John Edward Robinson — The Slavemaster

John Edward Robinson was a con man and serial killer from the Kansas City area who pioneered the use of the internet to find victims, earning him the distinction of being considered the first known internet serial killer. Beginning in the mid-1980s and continuing into the late 1990s, Robinson used early online BDSM chat rooms under the persona "Slavemaster" to lure women into submissive relationships before murdering them. He killed at least eight women over two decades in Kansas and Missouri. Robinson forged documents to claim the infant daughter of one victim as his own and arranged for the child to be adopted by his brother. He also defrauded multiple corporations and government agencies, weaving a complex web of financial crimes alongside his murders. Victims' bodies were kept in barrels stored on his rural Kansas property and at a rented storage unit. He was arrested in 2000 after a woman he had been corresponding with online contacted police about suspicious activity. Investigators searched his property and found the decomposing remains of five women in sealed barrels. Three more barrels containing victims were discovered at a storage unit. The evidence against Robinson was overwhelming and he was charged with capital murder. In 2003, Robinson became the first person sentenced to death in Kansas after the state reinstituted capital punishment. He remains on death row. His case marked a watershed moment in law enforcement's understanding of how the internet could be exploited by predators and directly accelerated the development of cybercrime investigation units across the United States.