Sharon Kinne

According to Sharon, on March 19, 1960, at around 5:30 p.m., she heard a gunshot from the direction of the bedroom in which James was sleeping. Entering the room, she found two-and-a-half-year-old Danna on the bed next to her father. Danna was holding one of James's guns, a High Standard .22 target pistol,[9] and James was bleeding from an apparent gunshot wound in the back of his head.[15] Sharon called the police, but James was dead by the time the ambulance carrying him arrived at the hospital.[16]

Police were unable to recover any fingerprints from the well-oiled grip of the pistol,[7] and a paraffin test for gunshot residue was not performed on either Danna or Sharon.[16] Multiple people, including family and neighbors, told police that James had often allowed Danna to play with his guns,[17] and in a test by investigating officers, Danna proved able to pull the trigger on a gun matching the one that had killed her father. With no evidence to the contrary, investigators ruled the case an accidental homicide.[10]

The pistol that killed James was taken into police custody and never returned to Sharon,[18] despite her efforts to reclaim it;[19] she later had a male friend secretly buy her a .22 caliber automatic pistol. When the friend told Sharon that he had registered the gun in her name, she requested that he re-register it under a name other than hers.[20]

With the investigation into his death closed, James was buried and Sharon collected on his life insurance policies, valued at about US$29,000 (US$230,000 today).[12]

Patricia Jones was born Patricia Clements, one of six children born to Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Clements of St. Joseph, Missouri.[21] After graduating from Benton High School, she married Walter T. Jones Jr., her high school sweetheart.[10] Walter enlisted in the United States Marine Corps shortly after their marriage, and the couple relocated to the West Coast while Walter served. After his discharge from the military, they returned to Missouri and settled in Independence with their two children.[22] By 1960, almost five years into the marriage, Jones was working as a file clerk for the Internal Revenue Service, while her husband sold cars.[10]

Despite his marriage and children, Walter reportedly had a wandering eye. On April 18, Walter met Sharon when she bought a Ford Thunderbird from his dealership using some of the insurance payout from her husband's death.[2] The two began an affair shortly thereafter.[15]

Sharon viewed Walter as a prospect for a second husband, but he was uninterested in leaving Patricia[2] despite difficulties in the marriage.[22] When Walter declined to go on a trip to Washington with her in May, Sharon reluctantly went with her brother Eugene instead. Although they reunited on May 25, shortly after Sharon returned, the relationship became fraught when she told Walter that she was pregnant and he was the father of the baby.[2] Walter, instead of responding with what Sharon expected to be an agreement to divorce Patricia, ended the affair.[23]

According to Sharon's later testimony, on the afternoon of May 26, she contacted Patricia at her office[24] and told her that Walter was having an affair with Sharon's sister.[25] Sharon then met with Patricia that evening to discuss the matter further before dropping her off near the Jones house.[2]

Patricia never made it to her house that evening, according to her husband. Walter filed a missing persons report with police the next day[15] and began calling people he thought might have seen his wife. He got a lead when he spoke to friends of Patricia's who carpooled to work with her. They told Walter that Patricia had reported receiving a phone call that day from an unnamed woman who wanted to meet with her. She had asked the carpool driver to drop her off at a street corner in Independence, which he had done. The occupants of the carpool had seen a woman waiting for Patricia in another car but did not recognize her. They nevertheless provided a description of the unknown woman to Walter.[25]

Suspicious of the identity of the unknown woman based on the carpoolers' general description, Walter called Sharon and asked if she had seen or spoken to his wife.[25] Sharon allowed that she had, indeed, seen Patricia that day; she had met her to tell her about Walter's affair.[15] According to Sharon, she last saw Patricia where she dropped her off near the Jones house, speaking to an unknown man in a green 1957 Ford.[19]

Based on Sharon's admission over the phone, Walter met with her late Friday evening and insisted she give him more details about where his wife was; he later admitted to going so far as to hold a key to her throat threateningly.[24] Sharon's response was, after leaving Walter, to call Boldizs and ask him to help her search for Patricia. Shortly before midnight, within hours of Sharon's conversation with Walter, she and Boldizs found the body of a woman in a secluded area[25][note 2] approximately one mile outside of Independence.[27] According to Boldizs, he had been the one to suggest searching the area in which they encountered the body; it was a spot to which they had often gone on dates before.[19]

