HARRISONVILLE, MO. ? Even though a Kansas jury has already recommended that John E. Robinson Sr. be executed, justice demands that he be tried for capital murder in Missouri as well, says the prosecutor who will try the case.

Cass County prosecutor Chris Koster will get no argument from survivors of the three people whose bodies Robinson is accused of storing in barrels in Missouri.

“It’s a matter of principle,” said Dr. William Bonner, a physician whose former wife was among Robinson’s alleged victims.

Although separated by the state line, the two states’ cases against Robinson, 58, of Olathe, Kan., have key aspects in common.

The victims – three in Kansas, three in Missouri – were all female. And while one of the victims has not been seen since she disappeared in 1985, the bodies of the other five were all found just two days apart in June 2000 – two in barrels on property Robinson owned in Kansas, three in barrels placed in storage lockers across the state line in Raymore.

Tried first in Kansas, Robinson was convicted Nov. 2 of capital murder in the deaths of Suzette Trouten, 27, of Newport, Mich., and Izabela Lewicka, 21, a former Purdue University student and a Polish immigrant. He was also convicted of first-degree murder in the 1985 death of Lisa Stasi, 19, whose body has never been found.

The same jury that convicted Robinson in Johnson County District Court recommended that he receive a lethal injection for the Trouten and Lewicka murders.

In Missouri, Robinson still awaits arraignment on capital murder charges in the deaths of Beverly Bonner, 49, of Cameron, and Sheila Faith, 45, and her daughter Debbie, 16, both formerly of California.

Koster said the Missouri trial would do justice to those women and pursue questions about other missing women possibly linked to Robinson.

“We want to intelligently and aggressively pursue answers to those questions,” Koster said.

John E. Robinson, shown in this artist rendering, sits alone at the defense table as his lawyers and members of the prosecution team meet with the judge behind closed doors before the beginning of the penalty phase in his Kansas trial.

The prosecution in Missouri promises to be long and expensive, as it was in Kansas.

“The economics doesn’t make sense to me,” said Cynthia Short, a public defender who represents indigent clients in capital murder cases in western Missouri.

Short said it might be more appropriate for Missouri officials to watch the Kansas appeals process and bring Robinson to trial only if the death sentence is overturned.

“How many times do you put someone on death row?” she asked.

But William Bonner, now of Stockton, said he wanted Robinson tried in Missouri, which has a recent history of executing convicted murderers.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Missouri has executed 58 persons since reinstating the death penalty in 1975. Kansas did not reinstate the death penalty until 1994 and has executed no one since 1965.

Robinson met Beverly Bonner in the 1990s while he was an inmate at Western Missouri Correctional Facility in Cameron. She was a prison librarian at the time, and William Bonner was a prison doctor who treated Robinson for high blood pressure.

“He was such a smooth talker,” Bonner said, adding that he can imagine Robinson “manipulating his way around,” managing a “comfortable prison existence for the rest of his life.”