Attorneys say police illegally tapped murder suspect's phone

OLATHE, Kan. -- Wiretap evidence from serial murder suspect John E. Robinson Sr.'s cellular phone conversations should be thrown out because authorities failed to exhaust other investigative options first, Robinson's attorneys said.

In a filing Thursday in Johnson County District Court, the defense also asked a judge to dismiss one of the less serious charges against Robinson, who is accused in both Kansas and Missouri of killing women and stashing their bodies in plastic barrels.

The defense alleges that before investigators obtained a May 19, 2000, court order allowing the wiretaps, they should have first sought physical search warrants. Not doing so violated the state's wiretap law, the defense said.

In their request for the wiretap, investigators said they were seeking evidence of Robinson's possible involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Suzette Trouten. She was one of two women whose bodies were found on Robinson's property in Linn County, Kan.

Trouten had been reported missing by her family in March 2000 after moving from Michigan to the Kansas City area to work for Robinson, according to previous court testimony.

In the wiretap application, police noted that Robinson was then communicating with or meeting with four other women from outside the Kansas City area.

Using undercover agents or informants to obtain information would be too risky, according to the application.

"John Robinson appears to recruit women for the purpose of building a dominant/ slave relationship, with participation in sado-masochistic sex as part of the courtship process," investigators wrote.

The defense motion does not reveal what information, if any, was obtained from the intercepted phone conversations.