The body, dressed in a black sweater and yellow skirt, was soon identified as the missing Patricia Jones.[19] She had been shot four times by a .22 caliber pistol.[18] Although the fatal wound was a shot to Patricia's head, entering near her mouth on an upward trajectory, she also had one through and through bullet wound to her abdomen and two penetrating gunshot wounds to her shoulders on a downward trajectory through her body.[25] Powder burns on the hemline of her skirt, which had been raised to her waist,[19] indicated that the gun had been fired from close range at least once.[10] Initial reports and investigation placed Patricia's time of death at approximately 9 p.m. on May 27.[28] She was buried on May 31.[21]

Investigators immediately began to question Sharon, Walter, and Boldizs. All three were questioned on May 28.[19] Walter and Boldizs both gave written statements admitting that they had dated Sharon,[18] and both agreed to lie detector tests; Sharon gave an oral statement to police but declined to sign a written one[19] or take a lie detector test.[29] She was questioned again on the morning of May 30,[25] and Boldizs on May 31.[29] The scheduled polygraphs for the two men were performed on June 1, and both men were deemed to have been truthful in their statements.[30] Sharon's brother Eugene was also questioned on May 31, but declined to answer questions.[20]

While police questioned potential suspects and witnesses, other investigators focused on processing the crime scene. Repeated[31] attempts were made to find the murder weapon and the bullet that had passed through Patricia's body, including the sifting of dirt at the crime scene for bullets[25] and the deployment of a troop of Boy Scouts to search for a gun.[30] A .22 caliber rifle slug was eventually found buried in the ground where Patricia's body had been found, providing evidence that at least some of her wounds had been sustained at the place her body was found. Although investigators went so far as to drag the bottom of nearby bodies of water, the gun that had shot Patricia—assumed to be a .22 caliber pistol—could not be found.[31]

Buildings near where the body had been located were also searched for blood and gunshot evidence, in accordance with police's theory that Patricia had been attacked elsewhere and then transported outdoors.[21] A "white, powdery substance"[21] found in Patricia's hair was initially believed to be trace evidence of some other crime scene area—an idea which fueled the search of nearby buildings—but was later determined to be fly eggs.[30]

Sharon was arrested at her home for Patricia Jones's murder around 11 p.m. on May 31,[4] the same night as her funeral.[32] The same day, the Jackson County sheriff requested that prosecutors consider a second charge of murder, this one for the death of James Kinne.[20] Sharon's lawyers, Alex Peebles and Martha Sperry Hickman, filed a writ of habeas corpus with the court the next morning, and a hearing that afternoon resulted in her release on US$20,000 bond while she awaited a preliminary hearing originally scheduled for June 16.[20]

Police were able to rule out the .22 caliber pistol that had killed James as the murder weapon in Patricia's death; that gun was still in the possession of the sheriff's office. However, a man who worked with Sharon admitted to having secretly purchased a new .22 caliber pistol at her request in the beginning of May. Police were unable to locate the gun in question when they searched her house, though they did find an empty box that they believed had once held a gun.[18] Sharon at first claimed to investigators that she had lost the gun on a trip to Washington, then stated simply that the gun had disappeared.[33] Walter was taken into custody on June 2 as a material witness to the case and was freed the same day on US$2,000 bond.[33]

The initial autopsy performed on Patricia was criticized by police and prosecutors, who felt that the recovery of bullets and the testing of stomach contents should have been done. Dr. Hugh Owens, who had performed the autopsy, argued that he had recovered one of the presumed three bullets present in the body, and that because the body had been "prepared" by an undertaker prior to autopsy, any chemical tests on stomach contents would have been useless. Owens did add when asked that he had not seen any food apparent in the stomach at autopsy.[8] Patricia's body was exhumed on June 17 in order to collect the bullets that had been left behind at the original autopsy, as well as to gather what samples of tissue and stomach contents were possible.[34]

Sharon's arraignment on July 11 resulted in denial of bail, but the Kansas City Court of Appeals struck down the ruling days later based on the prosecution's reliance on circumstantial evidence. She was freed on US$24,000 (worth US$188,976 in 2013 dollars) bond on July 18.[35] After a delay in her trial date due to her advanced pregnancy, Sharon gave birth to a daughter she named Marla Christine on January 16, 1961.[9]

