Anyone You Want Me to Be by John Douglas and Stephen Singular

Anyone You Want Me To Be by John Douglas and Stephen Singular is a true crime book about the serial killer John Robinson who was convicted of eight murders in and around Kansas City, Kansas.

7 out of 10 stars. This true crime book appears to be written more by Singular than by Douglas which is a credit to Singular’s writing style and his ability to stick to the facts and leave out conjecture, something that Douglas has a problem with.

In October 2002, John Edward Robinson was found guilty of the murders of Suzette Trouten, Izabela Lewicka, and Lisa Stasi and sentenced to death. He would eventually be transferred to Missouri where he’d be found guilty of the murders of Beverly Bonner, Sheila Faith, and Debbie Faith. As of today, he still has not been executed.

Robinson was always a crook and a con man. He’d repeatedly lied about his qualifications for jobs in various hospitals. When he took on a radiology job, he said he was licensed and trained then printed out the faked certificates. He embezzled from his employers and, embarrassed with how easily they were duped they refused to press charges. This gave Robinson the encouragement to keep committing bigger crimes. The next position he held was another radiology job. He lied about his qualifications for that job and embezzled even more money from his employer until eventually he got caught there too. He married Nancy Jo Lynch when he was young and Nancy turned a blind eye to her husband’s constant thievery, lying, deception, and affairs. Their eldest daughter Christy would also play a part in hiding her father’s crimes, as well as demanding that her mother take him back on the few occasions she got the nerve to kick him out. Even when Robinson was sent to prison for four years in Kansas then shipped across the border to Missouri and sentenced an additional two years, Robinson’s wife Nancy and daughter Christy ignored the mounting crimes he’d committed and welcomed him home. That’s when the crimes grew more serious and turned to murder.

Paula Godfrey

By 1983 he’d become a pimp and opened a bordello in Overland Park, Kansas. In 1984, he seduced a young pretty dark-haired girl named Paula Godfrey into coming to work for him. Paula, who was nineteen, disappeared almost immediately after going to work for Robinson. It was at about the same time that Robinson joined the International Council of Masters (ICM) which is a sadism-masochism cult that practices the trading of sex slaves. It’s theorized that many of Robinson’s victims whose bodies were never found were probably traded into this cult and disappeared.

Lisa and Tiffany Stasi

In January 1985, Robinson contacted several charity organizations looking for white, young, unwed mothers with infants who were also white. He claimed he was going to help them get back on their feet with job training, free housing, and an allowance. Lisa Stasi was young and living in a domestic abuse shelter with her infant daughter Tiffany when she was referred to Robinson. She thought she’d finally found salvation. Instead she walked into the car of a serial killer and was never seen again. Robinson took her baby Tiffany and sold her to his younger brother Donald Robinson and his wife who were unable to have children or to qualify for adoption. That Donald Robinson was never charged with any crimes in this fake adoption is another example of our broken judicial system.

Theresa Williams

In 1984 twenty one year-old Theresa Williams met Robinson. She shared his interest in sadism-masochism and became his sex slave. According to the contract she signed with him that gave him complete control over here, including giving her to other men. On one such occasion she was taken in a limousine to a mansion at the edge of town and handed over to an elderly man with white hair whom she was told to call Judge. Judge then proceeded to strap her onto an ancient rack and slowly pull her body apart until she screamed from the pain. When she finally reported this, no one would listen. The S&M world was considered voluntary and the police considered it a matter between two consenting adults.

Catherine Clampitt

By now Robinson had mastered the art of moving between jurisdictions to befuddle the police. He was a pathological liar and whenever confronted with evidence of some crime he’d committed he simply made up a new set of lies on the spot. But his past deeds were about to catch up with him. In August of 1985 he was sentenced to seven years in Missouri prison which was overturned by the appellate court in May 1986. In January 1987 the DA begged the court to apply the Habitual Criminal Act in the punishment phase and Robinson was sentenced to five to fourteen years in prison.

