Anyone You Want Me to Be (9 page)

R
obinson began serving his sentence on May 16, 1987, and during the next four years, he would be regarded as an excellent inmate at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility. He was placed in South Unit along with 160 other medium-security inmates, and almost the first thing he did after arriving at the prison was to start complaining about severe chest pains. He went to the institution’s doctor and asked for medication, receiving daily prescriptions of Tenormin and nitroglycerin. He apparently took the medicine but continued his vocal worries about his health. When he wasn’t consumed with his medical problems, he found time to work, and here, inside the state’s penal system, he received his initial training in the world of computers. He was chosen for this duty because of his obvious intelligence, his passion for learning new things, and his desire to please the authorities. They in turn were happy to have someone so competent and willing to take their instructions.

Robinson was a quick study and soon became a standout at this job. He not only reorganized the computer maintenance office but also, after a few months, was able to write new software programs, a process that would save Kansas roughly $100,000 a year. He’d found something he was good at and something that had a positive effect on everyone. Robinson was much admired by the staff, and in 1989 his physical plant supervisor, Jim Jestes, wrote of the inmate and his innovations on the job, “Even when he leaves, this office should function well.”

Robinson made a similarly good impression on the medical and mental health staffs. Like many serial criminals, he was excellent at adopting the language of psychiatry and making himself appear normal. He knew just what to say and how to say it, and his intelligence was useful in these circumstances. Being examined in prison was one more chance for him to do what criminals do best: play the game of conning others and then win. Unfortunately, this happens all too often inside penitentiaries.

On a recent visit to New Zealand, I was taken to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. I was to give a presentation to staff psychologists and psychiatrists regarding my research and experience with the criminal mind. Upon entering the classroom, I observed about thirty to thirty-five mental health personnel, who sat with their arms crossed on their chests and uninterested looks on their faces. I turned to my publicist and whispered, “Why did you book me to speak to this group?”

Early in my career I saw similar looks when I spoke to task forces. I found that the best way to handle the situation was to directly address a “problem” rather than to ignore it. Speaking before the New Zealand audience, I asked them what was wrong, and someone said he didn’t like the way I put down the mental health professionals in my books. I went on to tell them my personal beliefs and experiences with the criminal personality. I told them that to understand the criminal you must look at the crime. The crime is a reflection of the offender. Almost in unison they said that if they did look at the crime, it would prejudice them during the treatment. I asked them how they knew if the offender was telling the truth, and they said they were taught to detect deception in their training. I told them that they must be much better than me at detecting self-deception because if I only relied on self-reporting from the criminals, I would think that the convicts were all innocent or themselves victims. Not all mental health professionals exclude case information and materials during an assessment, but some do and this can have dire consequences.

Two respected doctors at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility, Supervising Psychiatrist George M. Penn, M.D., and the Kansas Department of Corrections’ Director of Medical Services, Ky Hoang, M.D., put together a nine page analysis of Robinson. Entitled “Report of Clinical and Medical Evaluation,” this November 1990 document characterized him as a “model inmate who…has made the best of his incarceration…. He is a non-violent person and does not present a threat to society…. He is a devoted family man who has taughthis children a strong value system.”

While imprisoned, Robinson suffered a number of small strokes that caused a minor slackness on the right side of his face but did not affect his speaking ability. According to the report, “his verbal skills [were measured] in the high average range, performance skills in the very superior range.”

In conclusion, the experts who examined him at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility wrote that Robinson’s behavior while incarcerated had been “remarkable” and he had displayed “concrete signs of rehabilitation.” He was “a docile, non-violent individual who does not pose a threat to society. It is unlikely that further incarceration will be of any benefit to either Mr. Robinson or society.” They recommended his immediate release.

In January 1991, Kansas took this advice and paroled Robinson, much to the concern of one person who’d never stopped following the progress of inmate #45690 at Hutchinson or thinking about the women who’d vanished after coming into contact with this prisoner. Steve Haymes was not at all convinced that Robinson—despite what the medical and psychiatric personnel in Kansas had written about him—was a changed man. Back in 1986, he’d characterized Robinson as the most criminally oriented person he’d ever met. Nothing in the past five years had altered this view.

“There wasn’t a month that went by,” Haymes says, “that I didn’t wonder about him, and about Lisa and Tiffany. For several years, around that wintertime that Lisa disappeared, I would contact her family to see if there had been any additional news or if they’d heard anything. They hadn’t and I was somewhat haunted by this because I had never gotten any answers to the most important questions I had at that time.”

Haymes had other, more pressing reasons for staying aware of Robinson’s activities in Hutchinson, reasons that had become increasingly personal.

“He wrote a letter complaining about me after his parole was put off in Missouri,” Haymes says. “He blamed me for all the bad things that had happened to him, saying that it was a personal vendetta on my part to harm him.”

The inmate had let a number of people know that someone within the legal system had, as he put it back in 1986, “a hard-on for John Robinson.” According to what Haymes had picked up from various sources inside and outside the walls of the penitentiary, Robinson’s criticisms of him were turning more serious. He wondered if once Robinson was set free, he would come after Haymes or his wife or his two young children. That was just one more reason for Haymes to do everything possible to ensure that the prisoner stayed locked up for as long as possible. The officer worked hard to make certain that even though Robinson had been freed in Kansas, he still faced up to seven years of jail time for violating his probation in Missouri. Haymes’s views were adopted by the authorities, and the day that Robinson was let out of prison in Hutchinson—January 23, 1991—he was transferred over the state line to Missouri and taken a hundred miles east of Kansas City, where he was checked into the Moberly Correctional Center for more psychiatric and medical tests. He claimed that his health had become so frail during his stay at Hutchinson that he should be able to walk out of the Missouri prison and go home to his family. One of Missouri’s examining physicians, Dr. Fred King, agreed with Robinson’s assessment and described the patient as a “very sick man.” Dr. King went on to state that Robinson’s medical condition “should be considered in any parole hearing he has.” He soon wrote another opinion that Robinson’s problems were “life threatening” and he “should be released without delay.”