Although charged with both murders, Sharon was tried separately for the two crimes. Her trial for the murder of Patricia Jones began in mid-June 1961, with jury selection beginning on or about June 13[36] and the trial commencing days later[37] with an all-male jury.[38]

Opening arguments by both prosecution and defense set up cases based on purported times of death. Basing their assertion on pathologist-given testimony that Patricia had died about six hours after she ate lunch on May 26,[39] the prosecution claimed that Jones had died more than 24 hours before Sharon and Boldizs found her body; defense attorneys argued that death had more likely occurred six to eight hours prior.[37] Prosecutor J. Arnott Hill[40] cited testimony by Walter Jones and Chief of Detectives Lt. Harry Nesbitt as evidence of Sharon's motive for the crime: Nesbitt recalled statements by Sharon that she was afraid Walter was drifting away from her[note 3] despite the financial support she offered him, and Walter testified that Sharon had told him she was pregnant by him and he had thereafter attempted to end the relationship.[38]

The prosecution was unable to firmly establish that Sharon owned or had once had the weapon that killed Patricia, though both Sharon's known pistol and the one that fired the bullets that killed Patricia were .22 caliber weapons. Roy Thrush, the man who sold the pistol to Sharon's male friend, had led police to a tree that contained what he claimed to be bullets he had fired from that pistol; however, when the bullets were extracted from the tree trunk, tests showed that the extracted bullets were not identifiable as having come from the weapon that killed Patricia.[41]

The prosecution rested its case on June 21[42] after calling 27 witnesses.[43] Sharon's defense, which took less than two days and involved fourteen witnesses other than Sharon—who did not testify[43]—focused on breaking down the State's claims of motive and means, arguing that she had no reason to kill Patricia and that the pistol she was alleged to have owned had not been proven to be the murder weapon.[40]

After slightly over one and a half hours of deliberation,[note 4] the jury, citing "just too many loopholes" left in the prosecution's case, acquitted Sharon Kinne.[43] Immediately after the delivery of the verdict, juror Ogden Stephens asked Sharon for her autograph,[40] which she was photographed giving to him.[43] Sharon was returned to jail the same day to await trial for the murder of her husband.[2]

Despite her acquittal for the murder of Patricia Jones, Sharon remained charged for the murder of her husband, James Kinne. When jury selection began on January 8, 1962,[44] Hill noted that he did not intend to pursue the death penalty in the case.[45]

The prosecution's case rested largely on their contention that Sharon had been so interested in seeing her husband removed that she had been willing to pay for his murder, supported by the grand jury testimony of Boldizs. Boldizs, though nominally a witness for the prosecution, weakened his testimony on the stand during the trial by claiming that Sharon's offer to pay him US$1,000 in return for James's murder could have been a joke, and Hill was forced to attack his own witness's credibility.[17] Further prosecution testimony alleged that the Kinnes' marriage had been on the verge of dissolution at the time of James's death, that Sharon's adultery had been a cause of this, and that Sharon had known that she would collect her husband's US$29,000 in life insurance policies only if she were still his wife.[16][17]

The defense, led by attorneys Hickman and James Patrick Quinn, focused on the circumstantial quality of the prosecution's evidence, noting that prior police investigation had determined James's death to be "obviously accidental"[17] and that the jury was obligated to assume innocence on the defendant's part no matter how unpleasant they found her moral character to be. The defense, too, attacked the reliability of Boldizs' testimony, calling him a "poor, mixed-up kid" who would "sign anything".[17] Kinne's attorneys also presented testimony from witnesses supporting the viability of the theory that Danna had shot her father, including statements that guns had been regularly left within her reach at the family home, that she was able to pull the triggers on toy guns with stiffer trigger pulls than the weapon that caused James' death, and that she had often been observed pretending to fire guns in play.[17]

The trial ended in conviction on January 11[46] after five and a half hours of deliberation.[2] In April of the same year, Sharon was formally sentenced to life in prison.[47] She began to serve her sentence in the Missouri Reformatory for Women.[48]

