OLATHE, Kansas — A close friend of victim Suzette Trouten spent the night in the Johnson County jail to ensure that she'll appear in court Tuesday to testify against her friend's alleged killer, John Edward Robinson Sr.

Lore Remington, a 36-year-old Canadian woman who spent more than an hour on the stand Monday at Robinson's capital murder trial, was asked by Judge John Anderson III if she could be counted on to show up and continue her testimony the next day.

"No," she answered firmly. It was uncertain why Remington did not want to reappear as a witness in the accused serial killer's trial, but upon hearing her answer, Judge Anderson slapped her with a $20,000 material witness bond and placed her under arrest. Her incarceration capped a dramatic day of opening statements and witness testimony.

Robinson, who was dressed in a navy, pinstriped suit for trial Monday, is being tried for the murders of three women in Kansas. He will face trial later on charges of killing three others in Missouri.

On Monday, prosecutors played a tape of a conversation between Remington and Robinson a few months after Trouten, of Michigan, disappeared. On the tape, the two could be heard discussing sadomasochistic sex and Trouten's possible whereabouts. They also talked about whether Trouten was sexually involved with other men.

"I’m getting a profile of a psychotic b---- who was out f------ people for money," said a voice identified by Remington as Robinson's. Talking about another mutual friend, he added, "any master in a master/slave relationship doesn't want the slave to f----- be touched by anyone else."

On the tape, Remington is heard steering the subject towards Trouten's disappearance. "I haven't heard squat from anyone as far as Suzette is concerned," she said. "I've got a PI (private investigator) working on it," Robinson replied.

"From what he tells me, she went to Mexico and is sailing around. All he can do is trace the credit cards and gas receipts ... I just wish she'd do the right thing and get a hold of people and let them know what's going on."

Assistant District Attorney Sara Welch asked Remington why she had maintained contact with Robinson, who called himself JR or James Turner, on the tape.

"To get as much information as I could about Suzette," Remington replied, her voice cracking with emotion. "I felt there was something very wrong and he was the only link I had to her." Remington testified that she was forwarding the information she received to the Lenexa Police Department, which by this point had launched a full-fledged investigation into Robinson.

"Were you playing him?" Welch asked Remington. "Yes," she said. "If I was cold and aloof, he'd have stopped all communication."

Suzette Trouten's mother, Carolyn, also took the stand Monday, describing the close relationship she shared with her youngest daughter, a 27-year-old nurse's aide who dreamed of completing her education. "We talked on the phone almost every day," she said. "I thought we talked about everything."

Trouten told prosecutor Paul Morrison that she didn't know her daughter was involved in the sadomasochistic lifestyle. "Would you have approved?" Morrison asked. "Oh no!" she replied. Trouten said her daughter told her she had met a man named John Robinson on the Internet.

A wealthy businessman with international connections, he purportedly offered her a $60,000 salary to move to Kansas and care for his elderly wheelchair-bound father. The job would entail a lot of travel, she said.

After taking two trips to Kansas City in the fall of 1999, Suzette Trouten told her family she had decided to take Robinson up on his offer and, packing up her belongings, drove out in mid-February 2000. For a few weeks, she stayed in close touch via e-mail and telephone. At 1 a.m. on March 1, she called her mother for the last time.

"I said, 'What are you doing up at this hour?'" testified Carolyn Trouten, who was working as a manager of a Big Boy in Michigan. "She said she wasn't tired and she wanted to let me know they'd be leaving in the morning. They were driving to California to pick up a yacht and then they would be sailing to Hawaii."

When two days passed, she grew very worried that she hadn't heard from her daughter. Then she received two letters, purportedly from Suzette. The first one was handwritten and was clearly written by her daughter just before she left town. But the second letter, Carolyn Trouten testified, was different: it was typewritten and contained only Suzette's signature.

"I knew immediately that it was not from my daughter," she said. "This was nothing like Suzette would write or talk."

The only other witness to take the stand Monday was Lidia Ponce, a Mexican woman who testified through an interpreter that she visited her son in Olathe in the spring of 2000 and mailed some letters addressed to Trouten's relatives upon her return home to Vera Cruz. Her son, Carlos Ibarra, was identified at the preliminary hearing as an acquaintance of Robinson; he is expected to testify at some point during the trial.

As the long-anticipated capital murder trial got underway, Robinson's defense attorney insisted in opening remarks that Robinson may have known or been sexually involved with the women whose bodies were found in barrels on his property but he didn't kill them. The prosecutor, however, said that evidence would show that Robinson had been killing women for years before his arrest in June 2000.

Robinson's lawyer admitted to the jury during opening statements that the defense had come into the case late and was unprepared for trial.

"This is a very humbling experience because ... we don't know what we need to know to effectively defend our client," said defense lawyer Sean O'Brien. In fact, "the only thing we know for certain is that we don't know the things that we should."

But noting that Robinson's "life and liberty are at stake here," O'Brien maintained that his client was unfairly targeted as the only suspect. "This was not a murder investigation," he charged. "This was a John Robinson investigation. His phones were tapped. His trash was collected. They focused exclusively on him until they built a case completely on circumstantial evidence."

Earlier, prosecutor Paul Morrison told the jury that he intends to prove that Robinson killed the three Kansas women as part of a scheme to murder a total of six women in Kansas and Missouri.

In a 25-minute opening statement, however, Morrison outlined strong circumstantial evidence that linked Robinson to a virtual trail of disappearing women. Starting on a cold snowy day in January 1985, he said, victim Lisa Stasi vanished after Robinson came to collect her at her sister-in-law's house.

"He knocked on the door," said Morrison, rapping on the podium for emphasis. "And with urgency in his voice, he said 'We gotta go. We gotta go right now.' Lisa left her car there and it sat and sat for days." That same month, Robinson's brother and sister-in-law flew to Kansas City to pick up a new baby. Upon hearing from Robinson that the baby's mother had committed suicide, "they returned to Chicago and they raised that baby as their own and they named her Heather."

That was just the beginning, Morrison charged. Beverly Bonner, 49, of Missouri, Sheila Faith, 45, and her 15-year-old daughter, Debbie, of Colorado, Lewicka, 21, of Indiana, and, ultimately, Trouten, also disappeared in the 1990s after last being seen with Robinson. "The evidence will be crystal clear," said Morrison, wrapping up his opening remarks. "The defendant has been killing women for over 17 years."

A former correspondent for Newsweek and People Weekly, Sue Miller Wiltz is currently writing a book about Robinson for Pinnacle Books. She is covering the trial for Courttv.com.