Outraged by the fact that he was finally going to be put behind bars, Robinson found another victim, Catherine Clampitt from Texas. He lured her to Kansas City on the pretense that he had work for her and was interested in having a relationship with her. Clampitt came to Kansas City and immediately disappeared.

On May 16, 1987 Robinson went to prison for four years. His prison psychologist, easily duped, claimed he was “a docile non-violent man who doesn’t pose a threat to society”. On January 23, 1991 Robinson would be released from Kansas prison after four years and be sent across the border to Missouri to serve another two years.

Beverly Bonner

Ironically enough, one of the prison psychiatrists who claimed Robinson was harmless was the husband of prison librarian Beverly Bonner, who fell under Robinson’s spell and left her husband for him. In 1994, a year after leaving her husband and taking up with Robinson, she disappeared. Robinson continued cashing her spousal support checks from her ex-husband to the tune of $14,000.

Sheila and Debbie Faith

Robinson had become a master at finding vulnerable women on the internet and luring them to Kansas City. Sheila Faith was a widow raising a handicapped child with cerebral palsy named Debbie. The strain and stress of raising a child like this alone was getting to Sheila so she welcomed Robinson’s advanced and assurances that he’d give her a job, a place to stay, and be the shoulder to lean on that she sorely needed. Sheila and Debbie disappeared almost immediately after being seen with Robinson. He would cash her monthly $1,016 disability check 152 times for a total of over $80,000.

Alecia Cox

In 1995 Robinson was a fifty-two year-old short, fat, gray-haired white man with no money or prospects. He moved into a trailer park with his wife Nancy who worked full-time managing the trailer park. She still projected to everyone that Robinson was a model husband and model father although she knew about his sexual affairs and his brothel. Now he had grandkids and painted himself as a doting grandfather. That didn’t stop him from beating and debasing women then murdering them.

By 1997 Alecia Cox had come under Robinson’s spell. He was into Gorean sadism and masochism which has no safe words and no rules. Alecia was in her late twenties, young enough to be Robinson’s granddaughter. He promised to take her on a trip overseas and the night before they were to leave she sensed something deeply disturbing and woke in the middle of the night. When he found that she’d awakened before him he was livid and left, but from the clues she discovered afterward, he’d been planning on murdering her that night. She was one of the lucky ones who got away.

Izabella Lewicka

In 1997, Izabella Lewicka met Robinson online in an S&M chat room and came to Kansas City to live with him and marry him. She had no idea he was already married and the huge age difference didn’t bother her. They were often seen together and she wore a wedding ring from him. She went by the last name Lewicka-Robinson implying they were indeed married. Right up until her murder, she probably thought they were married. She was nineteen years old. He was fifty-four. In the fall of 1999 she disappeared and no one saw her again.

Barbara Sandre

In the late 1990s Robinson bought an acreage in La Cigne, Kansas, a rural community with few people. He put a trailer on the property then went about obtaining several 85-gallon barrels. In 1998, he began reacquainting himself with a former girlfriend Barbara Sandre who was Canadian. He sent her several pieces of mail to mail from Canada and she did it without question, becoming his accomplice. In July of 1999 she came to Kansas City to be with Robinson. She would be his mistress right up until the day he was arrested and sent to jail for murder.

Suzette Trouten

Robinson was meeting a lot of Canadian women online in S&M chat rooms. In one of these chat rooms he met Canadian Suzette Trouten and convinced her to come meet him in Kansas City. She came once and then twice. In February of 2000 she moved to Kansas City. Less than a month later, on March 1, 2000, she disappeared. Her two dogs were dumped that morning in a field and an anonymous phone call to animal control got them picked up and taken to the pound the same day. They were later adopted and identified as Suzette’s dogs. She would never have left her dogs so her mother knew right away that someone had killed her and she immediately suspected John Robinson.

It was because of Suzette, her family, and her friends that the Kansas City police finally began surveilling Robinson. But Jackson County District Attorney Paul Morrison wanted to get the death penalty so even as the evidence against Robinson mounted, he kept waiting. He had no problem letting Robinson lure more unsuspecting women into his web because they were adults. This lack of care given to the welfare of women is a sickening part of the current judicial system in the US. Women are treated as chattel and when women are beaten or abused by their significant others, police automatically say that they should’ve known better and not gotten involved with the man. Even though their job is to protect and serve.

