The third of five children, Robinson was born in Cicero, Illinois. His father was an alcoholic and his mother a disciplinarian. By the age of 13, he was an Eagle Scout. At the same age, he also enrolled in a Catholic preparatory seminary, claiming he desired to become a priest but dropped out at the end of his freshman year due to poor grades and disciplinary issues. Instead, he started attending trade school to study radiology. Though he only spent two years there and didn't finish his training, he was still able to get a job as an X-ray technician at a children's hospital in Kansas City, Missouri by forging credentials. Around the same time, aged 21, he got married to a woman named Nancy Jo Lynch, with whom he had a son and fraternal twins. In 1966, after being fired from his job due to his incompetence, Robinson got a similar job at a medical practice from which he stole tens of thousands of dollars. He also had sexual affairs with both staff and patients. In 1969, after being caught, he was sentenced to three years' probation. He violated it in within only a year by returning to Chicago.
In 1983, Robinson's crimes escalated. His brother, Don Robinson, and his wife, Helen, had unsuccessfully been trying to conceive and formally adopt a child. Claiming to have connections in the adoption business, Robinson started looking for single pregnant women who could provide a child, presumably to enter the black market adoption business. Because he wasn't able to get any referrals from social services, he went directly to the source and approached 19-year-old Lisa Stasi, the single mother of a four-month-old baby, Tiffany, at a battered women's shelter in January of 1985. Using the name ""Josh Osborne"", he convinced her that he would take her into a training program in Texas that included daycare and job training. On January 9, he came to the home of Stasi's sister and picked up Tiffany. The next day, Stasi's family got a phone call in which a terrified-sounding Stasi said ""they"" had deemed her an unfit mother and that her mother, Betty, had said she wanted the baby. The last her family heard from Lisa were the words ""here they come"" over the phone before it was disconnected. No one saw or had any contact with Lisa after that. Two days later, Robinson handed Tiffany over to his brother along with forged legal documents about the adoption that claimed the child's mother had committed suicide. The same day, Stasi's family filed a missing person report. Robinson was investigated on suspicion of violating the Mann Act, which originally prohibited white slavery and transportation of women across state lines for ""immoral purposes"". This was then changed so the word ""immoral"" was narrowed down to prostitution and other illegal sexual acts, such as sending Stasi and Godfrey over state lines for work. As Robinson's probation was reevaluated, he became a major player in the underground sex industry, involved in S&M-related prostitution.
