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County (where John Robinson would eventually buy a farm), a pro-slavery leader named Charles Hamilton and his followers lined up eleven Free State citizens and shot them dead. In October 1864, the largest cavalry battle west of the Mississippi River also took place in Linn County; once the carnage ended, Americans began using the phrase “Bleeding Kansas.” In 1892, the infamous Dalton gang was shot to death not far from Linn County, in the village of Coffeyville, after they were caught robbing a bank. Frank and Jesse James, the Ma Barker gang, and Pretty Boy Floyd terrorized the region as well. And in the mid–twentieth century, two of the world’s best-known killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, had started out on their murderous trek to western Kansas from the latter’s home in Olathe. Their savage killing of all four members of the Clutter family was immortalized in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. The Kansas side of the border had produced legendary lawmen as well, including Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody.
    Nearly a century and a half after the Civil War had ended, the old rivalry between Missouri and Kansas lived on in their politics, their sports competitions, and their views of one another across the state line, which ran through the center of Kansas City. The athletic teams at Kansas University in Lawrence were named the Jayhawks, after the pro-abolitionist Jayhawkers during the War Between the States, while the teams at Missouri University in Columbia were called the Tigers, after a home guard unit in the Civil War. In his own peculiar way, John Robinson would eventually rekindle the rivalry that had always existed along the border, but this time it would erupt inside the legal system. The residue of the Civil War still lingered around this landscape, and it didn’t take much to set loose the old bad blood.
     
    At Pleasant Valley Farms, Robinson introduced his newest business venture. Hydro-Gro, Inc., was a company based on the principle of hydroponics, a way of growing vegetables indoors within a nutrient rich environment. He created a sixty-four-page booklet entitled Fun with Home Hobby Hydroponics and promoted the enterprise by boasting, “If It Grows, It Grows Better Hydroponically.” He also promoted himself. As you read this booklet, he hoped that you would “form an acquaintance with John Robinson as a sensitive and stimulating human being. John Robinson’s lifetime goal in hydroponics is as far reaching as his imagination.” The book described water-based home gardening products that allowed families to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and other vegetables “in a minimum space, in the corner of your home.” The literature featured a photograph of Robinson’s five-year-old twins, Christopher and Christine, wearing their GROW YOUR OWN T-shirts and smiling into the camera. The Hydro-Gro literature claimed that Robinson was one of America’s hydroponics pioneers and a “sought after lecturer, consultant and author.”
    Not everyone who knew Robinson at Pleasant Valley Farms remembered him as a sensitive human being. Some neighbors felt that he was condescending and abrupt when they queried him about the business or refused to invest in it. Others heard Robinson screaming at his family members inside their spacious home, with its two large stone fireplaces and well-kept grounds, or noticed him barking orders at his wife and kids. Still others heard stories about how Robinson raised his hand to his wife, and people could see for themselves that he fed his horses so little they seemed in danger of starving.
    Those who decided to invest in Hydro-Gro came away from the experience with a very different view of Robinson from the one he promoted in the company literature. Nancy Rickard first met him after her father, Brooks, put up $25,000 for the new business. Nancy’s mother, Beth, was dying of cancer and her father was under pressure to pay the mounting bills; he thought Hydro-Gro could bail him