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Anyone You Want Me to Be
by John Douglas and Stephen Singular
A True Story of Sex and Death on the Internet
It can be a dirty world out there on the World Wide Web and someone you meet online could be anyone – maybe even a serial killer.
On the Internet, a man named John Robinson lurked behind a number of online aliases – like “slavemaster” – haunting sadomasochistic Web site chat rooms, charming the women who frequented them and appearing to have a sincere interest in caring for them, both emotionally and financially. In real life, Robinson was a father of four, active in church and community – and the first known serial killer to find his victims using the Internet. In Anyone You Want Me to Be: A True Story of Sex and Death on the Internet, former FBI profiler John Douglas and author Stephen Singular detail Robinson's 35-year crime spree.
Robinson started that career by embezzling from the hospital where he worked as an x-ray technician. Caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he begged the hospital not to press charges and vowed to repay the money he had stolen. The hospital agreed, and the authors assert that what Robinson learned from that experience “was that he could get away with doing illegal things – even when he'd been caught doing them.” Even before the Internet came along, Robinson seemed to benefit from living behind false personas by routinely forging certificates that appeared to prove he had the credentials needed to obtain jobs he applied for, embezzling from each employer and others he came in contact with, and eventually stealing the money, dignity and lives of women by becoming a sexual predator.
He took to the Internet the way a shark takes to the scent of blood, because it offered him a hunting ground where he could hide behind the mask of anonymity and because it deprived his potential victims of the ability to decipher physical clues that might give him away by short-circuiting their intuition and other senses, including their survival instinct.
He soon found vulnerable women in various states, Nova Scotia and England, some of which were willing to pull up stakes and move to the Kansas City area under the auspices of developing a relationship and letting Robinson care for them. Once there, they were usually put up in a motel and required to engage in sadomasochism and soon thereafter they disappeared.
By 1985, two women who worked for a company Robinson had started had vanished and authorities had reason to believe a third was about to, so they closed in, at which point Robinson's probation from previous offences was revoked and he was sentenced to seven years in prison. Once incarcerated, he used the opportunity to learn about computers and conned prison psychiatrists into thinking he was becoming rehabilitated by mastering the use of psychiatric jargon. His charm remained intact and he used it on a prison doctor's wife who worked in the prison library. Upon his release, she divorced her husband to pursue a relationship with Robinson and she too disappeared.
Masquerading, at turns, as a wealthy horse rancher, an accomplished entrepreneur, a literary agent, and even a member of the CIA, Robinson found other victims online. Once ensnared, he had them sign blank stationery that he would subsequently use for letters sent to relatives, supposedly from the victim, telling them she was alright but had decided to sever ties with them or had met someone wonderful with whom she would be touring the world.
Finally, in July of 2000 two women who had narrowly avoided Robinson's trap came forward and authorities launched an extensive investigation. When they executed search warrants on Robinson's rural property and storage facilities he had rented, they found the bodies of five women, each crammed into an 85-gallon steel drum. They also found evidence linking him to the disappearance of three additional women and authorities suspect there may have been others they don't know about. The police reports detailing Robinson's crimes eventually numbered over 21,000 pages.
Many of his victims were bright and resourceful, but their common weakness seemed to be a vulnerability that came from a need to be rescued emotionally or financially. With Robinson sentenced to death by lethal injection, the book is a not-particularly-well-written but absorbing account of Robinson's crimes and prosecution. More than anything, it is a warning about the unwelcome benefits of the Internet. As Douglas points out in the book's introduction, “It has effectively invited the entire world into your home, but is everyone welcome?”
Title: Anyone You Want Me to Be
Author: John Douglas and Stephen Singular
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 0743226356
Review written by: Marc Duane Anderson
Reviewer's Rating:8
Reader's Rating: 10.00
Reader's Votes: 1
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