John Robinson Essay

I think it is possible to be both. While John Robinson’s criminal career started out in white collar crime he certainly didn’t stop at just that which in my opinion makes it possible to be both. At the beginning of the book when it was talking about only the white collar crimes he committed they described his personality as someone who could persuade anyone into doing anything he wanted. Basically, it was stated that he was persuasive and manipulative and always looking for ways to push the limits of his control. The ultimate form of control a person can have is to control someone’s life to the point where they are killed. I think that he had a need to see how far he could go and to see the lengths he was able to push the justice system

I think that after he got away with killing Paula it took on a new appeal to him to continue with the many scams he was doing to get money and to keep pushing people sexually and then killing them when he was done with them. He isn’t primarily just a white-collar criminal or a serial killer because while he is doing one he is also doing the other and he continued in doing both.

Robinson had a long career of scamming money from people and businesses, but his tastes in sexual encounters and his need to push the limits of control and the justice system are probably what drove him to deviate from the safety of only doing white collar crime to committing murder. Like previously stated, he was always looking for new ways to test the boundaries and that when Paula Godfrey, a nineteen-year-old naive girl came into

Robinson grew up where Al Capone had lead the mob in Chicago. He grew up with stories of legendary gangsters and where when you were involved in illegal dealings and having power commanded respect from people. The book says on page 4 “John Robinson heard these stories and absorbed them into his makeup, into his ideas about what was good and what was evil (Douglas and Singular, 2003).” I think that because of growing up thinking that getting power in illegal ways was the way to get respect from people was what first set him on his path to control leading to his path of crime. The manipulation of people into doing what he wanted, I think came from another saying on page 4 of the book “Al Capone had once said that you could go a lot further in life with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word. Robinson only absorbed half of this adage-he would use kind works and smiles throughout his life to get what he wanted, but guns were not part of his routine (Douglas and Singular, 2003).” With this being said, I believe that his motives for choosing crime are because he regarded Al Capone, one of America’s most famous gangsters, as one of his hero’s. He looked up to how Al Capone commanded respect from people and how he was living like a king with his wealth. Robinson wanted that power and respect in his own life which lead him to want to control and manipulate people in a way