Later interviews with jurors from the trial revealed that "three or four ballots" had been taken before the "guilty" verdict was reached, beginning with the jury solidly divided and moving progressively toward unanimity for conviction. One juror told the Kansas City Star that Sharon's morals had not been considered at issue by the jury, and that she thought no juror had been aware of her previously being tried for the murder of Patricia Jones.[49] Despite the verdict, James's family continued to believe the best of their daughter-in-law, telling reporters on the day of the verdict, "[W]e can't find it in our hearts to say anything bad about her" and, "We still don't feel that she committed murder."[50] Sharon herself told reporters that she felt the verdict was a mistake, and that she regretted her previous enthusiasm for having a woman on the jury.[51]

The following week, Sharon's lawyers requested that she be released on bond, supported by a community petition signed by 132 supporters of her innocence. The motion was denied on the basis of first-degree murder not being a bailable offense; presiding judge Tom J. Stubbs also counseled Sharon's lawyers that he felt their involvement in such a petition at a time when a motion for bond was being considered was "highly improper".[52] A subsequent defense motion requested that the conviction be vacated because the jury had delivered its verdict based on "surmise and speculation" rather than "substantial evidence", listing a series of procedural errors that Sharon's counsel alleged had taken place before and during the trial; these included a juror taking "incomplete"[53] notes, disputes over Boldizs' testimony, and an incorrect number of potential jurors being provided for selection.

The motion was denied by Judge Stubbs in April 1962, but appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, which in March 1963 reversed the conviction[54] and ordered a new trial on the basis of Sharon's defense having been denied adequate peremptory challenges during jury selection in her trial.[55] Sharon was denied an opportunity for bail in May 1963,[54] but that ruling was overturned in July and she was released on $25,000 bond, posted by her brother Eugene.[48]

The State's request that the Missouri Supreme Court re-consider its position on Sharon's conviction was granted, but in October 1963 that hearing resulted in further grounds being found for a new trial, this time on the basis of the prosecutor having been allowed to cross-examine a prosecution witness.[14] A second request for a re-hearing on the validity of the conviction was denied by the Missouri Supreme Court.[56] Sharon and her children moved in with her mother and awaited the start of her new trial.[2]

Sharon's second trial for the death of James Kinne began on March 23, 1964. As jury selection got underway that day, the public was initially barred from the proceedings, but the restriction was soon loosened and journalists were allowed into the courtroom.[57] An unusually long jury selection process made the first day of the trial last fourteen hours, beginning at 9 a.m. and not ending until nearly midnight; presiding judge Paul Carver noted that due to the notoriety of the case, he had been forced to choose between sequestering the entire jury pool overnight and forcing the court into a long day. The eventual jury, all men, were immediately sequestered,[57] but days later,[58] a mistrial was declared after it emerged that a law partner of prosecutor Lawrence Gepford had once been retained by one of the jurors.[59]

Sharon's third trial, originally scheduled to begin early in June 1964,[59] began instead on June 29.[60] Assistant prosecutor Donald L. Mason declared at jury selection that he intended to death-qualify the jury,[59] a process in which a prosecutor peremptorily challenges any juror who automatically opposes the death penalty, and jury selection once again took more than twelve hours in one day.[58] Boldizs' testimony in this trial remained contradictory as to whether he believed Sharon's US$1,000 offer to have James killed had been intended seriously, but he added this time that after his death, Sharon had asked that Boldizs not tell authorities about her offer.[13]

A new witness, a female acquaintance of Sharon's, testified that she had once joked that the woman should "get rid of [the woman's] old man like [Sharon] did", but defense cross-examination highlighted inconsistencies between this testimony and a similar quote the woman had offered at a previous deposition.[13] For the first time at any of her trials, Sharon took the stand on the last day of this trial to issue a categorical denial of all charges.[61] The all-male[58] jury deadlocked seven-to-five in favor of acquittal in this trial, resulting in a second mistrial.[61]

Police responding to Hotel La Vada arrested Sharon on charges of homicide and assault with a deadly weapon.[71] Sharon maintained that she had not intended to harm Ordoñez, and that she had fired her weapon at Rueda because she feared that he, too, was coming to attack her. Police searched her purse, finding a gun and fifty cartridges, and then the couple's room at Hotel Gin, where they found two more guns and another supply of cartridges.[70]

