OLATHE, Kan. (AP) - A suspected serial killer charged with murdering five women made a brief first appearance in court Thursday, and investigators announced that the number of missing or dead people linked to the man had grown to 11.
John Edward Robinson Sr. nodded and said ''yes'' when Johnson County District Judge Earl Jones asked if he understood what was happening.
Security was tightened for the five-minute hearing - four officers were inside the courtroom in addition to the metal detector outside - but Robinson, dressed in a dark blue suit, dark tie, white shirt and black shoes, wore no restraints. About 60 people packed the small courtroom.
He remained in custody under $5 million bond on two Kansas counts of capital murder, one count of aggravated kidnapping, two counts of sexual battery and one of felony theft. He is also charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of armed criminal action in Missouri.
Authorities in Missouri have filed papers declaring they will seek the death penalty. Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison has not made a final decision but said earlier that Kansas ''should seek the death penalty.''
Three lawyers with the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit, which is representing Robinson, accompanied him but would not talk to reporters.
Police on June 3 discovered two women's bodies in barrels on Robinson's property near La Cygne, Kan., south of Kansas City. Three more were found June 5 in barrels in a storage locker in Raymore, Mo., east of Kansas City and about 40 miles from La Cygne. Two of the bodies have not been identified.
Authorities have said Robinson, 56, trolled the Internet for sex under the name ''slavemaster,'' where he may have met some of his victims.
The number of missing with some known link to Robinson grew to six Thursday with the addition of a mother and daughter who disappeared in 1994. Earlier, authorities had said Robinson was being investigated in connection with the disappearance of three women and a baby in the mid-1980s.
Authorities said Sheila Dale Faith, 51, and her handicapped daughter, Debbie, 21, apparently left Fullerton, Calif., in 1994 to move to Colorado, and then moved to the Kansas-Oklahoma area a few months later. Family members have not heard from them since then. The task force did not specify what their connection to Robinson was.
The other missing people, all of whom vanished from the Kansas City area, are Paula Godfrey, 19, Katherine Clampet, 27, Lisa Stasi, 19, and Stasi's 5-month-old daughter.
Authorities have identified three of the five bodies: Beverly Bonner, 49, a prison librarian who disappeared in 1994; Suzette Marie Trouten, 28, of Newport, Mich., and Izabela Lewicka, 22, a Polish immigrant. Trouten allegedly moved to Kansas in response to an Internet solicitation to take care of an ''elderly father'' for $62,000.