked her sexual questions at a wedding in Florida and offered her a plane ticket to stay with him. 'I'd be dead. I would be in that barrel,' she surmised, referencing how John's other victims were found.
John is now 81 years old and has appealed his sentence on multiple occasions. In November 2015, the Kansas Supreme Court threw out one of his capital murder convictions and one first-degree murder conviction, citing a double jeopardy situation in which he was tried twice for the same crime. However, the court ultimately upheld John's capital sentence.
John filed a civil suit in 2016 and returned to court in 2022, hoping to earn a new trial or have his capital conviction vacated. Instead, he remains on death row at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.
According to an online database operated by the Kansas Department of Corrections, John has had four disciplinary instances between 2016 and 2024. This past November, he was reprimanded for theft.
Prior to being uncovered as a murderer, John had been convicted of a felony theft charge in Kansas back in the mid-1980s. He remained out of the Kansas justice system until the millennium.
Heather is now 40 and has a family of her own with husband Roberto Ramos.
Following the revelations about John's disturbing past, she developed a relationship with her maternal grandmother, Pat Sylvester. 'My grandma. Lisa's mother… that was hard at times, but I did love her,' Heather said in the 20/20 interview. 'She taught me to not have hate in my heart and to forgive John… because she did.'
Sylvester died in 2018, and Heather and her family hope to find Lisa's remains so she can be laid to rest alongside her own mother.
Chillingly, around 2010, someone in her biological mother's family gave Heather a letter purportedly written by her late mother. Forty-two pages long, it claimed that Lisa was alive and well and that John Robinson wouldn't harm anyone. However, Heather is sure her mother is, in fact, dead and believes John wrote the letter.
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