Olathe serial killer John Robinson returns to court in bid to overturn death sentence
Convicted serial killer John E. Robinson Sr. returned to a Johnson County courtroom this week as part of his years-long fight to overturn his conviction and death sentence.
Robinson, 78, has argued he did not receive effective legal counsel during his historic 2002 trial and that his death sentence violated the Kansas and U.S. constitutions.
Evidentiary hearings in Robinson’s appeal began in February in Johnson County District Court and continued throughout this week, court records show. Days-long sessions are scheduled to continue in the first week of each month through June.
Robinson, who lived in Olathe, was arrested and charged in 2000 after police found the remains of two women stored in barrels on rural acreage he owned in Linn County, Kan., south of Kansas City. The remains of three additional women were later found in barrels on another property owned by Robinson in Raymore, Missouri.
Investigators eventually linked Robinson to the deaths of at least eight women who were captured and killed under similar circumstances from 1985 to 2000, including several victims’ involvement in bondage sex and that they were in master-slave relationships with Robinson.
The salacious case drew national and international attention, and he was ultimately convicted in 2002 of three counts of capital murder in Kansas and later sentenced to life on five counts of murder in Cass County.
Robinson has pursued a series of appeals in the years since but in late 2015, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld his death sentence, even as it dismissed two of his convictions.
The latest appeal, filed as a civil lawsuit in late 2016 in Johnson County, seeks to win Robinson a new trial or at a minimum throw out his remaining capital murder conviction and vacate his death sentence, court records show.
Attempts to reach the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office and Robinson’s attorneys were unsuccessful Thursday morning.
The hearings are scheduled to continue Friday before a break until the first week of April.
