Olathe serial killer John Robinson’s clemency request has been answered. See details
Convicted serial killer John Robinson, an Olathe man known for storing some of his victims’ bodies in barrels, will remain on death row after Gov. Laura Kelly denied his request for clemency Thursday.
Robinson, 82, was sentenced to death in 2002 after a Johnson County jury found him guilty on two counts of capital murder and the killing of three women.
“As the existence of a credible claim of innocence or evidence of manifest injustice are absent in his request, I have denied John Robinson’s request to commute his death sentence,” Kelly wrote in a Thursday news release.
Investigators connected Robinson in the deaths of at least eight women over a 15-year period.
Robinson drew national attention in 2000 after investigators found the bodies of two women in barrels on his property in Linn County. Five more bodies were found in a storage unit Robinson had rented in Cass County.
The Johnson County District Court sentenced Robinson to death for the killings of two women and to life in prison in Kansas for the killing of a third.
“John Robinson is almost 83 years old, one of the oldest death row prisoners in America,” Robinson’s attorney Madeline Cohen wrote in a statement.
“Given his age, his medical condition, and his ongoing legal proceedings, it is nearly certain that he will die of natural causes before Kansas is in a position to execute him. By denying him clemency, Governor Kelly has ensured that the State must continue to waste vast resources defending his death sentence instead of resolving the case with a sentence of life without parole.”
Robinson’s request for clemency was one of several attempts to overturn his death sentence over the years. The Kansas Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in 2015 but overturned one conviction of capital murder on the grounds that it was unconstitutionally multiplicitous with the other conviction of the same offense.
He was also sentenced to life imprisonment in Missouri after pleading guilty to five counts of murder.
This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 3:12 PM.