Authorities took Pugliese into custody at the Hotel Gin,[63] initially holding him without charge[72] and later filing charges of entering the country illegally and carrying an unlicensed gun.[73] The gun found in the couple's room that night was later proven through ballistics to be the same gun that killed Patricia Jones in 1960,[74][75] but because Sharon had already been acquitted of that crime, she could not be charged again for it based on the new evidence.[76]

Pugliese was held at the Palacio de Lecumberri in Mexico City, while Sharon was initially placed in a women's prison[77] before being transferred to Lecumberri for her trial.[2] The couple were arraigned on September 26[73] and held for trial. In October, Sharon's Mexican attorney, Higinio Lara, filed a recurso de amparo, similar to a writ of habeas corpus, asserting that the Mexican government was violating her constitutional rights by holding her for a shooting committed in self-defense.[77] The request was denied and both Sharon and Pugliese were tried in the summer of 1965.[78]

Pugliese, cleared of the charges against him, was deported to the U.S., but Sharon was convicted on October 18[2] of the homicide of Ordoñez. Despite rumors that she would receive probation and be deported like Pugliese,[75] Sharon was instead sentenced to a ten-year prison term for the murder.[78] When she was officially notified of the sentence the next day, she asserted that she would appeal her conviction.[79] The appeal, rather than overturning her sentence, lengthened it.[80] The three-man superior court which heard Sharon's case overturned one aspect of her conviction—charges of attempted robbery—but upheld her murder conviction and increased her sentence from ten to thirteen years, saying that her original sentence had been too lenient.[1]

Sharon was returned to the women's prison to serve her sentence.[74] There, she was nicknamed "La Pistolera" ("the gunfighter"),[7] a nickname subsequently adopted by the Mexican press.[81]

On December 7, 1969, Sharon was not present for a routine 5 p.m. roll-call at the Ixtapalapan prison where she was serving her sentence. Her absence was not officially noted until she also failed to show up at a second roll-call later that evening. The news of her escape was not reported to Mexico City police until 2 o'clock the following morning.[82] A manhunt was then arranged, initially focusing on the northern Mexican states[83] due to authorities' belief that Sharon may have been heading for the last known whereabouts of a former inmate to whom she had grown close while they were in prison together.[82]

The search also encompassed country-wide transport hubs and eventually circled back to the Mexico City area.[84] U.S. authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), were also alerted of Mexican authorities' belief that Sharon may have been attempting to work her way back into her native country, but the FBI noted that it was unlikely to have jurisdiction in the case.[85]

Initial police speculation was that Sharon had bribed guards to look the other way while she escaped the prison—an unusual blackout had been reported at the prison on the evening of and at the approximate time of her escape. Investigation showed that a door that should have been locked had been left unsecured.[82] Further questioning of prison guards and administration showed that oversight at the prison was generally lax and that it was staffed by fewer guards than it should have been.[86]

News reports of the time reported numerous theories about Sharon's escape, including that she had bribed prison guards,[82] that she may have enlisted the help of a supposed boyfriend who was a Mexico City policeman,[84] that her mother had been involved in the escape plan,[86] that a former Mexican secret service agent had assisted in the escape,[87] and that Sharon may have disguised herself as a man to effect her escape.[88] A more modern theory speculates that Ordoñez's family had helped her escape and then killed her.[89]

The intensive manhunt for was short-lived. By December 18, the Mexican secret service and the Mexico City district attorney's office were both reporting that they were no longer involved in searching for the escaped prisoner, while the federal district attorney was reporting that responsibility for the hunt belonged to the city district attorney's office. Investigators speculated that Sharon had already crossed the border from Mexico into Guatemala, mooting the purpose of a Mexican manhunt.[90] They noted that she was fluent in Spanish after her years in Mexican prison, and she could therefore "get along rather well" in nearly any Spanish-speaking area of the world.[88] Despite vowing to keep the case open and their investigation running until Sharon was back in custody, authorities were forced to admit by the end of December 1969 that they had run out of investigative leads to pursue.[88]

More than fifty years after her escape, Sharon Kinne remains at large, her whereabouts and ultimate fate unknown.[89]