Vickie Neufeld

In the spring of 2000 Vickie Neufeld met Robinson online and came from Texas to Kansas City to meet him. He beat her and stole a bag of $700 worth of sex toys which angered her. So she called the police and filed a complaint against Robinson.

Jeanna Milliron

In May 2000 Robinson met another women online, Jeanna Milliron. He lured her from Texas to Kansas City and put her in a hotel room where he beat her so badly she was terrified enough to contact the police.

Even though the Kansas City police now had complaints from two women against Robinson and a reasonable belief that he’d killed at least five, maybe more women, District Attorney Paul Morrison refused to have him arrested.

It wasn’t until Robinson attempted to lure a young mother with an infant to Kansas City that the police finally arrested him.

Arrest and Trial

On June 2, 2000 Robinson was finally arrested. They found evidence in his home that linked him to Lisa Stasi, Debbie and Sheila Faith, Beverly Bonner, Suzette Trouten, Izabella Lewicka, and Vickie Neufeld (her bag of sex toys).

The police would go to Robinson’s acreage in La Cigne and find two 85 gallon barrels. Inside those barrels would be the remains of Suzette Trouten and Izabella Lewicka. Each of them was killed by a blow with a hammer to the head.

Police would get search warrants to search Robinson’s storage unit in Missouri. There they would find three more 85 gallon barrels with three more bodies–Beverly Bonner, Sheila Faith, and Debbie Faith.

After several delays by Robinson, his trial for the murders of Lisa Stasi, Suzette Trouten, and Izabella Lewicka finally began on September 16, 2002 in Kansas. His wife Nancy, not so shocked over finding out her husband was a deviant, pervert, pedophile, and serial killer, lied for him on the stand trying to establish an alibi for him for the day Suzette Trouten was murdered. It was obvious to everyone in the courtroom she was a liar like her husband. Their oldest daughter Christy Shipps would mouth the words I Love You to Robinson, trying to sway the jury in his favor. But they saw yet another monster in that family and convicted him in less than eleven hours. He was given the death penalty then transferred to Missouri where he stood trial for the murders of Sheila Faith, Debbie Faith, and Beverly Bonner. He was found guilty there too.

Internet Crime

Robinson is often referred to as the first Internet Serial Killer because he used the internet to find and lure his victims to Kansas City. He did this through fantasy chat rooms designed for S&M fantasies. What was shocking was the number of people interested in this type of sex fantasy.

At any given time Douglas says there are 30-50 serial killers operating in the US and only 10-12 are identified.

The book ends with suggestions on how to keep your kids safe online but he doesn’t mention keeping them off ALL SOCIAL MEDIA which is a must. He also recommends spyware that’s questionable when it comes to ethics.

If you do find yourself a victim of internet crime, report it to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC).

The most vile people in this story were Robinson, his wife Nancy Robinson, his daughter Christy Shipps, and the Kansas City DA Paul Morrison. Nancy had been following Robinson for decades when she first suspected he was cheating on her. She knew about his chat rooms, his S&M perversion, and that he had several “mistresses”. When they disappeared, she gave her husband alibis, and when he was on trial she brazenly lied on the witness stand, fabricating new information in the moment to try to give her husband an alibi. Their daughter Christy vehemently pursued the victims’ families aggressively trying to get them to believe her father was innocent. That’s not being a family. That’s a dangerous pathology. It’s like a family of psychopaths. Why weren’t they charged as accomplices? It was also deeply disturbing to read why Morrison took so many years to bring Robinson to justice–he felt the women who were Robinson’s victims were partially to blame for their demise because they were consenting adults. You can’t consent to being lied to. How could you? And who would consent to being murdered?

7 out of 10 stars. It’s to Singular’s credit that this book is pretty good. And it’s because of Douglas’s rants against women that parts of it are awful.