.
Читать онлайн книгу.
nothing to endear me to JR at all, for he will view me destroying his gilt-laced reputation as wicked as slaughtering a sacred cow.
Mr Robinson’s over-inflated ego always had, and still does have, a front larger than any major high street department store. At face value, the façade is impressive, hinting at an honest deal to be had within. ‘Integrity’ shouts at one peering through the glass windows, but it is not until one steps through the door, and walks around the displays inside, that the penny drops. John Robinson, the persuasive owner of the store, is the ultimate con-artist. He is the ‘quack’ of old, peddling phoney medicines and selling goods at over-inflated prices. He is the purveyor of Mickey Mouse, bamboo-spring, ‘Rolex’ watches, passing them off as the real thing. And if you purchased an item from the JR Robinson store, and complained afterwards, would you get a refund? No way, José!
And, in a kind of warped sort of way, this is why I was attracted to JR, the ultimate I-don’t-give-a-fuck merchant, a sort of homicidal Del Boy, whose history, and character, no imaginative screenplay writer could ever invent.
For me, however, the first challenge was to open up a dialogue with this heinous serial killer. He had never cooperated with an author before, or pretty well anyone else for that matter, so realistically I didn’t expect him to admit to a single wrongdoing to me either. You see, JR is ‘innocent’, or so he now says after already admitting to five of at least eight murders that he’s committed. If the truth be known, I did not even expect a reply to my initial letter either.
My second task, assuming the first mission was successful, was to discover whether there was any substance to his deep-seated claims supporting his integrity as a decent and honest man. He says he is totally innocent of all of the crimes for which he is incarcerated. He says he has been ‘framed’ by a crooked prosecutor and a bent judge. He says he never once used the internet to trawl for potential victims, moreover, he categorically states that he was most certainly not into BDSM, or master/slave contracts… God forbid!
Nevertheless, I baited my hook with a cocktail of goodies that this particularly nasty little man might find attractive, then, like the ever-optimistic fisherman, I pulled back my old beachcaster and cast out the line. Then I waited, and waited, and waited some more. I guess that JR sniffed at my lure, swam around it a few times – for a few weeks to be precise – and then sniffed again. The rod tip twitched, the temptation too much for this murderous con man; they say that the easiest person to con is the con man himself. JR took the bait and ran with it… and he ran hard. Then, like any fighting fish, once hooked, he tried to spit the barb from his mouth. The shiny lure was not all that it appeared… all that glittered was not gold.
For a short while, I had landed one of the most twisted serial killers in criminal history. But then, like so many of these cowardly individuals faced with a difficult question or two, he flipped and flopped about, slithering back to the murky water. However, in doing so, he fell into a net from which there could be no escape, and the fascinating results of what happened are published here.
* * *
Robinson sweats hatred, the copious secretions dripping out of every pore of his ageing skin. Having pleaded guilty to a number of shocking murders to escape the death penalty, John E Robinson is now demanding $400,000 to prove his innocence. His letters, featured in this chapter, explain that if he is not funded he will use college students to publish his poetry – well, actually other people’s poetry which he claims is his - to raise some of the money. The entity that is JR is a damning indictment of a sado-sexual sociopath, a social parasite who exhibits not one iota of remorse for his crimes, insulting his dead victims and their next-of-kin.
I want $400,000, although that amount may be adjusted depending on need. My attorney will control all information and distribution of funds.
John E Robinson, letter to the author, 20 February 2008.
The bespectacled inmate squinting into the Olathe Police Department booking camera lens is that of a flabby faced, real estate wheeler-dealer lookalike who mortgaged his soul to the Devil. This is John Edward Robinson, a depraved sado-sex sadist who tortured and murdered women then stuffed their corpses into steel drums to rot in their own bodily juices until they were discovered by sick-to-the-stomach police.
An outwardly honest businessman, whose shady dealings and rip-offs took him to prison several times previously, John Robinson has since admitted five murders to escape the death penalty. More recently he has been charged by federal authorities for committing murder across state lines. And, my first question to him was simplicity itself:
John, can you please, please explain to me how the bodies of five women you knew very well ended up in steel barrels, three in your storage locker and two more on your land?
He replied:
I received your 2 January letter. At first I was simply going to forward it to my attorney to place in the file of vultures flying overhead wanting to pick my bones for personal profit.
* * *
With several aliases, including ‘Anthony Thomas’ and ‘James Turner’, JR (as he was known to the few friends he had) was born on Monday, 27 December 1943 in Cicero, Illinois, a working-class suburb of Chicago. Today, standing 5ft 9in tall, weighing 167lb, with green eyes, he is balding with partially grey hair.
Refusing to discuss even his childhood without receiving large sums of money in return (the aforementioned $400,000 to be precise), we know from official sources that he was one of five children to devout Roman Catholic parents who raised him at 4916 West 32nd Street, two blocks north of Cicero’s Sportsman’s Park Race Track. His father, Henry, worked as a machinist for nearby Western Electric’s ‘Hawthorne Works’ manufacturing complex, and, although a nice enough chap, was given to more than the occasional bout of heavy drinking. John’s disciplinarian mother, Alberta, was the backbone of the family and ensured that the couple’s offspring had a decent upbringing. Little else of her is known.
He [Robinson] didn’t talk a great deal, but when he did talk, it was to produce an effect that he wanted. He was shrewd. He was aspiring to more than he was capable of, quite frankly.
Former Eagle Scout public relations officer, Richard
Shotke. Kansas City Star, 2005.
At the age of 13, John became an ‘Eagle Scout’, the highest rank attainable in the programme of the Boy Scouts of America. In 1957, he was chosen as the leader of 120 Scouts who flew to London to appear before Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, at a Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium on 18 November. Therefore, I asked JR if he could tell me a little more about this memorable experience. His reply was:
I have never discussed this with anyone before, and I will not discuss it with you now. This is very valuable information to me. Your British readers would be very interested in my appearing before the Queen. If you send me $500.00 I will give you the exclusive story, which you can sell to the media and make a lot of money.
Three days later I downloaded a press cutting of this Royal Command Performance from the internet, posted it to JR and politely declined his generous offer. I already knew that backstage JR had chatted to Judy Garland and had told British actress Gracie Fields that he planned to study for the priesthood.
With that bit of trivia out of the way, it is known that Robinson was a motivated youngster whose ability didn’t match his drive. He told his peers that he was planning to become a priest and to someday work in Rome, but no one, probably not even John himself, knows whether this was what he truly wanted to do with his life or this was just his way of getting attention. Anyway, maybe the facts speak for themselves: as a freshman at Quigley Preparatory Seminary, in downtown Chicago, he was a lacklustre student and a discipline problem. He did not return to Quigley for his second year of study and it is believed that he was denied admission as a sophomore, due either to his academic or behavioural shortcomings.
After high school, in 1961, Robinson went to the Morton Junior College, in Cicero. He met Nancy Jo Lynch and they married in 1964. After 41 years of domestic purgatory, they divorced on 25 February 2005, this Latter-Day