When Steve Haymes learned of this recommendation, he was both frightened and livid, more determined than ever to take action to keep Robinson behind bars. He created his own report on how dangerous he believed the inmate to be and delivered his views at a parole hearing in April 1991.

The next month, while waiting to learn his fate at Moberly, Robinson penned a letter to the Clay County circuit judge in charge of his case and in effect pleaded for mercy and for his freedom.

“I taught my children to believe in the basic fairness of our system of justice,” he wrote. “They know now that justice is just a word and that the concept of justice in America is something that can be manipulated and used as a weapon by those empowered to enforce the law.”

Robinson singled out Stephen Haymes as his nemesis—saying that the probation officer had lied and bent the law to keep him in jail:

“I guess we all underestimated the power of Mr. Haymes from the probation and parole department and his ability to keep me incarcerated. Since 1986, this man has done everything within his power to keep me in prison and to assure that the hand fell heavy on me and my family.”

Then Robinson made a direct appeal for clemency to the judge himself:

“I am not asking you to release me as I know that would be an improper request which the court could not consider. What I am asking is that the court enter an order to the Missouri Department of Corrections and the Missouri Parole Board to remove all the false and misleading information from my file, consider the information available from the Kansas Department of Corrections and all medical recommendations. Unless I can obtain an order from the court that directs the Board of Probation and Parole to use only factual information, I will never have an opportunity for a fair hearing. Since two courts have already ruled on this issue, the problem seems simple and should not pose any ethical questions.

“Without such an order, I will remain in prison. If lucky, I will live long enough to get out but there will be little left. My illnesses are degenerative and without proper rehabilitation, testing and long term treatment will continue to get worse. My physical impairments and right sided paralysis will not get better. Bruce [his lawyer], my family and I all realize that decisions made by the Clay County Court and the Missouri Parole Board amount to a sentence of death. Our only question, is this what is considered proportionate for my crime in Missouri?”

The Missouri Parole Board rejected Robinson’s argument and ordered him incarcerated for two more years. He was shipped to the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, a new medium security facility housing more than two thousand prisoners, most of them serving time for substance-abuse-related offenses. Cameron was less restrictive than either Hutchinson or Moberly and proved to be rich turf for Robinson to make new contacts and unleash new schemes. He continued complaining about his medical problems and met a physician at Cameron named Dr. William Bonner, who found him to be bright and talkative, but not very sick.

Then the inmate ran into Dr. Bonner’s wife, Beverly, who worked in the prison’s library. Robinson and Beverly, who was attractive, outgoing, and intelligent, soon discovered that they’d met each other twenty years earlier when both of them had been employed at Mobil Oil. Like many people, Bonner was taken with his charm, his ability to focus in and pay attention to her and to no one else, and his easy banter. He could speak fluidly about so many different subjects. He seemed so interested in things outside the prison walls. He’d had so many experiences as an entrepreneur and a global traveler. They struck up a friendship and he began working alongside her in the library and volunteering to upgrade its computer system.

Although her husband was employed in the same facility as Beverly, she and Robinson became romantically involved. He told her that he was innocent and had been wrongly imprisoned and would be getting out soon. He told her about his businesses in the Kansas City area and his plans for restarting them after his release. He shared his dreams for the future and hinted that she could be a part of them, if she was willing to make some changes in her life. Did she like the idea of traveling while making money and seeing more of the world?

Robinson not only wanted his freedom back, but the chance to recover his economic losses. His years behind bars had had a very detrimental effect on his finances and his family. His wife was now managing a mobile home park called Southfork in Belton, Missouri, a Kansas City suburb to the south. The park promoted a theme that reflected the huge TV hit
Dallas
from several years earlier. The streets were named after characters such as Sue Ellen (Avenue) and Cliff Barnes (Lane). Nancy and her two youngest children lived on Valeen Lane (named after J. R. Ewing’s sister-in-law). While her husband was serving six consecutive years in Kansas and Missouri prisons, Nancy’s workload and financial responsibilities had greatly increased, but her social position had dramatically declined. The spacious country estate had been replaced by a row of mobile homes.

When Robinson left prison in 1993, he needed money and was confronted with obvious difficulties in landing a job, let alone attracting new business partners or investors. His résumé was now littered with convictions and a long gap for incarceration. He could have taken this opportunity to fulfill the authorities’ expectations for his reform and gone about the hard work of rebuilding his life in the traditional way. He might have found a job in the computer field, which he’d consistently become more knowledgeable about, a field he’d already excelled in. But he didn’t do any of these things and had never intended to. Inside the prison, he’d molded himself to fit exactly what the medical and psychological staffs had been looking for. He understood their concepts and knew their lingo, knew how to appear healthy and well adjusted and harmless. He’d become just what they wanted him to be, fooling them as thoroughly as he’d fooled many of the young women he’d been linked with before he was jailed. He wasn’t changing his core behaviors, but refining them to fit the new world of technology and criminal opportunities. It was the same pattern he’d been repeating since the mid-1960s.